It’s impossible for him to not Dan this up. By showing up he’s Dan’d this up because Asma wants to hang with Alice not some girl she’s never spoken to who already has a boyfriend. Danny stay losing buddy.
She’s probably talking about Alice since she’s met Alice. But the description is vague enough to make them think she meant Sal so I can see why readers assume that too.
I don’t get how this conversation leads to Asma believing Alice is a friend of Joyce and Dorothy. She literally stated that she doesn’t ‘know any of these people’.
Alice is the only person in the comic so far who’s evinced interest in Asma as a person. (At least until whatever this shit is.) Ironically, Asma didn’t get her name.
To be fair to Dorothy, and Joyce, Asma just assumed Alice was their friend, and even if they do consider her a friend Asma’s description was pretty vague.
That being said, I hope this misunderstanding makes for funny times.
I feel like Sal is the type who might bowl. She seems like the sort of character who is either very good at it, or she’s really terrible at it as a contrast to how she’s otherwise been shown to be pretty athletically gifted, like being a strong skater, fighter, biking regularly, etc.
i worry sal’s hand may interfere with 10 pin bowling, but 5 pin might be fine as the ball is smaller and you arent havign to grip with 3 fingers. but yeah they are going to bring sal who will bring danny and walky, who will bring billy who will bring alice. ruth and white bread will be there on a date.
that would mean bowling right handed, but with 5 pin the ball is rolled more like lawnbowling or bocce. so it the hand injury may not interfere as much with the bowling motion, thus allowing her to use the rest of the strength the left side has (truth be told never 10 pin bowled, 5 lin is the dominant bowling in canada. wpg is near 800000 people and i think we only have 2-3 10pin alleys, and at least 3 times as many 5 pin spots
It’s Sal’s right hand that’s damaged. Amber specifically intended to take out her dominant hand, but got the wrong one because she assumed that Sal was right-handed, which she’s not. So Sal is good to go to bowl with her dominant hand.
Didn’t alice tell asma’s name? but i mean, i’m sure some ppl attracted to alice would have the same towards sal tho she’s taken/not bi/pan as far as wel know (tho monogamous anyways so moot)
They go bowling, Sal shows up. After a bit of Asma’s reaction seeming off, she goes, “No, I meant your friend who likes to insert herself in people’sconversations(but in a fun way)” and Carla shows up. Asma: “I THINK SHE LIVES IN FOREST QUAD,” and Jennifer shows up. Eventually almost every named female college student is there. Alice walks by, sipping a drink, and goes, “Hey guys, what’s going on?”
It’s kinda…not? I dunno. That sounds sweet but that logic just ain’t following for me.
Like does it help in any way? Or does it just make you, yourself, feel better? And then that morale helps you keep up the good fight? Will kissing help the cause? Like maybe if someone sees a photo of you kissing someone they’ll go “wow. These inhuman people I dehumanized ARE human. I now see their point of view more”. That seems like the best case scenario? Is that what you mean?
Schools teach us about the 60s hippie counter-culture Love and Peace protests, because the establishment knows that it’s ineffectual, and doesn’t actually threaten the status quo as badly as other forms of protest.
Most of those also weren’t within a billion years of nonviolent once the cops showed up with firehoses and angry dogs, either. Nonviolence is a tactic used to emphasize the violence being done TO you, not a polite means of registering mass disagreement.
It took a while, but the hippies were effective in turning public opinion against the Vietnam war. It’s important to note that the point of “love and peace” there was protest against the mandatory military draft, too. The protestors and/or their peers were being used as the murder weapon against innocent people, and wanted no part of it.
People in real life are currently protesting racist, illegal deportations using inflatable frogs and naked bike rides. Do you think those protests should be more po-faced?
Sometimes things have reasons behind them and sometimes they do not. Sometimes those reasons are bad. Sometimes what gets put in front of a newspaper story has nothing to do with a goddamn thing it’s supposed to be representing. This is basically always the case with protests.
The frogs have a point. Their point is not to entertain people on Instagram, but people being entertained by them on Instagram is definitely helpful so far to helping the ignorant recognize that ICE are brutish pigs who would cap a Grandma for a nickel, rather than mentally justifying it so as not to rock the boat.
Joyce and Dorothy, meanwhile, were there by complete fucking coincidence up until about five seconds AFTER everyone was told to leave, and their kiss was completely unrelated outside their own heads.
So the reason people are protesting in frog suits in Portland is because the messaging from the Trump administration was that Portland was an active war zone consumed with fire and reduced to rubble, and the frog suits make that line of argumentation look ridiculous. The pro-Palestinian encampments on college campuses, meanwhile, generally enforced ironclad discipline, especially as it regarded engaging with the media.
So again we come to: not every protest is the same, and what is apporopriate at one is not appropriate at another.
I feel like kissing at an anti-genocide protest, especially when the cops are already going after protesters and the people who were actually there for the protest cause are leaving and telling you to leave too, is definitely not a good idea. Which is what was the situation was when Joyce and Dorothy decided to kiss at the protest, in case people forgot.
Strictly speaking, the protest seems to be about the university’s investment policies in US companies which are involved in supplying war materials to Bulmaria, said materials evidently being used against one or more Muslim countries.
It’s hard to pin down details, but I believe it’s been implied that the genocide is occurring within Bulmeria, against an internal, probably Muslim, minority, not in a conflict with another country.
The frogs are practical for several reasons:
They make the fascist claims look stupid as fuck.
They provide anonymity while projecting harmlessness.
Anyone attacking them looks deranged.
They provide some coverage, and you could wear real safety gear under there.
Viral meme worthy to get more eyes on what’s happening.
That’s a classic. I’ve yet to see a good argument against kissing at a protest. In the end, they all keep boiling down to religious prudery dictating what is acceptable behaviour. There are places where kissing isn’t acceptable, sure, for safety for example, and others still where we accept not doing it, but again it’s because of tradition, not logic.
Other places where kissing is frowned upon:
Court – Why? They’re conservative. i.e. Religious cultural influence
Nuclear plants – Safety
Operating rooms – Safety
Political offices – see: courts
Eh, most of the time, a little kissing will not make you or others unsafe in a nuclear plant.
Of course, that mostly depends on your passion not causing you to bump into a button or lever that shouldn’t be bumped.
I’ll say, metatextually, Dorothy and Joyce’s kiss is particularly bad because neither of them were there FOR the protest. They don’t care about the protest. The drama of the protest is being used to make their first kiss more dramatic. The protest doesn’t matter. The people being violenced by cops don’t matter. The fictional country being bombed don’t matter. All of that stuff only exists to have a dramatic movie ending kiss scene.
That’s why this comic’s particular kiss is bad. At a regular protest I’m sure you can kiss or whatever idc. It will be weird if you make a big weird show out of kissing at a protest that isn’t about you though. Snog your partner cuz ya love ’em sure. But if you are trying to get attention it’s a little sus. Especially when the stakes of the protest don’t effect you. Y’know…like people who don’t look like you dying overseas. You can agree or disagree I guess. It’s just sorta an awkward place to kiss someone. Especially a passionate kiss. In the same way I probably wouldn’t make out in front of a burning building or a car accident. Unless of course, my SO just escaped that thing and I’m overcome with emotion of her escaping that situation. So I guess you could give it that credit?
This this this, everything Yotomoe is saying here. Plus, again, the optics of centering a genocide protest that is harming a certain group of people with a picture of two white women kissing is always going to hit a bad button.
Then why are they apologizing to Asma and not, say, Amber? Why is the front page of the newspaper just the kiss and not the violence? Has anyone been confirmed injured in the strip at all other than Amber? Is the idea that Amazi-girl stopped literally all the police from harming anyone?
And taking it a step further, Joyce being harmed just sorta feeds into the melodrama of their first kiss. It’s still centering the arc around these two. And like that’s not FAIR cuz she is being effected. But these two are basically the only perspective we’re allowed to have for this event. So it would be more accurate to say “people who aren’t the main character don’t matter”.
Joyce and Dorothy were there for the protest.
Your argument fails from the first phrase you wrote.
And more of that… whatever reason they were there, their kiss was not problematic at all.
People from outside don’t know their whole backstories and they don’t have to know. Their photo can speak so much on its own, like all the rest of the kisses.
I believe the commonality in situations where kissing is frowned upon is the degree of formality. Court cases are formal activities. Funerals are generally formal. For most, but not all churches, religious observations are formal. Professional activities are formal and so kissing while at work is viewed as unprofessional. But some business activities can be informal. There was a time when college life was formal, but those days are long gone.
While there could be exceptions, generally speaking, protests are not formal.
But also just anytime you’re supposed to be doing something else. Classes aren’t formal, but you still shouldn’t start making out during one. It would be bad form for them to start making out right now while they’re talking to Asma.
Or you know, while they’re supposed to be evacuating the protest.
This is somewhat cultural, in parts of Europe it’s common to kiss family and friends on the cheek, the way some Americans exchange hugs. You still probably wouldn’t use copious amounts of tongue on your partner at a funeral, though.
So have you just. Not been reading then? The thread above you have some pretty good explanations as to why not every protest is the same! Dot tends to have some pretty good comments on the subject, every single time this catboy grav pops up with this exact same comment and refuses to read anything that disagrees with them
OK, I’m thinking Joyce will have Sal come to mind, but why do I get the feeling Sma means someone else? Not sure who off the top of my head, but someone else….
Obligatory reminder: People who are queer can be bigoted to other branchs of the LGBTQ+ or even their own. It happens all the time.
Obligatory disclaimer: I do not think Asma is BEING homophobic, or was at any point. It’s just that liking girls isn’t some kind of shield against judging people for liking girls.
I really need Asma, Raidah, Alice, and Billifer to be a new core friend group. Ditch these two losers and get where the real potential is! I mean….uh… Don’t trust leather jackets and boots or homogenized fashion.
Raidah’s a pretty big loser in her own right. Like, maybe Roz can make the cut instead if we’re picking out someone critical of Dorothy and Joyce for some kind of Legion of Doom or whatever the hell we’re doing with this shtick.
I actually don’t think Raidah is that bad and the only reason she’s hated is because she’s directly antagonistic to characters we …..like? Do we still even like Joyce and Dorothy these days? Anyway I find she had nice energy with Alice and Asma. They made a good trio. I think there’s hope for Raidah if she cools her hate a bit and actually makes real friends and acts like a real friend instead of whatever she actually does all day, which seems to be walking around watching people do more interesting things than she is.
Nah, we’ve seen too much of Raidah in the strip for me to buy that.
I don’t think she’s pure evil, but she’s a social climber who has, on panel, tried to use both Jennifer and Walky, and was mad that the former broke up with Asher because it was going to impact her group, with total indifference to if those two even wanted to be together. Additionally, there’s the Sarah/Dana issue.
Raidah’s a shithead who just sometimes happens to have beef with people who characters whom have also made mistakes. It doesn’t absolve her of some of her scummier moments because she got some good dunks in on Dorothy a few times.
Hey you’re entitled to your opinion but for the record a lot of characters have done worse than being a shameless social climber and pretty much gotten away with it. Like:
Joyce
Dorothy
Ruth
Amber
Sarah
Mike
Jennifer
Robin
Jason ect. Basically everyone. You don’t have to like Raidah at all but saying she’s a shithead that needs to be absolved just ignores character nuance. Like what are we judging characters by here? Just being mean? Is that all it takes?
I don’t feel like Raidah NEEDS to be absolved, to be clear. I think she’s a character who brings something interesting to the dynamic and fills a good niche. Like, I think she’s a much more nuanced antagonist than like a Ross or Ryan or Blaine. I’d even say she’s not as bad as a Linda or Naomi. She’s someone who ambiguously knows Asher has connections to organized crime and considers that a selling point. That’s where I am given pause with her. She’s sketchy in a very realistic way.
I’m just saying, I don’t think she’s peachy keen, is all. I am hopeful that criticism of the handling of Muslim characters means we’ll be seeing more of her and Nash in addition to Asma. I just do not think she’s the kind of person most of the cast would benefit from having as their close confidant at this point in time. Who knows, maybe my opinion will shift given more exposure.
Do you also think Sal is bad, seeing as she also knows that Asher has connections to organised crime and considers that so much of a selling point that she’s the only one who’s made use of them?
I honestly don’t know how much anyone really knows about Asher’s mob connections other than definitely Sal. Because we don’t know anything about Asher! Raidah might think his family has legitimate business connection which they might. My point is don’t trust that Asher! And also I really want someone to get a redemption/ face turn in this comic but that never happens like every bad person is just always static and black and white in personality and action. Raidah has that potential.
I’d be fine with it as a face turn, but that’s different from she isn’t “that bad and the only reason she’s hated is because she’s directly antagonistic”
@thejeff I stand by that. I don’t think Raidah’s that bad. I don’t know how we’re judging people on their deeds or is it their personality or everything? The worst thing Raidah is really guilty of is being a bad friend to Jennifer and making horrible, possibly bigoted assumptions about Joyce and Dina. Dina and Raidah have never had a true interaction since so I wonder if Raidah’s actions on that will ever be addressed? She’s said mean things or just made true comments to Joyce and Dorothy a few times. She’s had schemes I guess, or more accurately bad intentions that never really affected anyone in any noticeable or meaningful way except arguably isolating Jennifer a bit while she was depressed but Jennifer just hung out with her real friends and fixed that without Raidah being any kind of hindrance or antagonist.
So why is Raidah bad? Cause she’s a social climber? Or because she’s kinda mean to people we kinda like sometimes? Comparatively our protagonists have punched her in the face and actively sabotaged her relationship. Y’know when they aren’t drunk driving, stealing, racially profiling, stalking, being sex pests, misogynists, bullies, assaulting, breaking and entering, undercutting protests, cheating, being man babies, possibly calling in an assassination, ect, to each other.
@sirksome For a lot of us, Raidah’s bad because of stuff like this strip, in which she actively decides to treat Dina as “mentally challenged” in a really disgustingly ableist way — even her objection to the r-slur in the next strip doesn’t change that fact.
She’s an interesting character, no doubt, but she’s also fundamentally an asshole who needs to do some work to not be a asshole.
Which, as you rightly note, is also pretty true of our protagonists as it stands, but people tend to get salty when you point that out.
@ Big Z Yeah that’s one of the moments I was talking about and I still hold that against Raidah too, and I’d personally love if that moment were further addressed in anyway by either of them beyond just this one time.
Joyce called Dina a robot and that’s water under the bridge now. But the Dana situation is just remaining cold heat between Sarah and Raidah so the Dina issue is probably never coming up again. I guess we just keep hating Raidah.
Do a lot of you also think Sarah, Dorothy, and Joyce are bad because when Becky said she was trying to put the moves on Dina their reaction was “ew, no, that’s weird, Dina’s basically a child”?
A “bad friend” to Jennifer in the sense that she doesn’t actually like Jennifer, but only pretends to for whatever scheme it is she has going on.
The treatment of Dina that Big Z mentioned.
Long term harassment/bullying of Sarah – seen at the beginning of comic, but strongly implied to have picked up from last semester.
That she’s still scheming against Sarah, as seen by bringing up (or having Carl bring up?) Dana at that breakfast with Walky.
How she reacted to Joyce flirting with Jacob – not that she reacted, but that she pretended to be friendly while trying to undermine her.
