don’t work out, play team sport, more fun less likely end up with super burny muscles! Same chances of suffering a brain aneurysm while exerting yourself, and morelikely to get help fat enough to suvive.
(had a classmate in Reefer training who had to delay his enrollment 2 years after recovering from an aneurysm sufferred while working out as 26)
Caution: advice does not apply to “indoor soccer pick-up game night” when you live within ten miles of several liberal arts colleges.
Ask me how I know, says the 40-something dude who got his ASS KICKED by 800 early-twenty-somethings college kids who were playing pick-up-game night like it was the world cup qualifiers.
I’ve had women say this about their thigh muscles describing both their actions with me and their actions with their trainers. The lesson is to stretch and hydrate.
I know that Sarah did a hard workout yesterdayish. But I prefer to believe that Sarah’s thighs are sore because she and Tony were really going at it, offscreen. Heh.
Honestly, there’s something else going on here that I didn’t really think about.
Sarah has always had serious trust issues. It was a HUGE step for her to try getting to know Joe better, for Joyce’s sake. This line from her displays, clearly, that Joyce has broken her trust. The one person she really trusted and cared for just betrayed so many of her friends and, somewhat more damning, doesn’t seem bothered by it or even to recognize that what she did was wrong.
WE know that Joyce has guilt, but all Sarah can see is Joyce’s rationalization that “It’s all for True Love, so it’s OK” and man, Sarah REALLY believed that Joyce was better than that.
I would definitely argue that we saw Joyce feeling too guilty about their actions to tell Joe in light of him giving her a very thoughtful gift. That’s certainly guilt in my eyes.
I can’t bring myself to hate Joyce, for a long time she was the character I identified with the most. It has however, been kind of sobering to watch her evolve and diverge away from that. I think deep down, she does still have a good heart and that’s why this arc is probably going to hurt like a mother-lover. Definitely lead her to some much-needed soul searching. I hold out hope that, though she has lost her way, she will learn from this experience and come out on the other side.
Honestly can’t tell if you are being sincere or not. There have been a bunch of sickos apparently delighting in other people disliking this comic.
If you are being sincere then I’ll say that I don’t appreciate your comment. It seems to cast how I am feeling as some sort of personal deficiency, and assumes that it is more important for me to like the comic than for the comic to be something I like. I appreciate, however, a sincere wish that I have an enjoyable reading experience.
If you are not being sincere then shove off. The world is a better place without trolls. Again, this part of the reply is only if you are not being sincere.
I was being sincere, and hoping for you to like a comic you are actively continuing to read.
But nitpicking something nasty out of it and trying to police how I said it? lmao absolutely go fuck yourself. My mistake for talking to you kindly but not exactly how you’d like. Won’t make it again o7
Yo, intent matters but so does impact. If your words were not having a positive impact when you wanted them to, I would expect you to want to hear that.
I am not saying “you were being nasty” I am saying “your words didn’t feel good”.
She does have a track record with friendships though. And she was friends with Joe. Joe was there for her, not for the newsworthy events, but for personal growth. In a way that Dorothy was not. The cheating in the relationship matters more than a week old relationship fizzling, because it’s how she’s betraying a friend.
Exactly this, yeah. She’s never been good at romance but she’s usually been a very loyal and loving friend. It’s honestly really devastating for me that my favorite character of 10 years in this comic is currently so unenjoyable for me… I can’t even see a way back for her right now bc I’m just exhausted and emotionally checked out/exhausted from this storyline. Joyce, Sarah and Joe have been my faves forever (mostly in that order) and it’s so weird that Joyce is now closer to the bottom of my list than the top. Genuinely been super sad about it bc I’ve loved this comic and Joyce Brown so much for so long. (and I’ve wanted bi joyce since day 1! and now ive got her! in the worst possible way and im not having fun at all!) its been a nightmare which is why i had to leave the patreon 😭 been devouring books and shows and music instead to try and wait it out
Meh. Maybe Sarah’s thighs hurt from too much riding on that high horse. I do totally agree with her, but it also feels much like some of us in the comments she’s putting a lot of heavy judgment on something I don’t think either Joyce or Dorothy have fully processed yet. Like damn 8 hours really turned them into the worst people ever, poor innocent Joe who has never done anything wrong ever (Walky sympathy not found) How terrible that Joyce ripped his heart out and crushed it right in front of him./s
Seriously though. I get her disappointment but this all feels very harsh very early. Sarah’s the girl who intentionally tried to sabotage one relationship already, and it worked. I think we can all calm down until Joyce and Dorothy actually follow through more on being cheaters.
I’m going to be honest, I don’t know why people keep using Sarah’s past misdeeds as a reason to ignore what she’s saying here. At worst someone being a hypocrite doesn’t change the fact that what they’re saying might be correct. At best a hypocrite is someone who is on their way to being a better person. Sarah having been wrong in the past doesn’t make Joyce or Dorothy any more correct. Sarah also doesn’t think very highly of herself but she did think very highly of Joyce. Her response here isn’t because she thinks Joyce was the worst person in the world. It’s because she trusted her and considered her to be a good person and Joyce is behaving in ways that are completely incongruous with that worldview.
It doesn’t ignore her statement, but you don’t think it’s an unfair double standard? As her friend I would expect at least the same leniency she received from Joyce which was a lot. Sarah even admitted to weaponizing Joyce in that situation and Joyce immediately forgave her, but when it’s Joyce behaving badly the “I knew you less than I thought.” comes out. That just doesn’t shake right with me.
I don’t agree at all with how Dorothy and (Joyce especially) seemed to be operating in the moment but it feels like you fuck up once and everyone’s ready to cook you for it. Even your sister.
There’s a difference between “you fuck up once and everyone’s ready to cook you for it” and “you are fucking up now and are making excuses and doubling down rather than dealing with it”.
Also Joyce immediately forgiving Sarah in the Jacob/Raidah situation is a bit different because at the point where Joyce forgave her, Joyce was still pursuing Jacob on her own.
“but it feels like you fuck up once and everyone’s ready to cook you for it. Even your sister.”
I agree wholeheartedly with this, and I think it’s because basically everyone in the comic (and a lot of people in the comments) had Joyce so high up on a pedestal that there was no way for her to grow or be messy or change without everyone feeling weirdly betrayed.
Joyce is allowed to make mistakes. Expecting her to be a perfect angel all the time is a weiiiiiirdddd vibe to me, and it’s nice seeing someone else say it. (And for those who would WELL BUT me: Yes she’s cheating, yes cheating is wrong, yes I personally think it falls under allowable mistakes for someone this young and this newly queer and THIS newly in the real world.)
Sometimes it feels like people can’t decide whether to infantilize her as completely not responsible for ANY choices she makes or demonize her as responsible for the feelings of every single person around her to the detriment of her own.
Notably, if it was JOE or WALKY hitting her with this speech I’d back him fully. This would be totally fair coming from one of the aggrieved parties, I just don’t think Sarah is one of those.
Didn’t Sarah show some remorse by the time Sarah confessed to Joyce though? it’s not like Sarah is saying she won’t ever forgive but that Joyce showing zero remorse and trying to frame her actions as good with a straight face is a side of her Sarah needs some time to process first. Also note Joyce was already trying to get with Jaocob so Joyce may have been so quick to forgive because she didn’t think it was a huge wrong.
Yeah to me Sarah’s comment reads as that she is going to work on wrapping her mind around Joyce’s current actions and possibly come to accept her anyway.
The rest of your comment I do also agree with, it’s just that Sirksome didn’t really ignore anything, they just like, have a different opinion. It happens. It’s fully fair to think about the other time Joyce was involved in breaking a couple up + the way Sarah pushed for that. Like, from Sarah’s perspective this makes perfect sense because she hated Raidah & changed her mind about Joe, and the main thing is really her perception of Joyce, yadda yadda – that’s all correct but as a reader I can like, slightly raise my eyebrow at that, too.
I never really understood the sentiment, “you did something bad before too, therefore you’re not allowed to make correct moral judgements.”
It’d be one thing if they were _presently_ doing one thing and saying another, but we really need to be fair and recognize that they’ve been putting in the work themselves to be better than they were when they made those *very real* mistakes.
For me, because I recognize the work they’ve put in and it’s shown serious results, why not let it be the past offenders being the ones who’re reminding what’s right to the current abusers?
When we say people like Joe and Sarah don’t get to say anything, we become the people they resent when they feel like nobody gives them a second chance (like what’s-her-name recently in the gym interaction). We become the stumbling block for that person’s growth when we ought to be celebrating positive change.
My point isn’t really that Sarah has no right to say her stance on this because of her own past in problematic behavior, it’s that she’s not treating Joyce the same way Joyce has shown to treat her in those situations. I’m happy Sarah has developed as a character but Joyce also gave her the room to get that development without judging her for said flaws. Same for Joe too honestly.
the point was that Sarah came to the realization what she did was shitty and she backed off from it. Joyce saw it too and she was witness to Sarah realizing she fucked up. But now not only is Joyce making mistakes just as bad as Sarah did she’s more trying to defend her own actions by throwing Sarah under the bus for something that she was already ashamed of doing.
Look, yes it takes years for us out here, but the thing Sarah did that Joyce mentioned was within the last week in-comic? She learned and grew in a week? This would be literally the first Joyce is seeing of it, it makes sense she would mention it, it literally just happened to her. I am amazed at how much everybody takes everything like actual years have passed for these kids. Joyce and Joe have been working towards this relationship not for years, but for maximum one month. They have been together maybe two to three weeks. I think we might still be in January? When the time skip happening put us into January? We had all of the Lucy x Walky drama, we had Joyce and Dorothy go out and get drunk together and the karaoke session and the party where Lucy and Jacob hooked up, and so on and so forth, in the last month in-comic.
I think despite this being the standard since the beginning of the comic, there’s still this assumption when reading that this comic operates like other stories where assumed time passes in between major events to solidify and establish character changes conveyed to the audience.
Joe and Joyce have been friends for several months, and she knows about his insecurities about both relationships and infidelity. That’s the “kicking a friend and confidant in the teeth right after you decided to date him” everyone’s ready to express that she’s being kind of a shithead who deserves to be taken down a peg about.
It’s not “Sarah is right, but she’s a hypocrite”. It’s “Sarah is being a judgemental asshole, and she’s a massive hypocrite”. Talking to Joyce like this after she just came out to her would be shitty in any circumstance, but the fact she’s such a hypocrite makes it even worse.
You know what else is shitty? Cheating on your boyfriend under the thoughtful gift he just gave you.
Nothing Sarah has said today or yesterday was wrong, and it’s EXACTLY what Dorothy and Joyce needed to hear. Now, if they actually HEARD it or if they will dismiss it remains to be seen.
Also… some people seem to be reading this as though Sarah’s words illustrate a final and inflexible rejection of Joyce, when they could just as easily be explained as being deliberately blunt in order to shock Joyce into thinking about how her actions could affect people.
Despite her words, Sarah does know that Joyce cares about others (to the point of encroaching on Sarah’s boundaries many times as a roommate), so this read, to me, more as a way to say “This isn’t you, Joyce” in a way that might shake her more than saying that in a more straightforward way could.
This is how I read it too. One thing that is genuinely surprising if you haven’t noticed it about Joyce Is how good she at lying to herself as well as lies by omission/technicality. I’m not surprised if Sarah finds it genuinely creepy how Joyce can go from looking so lovabley guilty to acting cool like nothings wrong the next. Sarah’s not going to stop being Joyce’s friends or found sister but it will take her a bit to process this change to her view of Joyce.
Go back and read the first panel of the previous page.
Joyce: “Yesterday, Dorothy and I… we finally kissed, after wanting to for so long.”
Sarah is right to condemn Joyce and Dorothy here, even if it ends up being an ephemeral condemnation. (I doubt Sarah’s going to, like, request a room transfer over this or anything.)
Lol.
Since we have seen that Joyce hadn’t understood her feelings of Dorothy in real time the previous years, this line says something different that you seem to think.
That line, actually makes Sarah be way worse for me.
Here is her little sister, accepting herself of being a bit gay/bi to her trusted person, Sarah. And Sarah acts like this?
F no.
Sarah has real nothing to stand on here.
Nah, Sarah is right. If my little sister was like “awesome news, I’ve discovered I’m bi by cheating on my boyfriend” I’d be like “man, c’mon, uncool” and if she kept going by “FINALLY i discovered this…we kissed yesterday and then I invited her to sleep over in my bed…” I would actually think less of her even though I’m queer lol. Joyce hasnt displayed any confusion or even awareness that what she did was kinda shitty where Sarah could see, all Sarah knows is that Joyce thinks this is awesome lol.
Kissing in the moment, yeah I definitely see how passions can run high that’s one thing. But then inviting the girl you kissed to sleep with you (nonsexual) instead of breaking up with the genuinely good boyfriend first and then doing whatever ? Sarah is right.
Being bisexual myself, the cheating is even more upsetting because there’s such a stereotype of bisexuals being cheaters/indecisive/etc. I’m looking forward to how the comic addresses that angle of this. We got a little bit of it with Danny talking to Dorothy.
The comic has many MANY bisexuals in it and only one pair are cheating. It’s okay if bisexuals cheat sometimes, it does happen, and there’s lots of other monogamous or committed bisexual representation in the comic already.
This exactly. They kissed at a protest, it was night when they got back, it has been incredibly obvious to everyone that they have repressed feelings for one another, why is this being treated like this maniacal laughter, mustache twirling indecency, especially by Sarah of all people who has historically been so misanthropic, and who not long ago swore she would forgive Joyce every time?
It’s human, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not wildly obscene to judge other people so harshly for something you have virtually no skin in the game about yourself.
Spent some time reading all the updates since they got back from the protest and it is literally a couple hours where their first tries was to keep themselves off of each other and then make a plan to inform Joe and Walky.
These young women who had their whole world turned upside down are literally trying to be honest and ethical and we have Sarah now and commenters during the last weeks acting like they have been cheaters for years.
Seriously???
Is this homophobic, misogynism or plain hypocrisy to act as being ethically better?
Sarah is working with what she sees. Which also involves that Joyce and Dorotyhy were trying (badly) to hide their cheating from her. I don’t think Joyce and Dorothy are now horrible, horrible people. But they are currently cheating on their respective partners. The kiss at least was a ‘spur of the moment’, but the sleeping together like that was a mix of both not willing to accept the pain of the break-up, combined with the unwillingness to postpone further intimacy.
Sarah’s reaction is I think appropriate and constructive. Makes it very clear that what they’re doing now, while super cute and I love to read it, is cheating. Joyce’s defense in the last comic ‘Why do you care if I cheat, you were against the relatiionship’ is, well, also not exactly something that radiates ‘I’m trying to do this in the most ethical way’
Sarah just saw Joyce try to lie about what’s happened, learned she did not inform her boyfriend (so, reasonable to assume lying to him to whether by omission or outright), and when she pointed out how what Joyce did was bad got told “why do you care if i hurt him??? you don’t like him” instead of “yeah I’m going to tell him” like Sarah’s reaction is very normal. I think Joyce/Dorothy is cute but it’s silly to pretend they’re trying to be ethical and honest when they’re not? Joyce did try to lie to Sarah. Ultimately characters making big mistakes makes for a better story – It’s not called Smarting of Age – but to pretend that Joyce is going about this the right way is very silly.
Agreed. Like, Sarah can tell Joyce as a friend that she thinks Joyce is making mistake, but otherwise it’s frankly not actually Sarah’s business.
I also find the extreme moral judgement that people here have for Joyce and Dorothy a bit much. Like, cheating is bad behaviour, they shouldn’t do it, they’re hurting people, but it’s also not, like, murder. Especially since they’ve been doing it for less than a day! Plenty of time to come clean.
(It’s also extremely common – not a justification or an excuse, just to let people know that you absolutely have loved ones who have cheated on someone, even if you haven’t ever yourself. And it’s probably not your business.)
It’s also the bandying about of kissing as cheating. Before I started reading webcomics, cheating pretty much exclusively meant bumping uglies, actual sex acts. Kissing wasn’t great, it was A Problem, but it was not considered Cheating, it was considered concerning behaviour that likely could lead to cheating.
This feels intensely like the American Christian shame machine? Protestantism is a helluva drug. Guess what, Dorothy and Joyce own their own bodies, they are allowed to do with them what they like, they haven’t destroyed their virtue or their honour, they realised they loved one another and kissed each other over it. Whether they’d kissed or not, this would have deeply hurt their boyfriends, but are we saying that Joyce and Dorothy could have spent a chaste night watching cartoons in bed together but with the full knowledge of their feelings but no kissing about it, and that would not have also been judged this way?
I would actually consider it the reverse. The idea that ‘as long as there’s no penetration, it doesn’t count’ feels like a rather rigid way. it is cheating if you’re crossing the boundaries set by the relationship. There’s absolutely relationships where kissing and cuddling a third party would be a-okay, but Joe and Joyce aren’t that. (For that matter, there are relationships where full on sex with a third party isn’t cheating, but again, Joe and Joyce aren’t that)
And yes, if they spent the night watching cartoons without crossing those lines, obviously there would still be issues, but it wouldn’t have been cheating. Honestly, the distance they have gone, I don’t think it would make much difference to the hurt it would cause Joe if they’d gone ahead and gone all the way.
Really? Literally every community I’ve been in, including the queer ones, has been the opposite of that — romantic kissing was DEFINITELY cheating, and demonstrating intent to cheat (“leaving your wedding ring in your hotel room to go to the bar”) was treated as “intent to cheat”.
And how many have been online in the last 10 years? Grew up in the 80s and 90s, it was a common thing for people to row with spouses over getting drunk and kissing someone else but nobody ever called it cheating, they called it being inconsiderate to their partner. See the line from Mr Brightside, “It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss” – that’s what people would say. That was the logic held before internet babies who’d never been physical with more than one person in their lives got hold of the concept of cheating. It reminds me a lot of when I came out as bi at 17 and my boomer mother took me to the side and told me not to say that because it made people assume I had had sex with women.
That isn’t to say kissing doesn’t mean anything, it is just that we used to operate on levels of severity, nuance, and context, and in the internet era now suddenly entire factions just want black and white reductivism to satisfy their point of view? But again, the kissing is the symptom of the actual issue, and it ends up getting used as an excuse to attack two people for realising feelings for one another at an inopportune time. Some people are that way, and what do you think should be done about it? It feels like this conversation always boils down to couched tones of whether punitive action must be taken, and if so how much. Sure, it isn’t illegal, but should their whole friend circle abandon them? Should their relationship, which could last 70 years, be doomed because they kissed before they broke up with their boyfriends? Life goes on. Yeah this can smart for years, I obsessively hated my best friend for plotting to get with my boyfriend before he dumped me. I wouldn’t talk to her for 5 months, and when I did talk to her *she* blamed *me* for moving away for the summer because I knew they were going to get together. They probably kissed, and even if they didn’t she was sending him soppy romantic emails about how right it felt to be with him, that was a year and a half relationship we had had. But does that render their kids invalid? Their marriage? Does that render the last 22 years that they’ve been together invalid? It does not, because they did actually love one another that much, and what I was angry about I would have been angry about even if they’d been completely platonic then got together. Case in point, I left a shitty ex because he was controlling and emotionally withdrawn. I got with a coworker a few weeks later, at the time I broke up with him the co-worker and I barely even talked, leaving him gave me more time to spend with other people and I found out said coworker and I had chemistry, I was with shitty ex for 8 months and the subsequent one for 2 years, but shitty ex probably still to this day believes I cheated on him with the next one, I didn’t even tell him until we had been together for three months, but for him it was like “only” three months.
People are angry and hurt because you don’t love them, or because you love someone more. I have been legitimately cheated on in the sense of my first husband actually having sex with people that were not me while we were together, he hid it for a year and a half. -that- drove me crazy and I tried to get over it, but it ended up being the reason we divorced in the end, even after 8 years of trying to work it through and rebuild trust. Again, he thinks I must have left him for someone else. The person I went to after him is my current husband, we have been together substantially longer than any other relationship I have been in, and I have had two substantial crushes on other people while with him, and I have been able to talk it through with him both times, and we are still monogamous, with the option for polyamory if anything ever worked out that way. The transparency around feelings for someone else is key, but make no mistake! it will still hurt someone, and it is the core of that hurt – not kisses.
Sorry, I’ll be clear: I am discussing the college communities I was in during the 1990s and early 2000s. I am an Old, and not discussing internet prudery.
I like the combination of “kissing isn’t cheating” with “I wouldn’t talk to her for 5 months, …They probably kissed, and even if they didn’t she was sending him soppy romantic emails about how right it felt to be with him”
Like, are we just arguing about the labels here? It would be reasonable for Joe to mad at her for months, but not to call it cheating?
It seems like the actual argument is one for nuance, but also one where we rant about the youths and their moral black-and-white-ness.
None of which seems to be in much evidence in the actual conversation, aside from like one person who’s totally adamant that kissing isn’t cheating at all.
I’m so glad for this comment. Yes, Joyce and Dorothy are upsetting to us, the audience, who saw how Joe and Joyce made one another grow as people. However, Dorothy and Joyce are into to one another. I’m not even sure how long Joyce and Joe have been together in their version of time- it can’t be THAT long. And again. NO ONE IS SAYING CHEATING IS COOL, but with a lot of context I am way less disappointed in both Joyce and Dorothy.
Sarah can sit down though. I love Sarah, but she isn’t the arbitor of all that is “right”.
I dunno how to phrase this more friendly but… It sincerely does not take an emotionally empathetic genius to realize what a sincerely shitty thing it is to cheat on someone. Especially since their reasoning was “Ugh today was so long we have to tell them tomorrow” and then spends the night snuggling and celebrating the relationship.
Joyce accepted a new, moderately expensive gift from her boyfriend – the first gift he has really given her – a guy with serious trust issues who is trying his best to be a good person… And Joyce blows him then goes right back to emotionally and physically cheating with Dorothy.
Sorry not sorry: They deserve to hear this and more.
In particular, this is the moment that spikes the “it’s only been a few hours!” argument for me.
There was time for Joyce to go, accept a gift, engage in physical relationship actions, and then go back to sleep all cuddled/spooned up with her new secret lover.
Oh, thank God, some people are finally being reasonable about things. I’d also add that Sarah is not taking some sort of principled stand against cheating. She specifically says it’s wrong because Joe is good. Presumably if her opinion of Joe hadn’t changed, she wouldn’t give a shit. Notably she has nothing to say about Walky.
To be fair, she started with this is wrong, and started talking about how good Joe was after Joyce used the excuse “You don’t even like Joe.” She was directly refuting Joyce’s “You don’t like Joe” excuse.
Also, she obviously has higher standards for Joyce than she does for Dorothy.
She doesn’t even come out really grandstanding or chastising or anything, she basically just says “I thought better of you.”
There have been a lot of rationalizations for Joyce’s behavior:
– They were overcome by passion
– There wasn’t a formal monogamy agreement
– She hasn’t been with Joe that long
– Joe will get over it eventually
– It’s worth it for the OTP
– Joe could be open to poly and that would make it okay
– Its okay for her to be “messy”
– You don’t like it because you’re a homophobe
One thing to keep in mind is that some people are bringing up reasons why they understand Joyce/Dorothy’s actions thus far because (insert reason here), but that “I get it” isn’t the same as “that is okay”.
I’m personally in the camp of “they were overcome by passion and extreme events” and “they’re teenagers, its entirely understandable that they’re fucking shit up here”. But they really should address the whole “Boyfriends” thing before things go too much further.
You know, let’s imagine they hadn’t already kissed, had in fact done nothing, just found out that they’re in love with each other.
Surely in that case, they would have done nothing wrong?
Let’s say they go to break up with the boyfriends next. Would the boyfriends be much less hurt? Would Becky be?
Of course this is what they should do!
But the hurt they’re going to cause is going to happen anyway, and it’s not coming from the kisses. Because realising you’re in love with someone else and ending your relationship over that hurts the other person even while you’re not doing anything wrong.
Oh you literally just said what I did but before I did, oops! But 100000% absolutely, people act like it’s the kissing but the kissing is just a physical manifestation of the feelings that would hurt their boyfriends and end their established relationships anyway.
Also, this literally happens all the time! It is ugly and messy, but especially in your teens you have A Person you decided to try because they seemed really into you, and then you found you weren’t really that into them. Maybe that can go like Walky where you don’t actually accept the affections of another person but instead keep trying at something you’re just not that into until the other person gives up on you, or that can happen that you get smacked in the face by the depth of your romantic bond with another person you loved deeply as a friend, that obliterates your reason and impulse control. None of these kids have fully formed brains yet, it’s so damned bizarre to insist that they are ruined or criminal for… Common teenage behaviour that may hurt some people’s feelings, but is still fully legal within the scope of modern laws.
No, I think the kissing adds a whole different layer of hurt.
Your partner falling for someone else is painful, but if they talk to you first, that at least communicates that despite everything else they still respect you and the relationship. It also would have actually been a route where polyamory could have been a serious possibility.
Being deceived by your partner hurts. Having your partner betray your shared expectations for the relationship hurts. Breaking up hurts too, if it comes to that, but not for the same reasons.
See, and I think the expectations for the relationship are being broken by your partner falling in love with someone else, not the kiss.
And sure, it hurts more if they don’t tell you for a long time, but can we remember that it has been less than 24h?
(Frankly, I think it’d be totally fair for Joyce and Dorothy to have a bit of a think about this, calmly, before doing anything. Separately.)
You know when would have been a good time to think about it calmly?
Last night when they decided to sleep together.
Joyce KNOWS Joe has major hang ups about infidelity. Joyce KNOWS Joe is a good person and has always been kind and patient with her. Joyce decided that respecting Joe was less important than her immediate hormonal desires.
That’s fucked up, and it needs to be called out for what it is. Sarah is being a good friend by refusing to let Joyce get away with this without knowing how badly she fucked up.
First of all, it isn’t either or. Joyce telling Joe that she has fallen for Dorothy doesn’t mean that Joyce doesn’t still love Joe. That was why I mentioned the polyibility (I’ll keep using this pun until it catches on). Joyce could talk to Joe and tell him “I’ve developed feeling for Dorothy, and I would like to explore them”.
Maybe that means the end of the relationship (which hurts), maybe it doesn’t. But it starts from a foundation of respect and honesty, which I think we can agree we all want in our relationships.
Second, can we agree that there are multiple degrees to which a partner can break your expectations? That falling for someone else is generally less of a violation than kissing someone else, which is generally less of a violation than having sex with someone else, etc…
Joyce did hurtful things already. She could have made less hurtful decisions but she didn’t. She has the potential to keep doing hurtful things or to change course.
Yes, the cheating could have been worse but it also could have been better. Ideally it would have been non-existant. And sure there would potentially be hurt regardless, but that doesn’t mean it would be an equal amount.
If Joyce keeps deceiving Joe for another day, I think it will hurt more than if she told him now. If she has sex with Dorothy (again), I think it will hurt Joe more if she does it before telling him vs after.
Your comments for some reason strike me as either someone very young, or someone not very experienced in real relationships, or both.
Because I promise you, the physical act of cheating is much worse than simply falling in love with someone else. There are degrees of severity. Sleeping with someone is worse than kissing someone, kissing someone is worse than emotionally cheating, etc etc. Like… that should be a no brainer.
Sure, it hurts when someone you love rejects you. It hurts worse when you already had a relationship with them, but it hurts even more when they betray your trust on top of that.
Like… from a storytelling perspective alone. We know Joe by now. We know his hangups and his insecurities. Can you honestly say that he’d wont take Joyce physically and emotionally cheating on him worse than he would have taken a simple “Actually, I just realized I’m in love with Dorothy, I’m going to date her instead.”
Given the second, I’m 100% sure he would have been hurt by the rejection, but ultimately happy for her at the same time. The cheating though, is not going to go over well.
I’m not one to talk of “emotional affairs” much, but even if they had remained completely chaste, sleeping in the same bed under the blanket Joe bought for Joyce that day would still absolutely be crossing a line for me.
My exposure to poly folks has taught me that love is not a limited resource. A person with 2 partners doesn’t love each one half as much as a monogamous person loves their spouse. But time and attention are still limited. Joyce has already started disregarding Joe’s feelings and needs in their relationship because she’s with Dotty. That’s the trouble.
Poly relationships are hard work and take a certain kind of personality to do well, I think. There’s a reason poly relationships often get so messy and end in so much heartbreak.
