their flirtiness tends to be fine and inoffensive in a vacuum. It’s mostly when another person shows up that Joyce tends to put her foot in her mouth hard and make people annoyed with the pairing
you have described the whole of Joyce in the comic, she is fine most of the time, but once people (plural) come into the mix she tends to eat her own foot. I actually used to not be able to stand Joyce, her rigid fundy attitude just rubbed me raw for some obvious reasons, but she has grown in some good ways and I have had time to like even her worst idiosyncrasies. ~<3
as an autistic person who is very atheistic, I used to not be able to stand Joyce, but “charming with just one person, socially incompetent the moment a third shows up” is extremely relatable to me.
Same. This isn’t a weird case where they act like they were always longing to marry each other since they first met or that their romantic relationship is way longer than a day and a half old; this is just a step or two up from their blurred-lines friendship from a day and a half ago, and it fits perfectly.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting here staring at Joyce’s jacket and going “Isn’t that a bomber jacket? That looks like a bomber jacket silhouette to me. Is she upset that it doesn’t have the classic fur lining?”
Like, I have a jacket that looks like that, and I call it my bomber jacket.
To me, all black leather jackets are the same bomberjackets, and all fermented tannin-heavy grape juices are red wines. I know not the fine differences.
I really wish that all fermented beverages didn’t share the same exact taste of rot. I really want to enjoy beers, wines, coolers, and other fermented beverages. Nope, all mine have to be distilled before they lose whatever the hell that taste is that just makes them foul to me.
It’s the lapels that make it not a bomber jacket — I said elsewhere in the thread, but a proper “bomber jacket” has a short waist so you can sit, elastic/ribbed wrist cuffs so it doesn’t get in the way of what you’re doing with your hands, and it fastens up to the neck by default — if it has lapels, they are the type intended to sit like shirt lapels, rather than the more suit-like/clubwear lapels that it appears to have esp in panel 3.
We only get one or two strips about other storylines before we inevitably circle back to these two being cute and not advancing the plot in any particular way.
I will say of all the webcomics on the web this feels like one of the ones that is least impacted by audience feedback because of how long the buffer is, so I don’t think it is.
Agreed, I’ve read other webcomics recently where the author will post the first development of a new story arc and then 1-2 days later the story takes a HARD pivot in a different direction, suspiciously in line with audience reactions (both opinions I agree AND disagree with).
Kinda like how the cowards at Disney backpedaled so hard with Rise of Skywalker they tripped, fell, and broke the entire franchise’s flimsy pandering spine.
DoA having such a long buffer likely makes it easier to ride out those bumps of fan reaction.
I hated the Last Jedi so much that I don’t think Rise of Skywalker could have easily been worse than it in my opinion. Rise of Skywalker was campy as it could be, but I grew up with the prequel triology (Phantom Menace, etc), so campy wasn’t outside of my expectations. (Campy might not be the term I am looking for either, but it is all my brain can come up with). Palpatine in general tends to be the king of camp.
I always thought that the series did better when it didn’t take itself too seriously and didn’t try to overexplain things. For one thing, there is only so much background information you can put into a feature film, and most of the audience gets bored with just boring talking (why cutscenes, backstory scenes, camp, or humor is used to lighten it up). TV shows and books have more leeway, with books having the most leeway. People don’t watch a Star Wars movie to get the alien equivalent of C-SPAN unless it is going to turn into a brawl or a rap battle worthy of MTV ir a musical.
That being said, you do need to have consistency in your universe rules unless you are aiming for something along the lines of Monty Python. You don’t have to explain the rules to the audience explicitly, but they notice if something changes. Like a wound that could be healed in the first movie suddenly can’t in the second. The only way you can get away with the rules changing like that is if the work is presented in a first person perspective. In that case, what they know could be wrong or change based on new information, and the audience is pulled along with them. This doesn’t work as well from a third person omniscient perspective.
On a side tangent, I did read a nice story that did a neat trick with the color of the stream. It was set in more of a fantasy realm, but the stream was originally said to be a normal color. Then, as the character goes to take a drink in the next paragraph, they talk about the red hue. The story gives you a beat to see if you notice before the author had the character catch it a sentence or two later (I actually went back right after reading the sentence mentioning it to see if it had been called red before, and it was not). Forget the book’s name unfortunately, but I thought that it was a fun bit of writing.
@Kimi
Pedantic note: Monty Python stuff does tend to have consistency; the jokes are often based on exploring an absurd premise or other bit of silliness in a way that wouldn’t work if stuff could just randomly change for no reason.
Even exceptions can rely on this continuity; in the ending to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the protagonists — who had been dwindling in number over the course of the movie — suddenly have an army backing them up. Although that army had actually shown up previously in a seemingly isolated joke (“get on with it”), so they’re not entirely out of nowhere.
Not sure there was any point in me making this comment, but I’m just sitting here waiting for someone, so typing this helped pass the time.
Monty Python might have some consistency with plot/storyline/jokes (especially in the movies where there should be some general overarching plot), but I am not sure how consistent it was with world rules, if that makes more sense? A consistent storyline and consistent world rules are two different things. Monty Python tends to rely on absurdist humor and unpredictable events. For example, someone can die from a sword strike while the black knight can still hop around without his limbs. Trying to explain why one survived and the other didn’t would just ruin the joke. It is just something unexpected that subverted our expectations of what should happen. If gravity decided to randomly flip upside down in one scene, it wouldn’t be too out of place in their work. If gravity suddenly flipped in a Law and Order show, people would expect it to be a major plot point with an explanation coming as it wouldn’t fit in otherwise. Also, just because they break some “world rules” doesn’t mean that they have to break all of them.
Note: “A rule is any statement that describes how a world works. A rule dictates what regularly happens, it is something that can be counted on. We take so many rules in our own world for granted, like gravity, weather, and the fact that all humans must eat, drink water, and sleep.”
You can also have something subvert a world rule in a story as long as you provide a good reason for the subversion and keep it consistent. Unfortunately, the most common way world rules get broken is in a series, where a newer story (ie book, movie, episode) doesn’t follow the same world rule as previously shown in a series. This could due to the author just forgetting that they had established that as a rule (especially if it was a long time ago). Another reason could be that the author felt constrained by the previous rule, and decided to ignore it or get ride of it without giving a good reason why. My example of this would be Luke’s in the Last Jedi. We had an established Luke character in the original series, and there was no build up or well done explanation of how it got to where it is in that movie. It hints at stuff, but never bothers to explain the change in depth, which leaves a sense of whiplash for people who knew his original character and how his first story line ended. I would go into more detail on that, but I don’t want to spoil anyone. My problem isn’t that they did the change as much as that they failed to meaningfully address how it got there. A big change like that is like the night sky suddenly turning bright neon orange. People are going to fixate on that and not the story line that you want them to focus on. On the other hand, if it was Monty Python, it would probably be a goose’s foot or something like that and would just fit right in.
Normally yes, but the abrupt shift in pacing and characterization for these two combined with statements from Willis about discarding the original plans and going against the buffer…
It might not be in response to the recent Patreon numbers, but it does still feel like this story bending way too far to force a result.
that was for the intention of Muslim characters having more prominent roles in the narrative, and frankly that’s a welcome change if you ask me, (at least given what’s come of it so far re: Asm)
To add on, regarding original plans, sometimes things just change in the writing process and its clear that’s what Joyce and Dorothy are for Willis. It’s a sillier example, but Darth Vader wasn’t always intended to be Luke’s father and Leia wasn’t originally Luke’s sister. As the movies were developed and came out, original plans were discarded and those ideas were put into place. I view Dorothy and Joyce as being similar, Willis went into writing and drafting up their strips, went “hm, but what if”, went through with it, and decided “okay let’s do it, this works better”. Sometimes ideas are first drafts and if your second draft includes certain things changing, I think it can work out so long as anything that doesn’t make sense or sticks out as being a bad fit are smoothed over from the transition to first draft to second.
This is what disappoints me the most. Joece the complex multi-year plot thread got rug-pulled, and all the tension that could have built up to Jorothy in that time was fast-forwarded to get to “the good part”.
Simply not true! Willis almost pulled the plug on Joece in 2023 and again in 2024. The version we got is actually a version with much more buildup than originally planned, not less.
People keep hearing “it could have been five years from now”, but no one seems to have paid attention to Willis also saying that they almost started this storyline two years earlier.
True though I think thats an issue in and of itself. It was the exact wrong amount of time for a Lotta people. If Joe and joyce had been cut off at the start it would’ve hurt but people would’ve felt less invested. Same for if they had run their course with more buildup on the dorothy/joyce end in the background. Rather it feels like its been stopped abruptly right as its reaching its zenith and to cement it further the narrative or characters don’t really spare any thoughts to the buildup that’s just deflated. It just hits a brick wall suddenly and a Lotta people got whiplash.
I’m not arguing that the pacing was above reproach, just trying again to dispel this false narrative that Willis planned to do a lot more with Joece and then abandoned it impulsively, or worse, for clicks.
Willis was planning on that conversation between Joe and Dorothy before Joe had even asked Joyce out, and as disappointing as that is for a lot of Joe/Joyce fans, it’s also the truth.
Now, I’m still hoping for (messy, possibly disastrous) polyamory, but. When discussing what was planned, we know Dorothy’s feelings for Joyce were always going to loom over Joe/Joyce. The first draft had Joe explicitly offer to step aside for her.
There is no universe where Joyce/Dorothy was a sudden impulse that destroyed Willis’s plans for Joe/Joyce: Joyce/Dorothy was always part of that plan.
(And what you’re saying additionally is part of why I’m glad it happened now instead of five years from now, but I don’t think there’s really any version of events where Joe/Joyce fans don’t feel cheated.)
Like, either they never even have one (1) nice dinner together, in which case they were never given a chance.
Or they got to have one dinner together and one date (that was still under the shadow of Dorothy’s feelings having been revealed), in which case they were broken up (maybe) just when things were getting interesting.
Or they got to date for like seven years real time, in which case even more people will be assuming they’re gonna be endgame than already were.
I don’t see a scenario where the reaction from Joece fans is actually “thank goodness Willis didn’t let me get my hopes up too high”. In part because that’s just not how shipping works, the shipping brain often has high hopes even before there’s any textual reason to.