Since she’s clearly manipulative and willing to lie and pretend to like people she despises to achieve her goals, as we’ve seen in a few asides to her clique, we can’t even trust that anything positive she says or does is real.
And even without that, we’ve seen very little positive from her. We talk about how our main characters have done shitty things too, but we’ve also seen their better sides and I think that matters.
Honestly I kinda did think that was shitty of them, yes. Keep in mind I didn’t much care for Sarah, Joyce, or Dorothy at that point in the comic so…yeah I probably did think they were bad.
I mean raidah was introduced by telling someone to choke for not wanting to lose her scholarship (and intended or not I get a lot of anti-blackness from her in the Sarah storyline. Classis definitely intended. College admin finds weed in the room, who are they gonna think it belongs to? Rich white girl or the black student that’s not even giving them money?) And then her next appearance was being incredibly demeaning and ableist to Dina, she just didn’t approve of literal slurs. Which I like, the bar is in hell if anyone thinks that absolves her of being ableist.
So yeah until she makes up for that shit I can’t really forgive her, as much as I’d like to
I think Raidah makes an interesting sort of mirrorverse counterpart to Dorothy. Neither seems poor, both can be a bit rightgeously obnoxious at people, and until recently, both had a long game focus on political clout. What’s different is we’re shown that Dorothy means well even when she’s bad at it, whereas Raidah was actively trying to use or bully people when we’ve seen her. Even her ex-boyfriend seemed like more of an asset to her than lover.
We could get a Raidah character development arc some year that changes perception, but as things are, she just comes off as a jerk or “ends justify the means” sort of person.
No hate today.
Well ok, A little hate. Dorothy is still cringe as hell. Horrendously cringe. Just trying to shmooze the front desk girl cuz you inconvenienced her during a protest. It feels so phony. Gross.
But yeah I’m here for silliness. Now leave this conversation before you make it worse, ya weirdos.
I like Dorothy, overall, as a person, but I think she is really bad at knowing what to do to make good with people. She’s awkward with her peace offerings, and even more awkward with her self-recriminations that veer off into flagellation. Like, I wonder if she wanted to be a president because of the West Wing, because she doesn’t know how to have a conversation with someone when it’s about her issues, it’s got to be a prepared speech or else she’s frozen up.
This is something she can ultimately work on, but it’s a major flaw she has in her character. (Not AS a character, mind. Conflict’s obviously a valid thing in a story.)
I think I’ve talked about it before but dotty follows a pre prepped Script. Like an if x then y logic map. It’s supposed to help her go through social interaction smoothly in a way that looks normal and makes her seem considerate and likeable but as it turns out, life isn’t a dating sim and having all the theoretically correct strategies doesn’t actually work. If why she did that awful moment of silence thing at the Halloween party, its why she came to apologize to asma (well, that and the white guilt). It’s why she does most of the weird shit she does. At the protest her logic map kinda frazzled out. “If fuck up then aaaAAA MAKE STATEMENT????” It unfortunately comes off really disingenuous which is why she has like -1 to her charisma stat.
Anyway I know all of this bc I’m low-key the same irl. It’s just a form of masking. Idk how this girl thought she wasn’t autistic lmfao
So let me say that I would rather give straight panels of Wally shitting his intestines out than spend one more moment on this train wreck of a conversation so thank g-d it seems to be over
I hate the idea that we need to be contained because people might get upset at our (often completely valid) criticisms of what’s being happening in this storyline.
From what I saw, in the days before the containment thread, people were misinterpreting even the valid criticisms and, in the way of the internet, things escalated rather than getting explained, with unhappy results. I haven’t seen this happen since the containment threads started.
Yes, it can be argued that people should read more carefully and apply nuance and such, but the overall negativity that resulted seemed to be infecting the comment section as a whole. It seems a lot better now.
Besides, in this thread, you can count on people not dismissing concerns with “but they’re cute so it doesn’t matter”.
I hate the idea that the haters/anti-Doyce commenters are some kind of persecuted, smol-bean community who are being confined and silenced lest they offend anyone. Especially when that idea is expressed by people who leave negative comments outside the negativity thread, and/or demand to be left alone whenever anyone criticizes their posts.
Kyulen isn’t letting themself (don’t know what their pronouns are) be contained. They made another comment shitting on Joyce and Dorothy outside this thread.
This is why I’m not calling it a containment thread anymore. It’s a negativity thread.
Most people have been keeping their actual kvetching contained to the thread so, like, it’s been pretty effective in that regard. I’m not a cop, I can’t stop people from posting outside of it, but most people seem to tend to respect it.
I agree with you. I’m not changing my language because the thread hasn’t been reasonably successful in that regard, I’m changing my language so that people don’t have an excuse to claim they are being treated like lepers because their “valid criticism” will hurt people’s feelings.
Just to be super-duper clear, I’ve only seen a few people make that claim. This is not an attack on every single person who has criticized the strip recently, or anything like that. And if you don’t make negative comments outside the negativity thread, I’m not going to attack you unless you’re actively calling people out or stuff like that.
I think most of us interpret “containment thread” as a place to confine unfocused dislike of these characters/this plot without unduly upsetting the people who can’t stand any criticism of their blorbo, but it’s certainly NOT going to prevent most of us from engaging in discussions elsewhere in the comment section as they come up.
It works as a containment thread for “unprovoked ‘hate'”, not as a containment thread for “all non-positive opinions” or “all comments by haters”.
If you make negative comments outside the negativity thread, I might engage with you. If you don’t, and you whine that people just can’t handle your criticism in the negativity thread, I’ll ignore you. But if you do both, then it’s fair to point out the hypocrisy.
Also, my interpretation of the “containment thread” idea is that it works both ways; people shouldn’t attack your criticism if it’s contained. So if you want to criticize the strip but you don’t want people to engage with you, then you should do it in the negativity thread, the thing set aside specifically for that.
Man, how the HELL did we go from “we want to apologize to you for cop energy” to “actually can we be friends/do something nice to make up for… some nebulous wrong? (and also, explicitly in text, because I fear I might have alienated all my other friends?)”
If Dorothy gets any more white she’s gonna start reflecting random lights.
Non sequitur but I don’t interpret Dina leaving that time as an actual breakup. They’re just goin through it rn imo but they’ll make it to the other side. If the Terrible Lizbians ACTUALLY broke up, if we are actually genuinely trading Peak ND sapphics for this dogwater, dollar tree version. I am going to be FUMING. Call me the third single released on June 7th 2023 by Canadian punk band PUP, cuz I’m gonna Kill Something
(I like making mr peanutbutter style contrived jokes, if you haven’t noticed)
Right? Between Dorothy acknowledging that their friends have a right to be pissy and whatever this awkward nonsense is and whatever identity-confusion between Alice and Sal I suspect is brewing, this has potential.
Also uh, not related to the actual strip at hand but it’s really weird for Willis to post a skeet gloating about ‘Patreon numbers are good since Joyce/Dorothy! Take that people who said I’ve destroyed engagement by doing it!’ when a fair amount of the commentary lately is about how badly the protest has been handled and the subsequent handling of Muslim characters.
Like, uh.
(I guess this is a containment thread option? I dunno.)
In a world where they haven’t talked about that, too, I’d be with you. But, nope, that’s also been discussed, so, ehh. Like, maybe you’ve missed it, but Willis has also discussed that on bsky back when all that was playing out in the strip.
They have, and I know they’ve inserted strips about it. But if the comments yesterday was any indication I still don’t think the execution has landed. And a post boasting about Patreon numbers when a few people still feel sour about it might not be the best timing.
Fwiw its entirely possible hes not talking about the commentary here, at least I dont think Ive seen anyone here claiming interest in the comic is destroyed
I mean, realistically, it’s both, but moreso the “they gayed it, now it sucks” types who claimed the relationship was an ass-pull, not people who have said the two have behaved inconsiderately, etc. Like, the ones who have been mocked in screenshots have fit a pretty common theme.
ooooh that explains the few comments i’ve seen accusing people of being “anti-gay” or complaining about people being “anti gay”. I was so confused how they extrapolated that from “i like other gay couples in the story but not this one”. If it was off platform I can pretend that makes sense now
Keep in mind also that, usually, the worst comments here get deleted. It’s possible there was blatant bigotry in the comments that got nuked before you saw it.
So Willis is fine if people don’t like these characters, the story, the way all of this has been handled… as long as Number Goes Up.
Cool. Good to know.
I mean in this case number goes up actually is indicative that people are indeed enjoying this since the main perk of the Patreon is seeing comics early, so more people getting means more people want to see what happens 🤷
Yeah, that’s the thing, it IS a direct indication that people do care about it. An unimpeachable one, even. People literally vote with their wallets with it.
There are things to cry foul about, but this is a pretty weak one, honestly.
There are also homophobic assholes who don’t like the strip direction and who have been very vocal about it. Both the homophobia and the Islamophobia aren’t great. Also the misogyny, that’s bad too.
…This strip has a whole lotta shit going on right now.
Uh, that seems like an odd read, StClair. I mean, the number going up is people wanting to give him money because of they want more of the story he is creating. I would be pretty jazzed if my income increased because so many people liked what I was doing.
Engagement isn’t the same as liking. Angry works just as well, often better. The big social media sites figured that out long ago, and adjusted their algorithms accordingly.
I encourage you to check the link and make sure you agree with my interpretation. I strongly disagree with how Nono read the OP, but there’s too many games of telephone going on around here about Word of Willis and too little actually going to the source to read for ourselves, IMHO.
and like if I’m being real here, as important as the comments are to Willis getting feedback on whether or not portrayal of issues affecting us comes off as insensitive, etc, but like
at the same time, a majority of readers don’t even read the comments at all, let alone write them, and not all of them are subbed to patreon either
I appreciate Willis getting feedback here of all places but at the same time it’s not like we can represent the WHOLE audience
(and for many reasons, this is actually a good thing)
re: hate-clicks,
yeah it’s as Clif said, I doubt Willis makes THAT much off of Ad revenue to be profitable via hate-clicks for raw engagement, he probably makes most of his money via Patreon and thus is has every reason to make something that much the audience find pleasant (if not interesting) to read
oh and there’s also porn, and he even said once that in the event of an economic downturn, he would “reverse the ratio of porn strips to regular strips”,
which pretty sure was a joke, but if there’s anything suggesting we better brace ourselves for shit to go the level of Harem Anime craziness, well… XD
Willis would not need to add or expand relationships to draw more erotica, there’s plenty of couples in this universe and the Walkyverse already who are presumably doin it on the regular.
Number that goes up is Patreon subscriptions. I strongly doubt anyone’s subbing to Willis’ Patreon in anger. “I hate this so much, I’m going to give you money every month!!” Doesn’t quite parse.
Other things come to mind was setting up polls specifically to drive a wedge between readers that’s had me getting weird vibes from him for a bit now. Like trying to drive engagement in the community in not the healthiest way.
It’s been said in this thread but I’m going to expand on it — this is far from the only place people comment on this comic, and as far as I can tell it’s the nicest in terms of how people are reacting to, well, everything — there has been a LOT of stupidly homophobic and just blatantly media-illiterate commentary on DoJo elsewhere, including the ridiculous opinion that this couple came outta nowhere and the equally ridiculous opinion (as cited by Willis here) that these two as a couple are somehow BAD for engagement.
To my understanding, the things Willis has said that specifically addresses opinions held by THIS commentariat are, paraphrased, “I need to do better about the protest and Muslim representation” and “I’m kinda bummed/bemused that some people seem to find DoJo boring”.
(I should be clear — there is some homophobic trash that gets posted here, but enough of it gets reported into oblivion that many of us rarely if ever see it)
And yeah, like. I understand the impulse to think of this as the only place Willis is talking about apart from the Patreon comments which are (???) usually I think nicer, because they’re made up of people paying for the early strips…
But this comment section definitely isn’t the only place Willis is getting feedback, and even here there are a bunch of comments that never make it out of moderation (because they’re from new posters) but which Willis still has to see with their eyes.
And I will just say again that some of the things I’ve seen people saying directly to Willis in their BlueSky replies are awful, and those are the ones that are being made semi-publicly. Willis’s mentions almost certainly have worse stuff, and they’ve also got an email address and DMs…
Willis doesn’t even have to go looking at Reddit to find people being REAL weird about this storyline.
Folks’ perfectly legitimate criticism is not anywhere near the level of weird, even when it’s sometimes phrased more bluntly here.
It’s neat that Dorothy slid in that acknowledgement that yes, they most likely did torpedo the majority of their relationships with other people… if not outright ALL of them.
Well, we’ll see how this plays out because it’s all but set to be a big miscommunication here.
I’ve seen people complain that the two are not facing consequences, but like, I definitely do think Dorothy’s right. I think Jennifer is their only core friend who isn’t either directly impacted by what happened or disgusted with them, like in Sarah’s case. Amber would also not be directly impacted I guess (outside of maybe being put off by what they did to Walky), but she’s got her own problems to deal with right now, in her case, getting bloodied.
I do not think Amber would blame them for getting her hurt, that isn’t how she’d likely look at it, but Dorothy probably isn’t quite as keen to let herself off the hook.
Well Sal hasn’t heard about it yet (she got Amber patched up but she doesn’t know anything re: the whole Dorothy/Joyce and the impacts). Same with Lucy.
Though I’m not sure Sal or Jennifer are considered their core friends at the moment. The group seems to be Joyce/Dorothy/Joe/Becky/Dina/Walky/Sarah. Lucy joins them for math but she doesn’t really hang out with them.
Potentially. Walky *did* get hurt and sure, it benefits her, potentially, but it’s still kind of a shitty move. Joe getting hurt, too, means that while she’ll probably cut them more slack than Sarah because mess and all that jazz, I doubt she’s about to pass out champagne to them, either.
Jennifer is annoyed because they inconvenienced her by making her have to “go be a friend to Walky”.
Amber feels terrible because the fallout devastated Becky and that may have busted up the Terrible Lizbians.
Jacob seems relatively cool with Dorothy and Joyce now. He came to their party anyway (and connected with Lucy). But he might be a bit annoyed that Joyce doesn’t appear to have changed her ways since he groused at her for scheming to break him up from Raidah.
I dunno… maybe Ethan’s cool with them? Vaguely? To the extent he likes anyone but Asher?
Ethan does seem to have an abiding affection for Joyce and likes her. I feel like he’d actually probably be pretty positive, both in her queer awakening and for her being unambiguously supportive of Jocelyn, whom Ethan also cares quite a lot about. Hell, he even zapped out of Emo Ethan-mode for a bit when he thought Joyce had figured out about her older sister, before I think realizing she was talking about Carla.
That’s probably going to be an interesting encounter.
On that last bit: you’re misremembering, Ethan thought she was talking about Jocelyne but wasn’t sure. He hedged on the side of not directly outing Jocelyne but did encourage Joyce to say “you have always been my sister”.
Joyce then took this advice to heart and went straight to Carla to tell her she’d always been her sister, which Carla responded to by exiting stage left at maximum warp.
Ah, thank you for the correction! It’d been a bit, but yeah, all things considered, Ethan does seem to be pretty gentle with Joyce compared to how he’s been with some others.