I’ve known several poly relationships IRL and online, and I’ve only seen one long term successful one. The rest all ended in fire and drama.
See, I think in particular that Joe would have understood a “I’m sorry, Joe, but I’ve had an epiphany and I think I do want to date Dorothy instead”, he might as well have directly asked her if that was the case when she got back from drinking with Dorothy.
I just reread the whole comic over the past three days, and I think Joyce and Dorothy are getting a little too much hate. I’m not saying they’ve done nothing wrong, but if you look at the comic as a whole, people (in-universe) have been hinting Joyce and Dorothy were a thing since about their second week on campus. The only part of this situation that goes back further is Sarah’s long-standing dislike of Joe, which she just got over yesterday in comic time.
When you read it straight through, you realize Joyce and Joe have only just started dating, and Dorothy getting back with Walky is only days old. Because the comic updates daily, it can feel like these couples have been together for a while, but this is not a long-term, committed situation. Joe has not even been “reformed” for very long, maybe three weeks in comic time at best.
Is what Joyce and Dorothy are doing a little crappy? Sure. But a massive betrayal? Hardly. Joe was simply there when Joyce finally dropped her no-masturbation rule, got a big boost in sex drive, and wanted to act on it. He was sweet, but even as late as the paper-sorting scene, he almost left with someone else. So yes, Dorothy and Joyce should have told their partners quickly. But I do not see how Joe or Walky can claim they were in serious relationships at the time, since they had both just started redating.
I mean it is recent in the romantic relationship, but they have been close friends for months. Joe is not some stranger that she just met, and Joyce is betraying Joe regardless of how old the relationship is.
But the main thing isn’t “These are the two most evil people ever”. Instead it is how a lot of people don’t like cheating being framed as romantic. Willis chose to make the kiss a wedding scene, which seems at odds with the fact that it was a selfish and uncaring decision.
We are like 5 months into the first semester, and Joyce *hated* Joe for at least the entire pre-timeskip era of it. She still wasn’t super fond of him when the timeskip ended, which was the same month the comic is still set in, January. I really don’t see how they can be “close friends for months”, there is no time for that in actual comic time
She didn’t hate him. He was arguably one of her closrst confidants when she was texting him about her family situation and he never gave anything but good honest advice there (“your parebts are less likely to have a fight in public”)
There’s also that even when Joyce was hurt by his behavior, she was stil really physically attracted to him. One of the bits I’m saddest to lose is Joyce going off into a mild fugue state as she imagines climbing Joe like a mountain.
Yeah, now that we’re not in the shadow of the protest and we’re starting to see other invested characters react to it I’m a lot less worried than I was about this plotline.
Remains to be seen how Joyce and Dorothy react to what Sarah just said to them, but yeah, I’m hoping they’ll do the right thing, sooner rather than later, and stop with the inane shenanigans.
I was more just talking about the uncertainty that comes when a story flips the board like this, especially in a chapter that also featured a pretty messy execution of a difficult touchy subject.
I don’t know where this is going, there’s a lot of potential outcomes here, but I am a lot more confident that regardless of which one happens it’s going to feel earned and emotionally plausible.
I don’t normally bother saying happy birthday to commenters, but you’re always so sweet when it’s someone else’s birthday that I wanted to make sure I said something nice to you!
I hope you had an awesome time on your hike and that you get lots of time with friends and loved ones!!
That was far calmer, and said better than I was expecting; is Sarah’s aching body somehow calming her down, or is she just too angry at the pain to focus on stuff?
I think it’s because she’s altogether just… disappointed. And the best way to handle that is to make it clear that she is, and why, and to move on. What happens now is up to Joyce and Dorothy.
Fair point; while seeing Joyce, and Dorothy, being cute makes me happy, I wish they had told their boyfriends first. The best thing they could do would be to go to Joe, and Walky, and tell them the truth. Then they can apologize, which may or may not matter to Joe, and Walky, and then they can go back to kissing, spooning, boob pressing against back, etc,
Granted, I imagine getting a front row seat to the effects this has on others is going to be a bit of a buzzkill. Here’s how I imagine that little talk going…
“You wanna make out?”
“Honestly? Not really. Between the pain and disappointment in Sarah’s eyes and [whatever happens with Joe and Walky], not really in the mood.”
There comes a point when anger just turns into raw disappointment. its like a switch gets flipped and you go from this “how could you be this dumb?!”stage, to a sort of weird acceptance. and the anger just dissipates and you feel exhausted and just… done. With the entire situation.
But if it was just a LITTLE betrayal, after a meticulously counted few days of a relationship, and we ignore the building friendship for months, carry the one… that adds up to OK, right?
So, question for any superfans and/or people with great memories, have we seen Sarah and Dorothy interact much outside the larger context of them living close to each other and being in the general friend group that encompasses like 70% of the cast? Just curious because while I know from today’s comic that Sarah is having to reevaluate her opinion of Joyce, I’m wondering if she has much an opinion on Dorothy at all? (I’d certainly imagine not a good one after today)
I didn’t really mean for this comment to go here but I guess when I refreshed the page it saved the place my comment was going to in addition to the comment itself? Oh well…
I wanna say there’s maybe one more instance where Dorothy was like “omg I’m the worst ever” and Sarah was like “dorothy c’mon no you aren’t” but it’s hard to tell for sure if that was Dorothy or Joyce.
I think there’s a limited amount of angry you can be about your friend cheating on a one month old relationship with someone you didn’t even really like especially when the cheating boiled down to “cuddling” and the duration of said cheating is “8 hours”.
This is not like they’re breaking up a five year long engagement and wedding plans here.
Weirdly, a month is actually overstating it. I think someone worked out that the laundry incident was less than two weeks ago and that happened before Joe and Joyce got together.
I think I’m right where Sarah is right now- looking back on past storylines where Joyce was dishonest or made selfish decisions based entirely on “feel good” emotions about what she wanted to be true, and realizing maybe she is just really not that good of a person and never has been, and I’ve let her being the protagonist cloud my judgement from recognizing what a creep she can be.
Still don’t like this plot.
Still think it destroyed several years of character grown and was just done for drama
But at least Sarah is bringing truth to the situation.
I mean from their perspective its just been a semester and a half. Plus I think the character growth was assumed when in this particular instance it has been a character trait that hasn’t changed.
Pacing is kind of weird, storytelling-wise, because we’ve known this version of these characters for fifteen years but they’ve only known each other a few months.
Destroying the status quo and plot trajectory for drama is clearly a feature and not a bug.
It’s a big swing and also kind of a bummer, I was also not particularly stoked at first, so I get it, but I’m warming up to it. I think I see the vision.
According to Willis’s comments on the Patreon pages, he didn’t intend for the two of them to kiss until he was writing that scene and felt it was basically a proposal. So it feels a bit off to call it a vision. One of the things I’ve liked about this comic is the long term planning but this change threw away a lot of plans.
I’m kind of curious where people who are in it for the drama would draw the line. There are lots of horrible things the characters could do that would be dramatic. There are lots of horrible things Willis could throw at them. Is all drama enjoyable?
From some things I’ve scene mentioned, would these be enjoyable to the people who love the current drama?
– Walky is crushed by Dorothy cheating on him and goes through a misogynistic, incel phase.
– Becky gets mad at Joyce for dating Dorothy and not her, inadvertently revealing to Dina that she was always Becky’s second choice. Becky and Dina have a messy angry break up.
– Amber is identified by the police and arrested for Amazigirl’s actions during the protest.
– Dorothy and Joyce get expelled from the University for their visible part in the protest.
– Ruth starts regretting breaking up with Jennifer. Jennifer feels conflicted, but the whole mess ends up blowing up Jennifer and Alice’s relationship.
I’m fine with all of those to varying degrees, yeah. I’ll go through in a little more detail:
– We’ve already had misogynistic and incel plotlines (and another is starting up right now) so that’s already drama people accept in the comic.
– We’ve already had Becky getting mad at Joyce for changing religions, I think this would be similar. I do like the idea of there being serious drama between Becky and Dina because there just isn’t much happening between them at the moment imo.
– I’d be down to read this, but it’s probably the one I’m least interested in. I think it would fundamentally be the “death” of her character in the comic, which would drop a lot of threads that Willis has been working on. I would be interested in seeing how they worked that out.
– This one would take the protagonist of a college drama comic out of the college. That just seems like a bad plan for the longevity of the comic. If Willis made it work, swapped protags or something, then I’d be good with that one too, yeah
– Not only would I be happy with this one, I really REALLY hope it happens. Especially if Ruth and Alice got together as a result and Jennifer is just sitting there like “WELL I’M NOT INTO GIRLS ANYWAY SO NYEH” (a lie). That would bring me joy.
This situation is not even close to the heights of drama this comic has achieved up to this point. This comic has had people actually kidnapped by Amber’s abusive mob-adjacent father. This is the same comic where Becky’s father showed up on campus with a gun to abduct his daughter. Amber has been splitting for months and is only now beginning to deal with her outbursts of violent rage. Billie and Ruth literally entered a suicide pact and nearly mutually drank themselves to death. Mike fell three stories onto his head and literally died trying to take Blaine with him in an attempted murder-suicide that he hoped would make up for his sustained abuse of Amber.
I am completely down for some light relationship drama incited by cheating. I think that would be fun and flirty actually.
the only way #4 makes any sense is that is how he ends the strip.
i would say as someone firmly in the “i’m just hear to read comics/ther are fucking teenagers with undeveloped(both biologically and emotionally) undeveloped brains and they can make mistakes we all do, lets see how they react before deciding they are minions of belphregor” camps, that those who are in it for drama are very unlikely to have a line to draw, they want drama, regardless of characters involved. i’d really say for many of them it would take truely left field unexplainable/inexplicable events to cause them to say line has been crossed (like in tomorrows strip and all strips going forward the great gazoo was suddenly there providing commentary, or we suddenly have a revelation like dorothy is somehow joyces half sister that her father had out of wedlock, or we find out the whole thing is actually taking place in Darkcity). i said a few weeks ago about how i really don’t like drama inserted for no other reason than to fill a cliche/trope quota (like adding a character who for no reason other than the main pairing is a pairing to cause strife (i have read way to many romance mangas that after the 2 mains (who in many of them have been pining after each other/at least known for many years, get together and are establishing what looks to be a very good relationship with good communication and you add a transfer student with less than 0 history involving either main and they somehow cause the mains to loose their communication skills, and even though the mains have no interest or attraction to this new person it somehow becomes a near relationship destroying event, like new person goes main 1 is hot i want to date them, main 1 goes i am sorry i have no interest in dating you, i love main 2, tells main 2 hey the new kid asked me out and i refused them, main 2 goes well i dont’ blame them you are awesome, and yet you have 30 chapters of them having drama because the writer it like well if they keep communicating in this perfectly natural manor that i have established they do, then i’ve introduced this character for no reason so i better have one of the mains become an idiot so this character has purpose and i don’t know how to write drama in a romance that isn’t a love triangle.
i am not against love triangles at all, have read many a romance with triangle and enjoyed them, usually cause the 3rd party exhists in the story beyond being a 3rd wheel, like they are a child hood friend who moved away. i know it is a cliche but at least their is established reason for conflict beyond new kid makes me dumb by exhisting so there can be drama. or the new kid fits a fetish for one of the mains that the other main doesn’t, but for some dumbass reason soooo goddamn many (i’d say 55% of manga i have read that give focus to a OTP as a major plot point (i am talking shonen shojo seinen josei youi yuri fantasy mecha historical spaceopera you name it. i am a voracious manga reader nad have probably stopped reading 200-300 because of stupid goddamn poorly written third wheel subplots)
Agree. Joe was becoming one of my favorite characters seeing his personal growth. But I guess he’s not allowed to have nice things because he used to be a pig? Seriously though, if this is the arc that makes him backslide into the pigpen…
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
I don’t know, I think if Joyce has been his motivation to become a better person up until now, if she’s been the support he’s built all his personal improvement around, it seems like the next step for him is to take that pillar away and see how he moves forward from there.
He’s not entitled to nice things from stopping being a pig. It’s a huge bummer, but he made himself emotional vulnerable, and that comes with the risk of this. On the other hand, it does feel like his whole experience with Joyce has been just turned into a test of character.
I don’t think “Joe was a pig so he can’t have nice things” was at all any part of the motivation here.
However I do want to state: No, he’s not entitled to Joyce as a trophy for being a good boy.
Equally, I’m sure he’ll get another girlfriend (or boyfriend, or other partner, if Willis answers prayers) soon enough. Joyce is not the only girl on earth, and partners are not the only way to get a good thing (he has lots of new friends and women who don’t think of him as a predator anymore!)
Probably too late to say, but worth saying regardless I think. A couple people interpreted what I was saying was “Joe deserves/earned/is entitled to Joyce” because I implied he should have nice things. While I’ll admit the wording was maybe callous, I can assure that that was not the heart of what I was saying, nor do I condone in any way that type of mentality.
To clarify, I’d love to see Joe be rewarded for his character growth in literally any way; tangibly, psychologically, emotionally… it absolutely does not need to be a female. Furthermore, based on how everything has been going, his “reward” should not be him keeping Joyce, that’s just yucky on so many different levels and angles. I really like the possibility of what others have said in him becoming more self-actualized, affirming the validity of his change, by overcoming the easy (for him) temptation of him backsliding. I’d love to see a Joe that is not simply defined by the women he’s around, whether he’s dating them or sleeping with them.
Basically, I’d love to just see a Jacob 2.0 😂 If that makes me a boring paladin, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but his positive growth just cannot all be a sham in the vain hope of “winning” Joyce, I truly hope it has roots in something real within himself.
Hopefully Joyce and Dorothy learn some things from this, and it doesn’t completely destroy their friend group. But yeah I also don’t like this story arc.
I mean, not really? Both Joyce and Dorothy have been growing in a “nothing matters”, “he’ll is not real” way, Dorothy has been pretty self destructive lately looking for anything to ground her even her ex that not quite fits with her anymore (and let’s not forget, she also flirt with him while he was in a relationship), wanting to allow herself to be selfish.
Joyce has been growing in a direction were she wants to liberate herself from the persone she was with mix results, she flirting with someone in a relationship is not new, she justifying things in the name of true love isn’t either, and not fully grasping why those outside the relationship would care (not understanding that Sarah is loyal to her friends INCLUDING Joe and Walky, not remembering that Sarah’s been cheated on before, or that Sarah as grumpy as she appears holds a very strong integrity).
Over all this isn’t completely out of character from them at this point in time, and it’s actually a good way to put them back on track character growth wise IF they actually learn from this.
This is 100% in-character for Dorothy when you recall that she was a villain in the Walkyverse for very similar reasons.
And like… Walkyverse Joyce murdered her own opposite-alignment clone because her clone was sexually uninhibited and Joyce couldn’t emotionally deal with it. At the climax of It’s Walky, Joyce and Walky ran away from the big climactic battle to finally go have sex for the first time and panels of Joyce losing her virginity were interspersed with her friends being murdered. And look at how Dumbiverse Joyce dealt with her attraction to Jacob! It’s well established that when Joyce’s own sexuality is on the line, she always chooses her own comfort over everyone else.
my watsonian interpretation is that Joyce doesn’t have any practice with self-governing, because previously her only faculty for resisting temptation was some flavor of God Will Send You To Hell If You Look At Butts and she doesn’t have that any more
well there’s that, and there’s the fact that up until now, her experience with general godlessness has been a largely adversarial one; it’s all people she thought she could trust Going Bugfuck Nuts For The Lord, or other people who still blame her for her previous worldview (roz)
no practice defending against things that don’t feel like a fight, you see?
I think what some of us are talking about is that we saw Joyce’s self-reflection after the Jacob thing as character growth and a reason she wouldn’t do the same again.
Also that this is worse in some ways, since it directly hurts someone she cares about rather than a Raidah – who she barely knows and has reasons to dislike.
As someone who has spent the last month working out regularly and seriously as in at least an hour every time at least 3 days a week doing cardio and exercise splits taught to me by a professional trainer, if you can get through like the first week or two of DOMS it gets a lot easier. Like your muscles just adapt to it. They resign themselves to “I guess this is what we’re doing now.” and the soreness is a lot more manageable. It’s also part of what makes starting a workout so hard apparently.
The only anecdote I specifically remember right now was me joking about disguising a real gun as a Power Rangers cosplay prop and taking it to a convention and that being a remotely plausible thing to do, and the response was “Guns are deadly serious and not to be joked about under any circumstances. You were definitely serious about wanting to do that in real life and now you’re backpedaling when you say otherwise.”
Just completely braindead corn syrup behavior. They’re genuinely just looking for anything at all to be upset about in every possible context.
Permission to borrow the phrase “corn syrup behavior” because I’ve never heard that before but now would dearly love to find a way to incorporate it into a sentence. Even with it being completely novel to me, it communicates what you mean.
Honestly though, the most charitable assumption is that folks like that somehow get off on flame wars. Starting arguments they know are ridiculous because they enjoy seeing others get upset. Never understood the appeal/humor in that.
Way more fun to make people laugh than to laugh at them.
Oh… oh no… I hadn’t even thought of that. I can’t imagine Becky is going to take too kindly on her oldest friend pulling something so non-kosher. Maybe some barb about “we were raised to think without church we’d become amoral. Don’t know why you had to go and prove them right.”
Idk about that, I’m just remembering how Joyce was Becky’s first huge girl crush. And how much she “play” resents Dorothy. Maybe there’ll be a Christian upbringing angle there, but it’s gonna be a way more personal explosion I reckon.
Oh I think she’s happy with Dina, sure. But at the end of the day she fled her old school (and kinda her old life) solely due to how in love with Joyce she was, and was crushed when Joyce did not reciprocate those feelings. Also iirc, there have been several points where she’s hinted that those feelings have never gone away 100%. Now she’s gonna know that it’s not that Joyce was straight that their relationship didn’t happen, just that Joyce didn’t want to be with her. That’s gonna make some Big Feelings happen, no matter how happy she is in her current relationship.
I thought she fled her old school because she was caught being intimate/romantic with her roommate and got kicked out, causing her to flee to Joyce both because crush, but also because “only safe person in Becky’s life”
There is maybe potential for that, but it seems like it would have serious repercussions for Becky/Dina, and also Becky wouldn’t really have a leg to stand on.
If Becky started chewing Joyce out because “You wouldn’t date me, but you’re willing to date Dorothy” she would be an asshole for several reasons. First she would be acting entitled to a romantic relationship with Joyce. Second she would be completely disregarding the value of her relationship with Dina.
Becky being jealous and shitty, blowing up her relationship with Dina, would certainly be dramatic. I suppose that might make some people happy.
I do agree with you on a fundamental level, but I also think it’d be within Becky’s character to react in that way. Trigger react today, apologies and smiles tomorrow.
I think Dina would be willing to accept that it was just Becky’s instinctive reaction, and forgive her accordingly… but it would likely make things difficult between them for a while, at least (if only because Becky likely wouldn’t forgive herself so easily; besides, she’s been insecure in the relationship before, though that was about Dina not experiencing the same kind of sexual attraction she did).
Still, I’m worried; they’re my favourite couple in the comic and I don’t want them breaking up. Does this make me a hypocrite, given how eager I’ve been for Joyce’s relationship chaos?
Well, first: as I’ve mentioned in earlier comments, I want the mess to bring about happiness, despite the difficulties. And second: yes.
I think it’s been mentioned before (and not to take anything away from the scene), but Dorothy’s and Joyce’s hairstyles look pretty similar.
I wonder if that’s supposed to be something subtle, maybe relating to Joyce’s admiration and/or attraction for Dorothy.
Or if it’s just a coincidence.
In case you don’t know, Dorothy was deliberately designed to look similar to Joyce because of her role in the original universe this comic is technically still the college AU of
I vaguely remember Willis posting something about Joyce’s bangs changing direction starting on Halloween, and it being because she wants to look more like Dorothy?
Dorothy helped her part her hair to better match Rapunzel and Joyce decided, for very heterosexual reasons obviously, to keep her hair parted the way that Dorothy did it.
Hmm. I wonder if the filter that changes “bongo” into “bongo” in the comments also alters it in the alt text. Like, I’m assuming Willis really did write bongo, but I wonder nevertheless
‘Bongo’ has long ago entered into the zeitgeist of the comic. It’s even appeared in-strip a few times. A lot of people – including the artist – use it intentionally to mean the other.
… is there any reason in particular why they’re replacing an admittedly gendered expletive which otherwise has common usage, with a word that when used as an expletive, is actually extremely offensive, very racist, and a bit of a dogwhistle for certain extremist groups?
I understand feeling like bit** is a worse word than most other swears due to the fact that it’s gendered, but this seems like several steps in the absolute wrong direction. Like, I literally searched for what it means to call someone that, and immediately wished that I hadn’t told Google that I was interesting in knowing about that subject.
See, I’m kind of interested in this. I’d love to see some kind of Elseworlds or “Beta Version” of how the story was originally going to go. It doesn’t have to be canon, I just think it’d be interesting to see from a creative writing standpoint.
Plus, I bet it will create an entire new subgenre in DoA fanfiction.
Huh, really didn’t bring up the Jacob plot at all. I guess it makes sense given that he’s maybe still a somewhat sore topic? Or Willis is saving that for another character. Maybe Jacob himself? It’s just that the “it’s true love so it’s fine” is the exact same (stupid) argument Joyce had then, too – it’s so relevant!
I still maintain that Sarah should at least be somewhat familiar with this part of Joyce, but I guess the crux is really at “you’d do this to someone you supposedly love/care about” vs. “you’d do this to someone I literally hate”.
Also it is just a classic line to hit. Probably the best way to express disappointment in someone. Up there for sure.
Oh it is, I just think it comes from the same place of Joyce sort of believing fate (true love) will absolve her actions in the eyes of go- I mean, other people. Which Sarah was happy to recognize then & point at a relationship she didn’t care about.
Basically I think she’s being a bit of a hypocrite and I think that’s fun : ) + like, emotionally makes sense.
I think since Sarah has trust issues with people turning on her in the past seeing Joyce do this to someone she cares about and stood up to Sarah for up until yesterday is also triggering an alarm bell in her head.
Sarah isn’t taking a stand on principle here. She’s arguing “Joe is good, so he doesn’t deserve this,” not, “Cheating is bad, so Joe doesn’t deserve this.” Presumably, if she still hated Joe, she’d be perfectly fine with this. Note that she has nothing at all to say about Walky.
She called both Dorothy and Joyce out on not breaking up with their boyfriends. Their talking about Joe because Joyce was arguing that Sarah should be happy she’s turned on Joe and Sarah is reminding Joyce that she should care about the person her actions hurt. Dorothy atleast is looking guilty and not trying to argue.
Well, with Jacob Sarah did eventually change her mind about going through with it. Joyce didn’t change her’s.
I think that Sarah might be drawing a distinction between ‘chasing a guy in a relationship because Joyce’s brain works on romcom rules’ vs ‘cheating on your boyfriend who has been nothing less than good to you in the relationship and who you clearly do have feelings for’. The first one made an early Joyce type of sense (and again, Sarah did try to call it off). The second one is different.
People cheering on the very amoral circumstances of this whole relationship and the fallout that will occur from it (and like, power to them, have fun sickos!!!) are okay and great and that’s a great interaction.
And me being like “wow I hope the shitty circumstances of this all give them a personality” about two characters I don’t particularly enjoy (and I’ve seen some of y’all say WAY worse about several characters) is crossing the line?????
What was the point of making this up? To upset yourself? Did it work? Did it make you happy? Did it un-fuck the Thanksgiving turkey?
You didn’t say the thing about personality. That wasn’t in your post. You know that. You know you’re lying about what you said. Do you think other people can’t see it anymore? It’s still there, and it says “I hope these two suffer so much”, not “I hope this gives them a personality”. You also know that none of us said anything about a crossed line. You know this. It’s plainly visible. Why are you telling lies about what was said by anyone involved, when it’s all still there and readable? Why do you think everyone is stupid enough to read what you said, read what literally only three people said in response, and think any of us said anything you’re now claiming was said? What’s your goal here, liar?
And I just said a reply, that’s how this works. The implication didn’t come through at all. It doesn’t matter if I liked it or not though, that’s a silly thing to apologise for.
A thought- thinking back on the comic two days ago, I bet Sarah is especially disappointed because she gave Joyce a chance to express herself because she started laying into her, and Joyce’s response pissed her off as much as it did me. This would probably have gone differently if Joyce had responded with any remorse or consideration for Joe
I will say that, yes Sarah didn’t seem to understand how impulsive Joyce is (despite seeing many times just how Impulsive she is), but she definitley still knows 90% of who Joyce is, while she still barely knows anything about Joe aside from him suddenly being a nicer guy then she thought. A Mistake does not define a person, despite all this Joyce is still a good person, just one that has had a very hard time over the last few months and tends to let her emotions do the talking more then her brain.
Given not only Joyce’s and Dorothy’s past behavior, but also Sarah’s own past behavior, I think she is reacting worse then she realistically should here. Yeah she is 100% valid in being upset at joyce here, but Sarah herself is not some perfect being who hasn’t made very similar mistakes (or wanted to) in the past. This shouldn’t be all that surprising to her. The only reason she is even upset is because she knows Joe has a soft side now, if it was anybody else she wouldn’t even be scolding Joyce.
I really do hope that Dorothy and Joyce do what needs done within the next few pages, because as much as I love them as a couple, they need to come clean before this actually does become full blown cheating. So far the only Line that has actually been crossed is Kissing, which is a Line that can be forgiven and uncrossed under the right circumstances. Cuddling isn’t cheating unless your naked.
Joe and Walky will both be fine in the long run, thats my belief until proven otherwise. Walky is fully capable of moving on and finding a new partner and probably will within a Week of the break up, like he did the first couple times.
Joe will probably take MAYBE a month tops before he is able to move on from this week or so long relationship and find somebody else. Him and Joyce were still in the Puppy Love phase of their relationship, everything feels intense and highly emotional, and it can hurt bad if the break up happens during that phase, but once the emotions calm down it does not take very long to move on from that pain, because the LOVE that you feel at that stage is not the same as being In Love, its more Infatuation then anything. It takes a lot longer then a week or two for actual love to form.
I would argue that the whole “good person” and “bad person” binary is flawed. It is rooted in punitive morality that considers some people lesser and deserving of suffering.
I think the alternative is aspirational. Goodness/Badness aren’t about which people deserve punishment, rather they are about how we aspire to act, and how we seek to align our actions with what is alive in us and in the world.
So, in the Joyce example, the critical element is not “Joyce is good” or “Joyce is bad”, rather it is that Joyce’s actions are deeply harmful and uncaring towards Joe. I think if she reflected on it, she would realize that her decisions do not align with all of her values. She would realize that there are other ways to act that would both get her what she needs, and also treat others well. Acting in better ways not to “be a good person” but because those ways better express Joyce, including Joyce’s potential for kindness.
—
Past that I will say a couple things.
First characterizing this as “a mistake” minimizes how this was repeated, conscious decision making by Joyce (and Dorothy). They knew what they were doing, and they knew who it would hurt. They didn’t do it by accident, they chose to do it.
Second Sarah is not claiming to be perfect. You do not need to be perfect to say someone else is acting without consideration for others.
Third she is not saying that Joyce is evil. My guess is saying that she thought better of Joyce than Joyce’s current actions reflect. Quite frankly, I thought better of Joyce before this current arc. I always thought that acting with care towards the people she loves was something important to Joyce, but that was not reflected in her latest behavior.
Fourth this is full blown cheating considering they have actively avoided telling their partners and continued to make out. There is both dishonesty and betrayal. Now, I am sure they could find ways to make the situation even worse, but it also seems like there are a lot of efforts to deny that these two have been cheating.
And I don’t think you get to set the boundaries for what Joyce and Joe would consider cheating. Do you think Joyce would consider it cheating if Joe spent the night cuddling with a girl with mutual romantic interest, who he made out with multiple times the previous day?
Fifth while it is true that Joe and Walky will be fine in the long run, this is again minimizing the harm that is being done. Being cheated on can have long lasting impacts including anxiety, depression, or symptoms similar to PTSD. Trust issues are just the surface.
Will Walky or Joe experience these? I don’t know. You don’t know. But the fact that they will hopefully eventually heal from the harm doesn’t make it any better in the moment.
Saying “they will heal eventually” is an easy way to rationalize hurting others for your own benefit.