@Li it does feel like they accidentally set up more for JoJo. Like the way it was going didn’t feel temporary, it seemed like there was a lot of narrative material that was going to be explored. Also just gonna add that Willis themself admitted that DoJo ended up being canonized earlier than intended bc that’s just how their pen flowed, so to speak. In setting up the emotional climax at the protest they realized “oh. That’s arch. This is a wedding.” And decided it had to happen there and then. I believe this is commentary from the Patreon so it wouldn’t be easily accessible. But yeah, I won’t call DoJo happening impulsive but it was much earlier than intended. They also talked about all the money they would have made off of a JoJo slipshine, which I can only assume means he was at least planning to do one at some point? So, yeah the way this storyline unfolded wasn’t planned out for ages, and maybe that means more stuff with JoJo was planned initially and got scrapped.
@zee: that’s exactly what I’m referring to — “ended up being canonized earlier than intended” is just not true.
I’ve read the Patreon posts and they’re all public, anyone can go read them.
What Willis actually said is: “here are two other times I almost started Joyce/Dorothy earlier” AND “when I realized the wedding imagery was happening, I went for it, having previously thought it would wait another five years”.
Like, everyone keeps fixating on that second part and ignoring the first part.
There are not two timelines, this isn’t a binary,
We got Dorothy/Joyce in 2025. We might have gotten it in 2023 or 2024. We might not have gotten it until 2030.
OR we might have gotten it at some point between 2025 and 2030, because Willis had been looking for opportunities to pull the trigger on it for two years already.
At this point I suspect there’s some cheerful trolling going on, and the more we remark that we’d like to know what’s happening in the other storylines, the more “This just in: Dorothy and Joyce being cute” is going to intrude.
Maybe we’ll even cut to Steve eating cereals at some point.
I mean, we’ve seen just recently that Willis is willing to change the direction of the comic in response to audience feedback, when that happened in response to the negative reception of the protest storyline. That’s one reason why I’ve felt compelled to defend Joyrothy as vehemently as I have, because I’m worried that the strength of the negative reaction in the comments, uncountered by a similar positive reaction, could cause Willis to make another storyline change to remove Joyrothy.
Yeah that’s not happening. This is clearly his otp, he’s been caping for it from time. Chill, your ship is fine. The protest storyline only got adjusted bc it crossed the line from unpopular to genuinely offensive to irl marginalized groups and trivializing irl protests for an irl genocide. I believe that’s the first and only time Willis has ever adjusted the comic in response to the audience. It was an extreme case and an anomaly. They are so not letting their audience dictate where the comic goes.
But like. Does our enthusiasm for an idea Willis hadn’t thought of NEVER affect their creative process? I doubt that.
I bet even if the Joe/Dorothy/Joyce thing doesn’t happen, we’ll get more screen time for the existing polycule on Joyce’s floor, for example, and that at least part of that will be because a lot of readers got excited over the possibility of #polyrep.
I mean yeah for sure, but it’s not like dojo is actually at risk of getting written out bc it wound up being controversial. Major plot defining things like that aren’t determined by whether people like it or not. That’s the main thing I’m responding to. Cape for them if you wanna but you don’t gotta do it out of fear of losing them
If there are critics who don’t like the tempo at which you’re choosing to play and meanwhile the passers-by keep tossing dollars into your guitar case, the critics can be safely ignored.
I don’t think popularity is a factor when the strips are written a year before people get to give their opinions. Tho I am guessing Willis thought people were gonna be a lot more universally excited for this than they ended up being
Pretty sure Willis has said on Bluesky that they especially enjoy drawing these two as a couple, and I suspect that’s the only “popularity contest” that matters here.
And honestly as far as i am concerned “the plot” (god i hate that word sometimes) it’s just whatever the characters are doing or planning on doing, there over arching narratives in the long run, but the beat of the story is generally just the characters doing, or reacting to, whatever.
Except it wasn’t, not to this extent. Joyce and Dorothy have always been central characters, but DOA has always been an ensemble piece with a great many moving parts, and lately a lot of those moving parts have been ignored or subsumed in order to have More Joyce And Dorothy.
Honestly, the “Joyce and Dorothy were always the main characters” folks are another group I think might be reading a different comic than the rest of us.
I wouldn’t say doa is a romcom, its a dramedy. Romcom implies it was always meant to be about a specific couple. Also again I find myself completely unable to decipher what the fuck acher is trying to say. Its impressive, my autistic ass is usually able to read tone in these comments pretty well but this one specific person absolutely stumps me every day
Dina bought a suit to see if it caused happy-pants-feelings in Becky and no one complained it wasn’t advancing the plot (like the comment that spawned this section of the thread).
Joyce and Dorothy are talking about buying a jacket in part because it causes general happiness for Joyce and in part because it causes happy-pants-feelings in Dorothy, and people are complaining it doesn’t advance the plot.
Acher feels like this is a double-standard and unfair to Joyce/Dorothy since there were no (or few, idk) complaints about a similar situation happening to a different sapphic couple.
Of Note: I don’t necessarily agree with this take, I think it ignores some context, but that’s what they seem to be saying.
Thank you for the translation, appreciate it. I also mad disagree bc Becky and Dina were taking up a very small percentage of the plot. That one plot thread was, what. Three strips long? And then we didn’t see them again for a while. It was almost background. Meanwhile this is being presented as basically the main plot. And hell this is like the first or second page of them I’ve actually found cute, but fuck, yeah I can get finding this tedious and annoying.
Well, Asma agreed to go bowling in return for the girl in a leather jacket being there. So now instead of Alice, she’ll probably get Sal and Joyce, and there might be shenanigans afoot.
It’s kind of weird how knowing about the “go back and add more Asma strips” thing is sort of like a cognitohazard. If I’d never heard it, I probably wouldn’t have noticed — but because I’ve seen discussion about those being added in, it’s interesting how I notice them and notice where they’re placed in the story.
I know there are other examples of creators saying they plan to make changes based on audience feedback (Rich Burlew of Order of the Stick had a big declaration about putting more female characters in after there was a lot of discussion on the forum). webcomics make it possible to be SUCH an immediate and significant change, more than TV, film, or published books.
Like, in Lewinsky’s case, the punchline was misogyny. At the expense of a nineteen-year-old who got taken advantage of by a president, might I add.
If your point is somehow that it’s “”””not that deep””””, you’re just wrong. The joke is never at the expense of the person who received the blowjob, unless they were blindfolded and the blowjob-giver was someone they wouldn’t willingly have had sex with, in which case the punchline becomes sexual assault with a side helping of USUALLY also homophobia or transphobia!
It’s also almost certainly not true (Clinton is far from the only person sometimes called “bubba”) and it just serves to draw focus away from the child rape part of the story and to implicate Clinton.
Yes, that second thing was a big part of my point, thank you for actually saying it because I barely even implied it! (It’s part of what my first paragraph meant.)
There could be an argument made that it’s about poking fun at hypocrisy or somesuch… Personally, I find it hard to care. As thejeff noted, it’s not his speculated consensual sex-having that we should be attacking him for.
But then they wouldn’t be expecting to find a leather jacket. Maybe some niche thrift store. I remember some stores used to open early for special sales too when I was a kid.
Looks like a big box store, which means that this is pleather, which means that it’s cheap garbage and Dorothy is a horrible girlfriend for buying it for Joyce.
Look I think we’re getting too deep into the weeds on this. Dorothy said she wanted to but Joyce a leather jacket, where they’re going and whether it’s real leather probably don’t matter as much as her buying the jacket.
All that being said we know Willis uses real world geography because IU is a real place so with just the quick google you can find that college mall is like a mile and a half away from IU, a very easy jog or walk for two young and fit ladies. The front of which also looks very similar to what Willis drew a few strips ago. The college mall also has a Macy’s and a Target for whatever your argument needs for Dorothy to buy or not buy real leather.
What actually stretches the logic is actually the point made by the originator of this thread which is that Target or Macy’s is likely not open at or around 6 am. Every bit of admittedly not thoroughly researched info tells me they don’t open till 8 am. Depending on how long their jog was we can say 30-45 minutes just to throw something out there store is probably not supposed to be open yet or they in fact will be late for class. Either Willis has changed the store hours for convenience, Dorothy is lying and ducking her classes, or perhaps even the mall has seasonal hours that change, or maybe I’m totally wrong and they went somewhere else. A mall that only exists for new couples to buy leather jackets in the early morning before class. Yep
Anyway don’t trust pedantic arguments about the logistics of jacket purchases.
I don’t want to puzzle out the geography, but we’ve been shown before that Dorothy goes for her morning jog early. I think aorund 5-6 am. Presumably they started walking later than that because they didn’t want to go for a jog and stayed in bed for a bit. It probably took them longer to get ready than it would for Dorothy to do so solo, so call it them leaving at 6-7.
By the time they get to the store the sun is well up, Chloe is in her office and they’re still 15 minutes before open, but Dorothy says there’s still time to get back before her class. Assuming she’s being genuine about that, I assume this store opens at 8-8.30. If not, then 9 is a very likely option as well.
They’re at the mall, but as noted above the mall has many stores, including a Macy’s, so we don’t actually know which one they’re at. The interior doesn’t look un-Macy’s-ish, having been to Macy’s myself (mostly walking through it on my way to other stores).
Like it doesn’t really matter, but they could be at any store. They’re all equally unlikely to be open at 6am.
I don’t think that first part matters that much, tbh. Whether or not a fictional store also closes in Willis’s universe is gonna be a matter of whether the story is better with it still open or not.
And…? Yes I agree? But so does Macy’s. Most stores open at 8 or 9. So it’s probably later in the morning, though also as noted elsewhere, the store hours could just be being bent for plot, or else Dorothy’s class starts later than we thought, or maybe both.
Maybe they got breakfast in the meantime and it wasn’t relevant enough to spend a strip on it.
Maybe there’s been a half day micro-timeskip and it’s actually 4pm.
Maybe it’s all part of a dream sequence!
I jest, but I kind of like how damn intense everyone is about available stores and opening hours. I find it endearing.
If it were 6am in January in Indiana, it would be dark outside. We can see it getting lighter between the strip they started running and the strip when they got to the store. So being around 8am here makes more sense. Then I’m not sure when Dorothy’s class is. The earliest classes where I went were at 8am. A 9am class would still be fairly early comparatively, though I admit in my mind, Dorothy was taking an 8am class.