I remain pretty sure that Amber’s feelings are magnified because Booster pointed out that MAYBE her encouraging Dorothy to send that photo was part of a scheme to get Walky for herself.
So she already felt guilty even before it had splash damage on Becky, and I think she’s likely to be too mired in self-loathing over that part to actually blame Dorothy or Joyce, at least for a while.
(Some things depend on how Walky actually ADMITS to feeling about any of this.)
Just because Amber wants something, and deliberately causes it to happen, doesn’t mean she doesn’t also get to budget some intense self-loathing about doing the thing she wanted to do into the procedure.
i was going to reply that i did not believe amber did this to get walky, but then i remembered booster confronting her about it.
i will say it did feel like the desire for walky as a motivator was definately a subconsious one.
but also i liked walky and amber together, more than i liked walky and dorothy.
I wonder if Amber would chat about it with Joe at some point? And if she would tell him her role in being a trash goblin who loves trash and helped Dorothy with the boob photo?
Agreed though, she’s going to be out of commission for a while and won’t be able to addr as things yet.
Yeah, I don’t anticipate it will be any time soon, but I’m now quite curious about that, too.
I also feel like Rachel, of all people, and Roz might wind up having some pretty interesting reactions to all of this, when talking about Joe-adjacent characters. Roz really does seem to legitimately care about Joe, and I could see her being kind of uncool with this, though I could also see her be kind of more disgruntled that Dorothy and Joyce unintentionally outdid her on using sex appeal to call attention to a political matter, even if there are further issues to how all of that played out.
And with Rachel, well, what happened has got to be kind of a spanner in the works of what her world view would suggest was going to happen.
i could see it happening as the are step-siblings now, i could see them meeting up for a family dinner, or joes streak of being great continues and he goes to check on her simply because he is her stepbrother now and wants to see how she is doing, knowing she was defending her fellow students
*As I started writing this, I slowly realized that this was becoming pretty long; apologies for that*
Not sure how Sal feels.
She saw them last night and didn’t react like she was surprised.
But with no discussion or internal dialogue from her, we don’t know if she fully realizes what was up, plus she probably had AG on her mind at that moment.
As for everyone else:
Sarah has a problem with it.
Joe is still dealing with it, so he’s probably up in the air until Joyce kills his hope for poly officially.
Walky is not ok, but he’s not as emotional as his last breakup with Dorothy (he probably won’t want to be around them, tho, which will make math class awkward).
Becky is spiraling.
Dina is probably not happy, but I don’t think she’d have a problem with them…maybe.
Amber has her own problems.
Lucy is a toss up: she could be indifferent, she could be bothered by the cheating, or, if her personality has changed to more than just being less restrictive about sex, she might gloat a little.
Jacob probably won’t care unless he is affected by Joe’s feelings.
Ruth definitely won’t care.
Neither will Carla.
Neither will Malaya, other than to call them Fakey for some reason.
Jennifer has done her perfunctory Walky comforting, and I don’t think she’ll actually condemn either Joyce or Dorothy, tho she’ll probably find them annoying very quickly.
I don’t think Danny is technically in the friend group, as they almost never hang around each other.
He’s more like Joe or Sal’s plus 1 when it comes to actually being friends with everyone, and yes I say that despite being Dorothy and AG’s ex and his recent conversation with Dorothy about being bi. But I will include him, and I don’t know how he will take it.
Joe’s his best friend, so he won’t be happy with this.
And he just had a conversation with Dorothy where the cheating bi stereotype might have come up (I don’t remember), so he could have a problem with that as well.
But he actively hates or at least hates on Walky for reasons that are just stupid to me, so he might be ok with it.
And hey, he might be happy that Dorothy fully admitted the truth to herself and/or two more queer folk found themselves and someone to be with.
He’s a toss up for me.
And I think that’s it. Every other character I can think of is too much in the background or too openly antagonistic to them to be in the friend group.
i actually think walky and joe are both in healthier places than many have give them credit for. as walky himself said to billie the had been back together for less than a week. i feel like alot of what he said was more for billies benefit than him deflecting.
joe after talking to sarah has validated my read of his head health, there is some sadness there, but it is overwhelmed by his acceptance of what he desires, what he wants, and what he can control. understanding those things makes moving on and moving forward very easy.
Amber is lying there stabbed and possibly wanted by the police for her showing up to the protest to protect everyone. Did she show up originally because she noticed that Joyce and Dorothy dropped their phones off so that her tracking was not working? I have questions about her choices to get involved in the protest that are not yet answered while she recovers.
Sal might get framed as Amazi-girl accidentally, thanks to Jennifer’s misunderstanding of who Amazi-girl is, also, especially as she helped Amber out and I think might be hiding the uniform?
I am glad that Asma laid out why what they did was a problem. I feel like the way she’s saying it is also allowing for that she *does* accept that they probably weren’t trying to make this about themselves or anything, that shit happened. She doesn’t know the reasons, and ultimately, the impact matters more than the intent here, but that’s honestly pretty gracious of her.
All this to say, looking forward to bowling, sounds like it’ll be a hoot.
Asma is more than socially aware enough, to immediately clue in from all of the unsubtle context clues, that these two are actually just as catastrophically unworldly as they obviously appear to be. That buys them a bare minimum amount of traction, and then, possible access to Alice buys them the other 99% of the way into being tolerated.
“You know! The one with the hair! And wears winter clothes sometimes! And she’s got body parts and stuff!”
I actually don’t recall how Asma knows that Alice and Joyce are friends.
What are the chances that she means Alice, they bring Sal, Asma also develops an instant crush or squish or whatever on Sal, somehow Alice learns about this and messiness ensues?
That’s awfully specific, but the chances are probably pretty low considering Sal may not want to hang out with the girl who just dumped her brother, and the girl that laughed at him as she left with his now ex-girlfriend.
Then again Sal may not even know, but might go with Danny in tow, and may deter any crush-age.
Yep, Asma knows they know Alice, she just isn’t aware they don’t know her that well yet, and that Sal is likely who they’d think of first given that description. She just also probably doesn’t know Sal that well, either.
In Asma’s defense, the way that Alice gossips, seems to very heavily imply that whatever she’s saying, comes out more thoroughly vetted as facts and truths than they actually are. She actually communicates several things that are untrue, that were based upon her assumptions, but she doesn’t present them like they’re information she indirectly assembled, she just says “oh, this thing totally happened, because I remember someone implied it did/because I put the pieces together myself.” This is probably behavior that served her well in Billie’s friend group back in high school, and I kinda see it as the beginnings of a potential character flaw we may explore.
But, all Asma heard was Alice talking as if everything she had concrete, direct evidence of all of the things she was saying, and thus incorrectly got the idea that Alice must naturally be pretty ingrained in Joyce and Dorothy’s social group. However, Alice only knows Joyce from one particularly passionate conversation, and some additional hearsay; she just doesn’t communicate in such a way that makes her knowledge, and thus her social connection, sound as insignificant as it should.
Oh for sure, I’d say Asma’s assumptions have so far been pretty reasonable ones. She has no way of knowing Alice is just kind of gossip-mongering and not fully immersed in the situation, and not the girl who only kinda-sorta knows Joyce and I don’t recall has ever once talked to Dorothy.
Y’know her. She breathes oxygen. She sometimes eats food and I SWEAR I’ve seen her drink liquids on occasion. Oh, and she has this habit of blinking now and then.
Alice is a friend of a friend. Moreso to Joyce, given I don’t actually recall if Dorothy has ever even met her before, and because Joyce is closer with Billie/Jennifer than Dorothy is, regardless.
Joyce at least has met her a couple of times, and even is a substantial part of why Alice and Jennifer are in each other’s orbit again, but Sal is definitely far closer to Joyce, obviously.
Calculated for maximum comedy value to be a valid descriptor for both of them. If Asma had specified “short, spikish hair” then Sal is ruled out, for example.
The last time Asma saw Alice, Alice was gossiping about Joyce and Dorothy in a way that definitely implied a greater level of familiarity than they actually share
And now we’re smoothly transitioning from “moral judgments for Joyce and Dorothy” to a classic case of wrong invitation and a really smooth excuse for Asma to suddenly ramp up in importance to the story!
Late October question: Anyone here watching the new season of hazbin hotel? The first 2 episodes already has me pretty excited. (If you don’t like the show you do not need to tell me, you can just ignore me).
Yesssssss!!!! Gravity’s a banger, Lute is going even MORE off the deep end than her usual baseline, the Vees are already showing signs that they’re going to fall apart, and it’s once again demonstrated that all the problems in this show are spawned by Heaven completely failing to understand Hellions at a most basic level.
It’ll never not be funny to me that nobody went, “wait, no, that’s bullshit” in S1 when Adam said “sticking it to the Man” was one of the conditions to get into Heaven. There’s nothing Heaven is about LESS than sticking it to the Man. Heaven IS the Man. The ur-example of sticking it to the Man is Lucifer, and he’s the only being to ever have been KICKED OUT of Heaven.
I mean, at the end of S1 she was sunbathing on a beach, and now she’s… drinking tea in a garden, while purposefully ignoring the calls and texts from both her daughter and (ex?)husband (or whatever they were).
What it feels like is that she got tired of Hell and dumped her family for a cushy life in Heaven.
I am I just not remember how that whole thing went down? Granted I didn’t exactly enjoy it the first time, but purely from in-universe perspective; Joyce and Dorothy went to the protest to warn Jocelyne, the cops came to break it up, and in the chaos the high tension caused their repressed feelings to bubble over and they kissed. Like I don’t understand what the big fuss is just because Daisy is a shitty editor. From our perspective I get being mad for Willis writing the protest just to be set dressing for the white girl romance, but trying to critique it diegetically this way just makes no sense. Like, this is a college newspaper not a real news publication that people don’t real.
I’m glad asma is getting more focus even if it is a bit clumsily done, her dynamic with Joyce and Dorothy already feels very established which feels like a bit of a double edged sword, it’s good to have your characters dynamic with other characters feel defined and fleshed out but I worry there rapport feels a bit to easy and natural for people who don’t really know each other all that well? Idk I’m excited for more asma though, I’m glad she seems to be bumped up to main cast member
Like I’m having trouble putting it into words but there talking like people who’ve been friends for awhile y’know? Which is good cause Willis wants to make these characters friends, but also for this specific moment where these characters are currently acquaintances at best I’m not sure it entirely fits
I enjoy it but would never seek it out myself. My skills at bowling is super inconsistent. Sometimes I can reliable get strikes and spares and sometimes I can barely hit the pins at all. Bowling is fun when I’m doing well but when I’m failing my competitive side makes it hard to enjoy myself.
I used to bowl as a child.whoch means I’m moderately decent at it as an adult. I have never been bowling with a group where anyone was even halfway as good as I am and I always end up feeling bad about how much better at it I am than everyone else there.
This isn’t even a brag, bowling is actually very easy to be decent at, it’s just that nobody ever actually learns how to do it properly (keep your arm straight and don’t swing it across your body as you bowl. That’s it, that’s all you need to know to not be terrible at bowling)
I have always been confused by bowling dates because surely at any point one of you is bowling. Bowling double dates make sense to me because at any point 3 people are not bowling, but a one on one mystifies me.
Asthma is, perhaps thankfully, cited a few times when I was looking this up as how *not* to say it. I’ve seen it suggested it’s more like As-Mah, with specifically an S sound and not a Z, or Ess-Mah. The latter, I am sort of leaning towards, since I’ve run into it a bit more.
Seeing as she is in the US, she might be inclined to present her name in a way that doesn’t get annoying comments about Asthma when she introduces herself, or she might choose to pronounce it in a traditional way as if spoken in another language and have to experience the frequent mispronunciations that follow – I’ve seen people choose either option according to their personal preference/energy levels for dealing with those conversations.
You gotta admire Joyce’s confidence that they’ll still be in Sal’s good graces after what happened to Walky gets back to her. It’s delusional, mind you, but I respect the commitment to the bit.
By virtue of Sal having zero faith in any of Walky’s relationships and like him, aware/self-hating enough that Dorothy could do better and leave him at any time…
There’s a nonzero chance Sal will remain unbothered. I say that especially because all things considered? Billie felt she had to check on him because Sal probably wasn’t going to.
I don’t think Sal would be psyched to hear that Dorothy 1) cheated on him and 2) strung him along a second time. Like obviously she’s not gonna go scorched earth or anything, but she knows Walky’s been circling the drain for a while and this will NOT help. The funniest outcome is that they invite Sal bowling and then she finds out there.
Walky’s been circling the drain? How do you figure that?
He had had some problems in math and then his grades came up after some tutoring by Amazigirl and a bit of historical grade revision by Amber. The guy has gone through three girlfriends, one of whom was really into him, one he was really into, and one he could be garbage together with. He’s been doing great recently, up to the point where Joyce dumped him.
Walky currently only sees value in himself as a backup for the people around him until they go after what they really want. His self-worth has cratered, reinforced by getting dumped (even though the Lucy situation was mostly on him), getting strung along and cheated on by Dorothy, and having to confront the way his parents treat him and his sister like commodities. I can tell you from personal experience, this mindset does not lead anywhere good.
Yeah, like I don’t think Sal *approves*, but I am inclined to think she isn’t going to play defense for him, exactly. She might still be aware enough of how the optics would be for going bowling with them, and Danny would probably not be president of the fanclub for either of them right now.
Yeah I don’t think she’d be running defense as much as observing “Look, I get that my brother’s a loser and you two are star-crossed lovers or whatever, but that was still fucked up.” Joyce’s blase attitude about it isn’t gonna help smooth the vibes over either.
It would be funny if they’re thinking of Sal but I do think they got Alice correct ONLY because I don’t think Dorothy would believe that Sal would go bowling with her after what she’s done to Walky. At the very least in solidarity, if nothing else.
Years (months) of her being the ‘front desk girl’ that nobody bothered to get to know, and we are finally going to get to see what makes her tick!
She’s already throwing off autistic/ND vibes to me (strong sense of justice / right/wrong, and highly- or particularly-organized), so I’m curious to see how that gets explored.
I know this isn’t where it’s going (in part because Sal is one of the only explicitly straight main characters in the strip at this point), but I do love how radioactive that’d leave the social circle, and Danny would likely have a pretty hilarious reaction to Dorothy and Joyce bringing that down on him, too.
Not sure how I feel about the possibility of Asma becoming friends with these two. I’ve been more hoping to see a secondary friend group form, maybe with people who no longer associate as much with the primary group. A less “evil” clique for Raidah to be involved with, you know? But I’ll accept sitcom shenanigans as a consolation I suppose, even if I struggle to see a world where Asma sticks around them much longer.
She’s pretty transparently using them as vectors for what she thinks will get her closer to Alice. She’ll drop them as soon as she hits pay dirt or realizes this is a cold trail.
I could very easily see this storyline evolving into “Joyce and Dorothy want to be better friends with Asma now that they’ve fucked their way out of the original group, and Asma goes along with it on the thin promise of proximity to Alice and/or Sal” depending on how this goes
I totally forgot Alice wears leather too and she actually interacted with her. So your right, she’s probably talking about Alice. I doubt Dorothy and Joyce will know that though.
Between her three strips of how dare you make out in public and that her big indulgence is, apparently, bowling, of all things, I’m just going to call it and say that Asma seems repressed. A drag to be around. And I think that case is probably helped by being attracted to the wild free spirit Sal, the antithesis of being all clogged up.