Fantastic write up. Bravo. Especially calling out that calling it a “mistake” is both a lie and minimizing the act, and *especially* turning the situation on its head on point four.
The one line. “I don’t think you get to set the boundaries for what Joyce and Joe would consider cheating.” That’s the crowning, incontestable point. Whether this would or wouldn’t be cheating for you, or a huge deal or minor deal, it is exactly what it is being portrayed as here.
While I could have articulated my point better, the way you view what I said is incorrect.
I never said that Joyce and Dorothy shouldn’t be punished “Because they are good people”, im simply stating that Joyce overall has far more Positive traits then Negative ones, and these actions are highly effected by how her life has been for the last few months of her life. Intent matters, and she did not Intend to hurt joe.
I have been cheated on several times by past partners, I know how harmful it is. I am not trying to determine what Joyce and Dorothy consider cheating, they obviously see it as cheating considering Joyce thought their acts on the washing machine to also be sex. Im saying what I don’t consider Cuddling to be cheating, its something that friends and family do all the time if they are close. Kissing is cheating, but its more just dipping your toe into it, not fully jumping into the deep end like actual sex is. I consider all the kissing that happened over the course of a highly emotional 30 minutes to be 1 mistake, one they realized was a mistake and then didn’t kiss again. They went straight to Joe and she tried her hardest to tell him but she then before she could she got given a gift of high personal value and got carried away Rewarding joe for that. Then promised herself she would go tell him the next day. Dorothy gets less leeway here because she purposefully avoided going to tell walky that night. The Kissing is forgivable given the circumstances, in my opinion, as long as they don’t cross the line further.
I feel really bad for Joe (not so much Walky considering how he has treated relationships in the past), He is trying his hardest to be a good boyfriend and is succeeding, but this relationship has only been for like a week, 2 weeks tops. Puppy Love stage. Speaking as somebody who has been Cheated on by partners in several stages of a relationship, both in the Puppy Dog phase and in the “Im gonna marry this woman and even got her the ring” stage of the relationship (almost 2 years into the relationship), the level of connection matters in this type of situation when it comes to how painful it will be.
I still feel pain from the “Im gonna marry her” example I mentioned, I still sometimes spend way to long thinking about how I didn’t see the red flags earlier, how I could have met her needs better or something, real toxic self hate shit. That bongo cheated on me in public with two of my friends, a threesome behind a gymnasium. 10 years later that still hurts.
This is not nearly at that level. Joyce and Joe has been dating for a couple weeks tops, that is not long enough to form a long lasting, deep connection. There are Levels to Betrayal, and while yes THIS IS BETRAYAL, Its what I would consider a minor infraction at this point. This WILL hurt Joe, but when I say Joe will be fine “In the long run”, im saying that he has grown as a person in the last month or so of this story, that this minor betrayal will not send him into a spiral of pain how some people think it will, I think he will more so take it on the chin and distance himself from joyce in an act of self healing, or do what I did a couple times and try to stay with the partner in hopes of making it better somehow (then to get further hurt when they prove to not want to fix the relationship after continuing to string me along) and then Joyce will just shut that down with a “We can be friends” line or something.
Joyce isn’t a monster, she is going to try to ease this somehow, she isn’t going to be Cold. This will be Messy, but messes can be cleaned up. They can still end things amicably from how I see it. They can still be Friends after a bit of time to figure out their feelings.
Everybody talking about this situation has a Bias that effects how they will react. If Joyce had actually had sex with Dorothy before telling Joe, I would probably be hating Joyce right about now because of my own bias.
I prefer to take every detail into account, and Intent is a big thing for me, Joyce intended to tell Joe right away (but failed) and Intends to do the same thing Today now that emotions weren’t so high and they could articulate a better way to do it. Her reactions here are because she got grilled on this first thing in the morning, nobody is gonna react well to that.
If she Continues acting like this my opinion will change.
I don’t think ‘she doesn’t intend to hurt Joe’ flies here. Joe getting hurt is not something Joyce desires. But she knows that what she did with Dorothy would deeply hurt Joe, and then, intentionally, did it anyway. Is it a sign that she doesn’t care at all about Joe? No. She clearly still cares about him. But right at this moment, she didn’t consider his feelings.
And obviously, everyone has their own reaction and their own feelings towards this. But for me personally, if someone I trust and love went as far as Joyce and Dorothy went behind my back? It doesn’t really matter what exactly they did. The point is not the sex, the point is the betrayal. I mean, if the situation was ‘Hey Joe, me and Dorothy are in a hotel and there is only one bed, and I’m a bit of a cuddlebug’ it might physically be the same thing, but no trust would be harmed. And I think that for Joe, knowing this would happen, and knowing this happened, except Joyce and Dorothy went all the way, would be similar, if not identical amount of heartbreak. And I think Joyce is well aware of that.
You will notice, however, that my point is actually that Joyce and Dorothy don’t deserve punishment. I am actively arguing that a punitive based understanding of morality is not the most productive. Dorothy and Joyce suffering doesn’t erase any of the harm they have chosen to inflict.
And I am not making an argument about the balance of Joyce’s positive traits with negative ones. Rather I am arguing that the entire premise is flawed. Humans cannot be reduced to a tally. There are no heavenly scales to separate the “mostly good” from the “mostly bad”. In fact, I would argue our flaws are often inseparable from our greatest strengths.
I think I understand what you are saying about Joyce because it is by far the most common approach to moral judgement of people, but it is also an approach I think could be improved. We are not playing ethical baseball and choosing people with the highest averages. We are living life, lives we are all flung into through no will of our own, and shaped by forces outside our control. We try to do the best we can with where we are at.
And my point isn’t that you need to consider cuddling cheating in your relationships. Rather that your standards for cheating in your relationships have no relevance to the standards in Joyce and Dorothy’s relationships.
“Cuddling isn’t cheating unless your naked.” might be true in your relationships, but it pretty obviously is not true for Joyce and Dorothy.
And I am not denying that there can be even more painful forms of cheating. The longer it goes on and the greater the betrayal the more painful it will likely be. But that does not mean the harm to Joe is trivial or should be dismissed.
I will add to this note that while they have been dating a short while, they were good friends for months before that. Being betrayed by a friend also hurts deeply, and Joyce is betraying and disregarding Joe.
Lastly, I am not persuaded by the “they were overcome by passion” excuse. I am not persuaded for two reasons:
First, losing control of your emotions does not excuse your behavior. Getting so emotional you do something bad is used to brush aside cheating, but it is also used to exuse violence. “It is the very error of the moon; She comes more nearer earth than she was wont, And makes men mad.”
But I don’t think we can split a person from their emotions. How you feel is part of who you are, and how you act in response to emotions is your responsibility. So yes, Joyce and Dorothy were feeling a lot of emotions in the heat of the moment, but that doesn’t makes their actions less bad.
Second, this was not a single lapse in judgement. They kissed at the protest, during the day, then they walked back and it was dark. They kissed again, talked about how they should stop, then kissed again. They went to tell Joe, and Joyce chose not to. Instead she had sex with him even though she knew he would likely not want to have sex if she had been honest with him.
— As an aside, I think framing the blowjob as a Reward for Joe is kind of gross. It makes it seem like it is entirely transactional, as if Joyce had no sexual desire of her own. It also by default assumes that of course Joe would want a blow job, when in fact if he knew about the cheating he probably wouldn’t want anything to do with Joyce —
Then they chose to spend the whole night together. This was not a single “moment of weakness”. This was extended decision making, including planning on how to conceal their actions.
They knew what they were doing. They knew it was wrong. They did it anyway.
This was Joe’s first actual relationship after possible decades of lying to himself and putting on performative personas to make sure he didn’t end up like his father.
After all of that, he’s finally opened up and tried with Joyce.
And now he’s turned into his mother.
I don’t know if he’s going to be fine for a long while.
Joe is like 18 or 19 so I definitely don’t think he’s been lying to himself about decades regarding relationships. If we’re assuming he started wanting to date around the typical age of 12 or 13 then it might be a handful of years but certainly not decades.
I mean, Joe might be 18 or 19, but he’s been 18 or 19 for fifteen years.
Considering that DoA exists in “comic time,” where the world and tech just adjust to be modern day with no one really noticing it (like how Danny’s DS became a 3DS, then a Switch, and is probably now a Switch 2) that would suggest that Joe was born sometime around 1470.
Time is relative, and while Joe has not been around for decades, he did spend half his young life watching his dad be shitty and his mom suffer for it. So let’s say he avoided relationships for a huge chunk of his life and it sucks his first real act of emotional vulnerability resulted in him being cheated on within a week.
Joyce has been saying repeatedly that she was never the nice super-fundamentalist girl that everyone took her as and changed in addition to not being who they thought she was. I think Sara is realizing that Joyce has always had a wild and dismissive side.
Yeah, like, I do like Joyce, and I think she is ultimately a person with a wealth of positive qualities, but she’s also the main character in more ways than one, and she’s got a knack for seeing things from her point of view and not really budging and seeing them from someone else’s, not at least without great difficulty.
Like, a great example of that is when she royally fucked up her friendship with Becky for a period of time, and just didn’t seem to even entertain the notion humiliating her friend by being a shithead about them behind their back might be something they’d have a grudge towards her over, or microaggressing against Dina and just kind of not giving a shit about it until she eventually had a breakthrough.
It’s not like she’s some wholly unempathetic person or anything, like she has consistently been the kindest person towards Faz. She just has a lot to work out, and while Sarah’s seen some of this from her before, this is probably the keenest example in a while.
Speaking of Keen(er), I do think that Dorothy might want to reflect on her introspection about past moral cowardice in the interest of avoiding discomfort or conflict, and uhh, maybe see that through to another logical conclusion about what she’s currently doing instead of doing other things.
You mean when she fucked up her relationship with Becky by venting about her horrible upbringing in a way that Becky didn’t approve of when she walked in on her? And then demanded she change her religious beliefs back to what would make Becky most comfortable? Because the fucking up wasn’t on Joyce there.
They both fucked up. Yeah, Joyce didn’t mean Becky when she said ‘I’m an idiot, I believe in God’ but yes, hearing Joyce say that was hurtful because Becky does still believe. Becky also didn’t handle it well and was entitled about Joyce changing religion.
Anyone else bothered by Joyce’s facial expressions in this one? Considering the things Sarah is saying I feel like they’re weirdly… empty? I dunno. I can’t really put an emotion to that look on her face. Maybe that’s what’s bothering me.
Her brain is finally starting to chug along the tracks of “What of the consequences of my actions” and there are a few really terrible stops along the way if everyone stays in character.
The faces are definitely bugging me. Dorothy looks more bothered than Joyce does and it is most definitely a conscious decision on Willis’ part to portray it that way. And yet even when I can recognize there is a plan, it is really upsetting to me. :’)
Dorothy has been more bothered by the cheating the whole way through. She has absolutely gone along with it, but Joyce has been the one consistently saying “but what if we kissed more instead”.
But alas, Joyce isn’t the only one up for reassessment! A lot of people are changing their opinions on Sarah today. Who knows next week. Maybe Jennifer will give us some amazing advice on how to dump a boyfriend the ‘right’ way.
From one shipper to another (and since you changed you profile pic) what makes you like the Ruth/Dina ship? Why do you think it would work? How would you want it to go down? This is a rare-pair I’ve never seen and I’m kinda curious. 😀
I hope Sarah doesn’t get on her high horse too much here. Being friends means you tell your friends when they’re wrong, yes, but it also means sticking with them.
(Also, Sarah, remember how you deliberately used Joyce to break up Raidah and Jacob?)
Frankly, if one of my fingers cheated on their partner, I wouldn’t care. Like, I’d tell them that they shouldn’t and try to get them to stop (one way or another), but it wouldn’t affect our friendship.
“Look, Sarah, it’s only my *fingers* that have been unfaithful. I’ll have a conversation with them, tell them they shouldn’t do that, and try to get them to stop one way or another.”
There are a few issues with this. Joe is now one of her friends, too, for one thing, and unlike with Raidah, who she has a major disdain for, it’s not like she is indifferent to the fallout.
Beyond that, she has been cheated on, and knows that you can wrap it up in any rationale you want, that it is a betrayal.
In addition, she probably wouldn’t have this level of disgust if Joyce hadn’t tried to wave all of this off, and Dorothy making excuses about how, oh gosh, they just hadn’t gotten around to it, when it’s a case of, no, they know they’re doing something wrong, that they are trying to avoid discomfort. It’s not her judging them for having feelings for one another, it’s for being cowardly and wrapping it in the veneer of it being something else.
Joe being her friend, yes, absolutely, and she can be mad on his behalf.
But Joyce has been her friend for much longer. So, I don’t think Sarah should take Joyce’s side or not be a little disappointed in her behaviour, but it’s also not a betrayal of Sarah’s and Joyce’s friendship. It’s in fact, not about Sarah at all.
Joyce cheating on Joe in front of Sarah, who shares a friend group with Joe, has made Sarah part of this. Joyce has put Sarah in a position where she can confront Joyce directly, expose her actions to Joe, or be complicit in hiding the infidelity.
I’m not gonna say I’d stop being friends of someone because they cheated on their partner, but I would be disappointed in them, and it would be a blow to the friendship.
You stand by your friends when it comes to persecution, and then only up to a point. If they do a bad thing you don’t minimize it, but you might support them with the fallout.
Joyce isn’t being persecuted, and Sarah is not “abandoning her forever”. Sarah is just fed up dealing with Joyce’s shit. She said her bit, and now it is on Joyce whether or not to listen.
I don’t really understand that viewpoint — I would at the very least dial down a friendship in which I became aware that my friend was more of a liar or more self-centered than I thought they were, even if I wasn’t the target of a particular incident of lying and/or self-centeredness. And of course, cheating has elements of both.
That’s just basic self-preservation. If they’re the kind of person who can lie to their romantic relationships, what are they lying to ME about?
This is also why it’s not particularly as important, either to the friend group or in the long run the commentariat, that there was the whole Sarah+Joyce plot to break up Jacob and Raidah — Raidah was not part of the group! And Jacob mostly wasn’t, except kinda as a guy Joe lifts with sometimes.
Whereas now, Joyce made an effort to get Sarah to treat Joe as part of the gang, and was apparently pretty successful, and now she’s cheated on him and unfortunately for her that puts Sarah pretty firmly on the side of “dude, don’t hurt my friend that you literally talked me into having” on top of “kinda thought you’d be better than this”.
And yeah, that’s kinda a stupid and kinda amoral way for them to look at it, but as they say it’s not called Smarting of Age.
Honestly if one of my friends cheated on their partner it would severely weaken the friendship and lower my opinion of them at the minimum. Because if that friend would hurt and betray their romantic partner (ostensibly one of the most important people in their life) like that for their own personal pleasure, I can’t ever trust them not to hurt or betray me if it suits them.
Judging by the look on Dorothy’s face, I think Sarah’s words affected her more than Joyce. Joyce always had a fantastical view on love (remember, her whole goal at the very start of this comic was to get her MRS degree) and she basically found that with Dorothy. Forbidden passion is always sexy, and kissing a freedom fighter in the middle of a protest that went to Hell is the fantasy Joyce always wanted.
But that’s just it- it’s a fantasy. What they have now, while fun, isn’t sustainable. Dorothy already knew that, but Joyce believes she found her “one true love” so I think she’s going to claw and scratch to find a way to make this passion last even though, really, all it will do would destroy the friendships around her. Dorothy has a great respect for Sarah, so when Sarah calls her out on the two of them cheating on their boyfriends, as well as admit that Joe is a good guy, I think that’s what will snap Dotty out of her sapphic fantasy and face the harsh reality that, while Joyce may have passion and lust for Dorothy, deep down she loves Joe. I don’t think Dotty has those same feelings for Walky, though, given she more or less told him their relationship is a consequence free-fling.
So the rose colored glasses are off Dorothy. Now how are we gonna get them off Joyce?
Dorothy was BEYOND hostile to Joe. Threatening him when he was showing interest. Calling him a predator and telling him to find different prey. Yelling at him and insulting him again and again when he was trying to be nothing but kind, concerned, and empathetic to her. She insulted him further by saying that she was afraid that she was “as bad as” him. And at the last time they spoke, she was barely civil.
And yeah, she acknowledged to Joyce that he was trying hard. But words are cheap, and actions speak louder. To Dorothy, Joe never stopped being the bad guy. He was always dangerous.
And to have Sarah, of all people – baseball bat-toting, man-smashing, general misanthrope SARAH say that she was wrong about him, and he was a good person, and good for Joyce…. Well, that kind of means that you didn’t have an excuse, did you?
All the evidence was there, Dorothy. You just didn’t want to see it. It was just so much easier to assume that his actions were only temporary; just an act, and there was really no harm in rescuing Joyce from that relationship before she would inevitably get hurt.
I mean, isn’t that part of why she was panicking when Joyce went on her date with Joe? She disappeared over that horizon yet again. That didn’t seem like jealousy to me. That looked like numb fear.
It looked like a trauma response which, if I were to psychologize, would be Dorothy coping with the intense feelings of powerlessness and fear during the kidnapping. She had no control and was vulnerable watching people she cared about threatened… When Joyce was going with Joe she again felt like she had no control.
Joyce’s experience at the party was also probably a contributing factor. Dorothy brings Joyce to a party, loses her, and Joyce gets roofied. Joyce is traumatized, fearing being alone in public, and Dorothy takes on a role of protector, caregiver, and support. Filling those roles was partially just being a good friend when needed, but partially it helped Dorothy assuage her guilt over the party. It is her role and duty to be with Joyce, to keep her close, and keep scary men away. The kidnapping exacerbated this instinct because Dorothy felt unable to do her perceived duty.
And part of trauma is that it means a smaller stimulus can provoke an outsized response. So Dorothy doesn’t need to literally think of Joe as a kidnapper to freak out when it feels like he is taking Joyce away from her and there is nothing she can do about it.
Her outburst at the protest was in part about reasserting her own control.
“while Joyce may have passion and lust for Dorothy, deep down she loves Joe”
This just reads like a desperate reach, especially because the author has not at all spoken about it in this way. But also because she’s been dating Joe for like a week. She’s been crazy about Dorothy for months.
The girl is bi and she just noticed, you are welcome to ship your ships, but framing the queer relationship that has been all kisses and snuggles as “lust only” and the straight relationship where Joyce repeatedly insisted she was ready to fuck as “deep down love” is just funny to me.
100% agree with you here. It’s Dorothy that she is in love with. If there was never any attraction, we’d more easily say that they love each other, and just call it a close, sisterly love. Now that they ARE romantically connected, it’s full-on love.
Joe always liked Joyce more than Joyce liked Joe. Joe’s been thinking about her since the beginning of Freshman year; he deeply cares about her and her wellbeing. Joyce just likes to be loved. I’m sure she really really likes Joe, but she’s also done some shitty things to him, for which the only explanation is either that she didn’t consider his preferences, needs, and feelings, or she did but she didn’t view them as being of equal importance to her own. Joe kept wanting to get to know Joyce on a personal level, go and date, take things at a normal pace; Joyce just wanted the expert boyfriend to show her the ropes as she explores her college life.
As much as I’m a Joeyce shipper, that’s kind of a wild take. They were friends, but I don’t think any of these relationships can be described as “romantic love” yet, because I don’t think any of them have figured out what that even means.
This is the first time I’ve agreed with you on this storyline, I think, so I wanted to acknowledge it. There’s no universe where Joyce is somehow more in love with Joe than she is with Dorothy, and it’s indicative of bias to think she is. It’s 100% clear she’s bi.
I don’t think Joyce loved Joe. If Joyce loves anyone, it’s probably closer to Dorothy.
Granted, everyone’s definitions of love are way different, but I’ve seen more relationships crash and burn because everyone was chasing an unsustainable high than I can count. Love, at best, is comfortable and boring. On average it is frustrating, it is painful, it is suffering that you choose because that other person matters more than temporary discomfort, that you care about someone else’s survival as much as you do your own, if not more. That’s why abuse happens so often, that’s why so many relationships suck. Love requires putting yourself in emotional danger and trusting that the other person will do the same and not take advantage of it. It’s crying because someone lied to you and making the decision whether that lie is indicative of future behavior and what you do if it is. It’s being willing to start over from rock bottom over and over because someone lost a job, or someone got sick, or you had a kid, or someone’s parent died and the funeral bankrupted you.
Basically, as much as I don’t care for Joyce/Dorothy, Joyce loves Dorothy. Dorothy maybe loves Joyce. I think Joe loves Joyce. I think Joyce liked the attention from Joe and maybe could’ve come to love him, but I don’t think she did.
Like, I’ve always had issues with how this is happening, not that it happened at all
That’s funny, because I would have called it the other way:
– Dorothy definitely loves Joyce
– Joyce maybe loves Dorothy
– Joyce probably doesn’t love Joe
but crucially, I think,
– Joyce THINKS she loves Dorothy and THINKS she might love Joe.
As far as I can tell, Joyce’s relationship maneuvering has generally been “anything you do for True Wuv is automatically okay”, and I don’t think she’d have bounced back and forth between Dorothy and Joe breaking a few more of her boundaries each time unless she was at least somewhat convinced each of them was specifically important to Her Romantic Story.
(I call “Dorothy definitely loves Joyce” because of how hard Dorothy’s trauma and nightmares have been bound to the idea of losing Joyce in general AND losing Joyce romantically — the vision of Joyce’s kidnapping overlapping her leaving on her date with Joe kinda clinched it for me.)
I don’t really think Walky will care that much. Like, he’ll be disappointed, he’s not gonna love it, but I don’t think he’s nearly as invested in getting back together with Dorothy as she was with him
Haven’t Walky and Dorothy only been back together for like, a couple of weeks? And he was 100% rebounding and she was having a breakdown? They were never going to last.
That said, you’re probably right and he’ll throw a hissy fit because he is like that.
They have been back together for a few days. Lucy and Walky broke up a week ago in comic time and Walky and Dorothy got back together two days later so it’s been like five days. And 100% a rebound of a rebound of a rebound for Walky.
Walky isn’t going to go insane. This is going to be everything he always assumed about himself and his relationship to Dorothy — he’s expendable because she’s going to have better things in her future. And he irritates Joyce but Walky 100% knows Joyce is right when she says “Dorothy is above your station.”
He *believes* Joyce is right, and this will reinforce that belief. Walky has severe self-image issues – but that doesn’t mean he’s correct in his beliefs.
Aaand this is why I’ve never been down with the “sicko” side of things. I like Sarah. I like Walky and Joe and Becky. I don’t want to see any of them hurting over the selfish decisions Joyce and Dorothy have been making. I get it’s just a comic but I read it because it’s about people that feel real and that I have empathy for
IMO, they do care; they’re just hoping that somehow they can keep putting off what they should do (while continuing to do what they really want to) and hoping that it’ll all work out. Somehow.
Aside from the hurt caused to others, I find it difficult to enjoy stories where the primary source of conflict is the main character’s making incredibly stupid decisions.
For all of its name, this comic has not primarily been about people being stupid. Mostly it is about people being different, working through different problems and figuring out how to relate. Not denying main cast members have made stupid decisions, but a lot of the bad decisions haven’t been quite so clear cut.
This bit, however, does feel more like smashing my head against the wall.
I mean, this is the kind of stupid, bad decision that a lot of people make every day, especially on college campuses. So I don’t find it ‘incredible’ in the literal ‘this stretches my suspension of disbelief’ kind of thing, especially considering I have no issue nodding and going along with the ‘Amazigirl’ thing.
All in all, I think both the amount of badness of the decision, and Sarah’s reaction to it are proportionate.
If Dorothy’s years long mental breakdown and loss of purpose and Joyce’s extremely well established recklessness in all things related to love and romance doesn’t establish this storyline as “extremely in character” rather than stupid then I’m not really sure what you even want from a drama.
I do like the bathos in the final panel. Not just being solid continuity, but I think its a good effort at helping the scene not feel TOO heavy after Sarah reading Dorothy and Joyce the Riot Act.
Because, yes, what Dorothy and Joyce are doing is not good. But its still in the realm of “teenagers being fucking awful at managing relationships”, and a little gag to remind everyone this isn’t the end of the world is a good thing.
I agree and I like thst Sarah isnt being unreasonably hard on them just saying hey this is wrong fix it. I personally am not to hard in Joyce and Dorothy this is just kids being stupid and its early enough that they haven’t been horrific betrayer but it needs to be handled
I don’t remember who made the prediction that Walky is gonna end up forming a evil pact with Incelerator as a result of being dumped by every girl he has opened up to, but I really hope something like that happens. If only because he has gone through just as much shit as anyone else and could be just as self destructive as a result.
Even as I hope for Walky antagonist times, I still cannot imagine him going full incel and saying some of the shit you hear those types say. But like… A year ago I never would have pegged Joyce for being bi, Sarah for defending Joe, or some other third thing. Times are changing.
I can’t either. Walky likes women. No incel or proto-incel could have been friends with Lucy all those months before they dated without making a move (or without whining about being stuck in the friendzone.)
He might well be upset, but he’s not headed in that direction.
Wow, Sarah is so insanely judgemental she could be a part of the comment section. Also, if not homophobic, at least bizarrely insensetive to the fact Joyce just came out to her, and has only just figured out she’s queer.
I think it is a problem of the whole storyline that there isn’t any emphasis on Joyce figuring out she’s queer, because that’s a pretty significant process to go through, and everyone (including the comment section) is acting like it’s no big deal.
I think it’s really gross how people are bandying about accusations of homophobia because Sarah isn’t over the moon for Joyce and Dorothy immediately. “Stop cheating on your boyfriend in front of me” is a perfectly reasonable reaction to your friend cheating on their boyfriend in front of you, especially when their boyfriend is also your friend, and especially when you yourself have baggage related to cheating. Is she supposed to preface everything with a “I’m really proud of you for your self-discovery but?” That’s not the kind of person Sarah is. She’s not going to beat around the bush, she’s going to go straight to the heart of the matter, and the issue at play here isn’t that Joyce has figured out she’s gay, it’s that she’s cheating on Joe.
Unhinged accusations of homophobia in response to people being unhappy with some aspect of weird behaviors from J&D is one of those perennial features of this comment section.
Sarah’s “baggage related to cheating” mainly consists of her being in favour of it and actively encouraging Joyce to do it. And again, her behaviour isn’t necessarily homophobic, but Joyce coming out to her is a big deal, and responding to it like this is pretty fucking insensetive. (Especially given her clearly established lack of any real ethical problem with cheating).
Like, I’m sorry, but Joyce realizing she’s queer and in love with her best friend is pretty important, and definitely more important than a week-old relationship. It’s also more important than the fact that they kissed and cuddled a bit for a few hours before breaking up with their boyfriends. This situation sucks for the guys, but acting like the main thing that’s happening here is a moral failing on the girls’ part is absurd.
Is it a big deal? Is it a big deal to Joyce? She’s certainly not treating her gayness as a big deal. I’m not willing to go along with this line of reasoning when the characters’ actions and attitudes don’t support it.
Also, while Sarah was willing to arrange for Raidah, a person she despises, to be cheated on, she actually has had an ethical problem with cheating – her boyfriend cheated on her with her sister, remember. Is it totally ethically consistent? No, but why is Sarah being held to that standard while Joyce and Dorothy get to have a pass?
Also, the plan with Jacob was to break them up, not to get Jacob to cheat with Joyce. Which has ethical problems in its own way, but is perfectly compatible with her being upset about Joyce and Dorothy not having broken off their previous relationships.
It can be both — their realization is important for them and for the story, and the fact they immediately jumped into being dumbasses about it instead of taking the correct route of “break up with boyfriends, then kiss more” means that they can be judged for it.
The funniest thing about these responses to me continues to be that Joyce and Dorothy both have admitted that the cheating A) is cheating and B) is a problem.
People have different “Aha” moments. When I realized I was Bi it was literally just that friend asked and I thought about it for 2 seconds.
From how Joyce has been handling it so far it seems like she isn’t too worked up. If Joyce were going to Sarah saying “OMG Sarah! I might be… (mutter mutter)… gay” Then I would expect a different reaction.
We’ve had the bisexual panic twice now, once with Danny and once with Dorothy. Asking to go through that *again* with Joyce is just asking for padding.
The drama fallout of Joyce’s recklessness is far, far more interesting to engage with.
I swear to God I’m this close to calling the people baselessly calling Sarah homophobic racist, bc i guess we’re just saying this now. I think there’s a little undercurrent of misogynoir in the negative reaction Sarah tends to get from commenters.