My siblings and I all desperately wanted my dad’s bomber jacket because it was a literal bomber jacket, but he cut the Gordian knot by selling it to a WW2 memorabilia collector for, I dunno, a thousand bucks maybe? Whatever the genuine article was going for fifteen years ago
I really don’t like the implication that you have to join a subculture before you can start playing with your gender. Especially as someone who grew up without any access to any type of queer subcultures. (One of many towns where the only queer establishments were bars, so I wasn’t allowed in because I was underaged, and also not a drinker so the scene was extra intimidating.)
When someone tells you “hey that’s a lesbian shirt,” and you yourself are a pericishet woman, and you respond with, “it’s just a shirt, it can’t be a lesbian shirt, I’m gonna wear it and prove that straight women can wear this shirt too…”
Then you’re missing the point by a wide mile. It’s not really about appropriation (and if it were, looool, white queer people would have nothing to wear, all of our fashion comes from queer people of color), it’s about safety.
No one individual part of queer fashion signals much of anything, except for like literal flag-colored pronoun pins, but put together, they’re how we spot each other in a crowd. They let us know that that stranger might be a safe person to hold hands in front of.
When percishet people start “reclaiming” plaid or whatever, they deprive us of a safety signal.
Which sucks.
But Joyce isn’t percishet, and neither she nor Dorothy are arguing that butch style isn’t real, and I’m genuinely uncomfortable with arguing that Joyce needs to, like, intern with a local queer scene that might or might not exist and might or might not welcome her, as a socially awkward ND girl who’s still detoxing from fundie programming, before she’s allowed to play with her gender presentation.
But also I think of it less as “reclaiming” and more…affirming? A lit of what is considered lesbian fashion is only seen as pericishet (never heard that before) due to societal and patriarchal ideas of what a woman should wear or look like. My mom has bomber jackets and she looks damn good in them. I can get to an extent wanting a style all your own to identify one another in a crowd but I think an entire style of jacket (especially a pretty popular one) feels like a bridge too far.
Going from “you can’t have this because youre a girl” to “you can’t have this cuz youre not the right kind of girl” rubs me the wrong way.
> When percishet people start “reclaiming” plaid or whatever, they deprive us of a safety signal.
I. Do not think this is a particularly good way of thinking about this. The straights abandoned the rainbow when the gay marriage movement happened, before that it was pretty ubiquitous. People avoiding wearing “queer culture” stuff because they don’t want to be accidentally taken as queer is a far far worse thing than people being like “I’m not queer, it’s flannel, whatever” and then continuing to wear it, which is typically something I see as a sign of not being as worried about whether someone incidentally picks up queerness off of you, an attitude that tends to come from people viewing the trait less negatively. As much as I personally do not care for the rainbow as an aesthetic object, I think it will be a really good sign culturally if the rainbow starts seeing more of its old non-queer use cases again. It will mean the culture is able to be normal enough about us that the possibility of accidentally implying us isn’t scary.
I said this below in my other comment, but it’s not “you can’t have that”. It’s “please don’t deny that that is a queer article of clothing, please don’t wear that without knowing and acknowledging that it’s a queer signal, and especially don’t wear it if you’re gonna be hostile about people assuming you’re queer when you wear it”.
@AK: I mean, when/if it starts being safer, I too will be grateful, but in the meantime the angry homophobic straight people who try to “reclaim the rainbow” (and they do exist, BTW) also sucks. It sucks when someone adopts a “I’m safe” signal only to be violently unsafe as soon as you’ve revealed yourself.
Also let’s be clear: queer people don’t have the societal power in 99% or settings to actually deny pericishet people the rainbow or whatever else.
Percishet people are generally speaking not actually complaining that no one will let them wear rainbows, they’re complaining that wearing rainbows is seen as gay, and they’re trying to make sure everyone knows that “”””normal”””” people “can wear rainbows too”, and those are the parts about their behavior that suck so much.
I just feel like something as ubiquitous as plaid or a bomber jacket feel like a weird hill to die on for “this is a queer article of clothing and you have to call it queer if you are gonna wear it. Especially since there are notable time periods where that kinda thing was just fashionable to wear in a general sense. Leather jackets, especially bomber jackets are cool. And I think while there is 100% homophobic reasons for why someone might not like to be clocked as a lesbian because of how they dress i so realize people express themselves through their clothes. Having to say “these are lesbian clothes” feels like saying “these clothes aren’t for people like me” which might feel wrong if it is a loom and outfit you identify heavily with. Especially since gay culture, black culture and feminism have such an intertwined history some articles of clothing mean more than just one thing.
Again: no one is actually going to stop anybody from wearing any articles of clothing.
I am criticizing a very specific behavior, which is being told that a shirt sends lesbian vibes, and responding “no it doesn’t, it’s just a shirt, I’m gonna wear it to prove that straight women have every right to wear this shirt”.
@Li
I mean yes but at that point I must point out that the entire specific scenario youre referencing isn’t what’s taking place here or really relevant. Im disagreeing with the notion that lesbians own plaid and leather jackets. I don’t think someone’s gonna “stop” anyone from wearing what they want. Cuz everyone is free to wear what they like. Thats my whole thesis.
And yeah I think someone going outta their way to “reclaim” something from queer spaces especially while being anti-queer is shitty. Obviously. But I still think marking certain common fashion trends as inherently gay to be a bit reductive for a multitude of reasons. Its not the same as a Cheongsam or a Dashiki. Bomber Jackets are popular! And theres also lots of different types, cuts, brands etc. Hell, Joyce’s love of leather jackets is her way of emulating SAL, who as far as we can tell is pretty cishet.
@Yotomoe: I mean, that specific scenario is what I’ve been talking about the whole time. My first reply to you was yes-but and trying to explain the specific, real phenomena of homophobic straight people deliberately wearing queercoded fashion and then getting mad when they’re mistaken for queer, and how that results in some defensiveness of “queer fashion” from straight people, that’s all.
i’m sure she could order a custom bomber jacket online tho might be pricier and take longer to get
But who knows a ‘feminine’ person wearing a bomber jacket and not trying to look butch/masc/androgynous would still look pretty good imo
a jacket’s a jacket, i think it’d only look bad if it was something ‘frumpy’ and baggy in an unflattering way versus how ppl wear loose/baggy clothing for fashion/asethetic reasons
STRAIGHT PEOPLE ARE DEFINITELY ALLOWED TO PLAY WITH QUEER FASHION.
The problem with my hypothetical pericishet girl wasn’t that she was donning a lesbian shirt, it was that she was loudly denying that the shirt was a lesbian shirt and “””reclaiming””” it for straight girls. Butch and femme are for everyone!!
It’s just when you deny the roots, when you say that bomber jacket is straight fashion now, and when you wear these items of clothing despite being an actively unsafe person for queer people to talk to, that it becomes a problem.
Like, don’t wear the lesbian shirt if you’re gonna get pissy if you’re mistaken for a lesbian, it’s that simple.
Honestly, the setup of Asma revealing she likes hot women in leather jackets, only for Joyce to show up in a leather jacket is great set up for continuing the joke that it looks like these two here are fishing for a 3rd.
Some green/khaki long sleeved overalls with a cinched waist and button down front would definitely go well with the jacket!
This all feels like a setup for Joe to be hit in the face with an emotional hammer when he sees Joyce next, cause it looks like she will be radiating happiness, confidence and overall hotness.
I realise I have 2 comments on what this scene can set up in quick succession – only goes to show that this is potentially more plot relevant than people might think! We’ll have to wait and see, as always.
Many years ago a friend joined me at BayCon, choosing to dress up a little as a Space Marine/Elli Quinn. She found a reasonable fitting ex-USAF flight suit with a gazillion zips and pockets. Already it looked good but she chose to wear it with the front zip pulled down to near-waist level to reveal a very red lacy bra, and with the thigh-side zips open to expose a matching garter belt and black stockings. To my surprise she got more “wow” comments from other women but I certainly enjoyed watching.
The Asma strips were added after the fact, so they’re put in where they won’t disrupt things too much.
I’m not sure how that’s going to affect the bowling night – unless that’s after where the buffer was at the time of the additions
I’ve dressed up as a character of mine. Granted, it was a City of Heroes character who was basically me getting Tron’ed into City of Heroes (isekai before I knew the term), but that counts.
Despite having been amused at the “what’s the point of lingerie if you’re just gonna take it off” commenter opinion several strips ago, here I am, basically the exact same opinion:
“All this cosplay shit just seems like fucking with extra steps”
Don’t knock it til you try it. Although, it’s somehow less hot when it’s characters you write. You’re more likely to be aware of continuity or characterization errors.
I’d cosplay my own but I’d need buckets of body paint and I’d feel weird and cringey as hell for going as one of my own peeps. Internalized shame is great at ruining everything lol.
Most cosplayers use long gloves for the hands or exposed parts. I guess it depends on how covered your character is, but the goal is to only need to paint the face/neck!
In my area there are Monster Drag workshops, where everyone can give internalised shame at dressing up and garnering attention a boot out the door together. 😀
tbf you can’t wear lingerie (or at least not *just* lingerie) in public to drive your partner wild in the moments when you aren’t fucking them. The leather jacket, by contrast, can be worn to class.
Adding extra steps to fucking is pretty much universally appealing. Kink, foreplay, dressing up, going on dates, making out… all of these could easily be described as “fucking with extra steps” if they end in fucking. I’m not sure when we decided that was a negative?
of note: for the purposes of this comment I am treating foreplay and fucking as separate things, even though they aren’t in my mind, because I know what some people feel about foreplay being “pointless” and lord that’s a weird opinion.
I started my whole comment by acknowledging the lingerie thing, so I feel like my understanding of “having fun with the preamble” ought to be clear.
This one just felt over the top, maybe because it’s Doyce, maybe because they’re already SO baseline horny, it reminded me of Lucy obsessing over “so this…THIS is technically a third date, right? And on the third date…” and I’m like “look just fuck already, we all know that’s what you’re after and that’s okay”
Mm, I think there’s a pretty vast difference between “Despite us being terminally horny and having acted on it, here are some things you could do/wear to make me even MORE horny” (good, actually, in most relationship contexts) and “I am super horny, but have put up arbitrary barriers in between me and satisfying that, which I will then try to logic my way back out of by counting arbitrary things as ‘dates’.” (potentially harmful in a lot of ways).
