It’s actually legit advice for beginning joggers/runners that if you can’t carry on a conversation you should slow down because you’re going too hard for optimal cardio training..
You shouldn’t be going at a pace that keeps you too busy trying not to die. Start with walking, build up little intervals of brisker walking and graduate to slow jogging…
I think campus life has a lot to do with it. always racing around for classes keeps you surprisingly in shape
I did not learn this myself until I went back to alma mater a year later to visit and nearly died on the stairs, like how the heck did I dash up and down them a mere year prior???
What makes leather so expensive anyway? We slaughter cows like nobody’s business and leather lasts a long time, so I doubt it is an issue of the hides being rare or the product requiring rapid replacement and thus creating scarcity. Is the bulk of the cost coming from the chemicals required for the tanning process? Are we paying for the over head created by disposal of toxic byproducts? Are specialized laborers or machinery involved still all that valuable in the modern age? Is there a secret leather cartel driving up prices with monopolization? What is going on here?
Different qualities of leather. (Full grain is thickest, most durable, best, most expensive, it’s like the whole skin. Top grain is still real good but not so crazy-expensive, the highest layers of the skin. Split grain is much less expensive, the lower layers. Bonded leather is the MDF particleboard of the mammalian world, it’s basically glue and dust.)
Hides are irregular shapes and may have undesirable variations, so even though a cow is pretty big, it’s not like a bolt of fabric, and you can’t get that many usably-large great pieces from each animal. Skilled people in factories probably have to cut each hide individually into all different grades of leather, and then sell/transport the types of grain they aren’t using, and that’s a lot of skilled work and extra middle-people.
I don’t know much about tanning.
Many other different skills involved, too. It’s definitely hard to make leather jackets well.
Markups for name brands — and maybe some brands invest in doing things more sustainably, or have higher pay for their skilled workers, or have factories that use only top-quality leather and fixings, or not.
Good leather will last for generations if cared for, so if can be an investment garment. An in-vestment, if you will (but you don’t have to and probably shouldn’t).
Digression: real leather is much more sustainable than plastic/vegan/faux leather, which are very poisonous to the environment to make, plus they soon leach into the ground in a landfill. Wool is very warm and can definitely be done sustainably. 🙂
Big factories very far away, such as in Turkey, Pakistan, and India, with various laws for chemical disposal, labour laws/costs, transportation, levels of middle-people who all need to take a cut, etc.
If you’re ever in India, Pakistan, or the Middle East, you can get leather way more cheaply there. (Similar to ceramics in Portugal and silver in Mexico.) It’s funny to see it sold there cheaply, because it’s usually way too hot to wear it until you get someplace else.
A town near where I grew up had a leather factory that closed due to bankruptcy. It turns out, while a hundred years ago the United States may have been the leather-making capital of the world, now there are only a few tanneries left. Part of this is due to shoe manufacturers moving abroad for cheaper labor, which causes most American tanneries to go out of business or followed them. Environmental regulations also moght play a factor, as the tanning process can be pretty rough on the environment, especially the water if it is dumped without doing quite a bit of treatment. You couldn’t fish or swim in rivers contaminated from the tanning process and smog was a big issue.
The cost of tanning also probably has difficulty due to how it can’t be automated or standardized. Each hide is different, so the process is more of an art that requires skilled workers to do it right than a formula where you always do a set amount of each ingredient. Leather is also used for a wide variety of things, including shoes, handbags, purses, upholstered furniture, and other items. It is probably more profitable for a company to pump out a lot of small items (that doesn’t have to worry about imperfections or getting a big piece of nice leather), than doing the more specialized and complicated work that requires leather without any imperfections (which might also be more profitable doing work for an expensive car or furniture, and not require the “softness” a jacket would). Also, cows are kept outside in an open environment, so it can be easy for them to get wounds or scars from things like parasitic flies (eg bot flies). Another factor might be that the US military uses a lot of leather.
I did an IT internship in the office of a leather tannery in the US back in college, and I can confirm that a LOT of the best sheets of fully-sized leather do in fact go mostly to car seats and not to clothing.
The environmental regs were WILD — it’s a nasty business literally filled with open vats of chemicals like a Batman villain origin story.
That said, you CAN automate a fair bit of it, depending on the specific tanning process, right up until the final sorting and grading of hides.
Since they ended up shutting down, I have no idea how much they could have automated rather than having skilled workers for, how much technology has changed since then or how much was just flowery language on their part and not the actual truth. I would imagine that with the progress in automation in cameras and sensing in the past decade or so, you could probably micro-adjust a lot better now than back in the 60s (like using drones for crop health monitoring). That doesn’t bring quite the ring to it as saying your workers are artisans though. The idea that each cow can be a little bit different does make sense from one point a view (different genetics, life experiences, etc), but I have no idea how much that actually factors into the process other than what I was told and have read.
As such, I appreciate the correction Big Z, it is interesting to know.
Leather is just more labor-intensive to manufacture than many other fabrics. The time it takes for the tanning and processing of leather is where most of the cost comes from, I think. Pretty much all animal-based fabrics, like leather, silk, and wool, cost more because they require more effort just to raise/breed the animals.
Its mostly the long and complex process of turning skin into leather.
The skin needs to be cleaned of meat and fat tissues.
Dehaired. Cut into usable even pieces. Often split apart in layers.
Soaked and churned in one type of solution for hours, even days, dependent on thickness, chosen process and material.
Then washed and soaked in another one to get the tanning solution out since that is usually toxic.
At that point it gets physically treated, flattend, kneaded, rolled.
Then usually coloured, washed from colouring, then soaked in a fixiative.
Finally often surface treatment, steamrolling powders into the surface to preempt rot. Many modern leathers are finally coated with some kind of plastics film.
And all that before fasioning clothes out of it, which is also more complex than with normal, industrially even fabrics.
And many of those steps can not be fully automated since every skin is slightly different.
Its a whole lot of time, water, energy and chemicals, with many steps needing experienced handlers to oversee and steer the mechanized processes.
Not to mention the expensive wastewater treatment – in regions that care about such stuff.
But also: luxury product.
Buy in india or china where the largest producers are located today (again, enviromental impacts) and the prices we westerners pay appear kinda ridiculous.
Thrift stores are wonderful things. I’ve found several very reasonably priced leather jackets there. They’re not my style, but I have bought them for my motorcycle-riding friends and family on occasion.
2nd hand store or specifically the salvation army store, a stinky piece-leather beauty. Good jackets look like a single piece of material, this patch-leather jacket looked like frankenstein made it out of rat-hides, but only if you were close enough to see the 1950 individual stitches.
It mostly smelled like motor oil and 50-years of cheap tobacco, which I suppose is a lot of leather jackets, even if they aren’t bonded jigsaw puzzles.
I was confused at first reading this strip because they’re just dressed like they’re going to class, but I think they’re meant to be running for exercise.
Joyce’s pants have a vertical stripe down the side so I think they’re doing what I more or less did when I jogged in the winter in Colorado, which was jacket and hat and gloves over my exercise clothes.
Depending on how cold it is, you also wanna add like leg warmers, or thicker socks.
(I’m in a warmer state now, so instead I just add a UV neck muffler and an extra non-jacket layer on top.)
When I did, and what I do now that I bike, I’ve got two things, one you can do one you can’t.
1. I was born with the Full Winter Package, which is to say, I’m one of those freaks shovelling snow in shorts and it feels GREAT because FINALLY it’s not hot. BUT!
2. Even I start out wearing more, which gets to the thing you can do, which is layering. More layers equals more insulation, and most of all, more flexibility. I used to put on oversized sweatpants over regular trousers, just for example. Outer jacket plus inner jacket (or a liner) plus regular clothes underneath works is another example. The outer layer should be a wind blocking layer.
3. okay I lied there’s three: gloves and heavy socks. You lose so much heat out of your hands it’s not funny (or at least I do), and keeping those warm keeps your whole arm warm. Thick/warm socks are similar but also have to deal with water and ground contact so that’s why they matter a lot too.
Not really a winter tip, but I learned you can wear shorts quite early in the year. As long as your upper body is warm, bare legs don’t matter as much.
Personally, I have a set of insulated tights and shirt that I wear under my usual exercise gear and a balaclava, but I live in the Great White North and have to take it somewhat more seriously than the average USian.
I live somewhere that doesn’t typically get below freezing, but when I did run a lot, I’d intentionally dress less warm than the temperature needed because Id get very warm very fast, and my body sucks at regulating that shit. Like, if I know I’m going to need a sweater and a jacket for class, then I need a light jacket for running. Any more and I overheat and have a panic attack
I always feel loved when my spouse gets me clothes. They have a pretty good read on my tastes.
It does feel odd to do it with a fresh romance as a college freshman. I don’t have any logic or rhetoric to back that position up, but I can sum up my feelings as “Whoa, Dorothy, chill out”
I mean, we established Joyce is totally into it. So depends on the relationship really. I know some couples who pretty much default to the others fashion tastes because it makes their lives easier lol
She and Walky had kind of a major fight over it when she did it unsolicited. I thought the shopping trip later was cute, though, where she offered to let him also pick out clothes for her in exchange.
I have zero positive experience with anyone getting me clothes, ever. Is it really a common thing? Sizes vary so dramatically between stores. My husband used to try, but it was basically impossible to reliably get me things that fit without me being there so it stopped.
Guess a leather coat is different though. Dorothy must be secretly rich, a decent leather coat was $300 on Black Friday sale in like 07’, I shudder to imagine what that price looks like now.
I haven’t had problems with people buying me clothes, but part of that is the presumption that they know more than I do about what is fashionable or looks good on me.
I never liked anybody else buying clothing for me.
Not so much because of style or fit, but because it always felt as a very core violation of my personal souvereignity. Godess, how I made my mother suffer until she finally gave up around 14.