I’m just saying, I don’t think people would be as mad if it were Danny or Amber/mazi. Still mad but, not as mad. And we all know how white ppl love to play up the homophobia in the black community. I’m not saying it’s not a problem but white folk sure love to act like we’re so much worse than them with it
Like, are people ONLY upset at Sarah/Raidah/Asma because of misogynoir? No.
Are people significantly more upset, and more likely to read the things these characters say in an uncharitable way, than they would if the same things were being said by white women or white men? Oh yeah.
I don’t think it’s racist, because the same allegations have been attached to people in the comments, what it comes down to bluntly is people who ship Joyce and Dorothy are too cowardly to just admit they don’t really care that they’re cheating if it means their ship is sailing.
And since you can’t really combat cheating is a bad thing and you shouldn’t do it they have to approach it from different, escalating methods. So far there’s been homophobia allegations, implying that it’s weird to think of your monogamous partner kissing somebody else and approaching them with romantic intent is cheating, and my personal favorite, how do we know they’re monogamous when they have not told us they are.
Imo it’s nothing more than shippers refusing to acknowledge that even if their ship is sailing their blorbos are still kinda being dicks. If it had been anybody else calling em out we’d probably still have ended up here.
I’m getting real tired of people assuming that everyone who has a problem with Joyce and Dorothy cheating on their boyfriends must be homophobic. It’s a ridiculous accusation that seems to be based on no evidence whatsoever.
Sarah was literally begging Dorothy through her door to confess her feelings to Joyce before Joyce/Joe became a couple. She shipped them and would have been happy if they were not already official with other people.
Imagine if Beef had an entire character arc off screen over the past several months, and now he beats up guys like Incelerator and volunteers at soup kitchens.
The comic timescale can be very confusing. In this scale it was literally yesterday afternoon that Dorothy’s self identity attempted a massive act of self destruction rather than accept real feelings. That can’t be healthy.
Sarah’s distress is understandable; someone she’s just come to trust as a friend may turn out to be another’s acceptable loss. Joyce and Dorothy may have just realized that this is not a ‘fix the paperwork and then Happy Ever After’ moment, but they have to deal with real people. (Well, real in the story sense. 🙂 )
So once again I don’t get a full night’s sleep because at 12:04 I have to get up and see What Happens Next. LOL
Yup, Allowed to make stupid, hurtful, shortsighted relationship decisions, but god forbid anyone REACT to those decisions with anything other than grace and sensitivity.
Okay… can someone please explain to me what “blorbo” means? I keep hearing it every now and again (usually in tumblr screencaps) and I haven’t the faintest clue what it means.
In short, it’s from someone poking fun at normal posts being tagged with vaguely related character names, and now it’s used for oblique judgement and snide dismissal of what someone says by claiming they wouldn’t have said it if they weren’t overly attached to a fictional character, usually in a way that has plausible deniability, so if you call them on it they can say “Nuh-uhhh~ you can’t prove that’s what I meant~” and keep treating you like an irrational, delusional asshole.
It can also be “hehe look at the funny little guy I drew”
I used to worry that I was chronically online, but apparently I’m doing pretty okay if I’m not… getting into arguments about fictional characters. The closest thing to that I ever had was a friend of mine telling me Catra and Adora were “just sisters” and I looked at him and said “are you high?”
That’s it though. No judgement calls, no assessments of character, no reevaluation of the friendship… just a raised eyebrow and then we moved on with our DnD game.
Sorry black girls dont get to handle things any less than 1000% perfectly with infinite empathy and true enlightenment levels of understanding for the human condition. Sarah’s not being the literal Buddha rn, what a judgemental bongo
I mean, I think Sarah’s pretty justified in being disappointed in Joyce here. She gave Joyce the chance to tell her what’s going on, several times, and Joyce kept trying to lie to her face and dodge the truth, and when Sarah finally pointed out that it was pretty obvious what was going on and confronted her directly with it, Joyce hasn’t really expressed any remorse about it, or even about lying to Sarah moments earlier.
I think Sarah would have judged them slightly less for this if they’d come clean as soon as Sarah asked, maybe even told her that they’re working on figuring out how to tell their boyfriends and are struggling with it – Sarah of all people knows that talking about your feelings is hard at the best of times, and she’d probably at least have just groaned and given them a deadline, something like “look, I get it, but you have until the end of the day to talk to them or I’m telling them myself. No more cheating on anyone in my room”.
But Sarah’s right that she didn’t know Joyce as well as she thought, too. I think Sarah’s fond enough of Joyce that she’s been kind of expecting her to be a little less reckless than this with other people’s feelings, because Joyce often leans towards kindness and empathy, but Joyce was never as selfless as Sarah maybe let herself think. Even when Sarah pushed her on Jacob, I’m pretty sure Sarah thought she was emplying a cunning, “evil” plan where Joyce would be largely an unwitting pawn with reasonably predictable moves that’d break Jacob and Raidah up, but in the end, the way Joyce broke them up was entirely through her own desire to be with him, entirely regardless of the feelings of Jacob and Raidah, because obviously they weren’t meant to be and therefore it didn’t matter. But I don’t think Sarah actually knows the full story there, even though it gives a LOT of context to this situation.
It’s hilarious to read about these uptight virginal college moralists. In a real college, there’s so much inter-group sleeping around that this wouldn’t even register on the other partner’s radar. They’ve been together for ten minutes, and now she’s — GASP! — kissed a girl?! Oh, the deep dark tragedy! It’s hilarious.
lol seriously. In most cases it’s the exact opposite – someone does something bad five minutes into a relationship and it becomes a HUGE drama, with people choosing sides. Freshmen don’t have the experience and maturity to put things into perspective. (Not saying they should, either, but the “wave away cheating” crowd can’t also be the “we’re messy drama kids”)
Whether you’ve been together for 10 minutes or 10 years is irrelevant. Cheating is wrong. That’s not an uptight stance to have, that’s basic morality and a standard line most people have.
Yeah, but there are also degrees to being wrong.
People here are treating a few kisses outside a relationship like it’s basically equivalent to murder. Which – newsflash – it’s not.
And when Joe gets hurt due to Joyce breaking up with him, that, and Joyce having fallen in love with Dorothy, is what will hurt, not the fact that they kissed before the breakup.
Joe has a foundational trauma directly related to infidelity. Do you really, genuinely believe that the act of cheating itself won’t be hurtful to him?
Last I checked Joe’s foundational trauma was a fear that he would cheat on anyone he tried to have a relationship with just like his father did. I’m not saying things are going to be puppies and rainbows for him but since him cheating on Joyce isn’t what happened I don’t think he’s going to be as traumatized as some people seem to be expecting him to be.
I mean, being cheated on has a much easier fix than living down to his worst expectations of himself would.
To be clear, I think this is why this isn’t going to shatter his progress — HE did not screw up here. But he’ll still be pissed to be the VICTIM of this thing that is generally a source of trauma.
It’s true that there are degrees, but it’s also true that the longer Joyce goes without telling him the worse degree it will be. Especially as she does more with Dorothy and as she interacts with him without telling him.
Even worse if he finds out without her telling him.
If they’d just kissed at the protest, come home and fessed up, that’s probably about as mild as cheating gets. Seeing him and the bj made it worse. Spending the night with Dorothy made it worse again. We’ll see what happens next.
Story wise, imo, this is a good thing. Why do a cheating arc and downplay it to the mildest possible form of cheating?
Completely opposite my college experience — every friend group that had in-group dating, if someone cheated on another person in the group, the cheater was more or less permanently exiled to the “sort of peripheral acquaintances” level at best.
Sarah needs to learn that you don’t have people “all figured out” after knowing them for, what’s it been? Eight months or so? People got layers, man. Especially young people. They get MORE layers every week.
There is also the issue of an alignment shift in general. Sarah was always extremely cynical and distrustful of people. Now she started to come out of her shell bit by bit, her burying the hatchet with Joe being a big example. And a lot of that comes from Joyce’s positive influence.
AND THEN JOYCE GOES AND PULLS SHIT LIKE THIS!
This is guaranteed to sabotage trust in people in both Joe and Sarah.
Sarah’s right, I’m dying on this hill, fuck you fight me (not really, im not going back and forth arguing about it. She’s just right, she has every right to react this way, it’s very normal, and it’s insanely hypocritical to brush off DoJo’s behavior with “they’re young and dumb” but expect the maturest, patientest, most well thought out response from an emotionally scarred 20 year old. Keep that same energy.)
Joyce fought Sarah hard to get her to accept Joe, and now that Sarah does accept him, Joyce is immediately cheating on him. I’d say Sarah has pretty good cause to confront Joyce about that, and you’re taking this way too personally.
Yeah, I haven’t seen many anti-Sarah posts, but maybe they just got deleted before I saw them. I genuinely cannot imagine why anyone would have a problem with what Sarah said to these two.
If anything, she was pretty calm and restrained here. If someone I admired and befriended suddenly did something really crappy that changed my entire perception of them… I’d probably be a lot less polite. My response might be something along the lines of a decently loud “what the actual fuck, dude?”
Is Joyce now irredeemable? Of course not. Does that mean Sarah is out of line? Fuck no. She’s calling it like she sees it. Hell, if/when Sarah gets more details of this whole caper, she’s probably going to have even more choice words and I doubt those will be out of line either.
When I scrolled through this morning every other comment was anti Sarah. I’m not gonna look again for the sake of my blood pressure these people are pmo
– Sarah is allowed to be mad at her friend for being a dumbass. Sarah has also canonically been a dumbass herself.
– Joyce and Dorothy are allowed to be dumbasses.
– It DOES matter that this is their first awareness of being queer, that shit can be rough to deal with for a lot of reasons.
– It is still a big deal that they both just came out to Sarah. In fact, Dorothy has come out to three people (including Joyce) and both Danny and Sarah have given her zero support.
– Neither Danny nor Sarah actually owe Dorothy support (but it would have been nice). I hope she gets support from someone soon.
– Joe isn’t entitled to Joyce staying with him or loving him forever, it’s a week or so long relationship in freshman year. He WAS entitled to not being cheated on and I hope he finds out soon.
– Joe is not an innocent widdle angel who never did a thing wrong, so hopefully he has room is his heart for forgiving Joyce a fuck up.
– I still want this to turn polyamorous. So much. I don’t think it would be immediately healthy or fix anything, I want to watch them struggle through it and come out with understandings about themselves and maybe a healed polycule of some configuration.
– Alice is best girl.
– I really do hope Joe still goes into culinary school. I like the idea of him having an outlet to feed people and make them happy. He should get happiness.
I like this. I do think Joe will forgive Joyce eventually – prooooobably gonna be a little bit though.
I predict one of the three they worry about (Joe, Walky, Becky) will react really well, one will be upset (as in sad) and the other is gonna be PISSED. Place your bets on who is who here folks!
Just gonna co-sign this and spare my own hands a lengthy comment of my own ❤️ this covers all the same points I’d make anyway, we are very in sync rn.
I genuinely feel pretty awful for Dorothy wrt coming out every time I think about that conversation with Danny. He wasn’t aiming any barbs at her on purpose and she explained herself in the worst possible way so he was just reacting to her literal words, but WOOF.
I mean, she less came out to him as he clocked her immediately and she then proceeded to essentially try to get him to provide her with justification and cover for how she’d been acting towards Joyce.
Also I nearly put “her” for Danny every time while I was writing that sentence. That egg needs to crack!
I don’t think there was anything that consciously machinatious about anything she said to him, is the thing.
Also that she didn’t intentionally come out to him only underlines and holds my point! Being “clocked” by him only further increases how uncomfortable she was, and makes the following conversation all the more unfortunate.
Everyone got very mad with her for what she was saying to him, as if she was a heterosexual girl just casting aspersions on the bi community, instead of describing her first-ever bi experience with deep discomfort and shame.
Yeah, but I don’t want to leave out the non-binaries either. They too deserve love. Seriously. I’ve only met (in-person)) two non-binary people in my life and both of them were gorgeous.
Also I can relate to Sarah’s pain so much XD September is coming up and when I was younger this would be the “picking potatoes season” in my family, a day or two in the fields, bending over or squatting just picking them all day long. Last time we were doing that my legs were recovering for a week.
As much as I like the Dotty/Joyce ship, I’m with Sarah; at least tell your current boyfriend and break it off now. It’s gonna hurt him no matter what, but it’s going to hurt more the longer it goes on before someone tells him. And it would just be spectacularly awful for him to be told by someone else or see it accidentally because these two can’t keep their paws off each other for more than 10 minutes.
BUT, I’m also down for whatever the hell happens because it will surely be a good dramatic read and that’s actually what I’m here for. Be weird, be stupid; it’ll be interesting regardless.
Yeah, there was a totally different person who called them that the other day. I think it even had a modifier on it, but I didn’t commit it to memory. It got deleted preeeetty fast, thankfully.
Some dumbass on Patreon dropped that word yesterday too. Doing it on the main site is bad enough, but who the fuck is paying five bucks a month to drop slurs in probably the most controlled environment? Like buddy are you lost????
Today’s trend in “weird things that this commentariat does”: misremembering comic history but being really adamant about it.
I’ve seen at least 2-3 people assert that Joe and Joyce hated each other until after the timeskip, and they weren’t already friends before the timeskip.
And also, I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that “what your friend group considers cheating” is one of those things where there are huge, huge regional differences but no one is aware of them until some discussion like this comes up.
Look, I’m working my way up. I’m not ready to be a macrohussy right now. Just let me dip my toe in the water before I work myself up to the real Heliogabalus shit. Let me devolve into mindless hedonism at my own pace. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. XD
Congratulations lol, romance “rules” are a culturally-mandated wild ass guess that we’ve made extremely taboo to actually discuss or question with our partners. A lot of queer and poly culture is about trying to engage with and deconstruct that and how we sometimes fail badly.
Honestly, I feel that Sarah is honestly relatively restrained with her reaction. She did some glaring at Joyce’s attempts to lie to her, including a ‘please don’t insult my intelligence’ She then voiced that she didn’t want them continuing the cheating in front of her. Said that they clearly know that what they’re doing is cheating since they’re covering it up. Told them that despite her faulty judgement earlier, Joe doesn’t deserve to be cheated on. Finalizing with saying she’d thought better of Joyce, before walking off.
That is a measured response, cutting right through Joyce’s words, who has a talent for self justification and self delusion at times, especially with romance involved. She is right and she should say it.
There’s at least one novel where it’s expressly stated he can’t heal himself with the Force because every time he tries, he’s so relieved at the idea that if it works he can interact with humans normally that he loses his grip on his Force powers since they’re all Dark Side at this point.
Joyce and Dorothy have been emotional cowards for a day. They tried to inform their significant others, made a real effort, and ran away because of the guilt and shame. They’re making terrible cases for themselves right now, and their behavior is genuinely shitty betrayal for their existing relationships, but they also literally just were at a protest and got gassed and informed Joyce’s sister about possible danger to her. There is a *lot* going on in their lives. But not being accountable 3 days from now is a whole different story from not being accountable the morning after an earthshaking day on several levels.
Not the weirdest, but still one of the weirdest thing about this comment section is people analysing a cartoon face for micro-expressions. It feels the way people analyse paparazzi celebrity photos on random websites to talk shit.
Do y’all have some kind of secret second set of eyeballs because the faces are relatively expressive but they are most definitely neither super realistic nor super exaggerated-for-effect and there are limits to what they can convey?
I mean- yeah they have expressions, but some people on here act like they just came home from their job at the Body Language Expert Panel Part Of Youtube factory.
My father was a Farwibliquefs, his father was a Farwibliquefs, and so was his father. They were heroes all, and I’ll be damned before I give those lousy Gorbabs and inch of our native soil! 😛
Regret? Heck, you’re only contributing to the hilarity of this farce. I for one am glad to have someone else willing to play along with this asinine bit. Makes it more fun. (At least until someone takes it too seriously rolls up and starts actually being a jerk about it.)
True sickos would be down with the ramifications of Joyce and Dorothy’s actions flying in their faces. Also, never underestimate the misgynoir of the comments when a woc has a loud opinion. That’s gonna happen regardless of sicko or paladin status.
There was a demographic survey being done by someone in the comments, right? That was today? I didn’t get a chance to look at the results and was going to come back to see… what the fuck did I miss…
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Oh god thigh cramps. Yeah. Ow.
I hate to return my training, after stopping for a while, because tights are the first pain I suffer.
maybe work out in looser pants? lol (i know i am the last person who should make spelling error puns but i couldn’t resist)
When I took my first adult Ballet class, I discovered it’s possible for the soles of your feet to cramp.
Try not to make this same discovery yourself.
Don’t trust thigh muscles.
Don’t trust showers
Yeah man workouts are evil dont do
Blasfemy!
don’t work out, play team sport, more fun less likely end up with super burny muscles! Same chances of suffering a brain aneurysm while exerting yourself, and morelikely to get help fat enough to suvive.
(had a classmate in Reefer training who had to delay his enrollment 2 years after recovering from an aneurysm sufferred while working out as 26)
Caution: advice does not apply to “indoor soccer pick-up game night” when you live within ten miles of several liberal arts colleges.
Ask me how I know, says the 40-something dude who got his ASS KICKED by 800 early-twenty-somethings college kids who were playing pick-up-game night like it was the world cup qualifiers.
thats when you start a pickup league for 35+ like one of my old managers did 20 years ago
I suggested that to my kid’s soccer club when I was a coach, but it never ended up happening before I moved.
Joe made her sore
I’ve had women say this about their thigh muscles describing both their actions with me and their actions with their trainers. The lesson is to stretch and hydrate.
People always underestimating the importance of correct water amounts.
I know that Sarah did a hard workout yesterdayish. But I prefer to believe that Sarah’s thighs are sore because she and Tony were really going at it, offscreen. Heh.
After all the weeks of edging, man this is satisfying
Honestly, there’s something else going on here that I didn’t really think about.
Sarah has always had serious trust issues. It was a HUGE step for her to try getting to know Joe better, for Joyce’s sake. This line from her displays, clearly, that Joyce has broken her trust. The one person she really trusted and cared for just betrayed so many of her friends and, somewhat more damning, doesn’t seem bothered by it or even to recognize that what she did was wrong.
WE know that Joyce has guilt, but all Sarah can see is Joyce’s rationalization that “It’s all for True Love, so it’s OK” and man, Sarah REALLY believed that Joyce was better than that.
On that note, it was also a huge step for her to get to know Joyce and open her heart to her
Also have we really seen any guilt from Joyce? Dorothy for sure, but not so sure about Joyce
I suspect it’s about to hit her like a freight train in about two to five minutes. Just as soon as it sinks in.
I would definitely argue that we saw Joyce feeling too guilty about their actions to tell Joe in light of him giving her a very thoughtful gift. That’s certainly guilt in my eyes.
I dunno. Was it guilt, or her being sad about realizing what she’d be losing?
Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a bit of both.
It probably is. I’m just feeling very jaded about Joyce
I can’t bring myself to hate Joyce, for a long time she was the character I identified with the most. It has however, been kind of sobering to watch her evolve and diverge away from that. I think deep down, she does still have a good heart and that’s why this arc is probably going to hurt like a mother-lover. Definitely lead her to some much-needed soul searching. I hold out hope that, though she has lost her way, she will learn from this experience and come out on the other side.
Meh… I don’t hate Joyce, she just isn’t someone I would want to spend time with (or watching).
That’s sad, Odo, because she’s the main character of the comic you’re reading. I hope you find a way to connect with her again.
Honestly can’t tell if you are being sincere or not. There have been a bunch of sickos apparently delighting in other people disliking this comic.
If you are being sincere then I’ll say that I don’t appreciate your comment. It seems to cast how I am feeling as some sort of personal deficiency, and assumes that it is more important for me to like the comic than for the comic to be something I like. I appreciate, however, a sincere wish that I have an enjoyable reading experience.
If you are not being sincere then shove off. The world is a better place without trolls. Again, this part of the reply is only if you are not being sincere.
I was being sincere, and hoping for you to like a comic you are actively continuing to read.
But nitpicking something nasty out of it and trying to police how I said it? lmao absolutely go fuck yourself. My mistake for talking to you kindly but not exactly how you’d like. Won’t make it again o7
Yo, intent matters but so does impact. If your words were not having a positive impact when you wanted them to, I would expect you to want to hear that.
I am not saying “you were being nasty” I am saying “your words didn’t feel good”.
K.
Sad why not both meme.
I feel like everyone forgets, because she’s nice, but Joyce has absolutely no track record with relationships.
First there was the guy who she knew was gay, then the guy who she pretended to be in a relationship with, and now Joe.
How is this all going wrong???? Joyce is usually so good in a relationship!!!
She does have a track record with friendships though. And she was friends with Joe. Joe was there for her, not for the newsworthy events, but for personal growth. In a way that Dorothy was not. The cheating in the relationship matters more than a week old relationship fizzling, because it’s how she’s betraying a friend.
Exactly this, yeah. She’s never been good at romance but she’s usually been a very loyal and loving friend. It’s honestly really devastating for me that my favorite character of 10 years in this comic is currently so unenjoyable for me… I can’t even see a way back for her right now bc I’m just exhausted and emotionally checked out/exhausted from this storyline. Joyce, Sarah and Joe have been my faves forever (mostly in that order) and it’s so weird that Joyce is now closer to the bottom of my list than the top. Genuinely been super sad about it bc I’ve loved this comic and Joyce Brown so much for so long. (and I’ve wanted bi joyce since day 1! and now ive got her! in the worst possible way and im not having fun at all!) its been a nightmare which is why i had to leave the patreon 😭 been devouring books and shows and music instead to try and wait it out
Meh. Maybe Sarah’s thighs hurt from too much riding on that high horse. I do totally agree with her, but it also feels much like some of us in the comments she’s putting a lot of heavy judgment on something I don’t think either Joyce or Dorothy have fully processed yet. Like damn 8 hours really turned them into the worst people ever, poor innocent Joe who has never done anything wrong ever (Walky sympathy not found) How terrible that Joyce ripped his heart out and crushed it right in front of him./s
Seriously though. I get her disappointment but this all feels very harsh very early. Sarah’s the girl who intentionally tried to sabotage one relationship already, and it worked. I think we can all calm down until Joyce and Dorothy actually follow through more on being cheaters.
I’m going to be honest, I don’t know why people keep using Sarah’s past misdeeds as a reason to ignore what she’s saying here. At worst someone being a hypocrite doesn’t change the fact that what they’re saying might be correct. At best a hypocrite is someone who is on their way to being a better person. Sarah having been wrong in the past doesn’t make Joyce or Dorothy any more correct. Sarah also doesn’t think very highly of herself but she did think very highly of Joyce. Her response here isn’t because she thinks Joyce was the worst person in the world. It’s because she trusted her and considered her to be a good person and Joyce is behaving in ways that are completely incongruous with that worldview.
It doesn’t ignore her statement, but you don’t think it’s an unfair double standard? As her friend I would expect at least the same leniency she received from Joyce which was a lot. Sarah even admitted to weaponizing Joyce in that situation and Joyce immediately forgave her, but when it’s Joyce behaving badly the “I knew you less than I thought.” comes out. That just doesn’t shake right with me.
I don’t agree at all with how Dorothy and (Joyce especially) seemed to be operating in the moment but it feels like you fuck up once and everyone’s ready to cook you for it. Even your sister.
This EXACTLY.
There’s a difference between “you fuck up once and everyone’s ready to cook you for it” and “you are fucking up now and are making excuses and doubling down rather than dealing with it”.
Also Joyce immediately forgiving Sarah in the Jacob/Raidah situation is a bit different because at the point where Joyce forgave her, Joyce was still pursuing Jacob on her own.
“but it feels like you fuck up once and everyone’s ready to cook you for it. Even your sister.”
I agree wholeheartedly with this, and I think it’s because basically everyone in the comic (and a lot of people in the comments) had Joyce so high up on a pedestal that there was no way for her to grow or be messy or change without everyone feeling weirdly betrayed.
Joyce is allowed to make mistakes. Expecting her to be a perfect angel all the time is a weiiiiiirdddd vibe to me, and it’s nice seeing someone else say it. (And for those who would WELL BUT me: Yes she’s cheating, yes cheating is wrong, yes I personally think it falls under allowable mistakes for someone this young and this newly queer and THIS newly in the real world.)
Sometimes it feels like people can’t decide whether to infantilize her as completely not responsible for ANY choices she makes or demonize her as responsible for the feelings of every single person around her to the detriment of her own.
Notably, if it was JOE or WALKY hitting her with this speech I’d back him fully. This would be totally fair coming from one of the aggrieved parties, I just don’t think Sarah is one of those.
I like you, Nymph. You’re both sensible and reasonable.
Didn’t Sarah show some remorse by the time Sarah confessed to Joyce though? it’s not like Sarah is saying she won’t ever forgive but that Joyce showing zero remorse and trying to frame her actions as good with a straight face is a side of her Sarah needs some time to process first. Also note Joyce was already trying to get with Jaocob so Joyce may have been so quick to forgive because she didn’t think it was a huge wrong.
Yeah to me Sarah’s comment reads as that she is going to work on wrapping her mind around Joyce’s current actions and possibly come to accept her anyway.
“I do totally agree with her […]” – Sirksome
The rest of your comment I do also agree with, it’s just that Sirksome didn’t really ignore anything, they just like, have a different opinion. It happens. It’s fully fair to think about the other time Joyce was involved in breaking a couple up + the way Sarah pushed for that. Like, from Sarah’s perspective this makes perfect sense because she hated Raidah & changed her mind about Joe, and the main thing is really her perception of Joyce, yadda yadda – that’s all correct but as a reader I can like, slightly raise my eyebrow at that, too.
sometimes a hypocrite is just a person in the process of changing
I never really understood the sentiment, “you did something bad before too, therefore you’re not allowed to make correct moral judgements.”
It’d be one thing if they were _presently_ doing one thing and saying another, but we really need to be fair and recognize that they’ve been putting in the work themselves to be better than they were when they made those *very real* mistakes.
For me, because I recognize the work they’ve put in and it’s shown serious results, why not let it be the past offenders being the ones who’re reminding what’s right to the current abusers?
When we say people like Joe and Sarah don’t get to say anything, we become the people they resent when they feel like nobody gives them a second chance (like what’s-her-name recently in the gym interaction). We become the stumbling block for that person’s growth when we ought to be celebrating positive change.
My point isn’t really that Sarah has no right to say her stance on this because of her own past in problematic behavior, it’s that she’s not treating Joyce the same way Joyce has shown to treat her in those situations. I’m happy Sarah has developed as a character but Joyce also gave her the room to get that development without judging her for said flaws. Same for Joe too honestly.
In which arc did Joyce treat Sarah better?
Because the scene that keeps coming to mind is the one where Sarah tells Joyce “We will always forgive you, every time”.
When was that?
When she rejected christianity together with Sarah’s sister and temporarily became a little edgelord about it
And I’m sure Sarah will forgive Joyce, but not while she’s still doing the thing.
the point was that Sarah came to the realization what she did was shitty and she backed off from it. Joyce saw it too and she was witness to Sarah realizing she fucked up. But now not only is Joyce making mistakes just as bad as Sarah did she’s more trying to defend her own actions by throwing Sarah under the bus for something that she was already ashamed of doing.
Look, yes it takes years for us out here, but the thing Sarah did that Joyce mentioned was within the last week in-comic? She learned and grew in a week? This would be literally the first Joyce is seeing of it, it makes sense she would mention it, it literally just happened to her. I am amazed at how much everybody takes everything like actual years have passed for these kids. Joyce and Joe have been working towards this relationship not for years, but for maximum one month. They have been together maybe two to three weeks. I think we might still be in January? When the time skip happening put us into January? We had all of the Lucy x Walky drama, we had Joyce and Dorothy go out and get drunk together and the karaoke session and the party where Lucy and Jacob hooked up, and so on and so forth, in the last month in-comic.
I think despite this being the standard since the beginning of the comic, there’s still this assumption when reading that this comic operates like other stories where assumed time passes in between major events to solidify and establish character changes conveyed to the audience.
10 days. Joe & Joyce have been together 10 days. That’s the grand relationship everyone’s ready to string her up over.
Joe and Joyce have been friends for several months, and she knows about his insecurities about both relationships and infidelity. That’s the “kicking a friend and confidant in the teeth right after you decided to date him” everyone’s ready to express that she’s being kind of a shithead who deserves to be taken down a peg about.