Since Joyce’s arc has kind of taken her from very repressed and religious to much less so, with her now having disavowed god and enjoyed a few sexual experiences, it would make sense to introduce a new vehicle for exploring religious repression to the cast.
Asma being Muslim instead of Christian would be a new angle, so you’re not literally repeating the exact same story beats.
Not sure that’s where this story is going, but it wouldn’t be the craziest thing to happen.
The thing here is that Asma’s just flatly right about the kissing, doing it when they did it was a bad idea, self-centered impulse that put them and others in danger.
I do agree that it seems like she might be lonely and bookish, but I don’t think that necessarily means repressed.
shes literally just right, dont go makeout at a protest??? we haven’t really seen enough of her to get a good gauge of what she is like on an interpersonal level
That’s really interesting to me, because personally I associate bowling in college with “all you can drink pitchers of beer” and other such amenities — it certainly CAN be a sedate sport, but it’s not always.
“These white people want to do me a favor as some sort of apology for how they mishandled a larger political issue that I hold no authority to forgive them for. That’s annoying, but also potentially useful.”
“Yes, I suppose if you set me up on a hot date, I will absolve you of sin and declare that you’re cool with the Bulmerian people. I can do that because I’m like, a shaman master or whatever it is you white people think we get up to.”
Been a while since I watched/Read that original Yu-Gi-Oh series, but I think they were all kind of the evil one.
Though the ghost in the millennium puzzle got domesticated over time, at least. Still, they’re all very much the “Cursed Ancient Egyptian Artifact that offers some sense of power but brings ruin and destruction to its user” trope.
In the interest of fairness, I’m going to give Willis credit this time, this pivot for Asma is finally a good example of the retrofitting they’ve done of the Muslim cast post-protest
I feel like Asma is being much nicer to Joyce and Dorothy than they deserve at this point. It would be great if they remember her criticism/advice in the first panel, but I’m not confident that they will.
Could have been the moment to say that their coming to the meadow was unplanned and was motivated by warning Joyce’s sister that her dad at spotted her in social media.
Might have set thing a bit more in perspective. That and that they basically came there when they were still in denial of their affection for each other.
Oh well, I guess we have switched to more important matter. Does she know Sal is with someone already? Or is this actually a case of someone who want to be friend?
*Louis CK shooting*
“When the F*** has it ever be about ‘simply being friend’?”
(Or maybe she is maybe talking about Jennifer (who is also taken (but is at lest a bit more gay)))
I’m pretty sure she’s talking about Alice, since she seemed to pointedly take notice of her the last time she showed up in the comic, and Alice *also* wears boots and a leather jacket and has “the hair” though it’s different hair.
Ok but.. what indication has she ever had that Alice is friends with these two? Friends by association? An off-screen observation? Near as I could tell, Asma hasn’t ever been around for any of their brief Alice interactions..
Earlier in the arc, Joyce, Billie, and Alice had a conversation right in the middle of the main area right in front of the front desk. Alice and Billie have also definitely been hanging out a lot lately and most likely at this point everybody knows Billie and Joyce are friends.
If your goal is to be kind it might be, ha! I think the here point is forest for the trees. Jorothy/Doyce did take attention away from the goal of the protest which lessens the impact of the work and risk so many put themselves through. Not to mention the cheating and Joe situations. But, you know, “Dumbing”, so.
Generally speaking, before all of this, she was cordial with Sarah most of the time, the Becky “rivalry” was more a running joke than anything, and she was friends with Danny. Now, though, uhhh, it’s going to be heated.
She is sort of friends with Ruth and Jennifer, but also will clash with them often, especially Jennifer. I guess neither of them would currently have beef with her, even if Jennifer needed to go check on Walky.
She wasn’t friends with Danny, she was casual acquaintances with him and they occasionally sought each other out for advice as former romantic partners.
Now, of course, he is liable to be absolutely furious with her.
Sierra. Walky, but she fucked that one up. Becky, but they both fucked that one up. She has some club activities she might have some friends in. The general friend group – Sarah, Sal, Lucy, and Jacob, but she’s not super close to any of them. Amber and Amazi-Girl.
Those club friends feel like when a I’m sitcom character has a birthday party or gets married and the show pads out the place with a bunch of strangers that have never shown up before
I’m glad it’s been acknowledged, because I would really struggle to see the friend group going unchanged as being in any way realistic. It’s true that college students (and people of all ages) cheat, but it’s equally true that people don’t tend to view their friends being cheated on in a positive light.
Asma has repressed Daisy energy, but Daisy does NOT have much Alice/Sal energy and she already acted in a way that is negative for Asma by focusing Jotty on the front page so I don’t see any chance of two of the thirstiest we know finding common ground… Daisy has gone and Daisy’d it up again.
First of all, love seein more of Asma in general and in the future. Second of all: thinking of Sal, I wonder if Joyce will finally clock that she’s had a crush on Sal for like. Ever.
Click on the name in the post and you can see she’s had interactions where she wanted to talk to Alice but couldn’t – all while she wore a leather jacket. It’s Alice.
Yes, but has Asma seen Alice and Joyce interact? This has to be someone that Asma has seen Joyce talking to, and assumes the two are friends. I saw the strip with Alice interacting with Asma, and after a little more searching, there is a strip where Joyce interacts with Alice and Jennifer, but I don’t think there is a strip with Alice, Joyce, and Asma, together in one panel.
There’s the pay-off. Worth the wait. Thanks Willis. That’s great.
Asma is setting goals! Also thinking of herself.
Interesting thought tho, if the Asma story is an insert, setting up the incoming confusion required changing Alice’s clothing???
Oh, OH. Asma doesn’t know that Jorothy’s thing is extremely new, so they appear to be very public smoochers generally, so of COURSE they must know all the lesbians and out bi’s in the immediate area. Therefore if they appear to recognize a description of a girlsmoocher, everyone must be on the same page. This all makes complete sense.
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Lol. They’re gonna bring Sal.
Sal: Don’t mind bowling. Can I bring my boyfriend?
Danny : Will he or won’t be Dan this up? News at eleven
It’s impossible for him to not Dan this up. By showing up he’s Dan’d this up because Asma wants to hang with Alice not some girl she’s never spoken to who already has a boyfriend. Danny stay losing buddy.
I think you got it in one, Sirksome. This is going to be hilarious.
Ahh bowling, my favourite sport. It’s how I earnt my nickname… — “Thunderball”.
(No seriously, my colleagues gave me that nickname for my high-speed bowling)
BRING ON THE BALLS!
Okayyy, fiiine. I’m-a ship Asma, Danny, and Sal now.
Happy??
Sal being straight is like a constant tragedy for every gay woman except Billie.
That’s just because Jennifer isn’t self destructive enough to date Amazigirl.
No exceptions.
That is what Im thinking.
my immediate thought as well and I support the mix up
Yeeeeeeep. Place your bets now folks.
put me down as another who thought she meant Sal.
…wait, does she *not* mean Sal?
She’s probably talking about Alice since she’s met Alice. But the description is vague enough to make them think she meant Sal so I can see why readers assume that too.
Well met is a bit generous, she’s seen her.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/help-3/
…huh. So that’s what’s up in that strip. I genuinely couldn’t make heads nor tails of what Asma was getting at with Alice.
Turns out they’ve technically said a word to each other. Asma at least told Alice her name.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/whatshername/
I don’t get how this conversation leads to Asma believing Alice is a friend of Joyce and Dorothy. She literally stated that she doesn’t ‘know any of these people’.
Yeah, that I still don’t get, either. I guess Asma saw Alice with Joyce and Jennifer at one point? I can’t remember clearly.
Alice is the only person in the comic so far who’s evinced interest in Asma as a person. (At least until whatever this shit is.) Ironically, Asma didn’t get her name.
That’s who I assumed who she meant, too.
Oh good, I’m not alone!
Uh. Uh, Asma.
I think you’re gonna have to be a bit more specific than that.
“Taller friend with the hair and the leather jacket” is going to ping a very specific face in Joyce’s mind, and not the one you’re thinking of.
Wait — Sal’s TALL?
“Tall” made me think of Carla.
“Tall with the hair” made me think of Ethan. xD
TallER. As in a little taller than these shorties. Which sal is I think
Worst case scenario Asma is gonna be an awkward single person with a group of couples.
Funniest case scenario, Asma gets a crush on Sal too.
I mean, who wouldn’t get a crush on Sal in this universe (apart from Walky, natch)? Pretty sure Joycy and Dots BOTH have crushes on her — don’t they?
Hell, I’m not even in that universe and I have a teeny little crush on Sal.
Jepp, that’s me, too.
My top DoA crush would definitely have to be Dots…also possibly l’il Joycy. I may or may not have a type. xD
Oh…
Oh no. We’ve got some crossed wires here.
I find it hilarious that we all went, “Umm…” all at once.
To be fair to Dorothy, and Joyce, Asma just assumed Alice was their friend, and even if they do consider her a friend Asma’s description was pretty vague.
That being said, I hope this misunderstanding makes for funny times.
Until your comment I was very confused about everyone else’s reaction, like “who else could she mean but Sal?”
Asma don’t care, if these over-saccharine crackerbread twits gonna pester her, might as well get somethin out of it XD
but yeah there better SERIOUSLY be some bowling! >:3
Does Sal bowl?
I feel like Sal is the type who might bowl. She seems like the sort of character who is either very good at it, or she’s really terrible at it as a contrast to how she’s otherwise been shown to be pretty athletically gifted, like being a strong skater, fighter, biking regularly, etc.
i worry sal’s hand may interfere with 10 pin bowling, but 5 pin might be fine as the ball is smaller and you arent havign to grip with 3 fingers. but yeah they are going to bring sal who will bring danny and walky, who will bring billy who will bring alice. ruth and white bread will be there on a date.
Maybe she’d just bowl left handed?
She’s left-handed, so presumably she would bowl left-handed.
that would mean bowling right handed, but with 5 pin the ball is rolled more like lawnbowling or bocce. so it the hand injury may not interfere as much with the bowling motion, thus allowing her to use the rest of the strength the left side has (truth be told never 10 pin bowled, 5 lin is the dominant bowling in canada. wpg is near 800000 people and i think we only have 2-3 10pin alleys, and at least 3 times as many 5 pin spots
It’s Sal’s right hand that’s damaged. Amber specifically intended to take out her dominant hand, but got the wrong one because she assumed that Sal was right-handed, which she’s not. So Sal is good to go to bowl with her dominant hand.
cool i had missed that then she is golden
Not to mention Wall climber.
Didn’t alice tell asma’s name? but i mean, i’m sure some ppl attracted to alice would have the same towards sal tho she’s taken/not bi/pan as far as wel know (tho monogamous anyways so moot)
They go bowling, Sal shows up. After a bit of Asma’s reaction seeming off, she goes, “No, I meant your friend who likes to insert herself in people’sconversations(but in a fun way)” and Carla shows up. Asma: “I THINK SHE LIVES IN FOREST QUAD,” and Jennifer shows up. Eventually almost every named female college student is there. Alice walks by, sipping a drink, and goes, “Hey guys, what’s going on?”
Sal and biwling? She is probably awesome at it. Not sure she has any bi energy though
Not the last time she checked (I believe it came up when she was trying to kiss Marcie to make Malaya feel some type of way).
But hey, Dorothy and Joyce both awakened to new realizations about themselves, so you never know.
There some alt text that describes Sal as “distressingly straight”. Oh no.
Well, it’s an Asma strip that’s NOT about the protest and Joyce has minimal talking. So I guess that’s a win?
The first part was still about the protest.
So cute. 🤩
Also: Protest – Riot Kisses Vol. 716383€2
https://www.gettyimages.at/detail/nachrichtenfoto/riot-police-walk-in-the-street-as-a-couple-kiss-on-nachrichtenfoto/116458172
A little more reminder…
Do you think there might be a difference between a sporting riot and a protest against genocide?
Yeah, like?
(Sorry to be clear i’m agreeing with you. This came off more sarcastic than I meant.)
But you don’t understand. Our team is getting killed.
I think love is a pretty great way to protest violence.
It’s kinda…not? I dunno. That sounds sweet but that logic just ain’t following for me.
Like does it help in any way? Or does it just make you, yourself, feel better? And then that morale helps you keep up the good fight? Will kissing help the cause? Like maybe if someone sees a photo of you kissing someone they’ll go “wow. These inhuman people I dehumanized ARE human. I now see their point of view more”. That seems like the best case scenario? Is that what you mean?
Schools teach us about the 60s hippie counter-culture Love and Peace protests, because the establishment knows that it’s ineffectual, and doesn’t actually threaten the status quo as badly as other forms of protest.
Most of those also weren’t within a billion years of nonviolent once the cops showed up with firehoses and angry dogs, either. Nonviolence is a tactic used to emphasize the violence being done TO you, not a polite means of registering mass disagreement.
It took a while, but the hippies were effective in turning public opinion against the Vietnam war. It’s important to note that the point of “love and peace” there was protest against the mandatory military draft, too. The protestors and/or their peers were being used as the murder weapon against innocent people, and wanted no part of it.
People in real life are currently protesting racist, illegal deportations using inflatable frogs and naked bike rides. Do you think those protests should be more po-faced?
Sometimes things have reasons behind them and sometimes they do not. Sometimes those reasons are bad. Sometimes what gets put in front of a newspaper story has nothing to do with a goddamn thing it’s supposed to be representing. This is basically always the case with protests.
The frogs have a point. Their point is not to entertain people on Instagram, but people being entertained by them on Instagram is definitely helpful so far to helping the ignorant recognize that ICE are brutish pigs who would cap a Grandma for a nickel, rather than mentally justifying it so as not to rock the boat.
Joyce and Dorothy, meanwhile, were there by complete fucking coincidence up until about five seconds AFTER everyone was told to leave, and their kiss was completely unrelated outside their own heads.
So the reason people are protesting in frog suits in Portland is because the messaging from the Trump administration was that Portland was an active war zone consumed with fire and reduced to rubble, and the frog suits make that line of argumentation look ridiculous. The pro-Palestinian encampments on college campuses, meanwhile, generally enforced ironclad discipline, especially as it regarded engaging with the media.
So again we come to: not every protest is the same, and what is apporopriate at one is not appropriate at another.
I feel like kissing at an anti-genocide protest, especially when the cops are already going after protesters and the people who were actually there for the protest cause are leaving and telling you to leave too, is definitely not a good idea. Which is what was the situation was when Joyce and Dorothy decided to kiss at the protest, in case people forgot.
Strictly speaking, the protest seems to be about the university’s investment policies in US companies which are involved in supplying war materials to Bulmaria, said materials evidently being used against one or more Muslim countries.
It’s hard to pin down details, but I believe it’s been implied that the genocide is occurring within Bulmeria, against an internal, probably Muslim, minority, not in a conflict with another country.
The frogs are practical for several reasons:
They make the fascist claims look stupid as fuck.
They provide anonymity while projecting harmlessness.
Anyone attacking them looks deranged.
They provide some coverage, and you could wear real safety gear under there.
Viral meme worthy to get more eyes on what’s happening.