Later dissapointed several girlfriends with less than enthusiastic gift-accepting and never wearing the stuff they got me.
But that sounds more lilke a personal quirk, now that I retell it.
Doesn’t bother me, in fact I think it’s kinda fun. Its just also really funny that up until now, as dotty herself pointed out before they went to the protest, that dress up has just been making Joyce look like herself
Nah. If you’re looking for something not to trust in this strip it’s very obviously Sal when she’s let you borrow any of her outfits, especially if it’s a leather jacket. All the context has been revealed. The seeds for Joyce and Dorothy were planted long ago, intentionally, by Sal. Why are readers not blown away by this?
are we talking about Joyce and Dorothy or Ethan and Asher. Because the latter feels more like a case of Ethan getting his day, but Asher being a show that has yet to drop on dangerous mob connections.
Worst that happens to Joyce and Dorothy is they lose their friendship, and other friends as well. With Ethan; I’m still scared he’s gonna get hurt more emotionally and physically by whatever drama Asher has.
I mean Ethan and Asher aren’t in this strip so I wasn’t really considering them. I guess it could apply? I was really just making a rather vague comment that only really applies in a very abstract way because I didn’t really have much to say in specific context to this strip. I really doubt either Joyce or Dorothy will pay any consequences for embracing the curiosity of buying your girlfriend clothes you might find them attractive in. But they COULD! So they should watch out for it.
It is not a sign of my distaste for the character but my love that I would really like Dorothy to get hit with a football from off camera or other cartoon violence like Walky’s comic strip until the drama returns.
New idea for trolling the audience: a version of LAWsome where it’s Joyce saying the “Ha ha!” like in her panel with Walky, and then Dorothy drop kicks them.
We do that for all the named characters in the strip, one day at a time, ending with Dorothy drop-kicking Mike. Beaten at his own game, the universe of the comic implodes in on itself.
I love this, except, I can’t quite see Dorothy dropkicking anyone, but I could definitely see Billie with the “Ha ha!” and Ruth with the dropkick.
… Walky with the “Ha ha!” and Amazi-Girl with the dropkick?
… Danny with “Ha ha!” and Sal dropkick?!?
The reason I am advocating for cartoon violence with Dorothy is also not because i am annoyed we’re not getting more drama but also because it’s a reference to Julia Gray. For whatever reason, Joyce seems to do horrible hilarious stuff to Doris like her getting crushed in a bed.
I mean, speaking from the perspective up someone who is a bit further north than y’all, I would at least hold off on that impulse until the weather becomes warmer/drier, Dorothy. Genuine leather is pricey for a college kid’s budget, and the cheap fake shit doesn’t hold up as well in the cold.
Or at least just Embrace the Sapphicism and start buying some plaid flannels for underneath. Layers are king when it comes to staying cozy.
Also, if you’re expressing an interest in buying your girlfriend something that you think would look attractive on her, and she suggests something that she might like to receive…
Idunno, I mean, it’s her body those clothes are going on, maybe take the hint and get her somethin’ lacy. Maybe some cute garters since you think her thighs are sexy. Make a trip of it.
America is such a strange country where flannel means “lesbian” and not “guy at the train station who’s going to get really aggressive when you don’t give him a cigarette”
Though the situation is still different in that we don’t see any signs Asma is going to ditch the hijab, just that we saw her without it in a private space.
Fair. In fact, the author notes that she does not in fact sleep with a hijab or wear one in her own home but depicts herself with it always on in the comic. Caveat that this is just her personal position of course.
But I think it’s an interesting thing to see as Asma’s romance plot develops, if it does. At least the meta commentary on the comic I shared about representation. We’ll see
I have no opinion on the appropriateness of Asma’s depiction. This is a purely rhetorical argument.
But the choice to have the storyline start with Asma waking up in bed was an authorial decision. Ultimately any negative or positive aspects of the depiction still rest on the author.
You can justify any storyline by pointing to internal reasons why such and such makes sense within the story, but that doesn’t mean the story wasn’t problematic because ultimately there was still a decision to tell that specific story instead of any of the infinite alternatives that exist.
Basically I don’t think that narrative justification is a defense for problematic representation.
Eh.
How strict muslimas handle the veiling is a very personal and cultural thing.
Friend of mine was engaged/married to a persian gal who never left the house without her headscarf.
But when we met at his place for gamin sessions she used to come home and instantly ditch it, with five guys sitting in her living room. When I saked her once she stated that its her home, we are friends and her man ist ther, so why bother?
True, everyone is different. That’s a knife that cuts both ways though. Ultimately though I think this one’s pretty minor. Things will heat up once we get closer to LGBTQ and non marital activity
another issue is of course what is the most likely default is going to differ and you need to make a judgement call. to use a different example, not all muslims care if a foodstuff is halal as long as it doesn’t contain pork. this does not give me license to presume that other muslims would be similarly lenient about it. (which means yes, one has to ask, but i’m talking about base assumptions. remember how many people seemed incredibly offended at any suggest asma might be anything less than a liberal open accepting muslim?)
Yeah, Thing 2 is correct, you don’t catch a cold from going outside in cold air. You are more likely to catch respiratory illnesses when your nose is cold BUT you do still have to be exposed to the pathogen. It’s not enough to just be outside and chilly.
Also going from warm air to cold air, and back repeatedly can weaken your immune system, and make it easier for you to get sick when exposed to the pathogen.
people tend to associate cold weather with getting colds because that’s the time of year we stay indoors more often — which is what *actually* makes contagious illness easier to spread to one another
If that’s the big factor, I’d expect different patterns in southern areas, where people tend to stay inside in air conditioning during the summer these days. We did see something of that pattern with Covid – summer surges in southern states, but not really in northern ones.
Also can’t neglect schools as a factor. Kids do a lot to spread colds and that overlaps with the cold weather
That’s not it. Well, not JUST it. The thing about the influenza virus is that it changes shape. When it’s cold it looks like a little tower with legs thing, but if it ever gets to a temperature close to the human body’s it lowers the main trunk (the tower bit) and it deploys its viral RNA. This shapechanging is irreversible, so a virus that heats up OUTSIDE the body is just useless.
I have a prediction: I think Joyce is going to at some point run into Joe after he has exercised and have a bout of horny feels that will add to the conflict of Dorojoyce, or whatever this lovely ship is called.
Hard to say, we gotta clear the hurdle of “successfully sits for tattoo” first. I could see her begging Sal for help and then defeating option paralysis by picking some flash from the artist who’s working on Sal’s arm.
Huh, I always thought leather was from cattle 100% of the time, but your comment got me to look it up. Most, but not all, leather comes from cows. About a tenth is pigs, which I double didn’t expect.
Most animal skin is tannable.
Sheep, goat and horse leather are also quite common. Rarer but still mass markets include snakes, alligator, croc or ostric hides.
I even once came across an artisan-type tinkerwoman on the edge of a big nature reserve who had made a business out of tanning various fish “hides” and making them into fashion items.
Not very durable, but real nice looking. She somehow even manged to keep some of the silvery scales in the carp skin during tanning.
Second panel establishes that in fact there have always been “questions”, third panel has Dorothy explicitly ask permission to pick out clothes for Joyce……. but go off I guess.
Have we actually seen Dorothy make “suggestions in upgrades to your visual presentation” and Joyce fighting back or is that just assumed background?
I mean, it makes sense, I just don’t remember any examples.
I think the main examples are Dorothy suggesting Joyce get glasses (which Joyce fought her on) and during Halloween when Dorothy changed Joyce’s part to make it match Rapunzel’s and Joyce was like “I’m not keeping this” only for it to be her current part months later.
Glasses isn’t really the same thing, since that was about her being able to see rather than her presentation. Closer to the arc about bc pills. Though there was a bit between Dorothy and Becky about which frames to choose.
I agree that the glasses aren’t really a good point but for whatever reason Dorothy thinks she classified Joyce to turn her into herself. I can’t link it right now but it came up last time they were in the laundry room just before the protest.
She listed glasses, the fitness watch, the direction Joyce parts her hair, Joyce’s musical tastes… probably was also thinking of Joyce’s atheism. Also in this strip Joyce is wearing some of Dorothy’s clothes.
But Dorothy here was more worrying that she’d had too much of an influence on Joyce, a concern Joyce herself rejected.
I do not think we’ve had a bunch of on-screen examples, no, but I think in that particular strip Dorothy wasn’t talking so much about fashion (and was being anxious about ‘controlling’ Joyce).
1) Dorothy and Joe both seem to have gift giving as their way of showing love to their partner. This is a perfectly valid way to express care and at no point is Dorothy telling Joyce she needs to wear it, she’s mainly offering to buy Joyce her own jacket since she usually borrows Sal’s.
2) https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/fetishist/ Dorothy bought clothes for Walky too, making this just a thing Dorothy, again, likes doing for her partner. Walky did go on to wear the striped shirt here to his interview for the newspaper gig so… it was useful. Also the next strip here Dorothy offers for Walky to buy her something too so it’s not meant to be only one way.
I would honestly say she wasn’t even trying to make him hotter for herself, he still wears hoodies after this. She literally says she’s making him hotter for FUTURE girlfriends. Which, you know, still weird but I guess nice? I mean, good clothes is good clothes.
Well, no, she asks WALKY if he wouldn’t like to have something to catch the next girl’s eye.
(Then she generalizes advice about leaving “things” better than you found them, which she’s continued to do. She said something similar in a more distinctly mournful way about Joyce, who then worried that SHE should also be leaving DOROTHY better than she found her when they were eating mac and cheese together and Dorothy hadn’t yet told Joyce about not going to Yale… it’s been a character theme.)