Fixed that for you.
It’s not “Sarah is right, but she’s a hypocrite”. It’s “Sarah is being a judgemental asshole, and she’s a massive hypocrite”. Talking to Joyce like this after she just came out to her would be shitty in any circumstance, but the fact she’s such a hypocrite makes it even worse.
You know what else is shitty? Cheating on your boyfriend under the thoughtful gift he just gave you.
Nothing Sarah has said today or yesterday was wrong, and it’s EXACTLY what Dorothy and Joyce needed to hear. Now, if they actually HEARD it or if they will dismiss it remains to be seen.
Also… some people seem to be reading this as though Sarah’s words illustrate a final and inflexible rejection of Joyce, when they could just as easily be explained as being deliberately blunt in order to shock Joyce into thinking about how her actions could affect people.
Despite her words, Sarah does know that Joyce cares about others (to the point of encroaching on Sarah’s boundaries many times as a roommate), so this read, to me, more as a way to say “This isn’t you, Joyce” in a way that might shake her more than saying that in a more straightforward way could.
This is how I read it too. One thing that is genuinely surprising if you haven’t noticed it about Joyce Is how good she at lying to herself as well as lies by omission/technicality. I’m not surprised if Sarah finds it genuinely creepy how Joyce can go from looking so lovabley guilty to acting cool like nothings wrong the next. Sarah’s not going to stop being Joyce’s friends or found sister but it will take her a bit to process this change to her view of Joyce.
Correct, not an inflexible rejection. It’s like a mirror to “Sometimes I get the feeling that you don’t [want to grow].”
The immediate words of “knowing her less” is so weird for sure. And actually makes me not like Sarah a bit. Condemning much??
Why are Sarah and commenters acting like the Dorothy/Joyce has been going on for months behind the backs of their married spouses?
Go back and read the first panel of the previous page.
Joyce: “Yesterday, Dorothy and I… we finally kissed, after wanting to for so long.”
Sarah is right to condemn Joyce and Dorothy here, even if it ends up being an ephemeral condemnation. (I doubt Sarah’s going to, like, request a room transfer over this or anything.)
Lol.
Since we have seen that Joyce hadn’t understood her feelings of Dorothy in real time the previous years, this line says something different that you seem to think.
That line, actually makes Sarah be way worse for me.
Here is her little sister, accepting herself of being a bit gay/bi to her trusted person, Sarah. And Sarah acts like this?
F no.
Sarah has real nothing to stand on here.
Nah, Sarah is right. If my little sister was like “awesome news, I’ve discovered I’m bi by cheating on my boyfriend” I’d be like “man, c’mon, uncool” and if she kept going by “FINALLY i discovered this…we kissed yesterday and then I invited her to sleep over in my bed…” I would actually think less of her even though I’m queer lol. Joyce hasnt displayed any confusion or even awareness that what she did was kinda shitty where Sarah could see, all Sarah knows is that Joyce thinks this is awesome lol.
Kissing in the moment, yeah I definitely see how passions can run high that’s one thing. But then inviting the girl you kissed to sleep with you (nonsexual) instead of breaking up with the genuinely good boyfriend first and then doing whatever ? Sarah is right.
Being bisexual myself, the cheating is even more upsetting because there’s such a stereotype of bisexuals being cheaters/indecisive/etc. I’m looking forward to how the comic addresses that angle of this. We got a little bit of it with Danny talking to Dorothy.
The comic has many MANY bisexuals in it and only one pair are cheating. It’s okay if bisexuals cheat sometimes, it does happen, and there’s lots of other monogamous or committed bisexual representation in the comic already.
This exactly. They kissed at a protest, it was night when they got back, it has been incredibly obvious to everyone that they have repressed feelings for one another, why is this being treated like this maniacal laughter, mustache twirling indecency, especially by Sarah of all people who has historically been so misanthropic, and who not long ago swore she would forgive Joyce every time?
It’s human, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not wildly obscene to judge other people so harshly for something you have virtually no skin in the game about yourself.
Spent some time reading all the updates since they got back from the protest and it is literally a couple hours where their first tries was to keep themselves off of each other and then make a plan to inform Joe and Walky.
These young women who had their whole world turned upside down are literally trying to be honest and ethical and we have Sarah now and commenters during the last weeks acting like they have been cheaters for years.
Seriously???
Is this homophobic, misogynism or plain hypocrisy to act as being ethically better?
Sarah is working with what she sees. Which also involves that Joyce and Dorotyhy were trying (badly) to hide their cheating from her. I don’t think Joyce and Dorothy are now horrible, horrible people. But they are currently cheating on their respective partners. The kiss at least was a ‘spur of the moment’, but the sleeping together like that was a mix of both not willing to accept the pain of the break-up, combined with the unwillingness to postpone further intimacy.
Sarah’s reaction is I think appropriate and constructive. Makes it very clear that what they’re doing now, while super cute and I love to read it, is cheating. Joyce’s defense in the last comic ‘Why do you care if I cheat, you were against the relatiionship’ is, well, also not exactly something that radiates ‘I’m trying to do this in the most ethical way’
Sarah just saw Joyce try to lie about what’s happened, learned she did not inform her boyfriend (so, reasonable to assume lying to him to whether by omission or outright), and when she pointed out how what Joyce did was bad got told “why do you care if i hurt him??? you don’t like him” instead of “yeah I’m going to tell him” like Sarah’s reaction is very normal. I think Joyce/Dorothy is cute but it’s silly to pretend they’re trying to be ethical and honest when they’re not? Joyce did try to lie to Sarah. Ultimately characters making big mistakes makes for a better story – It’s not called Smarting of Age – but to pretend that Joyce is going about this the right way is very silly.
Agreed. Like, Sarah can tell Joyce as a friend that she thinks Joyce is making mistake, but otherwise it’s frankly not actually Sarah’s business.
I also find the extreme moral judgement that people here have for Joyce and Dorothy a bit much. Like, cheating is bad behaviour, they shouldn’t do it, they’re hurting people, but it’s also not, like, murder. Especially since they’ve been doing it for less than a day! Plenty of time to come clean.
(It’s also extremely common – not a justification or an excuse, just to let people know that you absolutely have loved ones who have cheated on someone, even if you haven’t ever yourself. And it’s probably not your business.)
It’s also the bandying about of kissing as cheating. Before I started reading webcomics, cheating pretty much exclusively meant bumping uglies, actual sex acts. Kissing wasn’t great, it was A Problem, but it was not considered Cheating, it was considered concerning behaviour that likely could lead to cheating.
This feels intensely like the American Christian shame machine? Protestantism is a helluva drug. Guess what, Dorothy and Joyce own their own bodies, they are allowed to do with them what they like, they haven’t destroyed their virtue or their honour, they realised they loved one another and kissed each other over it. Whether they’d kissed or not, this would have deeply hurt their boyfriends, but are we saying that Joyce and Dorothy could have spent a chaste night watching cartoons in bed together but with the full knowledge of their feelings but no kissing about it, and that would not have also been judged this way?
Exactly right.
I would actually consider it the reverse. The idea that ‘as long as there’s no penetration, it doesn’t count’ feels like a rather rigid way. it is cheating if you’re crossing the boundaries set by the relationship. There’s absolutely relationships where kissing and cuddling a third party would be a-okay, but Joe and Joyce aren’t that. (For that matter, there are relationships where full on sex with a third party isn’t cheating, but again, Joe and Joyce aren’t that)
And yes, if they spent the night watching cartoons without crossing those lines, obviously there would still be issues, but it wouldn’t have been cheating. Honestly, the distance they have gone, I don’t think it would make much difference to the hurt it would cause Joe if they’d gone ahead and gone all the way.
Really? Literally every community I’ve been in, including the queer ones, has been the opposite of that — romantic kissing was DEFINITELY cheating, and demonstrating intent to cheat (“leaving your wedding ring in your hotel room to go to the bar”) was treated as “intent to cheat”.
And how many have been online in the last 10 years? Grew up in the 80s and 90s, it was a common thing for people to row with spouses over getting drunk and kissing someone else but nobody ever called it cheating, they called it being inconsiderate to their partner. See the line from Mr Brightside, “It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss” – that’s what people would say. That was the logic held before internet babies who’d never been physical with more than one person in their lives got hold of the concept of cheating. It reminds me a lot of when I came out as bi at 17 and my boomer mother took me to the side and told me not to say that because it made people assume I had had sex with women.
That isn’t to say kissing doesn’t mean anything, it is just that we used to operate on levels of severity, nuance, and context, and in the internet era now suddenly entire factions just want black and white reductivism to satisfy their point of view? But again, the kissing is the symptom of the actual issue, and it ends up getting used as an excuse to attack two people for realising feelings for one another at an inopportune time. Some people are that way, and what do you think should be done about it? It feels like this conversation always boils down to couched tones of whether punitive action must be taken, and if so how much. Sure, it isn’t illegal, but should their whole friend circle abandon them? Should their relationship, which could last 70 years, be doomed because they kissed before they broke up with their boyfriends? Life goes on. Yeah this can smart for years, I obsessively hated my best friend for plotting to get with my boyfriend before he dumped me. I wouldn’t talk to her for 5 months, and when I did talk to her *she* blamed *me* for moving away for the summer because I knew they were going to get together. They probably kissed, and even if they didn’t she was sending him soppy romantic emails about how right it felt to be with him, that was a year and a half relationship we had had. But does that render their kids invalid? Their marriage? Does that render the last 22 years that they’ve been together invalid? It does not, because they did actually love one another that much, and what I was angry about I would have been angry about even if they’d been completely platonic then got together. Case in point, I left a shitty ex because he was controlling and emotionally withdrawn. I got with a coworker a few weeks later, at the time I broke up with him the co-worker and I barely even talked, leaving him gave me more time to spend with other people and I found out said coworker and I had chemistry, I was with shitty ex for 8 months and the subsequent one for 2 years, but shitty ex probably still to this day believes I cheated on him with the next one, I didn’t even tell him until we had been together for three months, but for him it was like “only” three months.
People are angry and hurt because you don’t love them, or because you love someone more. I have been legitimately cheated on in the sense of my first husband actually having sex with people that were not me while we were together, he hid it for a year and a half. -that- drove me crazy and I tried to get over it, but it ended up being the reason we divorced in the end, even after 8 years of trying to work it through and rebuild trust. Again, he thinks I must have left him for someone else. The person I went to after him is my current husband, we have been together substantially longer than any other relationship I have been in, and I have had two substantial crushes on other people while with him, and I have been able to talk it through with him both times, and we are still monogamous, with the option for polyamory if anything ever worked out that way. The transparency around feelings for someone else is key, but make no mistake! it will still hurt someone, and it is the core of that hurt – not kisses.
Sorry, I’ll be clear: I am discussing the college communities I was in during the 1990s and early 2000s. I am an Old, and not discussing internet prudery.
This is such a weird take.
For one thing, completely misinterpreting the point of the “It was only a kiss” line in the Mr. Brightside song.
I like the combination of “kissing isn’t cheating” with “I wouldn’t talk to her for 5 months, …They probably kissed, and even if they didn’t she was sending him soppy romantic emails about how right it felt to be with him”
Like, are we just arguing about the labels here? It would be reasonable for Joe to mad at her for months, but not to call it cheating?
It seems like the actual argument is one for nuance, but also one where we rant about the youths and their moral black-and-white-ness.
None of which seems to be in much evidence in the actual conversation, aside from like one person who’s totally adamant that kissing isn’t cheating at all.
I’m so glad for this comment. Yes, Joyce and Dorothy are upsetting to us, the audience, who saw how Joe and Joyce made one another grow as people. However, Dorothy and Joyce are into to one another. I’m not even sure how long Joyce and Joe have been together in their version of time- it can’t be THAT long. And again. NO ONE IS SAYING CHEATING IS COOL, but with a lot of context I am way less disappointed in both Joyce and Dorothy.
Sarah can sit down though. I love Sarah, but she isn’t the arbitor of all that is “right”.
I dunno how to phrase this more friendly but… It sincerely does not take an emotionally empathetic genius to realize what a sincerely shitty thing it is to cheat on someone. Especially since their reasoning was “Ugh today was so long we have to tell them tomorrow” and then spends the night snuggling and celebrating the relationship.
Joyce accepted a new, moderately expensive gift from her boyfriend – the first gift he has really given her – a guy with serious trust issues who is trying his best to be a good person… And Joyce blows him then goes right back to emotionally and physically cheating with Dorothy.
Sorry not sorry: They deserve to hear this and more.
In particular, this is the moment that spikes the “it’s only been a few hours!” argument for me.
There was time for Joyce to go, accept a gift, engage in physical relationship actions, and then go back to sleep all cuddled/spooned up with her new secret lover.
THANK YOU! Finally someone in here speaking sense!
Oh, thank God, some people are finally being reasonable about things. I’d also add that Sarah is not taking some sort of principled stand against cheating. She specifically says it’s wrong because Joe is good. Presumably if her opinion of Joe hadn’t changed, she wouldn’t give a shit. Notably she has nothing to say about Walky.
To be fair, she started with this is wrong, and started talking about how good Joe was after Joyce used the excuse “You don’t even like Joe.” She was directly refuting Joyce’s “You don’t like Joe” excuse.
Also, she obviously has higher standards for Joyce than she does for Dorothy.
She doesn’t even come out really grandstanding or chastising or anything, she basically just says “I thought better of you.”
There have been a lot of rationalizations for Joyce’s behavior:
– They were overcome by passion
– There wasn’t a formal monogamy agreement
– She hasn’t been with Joe that long
– Joe will get over it eventually
– It’s worth it for the OTP
– Joe could be open to poly and that would make it okay
– Its okay for her to be “messy”
– You don’t like it because you’re a homophobe
One thing to keep in mind is that some people are bringing up reasons why they understand Joyce/Dorothy’s actions thus far because (insert reason here), but that “I get it” isn’t the same as “that is okay”.
I’m personally in the camp of “they were overcome by passion and extreme events” and “they’re teenagers, its entirely understandable that they’re fucking shit up here”. But they really should address the whole “Boyfriends” thing before things go too much further.
You know, let’s imagine they hadn’t already kissed, had in fact done nothing, just found out that they’re in love with each other.
Surely in that case, they would have done nothing wrong?
Let’s say they go to break up with the boyfriends next. Would the boyfriends be much less hurt? Would Becky be?
Of course this is what they should do!
But the hurt they’re going to cause is going to happen anyway, and it’s not coming from the kisses. Because realising you’re in love with someone else and ending your relationship over that hurts the other person even while you’re not doing anything wrong.
Oh you literally just said what I did but before I did, oops! But 100000% absolutely, people act like it’s the kissing but the kissing is just a physical manifestation of the feelings that would hurt their boyfriends and end their established relationships anyway.
Also, this literally happens all the time! It is ugly and messy, but especially in your teens you have A Person you decided to try because they seemed really into you, and then you found you weren’t really that into them. Maybe that can go like Walky where you don’t actually accept the affections of another person but instead keep trying at something you’re just not that into until the other person gives up on you, or that can happen that you get smacked in the face by the depth of your romantic bond with another person you loved deeply as a friend, that obliterates your reason and impulse control. None of these kids have fully formed brains yet, it’s so damned bizarre to insist that they are ruined or criminal for… Common teenage behaviour that may hurt some people’s feelings, but is still fully legal within the scope of modern laws.
No, I think the kissing adds a whole different layer of hurt.
Your partner falling for someone else is painful, but if they talk to you first, that at least communicates that despite everything else they still respect you and the relationship. It also would have actually been a route where polyamory could have been a serious possibility.
Being deceived by your partner hurts. Having your partner betray your shared expectations for the relationship hurts. Breaking up hurts too, if it comes to that, but not for the same reasons.
See, and I think the expectations for the relationship are being broken by your partner falling in love with someone else, not the kiss.
And sure, it hurts more if they don’t tell you for a long time, but can we remember that it has been less than 24h?
(Frankly, I think it’d be totally fair for Joyce and Dorothy to have a bit of a think about this, calmly, before doing anything. Separately.)
You know when would have been a good time to think about it calmly?
Last night when they decided to sleep together.
Joyce KNOWS Joe has major hang ups about infidelity. Joyce KNOWS Joe is a good person and has always been kind and patient with her. Joyce decided that respecting Joe was less important than her immediate hormonal desires.
That’s fucked up, and it needs to be called out for what it is. Sarah is being a good friend by refusing to let Joyce get away with this without knowing how badly she fucked up.
First of all, it isn’t either or. Joyce telling Joe that she has fallen for Dorothy doesn’t mean that Joyce doesn’t still love Joe. That was why I mentioned the polyibility (I’ll keep using this pun until it catches on). Joyce could talk to Joe and tell him “I’ve developed feeling for Dorothy, and I would like to explore them”.
Maybe that means the end of the relationship (which hurts), maybe it doesn’t. But it starts from a foundation of respect and honesty, which I think we can agree we all want in our relationships.
Second, can we agree that there are multiple degrees to which a partner can break your expectations? That falling for someone else is generally less of a violation than kissing someone else, which is generally less of a violation than having sex with someone else, etc…
Joyce did hurtful things already. She could have made less hurtful decisions but she didn’t. She has the potential to keep doing hurtful things or to change course.
Yes, the cheating could have been worse but it also could have been better. Ideally it would have been non-existant. And sure there would potentially be hurt regardless, but that doesn’t mean it would be an equal amount.
If Joyce keeps deceiving Joe for another day, I think it will hurt more than if she told him now. If she has sex with Dorothy (again), I think it will hurt Joe more if she does it before telling him vs after.
Your comments for some reason strike me as either someone very young, or someone not very experienced in real relationships, or both.
Because I promise you, the physical act of cheating is much worse than simply falling in love with someone else. There are degrees of severity. Sleeping with someone is worse than kissing someone, kissing someone is worse than emotionally cheating, etc etc. Like… that should be a no brainer.
Sure, it hurts when someone you love rejects you. It hurts worse when you already had a relationship with them, but it hurts even more when they betray your trust on top of that.
Like… from a storytelling perspective alone. We know Joe by now. We know his hangups and his insecurities. Can you honestly say that he’d wont take Joyce physically and emotionally cheating on him worse than he would have taken a simple “Actually, I just realized I’m in love with Dorothy, I’m going to date her instead.”
Given the second, I’m 100% sure he would have been hurt by the rejection, but ultimately happy for her at the same time. The cheating though, is not going to go over well.
I’m not one to talk of “emotional affairs” much, but even if they had remained completely chaste, sleeping in the same bed under the blanket Joe bought for Joyce that day would still absolutely be crossing a line for me.
My exposure to poly folks has taught me that love is not a limited resource. A person with 2 partners doesn’t love each one half as much as a monogamous person loves their spouse. But time and attention are still limited. Joyce has already started disregarding Joe’s feelings and needs in their relationship because she’s with Dotty. That’s the trouble.
Poly relationships are hard work and take a certain kind of personality to do well, I think. There’s a reason poly relationships often get so messy and end in so much heartbreak.
I’ve known several poly relationships IRL and online, and I’ve only seen one long term successful one. The rest all ended in fire and drama.
See, I think in particular that Joe would have understood a “I’m sorry, Joe, but I’ve had an epiphany and I think I do want to date Dorothy instead”, he might as well have directly asked her if that was the case when she got back from drinking with Dorothy.
For sure. Joe would have been hurt by the rejection, but he would have been happy for her too.
This turn of events instead is going to destroy him.
I’d like to hope it’s going to piss him off instead.
I just reread the whole comic over the past three days, and I think Joyce and Dorothy are getting a little too much hate. I’m not saying they’ve done nothing wrong, but if you look at the comic as a whole, people (in-universe) have been hinting Joyce and Dorothy were a thing since about their second week on campus. The only part of this situation that goes back further is Sarah’s long-standing dislike of Joe, which she just got over yesterday in comic time.
When you read it straight through, you realize Joyce and Joe have only just started dating, and Dorothy getting back with Walky is only days old. Because the comic updates daily, it can feel like these couples have been together for a while, but this is not a long-term, committed situation. Joe has not even been “reformed” for very long, maybe three weeks in comic time at best.
Is what Joyce and Dorothy are doing a little crappy? Sure. But a massive betrayal? Hardly. Joe was simply there when Joyce finally dropped her no-masturbation rule, got a big boost in sex drive, and wanted to act on it. He was sweet, but even as late as the paper-sorting scene, he almost left with someone else. So yes, Dorothy and Joyce should have told their partners quickly. But I do not see how Joe or Walky can claim they were in serious relationships at the time, since they had both just started redating.
I think the longest tenured relationship in the comment at this point is Grace/Sierra/Mandy.
*comic. I should never have given up coffee
ooof why give up your blood, why allow hemoglobin to enter your coffee viens
They have the advantage of being background characters most of the time.
I mean it is recent in the romantic relationship, but they have been close friends for months. Joe is not some stranger that she just met, and Joyce is betraying Joe regardless of how old the relationship is.
But the main thing isn’t “These are the two most evil people ever”. Instead it is how a lot of people don’t like cheating being framed as romantic. Willis chose to make the kiss a wedding scene, which seems at odds with the fact that it was a selfish and uncaring decision.
We are like 5 months into the first semester, and Joyce *hated* Joe for at least the entire pre-timeskip era of it. She still wasn’t super fond of him when the timeskip ended, which was the same month the comic is still set in, January. I really don’t see how they can be “close friends for months”, there is no time for that in actual comic time
She didn’t hate him. He was arguably one of her closrst confidants when she was texting him about her family situation and he never gave anything but good honest advice there (“your parebts are less likely to have a fight in public”)
There’s also that even when Joyce was hurt by his behavior, she was stil really physically attracted to him. One of the bits I’m saddest to lose is Joyce going off into a mild fugue state as she imagines climbing Joe like a mountain.
You need to go back and re-read — Joe and Joyce’s friendship started well before the timeskip.
Yes. They certainly made a mess of things. No doubt of that.
i kinda tried to hint at this idea the other day but man i did not lay it out as well as you have
I think it’s more like Joyce feels like “But it’s Dorothy!”
Yeah, now that we’re not in the shadow of the protest and we’re starting to see other invested characters react to it I’m a lot less worried than I was about this plotline.
Remains to be seen how Joyce and Dorothy react to what Sarah just said to them, but yeah, I’m hoping they’ll do the right thing, sooner rather than later, and stop with the inane shenanigans.
No, no, this is Inane Shenanigans: The Webcomic.
(Also superheroes, bad parents, and sometimes Autism. But still.)
The comic is called Dumbing of Age, so I’m pretty sure bad decisions are going to continue.
I was more just talking about the uncertainty that comes when a story flips the board like this, especially in a chapter that also featured a pretty messy execution of a difficult touchy subject.
I don’t know where this is going, there’s a lot of potential outcomes here, but I am a lot more confident that regardless of which one happens it’s going to feel earned and emotionally plausible.
damn same here Sarah, just returned from a 3 hour hike
I’ll say, was not expecting a birthday strip this relatable
XD @-@
for reals tho, ow
Happy Birthday! Sorry about your muscles, but glad you got to be out in nature on your birthday. I hope it was revivifying.
Happy birthday
HAPPY BIRTHDAY NGPZ!!!!! 🎂🎈🎈🎁
I don’t normally bother saying happy birthday to commenters, but you’re always so sweet when it’s someone else’s birthday that I wanted to make sure I said something nice to you!
I hope you had an awesome time on your hike and that you get lots of time with friends and loved ones!!
another year added to the belt! wish you many more!
awe thanksies ^-^
yee im heading out for hot wings and watermelon cocktails
my only regret is that can sometimes make me sneezy but oh well
damn you oriental gene pool! XD
Happy birthday!
Hope your birthday’s a happy one! 🎂 🍿 🌭
Happy birthday ❤️
That was far calmer, and said better than I was expecting; is Sarah’s aching body somehow calming her down, or is she just too angry at the pain to focus on stuff?
I think it’s because she’s altogether just… disappointed. And the best way to handle that is to make it clear that she is, and why, and to move on. What happens now is up to Joyce and Dorothy.
Fair point; while seeing Joyce, and Dorothy, being cute makes me happy, I wish they had told their boyfriends first. The best thing they could do would be to go to Joe, and Walky, and tell them the truth. Then they can apologize, which may or may not matter to Joe, and Walky, and then they can go back to kissing, spooning, boob pressing against back, etc,
100% agreed!
Granted, I imagine getting a front row seat to the effects this has on others is going to be a bit of a buzzkill. Here’s how I imagine that little talk going…
“You wanna make out?”
“Honestly? Not really. Between the pain and disappointment in Sarah’s eyes and [whatever happens with Joe and Walky], not really in the mood.”
I like your name
Thanks! I read it as a pun years ago and am still lightly chuckling about it.
There comes a point when anger just turns into raw disappointment. its like a switch gets flipped and you go from this “how could you be this dumb?!”stage, to a sort of weird acceptance. and the anger just dissipates and you feel exhausted and just… done. With the entire situation.
Ironically accurate description of how I often feel reading this comment section.
People in this comment section are legit insane.
I have to assume there’s a lot of very idealistic 15 year olds commenting, and I just hold that hope out because otherwise we go insane.
Some people just don’t get how betrayal is a shitty thing to do to a friend and have to rationalize why it’s OK.
Ya know, like Joyce is doing.
But if it was just a LITTLE betrayal, after a meticulously counted few days of a relationship, and we ignore the building friendship for months, carry the one… that adds up to OK, right?
So, question for any superfans and/or people with great memories, have we seen Sarah and Dorothy interact much outside the larger context of them living close to each other and being in the general friend group that encompasses like 70% of the cast? Just curious because while I know from today’s comic that Sarah is having to reevaluate her opinion of Joyce, I’m wondering if she has much an opinion on Dorothy at all? (I’d certainly imagine not a good one after today)
I didn’t really mean for this comment to go here but I guess when I refreshed the page it saved the place my comment was going to in addition to the comment itself? Oh well…
They generally don’t interact but Sarah once shared her opinion on Dorothy to Amazi-girl!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/shakedown/
I wanna say there’s maybe one more instance where Dorothy was like “omg I’m the worst ever” and Sarah was like “dorothy c’mon no you aren’t” but it’s hard to tell for sure if that was Dorothy or Joyce.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/wrong/ Here’s the other instance I was thinking of
I like this Sarah. Her capacity not to trust people is admirable.
I would like to add this to the actually-Sarah-appreciates-Dorothy pile: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/02-its-the-love-i-havent-got/recommendation/
That strip got me here https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/02-its-the-love-i-havent-got/briscoelobby/
And I will say that, although I didn’t notice it when I first read it, that is, in fact, a really nice dress. I love the pattern.
That dress does look really lovely on Carla.
Can we get back to Carla? Carla/Charlie is a relationship I would actually like to be seeing right now.
I think there’s a limited amount of angry you can be about your friend cheating on a one month old relationship with someone you didn’t even really like especially when the cheating boiled down to “cuddling” and the duration of said cheating is “8 hours”.
This is not like they’re breaking up a five year long engagement and wedding plans here.
Weirdly, a month is actually overstating it. I think someone worked out that the laundry incident was less than two weeks ago and that happened before Joe and Joyce got together.
10 days. The relationship has lasted 10 days. (Dorothy & Walky less).
Can concur, Joe and Joyce have been together for 10 days and Dorothy and Walky, 5 days.
i think if someone said that to me in real life i would shrivel up and die right there
No kidding. That last line in the second panel is even more brutal than I was expecting.
I think I’m right where Sarah is right now- looking back on past storylines where Joyce was dishonest or made selfish decisions based entirely on “feel good” emotions about what she wanted to be true, and realizing maybe she is just really not that good of a person and never has been, and I’ve let her being the protagonist cloud my judgement from recognizing what a creep she can be.
see? sarah’s just grumpy because she’s in painJoyce can excuse being down to her panties, it’s her bed; Dorothy, not so much.
sleeping in jeans isn’t exactly comfortable
Depends on the jeans, in my experience. There are some higher-end ones that can be maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad comfy.
…you sure you’re not thinking of pajama jeans?
I mean… do those not count as jeans? XD
The primary reason to skip leg day forever.
Still don’t like this plot.
Still think it destroyed several years of character grown and was just done for drama
But at least Sarah is bringing truth to the situation.
That’s super valid, sorry you’re not having a good time.
I mean from their perspective its just been a semester and a half. Plus I think the character growth was assumed when in this particular instance it has been a character trait that hasn’t changed.
