Raisins are great. They have a pleasant and mild taste, the texture is good they’re chewy, I think they legally count as fruit in the USA, and they’re dirt cheap in a lot of cases. Dorothy should eat some raisins.
100% chance she’s long known Dorothy has feelings for Joyce. 0% chance she has allowed herself to even consider that Joyce could possibly have feelings for Dorothy.
Because Becky has already established that that’s simply impossible, because Joyce just doesn’t like girls. So there’s no way she could ever like a girl, and there’s no reason to ever think about any other possibility, because it’s so impossible. ha ha.
Any evidence that Joyce MIGHT be into girls, or Dorothy specifically, can very easily be chalked up to “Joyce is just like that, and always has been!” Which is technically a true statement, and requires no additional unpacking! Her acting just like somebody who’s really horny for girls, all the time? Mark it up under the “Gal Pal” category.
Can we finally quash the whole their kiss was filmed and posted to social media theory now? No way Becky wouldn’t bring that up immediately if she saw it.
Becky has neither the patience nor the inclination to play coy about something like that. She has an issue with thought proceeding to action without anything in between, and this is amplified fivefold with regards to matters of queerness.
That’s what makes her so sneaky-snakey! Don’t live a fake persona, just take advantage of your actual one.
But though Becky’s expressions aren’t a giveaway here (which is some excellent arting choices), I am inclined to think she doesn’t know yet. Considered the possibility she senses the shift in Dorothy and thinks she’s into some other girl, but I’m not convinced Becky has even that good a gaydar yet.
i think this is her way of bringing it up. she’s very confident about dorothy having had a great day because she knows what happened at the protest
otherwise i don’t really get why she’d have the expression she does after realizing that dorothy and joyce didn’t have their phones. i think she finds it amusing that dorothy doesn’t realize that everyone already knows
She can tell that Dorothy is very happy, which is an abrupt change from how utterly depressed she was in the early morning. Are we supposed to believe that all four characters we’ve seen thus far have chosen to play coy about the kiss? It beggars belief, especially when it comes to Becky.
as i see it, i think the only people who definitely saw the kiss are becky and raidah. whether sarah and sal did depends on the context of the picture/video/whatever
sarah didn’t realize joyce was at the protest, so i think if sarah saw it, it wasn’t obvious that it took place at the protest. otherwise, i don’t think sarah saw it and just thought joyce was acting sus
i think it could go either way for sal, and depends on how much of joyce and dorothy’s kiss/hug she saw. the fact that she used the word “gay” for them makes me think she could tell that they got together in some fashion, but it could’ve just been her seeing or overhearing them as she passed by them. otherwise, it’s because she saw the thing and could tell that’s what dorothy was referring to when she commented on sal’s lack of reaction
that’s just my take tho, i’m absolutely prepared to be wrong about it
all raidah really had to say when she saw them was that they smelled bad, and a sarcastic “uh huh” when joyce told her they were at the protest. nothing else to indicate how much she knew about it.
imo, the fact that joyce said “the” protest implies it was general knowledge. raidah didn’t seem surprised at all to hear about a protest going on, and the way she replied lined up with what actually happened. it’s not hard at all to view dorothy and joyce’s dramatic kiss in the middle of everything going on as attention-seeking given the context. i feel like everyone’s reactions are weirdly specific/targeted for them to not know have some level of knowledge of what’s happened, and it now seems to be a very intentional narrative decision to have dorothy and joyce away from their phones for so long
i’m not going to be too surprised if i’m wrong about this, but i won’t be surprised if i’m right either. i know i said “definitely” lol, but i can see things going either way at this point. both could easily be played out in a comedic way
I think Becky would have a huge difference in reaction to thinking Dorothy likes and kissed a girl and her knowing Dorothy kissed Joyce. Like maybe Becky is picking up on the girl love awakening Dorothy’s gone through, but also she just really enjoys talking about how cool liking girls is and uses “rad” often in vocabulary. I struggle to believe even Becky’s most muted and reasonable reaction to finding out Dorothy is the one girl that gets to be with her long time crush is just coyly dancing around it.
But nothing is guaranteed. I could be wrong, especially since I’m not a patreon subscriber that would know tomorrow’s strip. It just seems like a stretch.
and from the “the protestors don’t actually care” segment of society, their social media is photos of former congresswoman Robin DeSanto holding a “I also care about whatever this is” sign.
It’s going to end with them walking down the hallway talking about what they’re going to tell the boys, Joyce will be the voice of reason, dotty will try to think of a lie.
The last panel of that comic is a stony faced Joe standing in his doorway, holding up his phone showing Joyce and Dorothy their kiss on the the screen.
someone def took a pic and posted it without joyce and dorothy realizing due to their lack of phones
no other reason for becky to acknowledge that part with such a smug expression imo
Becky is not the type to play coy about that. If she knew that Dorothy and Joyce kissed, she would be shouting about it with extreme specificity. I think people are really gonna have to drop this angle for now.
