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Mg home was built in the 70s and has no straight lines. This has made painting a nightmare as all tools to cut off between areas don’t work. Figured you’d sympathize, as a treat.
There’s a museum on the IU campus that does not have a single right angle in the entire building. I get headaches every time I’ve gone in there and slight vertigo makes me constantly feel like I’m stumbling around as I move. I feel like I’m dealing with the alien geometries of a cosmic horror story. I don’t think I could handle being in your house if there isn’t a single straight line. Like, I guess it could be fine if you’re referring to circular rooms or whatever, but if even the floor isn’t flat it might be a problem for someone like me, lol.
Myself I time-share my anger. I have 30-40 things in my list of stuff to be angry about, and each minute I switch to a new topic that consumes my soul with white-hot fury.
This strategy is very productive at getting lots of engagement on twitter and twitter clones.
@Reaver I can kinda understand how having more than one tap would make you capable of multitudes, I’m just struggling to see the relevance. But hey, that’s a me problem not a you problem.
People forget (constantly, not just in this case) that the characters aren’t privy to the same information we all are. Being upset that Rachel is still angry at a guy shitty enough to rate every single woman he came across (except trans women apparently) just a few months ago, seems silly? That’s such a reasonable thing to still be angry about?
It’s the bongo part, really. She could just keep walking. She could just ignore him. SHE chose to make it awkward. SHE chose to make it a thing. SHE chose to make sure Joe knew that she was still angry (and what’s Joe supposed to do with that?).
The point is to make people who you believe make your space less welcoming and hostile to you and the people you care about more hostile to those who hurt you.
She is aggressive with Joe because he has behaved in ways that have actively eroded the safety of the space, and therefore, the fact that he is unwelcome must be reiterated and reiterated until he leaves and does not come back.
In Joe’s case, she’s wrong. Her unwillingness to entertain the fact that he could have changed is probably due to her conflating him with all the sexist Ryans of the world who would at BEST pretend to have changed long enough to begin predating again. (You have to understand. Most people on Joe’s road, don’t choose to change. NEVER choose to change…Except to get worse, and worse, and worse. She regards him as a threat because she has good reason to do so.)
But also, it’s kind of on him to prove that she’s wrong. He has a position of social authority and privilege and general prior behavior that kind of means that, if someone tries to feed you humble pie on shitty stuff you’ve done, you’ve kinda got to eat it.
He’s honestly handling this pretty well so far. He’s not becoming belligerent, he’s not trying to minimize what he’s done, he’s not making excuses or saying that she should be ‘over it.’ Whether she accepts that…Another question.
…But she’s also not exactly OBLIGED to accept it. No one is obliged to give shitty dudes a second chance.
This all falls apart to me because it doesn’t take into account that Joe has been actively avoiding her. Like if this is their first encounter since October, in a very real sense he *has* gone away and never come back.
Like, if seeing him once in 3+ months just existing is too much for her to bear such that she can’t help but speak up, that’s reached the point where it’s *her* problem, not his. If her problem with Joe is him existing in public, then the only thing he can reasonably do to fix that is drop out of IU, and even the least charitable interpretation of his actions in the comic doesn’t rise to the level where that would be an appropriate punishment.
We have to accept that people we don’t like, even those we think are a certain level of harmful, have a right to exist in public.
What position of social authority and privilege? Are you referring to the fact that he’s male? As someone who’s been male for nearly thirty years, I’ve never felt I had any amount of default authority on anything, especially not socially. Maybe it would be different if I wasn’t autistic, but I get casually dismissed all the time, and have people challenge me on basic things, like my right to exist in public, all the time. Believe it or not, the world has in fact changed rather drastically since the 1970s. A man’s reputation can be ruined just for trying to have a conversation with a woman, I’ve been treated like dirt for simply saying “hello” before.
I’m not trying to minimize the hardships women experience or try to play the “who has it worse” game, because that’s obviously going to vary heavily from place to place and individual to individual, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were still places where men held authority by default here in the US (I know there are such places globally), but IU is decidedly not one of them, having lived in Bloomington since shortly before I turned 4 and having gone to IU in particular for several years.
Joe is just another freshman like any other, he has a decently large friend group but doesn’t appear to be particularly popular outside of that group, he doesn’t wield any sort of organizational power, so what “social authority” do you think he has? Frankly, it would be super easy for her to make his life significantly more difficult using social power, given his reputation and his history with the “do list”, if she made reports of him making her uncomfortable or doing or saying anything to her that could be construed as SA or harassment or whatever, I guarantee she’d be the one believed by the institution, not him. As such, he is not in a position of higher social authority, the power imbalance absolutely favors her, not him.
@Psychie, saying this as gently as possible: privilege is often invisible to those who have it. And you’re absolutely minimizing the hardships women experience and playing the “who has it worse” game.
That there’s a staunch core of Joe defenders here who think he’s never done anything wrong, that he was always just an ethical horn dog, despite him having an entire arc about his problems kind of proves it.
Joe was a creep to basically every woman he interacted with before his redemption arc started and he’s suffered basically no social consequences from it – except Rachel being a little mean to him.
It’s not minimizing anybody’s hardships to say that I have never in my life been in a position of privilege. Frankly, I see women exercising all kinds of privileges I don’t have all the time. All I’ve ever felt, socially speaking, is minimized, attacked, and dismissed for being a man. I get treated like a threat or a predator no matter what I have personally done or how I personally behave, I have had actual weapons pulled on me just for existing in public on separate occasions. Once a woman pointed to me as an example of a “dangerous man” when explaining to her daughter just how evil men were and how they were to be feared when I was walking through the arboretum to get to class, this was a random stranger who I had never even seen before, she just picked me because I’m large and male and conveniently nearby. I’ve been verbally accosted for saying hello to a woman in a social setting before. I’ve been accused of “mansplaining” for answering questions that they asked me directly. Once on a bus I had my knees together and my shoulders hunched in to make my large frame take up as little space as possible because we were packed in like sardines and I was accused of “manspreading” because the bus turned and centripetal force caused me to lean slightly to the left and my shoulder slightly bumped into the girl sitting there before I caught my balance. I was once banned from an internet forum because a user claimed I assaulted her at a convention I never went to in a state I’ve never been to (thankfully nobody on that forum had personal information on me so that was the only consequence of that false accusation). I live my life trying to be unobtrusive, harming nobody, and I get treated like I’m guilty until proven innocent of crimes other people committed by random strangers who don’t know me and who I have certainly never done anything to. That’s not a privilege. I don’t have people believe me because I am a man, in fact I’ve experienced the opposite, where my contributions, efforts, experiences, etc. get minimized, dismissed, or outright disbelieved because I am a man.
And how the heck did I “minimize” anybody’s experiences when I was talking about MY OWN? How does talking about the hardships *I* experience on a daily basis, and the lack of any magical “privileges” that supposedly make my life sunshine and rainbows by virtue of having been born with a dick minimize anybody else’s hardships? I didn’t say women who have been victims of assault haven’t been victimized or that their hardships aren’t worse than mine, I’m just pointing out that men do, in fact, have plenty of hardships too that exist purely because of our gender. Misandry is fucking normalized for crying out loud, it is perfectly socially acceptable to hate men for being men, I experience it regularly, and pointing that out does not in anyway negate or dismiss the struggles of women.
My entire point is that everybody has problems created by society, but focusing on blaming men for all of it and acting like women are the only ones being harmed by society’s bullshit doesn’t actually make things better for anybody, it just makes things worse for different people. Maybe there are some sort of privileges that I have but somehow never seem to benefit from in any meaningful way, but meanwhile I see women experiencing all kinds of privileges I DON’T have all the time, and some of them blatantly exploit those privileges maliciously.
Yes, Joe was very creepy for a few months (in-universe), I’m not defending that or pretending it didn’t happen. I’m not challenging that claim. I’m challenging the claim that he is in a position of social authority, that he somehow wields social power over Rachel in this situation, when if she really wanted to, she could claim he did or said something to make her uncomfortable and have him removed from the gym if she wanted, or make up something even more heinous and have him kicked out of the university, if she makes any accusations against him right now, the people in charge, and frankly the general public if she’s particularly loud about it, would instantly believe her over him, partly due to his own previous actions, but also partly because he’s a man and she’s a woman. That is a thing that does in fact happen, and something she absolutely has the power to do if she wanted to. That means she has social leverage over him. Meanwhile, what social power does he have? What can he do, socially speaking, to harm her in any way whatsoever? He doesn’t have much in the way of general popularity or social credibility, so he can’t do anything to ruin her reputation, or her relationships, or to use her social life to pressure her to do anything she doesn’t want to do, he certainly doesn’t have the ear of any authority figures that he could use to make her life difficult if he wanted to.
Yes, he was a creep before, doxxing her with the do list was a very bad thing, and yes, she does not have to forgive him for it. I never said otherwise. I’m just asking what social authority he has over her, what privilege he has as a man that is in any way relevant to this situation, because those are the terms that were used and I’m disagreeing with them. Not the overall point that Nightsbridge was making, literally just that part.
Pointing out that men also have problems that directly result from being men is not minimizing the struggles that women have or even claiming that ours are worse, just that they exist too. I’m sick and tired of having my struggles dismissed out of hand just because women’s struggles are worse in many cases. How does saying I have directly struggled as a result of being a man take away from women’s struggles? How am I minimizing anything? Frankly, telling me that I’m not allowed to complain about the shitty treatment I’ve received just for being born with a penis is doing to me exactly what you are accusing me of doing. I talked about my own experience as a man, and somehow advocating for myself is attacking women? Do you see what I’m getting at? Do you see why I felt the need to include that line that I wasn’t trying to minimize anybody else’s experiences or say that my struggles are worse? I’m just saying my struggles EXIST AT ALL, and that they are contextually relevant as a counterpoint to the claim that Joe has social authority over Rachel in this situation, a claim that has still not actually been defended mind you.
I have dealt with significant struggles because I am a man. I empathize with women who have struggled because they are women. It is entirely possible to acknowledge that both can suck for different reasons and actively work to make things better for everybody. I do it, I know plenty of people, men, women, and otherwise that do it. But I still find myself needing to hash this out over and over and over again every single time I bring up my own experiences on the internet because people like you like to pretend that men have it so easy by default and any claim otherwise is misogyny or minimizing women’s struggles, which is ridiculous. Things can be bad for everybody, there is more than enough misery and suffering to go around, but maybe if we stopped all this stupid pointing fingers and trying to argue over who has it worse we could focus on making things better instead and hopefully reduce some of that misery and suffering for everybody.
@Phsychie, I’m not going to unpack everything you wrote, but I’d like to point out two major points.
1) you demonstrate TheJeff’s argument in the very first statement by saying “I have never in my life been in a position of privilege”. You can’t possibly know, and it’s easy to stay blind to it if you’re not even open to the concept.
2) Rachel wouldn’t be wrong if she brought up to the school that Joe was leaning against her door, hitting on her the second she walked out of her own dorm room, and at a later point have kept on refer to her by the number he ranked her as.
“Social authority” might have been a bit of a strange argument to me by Nightsbridge, but their point still stands that Joe is in a position of privilege here, his previous actions have made the public areas of campus, downright to their own dorm hallways, less safe. And Joe even pointed out his privilege himself, probably unknowingly, about how he gets away with creepy comments just because he is conventionally attractive. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/hiatus/
She didn’t choose to be on his list. She didn’t choose to have her name and room number published alongside the list. She didn’t choose to be disgustingly objectified and have it become a public spectacle. God forbid she continue being upset about that just a few months after it happened.
She’s not in the wrong just because she isn’t staying silent and pretending everything is fine. Even if you’d prefer she didn’t keep talking about it, there’s actually nothing wrong with her doing so.
So should Joe have to leave any public space as soon as rachel arrives?
I get that that’s hyperbole, I’m just not reasonably certain what Rachel should expect out of Joe if “avoiding her for 3 months” is insufficient and deserves to be called out. Like, what benefit would she get out of this conversation? She’s *already* called him out on being a creep. She clearly knows Joe knows that she thinks he’s a creep. What is her goal here?
No, he shouldn’t, but she’s not required to keep her mouth shut about her annoyance either. Both things are true. He’s not doing anything wrong by being there and she’s not doing anything wrong by talking about how she feels. I understand that you think she has said all she needs to, but she clearly doesn’t feel that way.
I think it’s more because you think about what would happen if Sarah was right and Joe was still only concerned with getting his dick wet, he still would have been avoiding her to avoid making hwr uncomfortable. He’d be doing exactly the right thing by Rachel regardless. Basically- “so if Joe can’t change, what do you want him to *do* with that, Rachel?”
“Verbal attacks” is, perhaps, a bit of an overstatement. “Unprompted” is definitely inaccurate. Rachel has a poor opinion of Joe’s character, and isn’t shy about making that opinion known to him, certainly, but it is an evaluation based on entirely reasonable premises – his own past behavior – and she has kept the expression of her views regarding Joe entirely within the bounds of those factors. She has made no baseless accusations, and she has made no attempt to harass him outside of chance encounters that have occurred literally months apart.
Just because we’ve seen Joe do a lot of work on self-improvement and genuine effort to be a better person doesn’t mean Rachel has, and it’s not fair to expect her to have the same insight into his character arc as we do.
She wants him to kill himself, obviously. He did something bad in the past and therefore he is ruined forever. Only people like Rachel, who have never ever done anything wrong in their lives and never will, deserve to exist.
JFC, maybe take it down a notch or ten? She made a couple of snide comments, delivered in a completely civil and calm tone of voice, and accompanied them with literally no threat – either explicit or implied – towards his health, emotional well-being, social status, or even ability to complete his exercise routine undisturbed following their conversation.
Rachel has neither said nor done anything even remotely close to the same galaxy as exhortations of suicide.
Yikes. Do you, I’m just curious, here, but do you really think this sort of comment is helpful to a conversation? Do you think a snide comment from one fictional character to another is something that should have you making light of suicide to other real human beings in a conversation about a webcomic?
Oh yeah for sure. Just the “redemption is a story” philosophy is really shitty, and it was supremely shitty to say to someone on suicide watch. Ruth was bad, she wasn’t bad enough to make that appropriate at that specific time. I’m in general hostile to the idea that people don’t change, it’s a defeatist and worthless attitude, it’s doomerism. It’s throwing your hands up and saying “welp, shit sucks. Oh well.” And denying people the capacity of change now of all times is just, really unhelpful
I get the cynicism. It’s not a good attitude in regards to personal improvement, but “abusers don’t change” isn’t unreasonable as a survival strategy. She’s out of line to be sure, but from her perspective I get it.