Yeah like I think the problem isn’t necessarily growth related, but amthe heavily decompressed storytelling in DoA
Like Yoto once remarked, “it’s like the comic goes both too fast and too slow”
Pacing is kind of weird, storytelling-wise, because we’ve known this version of these characters for fifteen years but they’ve only known each other a few months.
Destroying the status quo and plot trajectory for drama is clearly a feature and not a bug.
It’s a big swing and also kind of a bummer, I was also not particularly stoked at first, so I get it, but I’m warming up to it. I think I see the vision.
According to Willis’s comments on the Patreon pages, he didn’t intend for the two of them to kiss until he was writing that scene and felt it was basically a proposal. So it feels a bit off to call it a vision. One of the things I’ve liked about this comic is the long term planning but this change threw away a lot of plans.
I’m kind of curious where people who are in it for the drama would draw the line. There are lots of horrible things the characters could do that would be dramatic. There are lots of horrible things Willis could throw at them. Is all drama enjoyable?
From some things I’ve scene mentioned, would these be enjoyable to the people who love the current drama?
– Walky is crushed by Dorothy cheating on him and goes through a misogynistic, incel phase.
– Becky gets mad at Joyce for dating Dorothy and not her, inadvertently revealing to Dina that she was always Becky’s second choice. Becky and Dina have a messy angry break up.
– Amber is identified by the police and arrested for Amazigirl’s actions during the protest.
– Dorothy and Joyce get expelled from the University for their visible part in the protest.
– Ruth starts regretting breaking up with Jennifer. Jennifer feels conflicted, but the whole mess ends up blowing up Jennifer and Alice’s relationship.
Would people enjoy this sort of drama?
I’m fine with all of those to varying degrees, yeah. I’ll go through in a little more detail:
– We’ve already had misogynistic and incel plotlines (and another is starting up right now) so that’s already drama people accept in the comic.
– We’ve already had Becky getting mad at Joyce for changing religions, I think this would be similar. I do like the idea of there being serious drama between Becky and Dina because there just isn’t much happening between them at the moment imo.
– I’d be down to read this, but it’s probably the one I’m least interested in. I think it would fundamentally be the “death” of her character in the comic, which would drop a lot of threads that Willis has been working on. I would be interested in seeing how they worked that out.
– This one would take the protagonist of a college drama comic out of the college. That just seems like a bad plan for the longevity of the comic. If Willis made it work, swapped protags or something, then I’d be good with that one too, yeah
– Not only would I be happy with this one, I really REALLY hope it happens. Especially if Ruth and Alice got together as a result and Jennifer is just sitting there like “WELL I’M NOT INTO GIRLS ANYWAY SO NYEH” (a lie). That would bring me joy.
This situation is not even close to the heights of drama this comic has achieved up to this point. This comic has had people actually kidnapped by Amber’s abusive mob-adjacent father. This is the same comic where Becky’s father showed up on campus with a gun to abduct his daughter. Amber has been splitting for months and is only now beginning to deal with her outbursts of violent rage. Billie and Ruth literally entered a suicide pact and nearly mutually drank themselves to death. Mike fell three stories onto his head and literally died trying to take Blaine with him in an attempted murder-suicide that he hoped would make up for his sustained abuse of Amber.
I am completely down for some light relationship drama incited by cheating. I think that would be fun and flirty actually.
1. To answer your question: yes.
People would enjoy this. Not all people (I mean, I am people too), but a number of people.
2. It doesn’t even sound completely unrealistic.
Sorry, accidentally flagged your comment. Was trying to reply.
In that case I can get down with that. I can support the whole “set everything on fire, so we can watch it burn” perspective.
My aim was to present an array of realistic scenarios, so I am glad they seemed possible.
the only way #4 makes any sense is that is how he ends the strip.
i would say as someone firmly in the “i’m just hear to read comics/ther are fucking teenagers with undeveloped(both biologically and emotionally) undeveloped brains and they can make mistakes we all do, lets see how they react before deciding they are minions of belphregor” camps, that those who are in it for drama are very unlikely to have a line to draw, they want drama, regardless of characters involved. i’d really say for many of them it would take truely left field unexplainable/inexplicable events to cause them to say line has been crossed (like in tomorrows strip and all strips going forward the great gazoo was suddenly there providing commentary, or we suddenly have a revelation like dorothy is somehow joyces half sister that her father had out of wedlock, or we find out the whole thing is actually taking place in Darkcity). i said a few weeks ago about how i really don’t like drama inserted for no other reason than to fill a cliche/trope quota (like adding a character who for no reason other than the main pairing is a pairing to cause strife (i have read way to many romance mangas that after the 2 mains (who in many of them have been pining after each other/at least known for many years, get together and are establishing what looks to be a very good relationship with good communication and you add a transfer student with less than 0 history involving either main and they somehow cause the mains to loose their communication skills, and even though the mains have no interest or attraction to this new person it somehow becomes a near relationship destroying event, like new person goes main 1 is hot i want to date them, main 1 goes i am sorry i have no interest in dating you, i love main 2, tells main 2 hey the new kid asked me out and i refused them, main 2 goes well i dont’ blame them you are awesome, and yet you have 30 chapters of them having drama because the writer it like well if they keep communicating in this perfectly natural manor that i have established they do, then i’ve introduced this character for no reason so i better have one of the mains become an idiot so this character has purpose and i don’t know how to write drama in a romance that isn’t a love triangle.
i am not against love triangles at all, have read many a romance with triangle and enjoyed them, usually cause the 3rd party exhists in the story beyond being a 3rd wheel, like they are a child hood friend who moved away. i know it is a cliche but at least their is established reason for conflict beyond new kid makes me dumb by exhisting so there can be drama. or the new kid fits a fetish for one of the mains that the other main doesn’t, but for some dumbass reason soooo goddamn many (i’d say 55% of manga i have read that give focus to a OTP as a major plot point (i am talking shonen shojo seinen josei youi yuri fantasy mecha historical spaceopera you name it. i am a voracious manga reader nad have probably stopped reading 200-300 because of stupid goddamn poorly written third wheel subplots)
Agree. Joe was becoming one of my favorite characters seeing his personal growth. But I guess he’s not allowed to have nice things because he used to be a pig? Seriously though, if this is the arc that makes him backslide into the pigpen…
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Not even that much of a reason. Maggie said “your comic needs even more dumb kids making bad decisions” and Willis said “you’re right!”
I don’t know, I think if Joyce has been his motivation to become a better person up until now, if she’s been the support he’s built all his personal improvement around, it seems like the next step for him is to take that pillar away and see how he moves forward from there.
He’s not entitled to nice things from stopping being a pig. It’s a huge bummer, but he made himself emotional vulnerable, and that comes with the risk of this. On the other hand, it does feel like his whole experience with Joyce has been just turned into a test of character.
*word order: been turned into just a test of character.
that, or “if Joyce has just been turned into a test of character”.
I don’t think “Joe was a pig so he can’t have nice things” was at all any part of the motivation here.
However I do want to state: No, he’s not entitled to Joyce as a trophy for being a good boy.
Equally, I’m sure he’ll get another girlfriend (or boyfriend, or other partner, if Willis answers prayers) soon enough. Joyce is not the only girl on earth, and partners are not the only way to get a good thing (he has lots of new friends and women who don’t think of him as a predator anymore!)
+500
Probably too late to say, but worth saying regardless I think. A couple people interpreted what I was saying was “Joe deserves/earned/is entitled to Joyce” because I implied he should have nice things. While I’ll admit the wording was maybe callous, I can assure that that was not the heart of what I was saying, nor do I condone in any way that type of mentality.
To clarify, I’d love to see Joe be rewarded for his character growth in literally any way; tangibly, psychologically, emotionally… it absolutely does not need to be a female. Furthermore, based on how everything has been going, his “reward” should not be him keeping Joyce, that’s just yucky on so many different levels and angles. I really like the possibility of what others have said in him becoming more self-actualized, affirming the validity of his change, by overcoming the easy (for him) temptation of him backsliding. I’d love to see a Joe that is not simply defined by the women he’s around, whether he’s dating them or sleeping with them.
Basically, I’d love to just see a Jacob 2.0 😂 If that makes me a boring paladin, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but his positive growth just cannot all be a sham in the vain hope of “winning” Joyce, I truly hope it has roots in something real within himself.
Hopefully Joyce and Dorothy learn some things from this, and it doesn’t completely destroy their friend group. But yeah I also don’t like this story arc.
I mean, not really? Both Joyce and Dorothy have been growing in a “nothing matters”, “he’ll is not real” way, Dorothy has been pretty self destructive lately looking for anything to ground her even her ex that not quite fits with her anymore (and let’s not forget, she also flirt with him while he was in a relationship), wanting to allow herself to be selfish.
Joyce has been growing in a direction were she wants to liberate herself from the persone she was with mix results, she flirting with someone in a relationship is not new, she justifying things in the name of true love isn’t either, and not fully grasping why those outside the relationship would care (not understanding that Sarah is loyal to her friends INCLUDING Joe and Walky, not remembering that Sarah’s been cheated on before, or that Sarah as grumpy as she appears holds a very strong integrity).
Over all this isn’t completely out of character from them at this point in time, and it’s actually a good way to put them back on track character growth wise IF they actually learn from this.
Still sucks though…
This is 100% in-character for Dorothy when you recall that she was a villain in the Walkyverse for very similar reasons.
And like… Walkyverse Joyce murdered her own opposite-alignment clone because her clone was sexually uninhibited and Joyce couldn’t emotionally deal with it. At the climax of It’s Walky, Joyce and Walky ran away from the big climactic battle to finally go have sex for the first time and panels of Joyce losing her virginity were interspersed with her friends being murdered. And look at how Dumbiverse Joyce dealt with her attraction to Jacob! It’s well established that when Joyce’s own sexuality is on the line, she always chooses her own comfort over everyone else.
my watsonian interpretation is that Joyce doesn’t have any practice with self-governing, because previously her only faculty for resisting temptation was some flavor of God Will Send You To Hell If You Look At Butts and she doesn’t have that any more
This! This is what i was trying to put into words!
Joyce has lost what rail her in and is yet to have consequences for any “bad behavior” she formerly condemn!
well there’s that, and there’s the fact that up until now, her experience with general godlessness has been a largely adversarial one; it’s all people she thought she could trust Going Bugfuck Nuts For The Lord, or other people who still blame her for her previous worldview (roz)
no practice defending against things that don’t feel like a fight, you see?
I think what some of us are talking about is that we saw Joyce’s self-reflection after the Jacob thing as character growth and a reason she wouldn’t do the same again.
Also that this is worse in some ways, since it directly hurts someone she cares about rather than a Raidah – who she barely knows and has reasons to dislike.
Much better than someone trying to kill some character, right?
Yeah, working out an area you usually don’t will hurt the next day!
And. Yeah. Painful talk.
Lately, Joyce’s working out an area she usually doesn’t, too — specifically, acting on two attractions at once.
Definitely hurting the next day.
I take it this will not be the last “I thought I knew you” speech Joyce will be hearing.
I’d be disappointed if it was!
I hope it will be. All the self-righteousness gets tedious real fast.
Stop being wrong
Damn….yeah that was worth the wait. I don’t think anyones reaction is gonna compare to this
Sarah’s not mad, just disappointed. Love Dorothy and Joyce’s subtle expressions in panel 3.
As someone who has spent the last month working out regularly and seriously as in at least an hour every time at least 3 days a week doing cardio and exercise splits taught to me by a professional trainer, if you can get through like the first week or two of DOMS it gets a lot easier. Like your muscles just adapt to it. They resign themselves to “I guess this is what we’re doing now.” and the soreness is a lot more manageable. It’s also part of what makes starting a workout so hard apparently.
/continuing to nod with deep satisfaction
Poor Sarah…
Damn Sarah… that wasn’t even directed at me and it still stung.
It’s what I’ve been saying about Joyce’s actions during the whole thing, and it still stung anyway.
Unrelated, but is there like, some kinda DoA discord or something? Been commenting here for a couple days now, and some of y’all are pretty based.
If there is, I’m not on it — I have too many discords as it is.
The discord got a mention, but it sounds like it’s really vitriolic over there and I have no interest in More Vitriol, Without Mods.
There is, but they’re dickheads with no sense of whimsy or humor.
Well that’s no good, I love and need both of those things!
The only anecdote I specifically remember right now was me joking about disguising a real gun as a Power Rangers cosplay prop and taking it to a convention and that being a remotely plausible thing to do, and the response was “Guns are deadly serious and not to be joked about under any circumstances. You were definitely serious about wanting to do that in real life and now you’re backpedaling when you say otherwise.”
Just completely braindead corn syrup behavior. They’re genuinely just looking for anything at all to be upset about in every possible context.
Permission to borrow the phrase “corn syrup behavior” because I’ve never heard that before but now would dearly love to find a way to incorporate it into a sentence. Even with it being completely novel to me, it communicates what you mean.
Honestly though, the most charitable assumption is that folks like that somehow get off on flame wars. Starting arguments they know are ridiculous because they enjoy seeing others get upset. Never understood the appeal/humor in that.
Way more fun to make people laugh than to laugh at them.
Any time I use a weird phrase like “corn syrup behavior”, that’s a freebie. Sometimes I just connect words in ways that feel right.
Dorothy and Joyce have no defense to what Sarah said.
They don’t need a defense. It’s not her business.
How old is Sarah? Was she super into thigh exercise when she was between the ages of 1-2?
Pretty sure 20, so the joke is that she’s literally never exercised those muscles.
Sarah’s 20th and Dina’s 19th birthday were covered in Birthday Pursuit.
Okay so Sarah has spoken her truth to Joyce. Next up; Beckers.
Oh… oh no… I hadn’t even thought of that. I can’t imagine Becky is going to take too kindly on her oldest friend pulling something so non-kosher. Maybe some barb about “we were raised to think without church we’d become amoral. Don’t know why you had to go and prove them right.”
Good ol’ Joyce, just speedrunning the identity stereotypes.
oh my god that’s exactly what she’s gonna say, isn’t it? and it’s fucking brutal. ow.
Idk about that, I’m just remembering how Joyce was Becky’s first huge girl crush. And how much she “play” resents Dorothy. Maybe there’ll be a Christian upbringing angle there, but it’s gonna be a way more personal explosion I reckon.
Certainly possible, but I really do think that, at this point, Becky is genuinely happy with Dina. That’s just my read, at least.
Oh I think she’s happy with Dina, sure. But at the end of the day she fled her old school (and kinda her old life) solely due to how in love with Joyce she was, and was crushed when Joyce did not reciprocate those feelings. Also iirc, there have been several points where she’s hinted that those feelings have never gone away 100%. Now she’s gonna know that it’s not that Joyce was straight that their relationship didn’t happen, just that Joyce didn’t want to be with her. That’s gonna make some Big Feelings happen, no matter how happy she is in her current relationship.
I thought she fled her old school because she was caught being intimate/romantic with her roommate and got kicked out, causing her to flee to Joyce both because crush, but also because “only safe person in Becky’s life”
Becky isgenuinely happy with Dina.
Unfortunately, she will definitely fuck that up.
There is maybe potential for that, but it seems like it would have serious repercussions for Becky/Dina, and also Becky wouldn’t really have a leg to stand on.
If Becky started chewing Joyce out because “You wouldn’t date me, but you’re willing to date Dorothy” she would be an asshole for several reasons. First she would be acting entitled to a romantic relationship with Joyce. Second she would be completely disregarding the value of her relationship with Dina.
Becky being jealous and shitty, blowing up her relationship with Dina, would certainly be dramatic. I suppose that might make some people happy.
I do agree with you on a fundamental level, but I also think it’d be within Becky’s character to react in that way. Trigger react today, apologies and smiles tomorrow.
I think Dina would be willing to accept that it was just Becky’s instinctive reaction, and forgive her accordingly… but it would likely make things difficult between them for a while, at least (if only because Becky likely wouldn’t forgive herself so easily; besides, she’s been insecure in the relationship before, though that was about Dina not experiencing the same kind of sexual attraction she did).
Still, I’m worried; they’re my favourite couple in the comic and I don’t want them breaking up. Does this make me a hypocrite, given how eager I’ve been for Joyce’s relationship chaos?
Well, first: as I’ve mentioned in earlier comments, I want the mess to bring about happiness, despite the difficulties. And second: yes.
I think it’ll be personal in the sense that Becky thought better of Joyce than this, but I do not think Becky will frontload any jealousy she’ll feel.
I do think Joyce or Dorothy might accuse her of being motivated by jealousy, because I think the fireworks from that would be spectacular.
I would be amused to see them try, and to see Becky’s response.
Oh daaaaamn I love that. Pure heart love it. you can feel the twist of the knife in it. beautiful.
If she does, that’ll be a 180 change from when she wanted a front row seat with popcorn to Joyce trying to seduce Jacob.
It would also be in character considering she realized what she was doing was wrong and tried to get Joyce to back off, or did you forget that part?
So, she’s twenty herself… the math checks.
Woof. Woof woof woof. Joyce got a real talking to.
Cackling madly at how things are inevitably gonna get even worse from here.
Trash goblins, sickos, I don’t care what you call it, I am locked tf in
Sarah continues to be the best character in the comic despite battling incalculable levels of thigh pain. That’s what we call a fighter, folks.
Hey wait a damn sec this wasn’t supposed to be a reply. The comment box was even at the bottom of the page. What the dink.
WOO THE FIREWORKS ARE SETTING OFF
Also this feels oddly relevant to some drama in my own server like ???
I think it’s been mentioned before (and not to take anything away from the scene), but Dorothy’s and Joyce’s hairstyles look pretty similar.
I wonder if that’s supposed to be something subtle, maybe relating to Joyce’s admiration and/or attraction for Dorothy.
Or if it’s just a coincidence.
In case you don’t know, Dorothy was deliberately designed to look similar to Joyce because of her role in the original universe this comic is technically still the college AU of
Source?
I vaguely remember Willis posting something about Joyce’s bangs changing direction starting on Halloween, and it being because she wants to look more like Dorothy?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/tangled/
Dorothy helped her part her hair to better match Rapunzel and Joyce decided, for very heterosexual reasons obviously, to keep her hair parted the way that Dorothy did it.
oh I know that feel
This is going to be a loooooooong brutal day for these two, isn’t it?
Yes it is. A brutal day of learning from the school of hard (emotional) knocks.
You say that like we’re not going to be on the same day in October. It’s going to be a looooong brutal day for all of us.
Facts XD
I thought Sarah’s ows were emotional pain. Would be intense but amazing.
Hmm. I wonder if the filter that changes “bongo” into “bongo” in the comments also alters it in the alt text. Like, I’m assuming Willis really did write bongo, but I wonder nevertheless
It wouldn’t affect anything but the comments, so yeah they wrote it on purpose.
‘Bongo’ has long ago entered into the zeitgeist of the comic. It’s even appeared in-strip a few times. A lot of people – including the artist – use it intentionally to mean the other.
… is there any reason in particular why they’re replacing an admittedly gendered expletive which otherwise has common usage, with a word that when used as an expletive, is actually extremely offensive, very racist, and a bit of a dogwhistle for certain extremist groups?
I understand feeling like bit** is a worse word than most other swears due to the fact that it’s gendered, but this seems like several steps in the absolute wrong direction. Like, I literally searched for what it means to call someone that, and immediately wished that I hadn’t told Google that I was interesting in knowing about that subject.
Probably because they had no idea that bongo meant anything other than a kind of drum and maybe an antelope.
and an Ocarina of Time boss!
Sarah told them what they need to hear. Now hopefully Joyce and Dorothy do the right thing and break up with their boyfriends properly already.
I think at this point you should accept that’s not gonna happen for a while.
Suppose Willis had kept to the original schedule. Would the end of Joe/Joyce been handled more … gently?
See, I’m kind of interested in this. I’d love to see some kind of Elseworlds or “Beta Version” of how the story was originally going to go. It doesn’t have to be canon, I just think it’d be interesting to see from a creative writing standpoint.
Plus, I bet it will create an entire new subgenre in DoA fanfiction.
Huh, really didn’t bring up the Jacob plot at all. I guess it makes sense given that he’s maybe still a somewhat sore topic? Or Willis is saving that for another character. Maybe Jacob himself? It’s just that the “it’s true love so it’s fine” is the exact same (stupid) argument Joyce had then, too – it’s so relevant!
I still maintain that Sarah should at least be somewhat familiar with this part of Joyce, but I guess the crux is really at “you’d do this to someone you supposedly love/care about” vs. “you’d do this to someone I literally hate”.
Also it is just a classic line to hit. Probably the best way to express disappointment in someone. Up there for sure.
Yeah, it’s both a matter of care, and I mean, Jacob wasn’t Joyce’s boyfriend, but Raidah’s. It’s a bit of a different dynamic than doing it to Joe.
Oh it is, I just think it comes from the same place of Joyce sort of believing fate (true love) will absolve her actions in the eyes of go- I mean, other people. Which Sarah was happy to recognize then & point at a relationship she didn’t care about.
Basically I think she’s being a bit of a hypocrite and I think that’s fun : ) + like, emotionally makes sense.
I think since Sarah has trust issues with people turning on her in the past seeing Joyce do this to someone she cares about and stood up to Sarah for up until yesterday is also triggering an alarm bell in her head.
Sarah isn’t taking a stand on principle here. She’s arguing “Joe is good, so he doesn’t deserve this,” not, “Cheating is bad, so Joe doesn’t deserve this.” Presumably, if she still hated Joe, she’d be perfectly fine with this. Note that she has nothing at all to say about Walky.
She called both Dorothy and Joyce out on not breaking up with their boyfriends. Their talking about Joe because Joyce was arguing that Sarah should be happy she’s turned on Joe and Sarah is reminding Joyce that she should care about the person her actions hurt. Dorothy atleast is looking guilty and not trying to argue.
Well, with Jacob Sarah did eventually change her mind about going through with it. Joyce didn’t change her’s.
I think that Sarah might be drawing a distinction between ‘chasing a guy in a relationship because Joyce’s brain works on romcom rules’ vs ‘cheating on your boyfriend who has been nothing less than good to you in the relationship and who you clearly do have feelings for’. The first one made an early Joyce type of sense (and again, Sarah did try to call it off). The second one is different.
Gosh I hope these two suffer so much. Maybe it’ll get them both to stop being so boring compared to the rest of the cast.
you’re right my guy, nothing bad has happened to either of them in this comic so far. they really have not suffered at all.
Weird ass
That’s a normal thing to say.
So I just want to ensure I got this right:
People cheering on the very amoral circumstances of this whole relationship and the fallout that will occur from it (and like, power to them, have fun sickos!!!) are okay and great and that’s a great interaction.
And me being like “wow I hope the shitty circumstances of this all give them a personality” about two characters I don’t particularly enjoy (and I’ve seen some of y’all say WAY worse about several characters) is crossing the line?????
What was the point of making this up? To upset yourself? Did it work? Did it make you happy? Did it un-fuck the Thanksgiving turkey?
You didn’t say the thing about personality. That wasn’t in your post. You know that. You know you’re lying about what you said. Do you think other people can’t see it anymore? It’s still there, and it says “I hope these two suffer so much”, not “I hope this gives them a personality”. You also know that none of us said anything about a crossed line. You know this. It’s plainly visible. Why are you telling lies about what was said by anyone involved, when it’s all still there and readable? Why do you think everyone is stupid enough to read what you said, read what literally only three people said in response, and think any of us said anything you’re now claiming was said? What’s your goal here, liar?
Sheesh. I just said a comment. I thought it was implied. I’m sorry I said something you didn’t like?
And I just said a reply, that’s how this works. The implication didn’t come through at all. It doesn’t matter if I liked it or not though, that’s a silly thing to apologise for.
To reiterate: Weird. Ass.
A thought- thinking back on the comic two days ago, I bet Sarah is especially disappointed because she gave Joyce a chance to express herself because she started laying into her, and Joyce’s response pissed her off as much as it did me. This would probably have gone differently if Joyce had responded with any remorse or consideration for Joe
*before she started laying in
Yes, how dare Joyce show any emotions that do not conform exactly to other people’s expectations!
I will say that, yes Sarah didn’t seem to understand how impulsive Joyce is (despite seeing many times just how Impulsive she is), but she definitley still knows 90% of who Joyce is, while she still barely knows anything about Joe aside from him suddenly being a nicer guy then she thought. A Mistake does not define a person, despite all this Joyce is still a good person, just one that has had a very hard time over the last few months and tends to let her emotions do the talking more then her brain.
Given not only Joyce’s and Dorothy’s past behavior, but also Sarah’s own past behavior, I think she is reacting worse then she realistically should here. Yeah she is 100% valid in being upset at joyce here, but Sarah herself is not some perfect being who hasn’t made very similar mistakes (or wanted to) in the past. This shouldn’t be all that surprising to her. The only reason she is even upset is because she knows Joe has a soft side now, if it was anybody else she wouldn’t even be scolding Joyce.
I really do hope that Dorothy and Joyce do what needs done within the next few pages, because as much as I love them as a couple, they need to come clean before this actually does become full blown cheating. So far the only Line that has actually been crossed is Kissing, which is a Line that can be forgiven and uncrossed under the right circumstances. Cuddling isn’t cheating unless your naked.
Joe and Walky will both be fine in the long run, thats my belief until proven otherwise. Walky is fully capable of moving on and finding a new partner and probably will within a Week of the break up, like he did the first couple times.
Joe will probably take MAYBE a month tops before he is able to move on from this week or so long relationship and find somebody else. Him and Joyce were still in the Puppy Love phase of their relationship, everything feels intense and highly emotional, and it can hurt bad if the break up happens during that phase, but once the emotions calm down it does not take very long to move on from that pain, because the LOVE that you feel at that stage is not the same as being In Love, its more Infatuation then anything. It takes a lot longer then a week or two for actual love to form.
I would argue that the whole “good person” and “bad person” binary is flawed. It is rooted in punitive morality that considers some people lesser and deserving of suffering.
I think the alternative is aspirational. Goodness/Badness aren’t about which people deserve punishment, rather they are about how we aspire to act, and how we seek to align our actions with what is alive in us and in the world.
So, in the Joyce example, the critical element is not “Joyce is good” or “Joyce is bad”, rather it is that Joyce’s actions are deeply harmful and uncaring towards Joe. I think if she reflected on it, she would realize that her decisions do not align with all of her values. She would realize that there are other ways to act that would both get her what she needs, and also treat others well. Acting in better ways not to “be a good person” but because those ways better express Joyce, including Joyce’s potential for kindness.
—
Past that I will say a couple things.
First characterizing this as “a mistake” minimizes how this was repeated, conscious decision making by Joyce (and Dorothy). They knew what they were doing, and they knew who it would hurt. They didn’t do it by accident, they chose to do it.
Second Sarah is not claiming to be perfect. You do not need to be perfect to say someone else is acting without consideration for others.
Third she is not saying that Joyce is evil. My guess is saying that she thought better of Joyce than Joyce’s current actions reflect. Quite frankly, I thought better of Joyce before this current arc. I always thought that acting with care towards the people she loves was something important to Joyce, but that was not reflected in her latest behavior.
Fourth this is full blown cheating considering they have actively avoided telling their partners and continued to make out. There is both dishonesty and betrayal. Now, I am sure they could find ways to make the situation even worse, but it also seems like there are a lot of efforts to deny that these two have been cheating.
And I don’t think you get to set the boundaries for what Joyce and Joe would consider cheating. Do you think Joyce would consider it cheating if Joe spent the night cuddling with a girl with mutual romantic interest, who he made out with multiple times the previous day?
Fifth while it is true that Joe and Walky will be fine in the long run, this is again minimizing the harm that is being done. Being cheated on can have long lasting impacts including anxiety, depression, or symptoms similar to PTSD. Trust issues are just the surface.
Will Walky or Joe experience these? I don’t know. You don’t know. But the fact that they will hopefully eventually heal from the harm doesn’t make it any better in the moment.
Saying “they will heal eventually” is an easy way to rationalize hurting others for your own benefit.
Well said, on all points.
You. I like you.
Fantastic write up. Bravo. Especially calling out that calling it a “mistake” is both a lie and minimizing the act, and *especially* turning the situation on its head on point four.
The one line. “I don’t think you get to set the boundaries for what Joyce and Joe would consider cheating.” That’s the crowning, incontestable point. Whether this would or wouldn’t be cheating for you, or a huge deal or minor deal, it is exactly what it is being portrayed as here.