I mean, I figure the distinction is if the extra steps are things you enjoy, or things you do to avoid feel guilt or shame about sex.
The former is ‘happy fun times’ the latter is ‘Well, if you can’t rid yourself of those hangups, I’d rather you go through those steps rather than feel bad about it’
With Lucy it felt like she didn’t particularly WANT the date, just felt she had to. But Joyce and Dorothy here very much enjoy the outfits.
Honestly, the one thing I dislike about today’s strip: the jacket colour. It irks me on an instinctual level, somehow. Maybe because it feels like it’s almost but not quite something? #28383f — not even a “proper” grey, but not committing to its not-greyness. It just feels like the chromatic incarnation of missed opportunity.
…I wonder if this comment actually made sense to anyone but me.
idk much about but i just associate bomber jackets with that ‘fuzzy’ part on the collar and such/basically what America from Hetalia (cringe, i know, sorry) wore XD
IMHO, if it’s not a “bomber jacket” it’s because of the lapels — IIRC the defining features of a “bomber jacket” are “high elastic waist so you can sit in it without unzipping”, “elastic/tight cuffs so your sleeves don’t go over your hands”, and “high collar that buttons around the neck”. The furry/insulated lapels are not strictly part of the style, and what’s definitely NOT are folded-down suit-style lapels — those look more like the kind of generic clubbing jacket you’re more likely to find at a big-box store that’s already putting out spring stock since it’s Jan/Feb.
I used to be the kind of dorky high school kid who insisted on a nylon bomber jacket with the fur lapels (which I thought looked great with my Civil Air Patrol uniform and Clark Gable rat mustache), so it’s kinda a special interest for my past self. =P
Aw, so cute! Took me a minute to figure out that Joyce wants Dorothy to dress up as President Doris. At first I thought Joyce just had an unforeshadowed pantsuit fetish.
These two dorks had just begun wearing out their welcome three months ago — August 24th was “Joe tries to talk Joyce into poly instead of breaking up”.
Well, to be fair, if I was able to employ security who were up in the 2.7m height range, and not impaired by that, I think I probably would!
But, yeah, poster was kinda where I got to!
Yeah, I read that strip, that’s why I thought we’d see the poli sci class. I guess that was like 7 in the morning and Joyce was afraid to make Dorothy late for class, so did we do a time jump to after class or is this store open at 7am? And they decided they had time to go before Dorothy’s class? It
You’re welcome! It does make me wonder what ‘time’ this is taking place, the comic being during winter and Indiana makes it harder to gauge based on the outdoor lighting. Could be 5 am, could be 8 am!
Someone upthread worked out that the nearest mall to the IU campus is about a mile and a half away, the stores open at 8am on Mondays, and the sun rises around 8am in January.
I wonder what time Dorothy’s class is. It’s an early class, but when I was in college, it wasn’t uncommon for someone’s classes to start at 10:20am or later. In fact, I think I only had one semester where a class started before that. (Tangent: “Wait, how the fuck was it I almost never found time to eat breakfast…oh, right, I was mostly losing my mind, okay.”)
So her class could start at 9am this semester and still be considered early, even if she was in an earlier class first semester.
I feel like Dorothy’s response is super weird. Like…Joyce just wants to wear a bomber Jacket. She likes them. People often include things they think are cool in the art they create.
Oh I wasn’t even gonna argue that, I think it’s a matter of opinion. 🙂 I just wanted to pop in and note that the very first time Joyce borrowed Sal’s leather jacket, it was followed by her posing against a wall with gloves and sunglasses on, trying her best to look Like A Cool Girl, and Julia Gray later wore a very similar expression in her introduction.
I think the line is fuzzy because she IS such a self-insert character, informed by what Joyce thinks is cool and Joyce’s desire to look cool.
(I do think Dorothy’s line of reasoning is less “don’t cosplay as Julia” and more “you don’t have to wear a bomber jacket to be cool”, but yeah, fully matter of opinion.)
No it definitely feels like Dorothy treating her romantic partners like a project is gonna cause problems in the same way the bill will come due for Joyce acting like only she and Dorothy exist
It is desperately spammy, but sometimes that is someone saying their opinion when they have not yet said it. That seems less spammy overall than people who *keep* saying basically the same thing over and over again. You get to know them by the cringement of ‘oh no, its this person, they are going to tell us again’ (even when they don’t). (And I’ve been told off for repeatedly pointing out that a person repeatedly says the same thing, and fair enough too).
Also I’m not telling anyone else what to do, yall are mostly grown adults and can make your own choices.
But if I were someone who actually wanted Willis to do me the favor of adding more strips with Asma or whoever my favorite character was, I think I would focus on leaving positive comments when those characters show up, rather than focusing on leaving negative comments on every other strip?
And that’s not even getting into how often the strips with Asma or whoever in them get comments like “can’t wait to switch gears right back to the boring stuff tomorrow 😭”.
Like, purely in terms of strategy, I know which type of comment would actually make me as a creator want to do more strips with your favorite character, and which set of comments would make me give up on ever pleasing you.
Oh and inb4 “are you saying we’re not allowed to criticize” — no, of course not!
I’m just saying I get whiplash reading comments like: “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SWITCH BACK TO ASMA,” which aren’t criticism so much as asking Willis to do you a favor and focus on characters you like better…? But phrased so unpleasantly.
If someone asks you to loan them $50 while also going out of their way to criticize how you spend money, are you going to want to give them $50?
Like how is this not obviously same thing? I genuinely don’t get it.
I don’t really think they are. To me, complaining (because yeah, that doesn’t read as criticism – not constructive one at the very least) doesn’t necessarily come with an expectation of something to happen about it due to the complaints. Like the comment you used as an example: I don’t read that as a genuine ask to Willis at all. It’s just a sentiment of “I don’t like this”, albeit a sort of obnoxious one. I can’t read anyone’s mind either though so it’s just a guess based on occasions I’ve wanted to complain, both in life generally & webcomics specifically.
Again: I’m not talking about people who are only complaining, I am talking about the whiplash of seeing specific folks very specifically beg Willis to do more of x y or z, but the only motivation they seem to be providing to Willis is “maybe, possibly, someday I might stop being so negative all the time”.
They’re not even being genuinely positive and encouraging on the strips they like, because even their compliments have a veneer of “I know this is the only tiny breath of fresh air I’m going to be allowed before it’s back to suffering your OTP” about them.
Folks who are just complaining with no stated expectations of Willis accommodating their wishes? That doesn’t give me whiplash.
No, that’s also what I’m talking about! Like I don’t think the intent of going, for example “please for the love of god switch back to Asma” has to be an actual plea to Willis even though it reads like one. Idk how to explain it any better without just repeating myself though.
I mean. Those words are literally a request for Willis to do something. If people don’t mean the words they’re saying, or if they’re doing it as a bit, oh well.
Yeah, I don’t read that as an actual request either. I’m more likely to interpret it as a “I would like for this to happen.” I think one factor is that people have experiences of both talking about media on the internet in spaces without creators/other involved (generally) present and talking about media in a place that is literally on the creator’s site (or directly attached to their media). So if I were to say on Tumblr, “You’re not going to make me care about Mako, please just move it along,” I’m not expecting Bryke to see that or for it to have a clear impact on the show. But the patterns we get used to expressing media reactions and such in can get carried into other spaces where it’s much more likely the creator will actually see them.
Well, I certainly agree that a lot of folks post here like they think Willis will never see what they say. I just can’t understand the mentality, to the point where it literally didn’t occur to me as an explanation lol.
You could try leaving positive comments on strips without Joyce and Dorothy in them (generally), and occasionally noting in a non-passive aggressive way that you’re really interested in seeing more of [fave character] soon!
Like there are definitely still ways of asking for what you want that are more likely to get results, even without those specific characters showing up.
Refer back up top where I said I wasn’t telling anyone what to do. Just what would make me, as a creator, way more likely to actually do what you seem to want Willis to do.
We had three days of Asma strips. Every single day, there were multiple comments along the lines of, “Well, I bet tomorrow we’ll switch back to Joyce and Dorothy and never see Asma again!” These tended to be the same people who have to start hater containment threads on all the Joyrothy strips.
They don’t “have to”, Dot was doing that in an effort to be neighborly.
I agree with the rest of your comment and it is literally the part of this that most bewilders me, but let’s not cast aspersions on the intent behind the hater containment thread.
I very rarely ask for more Walky and Amber because I feel like I’ll Jinx it. 😛 I doubt me asking for it would make Willis any more likely to include it.
You don’t have to ask for more Walky/Amber, and indeed asking directly for more of anything wasn’t really my suggestion.
The strategy I’m outlining is leaving positive comments expressing excitement when either of them show up, without also delving into how much you dread the inevitable return to Willis’s current OTP.
IMO, Willis has made it clear that they’re going to (keep) doing, per Carla, “whatever pleases me, generally.” This is their comic, and we’re just along for the ride.
…that’s a strange comic to choose to illustrate your point…? Carla, very much not doing what pleases her, but what was necessary to save Ruth’s life?
Anyway: that is indeed how art works 90% to the time, but people are still making demands, so. If they’re gonna be begging Willis for things anyway, they might as well do it in a way that has a better chance of working. And a much lower chance of actively antagonizing the artist.
Like I don’t know, is it all just a bit? Or do folks genuinely not realize that asking for what they’re asking in the way they’re asking for it would make most human beings less inclined to actually give it to them?
It was the quote that came most clearly to mind, context notwithstanding. I posted it at 3 am local time, just before going to a bed I should have been in at least two hours earlier, and had no desire
… well, to finish this post either, frankly. I’ve already said my piece, and I’m just explaining, not attempting to convince/influence anyone, as I doubt that’s possible on this point.
I mean this explanation makes more sense than most.
idk, it really seems like there’s a whole lost art in this generation to something as basic as leaving comments on fanfics. More and more people will just comment angrily on an author’s, idk, Batman fanfics, to complain that they want the author to finish up their long-abandoned Teen Wolf fanfic.
Did we all just forget how to actually present ourselves as an audience worth trying to please? It’s weird.