We actually have No Idea how bad Ruth was. Rachel’s beef with her was from being roomies the first year and she specifically called Ruth a bully. Without knowing what happened between them, we have no way to gauge how reasonable her attitude is.
I’m interested to see what her problem is, I would love to deep dive Rachel’s story to find out the ‘why’ instead of rabidly condemning the response to whatever happened without knowing.
We often talk about “protagonist centered morality” here to excuse pretty obvious villains (like Raidah), but this seems like a much clearer case of it.
she doesnt have healthy skepticism though, what she had is a problem, and decided to go off on him the second she saw him. Like if your introduction to someone is an insult, maybe dont even bother striking up conversation?
The man made a public apology with doughnuts, that is not something most horny 18 year olds would do. I think she just doesn’t want to believe he can change because she’s so mad at him, and it’d be disappointing to have less of a basis for that righteous anger
i can understnad rachel being skeptical although even if you know ppl can change i don’t think she’d rly care enough to befriend joe or so , ppl can live how they want although it’d be sucky if one was obligated to be near another person and such b/c of work and classes, can’t be friends with everyone after all
Really, girl, can you let a person work out? Give him grief if he hits on you but other wise be polite and mind your own business. I suppose she actually likes him though.
Why would the laundry rooms not be coed? The ones in my college certainly were just a single room of machines for our dorm, and I’m not sure what benefit there would have been in separating them.
Individual dorms might have smaller gyms (like only a big bigger than a typical hotel gym). But the university itself has a separate, huge gym (that is itself the size of a typical hotel).
Doesn’t Javert kill himself the moment he thinks about easing off? I’ve only watched that movie one time. For the record, I wouldn’t joke about Rachel killing herself, it’d be too close to home. Someone else can do it, maybe by accident. Or she could eat some bad chorizo, nobody at fault, it looked fine and the freshness label said it was good for another month, no evidence of tampering, it’s just bad luck.
Javert kills himself after realizing he’s been wrong about Valjean all that time. That he’d wasted decades pursuing an innocent man, at odds with his own rigid black/white morality. And, having never had a moment’s doubt about his own actions, had no idea how to deal with that guilt. Hence, removing himself from the census, post-haste.
No kidding, the man is trying to work out. Personally I can’t stand it when people interrupt my workouts. Of course it’s because I’m self conscious and easily distracted… I hope she actually likes him and is trying to forge a relationship of banter and fun repartee, rather than just generally sowing discord everywhere she goes. I suppose she finds him hot and distracting and it’s trying to be on top of the situation.
Eh, I personally find that possibility a bit distasteful considering the actually understandable origin of her dislike of him being his objectifying attitude so it being about finding him hot fells, icky I guess.
Agreed! I know Rachel gets a lot of hate for having the temerity to dislike multiple members of the main cast of characters for their genuinely unacceptable past actions, but I would really prefer her own arc not be about anything so trite as sublimated sexual attraction.
People don’t dislike her because of that. People dislike her because of her attitude towards redemption and her steadfast belief that people are destined to be horrible forever. Which is a position the narrative we’re presented with directly contradicts. This is also basically the only thing we know about Rachel, we don’t have her tragic backstory to explain what made her this way, and we don’t have any potentially endearing qualities or traits for her to make us care about her as a character. She’s just kinda there, and occasionally she says something. I mean I guess she’s had two prominent scenes – one where she was really cool and laid into Joe for his bullshit, and one where she told a suicidal person that it was impossible for them to improve. The circumstances of the latter kinda overshadow the first one. This is the first time I can think of Rachel being given any significant attention since the “Redemption is a story” scene.
Feel like characters who got together in Walkyverse are cursed. Like the universe wants them to get together and that string tethering them makes them want to go further apart.
Pro-tip: go to the Patreon and look at the blurry preview image if you’re ever that excited for the next strip. You can at least see the colors and vague shapes well enough to tell which characters are featuring. I would’ve resubscribed yesterday if I didn’t see it was cutting away to Joe and Rachel
well, a dude put together a massively sexist list that ranked all the girls in her dorm by hotness and then had it leak, and apologized by buying a bunch of donuts
also her ra was persistently abusive to everyone on her floor, including her, and when the school found out, they moved her chief victim out of the dorm and kept her in power
I seem to vaguely remember Rachel being this bitter from her first appearance, but yeah, you’re not wrong. From her perspective so far, she’s only seen her worldview reinforced. And Rachel started out despising Joe in the Walkyverse, and that relationship only changed through the sort of extremely unlikely coincidence that is so common in fiction and unheard of in real life. So there’s not really a reason to expect them to ever have the same breakthrough here, except possibly because the Willis wills it.
Though what I *am* trying to figure out is if the comic has ever given any reason why Rachel is not bitterest friends forever with Sarah. You’d expect their shared misanthropy to gives them some common ground.
This! You have squarely explained the reason she’s upset. Also, people from the hallway she lives in keep getting kidnapped, killed, or seriously traumatized. It’s not AS traumatizing as living through it, but having something terrible happen in close proximity to you is still upsetting.
Not that I don’t get why Rachel feels like this, I do, but panel 6 feels like a bit of a stretch on her part. “You are considering my feelings, which means you’re a skeezebag” is difficult logic to follow.
That makes some amount of sense, but outside of the donuts thing he did, there’s not really a whole hell of a lot more else he could presumably do about that, short of maybe try to find who leaked it, given the potential danger whoever did that put the women on the list in. But, that’d also likely be interpreted as less than altruistic on his part, too, which I know he doesn’t really care about, but does kind of make it seem all the more like there’s no real path forward.
Joe put those women in danger, not the person who “leaked” it. Joe’s list was a public feed that he talked about constantly. For all we know, whoever leaked it was one of the women on the list who wanted people to know what he was posting out there for anyone to see.
It was a list of names, where those women live, and in many cases notes about what they liked or how to get in good with them (churchy, for instance). The women in the comic itself (Rachel, in fact) called it a “treasure map” so, no, I don’t think it’s any kind of exaggeration to say Joe put women in danger with that list.
In most cases it didn’t have names, just descriptions I think. Did we know that it ever had names?
I don’t remember anything about where they lived – though if you knew enough of them you could probably figure out that a lot of the rest were also in Read (though as it’s a continuation of his list from high school and it has grandmothers on it, it’s got a lot who weren’t there.)
Like I said, it is specifically called “a virtual treasure map to every woman in the building”. I’m just going by what the comic implied was on the list.
And any danger from the list was massively overstated. It was superficial stuff from what we saw and in most cases you’d need to already know it in order to even identify who they were.
It did give out enough information that in some cases could put someone at greater risk, but not more than could be easily found out by other means. It is possible that someone who might not have thought about other ways to find this information could read the list and be like, “Hey, it’s that girl, she must live in Read.”
(To be clear, the risk would almost definitely come from people who already knew the women to some extent. “College women live in this college dorm” isn’t exactly a revelation.)
But overall, yes, the greater danger was in the objectifcation rather than the physical. For those who didn’t see any danger in the objectification (like Joe and Danny, initially), it does make sense that the possibility of physical danger is what registers.
It would also be very good for her to achieve some personal growth in this arena (believing that it’s possible that people can change) regardless of whether or not she forgives Joe.
Exactly this. She doesn’t owe him forgiveness or friendship, but she doesn’t have to be purposefully mean, either. Cause then she’s just being the kind of person she claims to hate.
it’s really been a theme that the peeps around you don’t always help you change with their preconceptions. this is one more angle to explore I suppose.
I wonder what Rachel thinks she’ll achieve by instigating with people she doesn’t like or trust. Isn’t this what she’s done with Ruth, too? Like, if she wants people to keep affirming her dislike of them, of course she’ll get that when she always comes in swinging. Good on Joe for not taking the bait so far
Oh yeah, there was that brief flashback where we saw her introduction to her freshman move-in day. Ruth turned out to be her roommate, so they were off to a great start.
It takes a lot for me to downright hate a character, and she’s nowhere near that threshold for me. I’m always down for some personality growth, though!
She didn’t tell him not to talk to her anymore I don’t think but this feels like a weird bitter resentment towards him. The fact that he said “I’m sorry, I’m stopping” seems to piss her off more because now he has complexity to him and wants to change. Given her dislike of Ruth it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s just kind of inherently the kind of negative person who holds a grudge.
Joe has changed a lot, but in DoA time it’s been so soon that I can’t see very many people believing or trusting it. Nor would I, probably, in their shoes.
yeah we have the benefit of the audience’s perspective here but it’s not unreasonable to be suspicious of Joe here. that said, Rachel’s like this to everybody
It’s true, I just reread her last interaction with Joe and I don’t blame her for hating him. She also has no reason to think he’s changed, she hasn’t witnessed it and it’s only been a few months. Yet her approach here just makes her seem like such an asshole.
I can accept people not becoming friends with Joe right awayor even liking him at all, but Joe never asked her to believe or trust anyting, doesnt even seem to have asked her for anything at all, she just arrived and decided to start insulting him for working out. then insulted him again after he said “yeah you dont le so i stayed out the way”
There’s never any winning with Tall Rachel. No scenario exist in which she says anything to anyone that’s not purely negative. Your options are to either sit and let her berate you, or let her chase you out of whatever space you were in before she showed up, and both of those just solidify her predetermined opinion of you.
Oh my god, it’s this bongo. All she fucking does is pick the exact same fight with people over and over. If any character deaths are planned for the near future, I hope she’s first on the list and goes unmourned.
I thought she was relatively meh about Joe so maybe something happened. Maybe the people constantly sexually assaulting her the past few months all mentioned the list as the impetus.
I’ve finally found a worthy cause to champion. Joyce Brown deserves to commit at least one (1) murder, because she’s been such a very good girl lately and it’s her unbirthday. You know, as a treat.
Golly, if change can’t happen, I guess her car’s gonna fall apart pretty quickly. No changing her oil, tires, brakes, none of it. She can’t update her computer software either, or really any electronics, because that would be her changing the version on them. She’s a massive fucking hypocrite or some other form of scoundrel too, because I know she wasn’t wearing these clothes last time we saw her. A change of outfit? Rachel, people can’t change, you can’t do that. So many normal things in life, so many options, locked off to all and sundry. A miserable existence, but one she chose for herself.
Yeah out of everything, I’m really bothered that Joe is cleaning up his act and getting a chance to finally trust and be trusted, and Dorothy’s kind of fucking everything up for both of them.
I feel for her. I do. But it’s frustrating to watch her take them down with her.
Joe’s over here doing his best, actively trying to fix himself, and Dorothy’s squatting in the corner in her underwear, melting crayons on a lightbulb and smearing the wax all over her face, muttering about Joyce’s ass. It’s quite a contrast.
Joyce is literally on her way to go cheat on him by ‘doing laundry’ with another woman while actively dating him. Plus given the nature of this comic ‘something’ will happen eventually.
Weirdly, this is actually going better than their initial interactions in the universe where they ended up together and became the parents of a sapient automobile on their first date.
i wonder how many ‘joe-type’ charas irl would actually be able to change, but rachel could’ve easily ignored hi mand refuse t o engage unless she specifically wanted a turn next on the machine joes using
Rachel has quite a talent for being unlikable even when she’s right.
And I say that as someone who agrees with her that Joe’s redemption arc has come too easily and quickly, and agrees with Dorothy that his hunkyness / Joyce’s ‘excess horny’ are the reason for that (I mean, hell, Joyce seems less willing to get over not liking Walky for…I’m not even sure what reasons, when in theory she should have MUCH more of a problem with Joe).
I feel like Joe should be getting the cold shoulder around campus. One could assume that he has off-camera, but yeah, we basically haven’t seen much of people being still mad at him for the list thing.
For *general people*, sure. *Joyce* easily letting it (or moreover just his general sluttiness) go still feels weird to me. She’s not the person she was a few months ago but she’s still not exactly Roz.
what good is college for if not speedrunning extreme changes lol
i guess it helps that he’s not completely isolated or Faz-like, so most ppl won’t care or busy with their own projects to go outta their way to do/say anything since he has an existing friend group
…. Rachel, dude, why are you talking to him. What do you seek from this interaction.
Because the only reason I can think of is, yeah, what she wants is Joe just grabbing his stuff and leaving. How dare he be already at the gym and stuff.
It might be her goal, yeah. Feeling unsafe working out next to someone you think might be a predator isn’t unreasonable, and we don’t know if there’s anyone else in this room
She might not want to flee but not want to be alone with him either
Her options (to her mind) are A: leave (this is letting the creep win), B: stay and say nothing (this allows the creep to be comfortable sharing her space, possibly giving him the impression that she has come to accept him. This is also letting the creep win.), or C: go on the offensive. Make it clear that he is not welcome to leer or try to chat her up or linger near her.
Honestly, I don’t fault her that decision from her perspective, at least for the initial comment. The follow-ups getting more and more… Zealous in fitting Joe in the particular box she has for him could’ve just been an eyeroll and maybe an ‘ugh’, but.
Maybe in her own way she is giving him the opportunity to prove her wrong, but absolutely not making it easy on him. We’ll see if anything comes of it.
I get why, but, like, Joe clearly said that he’s been taking steps to avoid her out of consideration for her feelings. He’s very much aware he shouldn’t share space with her. And at this point he’s been avoiding her since October.
At some point she needs to accept that no matter what he’s done, Joe has a right to exist inoffensively in a public space.
The conflict in the comments is between people who want Joyce and Dorothy to get into it right now, and people who want them to do right by their current partners. The latter are the relationship paladins in the poll.
I reject that framing, as one of several people I know voted “sickos” despite not in fact wanting that. I am excited for the drama, but deep in my heart I hope Joyce and Dorothy talk to their current partners before doing anything further over the line, and I have crossed fingers for clumsy poly because that would be rad.
But we had to pick one (or not vote at all), and I’m definitely not one of the people crusading for the sanctity of a fictional relationship and being mad that other people openly cheer on soap opera drama.
Okay? That’s the framing at hand in the poll, you can reject it all you want, I was just giving a requested explanation about what it meant.
I’m not really either, and I chose the third option of not voting in the poll. So take it up with Willis, or really…anyone who has any investment in that framing device at all. Someone who is not me.
And yet, it would be better than taking it up with me, who did not come here for an argument and is not invested in this as much as you seem to be. Look at below, where you presented an alternative framing and I have no interest in arguing with you about it.
Gosh I wish there was a block function available sometimes.
You seem like you’re in a really bad mood, and I’m truly not trying to upset you. I’m also not that invested; I think conversations about different interpretations of what the terms in the poll mean could be interesting, but you were clearly annoyed by the time you replied to Li– and I felt defense about what seemed to be your rudeness to them, but I should have just let it go.