While I could have articulated my point better, the way you view what I said is incorrect.
I never said that Joyce and Dorothy shouldn’t be punished “Because they are good people”, im simply stating that Joyce overall has far more Positive traits then Negative ones, and these actions are highly effected by how her life has been for the last few months of her life. Intent matters, and she did not Intend to hurt joe.
I have been cheated on several times by past partners, I know how harmful it is. I am not trying to determine what Joyce and Dorothy consider cheating, they obviously see it as cheating considering Joyce thought their acts on the washing machine to also be sex. Im saying what I don’t consider Cuddling to be cheating, its something that friends and family do all the time if they are close. Kissing is cheating, but its more just dipping your toe into it, not fully jumping into the deep end like actual sex is. I consider all the kissing that happened over the course of a highly emotional 30 minutes to be 1 mistake, one they realized was a mistake and then didn’t kiss again. They went straight to Joe and she tried her hardest to tell him but she then before she could she got given a gift of high personal value and got carried away Rewarding joe for that. Then promised herself she would go tell him the next day. Dorothy gets less leeway here because she purposefully avoided going to tell walky that night. The Kissing is forgivable given the circumstances, in my opinion, as long as they don’t cross the line further.
I feel really bad for Joe (not so much Walky considering how he has treated relationships in the past), He is trying his hardest to be a good boyfriend and is succeeding, but this relationship has only been for like a week, 2 weeks tops. Puppy Love stage. Speaking as somebody who has been Cheated on by partners in several stages of a relationship, both in the Puppy Dog phase and in the “Im gonna marry this woman and even got her the ring” stage of the relationship (almost 2 years into the relationship), the level of connection matters in this type of situation when it comes to how painful it will be.
I still feel pain from the “Im gonna marry her” example I mentioned, I still sometimes spend way to long thinking about how I didn’t see the red flags earlier, how I could have met her needs better or something, real toxic self hate shit. That bongo cheated on me in public with two of my friends, a threesome behind a gymnasium. 10 years later that still hurts.
This is not nearly at that level. Joyce and Joe has been dating for a couple weeks tops, that is not long enough to form a long lasting, deep connection. There are Levels to Betrayal, and while yes THIS IS BETRAYAL, Its what I would consider a minor infraction at this point. This WILL hurt Joe, but when I say Joe will be fine “In the long run”, im saying that he has grown as a person in the last month or so of this story, that this minor betrayal will not send him into a spiral of pain how some people think it will, I think he will more so take it on the chin and distance himself from joyce in an act of self healing, or do what I did a couple times and try to stay with the partner in hopes of making it better somehow (then to get further hurt when they prove to not want to fix the relationship after continuing to string me along) and then Joyce will just shut that down with a “We can be friends” line or something.
Joyce isn’t a monster, she is going to try to ease this somehow, she isn’t going to be Cold. This will be Messy, but messes can be cleaned up. They can still end things amicably from how I see it. They can still be Friends after a bit of time to figure out their feelings.
Everybody talking about this situation has a Bias that effects how they will react. If Joyce had actually had sex with Dorothy before telling Joe, I would probably be hating Joyce right about now because of my own bias.
I prefer to take every detail into account, and Intent is a big thing for me, Joyce intended to tell Joe right away (but failed) and Intends to do the same thing Today now that emotions weren’t so high and they could articulate a better way to do it. Her reactions here are because she got grilled on this first thing in the morning, nobody is gonna react well to that.
If she Continues acting like this my opinion will change.
I don’t think ‘she doesn’t intend to hurt Joe’ flies here. Joe getting hurt is not something Joyce desires. But she knows that what she did with Dorothy would deeply hurt Joe, and then, intentionally, did it anyway. Is it a sign that she doesn’t care at all about Joe? No. She clearly still cares about him. But right at this moment, she didn’t consider his feelings.
And obviously, everyone has their own reaction and their own feelings towards this. But for me personally, if someone I trust and love went as far as Joyce and Dorothy went behind my back? It doesn’t really matter what exactly they did. The point is not the sex, the point is the betrayal. I mean, if the situation was ‘Hey Joe, me and Dorothy are in a hotel and there is only one bed, and I’m a bit of a cuddlebug’ it might physically be the same thing, but no trust would be harmed. And I think that for Joe, knowing this would happen, and knowing this happened, except Joyce and Dorothy went all the way, would be similar, if not identical amount of heartbreak. And I think Joyce is well aware of that.
You will notice, however, that my point is actually that Joyce and Dorothy don’t deserve punishment. I am actively arguing that a punitive based understanding of morality is not the most productive. Dorothy and Joyce suffering doesn’t erase any of the harm they have chosen to inflict.
And I am not making an argument about the balance of Joyce’s positive traits with negative ones. Rather I am arguing that the entire premise is flawed. Humans cannot be reduced to a tally. There are no heavenly scales to separate the “mostly good” from the “mostly bad”. In fact, I would argue our flaws are often inseparable from our greatest strengths.
I think I understand what you are saying about Joyce because it is by far the most common approach to moral judgement of people, but it is also an approach I think could be improved. We are not playing ethical baseball and choosing people with the highest averages. We are living life, lives we are all flung into through no will of our own, and shaped by forces outside our control. We try to do the best we can with where we are at.
And my point isn’t that you need to consider cuddling cheating in your relationships. Rather that your standards for cheating in your relationships have no relevance to the standards in Joyce and Dorothy’s relationships.
“Cuddling isn’t cheating unless your naked.” might be true in your relationships, but it pretty obviously is not true for Joyce and Dorothy.
And I am not denying that there can be even more painful forms of cheating. The longer it goes on and the greater the betrayal the more painful it will likely be. But that does not mean the harm to Joe is trivial or should be dismissed.
I will add to this note that while they have been dating a short while, they were good friends for months before that. Being betrayed by a friend also hurts deeply, and Joyce is betraying and disregarding Joe.
Lastly, I am not persuaded by the “they were overcome by passion” excuse. I am not persuaded for two reasons:
First, losing control of your emotions does not excuse your behavior. Getting so emotional you do something bad is used to brush aside cheating, but it is also used to exuse violence. “It is the very error of the moon; She comes more nearer earth than she was wont, And makes men mad.”
But I don’t think we can split a person from their emotions. How you feel is part of who you are, and how you act in response to emotions is your responsibility. So yes, Joyce and Dorothy were feeling a lot of emotions in the heat of the moment, but that doesn’t makes their actions less bad.
Second, this was not a single lapse in judgement. They kissed at the protest, during the day, then they walked back and it was dark. They kissed again, talked about how they should stop, then kissed again. They went to tell Joe, and Joyce chose not to. Instead she had sex with him even though she knew he would likely not want to have sex if she had been honest with him.
— As an aside, I think framing the blowjob as a Reward for Joe is kind of gross. It makes it seem like it is entirely transactional, as if Joyce had no sexual desire of her own. It also by default assumes that of course Joe would want a blow job, when in fact if he knew about the cheating he probably wouldn’t want anything to do with Joyce —
Then they chose to spend the whole night together. This was not a single “moment of weakness”. This was extended decision making, including planning on how to conceal their actions.
They knew what they were doing. They knew it was wrong. They did it anyway.
This was Joe’s first actual relationship after possible decades of lying to himself and putting on performative personas to make sure he didn’t end up like his father.
After all of that, he’s finally opened up and tried with Joyce.
And now he’s turned into his mother.
I don’t know if he’s going to be fine for a long while.
Joe is like 18 or 19 so I definitely don’t think he’s been lying to himself about decades regarding relationships. If we’re assuming he started wanting to date around the typical age of 12 or 13 then it might be a handful of years but certainly not decades.
I mean, Joe might be 18 or 19, but he’s been 18 or 19 for fifteen years.
Considering that DoA exists in “comic time,” where the world and tech just adjust to be modern day with no one really noticing it (like how Danny’s DS became a 3DS, then a Switch, and is probably now a Switch 2) that would suggest that Joe was born sometime around 1470.
a true Renaissance Man.
Time is relative, and while Joe has not been around for decades, he did spend half his young life watching his dad be shitty and his mom suffer for it. So let’s say he avoided relationships for a huge chunk of his life and it sucks his first real act of emotional vulnerability resulted in him being cheated on within a week.
You should’ve said it was them making you say “ow”, Sarah, missed opportunity.
Joyce has been saying repeatedly that she was never the nice super-fundamentalist girl that everyone took her as and changed in addition to not being who they thought she was. I think Sara is realizing that Joyce has always had a wild and dismissive side.
Yeah, like, I do like Joyce, and I think she is ultimately a person with a wealth of positive qualities, but she’s also the main character in more ways than one, and she’s got a knack for seeing things from her point of view and not really budging and seeing them from someone else’s, not at least without great difficulty.
Like, a great example of that is when she royally fucked up her friendship with Becky for a period of time, and just didn’t seem to even entertain the notion humiliating her friend by being a shithead about them behind their back might be something they’d have a grudge towards her over, or microaggressing against Dina and just kind of not giving a shit about it until she eventually had a breakthrough.
It’s not like she’s some wholly unempathetic person or anything, like she has consistently been the kindest person towards Faz. She just has a lot to work out, and while Sarah’s seen some of this from her before, this is probably the keenest example in a while.
Speaking of Keen(er), I do think that Dorothy might want to reflect on her introspection about past moral cowardice in the interest of avoiding discomfort or conflict, and uhh, maybe see that through to another logical conclusion about what she’s currently doing instead of doing other things.
You mean when she fucked up her relationship with Becky by venting about her horrible upbringing in a way that Becky didn’t approve of when she walked in on her? And then demanded she change her religious beliefs back to what would make Becky most comfortable? Because the fucking up wasn’t on Joyce there.
They both fucked up. Yeah, Joyce didn’t mean Becky when she said ‘I’m an idiot, I believe in God’ but yes, hearing Joyce say that was hurtful because Becky does still believe. Becky also didn’t handle it well and was entitled about Joyce changing religion.
Joyce has no respect for religion (surprise surprise) so that people who actually believe but not be idiots or assholes confuses her.
HAH! She did the thing I wanted her to do!
… I have no idea which strip I said it on though… Dammit!
Anyone else bothered by Joyce’s facial expressions in this one? Considering the things Sarah is saying I feel like they’re weirdly… empty? I dunno. I can’t really put an emotion to that look on her face. Maybe that’s what’s bothering me.
Her brain is finally starting to chug along the tracks of “What of the consequences of my actions” and there are a few really terrible stops along the way if everyone stays in character.
The faces are definitely bugging me. Dorothy looks more bothered than Joyce does and it is most definitely a conscious decision on Willis’ part to portray it that way. And yet even when I can recognize there is a plan, it is really upsetting to me. :’)
I think Joyce is only just now starting to finally come down from the “I kissed a girl and I liked it” high she’s been riding since the previous day.
Why is it upsetting?
I just don’t like how passive it is. Like zero fucks given by the character who apparently loves strongly and freely.
Dorothy has been more bothered by the cheating the whole way through. She has absolutely gone along with it, but Joyce has been the one consistently saying “but what if we kissed more instead”.
Joyce is probably thinking: Well, that’s YOU’RE opinion, but I found my one true love and no one’s taking that from me.
Dorothy: Oh my god, what have we done if SARAH is DEFENDING Joe?
She’s probably getting tired of self-righteous lectures. She’s certainly heard enough of them in her life.
I hard disagree. To me that silent ‘neutral’ face tells me this hit her way harder than if she was immediately making frowny faces.
Sometimes, I think I like Joyce and Dorothy mostly because of spite.
I read things here and outside DoA that me oblige me to defend them.
If things stay on this trajectory another 3-4 weeks, I suspect a lot of people will be re-assessing who their favorites are.
Not me! 😁
Nor me. Joyce will always be my favorite.
But alas, Joyce isn’t the only one up for reassessment! A lot of people are changing their opinions on Sarah today. Who knows next week. Maybe Jennifer will give us some amazing advice on how to dump a boyfriend the ‘right’ way.
Ruth and Dina remain untouched, fortunately.
From one shipper to another (and since you changed you profile pic) what makes you like the Ruth/Dina ship? Why do you think it would work? How would you want it to go down? This is a rare-pair I’ve never seen and I’m kinda curious. 😀
Good enough reason to be wrong as any other, I guess. *shrug*
I have been there. The muscle cramps, I mean. Made the mistake of taking a bath and I literally couldn’t come out of the bathtube.
(I wish my grabatar was still Sarah)
“Bathtube” sounds like a fun time or like a torture device, I’m not sure which.
I meant bathtub.
Clearly they are referring to those fully enclosed water slides. There is no other reasonable nor plausible interpretation!
I mean… even Joyce and Dorothy knew themselves even less 12 hours before.
That’s what happens with such large revelations about oneself.
Time to hold hands girls! ;P
so, must you keep more tabs on her from now on?
walk off the pain… or not
I hope Sarah doesn’t get on her high horse too much here. Being friends means you tell your friends when they’re wrong, yes, but it also means sticking with them.
(Also, Sarah, remember how you deliberately used Joyce to break up Raidah and Jacob?)
Frankly, if one of my fingers cheated on their partner, I wouldn’t care. Like, I’d tell them that they shouldn’t and try to get them to stop (one way or another), but it wouldn’t affect our friendship.
Autocorrect, sigh: fingers= friends
No no no, it’s hilarious as “fingers.”
“Look, Sarah, it’s only my *fingers* that have been unfaithful. I’ll have a conversation with them, tell them they shouldn’t do that, and try to get them to stop one way or another.”
“I’ll try to get them to stop, but I won’t cut them off over it.”
They’re young and horny fingers. They were overcome by passion and couldn’t stop themselves.
There are a few issues with this. Joe is now one of her friends, too, for one thing, and unlike with Raidah, who she has a major disdain for, it’s not like she is indifferent to the fallout.
Beyond that, she has been cheated on, and knows that you can wrap it up in any rationale you want, that it is a betrayal.
In addition, she probably wouldn’t have this level of disgust if Joyce hadn’t tried to wave all of this off, and Dorothy making excuses about how, oh gosh, they just hadn’t gotten around to it, when it’s a case of, no, they know they’re doing something wrong, that they are trying to avoid discomfort. It’s not her judging them for having feelings for one another, it’s for being cowardly and wrapping it in the veneer of it being something else.
Sarah is not being betrayed here.
Joe being her friend, yes, absolutely, and she can be mad on his behalf.
But Joyce has been her friend for much longer. So, I don’t think Sarah should take Joyce’s side or not be a little disappointed in her behaviour, but it’s also not a betrayal of Sarah’s and Joyce’s friendship. It’s in fact, not about Sarah at all.
Nobody Sarah was betrayed?? Your logic it’s just so weird.
Joyce cheating on Joe in front of Sarah, who shares a friend group with Joe, has made Sarah part of this. Joyce has put Sarah in a position where she can confront Joyce directly, expose her actions to Joe, or be complicit in hiding the infidelity.
I’m not gonna say I’d stop being friends of someone because they cheated on their partner, but I would be disappointed in them, and it would be a blow to the friendship.
Agreed and if it went on to be a pattern of behavior that’s probably where I’d end my friendship.
You stand by your friends when it comes to persecution, and then only up to a point. If they do a bad thing you don’t minimize it, but you might support them with the fallout.
Joyce isn’t being persecuted, and Sarah is not “abandoning her forever”. Sarah is just fed up dealing with Joyce’s shit. She said her bit, and now it is on Joyce whether or not to listen.
Being friends with someone also includes honesty and trust. And I’d say that has been broken now.
How did she break Sarah’s trust? Genuine question.
I don’t really understand that viewpoint — I would at the very least dial down a friendship in which I became aware that my friend was more of a liar or more self-centered than I thought they were, even if I wasn’t the target of a particular incident of lying and/or self-centeredness. And of course, cheating has elements of both.
That’s just basic self-preservation. If they’re the kind of person who can lie to their romantic relationships, what are they lying to ME about?
This is also why it’s not particularly as important, either to the friend group or in the long run the commentariat, that there was the whole Sarah+Joyce plot to break up Jacob and Raidah — Raidah was not part of the group! And Jacob mostly wasn’t, except kinda as a guy Joe lifts with sometimes.
Whereas now, Joyce made an effort to get Sarah to treat Joe as part of the gang, and was apparently pretty successful, and now she’s cheated on him and unfortunately for her that puts Sarah pretty firmly on the side of “dude, don’t hurt my friend that you literally talked me into having” on top of “kinda thought you’d be better than this”.
And yeah, that’s kinda a stupid and kinda amoral way for them to look at it, but as they say it’s not called Smarting of Age.
Honestly if one of my friends cheated on their partner it would severely weaken the friendship and lower my opinion of them at the minimum. Because if that friend would hurt and betray their romantic partner (ostensibly one of the most important people in their life) like that for their own personal pleasure, I can’t ever trust them not to hurt or betray me if it suits them.
The entirely relatable experience of “trying to walk the morning after you do your first racked squats.”
Judging by the look on Dorothy’s face, I think Sarah’s words affected her more than Joyce. Joyce always had a fantastical view on love (remember, her whole goal at the very start of this comic was to get her MRS degree) and she basically found that with Dorothy. Forbidden passion is always sexy, and kissing a freedom fighter in the middle of a protest that went to Hell is the fantasy Joyce always wanted.
But that’s just it- it’s a fantasy. What they have now, while fun, isn’t sustainable. Dorothy already knew that, but Joyce believes she found her “one true love” so I think she’s going to claw and scratch to find a way to make this passion last even though, really, all it will do would destroy the friendships around her. Dorothy has a great respect for Sarah, so when Sarah calls her out on the two of them cheating on their boyfriends, as well as admit that Joe is a good guy, I think that’s what will snap Dotty out of her sapphic fantasy and face the harsh reality that, while Joyce may have passion and lust for Dorothy, deep down she loves Joe. I don’t think Dotty has those same feelings for Walky, though, given she more or less told him their relationship is a consequence free-fling.
So the rose colored glasses are off Dorothy. Now how are we gonna get them off Joyce?
Dorothy was BEYOND hostile to Joe. Threatening him when he was showing interest. Calling him a predator and telling him to find different prey. Yelling at him and insulting him again and again when he was trying to be nothing but kind, concerned, and empathetic to her. She insulted him further by saying that she was afraid that she was “as bad as” him. And at the last time they spoke, she was barely civil.
And yeah, she acknowledged to Joyce that he was trying hard. But words are cheap, and actions speak louder. To Dorothy, Joe never stopped being the bad guy. He was always dangerous.
And to have Sarah, of all people – baseball bat-toting, man-smashing, general misanthrope SARAH say that she was wrong about him, and he was a good person, and good for Joyce…. Well, that kind of means that you didn’t have an excuse, did you?
All the evidence was there, Dorothy. You just didn’t want to see it. It was just so much easier to assume that his actions were only temporary; just an act, and there was really no harm in rescuing Joyce from that relationship before she would inevitably get hurt.
I mean, isn’t that part of why she was panicking when Joyce went on her date with Joe? She disappeared over that horizon yet again. That didn’t seem like jealousy to me. That looked like numb fear.
It looked like a trauma response which, if I were to psychologize, would be Dorothy coping with the intense feelings of powerlessness and fear during the kidnapping. She had no control and was vulnerable watching people she cared about threatened… When Joyce was going with Joe she again felt like she had no control.
Joyce’s experience at the party was also probably a contributing factor. Dorothy brings Joyce to a party, loses her, and Joyce gets roofied. Joyce is traumatized, fearing being alone in public, and Dorothy takes on a role of protector, caregiver, and support. Filling those roles was partially just being a good friend when needed, but partially it helped Dorothy assuage her guilt over the party. It is her role and duty to be with Joyce, to keep her close, and keep scary men away. The kidnapping exacerbated this instinct because Dorothy felt unable to do her perceived duty.
And part of trauma is that it means a smaller stimulus can provoke an outsized response. So Dorothy doesn’t need to literally think of Joe as a kidnapper to freak out when it feels like he is taking Joyce away from her and there is nothing she can do about it.
Her outburst at the protest was in part about reasserting her own control.
“She’s not another faceless conquest. This is *Joyce*. Find different prey.”
Irony can be very ironic sometimes.
“while Joyce may have passion and lust for Dorothy, deep down she loves Joe”
This just reads like a desperate reach, especially because the author has not at all spoken about it in this way. But also because she’s been dating Joe for like a week. She’s been crazy about Dorothy for months.
The girl is bi and she just noticed, you are welcome to ship your ships, but framing the queer relationship that has been all kisses and snuggles as “lust only” and the straight relationship where Joyce repeatedly insisted she was ready to fuck as “deep down love” is just funny to me.
Notably: I’m sure lust is involved in BOTH relationships, but we’ve seen it mostly in the Joe/Joyce one at the moment.
100% agree with you here. It’s Dorothy that she is in love with. If there was never any attraction, we’d more easily say that they love each other, and just call it a close, sisterly love. Now that they ARE romantically connected, it’s full-on love.
Joe always liked Joyce more than Joyce liked Joe. Joe’s been thinking about her since the beginning of Freshman year; he deeply cares about her and her wellbeing. Joyce just likes to be loved. I’m sure she really really likes Joe, but she’s also done some shitty things to him, for which the only explanation is either that she didn’t consider his preferences, needs, and feelings, or she did but she didn’t view them as being of equal importance to her own. Joe kept wanting to get to know Joyce on a personal level, go and date, take things at a normal pace; Joyce just wanted the expert boyfriend to show her the ropes as she explores her college life.
As much as I’m a Joeyce shipper, that’s kind of a wild take. They were friends, but I don’t think any of these relationships can be described as “romantic love” yet, because I don’t think any of them have figured out what that even means.
Gross. The comphet is just oozing off this comment.
This is the first time I’ve agreed with you on this storyline, I think, so I wanted to acknowledge it. There’s no universe where Joyce is somehow more in love with Joe than she is with Dorothy, and it’s indicative of bias to think she is. It’s 100% clear she’s bi.
I don’t think Joyce loved Joe. If Joyce loves anyone, it’s probably closer to Dorothy.
Granted, everyone’s definitions of love are way different, but I’ve seen more relationships crash and burn because everyone was chasing an unsustainable high than I can count. Love, at best, is comfortable and boring. On average it is frustrating, it is painful, it is suffering that you choose because that other person matters more than temporary discomfort, that you care about someone else’s survival as much as you do your own, if not more. That’s why abuse happens so often, that’s why so many relationships suck. Love requires putting yourself in emotional danger and trusting that the other person will do the same and not take advantage of it. It’s crying because someone lied to you and making the decision whether that lie is indicative of future behavior and what you do if it is. It’s being willing to start over from rock bottom over and over because someone lost a job, or someone got sick, or you had a kid, or someone’s parent died and the funeral bankrupted you.
Basically, as much as I don’t care for Joyce/Dorothy, Joyce loves Dorothy. Dorothy maybe loves Joyce. I think Joe loves Joyce. I think Joyce liked the attention from Joe and maybe could’ve come to love him, but I don’t think she did.
Like, I’ve always had issues with how this is happening, not that it happened at all
That’s funny, because I would have called it the other way:
– Dorothy definitely loves Joyce
– Joyce maybe loves Dorothy
– Joyce probably doesn’t love Joe
but crucially, I think,
– Joyce THINKS she loves Dorothy and THINKS she might love Joe.
As far as I can tell, Joyce’s relationship maneuvering has generally been “anything you do for True Wuv is automatically okay”, and I don’t think she’d have bounced back and forth between Dorothy and Joe breaking a few more of her boundaries each time unless she was at least somewhat convinced each of them was specifically important to Her Romantic Story.
(I call “Dorothy definitely loves Joyce” because of how hard Dorothy’s trauma and nightmares have been bound to the idea of losing Joyce in general AND losing Joyce romantically — the vision of Joyce’s kidnapping overlapping her leaving on her date with Joe kinda clinched it for me.)
Ohhh no… She’s not mad, she’s disappointed.
Im pretty sure Joe is gonna be pretty cool and understanding about it.
Walky on the other hand is gonna throw a hissy fit
Wally would be well within his rights to blow his stack I think
Walky needs to go apeshit. As a treat.
I don’t really think Walky will care that much. Like, he’ll be disappointed, he’s not gonna love it, but I don’t think he’s nearly as invested in getting back together with Dorothy as she was with him
My hope is that he will come away from it with (eventually) better self-worth and won’t settle for his partners treating him like shit anymore.
Haven’t Walky and Dorothy only been back together for like, a couple of weeks? And he was 100% rebounding and she was having a breakdown? They were never going to last.
That said, you’re probably right and he’ll throw a hissy fit because he is like that.
They have been back together for a few days. Lucy and Walky broke up a week ago in comic time and Walky and Dorothy got back together two days later so it’s been like five days. And 100% a rebound of a rebound of a rebound for Walky.
Walky isn’t going to go insane. This is going to be everything he always assumed about himself and his relationship to Dorothy — he’s expendable because she’s going to have better things in her future. And he irritates Joyce but Walky 100% knows Joyce is right when she says “Dorothy is above your station.”
He *believes* Joyce is right, and this will reinforce that belief. Walky has severe self-image issues – but that doesn’t mean he’s correct in his beliefs.
Sure but you get what I mean. This is going to confirm everything Walky thinks about himself and Dorothy.
Yes. And he can either let it sink him down further, or hopefully, find the spine to stand up for himself for once.
I think many people in this comments section are forgetting that Sarah knows extremely intimately how much being cheated on can hurt someone
Also, boy is the comments section tiresome today.
Aaand this is why I’ve never been down with the “sicko” side of things. I like Sarah. I like Walky and Joe and Becky. I don’t want to see any of them hurting over the selfish decisions Joyce and Dorothy have been making. I get it’s just a comic but I read it because it’s about people that feel real and that I have empathy for
And if it now turns out Joyce and Dorothy don’t actually care about hurting people, I don’t care to read about them.
I mean it’s not like anyone ia forcing you to
IMO, they do care; they’re just hoping that somehow they can keep putting off what they should do (while continuing to do what they really want to) and hoping that it’ll all work out. Somehow.
That’s a very relatable consequence of not wanting to hurt people. Just keep putting off the moment when it happens.
Exactly.
I mean, if they didn’t care then it would be easy to tell Joe and Walky.
Aside from the hurt caused to others, I find it difficult to enjoy stories where the primary source of conflict is the main character’s making incredibly stupid decisions.
For all of its name, this comic has not primarily been about people being stupid. Mostly it is about people being different, working through different problems and figuring out how to relate. Not denying main cast members have made stupid decisions, but a lot of the bad decisions haven’t been quite so clear cut.
This bit, however, does feel more like smashing my head against the wall.
I mean, this is the kind of stupid, bad decision that a lot of people make every day, especially on college campuses. So I don’t find it ‘incredible’ in the literal ‘this stretches my suspension of disbelief’ kind of thing, especially considering I have no issue nodding and going along with the ‘Amazigirl’ thing.
All in all, I think both the amount of badness of the decision, and Sarah’s reaction to it are proportionate.
If Dorothy’s years long mental breakdown and loss of purpose and Joyce’s extremely well established recklessness in all things related to love and romance doesn’t establish this storyline as “extremely in character” rather than stupid then I’m not really sure what you even want from a drama.
I do like the bathos in the final panel. Not just being solid continuity, but I think its a good effort at helping the scene not feel TOO heavy after Sarah reading Dorothy and Joyce the Riot Act.
Because, yes, what Dorothy and Joyce are doing is not good. But its still in the realm of “teenagers being fucking awful at managing relationships”, and a little gag to remind everyone this isn’t the end of the world is a good thing.
I agree and I like thst Sarah isnt being unreasonably hard on them just saying hey this is wrong fix it. I personally am not to hard in Joyce and Dorothy this is just kids being stupid and its early enough that they haven’t been horrific betrayer but it needs to be handled
I don’t remember who made the prediction that Walky is gonna end up forming a evil pact with Incelerator as a result of being dumped by every girl he has opened up to, but I really hope something like that happens. If only because he has gone through just as much shit as anyone else and could be just as self destructive as a result.
He’s gonna bleach his Night Guy cape and sharpie an R on his shirt, and become Right Guy.
As in right wing, not as in correct
I would be disappointed because it feels like that story line would be saying “men become incels because women are mean”.
I agree Walky has totally had some pretty tough shakes, but being a mess wouldn’t make his life easier.