Its not like its a lost art. Some people do that and some people don’t. This has been true since the days of people handwriting letters and sending them into magazines.
I mean, ask any artist who regularly posts their stuff on tumblr or BlueSky.
There has DEFINITELY been a sharp decline in reblogs, in comments being left at all. There’s definitely been an uptick in demands.
There is a very noticeable shift away from the idea that artists are people whose labor we appreciate, and towards the idea of “content creators” whose job it is to churn out content for our consumption.
Honestly I do hate how few comments I get but outside of a few weird DMs I haven’t seen an uptick in requests or demands. Mostly just lots of likes and reblogs on the random stuff I put out (I’ll spend weeks on a Pic and itll to nowhere and then doodle something in an afternoon that blows up big.) Blusky in general gives me less engagement because there’s simply less people using it and my account is relatively new in contrast with my Twitter. I think a Lotta people are just avoiding social media right now (I basically don’t use it for anything but posting art) because everything is so depressing.
I’m talking about artists who have been actively posting to social media for like 20 years. They’ve definitely consistently talked about a noticeable drop in engagement on all platforms.
It seems to be partly the porn purges, partly the rise of Internet harassment campaigns that dig through people’s reblogs to find Impure Ships and the like, but the chilling effect is very real, and the new generation of kids genuinely don’t seem to know how to interact with artists beyond liking posts silently and making rude demands.
As an aside its honestly very frustrating to read “any artist” and then have you clarify “oh but only ones who’ve been posting for like 20 years.” Which yknow. Is longer than the lifespan of Twitter, Tumblr, and most modern social media as we know it today. Basically feels like you’re discounting me as an artist and my experience entirely. Very fun.
That said I am a pretty underwhelming artist. Having fans is a recent development. Only within the last decade or so. But I’ve been drawing and posting art and in art spaces since the heyday of deviantart and newgrounds. I’ve observed the comment sections. Left reviews. Read everyone’s posts on walls. Gone through furaffinity comments. The whole 9 yards. So I’m speaking from experience when I say this shit has always existed. There’s less comments in general cuz modern sites don’t really insentivize comments over other things like “likes”. Engagement is trending downwards for sure we can agree on that. But theres still plenty of positive posts and plenty of posts not demanding or requesting things. But also negative posts, crazy demands, needlessly bigoted responses and other unpleasantness has always been part of posting art online.
But i guess I’m not someone worth listening to. Im not any artist.
I didn’t mean to discount you as an artist. I’m just talking about a trend that’s been steadily worsening since around 2015.
I definitely didn’t figure you for sharing your art a lot outside of this space, though. You’d just struck me as more shy than that. I’m glad you are posting elsewhere, because you’re really good.
I’m sorry it hit you that way. It’s super not what I meant, but I can see where my phrasing just did not work out. 🫂 I hope you feel at least a little better now. Again: your art is great.
IMHO it’s a function of saturation. There’s SO much more out there, in terms of the sheer number of artists posting, fic writers, comics, etc, that people have become steadily more used to being able to find their particular niche instead of having to settle for finding the funny in Garfield and the horny in 9 Chickweed Lane or whatever.
But it’s a well-known phenomenon that giving someone too much of exactly what they want can turn them into a demanding brat instead of grateful for getting something better.
I don’t think the culture of how one reacts to “close to what I want but not perfect” art has had nearly enough time to react to “the internet” to develop new ways of dealing with that.
Mostly I blame algorithms (creating the illusion that content just appears out of the ether in your feed without anyone having put time and energy into it) combined with the “new normal” of digging through people’s reblog history to find problematic content.
And I do mean problematic: thoroughly harmless stuff like a weird fetish or a “bad” ship.
I know I personally stopped reblogging much at all in self-defense years ago. The best I can say about myself is at least I don’t hassle artists for not “producing” more, faster.
Yeah, the algorithms are not helping either. I wish I could be confident in the idea that wasn’t affecting the people who actually post here, but well.
“most Americans are punishment-oriented”
Ooo, this is kinda what I have been asking. Some of the comments give that impression. Which I find puzzling. This is a USA thing?
I’d be curious to know how many people read comic without ever contributing to the artists/writers income, and THEN complain that they are not getting what they want.
I still don’t fine these two cute, mostly because of their shitty behavior towards other characters before this. But also partly because I’m a bit weirded out by how controlling Dorothy seems to act towards Joyce. Rather than let Joyce wear the clothes she wants to wear, Dorothy has to stop her and make sure Joyce wears what Dorothy wants her to wear.
This is the most bad faith interpretation of what is going on here. Dorothy offered to buy Joyce a jacket, a jacket based off of a style that Joyce has been embracing by borrowing clothes from Sal. Joyce accepted the offer to buy her a jacket. If you mean Dorothy is ‘controlling’ her by ‘not letting her get a bomber jacket’, Dorothy literally says here that there is a limited selection of jackets in this store and honestly, a bomber jacket IS a style of jacket that might not be easy to find in a random store. You are within your right to not like these characters and this relationship, but you should just them based off of actual events within the comic and not angry fanfiction you create in your head.
Commenters getting angry for characters,
because those same commenters chose to look at story points in such a distorted way, so to make those points in their own heads seem disgusting, while the acts were never even bad?
Joyce likes wearing leather jackets so much she borrows Sal’s on a regular basis.
Dorothy asked permission before even mentioning what she thought on the topic, and then insisted on getting Joyce a thing Joyce likes.
Joyce has shown zero signs that she’s unhappy here, except with the selection offered by the store.
It’s not that Dorothy can’t be controlling sometimes, it’s just that this isn’t an example of it at all. If anything, this is an example of the positive version of whatever weirdness she’s always had about Walky’s clothing. It’s literally just two girlfriends shopping together and being honest about what they think looks good on each other.
I notice you didn’t accuse Joyce of being “controlling” or “not letting [Dorothy] wear the clothes she wants to wear” when she asked Dorothy to slip into (and out of) a black pantsuit and necktie. Despite the fact that Dotty has never been seen in anything like that and we don’t know if she enjoys wearing outfits like that.
note for the tone/context blind people: No, I was not arguing that Joyce is actually being controlling here, just pointing out an inconsistency in the way these two women are viewed. I.e. Joyce getting treated as if she is a pushover or not capable of consenting properly, and Dorothy getting treated as if her every opinion is a law she’s laying down and like she has an imbalanced power dynamic with everyone around her.
It took me a few rereads to get this but despite what dorothy is saying following her telling Joyce they probably don’t have bomber jackets I think the rest of what she’s saying has nothing to do with bomber jackets. I definitely read it as her telling joyce not to buy one my first couple of read throughs.
On many levels, I think “cosplaying as your own OC” – especially if it is a self insert OC – is just trying to be the best version of yourself that you can be.
Loading ...
joyce fantasizing about her wife wearing presidential clothing is like, the most ‘fork found in kitchen’ revelation of all time.
it does cast her reaction to dina in a suit in a new light, though!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/itsadate/
eh ngl this actually *kinda* cute
no kvetching from me today XD
their flirtiness tends to be fine and inoffensive in a vacuum. It’s mostly when another person shows up that Joyce tends to put her foot in her mouth hard and make people annoyed with the pairing
you have described the whole of Joyce in the comic, she is fine most of the time, but once people (plural) come into the mix she tends to eat her own foot. I actually used to not be able to stand Joyce, her rigid fundy attitude just rubbed me raw for some obvious reasons, but she has grown in some good ways and I have had time to like even her worst idiosyncrasies. ~<3
as an autistic person who is very atheistic, I used to not be able to stand Joyce, but “charming with just one person, socially incompetent the moment a third shows up” is extremely relatable to me.
For all my grumbling, Willis is very good at cute couple stuff.
if only we’d get more Sal X Danny then, they hella cute couple ^-^
I’m still shocked at how well that was executed, I was not expecting to end up liking those two as much as I did.
shouldn’t the couple we want to see more of right now… be Becky/Dina? ~<3
unfortunately we will not be seeing them as a couple anymore
Willis himself also confirmed The End of Lizbiangelion
😖😭🦖
I just said I liked the hashtag!!!!!
That some emotional rollercoaster here, in the space of two comments.
1) they’re doomed! 🙁
2) no they’re good! 🙂
3) no in fact we don’t know -_-
Same. This isn’t a weird case where they act like they were always longing to marry each other since they first met or that their romantic relationship is way longer than a day and a half old; this is just a step or two up from their blurred-lines friendship from a day and a half ago, and it fits perfectly.
Concur wholeheartedly.
Yeah this one’s cute, can’t even lie
SUITS SUITS SUITS
Meanwhile, I’m sitting here staring at Joyce’s jacket and going “Isn’t that a bomber jacket? That looks like a bomber jacket silhouette to me. Is she upset that it doesn’t have the classic fur lining?”
Like, I have a jacket that looks like that, and I call it my bomber jacket.
To me, all black leather jackets are the same bomberjackets, and all fermented tannin-heavy grape juices are red wines. I know not the fine differences.
I really wish that all fermented beverages didn’t share the same exact taste of rot. I really want to enjoy beers, wines, coolers, and other fermented beverages. Nope, all mine have to be distilled before they lose whatever the hell that taste is that just makes them foul to me.
I’m with you on that one.
Can’t drink alcohol that isn’t properly finished.
And I’m not sure I’ve run into anyone with that same reaction before.
It’s the lapels that make it not a bomber jacket — I said elsewhere in the thread, but a proper “bomber jacket” has a short waist so you can sit, elastic/ribbed wrist cuffs so it doesn’t get in the way of what you’re doing with your hands, and it fastens up to the neck by default — if it has lapels, they are the type intended to sit like shirt lapels, rather than the more suit-like/clubwear lapels that it appears to have esp in panel 3.
The 48 hour curse continues.
what curse?
We only get one or two strips about other storylines before we inevitably circle back to these two being cute and not advancing the plot in any particular way.
yeah but apparently lotta people (including Patreon subbers) like it XD
what ya gonna do, in the end a popularity contest is three wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Personally I would rather story structure and pacing not be dictated by the equivalent of passers-by throwing coins into a busker’s guitar case
I will say of all the webcomics on the web this feels like one of the ones that is least impacted by audience feedback because of how long the buffer is, so I don’t think it is.