Yes but in suggesting Walky look attractive for future girlfriends does that not support my point that Dorothy is less dressing Walky up for herself and more for… well, him but so he’d look nice for other girls, thus countering thesuggestion she’s dressing him up for her own gratification? I do like that character theme though it’s consistent.
Oh fully agreed she explicitly wasn’t doing it for her own gratification, sorry! Should’ve been more of a “yes AND” comic.
I’m really just further arguing against the criticism I keep seeing everywhere today that Dorothy is somehow doing this stuff without her partners’ buy-in. Like she’s being sneaky or controlling instead of literally saying her goal out loud and asking permission.
And like she’s not specifically today offering to buy Joyce her own version of a jacket Joyce demonstrably already likes???? People are being so weird about Dorothy today.
I didn’t say it was without her partner’s consent. I was just saying that it’s not an altruistic impulse to give them something nice, but wanting to dress them up in ways that make them (more) attractive in her eyes.
This is a feature of Dorothy that people are always weird about in general. I genuinely don’t get it. I feel like doing/making/gifting stuff for each other is stuff most people I know like in their friends and partners irl. (If they’re good at it) (Which by Joyce’s estimation over time Dorothy decidedly is.)
People’s fashion and style informs their identity. When you shop outside of that identity or style it may start to effect their sense of individuality.
Im kinda like walky in that I love t-shirts and hoodies and wear them almost constantly. I don’t really like button-down shirts or other “nice” clothes even if I might look “nicer” in them. Like I get on some level wanting to see me in something other than an anime shirt or a big jacket but that’s what I’m most comfortable in. A partner who buys me clothes I LIKE is preferable to one who buys me clothes they want to see me in.
@Adept: I think “buying something for your partner that you think they’d look hot in” being characterized as either altruistic OR selfish is weird, tbqh? It’s neither. Especially not when the partner is super on board for it, like Joyce visibly is in this strip.
@AK: yeeeaaah I’m with you there.
@Yotomoe: I fully respect this take, even though I disagree with it. The only thing I’ll say is that Dorothy wasn’t trying to replace any of Walky’s other shirts, she was trying to get him an additional bonus shirt. I don’t think the idea was ever that he would wear it on a daily basis — just for special occasions, which he did, when he wore it for the “job interview” with Daisy.
I get the concern here, in part because I have a close friend who is similar in a way. She will do anything for a friend, but she’ll do what she thinks is best for you, not necessarily what you ask her for. it’s a weird space between self-centeredness and altruism, that shares properties of both. The intent is absolutely benign, but the execution can lack at times because she sometimes lacks a proper ‘theory of mind’ (the ability to envision how someone else sees the world).
Joyce still defaults to the girly-girl impulse, and immediately through lingerie, where as Dorothy wants her to embrace the Julia Gray tough space captain persona 😀
It definitely depends on the couple and how much give/take it involves, yeah. Telling them that you like to see them in a certain style/outfit? Probably fair enough. Telling them that you want to remake their entire wardrobe? Thaaaat’s probably getting into creepy/abuser territory. I’m not saying Dorothy is like this, but I’ve known some people (almost universally women) who have had partners who basically control or pressure them into only wearing stuff they approve of.
I think it isn’t about needing a project, per se, as how Dorothy engages with everything.
Dorothy has projects, the newspaper etc… that she can and does work on.
It is just that in any area of her life Dorothy tends to engage with it by working to improve. So if Joyce is going to be part of Dorothy’s life, then Dorothy will engage by trying to come up with plans to make Joyce’s life better.
This is 100% the reason I have always hated Dorothy. For blessed kami-sama’s sake, if you love someone, why are you so determined to remake them? You don’t love them, you love the IDEA of what they could be in your head. Let people be themselves, you a-type controlling pile of hormones and sierra club desk calendars.
Dorothy is asking permission here to buy Joyce a type of jacket she has always liked but only ever borrowed from someone, and pointing out that she literally helped Joyce see properly.
I’m not sure what part of that is not letting Joyce be herself, or even being controlling. Certainly not which part of it required you calling her a “pile of hormones” but like… go off I guess?
Buying your s.o. clothing can be a controlling move.
I always hated wearing anything I didnt chose myself … disappointed several clothing-gifting GFs that way.
And given how Dotty just ordered Walky to “wear a nice shirt for once”, you could be on to something.
But in this case she is basically asking, which should always be okay between lovers.
I think people are just looking for reasons to be mad at them at this point. You can’t just say you don’t like Joyce and Dorothy now. That’s fine. You don’t need a reason. If you’re salty it shits all over Joe or Walky then that’s fine too, but this moment is 100% their dynamic from like nearly the start of the comic. Dorothy’s not some sinister control freak trying to change Joyce. Where is this coming from?
Yeah. I mean, there are examples of Dorothy pushing the boundaries between “suggestions” and “weirdly pushy”, but this is about as far from that as you can get.
She’s asking permission to buy Joyce a version of a jacket Joyce already likes…!
It’s definitely a bit of a bongo eating crackers thing. Folks are so mad at her that they’re just fully transforming the text of today’s strip into something else in their heads.
I feel in the odd position of being firmly middle of the road. Dorothy isn’t doing anything objectionable in this strip, but this is a habit of hers that she can and has pushed into, for me, very uncomfortable territory in the past, and the speed with which she just jumps into it gives me pause. It’s eyebrow-raising for me. But like I’m not gonna cuss her out for wanting to buy her girlfriend a leather jacket.
I think she has, textually, expressed a fair bit of hesitation over this impulse specifically with Joyce!
She’s here being very direct about what she’d like to do, asking permission, and offering to buy Joyce an article of clothing she already knows Joyce loves. In the laundry room prior to the kiss, she worried out loud that she’d “really” remade Joyce in her image. Joyce is enthusiastically consenting, as well as demonstrably very capable of saying “NO” to Dorothy both when she doesn’t like the idea of a thing and when she does like it but isn’t yet ready for a change.
I think there’s more an argument to be made about Walky, or an argument to be made about the previous laundry room incident (which Joyce has so far explicitly rejected, she’s extremely positive about everything that happened there even though it understandably pushed ugly buttons for many readers).
But right now I would say Dorothy is conscientiously attempting to compensate for and avoid the urge you’re talking about.
For clarity I made a typo I didn’t notice. You CAN just say you don’t like Joyce and Dorothy. You can even like them as individuals but not as a couple. It can be that simple.
But hey if you’re having fun inventing ulterior motives then that’s fine I guess. I do that too probably. I don’t like Lucy for instance and have probably warped the narrative to serve my bias.
What ‘suggestions’ is Dorothy referring to? I only remember her suggesting glasses. And in that case the ‘upgrade to [Joyce’s] visual presentation’ was only a side effect.
A lot lf it is implied, but Joyce has steadily begun dressing like Dorothy, wearing glasses, even parting her hair the same way. Dorothy took stock of it a few storylines ago, and she was much less enthusiastic about it then.
I wonder if that “less enthusiastic” is coloring her perception of what she did, because a lot of that, at least as far as style goes, seemed to be Joyce choosing to imitate Dorothy rather than Dorothy pushing it on Joyce and especially Joyce fighting her every single time.
Joyce fought her on other changes – like getting glasses at all or the bc pills or over changing her fundie views in the first semester, but not really over visual presentation.
Joyce is so cute in panel 3 when she thinks Dorothy is going to buy her lingerie, it makes me a little sad that it doesn’t go in that direction.
Dorothy dressing up her partners is definitely a consistent theme in her relationships. I’m reminded of the time she told Joyce that she was basically “basting [Walky] like a turkey.”
It’s interesting that Becky wasn’t the only one turned on by Joyce in a leather jacket. I don’t think we saw any reaction from Dorothy at the time.
as someone who works at a clothing store I can say a leather jacket is a SIGNIFICANT gift, we only have a couple of real leather jackets in stock and they are the most expensive items we have, even more than the fancy japanese selvege items.
Also I suspect Dorothy’s parents already like Joyce, and may have been trying to be quietly supportive while their queer daughter sublimated her sapphic thoughts into spreadsheets.
I still think wearing another – a stranger – persons clothing would be a hurdle for Joyce.
And on top most leather clothes are not all that washable.
I got a few leather things from thrift stores, all of them felt kind of rank in the beginning.
After feeling on a downer yesterday about Dorothy and Joyce making each other worse, I’m glad to see today’s comic. Stay healthy, both of you. You’ll need it when the things you’ve been failing to deal with catch up with you.
Curious why so many folks are assuming Dorothy doesn’t have enough money for a real leather jacket…?
I know they’re expensive, but she absolutely seems like the type of college student who works summer jobs and saves all her money, and we know her parents are paying her tuition and stuff.
(Frankly they might also pull a Dina’s-parents and just give her extra money for The New Girlfriend.)
We haven’t had our first collegiate summer yet. I don’t know why any of the characters have money outside of plot necessity. We never see anyone barring Becky with a job. Like sure we can just make assumptions that they all have summer jobs or that everyone’s parents are giving them an allowance but that’s more because we HAVE to for the story to make sense.
I was thinking every summer prior to college! I just bet Dorothy has a very healthy savings account.
There are characters we know are in tight financial situations: Sarah is here entirely on academic scholarship, for example, and Becky is in a similar situation with Robin’s help (and presumably also Leslie’s). We also know that Jennifer’s parents give her money instead of affection.
We know Dina has “enough” money; we know Walky doesn’t have, at the very least, access to money to buy his own Nintendo Switch — I would assume because he has to ask his parents for cash, and that they wouldn’t approve of buying a video game system.
Most of the other characters, it’s true, haven’t said anything one way or another about money, so it’s hard to be sure what anyone’s financial situation is, but Dorothy would be one of the characters I’d most assume had sufficient savings to make the occasional medium-ticket item.