Plus, there was tear gas being launched all over while riot police were marching in during the kiss. If somebody is taking pictures during that, then they do NOT have self preservation skills
I think there is a very small chance that someone took a picture of them kissing and that it will be posted to the school new. I only say there’s a small chance because I believe that Daisy specifically fits the specific requirements of both running the school news and being a horny lesbian that could explain a photo of them being taken in such a high stress environment. She has both a reason and it would be in character, but I would feel a bit cheated because she wasn’t setup to be there and we never saw her at the camp.
Other than that I think the whole everyone already knows about the kiss angle is fishing for extra drama this scenario doesn’t need. It’s not really fun to have the big secret already be exposed.
It is possible, though, that there was enough smoke around that the picture is just “two women kissing” rather than “two easily identifiable women kissing”
Very reasonable scenario is a photograph ends up in the paper where Joyce and Dorothy are mostly obscured and unidentifiable, except to those for whom recognizing them would produce drama
Tear gas? Soldiers? Man this is great footage. As a Midwesterner I will stand there and make video of weather that should have me rushing to get underground. Self-preservation is like, a distant fifth in order of importance
Dorothy walking in all happy and excited when Becky last saw her depressed is reason enough for this reaction. I haven’t seen any reason in any of the scenes since they got back to think anyone knew.
It’s certainly possible the kiss is on social media, but just hasn’t gone viral enough yet. Or that it’ll show up in the school paper later, but it doesn’t seem to be a factor yet.
Not sure if I’ve been successfully dissuaded away from the “everyone saw the kiss” hypothesis or if Becky is just trolling the fuck out of Dorothy to hide her anger.
I think Becky just being Happy would be really lame tbh. Of all the characters involved, she’s maybe the one it would be most interesting to see be conflicted in her feelings.
Now that you mention it, Becky trolling Dorothy to hide her anger and avoid her real feelings is a very real possibility. It would be very in character for her. I previously had thought that Becky learning Joyce was willing to be with girls after all would create an emotional reaction sufficient to break Becky’s normally immovable masks, however, she is in a healthy relationship with Dina that would not have happened if Joyce had not first rejected her, so maybe Becky isn’t as distraught as I thought she would be.
Did you read Willis’ whole wedding thing on Patreon? It’s publicly available and BBCC (or BBBC?) linked it for me a few days ago. I am sadly convinced by the tone of the post that both girls intend to fully leave their current partners for each other. Mostly I’m sad because of how much build up there was to J/J which now feels like it was all for nothing, or very little.
Yes. Willis wrote that things intended to happen five(!) years from now kind of forced themselves into the narrative, and he ”blew up his webcomic”.
I think he really did blow it up for me. Cutting short the Joe / Joyce arc and speedrunning to his OTP doesn’t work at all IMO. I’m giving him a few weeks to change my mind, then I think I’ll stop reading.
I’m nowhere near that extreme but the blowing up of Joe/Joyce so early after how much it was built up ESPECIALLY post time skip really REALLY grinds my gears.
I’m not saying Joyrothy didn’t have build up but I personally found Joece had a lot better build up
Even if they don’t get together the fact that they were so easily pushed into smooching each other has to be destroyed their possibility to date their current respective partners
Hmm… so therefore Jocelyne might be able to Older Sibling Mess With Dorothy pretty effectively in the near future. She’s clearly good at it. I am all for this.
A lot of couples do that…it’s like how humans and their dogs tend to end up looking like each other.
I saw a wild example of this at a dog park recently with a trio of afghan hounds accompanied by a lady with insanely skinny legs in tight jeans and platinum blonde hair. She was literally brought to life from 101 Dalmatians.
Yes, this often happens in real life. I tend to gravitate towards people who are very like myself romantically, in fact.
But as I find myself needing to frequently say, this isn’t real life, it’s a story. And in a story, when a couple is too similar to each other, it isn’t very interesting to watch.
For both of them, I guess the sensible (ha ha) thing is: Yes I’ve got secrets, which will very soon not be secret, but need to be discussed the right people in the right order. So please wait your turn.
If only we all had “audience time” in which to sort out our inner turmoil and “audience suggestions” to consult when considering all the angles!
I can’t tell if people know something or if we’re just as paranoid as Joyce and Dorothy at this point
Either way, my first thought when I saw the title of this strip was “expressions” because I’m a programmer so here’s the shortest Regex I could write which matches all the main characters on the cast page but none of the side characters:
Her personal crisis has just completely wrecked her trained defenses. Dorothy’s gonna end up having a breakdown before she can build back up with her new perspective on political ambition.
That as much as anything might wreck her thing with Joyce: til she reorients, she’s primed for terrible decisions, as we’ve already seen.
Of course, the person he was referring to later turned out to be cheating on him with two different guys, embezzling all the money from their account, and would drag him through almost 15 years of divorce proceedings. So… possibly not the best example?