Agreed, I’ve read other webcomics recently where the author will post the first development of a new story arc and then 1-2 days later the story takes a HARD pivot in a different direction, suspiciously in line with audience reactions (both opinions I agree AND disagree with).
Kinda like how the cowards at Disney backpedaled so hard with Rise of Skywalker they tripped, fell, and broke the entire franchise’s flimsy pandering spine.
DoA having such a long buffer likely makes it easier to ride out those bumps of fan reaction.
I hated the Last Jedi so much that I don’t think Rise of Skywalker could have easily been worse than it in my opinion. Rise of Skywalker was campy as it could be, but I grew up with the prequel triology (Phantom Menace, etc), so campy wasn’t outside of my expectations. (Campy might not be the term I am looking for either, but it is all my brain can come up with). Palpatine in general tends to be the king of camp.
I always thought that the series did better when it didn’t take itself too seriously and didn’t try to overexplain things. For one thing, there is only so much background information you can put into a feature film, and most of the audience gets bored with just boring talking (why cutscenes, backstory scenes, camp, or humor is used to lighten it up). TV shows and books have more leeway, with books having the most leeway. People don’t watch a Star Wars movie to get the alien equivalent of C-SPAN unless it is going to turn into a brawl or a rap battle worthy of MTV ir a musical.
That being said, you do need to have consistency in your universe rules unless you are aiming for something along the lines of Monty Python. You don’t have to explain the rules to the audience explicitly, but they notice if something changes. Like a wound that could be healed in the first movie suddenly can’t in the second. The only way you can get away with the rules changing like that is if the work is presented in a first person perspective. In that case, what they know could be wrong or change based on new information, and the audience is pulled along with them. This doesn’t work as well from a third person omniscient perspective.
On a side tangent, I did read a nice story that did a neat trick with the color of the stream. It was set in more of a fantasy realm, but the stream was originally said to be a normal color. Then, as the character goes to take a drink in the next paragraph, they talk about the red hue. The story gives you a beat to see if you notice before the author had the character catch it a sentence or two later (I actually went back right after reading the sentence mentioning it to see if it had been called red before, and it was not). Forget the book’s name unfortunately, but I thought that it was a fun bit of writing.
@Kimi
Pedantic note: Monty Python stuff does tend to have consistency; the jokes are often based on exploring an absurd premise or other bit of silliness in a way that wouldn’t work if stuff could just randomly change for no reason.
Even exceptions can rely on this continuity; in the ending to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the protagonists — who had been dwindling in number over the course of the movie — suddenly have an army backing them up. Although that army had actually shown up previously in a seemingly isolated joke (“get on with it”), so they’re not entirely out of nowhere.
Not sure there was any point in me making this comment, but I’m just sitting here waiting for someone, so typing this helped pass the time.
Monty Python might have some consistency with plot/storyline/jokes (especially in the movies where there should be some general overarching plot), but I am not sure how consistent it was with world rules, if that makes more sense? A consistent storyline and consistent world rules are two different things. Monty Python tends to rely on absurdist humor and unpredictable events. For example, someone can die from a sword strike while the black knight can still hop around without his limbs. Trying to explain why one survived and the other didn’t would just ruin the joke. It is just something unexpected that subverted our expectations of what should happen. If gravity decided to randomly flip upside down in one scene, it wouldn’t be too out of place in their work. If gravity suddenly flipped in a Law and Order show, people would expect it to be a major plot point with an explanation coming as it wouldn’t fit in otherwise. Also, just because they break some “world rules” doesn’t mean that they have to break all of them.
Note: “A rule is any statement that describes how a world works. A rule dictates what regularly happens, it is something that can be counted on. We take so many rules in our own world for granted, like gravity, weather, and the fact that all humans must eat, drink water, and sleep.”
You can also have something subvert a world rule in a story as long as you provide a good reason for the subversion and keep it consistent. Unfortunately, the most common way world rules get broken is in a series, where a newer story (ie book, movie, episode) doesn’t follow the same world rule as previously shown in a series. This could due to the author just forgetting that they had established that as a rule (especially if it was a long time ago). Another reason could be that the author felt constrained by the previous rule, and decided to ignore it or get ride of it without giving a good reason why. My example of this would be Luke’s in the Last Jedi. We had an established Luke character in the original series, and there was no build up or well done explanation of how it got to where it is in that movie. It hints at stuff, but never bothers to explain the change in depth, which leaves a sense of whiplash for people who knew his original character and how his first story line ended. I would go into more detail on that, but I don’t want to spoil anyone. My problem isn’t that they did the change as much as that they failed to meaningfully address how it got there. A big change like that is like the night sky suddenly turning bright neon orange. People are going to fixate on that and not the story line that you want them to focus on. On the other hand, if it was Monty Python, it would probably be a goose’s foot or something like that and would just fit right in.
Normally yes, but the abrupt shift in pacing and characterization for these two combined with statements from Willis about discarding the original plans and going against the buffer…
It might not be in response to the recent Patreon numbers, but it does still feel like this story bending way too far to force a result.
re: going against the buffer,
that was for the intention of Muslim characters having more prominent roles in the narrative, and frankly that’s a welcome change if you ask me, (at least given what’s come of it so far re: Asm)
To add on, regarding original plans, sometimes things just change in the writing process and its clear that’s what Joyce and Dorothy are for Willis. It’s a sillier example, but Darth Vader wasn’t always intended to be Luke’s father and Leia wasn’t originally Luke’s sister. As the movies were developed and came out, original plans were discarded and those ideas were put into place. I view Dorothy and Joyce as being similar, Willis went into writing and drafting up their strips, went “hm, but what if”, went through with it, and decided “okay let’s do it, this works better”. Sometimes ideas are first drafts and if your second draft includes certain things changing, I think it can work out so long as anything that doesn’t make sense or sticks out as being a bad fit are smoothed over from the transition to first draft to second.
Like those parts are literally the parts with Asma in them. Not this.
If Willis is “pandering” to any part of their audience, it’s the complainers! Plot twist.
This is what disappoints me the most. Joece the complex multi-year plot thread got rug-pulled, and all the tension that could have built up to Jorothy in that time was fast-forwarded to get to “the good part”.
Simply not true! Willis almost pulled the plug on Joece in 2023 and again in 2024. The version we got is actually a version with much more buildup than originally planned, not less.
People keep hearing “it could have been five years from now”, but no one seems to have paid attention to Willis also saying that they almost started this storyline two years earlier.
True though I think thats an issue in and of itself. It was the exact wrong amount of time for a Lotta people. If Joe and joyce had been cut off at the start it would’ve hurt but people would’ve felt less invested. Same for if they had run their course with more buildup on the dorothy/joyce end in the background. Rather it feels like its been stopped abruptly right as its reaching its zenith and to cement it further the narrative or characters don’t really spare any thoughts to the buildup that’s just deflated. It just hits a brick wall suddenly and a Lotta people got whiplash.
I’m not arguing that the pacing was above reproach, just trying again to dispel this false narrative that Willis planned to do a lot more with Joece and then abandoned it impulsively, or worse, for clicks.
Willis was planning on that conversation between Joe and Dorothy before Joe had even asked Joyce out, and as disappointing as that is for a lot of Joe/Joyce fans, it’s also the truth.
Now, I’m still hoping for (messy, possibly disastrous) polyamory, but. When discussing what was planned, we know Dorothy’s feelings for Joyce were always going to loom over Joe/Joyce. The first draft had Joe explicitly offer to step aside for her.
There is no universe where Joyce/Dorothy was a sudden impulse that destroyed Willis’s plans for Joe/Joyce: Joyce/Dorothy was always part of that plan.
(And what you’re saying additionally is part of why I’m glad it happened now instead of five years from now, but I don’t think there’s really any version of events where Joe/Joyce fans don’t feel cheated.)
Like, either they never even have one (1) nice dinner together, in which case they were never given a chance.
Or they got to have one dinner together and one date (that was still under the shadow of Dorothy’s feelings having been revealed), in which case they were broken up (maybe) just when things were getting interesting.
Or they got to date for like seven years real time, in which case even more people will be assuming they’re gonna be endgame than already were.
I don’t see a scenario where the reaction from Joece fans is actually “thank goodness Willis didn’t let me get my hopes up too high”. In part because that’s just not how shipping works, the shipping brain often has high hopes even before there’s any textual reason to.
(Real time being OUR years, in-universe seven years of dating with the current pace of stories comes out to about a month.)
@Li it does feel like they accidentally set up more for JoJo. Like the way it was going didn’t feel temporary, it seemed like there was a lot of narrative material that was going to be explored. Also just gonna add that Willis themself admitted that DoJo ended up being canonized earlier than intended bc that’s just how their pen flowed, so to speak. In setting up the emotional climax at the protest they realized “oh. That’s arch. This is a wedding.” And decided it had to happen there and then. I believe this is commentary from the Patreon so it wouldn’t be easily accessible. But yeah, I won’t call DoJo happening impulsive but it was much earlier than intended. They also talked about all the money they would have made off of a JoJo slipshine, which I can only assume means he was at least planning to do one at some point? So, yeah the way this storyline unfolded wasn’t planned out for ages, and maybe that means more stuff with JoJo was planned initially and got scrapped.
@zee: that’s exactly what I’m referring to — “ended up being canonized earlier than intended” is just not true.
I’ve read the Patreon posts and they’re all public, anyone can go read them.
What Willis actually said is: “here are two other times I almost started Joyce/Dorothy earlier” AND “when I realized the wedding imagery was happening, I went for it, having previously thought it would wait another five years”.
Like, everyone keeps fixating on that second part and ignoring the first part.
There are not two timelines, this isn’t a binary,
We got Dorothy/Joyce in 2025. We might have gotten it in 2023 or 2024. We might not have gotten it until 2030.
OR we might have gotten it at some point between 2025 and 2030, because Willis had been looking for opportunities to pull the trigger on it for two years already.
At this point I suspect there’s some cheerful trolling going on, and the more we remark that we’d like to know what’s happening in the other storylines, the more “This just in: Dorothy and Joyce being cute” is going to intrude.
Maybe we’ll even cut to Steve eating cereals at some point.