That’s a classic. I’ve yet to see a good argument against kissing at a protest. In the end, they all keep boiling down to religious prudery dictating what is acceptable behaviour. There are places where kissing isn’t acceptable, sure, for safety for example, and others still where we accept not doing it, but again it’s because of tradition, not logic.
Other places where kissing is frowned upon:
Court – Why? They’re conservative. i.e. Religious cultural influence
Nuclear plants – Safety
Operating rooms – Safety
Political offices – see: courts
Eh, most of the time, a little kissing will not make you or others unsafe in a nuclear plant.
Of course, that mostly depends on your passion not causing you to bump into a button or lever that shouldn’t be bumped.
I’ll say, metatextually, Dorothy and Joyce’s kiss is particularly bad because neither of them were there FOR the protest. They don’t care about the protest. The drama of the protest is being used to make their first kiss more dramatic. The protest doesn’t matter. The people being violenced by cops don’t matter. The fictional country being bombed don’t matter. All of that stuff only exists to have a dramatic movie ending kiss scene.
That’s why this comic’s particular kiss is bad. At a regular protest I’m sure you can kiss or whatever idc. It will be weird if you make a big weird show out of kissing at a protest that isn’t about you though. Snog your partner cuz ya love ’em sure. But if you are trying to get attention it’s a little sus. Especially when the stakes of the protest don’t effect you. Y’know…like people who don’t look like you dying overseas. You can agree or disagree I guess. It’s just sorta an awkward place to kiss someone. Especially a passionate kiss. In the same way I probably wouldn’t make out in front of a burning building or a car accident. Unless of course, my SO just escaped that thing and I’m overcome with emotion of her escaping that situation. So I guess you could give it that credit?
This this this, everything Yotomoe is saying here. Plus, again, the optics of centering a genocide protest that is harming a certain group of people with a picture of two white women kissing is always going to hit a bad button.
This sounds more like a problem with the newspaper editor than a problem with the kissers.
Yes, it is. We agree on this.
Weird to say the people bring violenced don’t matter when Joyce was one of them.
Then why are they apologizing to Asma and not, say, Amber? Why is the front page of the newspaper just the kiss and not the violence? Has anyone been confirmed injured in the strip at all other than Amber? Is the idea that Amazi-girl stopped literally all the police from harming anyone?
And taking it a step further, Joyce being harmed just sorta feeds into the melodrama of their first kiss. It’s still centering the arc around these two. And like that’s not FAIR cuz she is being effected. But these two are basically the only perspective we’re allowed to have for this event. So it would be more accurate to say “people who aren’t the main character don’t matter”.
A fact that people reading the newspaper cover and only seeing two women kissing aren’t going to know.
You make some very good points here.
Joyce and Dorothy were there for the protest.
Your argument fails from the first phrase you wrote.
And more of that… whatever reason they were there, their kiss was not problematic at all.
People from outside don’t know their whole backstories and they don’t have to know. Their photo can speak so much on its own, like all the rest of the kisses.
I believe the commonality in situations where kissing is frowned upon is the degree of formality. Court cases are formal activities. Funerals are generally formal. For most, but not all churches, religious observations are formal. Professional activities are formal and so kissing while at work is viewed as unprofessional. But some business activities can be informal. There was a time when college life was formal, but those days are long gone.
While there could be exceptions, generally speaking, protests are not formal.
But also just anytime you’re supposed to be doing something else. Classes aren’t formal, but you still shouldn’t start making out during one. It would be bad form for them to start making out right now while they’re talking to Asma.
Or you know, while they’re supposed to be evacuating the protest.
This is somewhat cultural, in parts of Europe it’s common to kiss family and friends on the cheek, the way some Americans exchange hugs. You still probably wouldn’t use copious amounts of tongue on your partner at a funeral, though.
So have you just. Not been reading then? The thread above you have some pretty good explanations as to why not every protest is the same! Dot tends to have some pretty good comments on the subject, every single time this catboy grav pops up with this exact same comment and refuses to read anything that disagrees with them
Will you come off this shit already? Or at least open your eye and read the things people say in response to you?
Asma did not get sidetracked
You’re going to need to be more specific. We know you mean Alice… but these two…
Is . . . Is Asma not talking about Sal?
Ah, Alice. Yes. I thought she said she didn’t know these people infront of Asma though?
My first thought was also Sal because is there anything particularly distinctive about Alice’s hair?
Well to asma there certainly seems to be, though it seems she may be biased on that matter
With her hair included, she’s taller than Joyce & Dorothy. That’s what Asma is saying.
Alice mentioned knowing them a couple hours ago
She’s talking about Alice, who she was kinda checking out in an earlier comic.
I think she’s talking about Alice, at least thats who she was implied to have a crush on in an earlier strip
I think she may be overestimating how well they know Alice (has Dorothy even met her at all?)
This is an understandable misunderstanding that will lead to amusing hijinks
OK, I’m thinking Joyce will have Sal come to mind, but why do I get the feeling Sma means someone else? Not sure who off the top of my head, but someone else….
She means Alice.
I also thought Asma was talking about Sal until I read the comments.
Also, this strip had better put the weird “Asma is homophobic” accusations I’ve been seeing in the comments for the past few days to rest.
Obligatory reminder: People who are queer can be bigoted to other branchs of the LGBTQ+ or even their own. It happens all the time.
Obligatory disclaimer: I do not think Asma is BEING homophobic, or was at any point. It’s just that liking girls isn’t some kind of shield against judging people for liking girls.
I really need Asma, Raidah, Alice, and Billifer to be a new core friend group. Ditch these two losers and get where the real potential is! I mean….uh… Don’t trust leather jackets and boots or homogenized fashion.
I’m angling this into my Walky/Raidah crackship
Raidavid the crack ship for the sophisticated shipper.
You have my attention.
Raidah’s a pretty big loser in her own right. Like, maybe Roz can make the cut instead if we’re picking out someone critical of Dorothy and Joyce for some kind of Legion of Doom or whatever the hell we’re doing with this shtick.
I actually don’t think Raidah is that bad and the only reason she’s hated is because she’s directly antagonistic to characters we …..like? Do we still even like Joyce and Dorothy these days? Anyway I find she had nice energy with Alice and Asma. They made a good trio. I think there’s hope for Raidah if she cools her hate a bit and actually makes real friends and acts like a real friend instead of whatever she actually does all day, which seems to be walking around watching people do more interesting things than she is.
Nah, we’ve seen too much of Raidah in the strip for me to buy that.
I don’t think she’s pure evil, but she’s a social climber who has, on panel, tried to use both Jennifer and Walky, and was mad that the former broke up with Asher because it was going to impact her group, with total indifference to if those two even wanted to be together. Additionally, there’s the Sarah/Dana issue.
Raidah’s a shithead who just sometimes happens to have beef with people who characters whom have also made mistakes. It doesn’t absolve her of some of her scummier moments because she got some good dunks in on Dorothy a few times.
Hey you’re entitled to your opinion but for the record a lot of characters have done worse than being a shameless social climber and pretty much gotten away with it. Like:
Joyce
Dorothy
Ruth
Amber
Sarah
Mike
Jennifer
Robin
Jason ect. Basically everyone. You don’t have to like Raidah at all but saying she’s a shithead that needs to be absolved just ignores character nuance. Like what are we judging characters by here? Just being mean? Is that all it takes?
I don’t feel like Raidah NEEDS to be absolved, to be clear. I think she’s a character who brings something interesting to the dynamic and fills a good niche. Like, I think she’s a much more nuanced antagonist than like a Ross or Ryan or Blaine. I’d even say she’s not as bad as a Linda or Naomi. She’s someone who ambiguously knows Asher has connections to organized crime and considers that a selling point. That’s where I am given pause with her. She’s sketchy in a very realistic way.
I’m just saying, I don’t think she’s peachy keen, is all. I am hopeful that criticism of the handling of Muslim characters means we’ll be seeing more of her and Nash in addition to Asma. I just do not think she’s the kind of person most of the cast would benefit from having as their close confidant at this point in time. Who knows, maybe my opinion will shift given more exposure.
Yeah I like Raidah as a steady comic antagonist too.
Do you also think Sal is bad, seeing as she also knows that Asher has connections to organised crime and considers that so much of a selling point that she’s the only one who’s made use of them?
I honestly don’t know how much anyone really knows about Asher’s mob connections other than definitely Sal. Because we don’t know anything about Asher! Raidah might think his family has legitimate business connection which they might. My point is don’t trust that Asher! And also I really want someone to get a redemption/ face turn in this comic but that never happens like every bad person is just always static and black and white in personality and action. Raidah has that potential.
I’d be fine with it as a face turn, but that’s different from she isn’t “that bad and the only reason she’s hated is because she’s directly antagonistic”
@thejeff I stand by that. I don’t think Raidah’s that bad. I don’t know how we’re judging people on their deeds or is it their personality or everything? The worst thing Raidah is really guilty of is being a bad friend to Jennifer and making horrible, possibly bigoted assumptions about Joyce and Dina. Dina and Raidah have never had a true interaction since so I wonder if Raidah’s actions on that will ever be addressed? She’s said mean things or just made true comments to Joyce and Dorothy a few times. She’s had schemes I guess, or more accurately bad intentions that never really affected anyone in any noticeable or meaningful way except arguably isolating Jennifer a bit while she was depressed but Jennifer just hung out with her real friends and fixed that without Raidah being any kind of hindrance or antagonist.
So why is Raidah bad? Cause she’s a social climber? Or because she’s kinda mean to people we kinda like sometimes? Comparatively our protagonists have punched her in the face and actively sabotaged her relationship. Y’know when they aren’t drunk driving, stealing, racially profiling, stalking, being sex pests, misogynists, bullies, assaulting, breaking and entering, undercutting protests, cheating, being man babies, possibly calling in an assassination, ect, to each other.
@sirksome For a lot of us, Raidah’s bad because of stuff like this strip, in which she actively decides to treat Dina as “mentally challenged” in a really disgustingly ableist way — even her objection to the r-slur in the next strip doesn’t change that fact.
She’s an interesting character, no doubt, but she’s also fundamentally an asshole who needs to do some work to not be a asshole.
Which, as you rightly note, is also pretty true of our protagonists as it stands, but people tend to get salty when you point that out.
@ Big Z Yeah that’s one of the moments I was talking about and I still hold that against Raidah too, and I’d personally love if that moment were further addressed in anyway by either of them beyond just this one time.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/eavesdrop/
Joyce called Dina a robot and that’s water under the bridge now. But the Dana situation is just remaining cold heat between Sarah and Raidah so the Dina issue is probably never coming up again. I guess we just keep hating Raidah.
@Big Z
Do a lot of you also think Sarah, Dorothy, and Joyce are bad because when Becky said she was trying to put the moves on Dina their reaction was “ew, no, that’s weird, Dina’s basically a child”?
I really want to get Raidah’s actual perspective on the Dana situation and see how Dana herself feels bc we have only ever gotten Sarah’s perspective
A “bad friend” to Jennifer in the sense that she doesn’t actually like Jennifer, but only pretends to for whatever scheme it is she has going on.
The treatment of Dina that Big Z mentioned.
Long term harassment/bullying of Sarah – seen at the beginning of comic, but strongly implied to have picked up from last semester.
That she’s still scheming against Sarah, as seen by bringing up (or having Carl bring up?) Dana at that breakfast with Walky.
How she reacted to Joyce flirting with Jacob – not that she reacted, but that she pretended to be friendly while trying to undermine her.
Since she’s clearly manipulative and willing to lie and pretend to like people she despises to achieve her goals, as we’ve seen in a few asides to her clique, we can’t even trust that anything positive she says or does is real.
And even without that, we’ve seen very little positive from her. We talk about how our main characters have done shitty things too, but we’ve also seen their better sides and I think that matters.
@JBento
Honestly I kinda did think that was shitty of them, yes. Keep in mind I didn’t much care for Sarah, Joyce, or Dorothy at that point in the comic so…yeah I probably did think they were bad.
@JBento What Yotomoe said, and also what *I* said in the post I made to Sirksome, which I quote:
“she’s also fundamentally an asshole who needs to do some work to not be a asshole.
Which, as you rightly note, is also pretty true of our protagonists”
I mean raidah was introduced by telling someone to choke for not wanting to lose her scholarship (and intended or not I get a lot of anti-blackness from her in the Sarah storyline. Classis definitely intended. College admin finds weed in the room, who are they gonna think it belongs to? Rich white girl or the black student that’s not even giving them money?) And then her next appearance was being incredibly demeaning and ableist to Dina, she just didn’t approve of literal slurs. Which I like, the bar is in hell if anyone thinks that absolves her of being ableist.
So yeah until she makes up for that shit I can’t really forgive her, as much as I’d like to
Obligatory yes everyone was insanely ableist to Dina back then but at least they realized the error of their ways and made up for it
Did Joyce make up for it before or after calling her a robot?
I think Raidah makes an interesting sort of mirrorverse counterpart to Dorothy. Neither seems poor, both can be a bit rightgeously obnoxious at people, and until recently, both had a long game focus on political clout. What’s different is we’re shown that Dorothy means well even when she’s bad at it, whereas Raidah was actively trying to use or bully people when we’ve seen her. Even her ex-boyfriend seemed like more of an asset to her than lover.
We could get a Raidah character development arc some year that changes perception, but as things are, she just comes off as a jerk or “ends justify the means” sort of person.
Hater containment thread ⬇️
I’m at a Halloween party behave yourselves
I hate that not Halloween is over we ate about to be inundated with that Mariah Carey song.
Now…not not.
Also you wrote “ate” instead of “are.”
this happens to me all the time! the most inconvenient thing my dyslexia does to my writing…
More than you could ever know…
No hate today.
Well ok, A little hate. Dorothy is still cringe as hell. Horrendously cringe. Just trying to shmooze the front desk girl cuz you inconvenienced her during a protest. It feels so phony. Gross.
But yeah I’m here for silliness. Now leave this conversation before you make it worse, ya weirdos.
I like Dorothy, overall, as a person, but I think she is really bad at knowing what to do to make good with people. She’s awkward with her peace offerings, and even more awkward with her self-recriminations that veer off into flagellation. Like, I wonder if she wanted to be a president because of the West Wing, because she doesn’t know how to have a conversation with someone when it’s about her issues, it’s got to be a prepared speech or else she’s frozen up.
This is something she can ultimately work on, but it’s a major flaw she has in her character. (Not AS a character, mind. Conflict’s obviously a valid thing in a story.)
I think I’ve talked about it before but dotty follows a pre prepped Script. Like an if x then y logic map. It’s supposed to help her go through social interaction smoothly in a way that looks normal and makes her seem considerate and likeable but as it turns out, life isn’t a dating sim and having all the theoretically correct strategies doesn’t actually work. If why she did that awful moment of silence thing at the Halloween party, its why she came to apologize to asma (well, that and the white guilt). It’s why she does most of the weird shit she does. At the protest her logic map kinda frazzled out. “If fuck up then aaaAAA MAKE STATEMENT????” It unfortunately comes off really disingenuous which is why she has like -1 to her charisma stat.
Anyway I know all of this bc I’m low-key the same irl. It’s just a form of masking. Idk how this girl thought she wasn’t autistic lmfao
ha! just got back from trick o treating myself
I needed my cane, and as usual my noise-canceling headphones, so I went as a zombie DJ lol
Asma is in the right here, if these white babyqueer twits are gonna pester her, might as well turn lemons into lemonade ammi right? XD
Right. But the important point is to throw them at people.