Boy, sure a good thing that Joyce and Dorothy recognized the importance of how to tell Becky and had crafted a careful response before ever letting Dorothy near her roommate. Goodness knows what might have happened if they left that up to chance. 🙄
Becky for sure has Dorothy’s phone behind her back, and either texts have been sent to Dorothy, or Joyce texted her, or Becky saw the titty pics Joyce and Dorothy sent to each other already, or things have been posted online. No matter the case, Becky definitely knows SOMEthing, and is hoping Dorothy will tell her about it. I personally think she might be silently suffering here, since she tends to do that.
You know, I think both of them are underestimating Becky. She and Dina are really happy together, and that has really helped her come into her own self. I think she’s actually going to be overjoyed that two of her best friends are getting together (and she does like ‘Dottie’ no matter how she tries to project otherwise) I think if anything, if they don’t overplay the hiding it from her thing, when she does find out, she’s going to smirk, look over at Dina and say: “Called it!”
This would be so anodyne, so safe, so toothless, and I don’t understand why people are entertaining it as a serious possibility. Becky has every reason to have complicated and uncomfortable feelings about this situation. Willis has said this will be a messy cheating story. There’s gonna be mess!
I would like to see a shuffling of earlier personalities. Like from Jennifer’s observation Becky: overbearing, Sarah: distant, Dorothy: judgmental; Sarah becomes judgmental and Becky just gets real cold and distant. I think that’s already how she gets when angry or hurt. She’s angry and hurt, but also beyond all that, and nominally glad for them. She’s fine.
Much as I would love to see Joyrothy launch smoothly, I think that would be the equivalent of leaving a major Chekov’s Gun unfired. There’s so much potential drama in Becky’s reaction that I can’t see Willis just deciding to pass it all up.
My personal prediction is that Becky’s reaction is somehow going to lead to her upcoming Signifcant Haircut (TM) that we’ve seen in the preview panels.
I have a feeling a lot of characters are gonna act like they’re fine with this when Joyce and Dorothy tell them initially, but they’re gonna have much more complicated feelings about it that they struggle to deal with later. We know Joe has troubles with cheating due to his dad cheating on his mom a lot. Walky acts like a goofball around his friends a lot to hide how he really feels about things. Becky was attracted to Joyce first and might still be dealing with that even after being with Dina for a while. And others of their friend group might have issues with this for different reasons.
Damn it I was looking at a panel with Dina in it for reasons and realized I don’t know how their nose works. Then I looked at the rest of the cast and like half of their noses are fake. The illusion is shattered. DINA HAS NO NOSE WHO STOLE IT YOU FILTHY NOSE STEALING HORNSWOGGLERS.
We know Mary was likely in direct line of sight to witness the kiss. We also know that neither Jennifer nor Dorothy is going to go to Daisy for any news related to the protest. Whether or not Daisy cares about actual news is beside the point, because Mary (who wouldn’t see any reason to leave her phone behind because she was on the other side of the fence) may have a steamy hot lesbian photo which Daisy would absolutely be all over.
The ultimate drama bomb would be if she went to Daisy today and got the photo plastered on the front page, hell maybe even social media, and everyone would find out that way before the girls have the courage to tell the relevant parties.
The next chapter title, Not So Smooth Criminals, definitely hints that the girls get caught and outed in some way. I’m willing to bet that’s it.
Based on their behavior so far, they’re going to get outrun by the news simply by A) being unable to play anything cool whatsoever and B) humorously not being able to find their boyfriends, whom they seem to be intent on telling first (despite Becky getting namedropped a few strips ago).
Dorothy: Well, I kinda cheated on my boyfriend…
Becky: Ohhhhhh, that’s bad.
Dorothy: …by making out with a girl…
Becky: That’s good.
Dorothy: She has a boyfriend too…
Becky: That’s bad.
Dorothy: But it was super hot.
Becky: That’s good.
Dorothy: It was Joyce.
[Becky stares speechless]
Dorothy: That’s bad.
Panel 5 made me put on my glasses to look at it more closely. It looked kind of odd. It makes sense now, though. Dorothy is trying so hard not to look directly at Becky that her left eye moved to her temple.
Throughout this arc I’ve rejected the idea that the girls should feel responsible for anyone’s feelings except their own and their boyfriends’ to an extent (alerting them they’ve cheated is in that extent). This excludes Becky and especially actual-ex Danny. ALL THAT SAID, oh my god. Becky. My sweet Beckalina. Your innocent japes are breaking my heart
That strikes me as a deeply solipsistic perspective. Joyce and Dorothy are not the only people who exist, and the way they act upon their feelings has an effect on the people they care about.
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BECKY!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!
SHE’LL SAVE EVERY ONE OF US!
Saviour of the Universe
I like how the last panel has a transparent background. Makes Dorothy look like she’s trying to escape the comic entirely.
That might not be a bad call at this point.
the problem is even if she escapes the comic itself, she’s just gonna land down here in the comments. which is a million times worse
Yeah, there’s been some real nasty remarks made about ‘er.