@Thag Simmons
shhhhh, don’t say facts in these threads. 😛
I mean, we’ve seen just recently that Willis is willing to change the direction of the comic in response to audience feedback, when that happened in response to the negative reception of the protest storyline. That’s one reason why I’ve felt compelled to defend Joyrothy as vehemently as I have, because I’m worried that the strength of the negative reaction in the comments, uncountered by a similar positive reaction, could cause Willis to make another storyline change to remove Joyrothy.
The difference there being that Willis agreed that Asma and their other Muslim characters were criminally underutilized.
I don’t think they’re ever going to agree that Joyce/Dorothy sucks and is boring.
Yeah that’s not happening. This is clearly his otp, he’s been caping for it from time. Chill, your ship is fine. The protest storyline only got adjusted bc it crossed the line from unpopular to genuinely offensive to irl marginalized groups and trivializing irl protests for an irl genocide. I believe that’s the first and only time Willis has ever adjusted the comic in response to the audience. It was an extreme case and an anomaly. They are so not letting their audience dictate where the comic goes.
@zee: letting us dictate it, no, never.
But like. Does our enthusiasm for an idea Willis hadn’t thought of NEVER affect their creative process? I doubt that.
I bet even if the Joe/Dorothy/Joyce thing doesn’t happen, we’ll get more screen time for the existing polycule on Joyce’s floor, for example, and that at least part of that will be because a lot of readers got excited over the possibility of #polyrep.
I mean yeah for sure, but it’s not like dojo is actually at risk of getting written out bc it wound up being controversial. Major plot defining things like that aren’t determined by whether people like it or not. That’s the main thing I’m responding to. Cape for them if you wanna but you don’t gotta do it out of fear of losing them
I mean, they not. They are dictated by what the author wants to happen.
If there are critics who don’t like the tempo at which you’re choosing to play and meanwhile the passers-by keep tossing dollars into your guitar case, the critics can be safely ignored.
In other news, it seems that Asma always gets no respect. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/shutit/
I mean, it’s also because Willis like it, which is ultimately what decides what goes on the strip or not.
I don’t think popularity is a factor when the strips are written a year before people get to give their opinions. Tho I am guessing Willis thought people were gonna be a lot more universally excited for this than they ended up being
Pretty sure Willis has said on Bluesky that they especially enjoy drawing these two as a couple, and I suspect that’s the only “popularity contest” that matters here.
It’s almost like the plot was always about Joyce and Dorothy
And honestly as far as i am concerned “the plot” (god i hate that word sometimes) it’s just whatever the characters are doing or planning on doing, there over arching narratives in the long run, but the beat of the story is generally just the characters doing, or reacting to, whatever.
Except it wasn’t, not to this extent. Joyce and Dorothy have always been central characters, but DOA has always been an ensemble piece with a great many moving parts, and lately a lot of those moving parts have been ignored or subsumed in order to have More Joyce And Dorothy.
Honestly, the “Joyce and Dorothy were always the main characters” folks are another group I think might be reading a different comic than the rest of us.
“DoA” means “Dor-oyce-ing of Age”
Doycing of Age
I think it’s a little early to determine if “Joyce buying a jacket” is going to be plot relevant or not.
Also a little odd to complain that the romantic stuff isn’t plot relevant in a romantic comedy.
It’s funny that Dina bying a suit was a plot point, but Dorothy getting Joyce a jacket that makes look like her OC, is not?….
hmmmmmmmmmm?????????
I wouldn’t say doa is a romcom, its a dramedy. Romcom implies it was always meant to be about a specific couple. Also again I find myself completely unable to decipher what the fuck acher is trying to say. Its impressive, my autistic ass is usually able to read tone in these comments pretty well but this one specific person absolutely stumps me every day
Acher is saying:
Dina bought a suit to see if it caused happy-pants-feelings in Becky and no one complained it wasn’t advancing the plot (like the comment that spawned this section of the thread).
Joyce and Dorothy are talking about buying a jacket in part because it causes general happiness for Joyce and in part because it causes happy-pants-feelings in Dorothy, and people are complaining it doesn’t advance the plot.
Acher feels like this is a double-standard and unfair to Joyce/Dorothy since there were no (or few, idk) complaints about a similar situation happening to a different sapphic couple.
Of Note: I don’t necessarily agree with this take, I think it ignores some context, but that’s what they seem to be saying.
Thank you for the translation, appreciate it. I also mad disagree bc Becky and Dina were taking up a very small percentage of the plot. That one plot thread was, what. Three strips long? And then we didn’t see them again for a while. It was almost background. Meanwhile this is being presented as basically the main plot. And hell this is like the first or second page of them I’ve actually found cute, but fuck, yeah I can get finding this tedious and annoying.
Well, Asma agreed to go bowling in return for the girl in a leather jacket being there. So now instead of Alice, she’ll probably get Sal and Joyce, and there might be shenanigans afoot.
It’s kind of weird how knowing about the “go back and add more Asma strips” thing is sort of like a cognitohazard. If I’d never heard it, I probably wouldn’t have noticed — but because I’ve seen discussion about those being added in, it’s interesting how I notice them and notice where they’re placed in the story.
I know there are other examples of creators saying they plan to make changes based on audience feedback (Rich Burlew of Order of the Stick had a big declaration about putting more female characters in after there was a lot of discussion on the forum). webcomics make it possible to be SUCH an immediate and significant change, more than TV, film, or published books.
Weirdly perfect timing, given how much talk of Presidential sex we’ve been having lately…
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
And a horse is a horse, of course of course.
“Presidential sex”
is not what’s in the Epstein files.
That’s presidential felony sexual assault at a minimum!
I think they meant Trump x Clinton
Ah.
Yeah, I don’t care even a tiny bit about that and I think it’s embarrassing for us as a nation that it’s getting any attention at all.
“No no you don’t understand, I’m not laughing at Trump and Clinton because I’m homophobic, I’m laughing because I assume he’s homophobic”
Sure, right, it’s “good” homophobia aimed at people you don’t like.
Or maybe all homophobia is bad actually and it’s childish and gross to be mocking Trump for this specifically.
Did you know there are people who find oral disgusting no matter who does it?
???? Which is still shitty?
It’s incredibly shitty, what happened to Monica Lewinsky.
Doesn’t mean the punchline isn’t currently homophobia, friend.
Like, in Lewinsky’s case, the punchline was misogyny. At the expense of a nineteen-year-old who got taken advantage of by a president, might I add.
If your point is somehow that it’s “”””not that deep””””, you’re just wrong. The joke is never at the expense of the person who received the blowjob, unless they were blindfolded and the blowjob-giver was someone they wouldn’t willingly have had sex with, in which case the punchline becomes sexual assault with a side helping of USUALLY also homophobia or transphobia!
It’s also almost certainly not true (Clinton is far from the only person sometimes called “bubba”) and it just serves to draw focus away from the child rape part of the story and to implicate Clinton.
But many people are saying it!
But the gopsters-for-trump camp desperately want the distraction to work.
Yes, that second thing was a big part of my point, thank you for actually saying it because I barely even implied it! (It’s part of what my first paragraph meant.)
I was too busy being disgusted myself.
There could be an argument made that it’s about poking fun at hypocrisy or somesuch… Personally, I find it hard to care. As thejeff noted, it’s not his speculated consensual sex-having that we should be attacking him for.
Yeah, it’s “poking fun at the hypocrisy” in a way that nevertheless reinforces homophobia! It sucks!!
“Yes, in fact, I do want to look exactly like my idealized fantasy version of myself.”
(“You don’t have to keep pretending–”
“No, you don’t get it, that’s who I want to be.”)
By all means, cosplay as your own self-insert character.
“No you don’t, that’s not on my project timeline.”
What kind of clothing store is open at 6 in the fucking morning??? They haven’t even eaten breakfast…
Walmart or Target?
But then they wouldn’t be expecting to find a leather jacket. Maybe some niche thrift store. I remember some stores used to open early for special sales too when I was a kid.
Looks like a big box store, which means that this is pleather, which means that it’s cheap garbage and Dorothy is a horrible girlfriend for buying it for Joyce.
They’re students, unless they’re Carla (or Sal apparently) I doubt they can afford ‘good’ leather.
https://www.thegardensmall.com/retailer/macys/
I mean the outside of the store that we saw a couple strips back looked like a Macy’s to me.
Far from rich people clothing, but certainly a step up from Target, and they do sell real leather jackets ($225 for the one I just found by googling).
I guess we’ll know later if it matters to the plot.
Look I think we’re getting too deep into the weeds on this. Dorothy said she wanted to but Joyce a leather jacket, where they’re going and whether it’s real leather probably don’t matter as much as her buying the jacket.
All that being said we know Willis uses real world geography because IU is a real place so with just the quick google you can find that college mall is like a mile and a half away from IU, a very easy jog or walk for two young and fit ladies. The front of which also looks very similar to what Willis drew a few strips ago. The college mall also has a Macy’s and a Target for whatever your argument needs for Dorothy to buy or not buy real leather.
What actually stretches the logic is actually the point made by the originator of this thread which is that Target or Macy’s is likely not open at or around 6 am. Every bit of admittedly not thoroughly researched info tells me they don’t open till 8 am. Depending on how long their jog was we can say 30-45 minutes just to throw something out there store is probably not supposed to be open yet or they in fact will be late for class. Either Willis has changed the store hours for convenience, Dorothy is lying and ducking her classes, or perhaps even the mall has seasonal hours that change, or maybe I’m totally wrong and they went somewhere else. A mall that only exists for new couples to buy leather jackets in the early morning before class. Yep
Anyway don’t trust pedantic arguments about the logistics of jacket purchases.
I agree entirely with your first paragraph, which is why I said we’ll probably find out later if it matters to the plot.
Considering Chloe was awake and in her office, they might just have spent a few hours walking to the store. Or waiting for it to open.
Jogging in the morning takes me an hour or so.
I don’t want to puzzle out the geography, but we’ve been shown before that Dorothy goes for her morning jog early. I think aorund 5-6 am. Presumably they started walking later than that because they didn’t want to go for a jog and stayed in bed for a bit. It probably took them longer to get ready than it would for Dorothy to do so solo, so call it them leaving at 6-7.
By the time they get to the store the sun is well up, Chloe is in her office and they’re still 15 minutes before open, but Dorothy says there’s still time to get back before her class. Assuming she’s being genuine about that, I assume this store opens at 8-8.30. If not, then 9 is a very likely option as well.