How are you posting this at 12:09 and still too late to act as containment
Don’t be rude
Some parties don’t end until the sun comes up.
infecting this zone with delight and joy; Asma has proven my fears wrong. Now lets see how badly her vague request goes lol
Ok I’m on my way home from the party.
So let me say that I would rather give straight panels of Wally shitting his intestines out than spend one more moment on this train wreck of a conversation so thank g-d it seems to be over
*five
It does seem to have finally crashed into something instead of speeding toward the bollard endlessly.
I hate the idea that we need to be contained because people might get upset at our (often completely valid) criticisms of what’s being happening in this storyline.
*been not being, damn my typos
From what I saw, in the days before the containment thread, people were misinterpreting even the valid criticisms and, in the way of the internet, things escalated rather than getting explained, with unhappy results. I haven’t seen this happen since the containment threads started.
Yes, it can be argued that people should read more carefully and apply nuance and such, but the overall negativity that resulted seemed to be infecting the comment section as a whole. It seems a lot better now.
Besides, in this thread, you can count on people not dismissing concerns with “but they’re cute so it doesn’t matter”.
I hate the idea that the haters/anti-Doyce commenters are some kind of persecuted, smol-bean community who are being confined and silenced lest they offend anyone. Especially when that idea is expressed by people who leave negative comments outside the negativity thread, and/or demand to be left alone whenever anyone criticizes their posts.
*meant to say “minority” not “community”
If you don’t want to be contained, simply don’t allow yourself to be contained.
Kyulen isn’t letting themself (don’t know what their pronouns are) be contained. They made another comment shitting on Joyce and Dorothy outside this thread.
This is why I’m not calling it a containment thread anymore. It’s a negativity thread.
Most people have been keeping their actual kvetching contained to the thread so, like, it’s been pretty effective in that regard. I’m not a cop, I can’t stop people from posting outside of it, but most people seem to tend to respect it.
I agree with you. I’m not changing my language because the thread hasn’t been reasonably successful in that regard, I’m changing my language so that people don’t have an excuse to claim they are being treated like lepers because their “valid criticism” will hurt people’s feelings.
Just to be super-duper clear, I’ve only seen a few people make that claim. This is not an attack on every single person who has criticized the strip recently, or anything like that. And if you don’t make negative comments outside the negativity thread, I’m not going to attack you unless you’re actively calling people out or stuff like that.
I think most of us interpret “containment thread” as a place to confine unfocused dislike of these characters/this plot without unduly upsetting the people who can’t stand any criticism of their blorbo, but it’s certainly NOT going to prevent most of us from engaging in discussions elsewhere in the comment section as they come up.
It works as a containment thread for “unprovoked ‘hate'”, not as a containment thread for “all non-positive opinions” or “all comments by haters”.
If you make negative comments outside the negativity thread, I might engage with you. If you don’t, and you whine that people just can’t handle your criticism in the negativity thread, I’ll ignore you. But if you do both, then it’s fair to point out the hypocrisy.
Also, my interpretation of the “containment thread” idea is that it works both ways; people shouldn’t attack your criticism if it’s contained. So if you want to criticize the strip but you don’t want people to engage with you, then you should do it in the negativity thread, the thing set aside specifically for that.
Oh, sure, I’m not getting on you for snarking on Kyulen, I’m just expounding on what I feel is being “contained” here.
It’s convenient tbh. I like that I have somewhere I can bongo my whole heart out without having to worry so much about etiquette
Man, how the HELL did we go from “we want to apologize to you for cop energy” to “actually can we be friends/do something nice to make up for… some nebulous wrong? (and also, explicitly in text, because I fear I might have alienated all my other friends?)”
If Dorothy gets any more white she’s gonna start reflecting random lights.
Non sequitur but I don’t interpret Dina leaving that time as an actual breakup. They’re just goin through it rn imo but they’ll make it to the other side. If the Terrible Lizbians ACTUALLY broke up, if we are actually genuinely trading Peak ND sapphics for this dogwater, dollar tree version. I am going to be FUMING. Call me the third single released on June 7th 2023 by Canadian punk band PUP, cuz I’m gonna Kill Something
(I like making mr peanutbutter style contrived jokes, if you haven’t noticed)
Naw but I’m locked in. I’m here for this. Gimmie some Shenanigans. Wacky hijinks.
Yeah, this page makes some stuff click for me, there’s potential here
Right? Between Dorothy acknowledging that their friends have a right to be pissy and whatever this awkward nonsense is and whatever identity-confusion between Alice and Sal I suspect is brewing, this has potential.
We’re back to shenanigans and comedic misunderstandings,,,,nature is healing,,,,
Shortpacked is totally gay!
Dorothy is totally gay & she’s open to threesomes: “I think we can still get her to come!” Wink. Nudge.
Also uh, not related to the actual strip at hand but it’s really weird for Willis to post a skeet gloating about ‘Patreon numbers are good since Joyce/Dorothy! Take that people who said I’ve destroyed engagement by doing it!’ when a fair amount of the commentary lately is about how badly the protest has been handled and the subsequent handling of Muslim characters.
Like, uh.
(I guess this is a containment thread option? I dunno.)
In a world where they haven’t talked about that, too, I’d be with you. But, nope, that’s also been discussed, so, ehh. Like, maybe you’ve missed it, but Willis has also discussed that on bsky back when all that was playing out in the strip.
They have, and I know they’ve inserted strips about it. But if the comments yesterday was any indication I still don’t think the execution has landed. And a post boasting about Patreon numbers when a few people still feel sour about it might not be the best timing.
But that might just be me.
No, it struck me wrong, too. Nothing I can do about it but be quietly grumpy, though.
I’m glad patron numbers are up though.
Thanks for indicating me of that post, i missed ita nd it is very fun.
Fwiw its entirely possible hes not talking about the commentary here, at least I dont think Ive seen anyone here claiming interest in the comic is destroyed
He likely gets hate messages on other platforms
I mean, realistically, it’s both, but moreso the “they gayed it, now it sucks” types who claimed the relationship was an ass-pull, not people who have said the two have behaved inconsiderately, etc. Like, the ones who have been mocked in screenshots have fit a pretty common theme.
ooooh that explains the few comments i’ve seen accusing people of being “anti-gay” or complaining about people being “anti gay”. I was so confused how they extrapolated that from “i like other gay couples in the story but not this one”. If it was off platform I can pretend that makes sense now
Keep in mind also that, usually, the worst comments here get deleted. It’s possible there was blatant bigotry in the comments that got nuked before you saw it.
possibly. the context was more “as you well know”, rather than sounding like a direct response, but that’s definitely also an option
I suspect he is mostly talking about the people on Reddit. They’re awful over there.
Willis literally clarified it’s not about anybody here IMMEDIATELY.
https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3m4k6fubztk2m
(I retract the word “immediately”, the two clarifying skeets came an hour after the original skeet.)
Wait is that what we’re actually calling bluesky posts? Like, the adlib?
(Skeet skeet)
God damn it I’m gonna be stimming that all day now
The CEO has basically begged people not to call them skeets, but like. Gonna do it anyway.
The CEO has basically begged people not to call them skeets, which is why I’m going to call them skeets. 🙂
I hear they’re an ai loser, that’s rad. Skeet skeet
Heh, fair point! I didn’t remember anything specific about the guy in the moment.
Mostly I meant that it’s unlikely to become the OFFICIAL term but it’s good and catchy.
So Willis is fine if people don’t like these characters, the story, the way all of this has been handled… as long as Number Goes Up.
Cool. Good to know.
I mean in this case number goes up actually is indicative that people are indeed enjoying this since the main perk of the Patreon is seeing comics early, so more people getting means more people want to see what happens 🤷
Yeah, that’s the thing, it IS a direct indication that people do care about it. An unimpeachable one, even. People literally vote with their wallets with it.
There are things to cry foul about, but this is a pretty weak one, honestly.
Given that he posts about it a lot I guess it’s also appropriate to say everyone’s got their own 9 Chickweed Lane. For some people that’s DoA.
I would be surprised if Willis subscribed to a 9 Chickweed Lane patron.
There are also homophobic assholes who don’t like the strip direction and who have been very vocal about it. Both the homophobia and the Islamophobia aren’t great. Also the misogyny, that’s bad too.
…This strip has a whole lotta shit going on right now.
I mean when the number going up is people throwing money at you because they like the strip…
Uh, that seems like an odd read, StClair. I mean, the number going up is people wanting to give him money because of they want more of the story he is creating. I would be pretty jazzed if my income increased because so many people liked what I was doing.
Engagement isn’t the same as liking. Angry works just as well, often better. The big social media sites figured that out long ago, and adjusted their algorithms accordingly.
But per Li’s comment above, Willis apparently clarified who that was directed at, so… never mind, I guess. *shrug*
Anger may work for the attention economy, but not so much for people handing over their cash.
I encourage you to check the link and make sure you agree with my interpretation. I strongly disagree with how Nono read the OP, but there’s too many games of telephone going on around here about Word of Willis and too little actually going to the source to read for ourselves, IMHO.
yeah it’s the Ship of Theseus maneuver in action
and like if I’m being real here, as important as the comments are to Willis getting feedback on whether or not portrayal of issues affecting us comes off as insensitive, etc, but like
at the same time, a majority of readers don’t even read the comments at all, let alone write them, and not all of them are subbed to patreon either
I appreciate Willis getting feedback here of all places but at the same time it’s not like we can represent the WHOLE audience
(and for many reasons, this is actually a good thing)
re: hate-clicks,
yeah it’s as Clif said, I doubt Willis makes THAT much off of Ad revenue to be profitable via hate-clicks for raw engagement, he probably makes most of his money via Patreon and thus is has every reason to make something that much the audience find pleasant (if not interesting) to read
oh and there’s also porn, and he even said once that in the event of an economic downturn, he would “reverse the ratio of porn strips to regular strips”,
which pretty sure was a joke, but if there’s anything suggesting we better brace ourselves for shit to go the level of Harem Anime craziness, well… XD
Willis would not need to add or expand relationships to draw more erotica, there’s plenty of couples in this universe and the Walkyverse already who are presumably doin it on the regular.
(I agree with you for the most part! That was just the only thing where a response popped into my head, heh.)
Number that goes up is Patreon subscriptions. I strongly doubt anyone’s subbing to Willis’ Patreon in anger. “I hate this so much, I’m going to give you money every month!!” Doesn’t quite parse.
Not even remotely what that post is about but go off I guess
Other things come to mind was setting up polls specifically to drive a wedge between readers that’s had me getting weird vibes from him for a bit now. Like trying to drive engagement in the community in not the healthiest way.
I mean if you take the polls seriously that feels like its kind of on you imo
Yeah but how long were people calling themselves paladins vs sickos it causing actual drama and fights? Months?
And? That is just not on willis, that’s on us for taking a joke too seriously
I think the main contribution the poll made to that was just giving both sides of an argument that was always going to happen regardless stupid names.
Feels kind of silly to get worked up over it
Yeah it’s not really Willis fault that people took a lighthearted joke poll and turned it into an us vs them thing.
And the four or five subsequent polls that leaned into it even more given how divisive and hostile the community had become?
I won’t say it lean into it as much as make fun of it.
I take that back, it was like two to three.
Possibly there are some readers with a sense of humor?
Webcomics readers with a sense of humor?? Now you’re just being ridiculous. Webcomics is srs bznss!!
the polls are mostly funny, at least
It’s been said in this thread but I’m going to expand on it — this is far from the only place people comment on this comic, and as far as I can tell it’s the nicest in terms of how people are reacting to, well, everything — there has been a LOT of stupidly homophobic and just blatantly media-illiterate commentary on DoJo elsewhere, including the ridiculous opinion that this couple came outta nowhere and the equally ridiculous opinion (as cited by Willis here) that these two as a couple are somehow BAD for engagement.
To my understanding, the things Willis has said that specifically addresses opinions held by THIS commentariat are, paraphrased, “I need to do better about the protest and Muslim representation” and “I’m kinda bummed/bemused that some people seem to find DoJo boring”.
(I should be clear — there is some homophobic trash that gets posted here, but enough of it gets reported into oblivion that many of us rarely if ever see it)
I really appreciate this addition.
And yeah, like. I understand the impulse to think of this as the only place Willis is talking about apart from the Patreon comments which are (???) usually I think nicer, because they’re made up of people paying for the early strips…
But this comment section definitely isn’t the only place Willis is getting feedback, and even here there are a bunch of comments that never make it out of moderation (because they’re from new posters) but which Willis still has to see with their eyes.
And I will just say again that some of the things I’ve seen people saying directly to Willis in their BlueSky replies are awful, and those are the ones that are being made semi-publicly. Willis’s mentions almost certainly have worse stuff, and they’ve also got an email address and DMs…
Willis doesn’t even have to go looking at Reddit to find people being REAL weird about this storyline.
Folks’ perfectly legitimate criticism is not anywhere near the level of weird, even when it’s sometimes phrased more bluntly here.
Asma needs a Telecaster and an overdrive pedal. She looks the type.
Just when you think the strip can’t get any worse
Okay, Anus With Hair Around It
For a moment I thought you were being mean, but then I read the name, and it all became clear.
I mean this is definitely a porque no los dos.
You make a fair point; why am I limiting the options here?
Asma has excellent taste.
Who wouldn’t want to go bowling with Sal?
It’s neat that Dorothy slid in that acknowledgement that yes, they most likely did torpedo the majority of their relationships with other people… if not outright ALL of them.
Well, we’ll see how this plays out because it’s all but set to be a big miscommunication here.
I’ve seen people complain that the two are not facing consequences, but like, I definitely do think Dorothy’s right. I think Jennifer is their only core friend who isn’t either directly impacted by what happened or disgusted with them, like in Sarah’s case. Amber would also not be directly impacted I guess (outside of maybe being put off by what they did to Walky), but she’s got her own problems to deal with right now, in her case, getting bloodied.
I do not think Amber would blame them for getting her hurt, that isn’t how she’d likely look at it, but Dorothy probably isn’t quite as keen to let herself off the hook.
Well Sal hasn’t heard about it yet (she got Amber patched up but she doesn’t know anything re: the whole Dorothy/Joyce and the impacts). Same with Lucy.
Though I’m not sure Sal or Jennifer are considered their core friends at the moment. The group seems to be Joyce/Dorothy/Joe/Becky/Dina/Walky/Sarah. Lucy joins them for math but she doesn’t really hang out with them.
Sal literally caught them in the act and was unphased, though.
Sal didnt have full context, and she immediately had more pressing matters to focus on
I don’t think Amber would be particularly put off, given that, wasn’t Amber helping to engineer precisely this, so SHE could get at Walky?
Potentially. Walky *did* get hurt and sure, it benefits her, potentially, but it’s still kind of a shitty move. Joe getting hurt, too, means that while she’ll probably cut them more slack than Sarah because mess and all that jazz, I doubt she’s about to pass out champagne to them, either.
We already know amber blames herself for it, so she’s probably not holding it against them.
Jennifer is annoyed because they inconvenienced her by making her have to “go be a friend to Walky”.