She Who Walks Between The Frames…
She thrusts her fists against the frames but Becks will sense she kissed the dames
on the one hand: hurt. on the other hand: her two closest friends have now gotten 1000% cooler
I saw what you did there, Shakespeare
If you haven’t already, look up the comic book “Mister Invincible.”
She can’t escape the confines of the page
Dotty so scared of this situation that she’s trying to break out of the very format of the comic itself!
That is a sweet Avatar. What is that picture from?
the new Magic set, Edge of Eternities – it’s the art of Weftstalker Ardent by Valera Lutfullina.
“No kill Dorothy?” Is there another …
Oh wait…
I assume they want to tell Joe and Walky first, but at some point soon Joyce and Dorothy are gonna have to tell the rest of their friend group.
Joyce is not experienced enough to say ‘for reasons’…
“Did I say reasons? I meant raisins! Yep, just got a craving…”
Raisins are great. They have a pleasant and mild taste, the texture is good they’re chewy, I think they legally count as fruit in the USA, and they’re dirt cheap in a lot of cases. Dorothy should eat some raisins.
Wait! There are places where they aren’t considered fruit?
Are they considered vegetables instead?
Tbh, I was trying to get ahead of some hypothetical smartass who might say “well, they’re haaaardly fruit, hm 🧐” if I called them fruit outright.
Raisins are horrible. The taste is unpleasant, the texture is a nasty surprise if they’re baked in somewhere (it’s even slippery)…
So Dorothy is going to eat some, but Joyce is not.
The fuck kinda raisins you ate that was slippery?
They’re slippery when they’re raw.
Raw raisins? You mean grapes? Because grapes are slippery, but raisins are not.
There’s no disappointment quite like chomping into what you thought was a tasty chocolate chip cookie and finding out it’s oatmeal raisin instead.
Who’s out here confusing the two? They look different, they smell different, they even feel different.
I’ve never confused one long enough to take a bite, but I have been tricked into getting excited for chocolate chip cookies only to find it’s a trap.
“Reasons that have nothing to do with my newly acquired girlfriend!
Also, accidentally reported your comment, sorry.
Panel four Becky is as sly as I’ve ever seen her w.r.t. someone else’s situation.
I suspect that Becky knows one way or another that Joyce and Dorothy have realised they have lovey dovey feelings for each other.
I suspect there’s a 0% chance that’s the case.
100% chance she’s long known Dorothy has feelings for Joyce. 0% chance she has allowed herself to even consider that Joyce could possibly have feelings for Dorothy.
Because Becky has already established that that’s simply impossible, because Joyce just doesn’t like girls. So there’s no way she could ever like a girl, and there’s no reason to ever think about any other possibility, because it’s so impossible. ha ha.
Any evidence that Joyce MIGHT be into girls, or Dorothy specifically, can very easily be chalked up to “Joyce is just like that, and always has been!” Which is technically a true statement, and requires no additional unpacking! Her acting just like somebody who’s really horny for girls, all the time? Mark it up under the “Gal Pal” category.
Such a master of deception.
* Decepticon
she’s gotta go smear mud on her ass
They’re both very bad at keeping secrets.
Yeah, Dorothy never stood a chance as a politician
oh, i don’t know, panicking and running away when someone asks about her sex life would have made her a pretty standard republican
But Joyce is like at least 5 years too old to be a politician’s interest.
#notallpoliticians
#IOKIYAR,_though
One of these characters has excellent political instincts.
The other… does not.
Becky don’t need to be a detective to know something’s up here
everyone’s gonna end up figuring it out before they have a chance to say anything, aren’t they
> No-chill Dorothy
As opposed to…
Unconscious Dorothy?
Yes-chill Dorothy. But that type of Dorothy is purely theoretical.
Like some of those high-number elements, Yes-Chill Dororhy can only exist under laboratory conditions for a fraction of a second.
Laboratory conditions being Joyce’s bed.
“Let’s change the subject please!”
“Awright, Dotty, why don’t we talk about things we got in common? You go first!”
“We’ve both kissed Joyce!”
“An’ she ran away crying because she doesn’t feel the same way ’bout you.”
“Uhhhhh…..”
“Well the topic was things we have in *common*…”
We were both almost killed by a MacIntyre in an Act II.
Well I’m glad Dorothy is regular, that means she’s getting enough fiber!
She maintains a well balanced diet.
See raisins, above.
Well there is always the run away and live in the woods option
Regular Feelings Dorothy, meet Pocket-Sized Emotional Control Dorothy.
Can we finally quash the whole their kiss was filmed and posted to social media theory now? No way Becky wouldn’t bring that up immediately if she saw it.
Becky has neither the patience nor the inclination to play coy about something like that. She has an issue with thought proceeding to action without anything in between, and this is amplified fivefold with regards to matters of queerness.
IIRC she’s made clear that she knowingly pushes the narrative that she says every thought she has.