My reference point for how much money Dorothy has access to is where she shops – she took Walky to target to buy clothes, while Billie took Joyce to higher-end shops at the mall. Either Dorothy is particularly frugal, which wouldn’t be out of character, or her budget is more target-level, in which case a good quality genuine leather jacket, which will run her anywhere from $150 to $300, is gonna be a big ticket item. Clearly, she can afford it if she’s talking so casually about it, but it’s gonna be a big ticket purchase for her.
That’s totally possible, but submitting for the approval of the midnight society:
Walky not being willing to go to a higher-end store. Dorothy at the time also being very determined that this would be a less serious relationship, after she’d just very clumsily broken up with Danny, versus Dorothy now, having decided to stay at IU with Joyce and both of them seemingly having decided this is a more serious relationship, where more expensive gifts are more appropriate and less weird.
She might also not be aware how much a leather jacket can cost. Like, decent enough chance she has “enough” from what we know of her background, not as clear what percentage of the total that would be or how willing she would be to part with it.
Also, in this sort of situation, I feel like your money is kind of…stagnant. Like, she doesn’t really have expenses that aren’t covered by her parents; she also doesn’t have an income. That makes larger purchases feel more significant, at least to me, because you’re only going to see your account go down until things change. I also imagine she intends to pursue graduate school (or at least intended to), so some/a lot of her savings might be sort of considered as “for an undetermined but significant future expense.”
I was thinking her parents probably set up a fund for both college and grad school, but I guess I have no reason to be so sure Dorothy has worked part-time jobs through high school! We’ll find out when / if she actually tries to buy a jacket ❤️
There’s not a ton of concrete details, so there’s definitely some projecting for me. I feel very privileged that my parents/grandparents were able to cover my undergrad costs, and it was clear anything beyond that, I would be expected to cover. “Undergrad *and* grad school covered” feels like another level of privilege that I feel like is past what Dorothy has been coded as. But again, I acknowledge my projection here.
Oh I should be clear that none of this is MY experience at all. My grandmother covered a couple of years of community college for me, that’s all.
But I was under the impression that her parents were solidly middle class AND type-A personalities, so a long term college fund seemed to make sense. Especially since they knew she was trying to go to Yale… IDK.
I’m sure scholarships were also part of the plan, but Dorothy didn’t express any anxiety about that when her grades briefly slipped.
That is super sad and also gives me pause because I thought both Dorothy’s parents were middle class, and they’ve always know Dorothy would go to college…
In all fairness, you could also read this as Dorothy simply trying to Be An Adult™ by discarding any childish “vices” in service of her big adult goals. Or perhaps she’s saving for graduate school, or she sold these things before she had an idea of how much she would have by way of scholarships and financial aid.
I don’t think I personally believe she’s hurting too badly for money. She didn’t hesitate to, say, buy Becky’s sushi when they first met. But I can understand other folks believing she wouldn’t be able to afford a leather jacket.
…did like a huge chunk of the comments just boop out of existence in the last couple hours? Normally I wouldn’t notice but a lot of today has been waiting rooms and I keep coming back here…
Honestly I find this very sweet- feels like Dorothys done some re-examining about her responses to stuff. Also from people I know I think the urge to get your girlfriend a cool type of jacket she clearly likes is somewhat common.
A lot of discourse about the lens through which people view Dorothy’s behavior vis a vis wanting to improve or upgrade her partner…
…and I’m just sitting here thinking, “guys, we found out Dorothy’s parents’ toxic trait! We’ve maybe finally learned something besides ‘they are good parents, I guess’ when it comes to their personalities and treatment of their daughter!” She’s gotta get this behavior from somewhere, maybe it was actually informed by her upbringing.
Maybe it wasn’t actually toxic, maybe they were just supporting her. But like…maybe, Dorothy is the way that she is, because the model of love she was brought up with was “supporting someone to be the best person they can be.” So, she then feels the urge to show her love this way.
That doesn’t change the fact that we don’t know if Dorothy is receptive to the same thing from her partner (Walky and Danny were not guys who would have felt emboldened to try), and if it’s a one-sided thing, then maybe it’s a red flag. But, maybe she was just “loved like a project” growing up, and didn’t actually have a problem with being treated that way, so it doesn’t even begin to occur to her, that this behavior could or should feel stifling to her partners.
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we get it Dorothy, ya think she looks hot in leather XD
i mean, she DOES
Split the difference, and go with leather lingerie.
p. sure that’s for Dina
hope so anyway xD
I was thinking leather jacket over lingerie. But yours is good too! 👌
…. Well that just awakened something in me. Okay. So now I know that.
Kate McKinnon rocked that look in the Celesbian interview with Dani Campbell…
A babydoll nightie and leather jacket… excuse me, one cold shower required… xD
i think dorothy should wear something leather to try and match the vibe of joyce’s leather jacket. maybe a collar?
if they both get leather jackets, they can start a dorky biker gang.
Really getting Harry/Kim vibes from Disco Elysium, maybe they could fleece the jackets from some delinquents while pretending to be the fuzz.
Better than getting Harry Kim vibes – they’d be freshmen forever!
and they’d have to die at least twice, and have one of them replaced by a duplicate and have it never be talked about again.
GOOD IDEA QueenofSodor
Sub Dorothy truthers rise up
i’m always saying this
rise up? like to the top? you’re not making sense
okay but like do you get puppygirl or kittygirl vibes? cuz honestly I think she could go either way, but I do feel she leans slightly kittygirl
i mean, canonically she is considered a puppygirl!
http://www.dumbingofage.com/arf
I’d just like to assure everyone that the above link to http://www.dumbingofage.com/arf is SFW.
A jacket that looks cool, yet noticeably less cool than Sal’s.
Of course it’s less cool than Sal’s – Sal isn’t wearing it.
What if Sal wears Joyce’s jacket?
Then it becomes cooler by being in contact with Sal; now whether it absorbs any of her coolness, and becomes permanently cooler is up for debate.
Sal will always be 20 percent cooler.
And now my brain is racing down a “Which DoA character is which FIM character” rabbit hole.
Sal = Rainbow Dash
Joyce = Twilight Sparkle
Dorothy = Starlight Glimmer
How do people have conversations while they’re jogging, I’m too busy trying not to die
You have enough stamina and motivation to actually jog?
Glad somebody does.
Some call it “jogging”, some call it “failing to catch up to the ice cream truck.”
Being 19 is a whole hell of a lot of it in my experience, lol.
i think you have to do it slowly but for some of us this would simply be a brisk walk
It’s actually legit advice for beginning joggers/runners that if you can’t carry on a conversation you should slow down because you’re going too hard for optimal cardio training..
Yes this exactly!
You shouldn’t be going at a pace that keeps you too busy trying not to die. Start with walking, build up little intervals of brisker walking and graduate to slow jogging…
If you’re jogging you can talk. If you’re running you can’t.
I think campus life has a lot to do with it. always racing around for classes keeps you surprisingly in shape
I did not learn this myself until I went back to alma mater a year later to visit and nearly died on the stairs, like how the heck did I dash up and down them a mere year prior???
leather jackets unlocked something in her
College kids can afford leather jackets?
Maybe at a second-hand store or something?
This was my thought *exactly*, like, I was NOT gonna buy anyone a leather jacket at 19 due to the 19-year-old amount of money in the bank account
YEP
Not in MY budget
Right? I got my first leather coat as a graduation present from college!
What makes leather so expensive anyway? We slaughter cows like nobody’s business and leather lasts a long time, so I doubt it is an issue of the hides being rare or the product requiring rapid replacement and thus creating scarcity. Is the bulk of the cost coming from the chemicals required for the tanning process? Are we paying for the over head created by disposal of toxic byproducts? Are specialized laborers or machinery involved still all that valuable in the modern age? Is there a secret leather cartel driving up prices with monopolization? What is going on here?
I’ll take an educated guess at it.
Different qualities of leather. (Full grain is thickest, most durable, best, most expensive, it’s like the whole skin. Top grain is still real good but not so crazy-expensive, the highest layers of the skin. Split grain is much less expensive, the lower layers. Bonded leather is the MDF particleboard of the mammalian world, it’s basically glue and dust.)
Hides are irregular shapes and may have undesirable variations, so even though a cow is pretty big, it’s not like a bolt of fabric, and you can’t get that many usably-large great pieces from each animal. Skilled people in factories probably have to cut each hide individually into all different grades of leather, and then sell/transport the types of grain they aren’t using, and that’s a lot of skilled work and extra middle-people.
I don’t know much about tanning.
Many other different skills involved, too. It’s definitely hard to make leather jackets well.
Markups for name brands — and maybe some brands invest in doing things more sustainably, or have higher pay for their skilled workers, or have factories that use only top-quality leather and fixings, or not.
Good leather will last for generations if cared for, so if can be an investment garment. An in-vestment, if you will (but you don’t have to and probably shouldn’t).
Digression: real leather is much more sustainable than plastic/vegan/faux leather, which are very poisonous to the environment to make, plus they soon leach into the ground in a landfill. Wool is very warm and can definitely be done sustainably. 🙂
Big factories very far away, such as in Turkey, Pakistan, and India, with various laws for chemical disposal, labour laws/costs, transportation, levels of middle-people who all need to take a cut, etc.
If you’re ever in India, Pakistan, or the Middle East, you can get leather way more cheaply there. (Similar to ceramics in Portugal and silver in Mexico.) It’s funny to see it sold there cheaply, because it’s usually way too hot to wear it until you get someplace else.
There! Now you know a bunch about leather.