Yes, I was annoyed by someone opening with “I reject that framing.”
I wasn’t here for an argument, and an alternative framing could have been presented without that, and as a reply to the one who asked instead of me. I was then even more annoyed when a reply to me continued with an argument after I made it pretty clear I did not want someone to take it up with me.
Nadamás, this really feels like you’re trying to execute a “gotcha”, but consider that what I was saying beyond my first message was about getting people to stop taking it up with me. I was and continue to be pretty invested in that.
And as I type this I’m remembering that I do actually have a block function of sorts, I can block the entire comments section from rendering in my browser, which I haven’t done in a while, but I think maybe it’s time again.
Um. Well. I know tone is hard on the internet but “I reject that framing” is super super neutral coming from me. Please picture this emoji, because it’s basically what my face was when I wrote the whole comment:
Well, it was my reading of it too. That is all it ever can be to one person. I have replied giving a similar ‘explanation’ as Devin. Devin said nothing rude, in my opinion. Devin was simply attempting to offer an explanation to someone who asked for one. Anyone can offer a different one.
Nothing rude about trying to offer an explanation, no. It’s not as objectively what the poll categories mean as they went on to argue, though. (And it doesn’t have to be– but I wouldn’t take Devin’s subjective take to someone else as a starting point to share my subjective take, because it’s their personal view on the matter.)
Yeah, sickos are the ones (as per the meme) seeing everything unfold and going, “Yes… ha ha ha… YES…”
I don’t particularly ship Joyce and Dorothy, but I’m down to be entertained by mess
Like I said to someone yesterday, it is basically being a granny watching a telenovela, screaming at the screen for the most drama creating event to happen.
I’m apparently in the minority in thinking that if Joyce and Dorothy are going to get into a sexual and/or romantic relationship with each other, they should break up with their current boyfriends first instead of cheating. At least that’s how I interpret “relationship paladins”.
That’s a very common sentiment and not actually as in line with the relationship paladins/sickos divide as you think. The right thing for Joyce and Dorothy to do would be to openly communicate with their partners, whether that’s changing the bounds of their relationships or breaking up, before they begin a romantic/sexual relationship with each other. Their relationship starting as cheating would also be unstable ground for it and might damage them long-term.
BUT I’m here for entertainment, and characters doing the “right” thing or what they “should” do is a less important element to me. Not everyone is going to be entertained by different ways of characters being messy; I view the “sickos” fragment as the ones who are enjoying how the storyline is going currently, feeling entertained by it.
I voted sickos, but I actually agree with you. My ideal would actually be that they talk to Joe and Walky and agree to some type of poly relationship. But I voted sickos because what I want most is to see Joyce/Dorothy happen and I’ll take it in whatever form it happens to come in.
Again, as I said yesterday, basically no one is arguing that Joyce and Dorothy shouldn’t break up or talk to their current partners first. The only person I saw saying anything pro-cheating was doing it as a bit and admitted as much.
Monogamy is safe, no one is going to persecute the monogamists, you can put the shield down. “Relationship Paladins” are the ones getting in a twist because other people have different boundaries for what officially counts as cheating. The kind of people who, when Joyce touched Dorothy’s face, got in the comments to tell anyone who thought that was a fun story moment that they were horrible people for championing cheating.
I don’t think they SHOULD cheat, but I think it’d be an interesting story element if that happened. I wanna see the drama, that’s what I’m reading this slice of life college comic for!
I thought about not commenting to Devin’s comment since it devolved into a much broader topic but after considering for a bit. “I don’t see how those are mutually exclusive” is in fact a response worth sharing in my opinion.
Shakes
June 7, 2025 at 12:30 am | # | Reply Report comment
I love how the comments have split into Relationship Paladins demanding the characters do the right thing and the other half are pressed against the window wearing “SICKOS” shirts.
There is a homebrew pali I know that’s basically the power of being a wife guy (minus the part where they inevitably cheat on their wives). Oath of the betrothed or something
It’s weird to me how my explanation, and Devin’s explanation, and Shakes’ comment that inspired the poll yesterday pretty much mean the exact same thing with slightly different wording, and yet almost everyone is acting like we’re using entirely different meanings for “relationship paladins” and “sickos” for some reason.
Shakes would have to weigh in, but I definitely interpreted their comment differently (and reliant on the meme it’s from, and how that’s often used) than what you said. Some overlap, but real differences. Also, grouping different implications and beliefs together in how people respond to the poll.
‘relationship paladins’ sounds like some kinda vid game if not some kinda weird metaphor like ‘princess and handmaiden’ or being a ‘knight’ for someone lol
Rachel: “I know you’re a filthy creep, Joe, and I’ll prove it! [She undresses] Aha, see! I bet you want a piece of this right here and now, don’t you! Absolute scumbag that you are!”
Joe: “Look, I appreciate what you’re showing me right now, but no, thank you.”
the patreon strip comment saying “for sexy reasons” might be a bit brow raising buti imagine hatefucking isn’t something joe woudl rly do even ‘before’ all the changes
Oh, nice! I would genuinely love to see Rachel’s beliefs get dissected a little more.
I kind of hope it’s not going to involve her being made to look like a total idiot over this specific lack of extended grace (she hasn’t interacted with Joe since he accused her of leaking his “do” list and then later apologized and told her he’d stopped collating and ranking women because he now understood it wasn’t cute or funny), but I would love for her to be given something to think about.
Ditto. I’m with the wanting-to-see-more group. Like, her responses/interactions with people who’ve done shitty things are entirely understandable. Granted they’re emotional reactions from someone who clearly has some hurt and not entirely healthy or helpful. I kind of want to see where she’s coming from and see her deal with it.
(also it kinda sucks that a lot of the character traits I relate to from my teen years get absolutely mauled in the comment section. I like them because they’re messy and real and I get to reflect on my own journey through theirs)
It’s just PoV bias. The comic’s spent a lot of time with Joe (and Ruth) so we get a lot more time to build empathy and understand their characters, where Rachel makes like one appearance per year and usually an antagonistic one
If she had more page time and more development I think people would be more sympathetic
Oh, I know! That’s part of why I’m hoping she doesn’t get comeuppance from him or with him specifically.
We don’t even really know that Rachel is wrong to feel as strongly as she does about RUTH, to be fair to Rachel, because all we have currently is Rachel expressing some very black-and-white thinking and then telling Ruth she sometimes gets the feeling that Ruth doesn’t remember very much of their year as roommates.
But yeah, I would love to see at least a seed planted here. Rachel’s view of redemption and change and mistakes is extremely unforgiving — and frankly, per her last strip, it sounds like she’s equally unforgiving of herself. That’s an awful way to live.
(If Ruth is owed an apology, I’d love her to get one; I’m just not totally sure she does, except in the “basic human decency” way where Rachel’s tirade definitely was kind of triggering for Ruth, I guess.)
To be fair, Ruth was antagonistic, cruel, and likely drinking to excess. Living with her would have been somewhere between depressing and a downright nightmare. I love Ruth, but she would have been hell to room with.
Yeah it feels like a total non sequitur . “I’ve been avoiding you because you don’t like me” does not really lead into “So you agree that I’m right for disliking you” at all.
Rachel’s not wrong in her initial reaction nor is she unreasonable to believe he couldn’t/wouldn’t change in that short of a window since she doesn’t have ‘audience perspective’. But the fact she chooses to engage and aggravate shows she’s not acting out of the right place even if the rest of it is valid.
She’s not the worst person we know but definitely brings the ‘has made a good point’ meme to mind.
Maybe Joyce will burst in with some comment to Joe about doing laundry. Joe will reply in a way that’s emotional but does not drop the “doing laundry” phrasing. They’ll leave the gym to continue their intense laundry discussion, and Rachel will be left there going, “…Laundry?”
I also wonder if this foreshadows a (hopefully temporary) backslide into OldJoe if Joyce does follow through on cheating on him instead of ending or opening the relationship first.
‘I tried to change and it got me nothing except making the person I wanted to change for worse….’
Comments try not to wish death and suffering on an imperfect woman challenge! Today, her crimes are *checks notes* being rude and not giving the benefit of the doubt to a person who openly objectified her, made uncomfortable sexual advances, rated her body and then posted it online, with instructions on where to find her. Ooo, this one could be tricky, Jim! We all know that a woman holding a grudge is the eight deadly sin- women are supposed to immediately recognise change, and reward the person doing so, regardless of any heinous things they might’ve done beforehand. You can see here Jim that in the ”Rachel is a demon” camp, they’ve already set up some pretty sturdy structures! It seems they’ve actually repurposed the ”it’s just a webcomic” wall they had left over from defending Joe last round! Now, they’ve picked it apart and use it to THROW at rival camp, followed by- oh I see, they send the death wishes in conjunction to justify it! Quite a bold strategy Jim, but one we’ve seen work time and time again. I do wonder if this is enough, because, as you mentioned earlier, team ”Rachel is justified” now has that second boost from that rule change last month, where players are now ALLOWED to acknowledge the disproportionate hate that Dorothy gets. I dunno about this one, Jim, we can only wait and see for the tiebreaker
The only one saying they want Rachel to get killed off is me, so it’s fine if you say my name outright. You’re on a bit of a high horse about it, though, with all the additional details about demons and sin and immediately recognizing yadda yadda. It’s not nearly as deep as you’re making it, I just don’t like the character.
Oh dear! It seems our commentary has been broadcasted onto the battlefield! Not great for the strategists in either camp, hopefully production will sort it out. In the meantime, Jim, let’s give a big shoutout to our sponsors!
Taffy, I honestly prefer not to interact with you… not that you’re doing anything wrong, I just never feel great when I read your comments. I don’t think I understand your hyperbole. It all just feels very mean and venomous to me. Also my comment was not directed at you- several people have wished death on characters in the past. I wish you well!
I know it’s been the schtick for walkyverse OTPs to have a large degree of antipathy towards one another in the dumbiverse, but I actually fear Joe/Rachel as OTP in the dumbiverse just because I feel like we’ve tread Joe/Rachel so much as part of either of their character arcs in the walkyverse.
i mean iassume most ppl go for adegree tho i’m sure some ppl are carefree(?) or rich enough to not worry about ‘wasting money’ and going for the ‘experience’ but i wouldn’t be surprised if ppl went to uni for 4 years and not change at all/be at a stand still if not change ‘for the worse’
(after all you hear talk about how ppl in their 40s still act like they’re in high school. or ppl getting indoctrinated into cults)
She’s there to berate them. That’s the only thing she ever does, every time she shows up. She barely qualifies as a character, An angry pigeon could fill the exact same function as her, and it’d be more interesting to read.
People go to college or university to change and grow? I went because my parents expected it after high school, and I was led to believe that I could get a better job that paid better than what you get with just a high school diploma. That turned out to not be true as I ended up working retail for years after graduating college. But unless you’re very rich I assume that’s why lots of people go to college.
I think “change and grow” is part of the idea of it for many people (or at least “grow”), but the other things are bigger factors for most of the same people.
For some reason I really love panel 4. “I’d be too much of a distraction,” she says, removing her shirt/jacket. Standing her ground, but also challenging him. Or providing him the opporunity to prove her right.
I mean, clearly she was taking it off anyway, but doing so during this particular conversation is… Seriously, I can’t decide whether it’s a power move or not.
I chose “relationship paladins,” not because of anything to do with the comic, but mainly because I think there needs to be, at the very least, a very lengthy moratorium on the use of the word “sickos” by the Internet as a whole, lately, just in general.
Yeah, I have no idea who this chick is. She shows up like once a year to be an ass to somebody over something that happened in like 2016 but she hasn’t done anything of narrative importance since Obama was in office.
My guess for this arc
Joyce and Dorothy hook up
Joe feels betrayed, and has a “well i tried growing as a person and got my heart smashed back to being a player” phase
Everyone that didnt trust his growth goes “see told you so”
Meanwhile there is alot of development for Joyce coming to terms with sexuality and all her baggage with that
Becky gets hurt even though she’s happy with Dina
And Walky is somewhere in thr background going “wait what just happened?”
Honestly, I tend to struggle to let myself write my own stories and characters as messy as I want to, so I’m absolutely team Sickos – I greatly appreciate it when I see a well-written storyline with flawed characters whose author actually lets them mess up their relationships enough that they’re forced to learn and grow in ways that resonate, rather than try to fix things as soon as possible and minimize the potential fallout and consequences.
I’m shit scared of messing up my own relationships, so I’m sure there’s totally definitely no projection involved or anything like that, obviously, of course. (/s) But that’s also why it’s so satisfying when I read something that isn’t afraid to linger in the discomfort and the misunderstandings while keeping me invested in things turning out well in the end, however it resolves, because I know all the flawed characters are trying their best* from their own perspective. It’s just great writing of deeply relatable characters.
*Well, Mary is always trying her worst, but someone has to carry that burden too, I suppose.
Yeah, looking at their last interaction actually makes this make less sense to me– well, not fully since it’s just that Rachel strongly believes this and would see whatever Joe says as evidence, but. Last time they interacted seemed less hostile.
Maybe she thinks if he had changed, he’d be showing it to her? Giving her space when she doesn’t like him is a way he’s showing it, but maybe not like she thinks he should– like, she thinks it’s him hiding how he’s acting exactly the same as before?
Yeah, it’s not a clear line of reasoning to panel six. Without that comment, I might find how she is in this strip… well, still probably annoying to me, but also fair enough.
Rachel is assuming Joe is avoiding her because he can’t behave himself when he’s around her, not because he’s respecting her space (or trying to avoid her complaining).
I’d forgotten how much Tall Rachel sucks. Glad to see she’s giving her screed to everyone.
I’m not sure I’ve ever fully articulated what about her is so awful, but it’s that she refuses to ever walk away. She’s got beef with Ruth stemming from their Freshman year. Why has she done nothing to get away from Ruth? “Not her responsibility, I’m victim blaming,” no, taking care of herself is her responsibility, and deliberately staying in the orbit of her abuser so she can constantly snipe and undermine attempts to change for the better makes her the (worse) asshole.
Why’s the annoying pest get to be the one whose name has no adjective? Why’s the cool one have to be Other? Calling this whiny nag Tall Rachel is perfectly fine.
It’s nice of you to say a rebuttal someone might have for your comment & not refute it whatsoever! You’re right, you are victim-blaming. You’re also assuming some stuff about a character we know fuck-all about in order to shit on her, but such is the way of the comment section.