She leans into it, but that doesn’t make it not a real trait of hers.
That’s what makes her so sneaky-snakey! Don’t live a fake persona, just take advantage of your actual one.
But though Becky’s expressions aren’t a giveaway here (which is some excellent arting choices), I am inclined to think she doesn’t know yet. Considered the possibility she senses the shift in Dorothy and thinks she’s into some other girl, but I’m not convinced Becky has even that good a gaydar yet.
i think this is her way of bringing it up. she’s very confident about dorothy having had a great day because she knows what happened at the protest
otherwise i don’t really get why she’d have the expression she does after realizing that dorothy and joyce didn’t have their phones. i think she finds it amusing that dorothy doesn’t realize that everyone already knows
She can tell that Dorothy is very happy, which is an abrupt change from how utterly depressed she was in the early morning. Are we supposed to believe that all four characters we’ve seen thus far have chosen to play coy about the kiss? It beggars belief, especially when it comes to Becky.
as i see it, i think the only people who definitely saw the kiss are becky and raidah. whether sarah and sal did depends on the context of the picture/video/whatever
sarah didn’t realize joyce was at the protest, so i think if sarah saw it, it wasn’t obvious that it took place at the protest. otherwise, i don’t think sarah saw it and just thought joyce was acting sus
i think it could go either way for sal, and depends on how much of joyce and dorothy’s kiss/hug she saw. the fact that she used the word “gay” for them makes me think she could tell that they got together in some fashion, but it could’ve just been her seeing or overhearing them as she passed by them. otherwise, it’s because she saw the thing and could tell that’s what dorothy was referring to when she commented on sal’s lack of reaction
that’s just my take tho, i’m absolutely prepared to be wrong about it
I don’t see any reason at all to think Raidah knew anything. They told her about the protest.
No one yet has known anything about the protest before being told.
all raidah really had to say when she saw them was that they smelled bad, and a sarcastic “uh huh” when joyce told her they were at the protest. nothing else to indicate how much she knew about it.
imo, the fact that joyce said “the” protest implies it was general knowledge. raidah didn’t seem surprised at all to hear about a protest going on, and the way she replied lined up with what actually happened. it’s not hard at all to view dorothy and joyce’s dramatic kiss in the middle of everything going on as attention-seeking given the context. i feel like everyone’s reactions are weirdly specific/targeted for them to not know have some level of knowledge of what’s happened, and it now seems to be a very intentional narrative decision to have dorothy and joyce away from their phones for so long
i’m not going to be too surprised if i’m wrong about this, but i won’t be surprised if i’m right either. i know i said “definitely” lol, but i can see things going either way at this point. both could easily be played out in a comedic way
Hey remember how walky said not long ago that Dorothy really needs to change the password on her phone?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/rascal/
We can quash social media. School Paper is still on the table, though!
Becky, March 7th 2025, strip titled “Vocab”:
“Hey, Dotty, y’know what’s rad? Chicks.”
Becky, today, this strip:
“Aw, c’mon, Dotty, I can tell somethin’ rad happened!”
A callback to some foreshadowing isn’t imposible here.
I think Becky would have a huge difference in reaction to thinking Dorothy likes and kissed a girl and her knowing Dorothy kissed Joyce. Like maybe Becky is picking up on the girl love awakening Dorothy’s gone through, but also she just really enjoys talking about how cool liking girls is and uses “rad” often in vocabulary. I struggle to believe even Becky’s most muted and reasonable reaction to finding out Dorothy is the one girl that gets to be with her long time crush is just coyly dancing around it.
But nothing is guaranteed. I could be wrong, especially since I’m not a patreon subscriber that would know tomorrow’s strip. It just seems like a stretch.
precisely this actually
“If she saw it”
Maybe she hasn’t seen it yet.
social media is more likely photos and videos of the police snipers
and from the “the protestors don’t actually care” segment of society, their social media is photos of former congresswoman Robin DeSanto holding a “I also care about whatever this is” sign.
It’s going to end with them walking down the hallway talking about what they’re going to tell the boys, Joyce will be the voice of reason, dotty will try to think of a lie.
The last panel of that comic is a stony faced Joe standing in his doorway, holding up his phone showing Joyce and Dorothy their kiss on the the screen.
someone def took a pic and posted it without joyce and dorothy realizing due to their lack of phones
no other reason for becky to acknowledge that part with such a smug expression imo
Becky is not the type to play coy about that. If she knew that Dorothy and Joyce kissed, she would be shouting about it with extreme specificity. I think people are really gonna have to drop this angle for now.
Plus, there was tear gas being launched all over while riot police were marching in during the kiss. If somebody is taking pictures during that, then they do NOT have self preservation skills
you’re not familiar with journalists game, then
Also: civilian bad actors, white nationalist types. Mary wouldn’t be the only ahole there. We weren’t actually shown very much of the goings-on.