A town near where I grew up had a leather factory that closed due to bankruptcy. It turns out, while a hundred years ago the United States may have been the leather-making capital of the world, now there are only a few tanneries left. Part of this is due to shoe manufacturers moving abroad for cheaper labor, which causes most American tanneries to go out of business or followed them. Environmental regulations also moght play a factor, as the tanning process can be pretty rough on the environment, especially the water if it is dumped without doing quite a bit of treatment. You couldn’t fish or swim in rivers contaminated from the tanning process and smog was a big issue.
The cost of tanning also probably has difficulty due to how it can’t be automated or standardized. Each hide is different, so the process is more of an art that requires skilled workers to do it right than a formula where you always do a set amount of each ingredient. Leather is also used for a wide variety of things, including shoes, handbags, purses, upholstered furniture, and other items. It is probably more profitable for a company to pump out a lot of small items (that doesn’t have to worry about imperfections or getting a big piece of nice leather), than doing the more specialized and complicated work that requires leather without any imperfections (which might also be more profitable doing work for an expensive car or furniture, and not require the “softness” a jacket would). Also, cows are kept outside in an open environment, so it can be easy for them to get wounds or scars from things like parasitic flies (eg bot flies). Another factor might be that the US military uses a lot of leather.
This was a good and educational comment
I did an IT internship in the office of a leather tannery in the US back in college, and I can confirm that a LOT of the best sheets of fully-sized leather do in fact go mostly to car seats and not to clothing.
The environmental regs were WILD — it’s a nasty business literally filled with open vats of chemicals like a Batman villain origin story.
That said, you CAN automate a fair bit of it, depending on the specific tanning process, right up until the final sorting and grading of hides.
Since they ended up shutting down, I have no idea how much they could have automated rather than having skilled workers for, how much technology has changed since then or how much was just flowery language on their part and not the actual truth. I would imagine that with the progress in automation in cameras and sensing in the past decade or so, you could probably micro-adjust a lot better now than back in the 60s (like using drones for crop health monitoring). That doesn’t bring quite the ring to it as saying your workers are artisans though. The idea that each cow can be a little bit different does make sense from one point a view (different genetics, life experiences, etc), but I have no idea how much that actually factors into the process other than what I was told and have read.
As such, I appreciate the correction Big Z, it is interesting to know.
Leather is just more labor-intensive to manufacture than many other fabrics. The time it takes for the tanning and processing of leather is where most of the cost comes from, I think. Pretty much all animal-based fabrics, like leather, silk, and wool, cost more because they require more effort just to raise/breed the animals.
Its mostly the long and complex process of turning skin into leather.
The skin needs to be cleaned of meat and fat tissues.
Dehaired. Cut into usable even pieces. Often split apart in layers.
Soaked and churned in one type of solution for hours, even days, dependent on thickness, chosen process and material.
Then washed and soaked in another one to get the tanning solution out since that is usually toxic.
At that point it gets physically treated, flattend, kneaded, rolled.
Then usually coloured, washed from colouring, then soaked in a fixiative.
Finally often surface treatment, steamrolling powders into the surface to preempt rot. Many modern leathers are finally coated with some kind of plastics film.
And all that before fasioning clothes out of it, which is also more complex than with normal, industrially even fabrics.
And many of those steps can not be fully automated since every skin is slightly different.
Its a whole lot of time, water, energy and chemicals, with many steps needing experienced handlers to oversee and steer the mechanized processes.
Not to mention the expensive wastewater treatment – in regions that care about such stuff.
But also: luxury product.
Buy in india or china where the largest producers are located today (again, enviromental impacts) and the prices we westerners pay appear kinda ridiculous.
Thrift stores are wonderful things. I’ve found several very reasonably priced leather jackets there. They’re not my style, but I have bought them for my motorcycle-riding friends and family on occasion.
its affordable at a thrift store if they can find one
Always check secondhand stores and Marketplace first. I got a CE-rated, armored motorcycle jacket for 50 bucks this past spring.
2nd hand store or specifically the salvation army store, a stinky piece-leather beauty. Good jackets look like a single piece of material, this patch-leather jacket looked like frankenstein made it out of rat-hides, but only if you were close enough to see the 1950 individual stitches.
It mostly smelled like motor oil and 50-years of cheap tobacco, which I suppose is a lot of leather jackets, even if they aren’t bonded jigsaw puzzles.
I found a leather winter coat for 25 dollars at Charlotte Russe once. It was during summer in Central FL so it was on clearance.
It’s the jackeeeet!!
What’s up, Richie Aprile?
Oh god, jogging in the cold. That always would make my lungs burn when I had to do it in high school. Good on them for pulling it off
Question for folks who run in the winter.
Do you just wear your regular winter outerwear?
I was confused at first reading this strip because they’re just dressed like they’re going to class, but I think they’re meant to be running for exercise.
Even though just yesterday they both said “why go running when we could stay in bed and cuddle”, and I just accepted that as the correct answer lol
I hate running so bad
Joyce’s pants have a vertical stripe down the side so I think they’re doing what I more or less did when I jogged in the winter in Colorado, which was jacket and hat and gloves over my exercise clothes.
Depending on how cold it is, you also wanna add like leg warmers, or thicker socks.
(I’m in a warmer state now, so instead I just add a UV neck muffler and an extra non-jacket layer on top.)
When I did, and what I do now that I bike, I’ve got two things, one you can do one you can’t.
1. I was born with the Full Winter Package, which is to say, I’m one of those freaks shovelling snow in shorts and it feels GREAT because FINALLY it’s not hot. BUT!
2. Even I start out wearing more, which gets to the thing you can do, which is layering. More layers equals more insulation, and most of all, more flexibility. I used to put on oversized sweatpants over regular trousers, just for example. Outer jacket plus inner jacket (or a liner) plus regular clothes underneath works is another example. The outer layer should be a wind blocking layer.
3. okay I lied there’s three: gloves and heavy socks. You lose so much heat out of your hands it’s not funny (or at least I do), and keeping those warm keeps your whole arm warm. Thick/warm socks are similar but also have to deal with water and ground contact so that’s why they matter a lot too.
Not really a winter tip, but I learned you can wear shorts quite early in the year. As long as your upper body is warm, bare legs don’t matter as much.
Personally, I have a set of insulated tights and shirt that I wear under my usual exercise gear and a balaclava, but I live in the Great White North and have to take it somewhat more seriously than the average USian.
I live somewhere that doesn’t typically get below freezing, but when I did run a lot, I’d intentionally dress less warm than the temperature needed because Id get very warm very fast, and my body sucks at regulating that shit. Like, if I know I’m going to need a sweater and a jacket for class, then I need a light jacket for running. Any more and I overheat and have a panic attack
Dorothy really likes to dress her partners like dolls, huh
she’s so real for it, her next move should be to forcefem walky
“I’ll show you a doll”
You have my attention.
1000% agree
Well, that’ll confuse Danny to no end….
I always feel loved when my spouse gets me clothes. They have a pretty good read on my tastes.
It does feel odd to do it with a fresh romance as a college freshman. I don’t have any logic or rhetoric to back that position up, but I can sum up my feelings as “Whoa, Dorothy, chill out”
No yeah I like playing dress-up with my partners, but she just jumps into it with an immediacy that gives me pause.
I mean, we established Joyce is totally into it. So depends on the relationship really. I know some couples who pretty much default to the others fashion tastes because it makes their lives easier lol
Yep, and Walky needed the help. So yeah I’m Team Dorothy on this one.
She and Walky had kind of a major fight over it when she did it unsolicited. I thought the shopping trip later was cute, though, where she offered to let him also pick out clothes for her in exchange.
And then he went straight for a Kraft Macaroni and Cheese t-shirt, completely missing the subtext.
The subtext was to buy her clothes. Which he did. He bought her a nice shirt with a brand slogan. A romantic gesture!
@Thomas: I regret to inform you that the subtext was, again, lingerie.
Look, if Dorothy wanted Walky to buy her underwear, she should have said so. She didn’t.
Thomas is doing a bit. It isn’t funny.
To be fair sex with a girl ONLY wearing a Kraft macaroni and cheese shirt is hotter than any lingerie imo.
I have zero positive experience with anyone getting me clothes, ever. Is it really a common thing? Sizes vary so dramatically between stores. My husband used to try, but it was basically impossible to reliably get me things that fit without me being there so it stopped.
Guess a leather coat is different though. Dorothy must be secretly rich, a decent leather coat was $300 on Black Friday sale in like 07’, I shudder to imagine what that price looks like now.
thrift store, under 30
I haven’t had problems with people buying me clothes, but part of that is the presumption that they know more than I do about what is fashionable or looks good on me.
I never liked anybody else buying clothing for me.
Not so much because of style or fit, but because it always felt as a very core violation of my personal souvereignity. Godess, how I made my mother suffer until she finally gave up around 14.
Later dissapointed several girlfriends with less than enthusiastic gift-accepting and never wearing the stuff they got me.
But that sounds more lilke a personal quirk, now that I retell it.
She does like impressionable partners, malleable even.
Yes and I’m 257% into it.
wow great point, even more points in favor of this relationship
No need to be snide
Doesn’t bother me, in fact I think it’s kinda fun. Its just also really funny that up until now, as dotty herself pointed out before they went to the protest, that dress up has just been making Joyce look like herself
apropos of nothing,
while I still can’t walk or even stretch out my leg all the way, at least the pain has gotten down
oh and also finally after years of practice, I was able to win Spelunky and get it’s true ending, King Yama defeated and everything, YIPPEE ^^
Good news!!
Part A, good luck on continued improvement
Part B, fuck yeah! Congratulations 😀
They say every dog has its day, and that curiosity killed the cat. Maybe these two should think on that for a bit.
Don’t trust dogs and cats?
Nah. If you’re looking for something not to trust in this strip it’s very obviously Sal when she’s let you borrow any of her outfits, especially if it’s a leather jacket. All the context has been revealed. The seeds for Joyce and Dorothy were planted long ago, intentionally, by Sal. Why are readers not blown away by this?