This comes up every single time Rachel pops in to gripe. Ruth isn’t leaving because Grandpa Fuckass lodged her in and wouldn’t let her, and Ruth is afraid of the old man hurting her brother so she’s not gonna rebel. So that option is off the table. If Rachel wants to be somewhere Ruth isn’t, she can either relocate herself or kill Ruth. Now, I’m surely not saying she’s under any obligation to move, but I don’t see any other way she escapes the horribly abusive character we’ve never seen wrong her to any degree. The “Ruth abuses/abused Rachel” angle is fully hypothetical at this point.
Exactly. She’s old enough that she doesn’t even have to live on campus anymore. In one of the bonus strips she was asked why she even still lived in the dorms and she said she didn’t know. It hardly seems ridiculous to expect her to move out of the one hall in an enormous campus that the person she hates lives in.
You know James Fridman? The internet dude who does humorous Photoshop requests?
I’ll bet he could take Joe’s big blocky head and turn him into a cereal box.
For posterity, I hate Rachel’s anti change philosophy, it’s very redditor who spends too much time on r/relationships, it’s very “I’m 20 years old and have the whole world figured out”, it’s lazy, it’s harmful, and it’s an excuse. Because if no one can really change, neither can she so why bother. And I think saying what she said to someone who is on suicide watch is, reckless at best without being hyperbolic. I get that Rachel might not care if Ruth lives or dies and that’s whatever but trying to push her back to the edge is a bit much.
All that being said, I think she’s mostly just a moronic 20 year old who’s gonna be embarrassed about that philosophy in five years, and she’s in the pile of characters I cant fully hate because god college kids are stupid. I also don’t actually blame her for how she regards Joe. I think going out of her way to pick fights is kinda dumb and bad for the ol mental health but hey, bongoes be messy.
I’d love to see lil miss stagnation fall on the “evolve” side of “evolve or die” (my philosophy), i wanna see her character arch, even if its background or something. I think she’s interesting
For what it’s worth, as someone who’ll be 45 this year, I sadly have to report that it is MOSTLY true that people do not change. They CAN, so definitely do work on yourselves if there’s something you don’t like, and give people second chances if they genuinely ask for one. But on the whole I’ve noticed that people cannot, or will not, really change the core of who they are (outside of things caused by physical changes like degenerative diseases). For example, someone who never likes to admit they are wrong and likes to double down when called out will almost always remain the same throughout their entire life, even if the things and causes they champion changes over time.
I mean, it’s bad as philosophy in the abstract, but it works pretty well as the viewpoint of a victim of an abuser who kept promising they’d change if they just got one more chance.
It actually is very normal to dislike a character who only shows up to badger other characters for a couple of strips and then vanish again until another Sonic the Hedgehog movie comes out.
Personally i think you take your dislike of Rachel just a bit too far to the point it is actually uncomfortable. I learned to not take much of what you say seriously, but still it makes me recoil a bit.
I hope Rachel gets a backstory at some point because I think it’s a lot easier to sympathize with Joe who we, as audience, know and root for than someone who shows up for rarely and is mean every time (even if it’s justified). Like, right now, every time she’s mean to Joe or Ruth I just think “go away random person who I don’t even know, the main characters and growing into better people!” but if she gets some character development than it will be easier to…idk, take what she says with more depth I guess?
It’d be nice if we could at least see what the hell was so bad about Ruth. All we’ve seen was their introduction, in which Ruth specifically said she was mostly gonna be reading or yelling at hockey games.
I find the takes that Rachel is like this towards Joe because she secretly into him to be, weird. Thankfully it is a very small minority because it makes me pretty uncomfortable.
Ther is a kind of rhyme where i live that school usually tease each other with that roughly translate as “Those who fight love each other and end up in bed” which i think is part of the attitude that happens here.
Yeah, the “maybe he just likes you” sentiment is common in real life, especially with kids. Then it enters into fiction and fanfiction and is reinforced in what people think in real life.
And part of the thing is, there is some basis in reality for it, especially with kids. Sometimes they don’t know what to do with their feelings, especially when it’s a new experience, so they act mean toward the person instead. But being a true thing doesn’t mean it’s a good thing, and the behavior should be addressed and not excused.
I mean I think it’s probably also just speculation because of what already happened in the Walkyverse. sure a lot of things are different here but in most ways they’re still the same people.
Huh. Yeah thats a pretty direct read on the sitch, and clearly communicated, Joe. And…. feels like most of Rachels deal, tbh. Mad at someone for a genuinely 100% reasonable reason. …which is then kinda her whole deal.
How long until Rachel ends up involved in Jennifer and Alice’s situation? There’s no way this arc ends without Rachel having an argument with one or both of them about whether people can change, right?
The problem with Rachel is that what she’s saying in panel 6 is too tedious. It’s not trying to get the last word, it’s trying to start shit, but there’s nothing even clever behind it. It’s putting words in his mouth, and in the most boring way.
She does not owe Joe liking him even if he has changed.
I expect the Doylian explanation is Willis is reintroducing her “people don’t change” attitude, but “oh so you agree…” is about as unsatisfying as “I know you are but what am I”.
Yeah, he may as well be saying anything at that point, because it’s not like what he actually said affected her response. He could have told her a fun fact about sea urchins and she’d have said the same thing.
It’s not even the first time or the first person that her first response was hostile either, looking back at her previous experiences. Not just talking about Ruth either, for example she’s pretty much a bongo towards Carla but Carla doesn’t care as long as she’s being acknowledged.
I kind of get the feeling that her whole “people don’t change” perspective comes from early on and she has internalized it to mean she also doesn’t need to change. Wouldn’t be surprised if she’s another person on the shitty dad train and giving the shitty dad more opportunities than he deserved is why she focuses on this ‘people don’t change’ angle.
Would explain how badly she reacted to Booster’s assessment, he hit a nerve no one else gets the chance because she brushes everyone else off before they can learn about her. (Joyce and Lucy)
I’m not saying that she doesn’t have a right not to be hostile to Joe either. But they are in a private facility both are paying to use as part of their education to use. There are other people in the room who are minding their own business who were fine as long as Joe didn’t engage with them. He didn’t call out to her to get her attention and has been respectively letting her use the facility without his presence. She is being the aggressor in this moment.
I wonder if she also thinks good people are good forever, or once a person falls below the good/bad cutoff line they’re doomed to forever be bad. Either way, very immature. Reminds me of a romcom, maybe The Ugly Truth? “I have to believe it, because if it’s not true, men don’t leave women, men leave ME.” She has to believe abusers never change, or acknowledge that her abuser doesn’t think she’s worth changing for.
This is real character growth. Joe doesn’t stop at “i’ve changed so you need to be okay with me now”, he goes to “what i did had consequences and i’m going out of my way to no longer make women uncomfortable”. Great start! Love to see how it goes.
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Yeah yeah yeah. We get it redemption is a story. But if redemption is a story it is a damn good one. Where is the popcorn
“people don’t change and redemption is a story” yeah girl you are 20 years old and everyone around you has definitely reached their final form
though to be fair to rachel, it’s only been like a few months since the whole “do” list debacle. some healthy skepticism is pretty reasonable here
I know but I just see the whole casts’ efforts to change and I just get mad.
That’s kind of wasted. Don’t know about you, but I can find lots more potentially productive stuff to get mad about.
Well it isn’t a furious rage it is more of a peeved mad
Don’t know about you, but I can be mad about more than one thing at once, and sometimes about frivolous things. Y’know, as a treat.
Mg home was built in the 70s and has no straight lines. This has made painting a nightmare as all tools to cut off between areas don’t work. Figured you’d sympathize, as a treat.
sympathy is never a treat. that’s schadenfreude you’re thinking of.
I stand with you in indignation.
There’s a museum on the IU campus that does not have a single right angle in the entire building. I get headaches every time I’ve gone in there and slight vertigo makes me constantly feel like I’m stumbling around as I move. I feel like I’m dealing with the alien geometries of a cosmic horror story. I don’t think I could handle being in your house if there isn’t a single straight line. Like, I guess it could be fine if you’re referring to circular rooms or whatever, but if even the floor isn’t flat it might be a problem for someone like me, lol.
Jokes on you, I can be mad at mild issues in a comic AND Still be mad at serious issues too! I am a fauceted individual capable of multitudes!
Myself I time-share my anger. I have 30-40 things in my list of stuff to be angry about, and each minute I switch to a new topic that consumes my soul with white-hot fury.
This strategy is very productive at getting lots of engagement on twitter and twitter clones.
That sounds efficient. I approve.
@Reaver I can kinda understand how having more than one tap would make you capable of multitudes, I’m just struggling to see the relevance. But hey, that’s a me problem not a you problem.
I HAVE MANY FAUCETS FOR THE POURING OF RAGE!
A fauceted individual, as opposed to a spigoted individual.
Tap those faucets!
What color mana?
i get it, but… nobody is owed second chances.
People are very harsh on Rachel, but being bongoy to a sleazy guy who kept hitting on you and your bully of an RA is pretty understandable
~exactly~
People forget (constantly, not just in this case) that the characters aren’t privy to the same information we all are. Being upset that Rachel is still angry at a guy shitty enough to rate every single woman he came across (except trans women apparently) just a few months ago, seems silly? That’s such a reasonable thing to still be angry about?
It’s the bongo part, really. She could just keep walking. She could just ignore him. SHE chose to make it awkward. SHE chose to make it a thing. SHE chose to make sure Joe knew that she was still angry (and what’s Joe supposed to do with that?).
The point is to make people who you believe make your space less welcoming and hostile to you and the people you care about more hostile to those who hurt you.
She is aggressive with Joe because he has behaved in ways that have actively eroded the safety of the space, and therefore, the fact that he is unwelcome must be reiterated and reiterated until he leaves and does not come back.
In Joe’s case, she’s wrong. Her unwillingness to entertain the fact that he could have changed is probably due to her conflating him with all the sexist Ryans of the world who would at BEST pretend to have changed long enough to begin predating again. (You have to understand. Most people on Joe’s road, don’t choose to change. NEVER choose to change…Except to get worse, and worse, and worse. She regards him as a threat because she has good reason to do so.)
But also, it’s kind of on him to prove that she’s wrong. He has a position of social authority and privilege and general prior behavior that kind of means that, if someone tries to feed you humble pie on shitty stuff you’ve done, you’ve kinda got to eat it.
He’s honestly handling this pretty well so far. He’s not becoming belligerent, he’s not trying to minimize what he’s done, he’s not making excuses or saying that she should be ‘over it.’ Whether she accepts that…Another question.
…But she’s also not exactly OBLIGED to accept it. No one is obliged to give shitty dudes a second chance.
This all falls apart to me because it doesn’t take into account that Joe has been actively avoiding her. Like if this is their first encounter since October, in a very real sense he *has* gone away and never come back.
Like, if seeing him once in 3+ months just existing is too much for her to bear such that she can’t help but speak up, that’s reached the point where it’s *her* problem, not his. If her problem with Joe is him existing in public, then the only thing he can reasonably do to fix that is drop out of IU, and even the least charitable interpretation of his actions in the comic doesn’t rise to the level where that would be an appropriate punishment.
We have to accept that people we don’t like, even those we think are a certain level of harmful, have a right to exist in public.
What position of social authority and privilege? Are you referring to the fact that he’s male? As someone who’s been male for nearly thirty years, I’ve never felt I had any amount of default authority on anything, especially not socially. Maybe it would be different if I wasn’t autistic, but I get casually dismissed all the time, and have people challenge me on basic things, like my right to exist in public, all the time. Believe it or not, the world has in fact changed rather drastically since the 1970s. A man’s reputation can be ruined just for trying to have a conversation with a woman, I’ve been treated like dirt for simply saying “hello” before.
I’m not trying to minimize the hardships women experience or try to play the “who has it worse” game, because that’s obviously going to vary heavily from place to place and individual to individual, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were still places where men held authority by default here in the US (I know there are such places globally), but IU is decidedly not one of them, having lived in Bloomington since shortly before I turned 4 and having gone to IU in particular for several years.
Joe is just another freshman like any other, he has a decently large friend group but doesn’t appear to be particularly popular outside of that group, he doesn’t wield any sort of organizational power, so what “social authority” do you think he has? Frankly, it would be super easy for her to make his life significantly more difficult using social power, given his reputation and his history with the “do list”, if she made reports of him making her uncomfortable or doing or saying anything to her that could be construed as SA or harassment or whatever, I guarantee she’d be the one believed by the institution, not him. As such, he is not in a position of higher social authority, the power imbalance absolutely favors her, not him.
@Psychie, saying this as gently as possible: privilege is often invisible to those who have it. And you’re absolutely minimizing the hardships women experience and playing the “who has it worse” game.
That there’s a staunch core of Joe defenders here who think he’s never done anything wrong, that he was always just an ethical horn dog, despite him having an entire arc about his problems kind of proves it.
Joe was a creep to basically every woman he interacted with before his redemption arc started and he’s suffered basically no social consequences from it – except Rachel being a little mean to him.
It’s not minimizing anybody’s hardships to say that I have never in my life been in a position of privilege. Frankly, I see women exercising all kinds of privileges I don’t have all the time. All I’ve ever felt, socially speaking, is minimized, attacked, and dismissed for being a man. I get treated like a threat or a predator no matter what I have personally done or how I personally behave, I have had actual weapons pulled on me just for existing in public on separate occasions. Once a woman pointed to me as an example of a “dangerous man” when explaining to her daughter just how evil men were and how they were to be feared when I was walking through the arboretum to get to class, this was a random stranger who I had never even seen before, she just picked me because I’m large and male and conveniently nearby. I’ve been verbally accosted for saying hello to a woman in a social setting before. I’ve been accused of “mansplaining” for answering questions that they asked me directly. Once on a bus I had my knees together and my shoulders hunched in to make my large frame take up as little space as possible because we were packed in like sardines and I was accused of “manspreading” because the bus turned and centripetal force caused me to lean slightly to the left and my shoulder slightly bumped into the girl sitting there before I caught my balance. I was once banned from an internet forum because a user claimed I assaulted her at a convention I never went to in a state I’ve never been to (thankfully nobody on that forum had personal information on me so that was the only consequence of that false accusation). I live my life trying to be unobtrusive, harming nobody, and I get treated like I’m guilty until proven innocent of crimes other people committed by random strangers who don’t know me and who I have certainly never done anything to. That’s not a privilege. I don’t have people believe me because I am a man, in fact I’ve experienced the opposite, where my contributions, efforts, experiences, etc. get minimized, dismissed, or outright disbelieved because I am a man.