I think there is a very small chance that someone took a picture of them kissing and that it will be posted to the school new. I only say there’s a small chance because I believe that Daisy specifically fits the specific requirements of both running the school news and being a horny lesbian that could explain a photo of them being taken in such a high stress environment. She has both a reason and it would be in character, but I would feel a bit cheated because she wasn’t setup to be there and we never saw her at the camp.
Other than that I think the whole everyone already knows about the kiss angle is fishing for extra drama this scenario doesn’t need. It’s not really fun to have the big secret already be exposed.
She was setup to be there. She said she had to go because actual important stuff that was happening on campus. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/functional-2/
It is possible, though, that there was enough smoke around that the picture is just “two women kissing” rather than “two easily identifiable women kissing”
Very reasonable scenario is a photograph ends up in the paper where Joyce and Dorothy are mostly obscured and unidentifiable, except to those for whom recognizing them would produce drama
Tear gas? Soldiers? Man this is great footage. As a Midwesterner I will stand there and make video of weather that should have me rushing to get underground. Self-preservation is like, a distant fifth in order of importance
i disagree, i think becky is teasing dorothy in a way i consider to be in-character for her
but this kind of interpretation is super opinion-based until we get confirmation one way or another, which i’m sure is coming very soon
Dorothy walking in all happy and excited when Becky last saw her depressed is reason enough for this reaction. I haven’t seen any reason in any of the scenes since they got back to think anyone knew.
It’s certainly possible the kiss is on social media, but just hasn’t gone viral enough yet. Or that it’ll show up in the school paper later, but it doesn’t seem to be a factor yet.
Not sure if I’ve been successfully dissuaded away from the “everyone saw the kiss” hypothesis or if Becky is just trolling the fuck out of Dorothy to hide her anger.
Or alternatively, Becky knows and is delighted by it because she’s over Joyce at this point.
i think it’s this tbh
Becky is so not over Joyce.
I think Becky just being Happy would be really lame tbh. Of all the characters involved, she’s maybe the one it would be most interesting to see be conflicted in her feelings.
news fly real fast.
Now that you mention it, Becky trolling Dorothy to hide her anger and avoid her real feelings is a very real possibility. It would be very in character for her. I previously had thought that Becky learning Joyce was willing to be with girls after all would create an emotional reaction sufficient to break Becky’s normally immovable masks, however, she is in a healthy relationship with Dina that would not have happened if Joyce had not first rejected her, so maybe Becky isn’t as distraught as I thought she would be.
Joyce said “Let’s be criminals.”
The next chapter is “Not-so-Smooth Criminals”
If today and yesterday are any indication as well, we’re are in for a glorious clusterfuck, and I am all in for it.
Panel 5: the sheer horror sucks Dorothy’s eyeballs toward the back of her skull.
So are Joyce and Dotty going to break up with their boyfriends? It’s not cheating if they do but I’m not sure if they are.
First up, they should just talk to them. This doesn’t necessarily mean breakups gotta happen.
Dorothy almost certainly intends to break up with Walky, at the very least.
Did you read Willis’ whole wedding thing on Patreon? It’s publicly available and BBCC (or BBBC?) linked it for me a few days ago. I am sadly convinced by the tone of the post that both girls intend to fully leave their current partners for each other. Mostly I’m sad because of how much build up there was to J/J which now feels like it was all for nothing, or very little.
Same.
BB/CC, and same.
…what, why did I put the slash in… BBCC of course. ~:-|
What does BBCC stand for?
Truth, Justice, and the British Way!
Very sad indeed, although I do feel like Joyce and Joe have mostly maxed out how much character development they can bring to each other.
Yes. Willis wrote that things intended to happen five(!) years from now kind of forced themselves into the narrative, and he ”blew up his webcomic”.
I think he really did blow it up for me. Cutting short the Joe / Joyce arc and speedrunning to his OTP doesn’t work at all IMO. I’m giving him a few weeks to change my mind, then I think I’ll stop reading.
I’m nowhere near that extreme but the blowing up of Joe/Joyce so early after how much it was built up ESPECIALLY post time skip really REALLY grinds my gears.
I’m not saying Joyrothy didn’t have build up but I personally found Joece had a lot better build up
I’m in the camp that breakups need to happen.
Even if they don’t get together the fact that they were so easily pushed into smooching each other has to be destroyed their possibility to date their current respective partners
I certainly hope not.
There are FAR better options.
Definitely still cheating.
All regular.
Much normal.
So okay.
I love how Dorothy is relaxed for 5 seconds and Becky’s ready to pounce on a bonding moment XD
Have Dorothy and Joyce ever both done the Panic Face Dance at the same time before? We might never get this close to it happening again.
Hm, this actually made me realize a reason I’m not wild about them as a couple: they’ve kind of evolved to be too similar to one another
Hmm… so therefore Jocelyne might be able to Older Sibling Mess With Dorothy pretty effectively in the near future. She’s clearly good at it. I am all for this.
Awesome.