But satisfaction brought it back
are we talking about Joyce and Dorothy or Ethan and Asher. Because the latter feels more like a case of Ethan getting his day, but Asher being a show that has yet to drop on dangerous mob connections.
Worst that happens to Joyce and Dorothy is they lose their friendship, and other friends as well. With Ethan; I’m still scared he’s gonna get hurt more emotionally and physically by whatever drama Asher has.
I mean Ethan and Asher aren’t in this strip so I wasn’t really considering them. I guess it could apply? I was really just making a rather vague comment that only really applies in a very abstract way because I didn’t really have much to say in specific context to this strip. I really doubt either Joyce or Dorothy will pay any consequences for embracing the curiosity of buying your girlfriend clothes you might find them attractive in. But they COULD! So they should watch out for it.
You *become* cool enough to pull off a cool look by understanding that you can *choose* to be cool enough to pull off a cool look.
Damn right.
In other news, check out my sick new hat — The guy at the hat store said I’m the first guy he’s ever seen who can pull it off!
I for one think it’s a really cool hat, and I’m not just saying that because I’m not currently under oath.
are you quoting i think you should leave
It’s illegal for you to ask me that
Okay fucking think a Joyce fashion montage may sell me on this relationship again
Meant to say fuck I think, damn autocorrect
It is not a sign of my distaste for the character but my love that I would really like Dorothy to get hit with a football from off camera or other cartoon violence like Walky’s comic strip until the drama returns.
New idea for trolling the audience: a version of LAWsome where it’s Joyce saying the “Ha ha!” like in her panel with Walky, and then Dorothy drop kicks them.
We do that for all the named characters in the strip, one day at a time, ending with Dorothy drop-kicking Mike. Beaten at his own game, the universe of the comic implodes in on itself.
I love this, except, I can’t quite see Dorothy dropkicking anyone, but I could definitely see Billie with the “Ha ha!” and Ruth with the dropkick.
… Walky with the “Ha ha!” and Amazi-Girl with the dropkick?
… Danny with “Ha ha!” and Sal dropkick?!?
Ah, the two genders…
The reason I am advocating for cartoon violence with Dorothy is also not because i am annoyed we’re not getting more drama but also because it’s a reference to Julia Gray. For whatever reason, Joyce seems to do horrible hilarious stuff to Doris like her getting crushed in a bed.
This doesn’t seem related to my comment.
I was responding to the thread. My apologies.
I mean, speaking from the perspective up someone who is a bit further north than y’all, I would at least hold off on that impulse until the weather becomes warmer/drier, Dorothy. Genuine leather is pricey for a college kid’s budget, and the cheap fake shit doesn’t hold up as well in the cold.
Or at least just Embrace the Sapphicism and start buying some plaid flannels for underneath. Layers are king when it comes to staying cozy.
Also, if you’re expressing an interest in buying your girlfriend something that you think would look attractive on her, and she suggests something that she might like to receive…
Idunno, I mean, it’s her body those clothes are going on, maybe take the hint and get her somethin’ lacy. Maybe some cute garters since you think her thighs are sexy. Make a trip of it.
Garters ruin thighs (and everything else).
thrift store! they will have serviceable leather!
Yeah!
Because Joyce will definitely not have a problems wearing clothes somebody unknown by her wore beforehand.
Non-washable leather all the more.
America is such a strange country where flannel means “lesbian” and not “guy at the train station who’s going to get really aggressive when you don’t give him a cigarette”
I feel this is somewhat relevant on that topic of portrayal of Muslims in media https://www.instagram.com/p/CGC_W0vh2Jv/?igsh=MW10bWpmNWtxcng4Mg==
Though the situation is still different in that we don’t see any signs Asma is going to ditch the hijab, just that we saw her without it in a private space.
Well, that’s a by-product of every storyline starting with someone waking up in bed, and people usually don’t sleep in a hijab
Fair. In fact, the author notes that she does not in fact sleep with a hijab or wear one in her own home but depicts herself with it always on in the comic. Caveat that this is just her personal position of course.
But I think it’s an interesting thing to see as Asma’s romance plot develops, if it does. At least the meta commentary on the comic I shared about representation. We’ll see
I have no opinion on the appropriateness of Asma’s depiction. This is a purely rhetorical argument.
But the choice to have the storyline start with Asma waking up in bed was an authorial decision. Ultimately any negative or positive aspects of the depiction still rest on the author.
You can justify any storyline by pointing to internal reasons why such and such makes sense within the story, but that doesn’t mean the story wasn’t problematic because ultimately there was still a decision to tell that specific story instead of any of the infinite alternatives that exist.
Basically I don’t think that narrative justification is a defense for problematic representation.
Eh.
How strict muslimas handle the veiling is a very personal and cultural thing.
Friend of mine was engaged/married to a persian gal who never left the house without her headscarf.
But when we met at his place for gamin sessions she used to come home and instantly ditch it, with five guys sitting in her living room. When I saked her once she stated that its her home, we are friends and her man ist ther, so why bother?
True, everyone is different. That’s a knife that cuts both ways though. Ultimately though I think this one’s pretty minor. Things will heat up once we get closer to LGBTQ and non marital activity
another issue is of course what is the most likely default is going to differ and you need to make a judgement call. to use a different example, not all muslims care if a foodstuff is halal as long as it doesn’t contain pork. this does not give me license to presume that other muslims would be similarly lenient about it. (which means yes, one has to ask, but i’m talking about base assumptions. remember how many people seemed incredibly offended at any suggest asma might be anything less than a liberal open accepting muslim?)
Psst, Dorothy! I think your girlfriend is telling you she wants you to buy her lingerie.
At least one person here is paying attention to the important things!
You are correct and thank you for saying it!
Obviously Joyce wants Dorothy to buy her a Mac & Cheese t-shirt
wow they’re actually doing it
…for the love of Gods Dorothy cover your neck with something how do you not catch colds
By not experiencing the causative agents, eg viruses?
Yeah, Thing 2 is correct, you don’t catch a cold from going outside in cold air. You are more likely to catch respiratory illnesses when your nose is cold BUT you do still have to be exposed to the pathogen. It’s not enough to just be outside and chilly.
And it certainly has nothing to do with whether or not your neck is covered.
Also going from warm air to cold air, and back repeatedly can weaken your immune system, and make it easier for you to get sick when exposed to the pathogen.
yeah
people tend to associate cold weather with getting colds because that’s the time of year we stay indoors more often — which is what *actually* makes contagious illness easier to spread to one another
If that’s the big factor, I’d expect different patterns in southern areas, where people tend to stay inside in air conditioning during the summer these days. We did see something of that pattern with Covid – summer surges in southern states, but not really in northern ones.
Also can’t neglect schools as a factor. Kids do a lot to spread colds and that overlaps with the cold weather
That’s not it. Well, not JUST it. The thing about the influenza virus is that it changes shape. When it’s cold it looks like a little tower with legs thing, but if it ever gets to a temperature close to the human body’s it lowers the main trunk (the tower bit) and it deploys its viral RNA. This shapechanging is irreversible, so a virus that heats up OUTSIDE the body is just useless.
wait i literally joked about this yesterday, i didn’t think it’d be that fast
I have a prediction: I think Joyce is going to at some point run into Joe after he has exercised and have a bout of horny feels that will add to the conflict of Dorojoyce, or whatever this lovely ship is called.
*snaps fingers, points*
yeah, the lingering cigarette smell is so ain’t you
ahhh… that’s brisk, baby
Yes Joyce, accept the leather jacket. Become cool. Inch ever closer to my dream “Joyce attempts to get a tattoo” arc. All is going according to plan.
I DEMAND Joyce Tattoo Arc!
….what kind of tattoo would she get?
Hard to say, we gotta clear the hurdle of “successfully sits for tattoo” first. I could see her begging Sal for help and then defeating option paralysis by picking some flash from the artist who’s working on Sal’s arm.
I feel the weather from this strip.
Mmmmm black pig skin. Let me rub my naked body on… Oooo, what are all you people doing in my fantasy. Blushes.
Huh, I always thought leather was from cattle 100% of the time, but your comment got me to look it up. Most, but not all, leather comes from cows. About a tenth is pigs, which I double didn’t expect.
Before footballs were all plastic, they were made of pig leather. Was an actual issue for Muslims.
(Dunno about handeggs.)
Most animal skin is tannable.
Sheep, goat and horse leather are also quite common. Rarer but still mass markets include snakes, alligator, croc or ostric hides.
I even once came across an artisan-type tinkerwoman on the edge of a big nature reserve who had made a business out of tanning various fish “hides” and making them into fashion items.
Not very durable, but real nice looking. She somehow even manged to keep some of the silvery scales in the carp skin during tanning.
Joe: Here’s a kind and thoughtful gift that might help you feel more comfortable and cozy, I hope you like it.
Dorothy: You will wear what I tell you to wear, no questions!
Do you just have fun making up stuff to get mad at?
Don’t belittle the creative exercise.
They could at least add some dragons or something. Make it interesting
Second panel establishes that in fact there have always been “questions”, third panel has Dorothy explicitly ask permission to pick out clothes for Joyce……. but go off I guess.
Have we actually seen Dorothy make “suggestions in upgrades to your visual presentation” and Joyce fighting back or is that just assumed background?
I mean, it makes sense, I just don’t remember any examples.
I think the main examples are Dorothy suggesting Joyce get glasses (which Joyce fought her on) and during Halloween when Dorothy changed Joyce’s part to make it match Rapunzel’s and Joyce was like “I’m not keeping this” only for it to be her current part months later.
Glasses isn’t really the same thing, since that was about her being able to see rather than her presentation. Closer to the arc about bc pills. Though there was a bit between Dorothy and Becky about which frames to choose.