And how the heck did I “minimize” anybody’s experiences when I was talking about MY OWN? How does talking about the hardships *I* experience on a daily basis, and the lack of any magical “privileges” that supposedly make my life sunshine and rainbows by virtue of having been born with a dick minimize anybody else’s hardships? I didn’t say women who have been victims of assault haven’t been victimized or that their hardships aren’t worse than mine, I’m just pointing out that men do, in fact, have plenty of hardships too that exist purely because of our gender. Misandry is fucking normalized for crying out loud, it is perfectly socially acceptable to hate men for being men, I experience it regularly, and pointing that out does not in anyway negate or dismiss the struggles of women.
My entire point is that everybody has problems created by society, but focusing on blaming men for all of it and acting like women are the only ones being harmed by society’s bullshit doesn’t actually make things better for anybody, it just makes things worse for different people. Maybe there are some sort of privileges that I have but somehow never seem to benefit from in any meaningful way, but meanwhile I see women experiencing all kinds of privileges I DON’T have all the time, and some of them blatantly exploit those privileges maliciously.
Yes, Joe was very creepy for a few months (in-universe), I’m not defending that or pretending it didn’t happen. I’m not challenging that claim. I’m challenging the claim that he is in a position of social authority, that he somehow wields social power over Rachel in this situation, when if she really wanted to, she could claim he did or said something to make her uncomfortable and have him removed from the gym if she wanted, or make up something even more heinous and have him kicked out of the university, if she makes any accusations against him right now, the people in charge, and frankly the general public if she’s particularly loud about it, would instantly believe her over him, partly due to his own previous actions, but also partly because he’s a man and she’s a woman. That is a thing that does in fact happen, and something she absolutely has the power to do if she wanted to. That means she has social leverage over him. Meanwhile, what social power does he have? What can he do, socially speaking, to harm her in any way whatsoever? He doesn’t have much in the way of general popularity or social credibility, so he can’t do anything to ruin her reputation, or her relationships, or to use her social life to pressure her to do anything she doesn’t want to do, he certainly doesn’t have the ear of any authority figures that he could use to make her life difficult if he wanted to.
Yes, he was a creep before, doxxing her with the do list was a very bad thing, and yes, she does not have to forgive him for it. I never said otherwise. I’m just asking what social authority he has over her, what privilege he has as a man that is in any way relevant to this situation, because those are the terms that were used and I’m disagreeing with them. Not the overall point that Nightsbridge was making, literally just that part.
Pointing out that men also have problems that directly result from being men is not minimizing the struggles that women have or even claiming that ours are worse, just that they exist too. I’m sick and tired of having my struggles dismissed out of hand just because women’s struggles are worse in many cases. How does saying I have directly struggled as a result of being a man take away from women’s struggles? How am I minimizing anything? Frankly, telling me that I’m not allowed to complain about the shitty treatment I’ve received just for being born with a penis is doing to me exactly what you are accusing me of doing. I talked about my own experience as a man, and somehow advocating for myself is attacking women? Do you see what I’m getting at? Do you see why I felt the need to include that line that I wasn’t trying to minimize anybody else’s experiences or say that my struggles are worse? I’m just saying my struggles EXIST AT ALL, and that they are contextually relevant as a counterpoint to the claim that Joe has social authority over Rachel in this situation, a claim that has still not actually been defended mind you.
I have dealt with significant struggles because I am a man. I empathize with women who have struggled because they are women. It is entirely possible to acknowledge that both can suck for different reasons and actively work to make things better for everybody. I do it, I know plenty of people, men, women, and otherwise that do it. But I still find myself needing to hash this out over and over and over again every single time I bring up my own experiences on the internet because people like you like to pretend that men have it so easy by default and any claim otherwise is misogyny or minimizing women’s struggles, which is ridiculous. Things can be bad for everybody, there is more than enough misery and suffering to go around, but maybe if we stopped all this stupid pointing fingers and trying to argue over who has it worse we could focus on making things better instead and hopefully reduce some of that misery and suffering for everybody.
@Phsychie, I’m not going to unpack everything you wrote, but I’d like to point out two major points.
1) you demonstrate TheJeff’s argument in the very first statement by saying “I have never in my life been in a position of privilege”. You can’t possibly know, and it’s easy to stay blind to it if you’re not even open to the concept.
2) Rachel wouldn’t be wrong if she brought up to the school that Joe was leaning against her door, hitting on her the second she walked out of her own dorm room, and at a later point have kept on refer to her by the number he ranked her as.
“Social authority” might have been a bit of a strange argument to me by Nightsbridge, but their point still stands that Joe is in a position of privilege here, his previous actions have made the public areas of campus, downright to their own dorm hallways, less safe. And Joe even pointed out his privilege himself, probably unknowingly, about how he gets away with creepy comments just because he is conventionally attractive.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/hiatus/
She didn’t choose to be on his list. She didn’t choose to have her name and room number published alongside the list. She didn’t choose to be disgustingly objectified and have it become a public spectacle. God forbid she continue being upset about that just a few months after it happened.
She’s not in the wrong just because she isn’t staying silent and pretending everything is fine. Even if you’d prefer she didn’t keep talking about it, there’s actually nothing wrong with her doing so.
So should Joe have to leave any public space as soon as rachel arrives?
I get that that’s hyperbole, I’m just not reasonably certain what Rachel should expect out of Joe if “avoiding her for 3 months” is insufficient and deserves to be called out. Like, what benefit would she get out of this conversation? She’s *already* called him out on being a creep. She clearly knows Joe knows that she thinks he’s a creep. What is her goal here?
No, he shouldn’t, but she’s not required to keep her mouth shut about her annoyance either. Both things are true. He’s not doing anything wrong by being there and she’s not doing anything wrong by talking about how she feels. I understand that you think she has said all she needs to, but she clearly doesn’t feel that way.
I think it’s more because you think about what would happen if Sarah was right and Joe was still only concerned with getting his dick wet, he still would have been avoiding her to avoid making hwr uncomfortable. He’d be doing exactly the right thing by Rachel regardless. Basically- “so if Joe can’t change, what do you want him to *do* with that, Rachel?”
Sit there and take unprompted verbal attacks, of course.
“Verbal attacks” is, perhaps, a bit of an overstatement. “Unprompted” is definitely inaccurate. Rachel has a poor opinion of Joe’s character, and isn’t shy about making that opinion known to him, certainly, but it is an evaluation based on entirely reasonable premises – his own past behavior – and she has kept the expression of her views regarding Joe entirely within the bounds of those factors. She has made no baseless accusations, and she has made no attempt to harass him outside of chance encounters that have occurred literally months apart.
Just because we’ve seen Joe do a lot of work on self-improvement and genuine effort to be a better person doesn’t mean Rachel has, and it’s not fair to expect her to have the same insight into his character arc as we do.
She wants him to kill himself, obviously. He did something bad in the past and therefore he is ruined forever. Only people like Rachel, who have never ever done anything wrong in their lives and never will, deserve to exist.
Yep. Not a gross overstatement of what’s going on here at all.
JFC, maybe take it down a notch or ten? She made a couple of snide comments, delivered in a completely civil and calm tone of voice, and accompanied them with literally no threat – either explicit or implied – towards his health, emotional well-being, social status, or even ability to complete his exercise routine undisturbed following their conversation.
Rachel has neither said nor done anything even remotely close to the same galaxy as exhortations of suicide.
Yikes. Do you, I’m just curious, here, but do you really think this sort of comment is helpful to a conversation? Do you think a snide comment from one fictional character to another is something that should have you making light of suicide to other real human beings in a conversation about a webcomic?
Oh yeah for sure. Just the “redemption is a story” philosophy is really shitty, and it was supremely shitty to say to someone on suicide watch. Ruth was bad, she wasn’t bad enough to make that appropriate at that specific time. I’m in general hostile to the idea that people don’t change, it’s a defeatist and worthless attitude, it’s doomerism. It’s throwing your hands up and saying “welp, shit sucks. Oh well.” And denying people the capacity of change now of all times is just, really unhelpful
I get the cynicism. It’s not a good attitude in regards to personal improvement, but “abusers don’t change” isn’t unreasonable as a survival strategy. She’s out of line to be sure, but from her perspective I get it.
We actually have No Idea how bad Ruth was. Rachel’s beef with her was from being roomies the first year and she specifically called Ruth a bully. Without knowing what happened between them, we have no way to gauge how reasonable her attitude is.
I’m interested to see what her problem is, I would love to deep dive Rachel’s story to find out the ‘why’ instead of rabidly condemning the response to whatever happened without knowing.
We often talk about “protagonist centered morality” here to excuse pretty obvious villains (like Raidah), but this seems like a much clearer case of it.
THIS
she doesnt have healthy skepticism though, what she had is a problem, and decided to go off on him the second she saw him. Like if your introduction to someone is an insult, maybe dont even bother striking up conversation?
The man made a public apology with doughnuts, that is not something most horny 18 year olds would do. I think she just doesn’t want to believe he can change because she’s so mad at him, and it’d be disappointing to have less of a basis for that righteous anger
i can understnad rachel being skeptical although even if you know ppl can change i don’t think she’d rly care enough to befriend joe or so , ppl can live how they want although it’d be sucky if one was obligated to be near another person and such b/c of work and classes, can’t be friends with everyone after all
“Can you be less hostile when I’m just sitting here?”
“Redemption is a story, so no, I’m stuck like this.”
Really, girl, can you let a person work out? Give him grief if he hits on you but other wise be polite and mind your own business. I suppose she actually likes him though.
this is very mild hostility
how big is the gym i wonder? feels like they would have enough to each take a corner
if not, like a ‘female’ gym separated from the male one like how there’s shower rooms and ia ssume the laundry rooms aren’t co ed either
Why would the laundry rooms not be coed? The ones in my college certainly were just a single room of machines for our dorm, and I’m not sure what benefit there would have been in separating them.
For the other thing the characters have been using the machines for, of course.
Individual dorms might have smaller gyms (like only a big bigger than a typical hotel gym). But the university itself has a separate, huge gym (that is itself the size of a typical hotel).
She does in the Walkyverse
A woman insulted a man who insulted her? To the chair! No, the gallows! No, the guillotine!
Arguments are easy when you make shit up.
“Ease off, Javert.”
“You want her to DIE?”
… okay, Taffy’s coming in hot.
Doesn’t Javert kill himself the moment he thinks about easing off? I’ve only watched that movie one time. For the record, I wouldn’t joke about Rachel killing herself, it’d be too close to home. Someone else can do it, maybe by accident. Or she could eat some bad chorizo, nobody at fault, it looked fine and the freshness label said it was good for another month, no evidence of tampering, it’s just bad luck.
Javert kills himself after realizing he’s been wrong about Valjean all that time. That he’d wasted decades pursuing an innocent man, at odds with his own rigid black/white morality. And, having never had a moment’s doubt about his own actions, had no idea how to deal with that guilt. Hence, removing himself from the census, post-haste.
I get why Rachel doesn’t like Joe but I feel like Joe’s response in panel 5 is actually very respectful.
Yeah, Rachel only got from that to what she said in the next panel by those being her beliefs anyway.
It is, Rachel’s just being an asshole
i mean she’s the one who initiated this whole interaction. could’ve just kept walkin’
But that would defeat the purpose of Rachel needing validation.
She does presumably want to get her workout in
No kidding, the man is trying to work out. Personally I can’t stand it when people interrupt my workouts. Of course it’s because I’m self conscious and easily distracted… I hope she actually likes him and is trying to forge a relationship of banter and fun repartee, rather than just generally sowing discord everywhere she goes. I suppose she finds him hot and distracting and it’s trying to be on top of the situation.
Eh, I personally find that possibility a bit distasteful considering the actually understandable origin of her dislike of him being his objectifying attitude so it being about finding him hot fells, icky I guess.
Agreed! I know Rachel gets a lot of hate for having the temerity to dislike multiple members of the main cast of characters for their genuinely unacceptable past actions, but I would really prefer her own arc not be about anything so trite as sublimated sexual attraction.
People don’t dislike her because of that. People dislike her because of her attitude towards redemption and her steadfast belief that people are destined to be horrible forever. Which is a position the narrative we’re presented with directly contradicts. This is also basically the only thing we know about Rachel, we don’t have her tragic backstory to explain what made her this way, and we don’t have any potentially endearing qualities or traits for her to make us care about her as a character. She’s just kinda there, and occasionally she says something. I mean I guess she’s had two prominent scenes – one where she was really cool and laid into Joe for his bullshit, and one where she told a suicidal person that it was impossible for them to improve. The circumstances of the latter kinda overshadow the first one. This is the first time I can think of Rachel being given any significant attention since the “Redemption is a story” scene.
Honestly all of Joe’s lines in today’s strip show some pretty good maturity, I think.
Time to give Rachel the opportunity to prove herself wrong!
Feel like characters who got together in Walkyverse are cursed. Like the universe wants them to get together and that string tethering them makes them want to go further apart.
The red string of fate refuses to be cut
… huh. One wonders what that says about Walky and Dorothy long term.
… Or Danny and Sal.
I’m genuinely interested in Rachel’s story. That being said, it can’t be a nice one.
Agreed. What is going on there, she’s so off-camera.
Goddammit, I stayed up past midnight for this?! What are Joyce and Dorothy doing? Or do I have to wait for the Slipshine to come out?
Today’s strip had to be a cut. It just had to. Willis loves making us marinade knowing something juicy is about to happen.
Pro-tip: go to the Patreon and look at the blurry preview image if you’re ever that excited for the next strip. You can at least see the colors and vague shapes well enough to tell which characters are featuring. I would’ve resubscribed yesterday if I didn’t see it was cutting away to Joe and Rachel
One thing I’d really like to see is how Rachel acquired that massive chip on her shoulder and whether it can be sanded down in the present.
well, a dude put together a massively sexist list that ranked all the girls in her dorm by hotness and then had it leak, and apologized by buying a bunch of donuts
also her ra was persistently abusive to everyone on her floor, including her, and when the school found out, they moved her chief victim out of the dorm and kept her in power
I seem to vaguely remember Rachel being this bitter from her first appearance, but yeah, you’re not wrong. From her perspective so far, she’s only seen her worldview reinforced. And Rachel started out despising Joe in the Walkyverse, and that relationship only changed through the sort of extremely unlikely coincidence that is so common in fiction and unheard of in real life. So there’s not really a reason to expect them to ever have the same breakthrough here, except possibly because the Willis wills it.
Though what I *am* trying to figure out is if the comic has ever given any reason why Rachel is not bitterest friends forever with Sarah. You’d expect their shared misanthropy to gives them some common ground.
Our only interaction I can remember is Sarah telling Amazi-Girl she thinks Rachel is too pretty to be a good person
This!
You have squarely explained the reason she’s upset. Also, people from the hallway she lives in keep getting kidnapped, killed, or seriously traumatized. It’s not AS traumatizing as living through it, but having something terrible happen in close proximity to you is still upsetting.