I hope instead he gets really into his comic, channels his trauma into art, becomes rich and buys himself a mansion with a firepoll.
Firepoll
Firepole…
got it.
Fire pole
Indeed.
Even as I hope for Walky antagonist times, I still cannot imagine him going full incel and saying some of the shit you hear those types say. But like… A year ago I never would have pegged Joyce for being bi, Sarah for defending Joe, or some other third thing. Times are changing.
Well, Joyce has always been painfully queer. I just didn’t want to fall back on the cheating thing again for the hundredth time.
I can’t either. Walky likes women. No incel or proto-incel could have been friends with Lucy all those months before they dated without making a move (or without whining about being stuck in the friendzone.)
He might well be upset, but he’s not headed in that direction.
Let’s be clear: if Walky did that, it would not be an understandable, sympathetic reaction.
Once you go full incel, you no longer deserve sympathy.
Wow, Sarah is so insanely judgemental she could be a part of the comment section. Also, if not homophobic, at least bizarrely insensetive to the fact Joyce just came out to her, and has only just figured out she’s queer.
I think it is a problem of the whole storyline that there isn’t any emphasis on Joyce figuring out she’s queer, because that’s a pretty significant process to go through, and everyone (including the comment section) is acting like it’s no big deal.
I think it’s really gross how people are bandying about accusations of homophobia because Sarah isn’t over the moon for Joyce and Dorothy immediately. “Stop cheating on your boyfriend in front of me” is a perfectly reasonable reaction to your friend cheating on their boyfriend in front of you, especially when their boyfriend is also your friend, and especially when you yourself have baggage related to cheating. Is she supposed to preface everything with a “I’m really proud of you for your self-discovery but?” That’s not the kind of person Sarah is. She’s not going to beat around the bush, she’s going to go straight to the heart of the matter, and the issue at play here isn’t that Joyce has figured out she’s gay, it’s that she’s cheating on Joe.
I agree Dot. I find the homophobia accusations very distasteful and nasty.
Stepping out of my shitposting for a moment; yeah its a little like. Fucked.
Unhinged accusations of homophobia in response to people being unhappy with some aspect of weird behaviors from J&D is one of those perennial features of this comment section.
(I am not dismissing the fact that there has been some unhinged homophobia about J&D)
Sarah’s “baggage related to cheating” mainly consists of her being in favour of it and actively encouraging Joyce to do it. And again, her behaviour isn’t necessarily homophobic, but Joyce coming out to her is a big deal, and responding to it like this is pretty fucking insensetive. (Especially given her clearly established lack of any real ethical problem with cheating).
Like, I’m sorry, but Joyce realizing she’s queer and in love with her best friend is pretty important, and definitely more important than a week-old relationship. It’s also more important than the fact that they kissed and cuddled a bit for a few hours before breaking up with their boyfriends. This situation sucks for the guys, but acting like the main thing that’s happening here is a moral failing on the girls’ part is absurd.
Is it a big deal? Is it a big deal to Joyce? She’s certainly not treating her gayness as a big deal. I’m not willing to go along with this line of reasoning when the characters’ actions and attitudes don’t support it.
Also, while Sarah was willing to arrange for Raidah, a person she despises, to be cheated on, she actually has had an ethical problem with cheating – her boyfriend cheated on her with her sister, remember. Is it totally ethically consistent? No, but why is Sarah being held to that standard while Joyce and Dorothy get to have a pass?
Also, the plan with Jacob was to break them up, not to get Jacob to cheat with Joyce. Which has ethical problems in its own way, but is perfectly compatible with her being upset about Joyce and Dorothy not having broken off their previous relationships.
It can be both — their realization is important for them and for the story, and the fact they immediately jumped into being dumbasses about it instead of taking the correct route of “break up with boyfriends, then kiss more” means that they can be judged for it.
The funniest thing about these responses to me continues to be that Joyce and Dorothy both have admitted that the cheating A) is cheating and B) is a problem.
Actually, during the Liz arc it was mentioned that Liz did make out with one of Sarah’s boyfriends… promptly leading to him becoming an ex-boyfriend.
TWO of Sarah’s boyfriends!
Oh crud, I forgot that detail! Dang Liz, that’s 31 flavors of not-cool.
Everyone including Joyce herself, which probably has a lot to do with why the commentariat isn’t focusing on it.
People have different “Aha” moments. When I realized I was Bi it was literally just that friend asked and I thought about it for 2 seconds.
From how Joyce has been handling it so far it seems like she isn’t too worked up. If Joyce were going to Sarah saying “OMG Sarah! I might be… (mutter mutter)… gay” Then I would expect a different reaction.
We’ve had the bisexual panic twice now, once with Danny and once with Dorothy. Asking to go through that *again* with Joyce is just asking for padding.
The drama fallout of Joyce’s recklessness is far, far more interesting to engage with.
I swear to God I’m this close to calling the people baselessly calling Sarah homophobic racist, bc i guess we’re just saying this now. I think there’s a little undercurrent of misogynoir in the negative reaction Sarah tends to get from commenters.
I wasn’t gonna say it but I’ve been thinking it.
Ditto. The incindiary thing i mentioned earlier? Yeah.
Also its not just Sarah.
Yep. A few strips ago with Raidah immediately comes to mind.
People were also weird about Asma. And god help lucy.
I’m just saying, I don’t think people would be as mad if it were Danny or Amber/mazi. Still mad but, not as mad. And we all know how white ppl love to play up the homophobia in the black community. I’m not saying it’s not a problem but white folk sure love to act like we’re so much worse than them with it
Huh… misogynoire. Normally learning a new word is fun. This? Not so much.
No e on the end for the record.
Ah bugger… well, hopefully I won’t have to use this word too often. (And yes, I’m saying “oh you sweet summer child” to even myself.)
Like, are people ONLY upset at Sarah/Raidah/Asma because of misogynoir? No.
Are people significantly more upset, and more likely to read the things these characters say in an uncharitable way, than they would if the same things were being said by white women or white men? Oh yeah.
I don’t think it’s racist, because the same allegations have been attached to people in the comments, what it comes down to bluntly is people who ship Joyce and Dorothy are too cowardly to just admit they don’t really care that they’re cheating if it means their ship is sailing.
And since you can’t really combat cheating is a bad thing and you shouldn’t do it they have to approach it from different, escalating methods. So far there’s been homophobia allegations, implying that it’s weird to think of your monogamous partner kissing somebody else and approaching them with romantic intent is cheating, and my personal favorite, how do we know they’re monogamous when they have not told us they are.
Imo it’s nothing more than shippers refusing to acknowledge that even if their ship is sailing their blorbos are still kinda being dicks. If it had been anybody else calling em out we’d probably still have ended up here.
I’m getting real tired of people assuming that everyone who has a problem with Joyce and Dorothy cheating on their boyfriends must be homophobic. It’s a ridiculous accusation that seems to be based on no evidence whatsoever.
Absolutely true. And we have seen some low-key homophobia from Sarah before, like when she told Joyce, “Have straighter dreams.”
What the fuck is wrong with you, seriously?
THESE ARE THE PEOPLE IM TALKING ABOUT. Im not crazy.
Really channeling the teto in my grav rn
Sarah was literally begging Dorothy through her door to confess her feelings to Joyce before Joyce/Joe became a couple. She shipped them and would have been happy if they were not already official with other people.
Huh. So she did, yeah.
I’m sorry how the FUCK is she homophobic?
She didn’t address the gayness of the situation, which I guess should have been her highest priority, or even a priority for her at all.
Sarah is so right and smart and correct
She is none of these things.
Donovan is so right and smart and correct and handsome
Donovan may or may not be one or more of these things.
Gigafreak is so smart and corr–
As a football player, Tony should know how to work out the knots in your thighs, Sarah.
Has it been addressed how Tony is friends with Beef, the dude who tried to beat up Danny at the start of the strip?
Nope. Presumably Tony doesn’t know about it.
Imagine if Beef had an entire character arc off screen over the past several months, and now he beats up guys like Incelerator and volunteers at soup kitchens.
That would be a funny punchline.
Okay, now we all need to start voting for Beef as the bonus strip character.
I don’t think cooldowns help with soreness, you can only prep so much for the day after your first actual workout.
The comic timescale can be very confusing. In this scale it was literally yesterday afternoon that Dorothy’s self identity attempted a massive act of self destruction rather than accept real feelings. That can’t be healthy.
Sarah’s distress is understandable; someone she’s just come to trust as a friend may turn out to be another’s acceptable loss. Joyce and Dorothy may have just realized that this is not a ‘fix the paperwork and then Happy Ever After’ moment, but they have to deal with real people. (Well, real in the story sense. 🙂 )
So once again I don’t get a full night’s sleep because at 12:04 I have to get up and see What Happens Next. LOL
Everyone’s in favor of teenagers/new adults having slightly messy emotional reactions. Until a characters mad at their blorbo.
“dumbing of age not smarting of age” is grace only extended to Joyce and Dorothy, apparently.
I could have added something else but it would be too incendiary
Yup, Allowed to make stupid, hurtful, shortsighted relationship decisions, but god forbid anyone REACT to those decisions with anything other than grace and sensitivity.
Okay… can someone please explain to me what “blorbo” means? I keep hearing it every now and again (usually in tumblr screencaps) and I haven’t the faintest clue what it means.
Blorbo From My Shows – Fanlore https://share.google/uWGv0ZLBL4VpiqTyJ
I think I’m somehow even more confused now… then again, I’m in a weird headspace right now.
In short, it’s from someone poking fun at normal posts being tagged with vaguely related character names, and now it’s used for oblique judgement and snide dismissal of what someone says by claiming they wouldn’t have said it if they weren’t overly attached to a fictional character, usually in a way that has plausible deniability, so if you call them on it they can say “Nuh-uhhh~ you can’t prove that’s what I meant~” and keep treating you like an irrational, delusional asshole.
It can also be “hehe look at the funny little guy I drew”
I used to worry that I was chronically online, but apparently I’m doing pretty okay if I’m not… getting into arguments about fictional characters. The closest thing to that I ever had was a friend of mine telling me Catra and Adora were “just sisters” and I looked at him and said “are you high?”
That’s it though. No judgement calls, no assessments of character, no reevaluation of the friendship… just a raised eyebrow and then we moved on with our DnD game.
Hey now. I call my own funny little guys blorbos, too.
Sorry black girls dont get to handle things any less than 1000% perfectly with infinite empathy and true enlightenment levels of understanding for the human condition. Sarah’s not being the literal Buddha rn, what a judgemental bongo
I mean, I think Sarah’s pretty justified in being disappointed in Joyce here. She gave Joyce the chance to tell her what’s going on, several times, and Joyce kept trying to lie to her face and dodge the truth, and when Sarah finally pointed out that it was pretty obvious what was going on and confronted her directly with it, Joyce hasn’t really expressed any remorse about it, or even about lying to Sarah moments earlier.
I think Sarah would have judged them slightly less for this if they’d come clean as soon as Sarah asked, maybe even told her that they’re working on figuring out how to tell their boyfriends and are struggling with it – Sarah of all people knows that talking about your feelings is hard at the best of times, and she’d probably at least have just groaned and given them a deadline, something like “look, I get it, but you have until the end of the day to talk to them or I’m telling them myself. No more cheating on anyone in my room”.
But Sarah’s right that she didn’t know Joyce as well as she thought, too. I think Sarah’s fond enough of Joyce that she’s been kind of expecting her to be a little less reckless than this with other people’s feelings, because Joyce often leans towards kindness and empathy, but Joyce was never as selfless as Sarah maybe let herself think. Even when Sarah pushed her on Jacob, I’m pretty sure Sarah thought she was emplying a cunning, “evil” plan where Joyce would be largely an unwitting pawn with reasonably predictable moves that’d break Jacob and Raidah up, but in the end, the way Joyce broke them up was entirely through her own desire to be with him, entirely regardless of the feelings of Jacob and Raidah, because obviously they weren’t meant to be and therefore it didn’t matter. But I don’t think Sarah actually knows the full story there, even though it gives a LOT of context to this situation.
It’s hilarious to read about these uptight virginal college moralists. In a real college, there’s so much inter-group sleeping around that this wouldn’t even register on the other partner’s radar. They’ve been together for ten minutes, and now she’s — GASP! — kissed a girl?! Oh, the deep dark tragedy! It’s hilarious.
Not my experience
what the fuck kind of college are you going to lmao
lol seriously. In most cases it’s the exact opposite – someone does something bad five minutes into a relationship and it becomes a HUGE drama, with people choosing sides. Freshmen don’t have the experience and maturity to put things into perspective. (Not saying they should, either, but the “wave away cheating” crowd can’t also be the “we’re messy drama kids”)
Whether you’ve been together for 10 minutes or 10 years is irrelevant. Cheating is wrong. That’s not an uptight stance to have, that’s basic morality and a standard line most people have.
Yeah, but there are also degrees to being wrong.
People here are treating a few kisses outside a relationship like it’s basically equivalent to murder. Which – newsflash – it’s not.
And when Joe gets hurt due to Joyce breaking up with him, that, and Joyce having fallen in love with Dorothy, is what will hurt, not the fact that they kissed before the breakup.
Joe has a foundational trauma directly related to infidelity. Do you really, genuinely believe that the act of cheating itself won’t be hurtful to him?
Last I checked Joe’s foundational trauma was a fear that he would cheat on anyone he tried to have a relationship with just like his father did. I’m not saying things are going to be puppies and rainbows for him but since him cheating on Joyce isn’t what happened I don’t think he’s going to be as traumatized as some people seem to be expecting him to be.
I mean, being cheated on has a much easier fix than living down to his worst expectations of himself would.
A few strips ago would indicate that infidelity in general is an issue for him.
To be clear, I think this is why this isn’t going to shatter his progress — HE did not screw up here. But he’ll still be pissed to be the VICTIM of this thing that is generally a source of trauma.
No, no ones doing that. They’re treating it like it’s cheating- which it is. On a guy who’s whole personality was built around his cheating trauma
It’s true that there are degrees, but it’s also true that the longer Joyce goes without telling him the worse degree it will be. Especially as she does more with Dorothy and as she interacts with him without telling him.
Even worse if he finds out without her telling him.
If they’d just kissed at the protest, come home and fessed up, that’s probably about as mild as cheating gets. Seeing him and the bj made it worse. Spending the night with Dorothy made it worse again. We’ll see what happens next.
Story wise, imo, this is a good thing. Why do a cheating arc and downplay it to the mildest possible form of cheating?
Completely opposite my college experience — every friend group that had in-group dating, if someone cheated on another person in the group, the cheater was more or less permanently exiled to the “sort of peripheral acquaintances” level at best.
You KNOW its not about the fact that theyre girls right?
its about the fact theyre lying and cheating. And they know its wrong.
In-comic it’s not (so far) about the fact that they’re women.
In-comments it has frequently been about the fact that they’re women. Thankfully, mostly in deleted comments and threads.
Good on you, Sarah, for not skipping leg day!
(that puts you on top of your exercise regimine)
The first days are the worst, but it’s worthy.
I am “Ow! Yesterday I exercised some thigh muscles for the first time in three months” years old.
Sarah needs to learn that you don’t have people “all figured out” after knowing them for, what’s it been? Eight months or so? People got layers, man. Especially young people. They get MORE layers every week.
Also, love the bisexual lighting on these scenes.
THAT is just part of “it’s Dumbing of Age, not Smarting of Age”, I think.
Some people are complaining about “suddenly gay” Joyce, but “Iron Seat Paladin” Sarah was kind of abrupt, too.
Like, for some days ago, Sarah really hated Joe to guts.
And she realized she was wrong. And then Joyce blew it all to smithereens anyway.
Which is why Sarah seems to be doubly hurt — she made an effort to see things Joyce’s way regarding Joe, and Joyce’s next move was to cheat on him!
There is also the issue of an alignment shift in general. Sarah was always extremely cynical and distrustful of people. Now she started to come out of her shell bit by bit, her burying the hatchet with Joe being a big example. And a lot of that comes from Joyce’s positive influence.
AND THEN JOYCE GOES AND PULLS SHIT LIKE THIS!
This is guaranteed to sabotage trust in people in both Joe and Sarah.
you have to put more faith in her
Sarah’s right, I’m dying on this hill, fuck you fight me (not really, im not going back and forth arguing about it. She’s just right, she has every right to react this way, it’s very normal, and it’s insanely hypocritical to brush off DoJo’s behavior with “they’re young and dumb” but expect the maturest, patientest, most well thought out response from an emotionally scarred 20 year old. Keep that same energy.)
People applying different standards to the Black girl than they do the white girls? Quelle surprise!
What are you talking about, brown women *never* get read as overly aggressive/mean when they are just. Talking. /s
🔥
Nope, she’s wrong, she’s intrusive, and she should butt out.
Literally nothing she has said about the situation has been incorrect
Joyce fought Sarah hard to get her to accept Joe, and now that Sarah does accept him, Joyce is immediately cheating on him. I’d say Sarah has pretty good cause to confront Joyce about that, and you’re taking this way too personally.
Yeah, I haven’t seen many anti-Sarah posts, but maybe they just got deleted before I saw them. I genuinely cannot imagine why anyone would have a problem with what Sarah said to these two.
If anything, she was pretty calm and restrained here. If someone I admired and befriended suddenly did something really crappy that changed my entire perception of them… I’d probably be a lot less polite. My response might be something along the lines of a decently loud “what the actual fuck, dude?”
Is Joyce now irredeemable? Of course not. Does that mean Sarah is out of line? Fuck no. She’s calling it like she sees it. Hell, if/when Sarah gets more details of this whole caper, she’s probably going to have even more choice words and I doubt those will be out of line either.
When I scrolled through this morning every other comment was anti Sarah. I’m not gonna look again for the sake of my blood pressure these people are pmo
Probably a wise move, all things considered.
Coming in with some piping hot personal opinions:
– Sarah is allowed to be mad at her friend for being a dumbass. Sarah has also canonically been a dumbass herself.
– Joyce and Dorothy are allowed to be dumbasses.
– It DOES matter that this is their first awareness of being queer, that shit can be rough to deal with for a lot of reasons.
– It is still a big deal that they both just came out to Sarah. In fact, Dorothy has come out to three people (including Joyce) and both Danny and Sarah have given her zero support.
– Neither Danny nor Sarah actually owe Dorothy support (but it would have been nice). I hope she gets support from someone soon.
– Joe isn’t entitled to Joyce staying with him or loving him forever, it’s a week or so long relationship in freshman year. He WAS entitled to not being cheated on and I hope he finds out soon.
– Joe is not an innocent widdle angel who never did a thing wrong, so hopefully he has room is his heart for forgiving Joyce a fuck up.
– I still want this to turn polyamorous. So much. I don’t think it would be immediately healthy or fix anything, I want to watch them struggle through it and come out with understandings about themselves and maybe a healed polycule of some configuration.
– Alice is best girl.
– I really do hope Joe still goes into culinary school. I like the idea of him having an outlet to feed people and make them happy. He should get happiness.
What this being reasonable shit?
lmao my sincerest apologies
I like this. I do think Joe will forgive Joyce eventually – prooooobably gonna be a little bit though.
I predict one of the three they worry about (Joe, Walky, Becky) will react really well, one will be upset (as in sad) and the other is gonna be PISSED. Place your bets on who is who here folks!
The latest incarnation of Marry/Fuck/Kill, aka Wed/Bed/Behead
We can call it Impressed/Depressed/Agressed
Perfect!
tyyy and yeah it’ll take time, these things do.
I think it’s going to be more like “Sad Becky, Sad Joe, Fuckboi Walky”
Indeed, which might just kill me in a comic that moves this slow T.T
Ooooh, interesting alternative bet! Let’s see how it pays off!
Mostly agree with *you* though. This is fine.
Ty!💕
Lukewarm at best. You gotta be much more unreasonable than all these valid opinions to make a splash in THIS comment section.
😉
lmao, oh no I’m a disappointment 😭
I’M SORRY! *chases after you ineffectually* DON’T BE ANGRY!
Just gonna co-sign this and spare my own hands a lengthy comment of my own ❤️ this covers all the same points I’d make anyway, we are very in sync rn.
I genuinely feel pretty awful for Dorothy wrt coming out every time I think about that conversation with Danny. He wasn’t aiming any barbs at her on purpose and she explained herself in the worst possible way so he was just reacting to her literal words, but WOOF.
I mean, she less came out to him as he clocked her immediately and she then proceeded to essentially try to get him to provide her with justification and cover for how she’d been acting towards Joyce.
Also I nearly put “her” for Danny every time while I was writing that sentence. That egg needs to crack!
I don’t think there was anything that consciously machinatious about anything she said to him, is the thing.
Also that she didn’t intentionally come out to him only underlines and holds my point! Being “clocked” by him only further increases how uncomfortable she was, and makes the following conversation all the more unfortunate.
Everyone got very mad with her for what she was saying to him, as if she was a heterosexual girl just casting aspersions on the bi community, instead of describing her first-ever bi experience with deep discomfort and shame.
*underlines and bolds
The messy poly would be a delightful turn that makes sense with where all their heads are at
Also it would make Walky having the worst reaction even more fun
I like this take. I agree with all of it. I hope Joyce does come clean and she and Joe can have a real conversation about it.
Great points, all. It’s almost like multiple things can be true at the same time and binary thinking is very unrealistic!
Fuck all binaries, honestly. I’ve never met one I could vibe with.
I mean, I don’t know if I could fuck all the binaries. Pretty sure I’d get tired fairly quickly.
I believe in you, just remember to hydrate!
Yeah, but I don’t want to leave out the non-binaries either. They too deserve love. Seriously. I’ve only met (in-person)) two non-binary people in my life and both of them were gorgeous.
She basically hit Joyce with a “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.” That’s vicious
Also I can relate to Sarah’s pain so much XD September is coming up and when I was younger this would be the “picking potatoes season” in my family, a day or two in the fields, bending over or squatting just picking them all day long. Last time we were doing that my legs were recovering for a week.
As much as I like the Dotty/Joyce ship, I’m with Sarah; at least tell your current boyfriend and break it off now. It’s gonna hurt him no matter what, but it’s going to hurt more the longer it goes on before someone tells him. And it would just be spectacularly awful for him to be told by someone else or see it accidentally because these two can’t keep their paws off each other for more than 10 minutes.
BUT, I’m also down for whatever the hell happens because it will surely be a good dramatic read and that’s actually what I’m here for. Be weird, be stupid; it’ll be interesting regardless.
https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3lw7al4xjmk2o
Wherever the comments are being particularly awful always remember that it could be much, much worse.
Useful reminder that none of us are seeing the sum total of all the actual shit that gets posted.
Yeah, there was a totally different person who called them that the other day. I think it even had a modifier on it, but I didn’t commit it to memory. It got deleted preeeetty fast, thankfully.
PRAISE BE TO WILLIS’ DELETE BUTTON.
They really save us from the most vile comments
And we appreciate that!
Some dumbass on Patreon dropped that word yesterday too. Doing it on the main site is bad enough, but who the fuck is paying five bucks a month to drop slurs in probably the most controlled environment? Like buddy are you lost????
Today’s trend in “weird things that this commentariat does”: misremembering comic history but being really adamant about it.
I’ve seen at least 2-3 people assert that Joe and Joyce hated each other until after the timeskip, and they weren’t already friends before the timeskip.
And also, I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that “what your friend group considers cheating” is one of those things where there are huge, huge regional differences but no one is aware of them until some discussion like this comes up.
It’s mostly cultural, though that can heavily overlap with regional areas.
also massively depends on how much you interact with which internet weirdos
gonna summon some of those now, check it out: microcheating
Microcheating on my boyfriend by looking at an old picture of a hot guy who’s been dead for 50 years
Microcheating on my partner by engaging in more than one reply thread with the same person on a webcomic discussion.
omg you’re all microhussies
This is now a micropolycule.
Can i be a microhinge
There’s a joke in here about a micro screen door.
Look, I’m working my way up. I’m not ready to be a macrohussy right now. Just let me dip my toe in the water before I work myself up to the real Heliogabalus shit. Let me devolve into mindless hedonism at my own pace. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. XD
Congratulations lol, romance “rules” are a culturally-mandated wild ass guess that we’ve made extremely taboo to actually discuss or question with our partners. A lot of queer and poly culture is about trying to engage with and deconstruct that and how we sometimes fail badly.
Honestly, I feel that Sarah is honestly relatively restrained with her reaction. She did some glaring at Joyce’s attempts to lie to her, including a ‘please don’t insult my intelligence’ She then voiced that she didn’t want them continuing the cheating in front of her. Said that they clearly know that what they’re doing is cheating since they’re covering it up. Told them that despite her faulty judgement earlier, Joe doesn’t deserve to be cheated on. Finalizing with saying she’d thought better of Joyce, before walking off.
That is a measured response, cutting right through Joyce’s words, who has a talent for self justification and self delusion at times, especially with romance involved. She is right and she should say it.
Anyone want some popcorn? This drama is getting good!
Hard to storm off with sore legs.
Depending on which specific muscles are being trained, it may well be more painful to go down stairs than up them, on the day(s) following a workout.
Getting down from the loft bed would have already been an ordeal. Going down the steps outside the dorms, though, will be an ambush in plain sight.
Impressive that she was able to stand there glowering so long with her legs wobbling like that.
It’s why Vader never switched to a more comfortable suit. The pain fuels the Spite and the Dark Side.
There’s at least one novel where it’s expressly stated he can’t heal himself with the Force because every time he tries, he’s so relieved at the idea that if it works he can interact with humans normally that he loses his grip on his Force powers since they’re all Dark Side at this point.
Joyce and Dorothy have been emotional cowards for a day. They tried to inform their significant others, made a real effort, and ran away because of the guilt and shame. They’re making terrible cases for themselves right now, and their behavior is genuinely shitty betrayal for their existing relationships, but they also literally just were at a protest and got gassed and informed Joyce’s sister about possible danger to her. There is a *lot* going on in their lives. But not being accountable 3 days from now is a whole different story from not being accountable the morning after an earthshaking day on several levels.
Not the weirdest, but still one of the weirdest thing about this comment section is people analysing a cartoon face for micro-expressions. It feels the way people analyse paparazzi celebrity photos on random websites to talk shit.
I don’t think it’s weird at all to analyze visual aspects of a visual medium
The artist does very deliberate expressions that I expect are intended to convey meaning
Yeah, like, Willis has been doing this for literal decades. The faces are absolutely one of the ways the story is conveyed to us.
Do y’all have some kind of secret second set of eyeballs because the faces are relatively expressive but they are most definitely neither super realistic nor super exaggerated-for-effect and there are limits to what they can convey?
I mean- yeah they have expressions, but some people on here act like they just came home from their job at the Body Language Expert Panel Part Of Youtube factory.
Man some of the anti Sarah comments the past 2 strips have been wild.
Sickos getting mad that the girls are being confronted by the shittyness of their actions
I’m already tired of the dumbass “sickos/paladins” meme. It has as much value as calling each other “gorbabs” and “farwibliquefs”.
My father was a Farwibliquefs, his father was a Farwibliquefs, and so was his father. They were heroes all, and I’ll be damned before I give those lousy Gorbabs and inch of our native soil! 😛
well now I regret joking in this manner
Regret? Heck, you’re only contributing to the hilarity of this farce. I for one am glad to have someone else willing to play along with this asinine bit. Makes it more fun. (At least until someone takes it too seriously rolls up and starts actually being a jerk about it.)
I’m not down with it anymore is what I’m saying.
“You are a worthless Gorbab. You were born a Gorbab, you’ll die a Gorbab, and only your fleas will mourn you!”
-Prince Farwibliquefs
Perfection. Simply perfection. I love it.
well that just sounds like something a gorbab would say
It’s the new SKUB vs. Anti-SKUB. Calling it now.
Why does that last one remind me of Farquaad?
“Some of you may die but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make!”
Come in fhqwhgads.
True sickos would be down with the ramifications of Joyce and Dorothy’s actions flying in their faces. Also, never underestimate the misgynoir of the comments when a woc has a loud opinion. That’s gonna happen regardless of sicko or paladin status.
I guess i am a true sicko by that definition 😁
TRUE SICKO MODE FUCK YEAH
+10
ok I am EXTREMELY impressed by Sarah’s character development here.
There was a demographic survey being done by someone in the comments, right? That was today? I didn’t get a chance to look at the results and was going to come back to see… what the fuck did I miss…
Sarah is officially my favorite character now. I 100% feel her pain