Hadn’t remembered the Halloween one though.
I agree that the glasses aren’t really a good point but for whatever reason Dorothy thinks she classified Joyce to turn her into herself. I can’t link it right now but it came up last time they were in the laundry room just before the protest.
Glass-i-fied, sigh autocorrect
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/actuallaundry/
She listed glasses, the fitness watch, the direction Joyce parts her hair, Joyce’s musical tastes… probably was also thinking of Joyce’s atheism. Also in this strip Joyce is wearing some of Dorothy’s clothes.
But Dorothy here was more worrying that she’d had too much of an influence on Joyce, a concern Joyce herself rejected.
I do not think we’ve had a bunch of on-screen examples, no, but I think in that particular strip Dorothy wasn’t talking so much about fashion (and was being anxious about ‘controlling’ Joyce).
1) Dorothy and Joe both seem to have gift giving as their way of showing love to their partner. This is a perfectly valid way to express care and at no point is Dorothy telling Joyce she needs to wear it, she’s mainly offering to buy Joyce her own jacket since she usually borrows Sal’s.
2) https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/fetishist/ Dorothy bought clothes for Walky too, making this just a thing Dorothy, again, likes doing for her partner. Walky did go on to wear the striped shirt here to his interview for the newspaper gig so… it was useful. Also the next strip here Dorothy offers for Walky to buy her something too so it’s not meant to be only one way.
She definitely wanted to ”upgrade” Walky’s presentation to make him even hotter in her eyes. It’s a pretty selfish impulse, even though it’s ”gifts”.
I would honestly say she wasn’t even trying to make him hotter for herself, he still wears hoodies after this. She literally says she’s making him hotter for FUTURE girlfriends. Which, you know, still weird but I guess nice? I mean, good clothes is good clothes.
Well, no, she asks WALKY if he wouldn’t like to have something to catch the next girl’s eye.
(Then she generalizes advice about leaving “things” better than you found them, which she’s continued to do. She said something similar in a more distinctly mournful way about Joyce, who then worried that SHE should also be leaving DOROTHY better than she found her when they were eating mac and cheese together and Dorothy hadn’t yet told Joyce about not going to Yale… it’s been a character theme.)
Yes but in suggesting Walky look attractive for future girlfriends does that not support my point that Dorothy is less dressing Walky up for herself and more for… well, him but so he’d look nice for other girls, thus countering thesuggestion she’s dressing him up for her own gratification? I do like that character theme though it’s consistent.
Oh fully agreed she explicitly wasn’t doing it for her own gratification, sorry! Should’ve been more of a “yes AND” comic.
I’m really just further arguing against the criticism I keep seeing everywhere today that Dorothy is somehow doing this stuff without her partners’ buy-in. Like she’s being sneaky or controlling instead of literally saying her goal out loud and asking permission.
And like she’s not specifically today offering to buy Joyce her own version of a jacket Joyce demonstrably already likes???? People are being so weird about Dorothy today.
I didn’t say it was without her partner’s consent. I was just saying that it’s not an altruistic impulse to give them something nice, but wanting to dress them up in ways that make them (more) attractive in her eyes.
This is a feature of Dorothy that people are always weird about in general. I genuinely don’t get it. I feel like doing/making/gifting stuff for each other is stuff most people I know like in their friends and partners irl. (If they’re good at it) (Which by Joyce’s estimation over time Dorothy decidedly is.)
People’s fashion and style informs their identity. When you shop outside of that identity or style it may start to effect their sense of individuality.
Im kinda like walky in that I love t-shirts and hoodies and wear them almost constantly. I don’t really like button-down shirts or other “nice” clothes even if I might look “nicer” in them. Like I get on some level wanting to see me in something other than an anime shirt or a big jacket but that’s what I’m most comfortable in. A partner who buys me clothes I LIKE is preferable to one who buys me clothes they want to see me in.
Or at least buy me both.
@Adept: I think “buying something for your partner that you think they’d look hot in” being characterized as either altruistic OR selfish is weird, tbqh? It’s neither. Especially not when the partner is super on board for it, like Joyce visibly is in this strip.
@AK: yeeeaaah I’m with you there.
@Yotomoe: I fully respect this take, even though I disagree with it. The only thing I’ll say is that Dorothy wasn’t trying to replace any of Walky’s other shirts, she was trying to get him an additional bonus shirt. I don’t think the idea was ever that he would wear it on a daily basis — just for special occasions, which he did, when he wore it for the “job interview” with Daisy.
Sometimes, clothes are just clothes. I don’t think even remotely so much about whatbi wear, and i am sure many others don’t either including walky.
I get the concern here, in part because I have a close friend who is similar in a way. She will do anything for a friend, but she’ll do what she thinks is best for you, not necessarily what you ask her for. it’s a weird space between self-centeredness and altruism, that shares properties of both. The intent is absolutely benign, but the execution can lack at times because she sometimes lacks a proper ‘theory of mind’ (the ability to envision how someone else sees the world).
lol!
Joyce first thought immediately going to lingerie is certainly a vibe. 😛
She’s such a horny dork and I’m here for it.
re alt text:
IMO, no.
Dorothy may be the force that gets Joyce out of uggs and into a non-tan shoe
Wait, are they gonna come across Asma?
Remember, they’re students so that’s going to be a “leather” jacket which will start shedding and falling apart after six months of wear.
Don’t remind me. Plastic ”leather” which looks the part for a few months at best. Much like Elon Musk’s ”vegan leather” scams.
Vegan leather was an unbelievably effective marketing scheme for plastic.
Ok, this amused me a lot.
Joyce still defaults to the girly-girl impulse, and immediately through lingerie, where as Dorothy wants her to embrace the Julia Gray tough space captain persona 😀
I think a combination of these things could be fun and possibly break Dorothy’s brain.
Right. Lingerie under the leather jacket might blow her fuse.
For best results, Dorothy should grab at least the top from this.
https://ffxiv.eorzeacollection.com/gearset/gomphotherium-casting
So …. Dorothy has found the perfect person for her so it’s time to dig in and redefine them? Careful, girl. That’s still a relationship warning sign.
Unless they’re both into dressing each other. That may be hilarious. 😀
It definitely depends on the couple and how much give/take it involves, yeah. Telling them that you like to see them in a certain style/outfit? Probably fair enough. Telling them that you want to remake their entire wardrobe? Thaaaat’s probably getting into creepy/abuser territory. I’m not saying Dorothy is like this, but I’ve known some people (almost universally women) who have had partners who basically control or pressure them into only wearing stuff they approve of.
As much as Dorothy always needs a project, has she considered model trains?
Why am I reading that as Fashion Model Trains?
With her student budget and small, shared dorm space? At least Warhammer toys can be kept in a box under your bed
I think it isn’t about needing a project, per se, as how Dorothy engages with everything.
Dorothy has projects, the newspaper etc… that she can and does work on.
It is just that in any area of her life Dorothy tends to engage with it by working to improve. So if Joyce is going to be part of Dorothy’s life, then Dorothy will engage by trying to come up with plans to make Joyce’s life better.
No, I think it’s pretty clear that Dorothy needs something to work on or she’ll be left with a distressing amount of self-awareness.
Okay I do like this one ngl, this one’s funny
This is 100% the reason I have always hated Dorothy. For blessed kami-sama’s sake, if you love someone, why are you so determined to remake them? You don’t love them, you love the IDEA of what they could be in your head. Let people be themselves, you a-type controlling pile of hormones and sierra club desk calendars.
Dorothy is asking permission here to buy Joyce a type of jacket she has always liked but only ever borrowed from someone, and pointing out that she literally helped Joyce see properly.
I’m not sure what part of that is not letting Joyce be herself, or even being controlling. Certainly not which part of it required you calling her a “pile of hormones” but like… go off I guess?
Stuff like this is why i am of the firm opinion that not all interpretation are valid.. sometimes they are pure horseshit.
Buying your s.o. clothing can be a controlling move.
I always hated wearing anything I didnt chose myself … disappointed several clothing-gifting GFs that way.
And given how Dotty just ordered Walky to “wear a nice shirt for once”, you could be on to something.
But in this case she is basically asking, which should always be okay between lovers.
I think people are just looking for reasons to be mad at them at this point. You can’t just say you don’t like Joyce and Dorothy now. That’s fine. You don’t need a reason. If you’re salty it shits all over Joe or Walky then that’s fine too, but this moment is 100% their dynamic from like nearly the start of the comic. Dorothy’s not some sinister control freak trying to change Joyce. Where is this coming from?
Yeah. I mean, there are examples of Dorothy pushing the boundaries between “suggestions” and “weirdly pushy”, but this is about as far from that as you can get.
She’s asking permission to buy Joyce a version of a jacket Joyce already likes…!
It’s definitely a bit of a bongo eating crackers thing. Folks are so mad at her that they’re just fully transforming the text of today’s strip into something else in their heads.
I feel in the odd position of being firmly middle of the road. Dorothy isn’t doing anything objectionable in this strip, but this is a habit of hers that she can and has pushed into, for me, very uncomfortable territory in the past, and the speed with which she just jumps into it gives me pause. It’s eyebrow-raising for me. But like I’m not gonna cuss her out for wanting to buy her girlfriend a leather jacket.
Just make sure it’s genuine leather.
I think she has, textually, expressed a fair bit of hesitation over this impulse specifically with Joyce!
She’s here being very direct about what she’d like to do, asking permission, and offering to buy Joyce an article of clothing she already knows Joyce loves. In the laundry room prior to the kiss, she worried out loud that she’d “really” remade Joyce in her image. Joyce is enthusiastically consenting, as well as demonstrably very capable of saying “NO” to Dorothy both when she doesn’t like the idea of a thing and when she does like it but isn’t yet ready for a change.