Dorothy needs this. She’s an only child!
A lot of couples do that…it’s like how humans and their dogs tend to end up looking like each other.
I saw a wild example of this at a dog park recently with a trio of afghan hounds accompanied by a lady with insanely skinny legs in tight jeans and platinum blonde hair. She was literally brought to life from 101 Dalmatians.
That scene in 101 Dalmatians is one of my faves.
Yes, this often happens in real life. I tend to gravitate towards people who are very like myself romantically, in fact.
But as I find myself needing to frequently say, this isn’t real life, it’s a story. And in a story, when a couple is too similar to each other, it isn’t very interesting to watch.
I once saw two guys dressed identically, walking two identical dogs. I thought, “Well, they might be gay, but I shouldn’t assume.”
I mean, it might have been a glitch in the Matrix.
For both of them, I guess the sensible (ha ha) thing is: Yes I’ve got secrets, which will very soon not be secret, but need to be discussed the right people in the right order. So please wait your turn.
If only we all had “audience time” in which to sort out our inner turmoil and “audience suggestions” to consult when considering all the angles!
Would fantastic to have a subjective day’s worth of time to sort out feelings about every signficant moment without aging!
Willis is right. No-chill Dorothy is best Dorothy.
100% agreed with you both there!
I can’t tell if people know something or if we’re just as paranoid as Joyce and Dorothy at this point
Either way, my first thought when I saw the title of this strip was “expressions” because I’m a programmer so here’s the shortest Regex I could write which matches all the main characters on the cast page but none of the side characters:
^[A-JRSW][aeimou](?:(?!o|ce|rl))\w*[aehlry]$I loved the regex, but I could not insert Dorothy or Becky.
Dorothy might have a *worse* poker face than Joyce. Or at least she’s more prone to panicking a lot faster.
Her personal crisis has just completely wrecked her trained defenses. Dorothy’s gonna end up having a breakdown before she can build back up with her new perspective on political ambition.
That as much as anything might wreck her thing with Joyce: til she reorients, she’s primed for terrible decisions, as we’ve already seen.
Reasons. Perfectly normal, non-suspicious reasons. You know, straight people stuff.
You sure are inquisitive for a self proclaimed enemy of dorothy
Who’s an enemy of Dorothy?
oh derp ignore me, darkoneko, you meant in-comic. I need sleep.
Yeah almost like that whole thing been stated multiple times to be performative.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/vocab/
Somethin’ rad? Like chicks? Like bein’ into chicks? Like havin’ romantic and/or erotic attraction to women who are chicks? Did that happen?
Joe’s “did I do a ‘do a'” slays me
yakety-sax dorothy
In the words of Christopher Titus, “devious as Don Knotts on sodium pentathol”.
Of course, the person he was referring to later turned out to be cheating on him with two different guys, embezzling all the money from their account, and would drag him through almost 15 years of divorce proceedings. So… possibly not the best example?
I want to play poker with Dorothy and Joyce, for obvious reasons.
hahaha
Boy, sure a good thing that Joyce and Dorothy recognized the importance of how to tell Becky and had crafted a careful response before ever letting Dorothy near her roommate. Goodness knows what might have happened if they left that up to chance. 🙄
Becky for sure has Dorothy’s phone behind her back, and either texts have been sent to Dorothy, or Joyce texted her, or Becky saw the titty pics Joyce and Dorothy sent to each other already, or things have been posted online. No matter the case, Becky definitely knows SOMEthing, and is hoping Dorothy will tell her about it. I personally think she might be silently suffering here, since she tends to do that.
Especially since she knows the code to Dorothy’s phone.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/rascal/
I never ONCE considered any of these possibilities goddamn
imo Panel 5 Becky looks pretty sincere.
Is no-chill Dorothy also Joyce’s favorite Dorothy?
Trick question: All Dorothys are Joyce’s favorite Dorothy.
Dumbing of Age Book 15: A Normal Allocation of Okay Feelings
She doesn’t know.
Yet.
“…Look, a distraction!”
I wonder if dorothy’s even noticed that becky’s dropping the facade and being nice at the moment
Her brain might be recording it for future playback. But, yeah, right now? Nope.
You know, I think both of them are underestimating Becky. She and Dina are really happy together, and that has really helped her come into her own self. I think she’s actually going to be overjoyed that two of her best friends are getting together (and she does like ‘Dottie’ no matter how she tries to project otherwise) I think if anything, if they don’t overplay the hiding it from her thing, when she does find out, she’s going to smirk, look over at Dina and say: “Called it!”
This would be so anodyne, so safe, so toothless, and I don’t understand why people are entertaining it as a serious possibility. Becky has every reason to have complicated and uncomfortable feelings about this situation. Willis has said this will be a messy cheating story. There’s gonna be mess!