Also known as the origin story of FarceBook
just like Walky and Joyce huh
Not that I don’t get why Rachel feels like this, I do, but panel 6 feels like a bit of a stretch on her part. “You are considering my feelings, which means you’re a skeezebag” is difficult logic to follow.
From her point of view, it’s less “You’re considering my feelings” and more “You’re still a massive coward who’s running from your list debacle”.
That makes some amount of sense, but outside of the donuts thing he did, there’s not really a whole hell of a lot more else he could presumably do about that, short of maybe try to find who leaked it, given the potential danger whoever did that put the women on the list in. But, that’d also likely be interpreted as less than altruistic on his part, too, which I know he doesn’t really care about, but does kind of make it seem all the more like there’s no real path forward.
Joe put those women in danger, not the person who “leaked” it. Joe’s list was a public feed that he talked about constantly. For all we know, whoever leaked it was one of the women on the list who wanted people to know what he was posting out there for anyone to see.
In fact, I think that’s the most likely option.
“Joe put those women in danger, ”
Just a tiny bit of an overexageration to a list of names dont you think?
It was a list of names, where those women live, and in many cases notes about what they liked or how to get in good with them (churchy, for instance). The women in the comic itself (Rachel, in fact) called it a “treasure map” so, no, I don’t think it’s any kind of exaggeration to say Joe put women in danger with that list.
Thanks though
In most cases it didn’t have names, just descriptions I think. Did we know that it ever had names?
I don’t remember anything about where they lived – though if you knew enough of them you could probably figure out that a lot of the rest were also in Read (though as it’s a continuation of his list from high school and it has grandmothers on it, it’s got a lot who weren’t there.)
Yes, we know it had some real names: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/pissier/
Like I said, it is specifically called “a virtual treasure map to every woman in the building”. I’m just going by what the comic implied was on the list.
And any danger from the list was massively overstated. It was superficial stuff from what we saw and in most cases you’d need to already know it in order to even identify who they were.
It did give out enough information that in some cases could put someone at greater risk, but not more than could be easily found out by other means. It is possible that someone who might not have thought about other ways to find this information could read the list and be like, “Hey, it’s that girl, she must live in Read.”
(To be clear, the risk would almost definitely come from people who already knew the women to some extent. “College women live in this college dorm” isn’t exactly a revelation.)
But overall, yes, the greater danger was in the objectifcation rather than the physical. For those who didn’t see any danger in the objectification (like Joe and Danny, initially), it does make sense that the possibility of physical danger is what registers.
Like those reps, that’s deep.
these two, eh? what is this, an episode of Friends? or Walkyverse
like, it’s been so long.
I can’t stop thinking that her lips look like tiny hotdogs.
I feel bad for Joe, here. He’s trying his best and has really grown a lot
That’s fair, but growing and changing doesn’t mean the people you hurt will forgive you and move forward with you (or that they even should).
She doesn’t have to forgive him, but she doesn’t have to go out of her way to be antagonistic to him either
It would also be very good for her to achieve some personal growth in this arena (believing that it’s possible that people can change) regardless of whether or not she forgives Joe.
But she can’t achieve personal growth. By her own standards, that’s impossible. Good thing she’s already perfect!
She doesn’t have to, but I think it’s reasonable for her to.
Exactly this. She doesn’t owe him forgiveness or friendship, but she doesn’t have to be purposefully mean, either. Cause then she’s just being the kind of person she claims to hate.
it’s really been a theme that the peeps around you don’t always help you change with their preconceptions. this is one more angle to explore I suppose.
Well, progress has been made, two steps forward and one back.
I wonder what Rachel thinks she’ll achieve by instigating with people she doesn’t like or trust. Isn’t this what she’s done with Ruth, too? Like, if she wants people to keep affirming her dislike of them, of course she’ll get that when she always comes in swinging. Good on Joe for not taking the bait so far
Who cares, this character shows up like once a year.
k
I care, and I personally am rooting for her to show up more. If for no other reason than I want to know what happened between her and Ruth.
Oh yeah, there was that brief flashback where we saw her introduction to her freshman move-in day. Ruth turned out to be her roommate, so they were off to a great start.
Whatever happened to that?
Do does Christmas, but people love that.
*Si, no do
And I can’t fathom what people see in that either.
Frankly, Rachel’s way more appealing.
I can’t fuck Rachel. I can fuck a Christmas tree, a joyfully wrapped box, several dozen candy canes, a length of tinsel, and a nativity scene.
Which only gives her evidence that she was right to begin with unfortunately. It’s a vicious cycle.
Would love to see some introspection for characters like this. I think most of us probably know a Rachel, sadly
I’m rooting so hard for her growth. I know a lot of folks just hate her but she’s got fantastic potential as a character, I think.
It takes a lot for me to downright hate a character, and she’s nowhere near that threshold for me. I’m always down for some personality growth, though!
Now I just think you want to fuck him Rachel.
There was really no right response. Rach was going to spin it in her head however she had predetermined to.
Yeah. The nature of bad faith is that there is no right answer.
Rachel has legitimate reasons to dislike Joe… but she’s still coming in like “I notice you’ve been avoiding this interaction, making it your fault.”
She didn’t tell him not to talk to her anymore I don’t think but this feels like a weird bitter resentment towards him. The fact that he said “I’m sorry, I’m stopping” seems to piss her off more because now he has complexity to him and wants to change. Given her dislike of Ruth it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s just kind of inherently the kind of negative person who holds a grudge.
Still really wondering what happened to Rachel to make her somehow think that nobody can change for the better.
It’s ironic, because she never changes at all.
Well, she doesn’t think anyone can change, so why should she try.
Any time she needs evidence her philosophy is correct, there it is.
The most healthy thing about seaking self-improvement is doing it for yourself instead of trying to do it convince others.
Joe has changed a lot, but in DoA time it’s been so soon that I can’t see very many people believing or trusting it. Nor would I, probably, in their shoes.
yeah we have the benefit of the audience’s perspective here but it’s not unreasonable to be suspicious of Joe here. that said, Rachel’s like this to everybody
It’s true, I just reread her last interaction with Joe and I don’t blame her for hating him. She also has no reason to think he’s changed, she hasn’t witnessed it and it’s only been a few months. Yet her approach here just makes her seem like such an asshole.
You mean when Joe apologized to her?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/oath/
That’s the last interaction I can find.
Huh, interesting. She seemed to soften on him for a moment there
The interaction that led to the apology is what I mean
It’s been a year, hasn’t it?
They started school in like September. It’s January now.
I can accept people not becoming friends with Joe right awayor even liking him at all, but Joe never asked her to believe or trust anyting, doesnt even seem to have asked her for anything at all, she just arrived and decided to start insulting him for working out. then insulted him again after he said “yeah you dont le so i stayed out the way”
There’s never any winning with Tall Rachel. No scenario exist in which she says anything to anyone that’s not purely negative. Your options are to either sit and let her berate you, or let her chase you out of whatever space you were in before she showed up, and both of those just solidify her predetermined opinion of you.
Oh my god, it’s this bongo. All she fucking does is pick the exact same fight with people over and over. If any character deaths are planned for the near future, I hope she’s first on the list and goes unmourned.
That is a bit much.
It’s fine.
Per your icon, would you like Rachel to be Joyce’s first taste of blood?
No, Rachel doesn’t deserve that dignity. She can get creamed by a passing car in the background without anyone remarking on it, though.
I thought she was relatively meh about Joe so maybe something happened. Maybe the people constantly sexually assaulting her the past few months all mentioned the list as the impetus.
Oh yeah, all the rapists she’s constantly encountering, how could I forget about those?
Really uncomfortable thing to joke about.
Does it read as a joke? I figured it was speculation.
Yeah how dare she hold grudges about the bad behaviour of people we like
That’s a silly thing to say.
Nope
It is, yes. It has no relation to my actual gripe with the “character”, but is framed in a way that pretends there’s a connection.
I approve of the gravatar.
I’ve finally found a worthy cause to champion. Joyce Brown deserves to commit at least one (1) murder, because she’s been such a very good girl lately and it’s her unbirthday. You know, as a treat.
Hey she has a philosophy of stagnation, of course she’s just gonna pick the same fight. If people can’t change then neither can she
Golly, if change can’t happen, I guess her car’s gonna fall apart pretty quickly. No changing her oil, tires, brakes, none of it. She can’t update her computer software either, or really any electronics, because that would be her changing the version on them. She’s a massive fucking hypocrite or some other form of scoundrel too, because I know she wasn’t wearing these clothes last time we saw her. A change of outfit? Rachel, people can’t change, you can’t do that. So many normal things in life, so many options, locked off to all and sundry. A miserable existence, but one she chose for herself.
Agreed. We should get rid of this Rachel and promote Other Rachel to Rachel.
In my heart and mind, I already have. Purple Rachel is the cool one.
First Dorothy, now Rachel. Joe’s been cooking lately with his responses. It’s gonna suck when things fall apart with Joyce though.
He and Joyce just started dating. Give them a few weeks at least.
You really think either Dorothy or Joyce wouldn’t let it slip they’re jilling in the laundry room for weeks?
Yeah out of everything, I’m really bothered that Joe is cleaning up his act and getting a chance to finally trust and be trusted, and Dorothy’s kind of fucking everything up for both of them.
I feel for her. I do. But it’s frustrating to watch her take them down with her.
Joe’s over here doing his best, actively trying to fix himself, and Dorothy’s squatting in the corner in her underwear, melting crayons on a lightbulb and smearing the wax all over her face, muttering about Joyce’s ass. It’s quite a contrast.
The crayon facemask trend has gotten out of control.
Joyce is literally on her way to go cheat on him by ‘doing laundry’ with another woman while actively dating him. Plus given the nature of this comic ‘something’ will happen eventually.
“Literally”
Yes, literally. As in right this second in comic time.
No.
Not if he brings them in. The Joe Harem is the peak ending for this series’ romance arcs.
i maen if things ‘fall apart’ with joyce it might be because of feelings w/ dorothy as opposed to joe ‘messing up’ or so lol
Weirdly, this is actually going better than their initial interactions in the universe where they ended up together and became the parents of a sapient automobile on their first date.
That sure is a sentence.
It sure was a comic.
Oh right, Rachel’s whole thing is that people can’t change
i wonder how many ‘joe-type’ charas irl would actually be able to change, but rachel could’ve easily ignored hi mand refuse t o engage unless she specifically wanted a turn next on the machine joes using
Including herself, evidently.
She considers this truth to be self-evident.
I don’t even hate Rachel, but damn if Joe’s final line here ain’t satisfying.
Rachel has quite a talent for being unlikable even when she’s right.
And I say that as someone who agrees with her that Joe’s redemption arc has come too easily and quickly, and agrees with Dorothy that his hunkyness / Joyce’s ‘excess horny’ are the reason for that (I mean, hell, Joyce seems less willing to get over not liking Walky for…I’m not even sure what reasons, when in theory she should have MUCH more of a problem with Joe).
I feel like Joe should be getting the cold shoulder around campus. One could assume that he has off-camera, but yeah, we basically haven’t seen much of people being still mad at him for the list thing.
Well, with the timeskip it’s been nearly four months since the list came out. I feel like a lot of people would have forgotten about it by now.
For *general people*, sure. *Joyce* easily letting it (or moreover just his general sluttiness) go still feels weird to me. She’s not the person she was a few months ago but she’s still not exactly Roz.
Joyce is also the person who’s had the most opportunity to see him change, though. She was also (one of? I forget) the only person not on the list.
Ah wait no she got a zero? My memory is bad. Anyway she interpreted that as a positive gesture.
Zero minus.
what good is college for if not speedrunning extreme changes lol
i guess it helps that he’s not completely isolated or Faz-like, so most ppl won’t care or busy with their own projects to go outta their way to do/say anything since he has an existing friend group
…. Rachel, dude, why are you talking to him. What do you seek from this interaction.
Because the only reason I can think of is, yeah, what she wants is Joe just grabbing his stuff and leaving. How dare he be already at the gym and stuff.
It might be her goal, yeah. Feeling unsafe working out next to someone you think might be a predator isn’t unreasonable, and we don’t know if there’s anyone else in this room
She might not want to flee but not want to be alone with him either
The goal could also be just to clearly establish a boundary
Her options (to her mind) are A: leave (this is letting the creep win), B: stay and say nothing (this allows the creep to be comfortable sharing her space, possibly giving him the impression that she has come to accept him. This is also letting the creep win.), or C: go on the offensive. Make it clear that he is not welcome to leer or try to chat her up or linger near her.
Honestly, I don’t fault her that decision from her perspective, at least for the initial comment. The follow-ups getting more and more… Zealous in fitting Joe in the particular box she has for him could’ve just been an eyeroll and maybe an ‘ugh’, but.
Maybe in her own way she is giving him the opportunity to prove her wrong, but absolutely not making it easy on him. We’ll see if anything comes of it.
I get why, but, like, Joe clearly said that he’s been taking steps to avoid her out of consideration for her feelings. He’s very much aware he shouldn’t share space with her. And at this point he’s been avoiding her since October.
At some point she needs to accept that no matter what he’s done, Joe has a right to exist inoffensively in a public space.
She seeks validation of her own righteousness.
Redemption arc + Rachel being an asshole, we’re winning today
The fuck is a relationship paladin. Can someone explain the new poll to me?
The conflict in the comments is between people who want Joyce and Dorothy to get into it right now, and people who want them to do right by their current partners. The latter are the relationship paladins in the poll.
I reject that framing, as one of several people I know voted “sickos” despite not in fact wanting that. I am excited for the drama, but deep in my heart I hope Joyce and Dorothy talk to their current partners before doing anything further over the line, and I have crossed fingers for clumsy poly because that would be rad.
But we had to pick one (or not vote at all), and I’m definitely not one of the people crusading for the sanctity of a fictional relationship and being mad that other people openly cheer on soap opera drama.
Okay? That’s the framing at hand in the poll, you can reject it all you want, I was just giving a requested explanation about what it meant.
I’m not really either, and I chose the third option of not voting in the poll. So take it up with Willis, or really…anyone who has any investment in that framing device at all. Someone who is not me.
That’s your framing of it.
Okay.
Again, take it up with someone who is not me.
That would be silly.
And yet, it would be better than taking it up with me, who did not come here for an argument and is not invested in this as much as you seem to be. Look at below, where you presented an alternative framing and I have no interest in arguing with you about it.
Gosh I wish there was a block function available sometimes.