I think there’s more an argument to be made about Walky, or an argument to be made about the previous laundry room incident (which Joyce has so far explicitly rejected, she’s extremely positive about everything that happened there even though it understandably pushed ugly buttons for many readers).
But right now I would say Dorothy is conscientiously attempting to compensate for and avoid the urge you’re talking about.
Yeah, it’s pretty weird, but pretty much anything anyone does in this comic gets taken in bad faith by somebody.
For clarity I made a typo I didn’t notice. You CAN just say you don’t like Joyce and Dorothy. You can even like them as individuals but not as a couple. It can be that simple.
But hey if you’re having fun inventing ulterior motives then that’s fine I guess. I do that too probably. I don’t like Lucy for instance and have probably warped the narrative to serve my bias.
Of course then you get people mad at you for saying the same thing over and over.
Shopping instead of giving Joe a definitive answer or talking about it with Dorothy? Yeah, that checks out.
We need a chapter titled “Joe’s definitive answer.” That’s when we’ll know.
Joe is still standing in his room to this very day. It’s Spinel all over again!
What ‘suggestions’ is Dorothy referring to? I only remember her suggesting glasses. And in that case the ‘upgrade to [Joyce’s] visual presentation’ was only a side effect.
A lot lf it is implied, but Joyce has steadily begun dressing like Dorothy, wearing glasses, even parting her hair the same way. Dorothy took stock of it a few storylines ago, and she was much less enthusiastic about it then.
Well, she’s been literally wearing Dorothy’s clothes, which has also been mutual, so it’s not quite dressing like Dorothy in that particular case.
I wonder if that “less enthusiastic” is coloring her perception of what she did, because a lot of that, at least as far as style goes, seemed to be Joyce choosing to imitate Dorothy rather than Dorothy pushing it on Joyce and especially Joyce fighting her every single time.
Joyce fought her on other changes – like getting glasses at all or the bc pills or over changing her fundie views in the first semester, but not really over visual presentation.
I know they are running, but the way they move, reminds me a lot of how the Flash is running in the TV-show
so what you’re sayin is that the reason their relationship is moving so fast is because they have tapped into the Speed Force. 😁
Joyce is so cute in panel 3 when she thinks Dorothy is going to buy her lingerie, it makes me a little sad that it doesn’t go in that direction.
Dorothy dressing up her partners is definitely a consistent theme in her relationships. I’m reminded of the time she told Joyce that she was basically “basting [Walky] like a turkey.”
It’s interesting that Becky wasn’t the only one turned on by Joyce in a leather jacket. I don’t think we saw any reaction from Dorothy at the time.
as someone who works at a clothing store I can say a leather jacket is a SIGNIFICANT gift, we only have a couple of real leather jackets in stock and they are the most expensive items we have, even more than the fancy japanese selvege items.
You can find genuine leather jackets at thrift stores for relative bargains. All of my leather jackets – I only buy genuine leather – are thrifted.
Also I suspect Dorothy’s parents already like Joyce, and may have been trying to be quietly supportive while their queer daughter sublimated her sapphic thoughts into spreadsheets.
I still think wearing another – a stranger – persons clothing would be a hurdle for Joyce.
And on top most leather clothes are not all that washable.
I got a few leather things from thrift stores, all of them felt kind of rank in the beginning.
After feeling on a downer yesterday about Dorothy and Joyce making each other worse, I’m glad to see today’s comic. Stay healthy, both of you. You’ll need it when the things you’ve been failing to deal with catch up with you.
*imagines Joyce wearing leather jacket and leather pants, too*
😀
Curious why so many folks are assuming Dorothy doesn’t have enough money for a real leather jacket…?
I know they’re expensive, but she absolutely seems like the type of college student who works summer jobs and saves all her money, and we know her parents are paying her tuition and stuff.
(Frankly they might also pull a Dina’s-parents and just give her extra money for The New Girlfriend.)
We haven’t had our first collegiate summer yet. I don’t know why any of the characters have money outside of plot necessity. We never see anyone barring Becky with a job. Like sure we can just make assumptions that they all have summer jobs or that everyone’s parents are giving them an allowance but that’s more because we HAVE to for the story to make sense.
I was thinking every summer prior to college! I just bet Dorothy has a very healthy savings account.
There are characters we know are in tight financial situations: Sarah is here entirely on academic scholarship, for example, and Becky is in a similar situation with Robin’s help (and presumably also Leslie’s). We also know that Jennifer’s parents give her money instead of affection.
We know Dina has “enough” money; we know Walky doesn’t have, at the very least, access to money to buy his own Nintendo Switch — I would assume because he has to ask his parents for cash, and that they wouldn’t approve of buying a video game system.
Most of the other characters, it’s true, haven’t said anything one way or another about money, so it’s hard to be sure what anyone’s financial situation is, but Dorothy would be one of the characters I’d most assume had sufficient savings to make the occasional medium-ticket item.
My reference point for how much money Dorothy has access to is where she shops – she took Walky to target to buy clothes, while Billie took Joyce to higher-end shops at the mall. Either Dorothy is particularly frugal, which wouldn’t be out of character, or her budget is more target-level, in which case a good quality genuine leather jacket, which will run her anywhere from $150 to $300, is gonna be a big ticket item. Clearly, she can afford it if she’s talking so casually about it, but it’s gonna be a big ticket purchase for her.
That’s totally possible, but submitting for the approval of the midnight society:
Walky not being willing to go to a higher-end store. Dorothy at the time also being very determined that this would be a less serious relationship, after she’d just very clumsily broken up with Danny, versus Dorothy now, having decided to stay at IU with Joyce and both of them seemingly having decided this is a more serious relationship, where more expensive gifts are more appropriate and less weird.
But also ty for pointing that out, because I really was curious as to where folks were getting the idea, and you provided a very plausible answer!
She might also not be aware how much a leather jacket can cost. Like, decent enough chance she has “enough” from what we know of her background, not as clear what percentage of the total that would be or how willing she would be to part with it.
Also, in this sort of situation, I feel like your money is kind of…stagnant. Like, she doesn’t really have expenses that aren’t covered by her parents; she also doesn’t have an income. That makes larger purchases feel more significant, at least to me, because you’re only going to see your account go down until things change. I also imagine she intends to pursue graduate school (or at least intended to), so some/a lot of her savings might be sort of considered as “for an undetermined but significant future expense.”
I was thinking her parents probably set up a fund for both college and grad school, but I guess I have no reason to be so sure Dorothy has worked part-time jobs through high school! We’ll find out when / if she actually tries to buy a jacket ❤️
There’s not a ton of concrete details, so there’s definitely some projecting for me. I feel very privileged that my parents/grandparents were able to cover my undergrad costs, and it was clear anything beyond that, I would be expected to cover. “Undergrad *and* grad school covered” feels like another level of privilege that I feel like is past what Dorothy has been coded as. But again, I acknowledge my projection here.
Oh I should be clear that none of this is MY experience at all. My grandmother covered a couple of years of community college for me, that’s all.
But I was under the impression that her parents were solidly middle class AND type-A personalities, so a long term college fund seemed to make sense. Especially since they knew she was trying to go to Yale… IDK.
I’m sure scholarships were also part of the plan, but Dorothy didn’t express any anxiety about that when her grades briefly slipped.
It may be because Dorothy sold off all her “kid stuff” (that we know to be very meaningful to her) in an effort to save for college.
Whoops, I intended this as a reply to Li, above.
Oh that’s so sad… poor Dorothy…
That is super sad and also gives me pause because I thought both Dorothy’s parents were middle class, and they’ve always know Dorothy would go to college…
In all fairness, you could also read this as Dorothy simply trying to Be An Adult™ by discarding any childish “vices” in service of her big adult goals. Or perhaps she’s saving for graduate school, or she sold these things before she had an idea of how much she would have by way of scholarships and financial aid.
I don’t think I personally believe she’s hurting too badly for money. She didn’t hesitate to, say, buy Becky’s sushi when they first met. But I can understand other folks believing she wouldn’t be able to afford a leather jacket.
…did like a huge chunk of the comments just boop out of existence in the last couple hours? Normally I wouldn’t notice but a lot of today has been waiting rooms and I keep coming back here…
Yep. They were contentious threads so I think they probably hit the report threshhold.
Some people can’t handle being told to wipe their asses, apparently.
Honestly I find this very sweet- feels like Dorothys done some re-examining about her responses to stuff. Also from people I know I think the urge to get your girlfriend a cool type of jacket she clearly likes is somewhat common.
Regular DoA gets Dorothy buying her a leather jacket.
Other Patreon gets Dorothy buying her lingerie.
I can only hope this leather jacket is seen on the NSFW patreon as it is discarded in favor of lust filled makeouts.
A lot of discourse about the lens through which people view Dorothy’s behavior vis a vis wanting to improve or upgrade her partner…
…and I’m just sitting here thinking, “guys, we found out Dorothy’s parents’ toxic trait! We’ve maybe finally learned something besides ‘they are good parents, I guess’ when it comes to their personalities and treatment of their daughter!” She’s gotta get this behavior from somewhere, maybe it was actually informed by her upbringing.
Maybe it wasn’t actually toxic, maybe they were just supporting her. But like…maybe, Dorothy is the way that she is, because the model of love she was brought up with was “supporting someone to be the best person they can be.” So, she then feels the urge to show her love this way.
That doesn’t change the fact that we don’t know if Dorothy is receptive to the same thing from her partner (Walky and Danny were not guys who would have felt emboldened to try), and if it’s a one-sided thing, then maybe it’s a red flag. But, maybe she was just “loved like a project” growing up, and didn’t actually have a problem with being treated that way, so it doesn’t even begin to occur to her, that this behavior could or should feel stifling to her partners.