I would like to see a shuffling of earlier personalities. Like from Jennifer’s observation Becky: overbearing, Sarah: distant, Dorothy: judgmental; Sarah becomes judgmental and Becky just gets real cold and distant. I think that’s already how she gets when angry or hurt. She’s angry and hurt, but also beyond all that, and nominally glad for them. She’s
fine.Much as I would love to see Joyrothy launch smoothly, I think that would be the equivalent of leaving a major Chekov’s Gun unfired. There’s so much potential drama in Becky’s reaction that I can’t see Willis just deciding to pass it all up.
My personal prediction is that Becky’s reaction is somehow going to lead to her upcoming Signifcant Haircut (TM) that we’ve seen in the preview panels.
I have a feeling a lot of characters are gonna act like they’re fine with this when Joyce and Dorothy tell them initially, but they’re gonna have much more complicated feelings about it that they struggle to deal with later. We know Joe has troubles with cheating due to his dad cheating on his mom a lot. Walky acts like a goofball around his friends a lot to hide how he really feels about things. Becky was attracted to Joyce first and might still be dealing with that even after being with Dina for a while. And others of their friend group might have issues with this for different reasons.
Anyway, I’m sure Dorothy took a lot of weight off, she’s really glowing
Damn it I was looking at a panel with Dina in it for reasons and realized I don’t know how their nose works. Then I looked at the rest of the cast and like half of their noses are fake. The illusion is shattered. DINA HAS NO NOSE WHO STOLE IT YOU FILTHY NOSE STEALING HORNSWOGGLERS.
Random Early Morning Plot Theory:
We know Mary was likely in direct line of sight to witness the kiss. We also know that neither Jennifer nor Dorothy is going to go to Daisy for any news related to the protest. Whether or not Daisy cares about actual news is beside the point, because Mary (who wouldn’t see any reason to leave her phone behind because she was on the other side of the fence) may have a steamy hot lesbian photo which Daisy would absolutely be all over.
The ultimate drama bomb would be if she went to Daisy today and got the photo plastered on the front page, hell maybe even social media, and everyone would find out that way before the girls have the courage to tell the relevant parties.
The next chapter title, Not So Smooth Criminals, definitely hints that the girls get caught and outed in some way. I’m willing to bet that’s it.
Based on their behavior so far, they’re going to get outrun by the news simply by A) being unable to play anything cool whatsoever and B) humorously not being able to find their boyfriends, whom they seem to be intent on telling first (despite Becky getting namedropped a few strips ago).
Becky knowsssss
I love Dorothy, such a huge dorkus who has no dishonest bones in her body. That last image is all of them trying to leave simultaneously.
Dorothy: Well, I kinda cheated on my boyfriend…
Becky: Ohhhhhh, that’s bad.
Dorothy: …by making out with a girl…
Becky: That’s good.
Dorothy: She has a boyfriend too…
Becky: That’s bad.
Dorothy: But it was super hot.
Becky: That’s good.
Dorothy: It was Joyce.
[Becky stares speechless]
Dorothy: That’s bad.
I regret that I cannot upvote this. XD
Hey, it remembers Questionable Content. When May slept with Sven.
I kinda wish they’d kept going after she got the new body.
Best. Comment. Ever.
The guilty flee when none pursue.
Everything the new couple does draws attention to them. Love it.
Uh, did anyone else’s comic cut out halfway through the last panel? Weird.
No, but the last panel is a cut-off image of Dorothy.
Panel 5 made me put on my glasses to look at it more closely. It looked kind of odd. It makes sense now, though. Dorothy is trying so hard not to look directly at Becky that her left eye moved to her temple.
Great Poker Face ya’ got there…
Why Dotty never stood a chance as a Presidential candidate, she just can’t lie to your face while looking you earnestly in the eyes XD
Smooth Dorothy, very smooth.
“Me, at a protest– with Joyce? Running around– holding hands– and kissing? – I gotta go!”
Becky’s gaydar is going off.
Throughout this arc I’ve rejected the idea that the girls should feel responsible for anyone’s feelings except their own and their boyfriends’ to an extent (alerting them they’ve cheated is in that extent). This excludes Becky and especially actual-ex Danny. ALL THAT SAID, oh my god. Becky. My sweet Beckalina. Your innocent japes are breaking my heart
That strikes me as a deeply solipsistic perspective. Joyce and Dorothy are not the only people who exist, and the way they act upon their feelings has an effect on the people they care about.
I mean yeah but the fact that they have an effect is not the same as being responsible.
That’s not what I said 🙁
Unfortunately, having people completely misread/misstate your comment so they can complain about/argue against it is a canon event.
Which one of us gonna be Miles and go “Fuck that shit!”?
Pol Sci Becky is dangerous.
Yes, she is.
but IMO, Dina is even more so.
“I CERTAINLY DID NOT BOTH VALIDATE YOUR LIFETIME OF FEELINGS FOR JOYCE BUT ALSO CRUSH THOSE DREAMS ALL IN ONE MOMENT”
Ruth and Billie walked so Joyce and Dorothy could fly directly into the sun. This is such a disasterpiece!