Amber feels terrible because the fallout devastated Becky and that may have busted up the Terrible Lizbians.
Jacob seems relatively cool with Dorothy and Joyce now. He came to their party anyway (and connected with Lucy). But he might be a bit annoyed that Joyce doesn’t appear to have changed her ways since he groused at her for scheming to break him up from Raidah.
I dunno… maybe Ethan’s cool with them? Vaguely? To the extent he likes anyone but Asher?
Core friend group has been blasted apart, though.
Ethan does seem to have an abiding affection for Joyce and likes her. I feel like he’d actually probably be pretty positive, both in her queer awakening and for her being unambiguously supportive of Jocelyn, whom Ethan also cares quite a lot about. Hell, he even zapped out of Emo Ethan-mode for a bit when he thought Joyce had figured out about her older sister, before I think realizing she was talking about Carla.
That’s probably going to be an interesting encounter.
On that last bit: you’re misremembering, Ethan thought she was talking about Jocelyne but wasn’t sure. He hedged on the side of not directly outing Jocelyne but did encourage Joyce to say “you have always been my sister”.
Joyce then took this advice to heart and went straight to Carla to tell her she’d always been her sister, which Carla responded to by exiting stage left at maximum warp.
Ah, thank you for the correction! It’d been a bit, but yeah, all things considered, Ethan does seem to be pretty gentle with Joyce compared to how he’s been with some others.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-15/01-love-dares-you-to-change/quickquestion/
I remain pretty sure that Amber’s feelings are magnified because Booster pointed out that MAYBE her encouraging Dorothy to send that photo was part of a scheme to get Walky for herself.
So she already felt guilty even before it had splash damage on Becky, and I think she’s likely to be too mired in self-loathing over that part to actually blame Dorothy or Joyce, at least for a while.
(Some things depend on how Walky actually ADMITS to feeling about any of this.)
Just because Amber wants something, and deliberately causes it to happen, doesn’t mean she doesn’t also get to budget some intense self-loathing about doing the thing she wanted to do into the procedure.
i was going to reply that i did not believe amber did this to get walky, but then i remembered booster confronting her about it.
i will say it did feel like the desire for walky as a motivator was definately a subconsious one.
but also i liked walky and amber together, more than i liked walky and dorothy.
Well, there’s also Amazi-girl’s comment to Amber on the matter.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/ice/
I wonder if Amber would chat about it with Joe at some point? And if she would tell him her role in being a trash goblin who loves trash and helped Dorothy with the boob photo?
Agreed though, she’s going to be out of commission for a while and won’t be able to addr as things yet.
Yeah, I don’t anticipate it will be any time soon, but I’m now quite curious about that, too.
I also feel like Rachel, of all people, and Roz might wind up having some pretty interesting reactions to all of this, when talking about Joe-adjacent characters. Roz really does seem to legitimately care about Joe, and I could see her being kind of uncool with this, though I could also see her be kind of more disgruntled that Dorothy and Joyce unintentionally outdid her on using sex appeal to call attention to a political matter, even if there are further issues to how all of that played out.
And with Rachel, well, what happened has got to be kind of a spanner in the works of what her world view would suggest was going to happen.
i could see it happening as the are step-siblings now, i could see them meeting up for a family dinner, or joes streak of being great continues and he goes to check on her simply because he is her stepbrother now and wants to see how she is doing, knowing she was defending her fellow students
*As I started writing this, I slowly realized that this was becoming pretty long; apologies for that*
Not sure how Sal feels.
She saw them last night and didn’t react like she was surprised.
But with no discussion or internal dialogue from her, we don’t know if she fully realizes what was up, plus she probably had AG on her mind at that moment.
As for everyone else:
Sarah has a problem with it.
Joe is still dealing with it, so he’s probably up in the air until Joyce kills his hope for poly officially.
Walky is not ok, but he’s not as emotional as his last breakup with Dorothy (he probably won’t want to be around them, tho, which will make math class awkward).
Becky is spiraling.
Dina is probably not happy, but I don’t think she’d have a problem with them…maybe.
Amber has her own problems.
Lucy is a toss up: she could be indifferent, she could be bothered by the cheating, or, if her personality has changed to more than just being less restrictive about sex, she might gloat a little.
Jacob probably won’t care unless he is affected by Joe’s feelings.
Ruth definitely won’t care.
Neither will Carla.
Neither will Malaya, other than to call them Fakey for some reason.
Jennifer has done her perfunctory Walky comforting, and I don’t think she’ll actually condemn either Joyce or Dorothy, tho she’ll probably find them annoying very quickly.
I don’t think Danny is technically in the friend group, as they almost never hang around each other.
He’s more like Joe or Sal’s plus 1 when it comes to actually being friends with everyone, and yes I say that despite being Dorothy and AG’s ex and his recent conversation with Dorothy about being bi. But I will include him, and I don’t know how he will take it.
Joe’s his best friend, so he won’t be happy with this.
And he just had a conversation with Dorothy where the cheating bi stereotype might have come up (I don’t remember), so he could have a problem with that as well.
But he actively hates or at least hates on Walky for reasons that are just stupid to me, so he might be ok with it.
And hey, he might be happy that Dorothy fully admitted the truth to herself and/or two more queer folk found themselves and someone to be with.
He’s a toss up for me.
And I think that’s it. Every other character I can think of is too much in the background or too openly antagonistic to them to be in the friend group.
i actually think walky and joe are both in healthier places than many have give them credit for. as walky himself said to billie the had been back together for less than a week. i feel like alot of what he said was more for billies benefit than him deflecting.
joe after talking to sarah has validated my read of his head health, there is some sadness there, but it is overwhelmed by his acceptance of what he desires, what he wants, and what he can control. understanding those things makes moving on and moving forward very easy.
Amber will not be put off by what they did to Walky. Amber planned for that to happen, leaving Walky available.
Amber is lying there stabbed and possibly wanted by the police for her showing up to the protest to protect everyone. Did she show up originally because she noticed that Joyce and Dorothy dropped their phones off so that her tracking was not working? I have questions about her choices to get involved in the protest that are not yet answered while she recovers.
Sal might get framed as Amazi-girl accidentally, thanks to Jennifer’s misunderstanding of who Amazi-girl is, also, especially as she helped Amber out and I think might be hiding the uniform?
I am glad that Asma laid out why what they did was a problem. I feel like the way she’s saying it is also allowing for that she *does* accept that they probably weren’t trying to make this about themselves or anything, that shit happened. She doesn’t know the reasons, and ultimately, the impact matters more than the intent here, but that’s honestly pretty gracious of her.
All this to say, looking forward to bowling, sounds like it’ll be a hoot.
Asma is more than socially aware enough, to immediately clue in from all of the unsubtle context clues, that these two are actually just as catastrophically unworldly as they obviously appear to be. That buys them a bare minimum amount of traction, and then, possible access to Alice buys them the other 99% of the way into being tolerated.
“You know! The one with the hair! And wears winter clothes sometimes! And she’s got body parts and stuff!”
I actually don’t recall how Asma knows that Alice and Joyce are friends.
What are the chances that she means Alice, they bring Sal, Asma also develops an instant crush or squish or whatever on Sal, somehow Alice learns about this and messiness ensues?
That’s awfully specific, but the chances are probably pretty low considering Sal may not want to hang out with the girl who just dumped her brother, and the girl that laughed at him as she left with his now ex-girlfriend.
Then again Sal may not even know, but might go with Danny in tow, and may deter any crush-age.
Last we saw Sal she was catching them in the act and being fine with it, so…
I’m assuming the latter, yeah, except I don’t know if his presence will be a deterrence, since crushes don’t always make sense.
Alice was talking about the friend group
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/whatshername/
Yep, Asma knows they know Alice, she just isn’t aware they don’t know her that well yet, and that Sal is likely who they’d think of first given that description. She just also probably doesn’t know Sal that well, either.
In Asma’s defense, the way that Alice gossips, seems to very heavily imply that whatever she’s saying, comes out more thoroughly vetted as facts and truths than they actually are. She actually communicates several things that are untrue, that were based upon her assumptions, but she doesn’t present them like they’re information she indirectly assembled, she just says “oh, this thing totally happened, because I remember someone implied it did/because I put the pieces together myself.” This is probably behavior that served her well in Billie’s friend group back in high school, and I kinda see it as the beginnings of a potential character flaw we may explore.
But, all Asma heard was Alice talking as if everything she had concrete, direct evidence of all of the things she was saying, and thus incorrectly got the idea that Alice must naturally be pretty ingrained in Joyce and Dorothy’s social group. However, Alice only knows Joyce from one particularly passionate conversation, and some additional hearsay; she just doesn’t communicate in such a way that makes her knowledge, and thus her social connection, sound as insignificant as it should.
Oh for sure, I’d say Asma’s assumptions have so far been pretty reasonable ones. She has no way of knowing Alice is just kind of gossip-mongering and not fully immersed in the situation, and not the girl who only kinda-sorta knows Joyce and I don’t recall has ever once talked to Dorothy.
This is as close as Dorothy has got to knowing Alice.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/nobigdeal/
Y’know her. She breathes oxygen. She sometimes eats food and I SWEAR I’ve seen her drink liquids on occasion. Oh, and she has this habit of blinking now and then.
All the hottest habits a woman can exhibit.
And speaking of hotness, she has a core temperature above 90° F! That’s generally considered a good thing.
(I was also going to mention respiration, but then I saw Yotomoe already covered that.)
She’s got, like, features!
“I call her facehead sometimes. Because her face is right there on her head. Never did learn her name.”
I’m assuming they’re gonna bring the wrong person to Asma, because her description could easily apply to multiple other students.
Is Alice their friend?
I think Asma is talking about Alice, but Dorothy, and Joyce, are probably talking about Sal; yes?
Also, bowling is a fun date idea; the only problem being I suck at bowling, and play with the bumpers because I’m bad.
Alice is a friend of a friend. Moreso to Joyce, given I don’t actually recall if Dorothy has ever even met her before, and because Joyce is closer with Billie/Jennifer than Dorothy is, regardless.
Joyce at least has met her a couple of times, and even is a substantial part of why Alice and Jennifer are in each other’s orbit again, but Sal is definitely far closer to Joyce, obviously.
Does Alice wear a leather jacket? I am struggling to understand how this could be Alice and not Sal.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/evaded/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/myeyesonly/
Leather jacket, boots, “hair”. QED
Calculated for maximum comedy value to be a valid descriptor for both of them. If Asma had specified “short, spikish hair” then Sal is ruled out, for example.
The last time Asma saw Alice, Alice was gossiping about Joyce and Dorothy in a way that definitely implied a greater level of familiarity than they actually share
And now we’re smoothly transitioning from “moral judgments for Joyce and Dorothy” to a classic case of wrong invitation and a really smooth excuse for Asma to suddenly ramp up in importance to the story!
Oh!! Someone earlier was right! (Unless she meant Sal)
that would be the one who calls themselves “Fail” XD
Late October question: Anyone here watching the new season of hazbin hotel? The first 2 episodes already has me pretty excited. (If you don’t like the show you do not need to tell me, you can just ignore me).
Yesssssss!!!! Gravity’s a banger, Lute is going even MORE off the deep end than her usual baseline, the Vees are already showing signs that they’re going to fall apart, and it’s once again demonstrated that all the problems in this show are spawned by Heaven completely failing to understand Hellions at a most basic level.
It’ll never not be funny to me that nobody went, “wait, no, that’s bullshit” in S1 when Adam said “sticking it to the Man” was one of the conditions to get into Heaven. There’s nothing Heaven is about LESS than sticking it to the Man. Heaven IS the Man. The ur-example of sticking it to the Man is Lucifer, and he’s the only being to ever have been KICKED OUT of Heaven.
Also, Lilith is the actual worst.
I am saving judgement on Lilith until we get more context.
I mean, at the end of S1 she was sunbathing on a beach, and now she’s… drinking tea in a garden, while purposefully ignoring the calls and texts from both her daughter and (ex?)husband (or whatever they were).
What it feels like is that she got tired of Hell and dumped her family for a cushy life in Heaven.
Until we are actually told that i am not making assumptions about her situation.
I am I just not remember how that whole thing went down? Granted I didn’t exactly enjoy it the first time, but purely from in-universe perspective; Joyce and Dorothy went to the protest to warn Jocelyne, the cops came to break it up, and in the chaos the high tension caused their repressed feelings to bubble over and they kissed. Like I don’t understand what the big fuss is just because Daisy is a shitty editor. From our perspective I get being mad for Willis writing the protest just to be set dressing for the white girl romance, but trying to critique it diegetically this way just makes no sense. Like, this is a college newspaper not a real news publication that people don’t real.
I’m glad asma is getting more focus even if it is a bit clumsily done, her dynamic with Joyce and Dorothy already feels very established which feels like a bit of a double edged sword, it’s good to have your characters dynamic with other characters feel defined and fleshed out but I worry there rapport feels a bit to easy and natural for people who don’t really know each other all that well? Idk I’m excited for more asma though, I’m glad she seems to be bumped up to main cast member
Like I’m having trouble putting it into words but there talking like people who’ve been friends for awhile y’know? Which is good cause Willis wants to make these characters friends, but also for this specific moment where these characters are currently acquaintances at best I’m not sure it entirely fits
if Dot gonna do a hater containment thread, might as well start up a little off-topic diffusion inquiry (ODI) to lighten things up around here
do any of ya like bowling for reals? 🎳
as a kid I wasn’t too fond of it, but lately I’ve been going with my friend a lot, I can consistently get 100+ scores without any rails ^-^
I never played in my life and i doubt i be any good at it.
I enjoy it but would never seek it out myself. My skills at bowling is super inconsistent. Sometimes I can reliable get strikes and spares and sometimes I can barely hit the pins at all. Bowling is fun when I’m doing well but when I’m failing my competitive side makes it hard to enjoy myself.
Same.
I am extremely bad at bowling, but bowling alleys can be quite charming, so I’d love to go with friends.
I’m shit at bowling but I love it and wish I could go bowling more.
I used to bowl as a child.whoch means I’m moderately decent at it as an adult. I have never been bowling with a group where anyone was even halfway as good as I am and I always end up feeling bad about how much better at it I am than everyone else there.
This isn’t even a brag, bowling is actually very easy to be decent at, it’s just that nobody ever actually learns how to do it properly (keep your arm straight and don’t swing it across your body as you bowl. That’s it, that’s all you need to know to not be terrible at bowling)
I have always been confused by bowling dates because surely at any point one of you is bowling. Bowling double dates make sense to me because at any point 3 people are not bowling, but a one on one mystifies me.
Bowling dates when one of you is a novice are nice, because there’s no good way to teach someone to bowl without getting REAL up close and personal.
And then it’s just a shared hobby, which is also nice.
I am glad Dorothy is still smart enough to realize how very, very many people are going to rightfully chastise them for this.
I have hope. I wanna see the fire!🔥🔥🔥
Bowling, the game where you put your fingers into holes.
Experience counts.
Since she’s showing up more often I might as well ask . . . How do we say Asma’s name?
My brain is telling me it’s either said like Asthma, which could be considered unfortunate, or like Ozma.