You seem like you’re in a really bad mood, and I’m truly not trying to upset you. I’m also not that invested; I think conversations about different interpretations of what the terms in the poll mean could be interesting, but you were clearly annoyed by the time you replied to Li– and I felt defense about what seemed to be your rudeness to them, but I should have just let it go.
You saying a lot of things for someone who is not invested.
Yes, I was annoyed by someone opening with “I reject that framing.”
I wasn’t here for an argument, and an alternative framing could have been presented without that, and as a reply to the one who asked instead of me. I was then even more annoyed when a reply to me continued with an argument after I made it pretty clear I did not want someone to take it up with me.
Nadamás, this really feels like you’re trying to execute a “gotcha”, but consider that what I was saying beyond my first message was about getting people to stop taking it up with me. I was and continue to be pretty invested in that.
And as I type this I’m remembering that I do actually have a block function of sorts, I can block the entire comments section from rendering in my browser, which I haven’t done in a while, but I think maybe it’s time again.
So if anyone wants the last word, have at.
Um. Well. I know tone is hard on the internet but “I reject that framing” is super super neutral coming from me. Please picture this emoji, because it’s basically what my face was when I wrote the whole comment:
Sure, bye. Probably would be nice for everyone if this is how you usually act.
Also, super belatedly: aw, thanks Yumi. I didn’t see that comment before and I’m touched.
Well, it was my reading of it too. That is all it ever can be to one person. I have replied giving a similar ‘explanation’ as Devin. Devin said nothing rude, in my opinion. Devin was simply attempting to offer an explanation to someone who asked for one. Anyone can offer a different one.
Nothing rude about trying to offer an explanation, no. It’s not as objectively what the poll categories mean as they went on to argue, though. (And it doesn’t have to be– but I wouldn’t take Devin’s subjective take to someone else as a starting point to share my subjective take, because it’s their personal view on the matter.)
It’s not the framing of the poll, though.
Anyway, I’ve provided my rebuttal and that is all I was interested in doing, since AnonGrouch asked what it meant.
Yeah, sickos are the ones (as per the meme) seeing everything unfold and going, “Yes… ha ha ha… YES…”
I don’t particularly ship Joyce and Dorothy, but I’m down to be entertained by mess
Like I said to someone yesterday, it is basically being a granny watching a telenovela, screaming at the screen for the most drama creating event to happen.
Last panel of this strip (also featuring Rachel, but odd coincidence). Joyce is Amber, Dorothy Mike, Joe Ethan, and Walky is Dina.
I’m apparently in the minority in thinking that if Joyce and Dorothy are going to get into a sexual and/or romantic relationship with each other, they should break up with their current boyfriends first instead of cheating. At least that’s how I interpret “relationship paladins”.
That’s a very common sentiment and not actually as in line with the relationship paladins/sickos divide as you think. The right thing for Joyce and Dorothy to do would be to openly communicate with their partners, whether that’s changing the bounds of their relationships or breaking up, before they begin a romantic/sexual relationship with each other. Their relationship starting as cheating would also be unstable ground for it and might damage them long-term.
BUT I’m here for entertainment, and characters doing the “right” thing or what they “should” do is a less important element to me. Not everyone is going to be entertained by different ways of characters being messy; I view the “sickos” fragment as the ones who are enjoying how the storyline is going currently, feeling entertained by it.
I voted sickos, but I actually agree with you. My ideal would actually be that they talk to Joe and Walky and agree to some type of poly relationship. But I voted sickos because what I want most is to see Joyce/Dorothy happen and I’ll take it in whatever form it happens to come in.
Again, as I said yesterday, basically no one is arguing that Joyce and Dorothy shouldn’t break up or talk to their current partners first. The only person I saw saying anything pro-cheating was doing it as a bit and admitted as much.
Monogamy is safe, no one is going to persecute the monogamists, you can put the shield down. “Relationship Paladins” are the ones getting in a twist because other people have different boundaries for what officially counts as cheating. The kind of people who, when Joyce touched Dorothy’s face, got in the comments to tell anyone who thought that was a fun story moment that they were horrible people for championing cheating.
I don’t think they SHOULD cheat, but I think it’d be an interesting story element if that happened. I wanna see the drama, that’s what I’m reading this slice of life college comic for!
I thought about not commenting to Devin’s comment since it devolved into a much broader topic but after considering for a bit. “I don’t see how those are mutually exclusive” is in fact a response worth sharing in my opinion.
From yesterday’s comments:
Shakes
June 7, 2025 at 12:30 am | # | Reply Report comment
I love how the comments have split into Relationship Paladins demanding the characters do the right thing and the other half are pressed against the window wearing “SICKOS” shirts.
Much better explanation.
Its iconic, I think I’m gonna always think of it now whenever these debates show up
I’m disappointed this isn’t about a dnd sublcass of paladin where they have an oath to love and therefore get to be chaotic good paladins.
There is a homebrew pali I know that’s basically the power of being a wife guy (minus the part where they inevitably cheat on their wives). Oath of the betrothed or something
Pff that would be neat.
It’s weird to me how my explanation, and Devin’s explanation, and Shakes’ comment that inspired the poll yesterday pretty much mean the exact same thing with slightly different wording, and yet almost everyone is acting like we’re using entirely different meanings for “relationship paladins” and “sickos” for some reason.
Shakes would have to weigh in, but I definitely interpreted their comment differently (and reliant on the meme it’s from, and how that’s often used) than what you said. Some overlap, but real differences. Also, grouping different implications and beliefs together in how people respond to the poll.
^^^^
‘relationship paladins’ sounds like some kinda vid game if not some kinda weird metaphor like ‘princess and handmaiden’ or being a ‘knight’ for someone lol
God. I’m not putting it past Rachel trying to bang Joe to prove herself right.
Now that would be fucking hilarious.
Rachel: “I know you’re a filthy creep, Joe, and I’ll prove it! [She undresses] Aha, see! I bet you want a piece of this right here and now, don’t you! Absolute scumbag that you are!”
Joe: “Look, I appreciate what you’re showing me right now, but no, thank you.”
the patreon strip comment saying “for sexy reasons” might be a bit brow raising buti imagine hatefucking isn’t something joe woudl rly do even ‘before’ all the changes
Oh, nice! I would genuinely love to see Rachel’s beliefs get dissected a little more.
I kind of hope it’s not going to involve her being made to look like a total idiot over this specific lack of extended grace (she hasn’t interacted with Joe since he accused her of leaking his “do” list and then later apologized and told her he’d stopped collating and ranking women because he now understood it wasn’t cute or funny), but I would love for her to be given something to think about.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/treasuremap/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/oath/
The strips in question.
Ditto. I’m with the wanting-to-see-more group. Like, her responses/interactions with people who’ve done shitty things are entirely understandable. Granted they’re emotional reactions from someone who clearly has some hurt and not entirely healthy or helpful. I kind of want to see where she’s coming from and see her deal with it.
(also it kinda sucks that a lot of the character traits I relate to from my teen years get absolutely mauled in the comment section. I like them because they’re messy and real and I get to reflect on my own journey through theirs)
Same same.
Aw, I’m sorry about that, it does feel crappy when that happens.
As if our brains aren’t mean enough about our teen years without any help :/
It’s just PoV bias. The comic’s spent a lot of time with Joe (and Ruth) so we get a lot more time to build empathy and understand their characters, where Rachel makes like one appearance per year and usually an antagonistic one
If she had more page time and more development I think people would be more sympathetic
Protagonist Centered Moralty, so to speak.
It’s not just a him thing, for what it’s worth. She really does not like Ruth any more than she likes Joe.
Oh, I know! That’s part of why I’m hoping she doesn’t get comeuppance from him or with him specifically.
We don’t even really know that Rachel is wrong to feel as strongly as she does about RUTH, to be fair to Rachel, because all we have currently is Rachel expressing some very black-and-white thinking and then telling Ruth she sometimes gets the feeling that Ruth doesn’t remember very much of their year as roommates.
But yeah, I would love to see at least a seed planted here. Rachel’s view of redemption and change and mistakes is extremely unforgiving — and frankly, per her last strip, it sounds like she’s equally unforgiving of herself. That’s an awful way to live.
(If Ruth is owed an apology, I’d love her to get one; I’m just not totally sure she does, except in the “basic human decency” way where Rachel’s tirade definitely was kind of triggering for Ruth, I guess.)
To be fair, Ruth was antagonistic, cruel, and likely drinking to excess. Living with her would have been somewhere between depressing and a downright nightmare. I love Ruth, but she would have been hell to room with.
Yea, would also love to see more of her perspective
Especially cause so far all I’m seeing is a point being made that I get but find tiresome to watch stated again and again
Yeeeeah, that doesn’t help.
Her most recent appearance with Joe was pretty interesting, but only a glimpse.
Damn, was desperate for washing machine on my birthday (happy June 8, I’m 34 and still reading my favorite webcomic!)
Happy birthday! Given pacing, maybe next year, your birthday will reveal either Dorothy’s or Joe’s reaction to Dorothy having taken Joyce’s virginity?
Thank you! Maybe we’ll be two days in the future!!!
Happy birthday
Thank you!!
get her ass, Joe. (no, not like *that*. but one way you’re different is you knew that already.)
Is this a “So you hate waffles?” moment, commentators?
It’s in the neighborhood, yes.
but I wuv waffles
especially with chicken ;-;
“I don’t cook pancakes when you’re in the kitchen because I know you don’t like them”
“So you admit you hate waffles?”
“No, but I know you think I do”
Or something like that idk
Yeah it feels like a total non sequitur . “I’ve been avoiding you because you don’t like me” does not really lead into “So you agree that I’m right for disliking you” at all.
I was just rereading that storyline and wondering when this angle will be revisited.
And then Joe and Rachel end up doing laundry together. The comments section is confused but still thinks it’s Dorothy’s fault somehow.
Yikes, just fuck, already.
Wait
No
Ooof.
Rachel’s not wrong in her initial reaction nor is she unreasonable to believe he couldn’t/wouldn’t change in that short of a window since she doesn’t have ‘audience perspective’. But the fact she chooses to engage and aggravate shows she’s not acting out of the right place even if the rest of it is valid.
She’s not the worst person we know but definitely brings the ‘has made a good point’ meme to mind.
Yeah the choice to talk to Joe at all is a really weird one, if she thinks he’s a sexist asshole ( a reasonable belief for her to have, really ).
….Joyce is about to see them together, isn’t she
No unless the gym is on her way to the laundry room.
Aren’t they both down in the basement? Might be onto something here.
Though it’s more likely to be an issue if Joe sees Dorothy and Joyce going to do laundry.
What would that matter? She’s seen him around other women before, and she knows what he is/was.
I would be surprised if any of their interactions end up looking remotely romantic
And then what? He’s allowed to be in the same exercise room as women and talking to them.
I feel the most likely result from that is Joyce coming in to cheerily greet Joe and Rachel, ask what’s up, and get upset on Joe’s behalf.
Or just furtively scoot by with Dorothy to the laundry room.
Maybe Joyce will burst in with some comment to Joe about doing laundry. Joe will reply in a way that’s emotional but does not drop the “doing laundry” phrasing. They’ll leave the gym to continue their intense laundry discussion, and Rachel will be left there going, “…Laundry?”
I also wonder if this foreshadows a (hopefully temporary) backslide into OldJoe if Joyce does follow through on cheating on him instead of ending or opening the relationship first.
‘I tried to change and it got me nothing except making the person I wanted to change for worse….’
I’m worried he’ll backslide, but I have hope that this is setup for “no, you were wrong about me, I can change even if I get hurt.”
Joe has reached zen levels of chill. He knows his path and doesn’t stray.
Comments try not to wish death and suffering on an imperfect woman challenge! Today, her crimes are *checks notes* being rude and not giving the benefit of the doubt to a person who openly objectified her, made uncomfortable sexual advances, rated her body and then posted it online, with instructions on where to find her. Ooo, this one could be tricky, Jim! We all know that a woman holding a grudge is the eight deadly sin- women are supposed to immediately recognise change, and reward the person doing so, regardless of any heinous things they might’ve done beforehand. You can see here Jim that in the ”Rachel is a demon” camp, they’ve already set up some pretty sturdy structures! It seems they’ve actually repurposed the ”it’s just a webcomic” wall they had left over from defending Joe last round! Now, they’ve picked it apart and use it to THROW at rival camp, followed by- oh I see, they send the death wishes in conjunction to justify it! Quite a bold strategy Jim, but one we’ve seen work time and time again. I do wonder if this is enough, because, as you mentioned earlier, team ”Rachel is justified” now has that second boost from that rule change last month, where players are now ALLOWED to acknowledge the disproportionate hate that Dorothy gets. I dunno about this one, Jim, we can only wait and see for the tiebreaker
The only one saying they want Rachel to get killed off is me, so it’s fine if you say my name outright. You’re on a bit of a high horse about it, though, with all the additional details about demons and sin and immediately recognizing yadda yadda. It’s not nearly as deep as you’re making it, I just don’t like the character.
Oh dear! It seems our commentary has been broadcasted onto the battlefield! Not great for the strategists in either camp, hopefully production will sort it out. In the meantime, Jim, let’s give a big shoutout to our sponsors!
Taffy, I honestly prefer not to interact with you… not that you’re doing anything wrong, I just never feel great when I read your comments. I don’t think I understand your hyperbole. It all just feels very mean and venomous to me. Also my comment was not directed at you- several people have wished death on characters in the past. I wish you well!
That’s a bold strategy Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for him.
It is a bit strange that she’s being ruder to him now than when he apologized. Maybe his responses are striking a nerve.
Have you considered punctuation and line breaks? This whole comment being a giant wall of text makes it unreadable
! x 5 ; , x 19 ; . x 4
Rov with the assist! They’re shaping up to be MVP for sure, Jim!
Or you know, she could have just worked out
I know it’s been the schtick for walkyverse OTPs to have a large degree of antipathy towards one another in the dumbiverse, but I actually fear Joe/Rachel as OTP in the dumbiverse just because I feel like we’ve tread Joe/Rachel so much as part of either of their character arcs in the walkyverse.
Rachel is at a university, a place where people go specifically to change and grow. Why is she even here?
i mean iassume most ppl go for adegree tho i’m sure some ppl are carefree(?) or rich enough to not worry about ‘wasting money’ and going for the ‘experience’ but i wouldn’t be surprised if ppl went to uni for 4 years and not change at all/be at a stand still if not change ‘for the worse’
(after all you hear talk about how ppl in their 40s still act like they’re in high school. or ppl getting indoctrinated into cults)
She’s there to berate them. That’s the only thing she ever does, every time she shows up. She barely qualifies as a character, An angry pigeon could fill the exact same function as her, and it’d be more interesting to read.