Asthma is, perhaps thankfully, cited a few times when I was looking this up as how *not* to say it. I’ve seen it suggested it’s more like As-Mah, with specifically an S sound and not a Z, or Ess-Mah. The latter, I am sort of leaning towards, since I’ve run into it a bit more.
In a british accent, you’d pronounce Asma “Azma” and Asthma “Athsma”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgCx8YzCIis
Further clouding the attempt to try and spell out and compare pronunciations!
Seeing as she is in the US, she might be inclined to present her name in a way that doesn’t get annoying comments about Asthma when she introduces herself, or she might choose to pronounce it in a traditional way as if spoken in another language and have to experience the frequent mispronunciations that follow – I’ve seen people choose either option according to their personal preference/energy levels for dealing with those conversations.
I just listening to an audiobook where the main character is named Asma. It was pronounced Us-muh.
…one letter after another?
In Arabic, sm and zm are two different things; there’s a reason for the S there.
You gotta admire Joyce’s confidence that they’ll still be in Sal’s good graces after what happened to Walky gets back to her. It’s delusional, mind you, but I respect the commitment to the bit.
congratz on your tinfoil hat theory yesterday being at least part right LOL XD
LOL thanks! I’m attuning myself to the ways of the lesbian.
By virtue of Sal having zero faith in any of Walky’s relationships and like him, aware/self-hating enough that Dorothy could do better and leave him at any time…
There’s a nonzero chance Sal will remain unbothered. I say that especially because all things considered? Billie felt she had to check on him because Sal probably wasn’t going to.
I don’t think Sal would be psyched to hear that Dorothy 1) cheated on him and 2) strung him along a second time. Like obviously she’s not gonna go scorched earth or anything, but she knows Walky’s been circling the drain for a while and this will NOT help. The funniest outcome is that they invite Sal bowling and then she finds out there.
Walky’s been circling the drain? How do you figure that?
He had had some problems in math and then his grades came up after some tutoring by Amazigirl and a bit of historical grade revision by Amber. The guy has gone through three girlfriends, one of whom was really into him, one he was really into, and one he could be garbage together with. He’s been doing great recently, up to the point where Joyce dumped him.
I detect no drain circling.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/gain/
Walky currently only sees value in himself as a backup for the people around him until they go after what they really want. His self-worth has cratered, reinforced by getting dumped (even though the Lucy situation was mostly on him), getting strung along and cheated on by Dorothy, and having to confront the way his parents treat him and his sister like commodities. I can tell you from personal experience, this mindset does not lead anywhere good.
Yeah, like I don’t think Sal *approves*, but I am inclined to think she isn’t going to play defense for him, exactly. She might still be aware enough of how the optics would be for going bowling with them, and Danny would probably not be president of the fanclub for either of them right now.
Yeah I don’t think she’d be running defense as much as observing “Look, I get that my brother’s a loser and you two are star-crossed lovers or whatever, but that was still fucked up.” Joyce’s blase attitude about it isn’t gonna help smooth the vibes over either.
Her boyfriend is also Joe’s bestie which
won’tshouldn’t help. But I’ve little faith in this plot tbh so I’m sure it’ll all go inexplicably fineWho just had a talk with Dorothy about her trying to excuse cheating.
Don’t trust bowling
novels.There has to be a first time for everything.
It’s what makes them novels.
It would be funny if they’re thinking of Sal but I do think they got Alice correct ONLY because I don’t think Dorothy would believe that Sal would go bowling with her after what she’s done to Walky. At the very least in solidarity, if nothing else.
https://imgchest.com/p/ej7ma6lea7d
Also I made Gastly and Haunter Pumpkins. I didn’t have enough time to do Gengar :T. Still super happy with them. Especially haunter.
Yeah, I’d say Haunter came out great. Gastly, as well, but Haunter’s face really pops.
wooooaaaah bruh your carving skills are PHENOMANAL! ^-^ <3
Those look sick, great job dude
sick
Amazing carving skills.
Okay I was really not expecting Asma to become a real developed character but I’m all here for it.
Same!
Years (months) of her being the ‘front desk girl’ that nobody bothered to get to know, and we are finally going to get to see what makes her tick!
She’s already throwing off autistic/ND vibes to me (strong sense of justice / right/wrong, and highly- or particularly-organized), so I’m curious to see how that gets explored.
ASMA AND SAL MUST SMOOCH
I know this isn’t where it’s going (in part because Sal is one of the only explicitly straight main characters in the strip at this point), but I do love how radioactive that’d leave the social circle, and Danny would likely have a pretty hilarious reaction to Dorothy and Joyce bringing that down on him, too.
”Hold me like one of your bowling books” 🙂
I’m just curious about it being a _book_. I did not know bowling books existed. … Maybe it’s a romance about bowlers?
“Two pairs of rental shoes set in primary colors. Both smelling of lysol. So much in common! So romantic!”
Books on how to bowl definitely exist but I like to imagine it’s some sort of “Passion in the Ninth Frame” pulp romance.
Not sure how I feel about the possibility of Asma becoming friends with these two. I’ve been more hoping to see a secondary friend group form, maybe with people who no longer associate as much with the primary group. A less “evil” clique for Raidah to be involved with, you know? But I’ll accept sitcom shenanigans as a consolation I suppose, even if I struggle to see a world where Asma sticks around them much longer.
She’s pretty transparently using them as vectors for what she thinks will get her closer to Alice. She’ll drop them as soon as she hits pay dirt or realizes this is a cold trail.
One can only hope!
I could very easily see this storyline evolving into “Joyce and Dorothy want to be better friends with Asma now that they’ve fucked their way out of the original group, and Asma goes along with it on the thin promise of proximity to Alice and/or Sal” depending on how this goes
A while back some of us posited a completely new main cast carved from the supporting characters and better at their things than them.
May I present: Upgraded Dorothy! On task and focused like a laser! Just add kisses!
Genuinely didn’t realize she wasn’t talking about Sal until I read the comments
Did you have someone else in mind? I couldn’t think of anyone else that wears leather.
isnt it alice?
I think it’s definitely Alice
To be fair, we don’t have confirmation that it’s Alice. It probably is, but lets not put the cart before the horses.
I totally forgot Alice wears leather too and she actually interacted with her. So your right, she’s probably talking about Alice. I doubt Dorothy and Joyce will know that though.
Between her three strips of how dare you make out in public and that her big indulgence is, apparently, bowling, of all things, I’m just going to call it and say that Asma seems repressed. A drag to be around. And I think that case is probably helped by being attracted to the wild free spirit Sal, the antithesis of being all clogged up.
Since Joyce’s arc has kind of taken her from very repressed and religious to much less so, with her now having disavowed god and enjoyed a few sexual experiences, it would make sense to introduce a new vehicle for exploring religious repression to the cast.
Asma being Muslim instead of Christian would be a new angle, so you’re not literally repeating the exact same story beats.
Not sure that’s where this story is going, but it wouldn’t be the craziest thing to happen.
The thing here is that Asma’s just flatly right about the kissing, doing it when they did it was a bad idea, self-centered impulse that put them and others in danger.
I do agree that it seems like she might be lonely and bookish, but I don’t think that necessarily means repressed.
shes literally just right, dont go makeout at a protest??? we haven’t really seen enough of her to get a good gauge of what she is like on an interpersonal level
That’s really interesting to me, because personally I associate bowling in college with “all you can drink pitchers of beer” and other such amenities — it certainly CAN be a sedate sport, but it’s not always.
I think it’s Alice she’s into, buddy. Not Sal.
So *that’s* why she didn’t immediately tell them to fuck off.
“These white people want to do me a favor as some sort of apology for how they mishandled a larger political issue that I hold no authority to forgive them for. That’s annoying, but also potentially useful.”
When life hands you lesbians, make it a gaypertunity.
“Yes, I suppose if you set me up on a hot date, I will absolve you of sin and declare that you’re cool with the Bulmerian people. I can do that because I’m like, a shaman master or whatever it is you white people think we get up to.”
She possesses the Millennium Necklace.
Isn’t the Millenium Necklace the evil one? The one with the NotSatan sealed inside?
Been a while since I watched/Read that original Yu-Gi-Oh series, but I think they were all kind of the evil one.
Though the ghost in the millennium puzzle got domesticated over time, at least. Still, they’re all very much the “Cursed Ancient Egyptian Artifact that offers some sense of power but brings ruin and destruction to its user” trope.
Heck yeah bowling! I’m in.
Bowling is fun
Joyce, Dorothy, Joe (Walky??) ship is over
Sal, Asma, and Danny polycule are now open for business
We love a sapphic triple threat!
In the interest of fairness, I’m going to give Willis credit this time, this pivot for Asma is finally a good example of the retrofitting they’ve done of the Muslim cast post-protest
I feel like Asma is being much nicer to Joyce and Dorothy than they deserve at this point. It would be great if they remember her criticism/advice in the first panel, but I’m not confident that they will.
Better erring in that direction than in the other.
(…accepting, for the sake of the argument, that there’s anything remotely objective about “deserving”.)
Could have been the moment to say that their coming to the meadow was unplanned and was motivated by warning Joyce’s sister that her dad at spotted her in social media.
Might have set thing a bit more in perspective. That and that they basically came there when they were still in denial of their affection for each other.
Oh well, I guess we have switched to more important matter. Does she know Sal is with someone already? Or is this actually a case of someone who want to be friend?
*Louis CK shooting*
“When the F*** has it ever be about ‘simply being friend’?”
(Or maybe she is maybe talking about Jennifer (who is also taken (but is at lest a bit more gay)))
Alice.
TBF to Dorothy i don’t think she has cop energy
i think she has slightly judgmental EMT energy
parallel yet VERY distinct energies :^)
Everybody Loves Sal!
It’s hard not to like.
I’m pretty sure she’s talking about Alice, since she seemed to pointedly take notice of her the last time she showed up in the comic, and Alice *also* wears boots and a leather jacket and has “the hair” though it’s different hair.
I concur, but I get the feeling that Dorothy and Joyce are thinking Asma is talking about Sal, so we’re setting up for more disappointment/drama. 😛
Ok but.. what indication has she ever had that Alice is friends with these two? Friends by association? An off-screen observation? Near as I could tell, Asma hasn’t ever been around for any of their brief Alice interactions..
Anotger commenter pointed out to me it was probably Alice gissipping to Raidah about them in front of her: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/whatshername/
She’s at the front desk, she must be used to seeing everyone coming and going.
Earlier in the arc, Joyce, Billie, and Alice had a conversation right in the middle of the main area right in front of the front desk. Alice and Billie have also definitely been hanging out a lot lately and most likely at this point everybody knows Billie and Joyce are friends.
I’m not sure “Be super focused on goals” is actually the best way to be kind
If your goal is to be kind it might be, ha! I think the here point is forest for the trees. Jorothy/Doyce did take attention away from the goal of the protest which lessens the impact of the work and risk so many put themselves through. Not to mention the cheating and Joe situations. But, you know, “Dumbing”, so.
“Asma, this is Sal. She’s the one you wanted to meet, right?”
“…she is now.”
Did Dorothy just kinda acknowledge that their behavior over this arc might have fallout with their friend group in panel 2?
Like I get the whole Sal/Alice sitcom mixup we are setting up but Dorothy admitting that feels important.
Yeah, I noticed that too.
Generally speaking, before all of this, she was cordial with Sarah most of the time, the Becky “rivalry” was more a running joke than anything, and she was friends with Danny. Now, though, uhhh, it’s going to be heated.
She is sort of friends with Ruth and Jennifer, but also will clash with them often, especially Jennifer. I guess neither of them would currently have beef with her, even if Jennifer needed to go check on Walky.
She wasn’t friends with Danny, she was casual acquaintances with him and they occasionally sought each other out for advice as former romantic partners.
Now, of course, he is liable to be absolutely furious with her.
Does Dorothy have any friends apart from Joyce?
Sierra. Walky, but she fucked that one up. Becky, but they both fucked that one up. She has some club activities she might have some friends in. The general friend group – Sarah, Sal, Lucy, and Jacob, but she’s not super close to any of them. Amber and Amazi-Girl.
Those club friends feel like when a I’m sitcom character has a birthday party or gets married and the show pads out the place with a bunch of strangers that have never shown up before
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/01-this-bright-millennium/laidback/
Ah yes her good friend Sierra, heh.
I’m glad it’s been acknowledged, because I would really struggle to see the friend group going unchanged as being in any way realistic. It’s true that college students (and people of all ages) cheat, but it’s equally true that people don’t tend to view their friends being cheated on in a positive light.
Okay, so, Asma is definitely thinking of Alice, right? And Dorothy/Joyce are definitely thinking of Sal, aren’t they…
Asma: “Look Sal, I don’t mind being your girlfriend, but I don’t want that dork around.”
Sal: “But what if…”
Asma: “NO, he CANNOT be in the cuck chair.”
“And let your friend know that numerous folks have heard good reviews about me.”
people are really bad at describing people in a coherent way
I have never read lesbian bowling erotica, but I’m sure it exists for Asma to partake of.
Asma has repressed Daisy energy, but Daisy does NOT have much Alice/Sal energy and she already acted in a way that is negative for Asma by focusing Jotty on the front page so I don’t see any chance of two of the thirstiest we know finding common ground… Daisy has gone and Daisy’d it up again.
Ahh, yes, their _one_ friend with the hair, jacket, and boots.
Asma and Sal, welcome to a rousing larp of “Who’s On First?”
😀
First of all, love seein more of Asma in general and in the future. Second of all: thinking of Sal, I wonder if Joyce will finally clock that she’s had a crush on Sal for like. Ever.
I’m not sure if Asma is talking about either Sal, or Alice; either way this is going to be hilarious. Have Dorothy and Joyce ever met Alice?
Would be funny if Asma meant Alice but Dotty and Joyce interpreted it as Sal.
Pretty sure this is 100% the case.
And that’s how I was interpreting it…
Click on the name in the post and you can see she’s had interactions where she wanted to talk to Alice but couldn’t – all while she wore a leather jacket. It’s Alice.
Several people above posted two earlier pages where Asma interacts with Alice and shows some – restrained but clear – interest.
Pretty sure what DaBoy writes is absolutely the thing happening here.
The only thing is, does she think Alice is their friend?
Yes, but has Asma seen Alice and Joyce interact? This has to be someone that Asma has seen Joyce talking to, and assumes the two are friends. I saw the strip with Alice interacting with Asma, and after a little more searching, there is a strip where Joyce interacts with Alice and Jennifer, but I don’t think there is a strip with Alice, Joyce, and Asma, together in one panel.
There’s the pay-off. Worth the wait. Thanks Willis. That’s great.
Asma is setting goals! Also thinking of herself.
Interesting thought tho, if the Asma story is an insert, setting up the incoming confusion required changing Alice’s clothing???
https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3m4lj3mnw7c23
This got me after googling that.
The fucking Halloween-ness of this arc.
Oh no they’re gonna invite Sal instead of Alice and Asma’s gonna be so mad
“your friend, the one with the hair”
Oh, OH. Asma doesn’t know that Jorothy’s thing is extremely new, so they appear to be very public smoochers generally, so of COURSE they must know all the lesbians and out bi’s in the immediate area. Therefore if they appear to recognize a description of a girlsmoocher, everyone must be on the same page. This all makes complete sense.
regular bowling, not the duckpins