People go to college or university to change and grow? I went because my parents expected it after high school, and I was led to believe that I could get a better job that paid better than what you get with just a high school diploma. That turned out to not be true as I ended up working retail for years after graduating college. But unless you’re very rich I assume that’s why lots of people go to college.
I think “change and grow” is part of the idea of it for many people (or at least “grow”), but the other things are bigger factors for most of the same people.
She’s here to lord her superiority over those peons who make mistakes instead of living a perfect life like she does. A lot like Mary, actually.
For some reason I really love panel 4. “I’d be too much of a distraction,” she says, removing her shirt/jacket. Standing her ground, but also challenging him. Or providing him the opporunity to prove her right.
I mean, clearly she was taking it off anyway, but doing so during this particular conversation is… Seriously, I can’t decide whether it’s a power move or not.
The war of the relationship paladins vs sickos begins
As a sicko, I hope Rachel leaves and goes to help Joyce and Dotty do laundry.
I chose “relationship paladins,” not because of anything to do with the comic, but mainly because I think there needs to be, at the very least, a very lengthy moratorium on the use of the word “sickos” by the Internet as a whole, lately, just in general.
It is a fun word, and much better that most alternatived.
I genuinely don’t remember Rachel at all. I only know the name from the tag.
Yeah, I have no idea who this chick is. She shows up like once a year to be an ass to somebody over something that happened in like 2016 but she hasn’t done anything of narrative importance since Obama was in office.
My guess for this arc
Joyce and Dorothy hook up
Joe feels betrayed, and has a “well i tried growing as a person and got my heart smashed back to being a player” phase
Everyone that didnt trust his growth goes “see told you so”
Meanwhile there is alot of development for Joyce coming to terms with sexuality and all her baggage with that
Becky gets hurt even though she’s happy with Dina
And Walky is somewhere in thr background going “wait what just happened?”
Honestly, I tend to struggle to let myself write my own stories and characters as messy as I want to, so I’m absolutely team Sickos – I greatly appreciate it when I see a well-written storyline with flawed characters whose author actually lets them mess up their relationships enough that they’re forced to learn and grow in ways that resonate, rather than try to fix things as soon as possible and minimize the potential fallout and consequences.
I’m shit scared of messing up my own relationships, so I’m sure there’s totally definitely no projection involved or anything like that, obviously, of course. (/s) But that’s also why it’s so satisfying when I read something that isn’t afraid to linger in the discomfort and the misunderstandings while keeping me invested in things turning out well in the end, however it resolves, because I know all the flawed characters are trying their best* from their own perspective. It’s just great writing of deeply relatable characters.
*Well, Mary is always trying her worst, but someone has to carry that burden too, I suppose.
I don’t understand how Rachel, from Joe trying to respect her personal space, can conclude that he is conforming that he can’t change.
Where is the logic, there? This feel like a twitter argument.
She said the same the last time she met him. Look her up in the archive.
This
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/oath/
?
I don’t really see how it provide better context for her comment in the 6th panel to make sense.
Yeah, looking at their last interaction actually makes this make less sense to me– well, not fully since it’s just that Rachel strongly believes this and would see whatever Joe says as evidence, but. Last time they interacted seemed less hostile.
Maybe she thinks if he had changed, he’d be showing it to her? Giving her space when she doesn’t like him is a way he’s showing it, but maybe not like she thinks he should– like, she thinks it’s him hiding how he’s acting exactly the same as before?
Could be, but even then it’s still a far cry from constituting him agreement with her.
Yeah, it’s not a clear line of reasoning to panel six. Without that comment, I might find how she is in this strip… well, still probably annoying to me, but also fair enough.
Rachel is assuming Joe is avoiding her because he can’t behave himself when he’s around her, not because he’s respecting her space (or trying to avoid her complaining).
I’d forgotten how much Tall Rachel sucks. Glad to see she’s giving her screed to everyone.
I’m not sure I’ve ever fully articulated what about her is so awful, but it’s that she refuses to ever walk away. She’s got beef with Ruth stemming from their Freshman year. Why has she done nothing to get away from Ruth? “Not her responsibility, I’m victim blaming,” no, taking care of herself is her responsibility, and deliberately staying in the orbit of her abuser so she can constantly snipe and undermine attempts to change for the better makes her the (worse) asshole.
Rachel.
The other Rachel’s name is Other Rachel.
Why’s the annoying pest get to be the one whose name has no adjective? Why’s the cool one have to be Other? Calling this whiny nag Tall Rachel is perfectly fine.
We should get rid of Tall Rachel and promote Other Rachel to Rachel.
It’s nice of you to say a rebuttal someone might have for your comment & not refute it whatsoever! You’re right, you are victim-blaming. You’re also assuming some stuff about a character we know fuck-all about in order to shit on her, but such is the way of the comment section.
I do like the idea that since Ruth is abusive, Rachel needs to either stop complaining or move to a new dorm.
This comes up every single time Rachel pops in to gripe. Ruth isn’t leaving because Grandpa Fuckass lodged her in and wouldn’t let her, and Ruth is afraid of the old man hurting her brother so she’s not gonna rebel. So that option is off the table. If Rachel wants to be somewhere Ruth isn’t, she can either relocate herself or kill Ruth. Now, I’m surely not saying she’s under any obligation to move, but I don’t see any other way she escapes the horribly abusive character we’ve never seen wrong her to any degree. The “Ruth abuses/abused Rachel” angle is fully hypothetical at this point.
Exactly. She’s old enough that she doesn’t even have to live on campus anymore. In one of the bonus strips she was asked why she even still lived in the dorms and she said she didn’t know. It hardly seems ridiculous to expect her to move out of the one hall in an enormous campus that the person she hates lives in.
Of course we know what’s going one with Ruth, but Rachel’s got no idea about Granpa Fuckass.
This has never once mattered.
God she sucks.
>shows up
>berates the first person she sees
>refuses to elaborate
>see you next time the cicadas hatch
oh my god can you guys lay off of the woman for five seconds.
By the look of things she’d rather he lay on her.
that is… A Reading of the situation. not what i’d go with but i can’t see the future.
Glad I am not seeing whatever alternative universe you are.
Joe’s minding his own business and just said he avoids the room if she’s in it. How much more off her can he lay?
I think Looney is talking to the comment section, not Joe.
In which case, we can’t possibly affect her, so laying off her or not is a purely cosmetic choice.
It is really about affecting the character but that it makes the comments just kind of unpleasant. Which is pretty nirmal honestly but still.
If someone can’t handle even one single person saying they’d like to see a character killed off, that’s their own responsibility to cope with.
I already knew you say something like that, not really trying to convince you otherwise just explaining a misunderstanding.
very normal thing to say
You’re incapable of saying what’s wrong with it, though.
Very Taffy thing to say
Y’all are obsessed with this version of me you’ve invented in your own fuckin’ heads, lately. Get over it.
If she could lay off the self-righteousness for five seconds we probably could.
You know James Fridman? The internet dude who does humorous Photoshop requests?
I’ll bet he could take Joe’s big blocky head and turn him into a cereal box.
you’re the only person in these comments who has a real vision, and I mean that.
This comment brings me joy.
For posterity, I hate Rachel’s anti change philosophy, it’s very redditor who spends too much time on r/relationships, it’s very “I’m 20 years old and have the whole world figured out”, it’s lazy, it’s harmful, and it’s an excuse. Because if no one can really change, neither can she so why bother. And I think saying what she said to someone who is on suicide watch is, reckless at best without being hyperbolic. I get that Rachel might not care if Ruth lives or dies and that’s whatever but trying to push her back to the edge is a bit much.
All that being said, I think she’s mostly just a moronic 20 year old who’s gonna be embarrassed about that philosophy in five years, and she’s in the pile of characters I cant fully hate because god college kids are stupid. I also don’t actually blame her for how she regards Joe. I think going out of her way to pick fights is kinda dumb and bad for the ol mental health but hey, bongoes be messy.
I’d love to see lil miss stagnation fall on the “evolve” side of “evolve or die” (my philosophy), i wanna see her character arch, even if its background or something. I think she’s interesting
For what it’s worth, as someone who’ll be 45 this year, I sadly have to report that it is MOSTLY true that people do not change. They CAN, so definitely do work on yourselves if there’s something you don’t like, and give people second chances if they genuinely ask for one. But on the whole I’ve noticed that people cannot, or will not, really change the core of who they are (outside of things caused by physical changes like degenerative diseases). For example, someone who never likes to admit they are wrong and likes to double down when called out will almost always remain the same throughout their entire life, even if the things and causes they champion changes over time.
I mean, it’s bad as philosophy in the abstract, but it works pretty well as the viewpoint of a victim of an abuser who kept promising they’d change if they just got one more chance.
Comment section having a absolutely normal one about a woman being pissed at a man
It actually is very normal to dislike a character who only shows up to badger other characters for a couple of strips and then vanish again until another Sonic the Hedgehog movie comes out.
Personally i think you take your dislike of Rachel just a bit too far to the point it is actually uncomfortable. I learned to not take much of what you say seriously, but still it makes me recoil a bit.
I’m extremely comfortable with others not meeting my intensity.
Yeah j an aware.
Yeah, I didn’t wanna call Taffy out by name, but yeah I meant them. Jfc, are you okay dude? The virtual woman can’t hurt you
She “doesn’t like him”, but goes out of her way to talk to him? You ain’t fooling anybody Rachel, you’re hit for him.
Wait, if that’s the case… Then Rachel is hot for Ruth too.
And she’s right to be that way.
Sometimes I need to remind myself of who the side characters are when we haven’t seen some of them in like 2 years.
“Youre also the kind of person who goes out of their way to talk to people they clearly dislike, and that’s weird as fuck”
(walkyverse reader voice) OF ALL THE PEOPLE TO SHOW UP RIGHT NOW. RACHEL. OH MY GOD
I hope Rachel gets a backstory at some point because I think it’s a lot easier to sympathize with Joe who we, as audience, know and root for than someone who shows up for rarely and is mean every time (even if it’s justified). Like, right now, every time she’s mean to Joe or Ruth I just think “go away random person who I don’t even know, the main characters and growing into better people!” but if she gets some character development than it will be easier to…idk, take what she says with more depth I guess?
It’d be nice if we could at least see what the hell was so bad about Ruth. All we’ve seen was their introduction, in which Ruth specifically said she was mostly gonna be reading or yelling at hockey games.
I find the takes that Rachel is like this towards Joe because she secretly into him to be, weird. Thankfully it is a very small minority because it makes me pretty uncomfortable.
People who have been trained by fanfic to assume that two people disliking each other, yet still interacting, is a form of sexual tension.
Not just fanfic. See Star Wars and Harry Potter for prominent canonical examples. It’s a trope I really hate.
At this point, J.K. Rowling should be considered a (not very talented) Harry Potter fanfic author.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BelligerentSexualTension
Extremely not from fanfic. It’s popular in fanfic because it’s popular in general. (I hate it too, but absolutely not a fanfic thing.)
Honestly wish it had another name at least.
Ther is a kind of rhyme where i live that school usually tease each other with that roughly translate as “Those who fight love each other and end up in bed” which i think is part of the attitude that happens here.
*school kids
Yeah, the “maybe he just likes you” sentiment is common in real life, especially with kids. Then it enters into fiction and fanfiction and is reinforced in what people think in real life.
And part of the thing is, there is some basis in reality for it, especially with kids. Sometimes they don’t know what to do with their feelings, especially when it’s a new experience, so they act mean toward the person instead. But being a true thing doesn’t mean it’s a good thing, and the behavior should be addressed and not excused.
I mean I think it’s probably also just speculation because of what already happened in the Walkyverse. sure a lot of things are different here but in most ways they’re still the same people.
I mean not really.
Huh. Yeah thats a pretty direct read on the sitch, and clearly communicated, Joe. And…. feels like most of Rachels deal, tbh. Mad at someone for a genuinely 100% reasonable reason. …which is then kinda her whole deal.
Such it do.
How long until Rachel ends up involved in Jennifer and Alice’s situation? There’s no way this arc ends without Rachel having an argument with one or both of them about whether people can change, right?
The problem with Rachel is that what she’s saying in panel 6 is too tedious. It’s not trying to get the last word, it’s trying to start shit, but there’s nothing even clever behind it. It’s putting words in his mouth, and in the most boring way.
She does not owe Joe liking him even if he has changed.
I expect the Doylian explanation is Willis is reintroducing her “people don’t change” attitude, but “oh so you agree…” is about as unsatisfying as “I know you are but what am I”.
Yeah, he may as well be saying anything at that point, because it’s not like what he actually said affected her response. He could have told her a fun fact about sea urchins and she’d have said the same thing.
He really has changed, huh?
I love Joe
I get why she wouldn’t believe he’s changed but man does it suck having someone show up like the ghost of mistakes past
It’s not even the first time or the first person that her first response was hostile either, looking back at her previous experiences. Not just talking about Ruth either, for example she’s pretty much a bongo towards Carla but Carla doesn’t care as long as she’s being acknowledged.
I kind of get the feeling that her whole “people don’t change” perspective comes from early on and she has internalized it to mean she also doesn’t need to change. Wouldn’t be surprised if she’s another person on the shitty dad train and giving the shitty dad more opportunities than he deserved is why she focuses on this ‘people don’t change’ angle.
Would explain how badly she reacted to Booster’s assessment, he hit a nerve no one else gets the chance because she brushes everyone else off before they can learn about her. (Joyce and Lucy)
I’m not saying that she doesn’t have a right not to be hostile to Joe either. But they are in a private facility both are paying to use as part of their education to use. There are other people in the room who are minding their own business who were fine as long as Joe didn’t engage with them. He didn’t call out to her to get her attention and has been respectively letting her use the facility without his presence. She is being the aggressor in this moment.
Admitting Rachel is being the aggressor means you want all women dead.
yeah right, I know Rachel hates Joe to the guts, but I bet Other Rachel hates him more
I suddenly understand Carla.
I wonder if she also thinks good people are good forever, or once a person falls below the good/bad cutoff line they’re doomed to forever be bad. Either way, very immature. Reminds me of a romcom, maybe The Ugly Truth? “I have to believe it, because if it’s not true, men don’t leave women, men leave ME.” She has to believe abusers never change, or acknowledge that her abuser doesn’t think she’s worth changing for.
Maybe she’s Calvinist.
Rachel’s an 11?! What’s Amber – a 20?
This is real character growth. Joe doesn’t stop at “i’ve changed so you need to be okay with me now”, he goes to “what i did had consequences and i’m going out of my way to no longer make women uncomfortable”. Great start! Love to see how it goes.