They’re at the Target in College Mall, which is only about a mile from campus. (That’s 160,934 centimetrics.) That store opens at 8 AM.
Sunrise in January in Indiana is around 8 AM.
They’re at the mall, but as noted above the mall has many stores, including a Macy’s, so we don’t actually know which one they’re at. The interior doesn’t look un-Macy’s-ish, having been to Macy’s myself (mostly walking through it on my way to other stores).
Like it doesn’t really matter, but they could be at any store. They’re all equally unlikely to be open at 6am.
The Macy’s at College Mall closed almost 5 years ago.
It’s also not 6 AM. Sunrise at this time of year, in their part of the country, is around 8 AM.
I don’t think that first part matters that much, tbh. Whether or not a fictional store also closes in Willis’s universe is gonna be a matter of whether the story is better with it still open or not.
And…? Yes I agree? But so does Macy’s. Most stores open at 8 or 9. So it’s probably later in the morning, though also as noted elsewhere, the store hours could just be being bent for plot, or else Dorothy’s class starts later than we thought, or maybe both.
Maybe they got breakfast in the meantime and it wasn’t relevant enough to spend a strip on it.
Maybe there’s been a half day micro-timeskip and it’s actually 4pm.
Maybe it’s all part of a dream sequence!
I jest, but I kind of like how damn intense everyone is about available stores and opening hours. I find it endearing.
If it were 6am in January in Indiana, it would be dark outside. We can see it getting lighter between the strip they started running and the strip when they got to the store. So being around 8am here makes more sense. Then I’m not sure when Dorothy’s class is. The earliest classes where I went were at 8am. A 9am class would still be fairly early comparatively, though I admit in my mind, Dorothy was taking an 8am class.
Sometimes you just have to employ suspension of belief in order to have the story move along.
It’s like lightsabers not being real… (breaks my heart IRL).
let’s see if you can stay dressed long enough
Oh, brother.
Joyce, you’re not butch enough to pull off a bomber jacket but I will loan you mine if we can just get things moving
Bomber jackets are for everyone! Bomber Jacket equality.
That’s a nice sentiment but please trust the bulldyke on this one
you probably aren’t being that serious but this is kinda silly.
people can play with their presentation lol?
saying this as a fellow transfem who plays with my presentation and
everything else like butches do
presentation doesn’t gotta be prescriptive?
Yyyyyeah, sorry Dot, but your joke really rubbed me the wrong way, too.
My siblings and I all desperately wanted my dad’s bomber jacket because it was a literal bomber jacket, but he cut the Gordian knot by selling it to a WW2 memorabilia collector for, I dunno, a thousand bucks maybe? Whatever the genuine article was going for fifteen years ago
next you’ll be tellin her to get rid of her plaid shirts lol
You say that like being butch is like. an inherent trait and not something you work towards by doing things like buying bomber jackets
Well no it’s something you work toward by being part of a particular sapphic subculture. The bomber jackets are actually incidental.
I…
Again you’re probably joking but.
I really don’t like the implication that you have to join a subculture before you can start playing with your gender. Especially as someone who grew up without any access to any type of queer subcultures. (One of many towns where the only queer establishments were bars, so I wasn’t allowed in because I was underaged, and also not a drinker so the scene was extra intimidating.)
Or that any force on earth can stop someone from dressing however the hell they want tbh. Seems kinda reductive
So yes, but.
When someone tells you “hey that’s a lesbian shirt,” and you yourself are a pericishet woman, and you respond with, “it’s just a shirt, it can’t be a lesbian shirt, I’m gonna wear it and prove that straight women can wear this shirt too…”
Then you’re missing the point by a wide mile. It’s not really about appropriation (and if it were, looool, white queer people would have nothing to wear, all of our fashion comes from queer people of color), it’s about safety.
No one individual part of queer fashion signals much of anything, except for like literal flag-colored pronoun pins, but put together, they’re how we spot each other in a crowd. They let us know that that stranger might be a safe person to hold hands in front of.
When percishet people start “reclaiming” plaid or whatever, they deprive us of a safety signal.
Which sucks.
But Joyce isn’t percishet, and neither she nor Dorothy are arguing that butch style isn’t real, and I’m genuinely uncomfortable with arguing that Joyce needs to, like, intern with a local queer scene that might or might not exist and might or might not welcome her, as a socially awkward ND girl who’s still detoxing from fundie programming, before she’s allowed to play with her gender presentation.
That makes sense from a safety perspective.
But also I think of it less as “reclaiming” and more…affirming? A lit of what is considered lesbian fashion is only seen as pericishet (never heard that before) due to societal and patriarchal ideas of what a woman should wear or look like. My mom has bomber jackets and she looks damn good in them. I can get to an extent wanting a style all your own to identify one another in a crowd but I think an entire style of jacket (especially a pretty popular one) feels like a bridge too far.
Going from “you can’t have this because youre a girl” to “you can’t have this cuz youre not the right kind of girl” rubs me the wrong way.
> When percishet people start “reclaiming” plaid or whatever, they deprive us of a safety signal.
I. Do not think this is a particularly good way of thinking about this. The straights abandoned the rainbow when the gay marriage movement happened, before that it was pretty ubiquitous. People avoiding wearing “queer culture” stuff because they don’t want to be accidentally taken as queer is a far far worse thing than people being like “I’m not queer, it’s flannel, whatever” and then continuing to wear it, which is typically something I see as a sign of not being as worried about whether someone incidentally picks up queerness off of you, an attitude that tends to come from people viewing the trait less negatively. As much as I personally do not care for the rainbow as an aesthetic object, I think it will be a really good sign culturally if the rainbow starts seeing more of its old non-queer use cases again. It will mean the culture is able to be normal enough about us that the possibility of accidentally implying us isn’t scary.
I agree with everything else you’re saying.
I said this below in my other comment, but it’s not “you can’t have that”. It’s “please don’t deny that that is a queer article of clothing, please don’t wear that without knowing and acknowledging that it’s a queer signal, and especially don’t wear it if you’re gonna be hostile about people assuming you’re queer when you wear it”.
Shout out to flagging.
Anti-shoutout to a woman getting an undercut and then loudly complaining about how she’s “not a *slur*” and such on the bus.
@AK: I mean, when/if it starts being safer, I too will be grateful, but in the meantime the angry homophobic straight people who try to “reclaim the rainbow” (and they do exist, BTW) also sucks. It sucks when someone adopts a “I’m safe” signal only to be violently unsafe as soon as you’ve revealed yourself.
Also let’s be clear: queer people don’t have the societal power in 99% or settings to actually deny pericishet people the rainbow or whatever else.
Percishet people are generally speaking not actually complaining that no one will let them wear rainbows, they’re complaining that wearing rainbows is seen as gay, and they’re trying to make sure everyone knows that “”””normal”””” people “can wear rainbows too”, and those are the parts about their behavior that suck so much.
I just feel like something as ubiquitous as plaid or a bomber jacket feel like a weird hill to die on for “this is a queer article of clothing and you have to call it queer if you are gonna wear it. Especially since there are notable time periods where that kinda thing was just fashionable to wear in a general sense. Leather jackets, especially bomber jackets are cool. And I think while there is 100% homophobic reasons for why someone might not like to be clocked as a lesbian because of how they dress i so realize people express themselves through their clothes. Having to say “these are lesbian clothes” feels like saying “these clothes aren’t for people like me” which might feel wrong if it is a loom and outfit you identify heavily with. Especially since gay culture, black culture and feminism have such an intertwined history some articles of clothing mean more than just one thing.
I’m not dying on any kind of hill.
Again: no one is actually going to stop anybody from wearing any articles of clothing.
I am criticizing a very specific behavior, which is being told that a shirt sends lesbian vibes, and responding “no it doesn’t, it’s just a shirt, I’m gonna wear it to prove that straight women have every right to wear this shirt”.
@Yumi: EXACTLY THIS.
This is the problem.
It’s not anything else, it’s not imaginary people picketing outside salons to prevent straight women from getting undercuts.
Oh and to answer a sorta-question:
Percishet is short for perisex cisgender heterosexual-and-heteroromantic.
A more specific and inclusive way of saying non-queer than “straight”.
@Li
I mean yes but at that point I must point out that the entire specific scenario youre referencing isn’t what’s taking place here or really relevant. Im disagreeing with the notion that lesbians own plaid and leather jackets. I don’t think someone’s gonna “stop” anyone from wearing what they want. Cuz everyone is free to wear what they like. Thats my whole thesis.
And yeah I think someone going outta their way to “reclaim” something from queer spaces especially while being anti-queer is shitty. Obviously. But I still think marking certain common fashion trends as inherently gay to be a bit reductive for a multitude of reasons. Its not the same as a Cheongsam or a Dashiki. Bomber Jackets are popular! And theres also lots of different types, cuts, brands etc. Hell, Joyce’s love of leather jackets is her way of emulating SAL, who as far as we can tell is pretty cishet.
@Yotomoe: I mean, that specific scenario is what I’ve been talking about the whole time. My first reply to you was yes-but and trying to explain the specific, real phenomena of homophobic straight people deliberately wearing queercoded fashion and then getting mad when they’re mistaken for queer, and how that results in some defensiveness of “queer fashion” from straight people, that’s all.
i’m sure she could order a custom bomber jacket online tho might be pricier and take longer to get
But who knows a ‘feminine’ person wearing a bomber jacket and not trying to look butch/masc/androgynous would still look pretty good imo
a jacket’s a jacket, i think it’d only look bad if it was something ‘frumpy’ and baggy in an unflattering way versus how ppl wear loose/baggy clothing for fashion/asethetic reasons
I have a hand-me down bomber jacket from my butch Great Auntie. Also her dapper hat.
Wear them both in her honor.
God I meant to say and didn’t —
STRAIGHT PEOPLE ARE DEFINITELY ALLOWED TO PLAY WITH QUEER FASHION.
The problem with my hypothetical pericishet girl wasn’t that she was donning a lesbian shirt, it was that she was loudly denying that the shirt was a lesbian shirt and “””reclaiming””” it for straight girls. Butch and femme are for everyone!!
It’s just when you deny the roots, when you say that bomber jacket is straight fashion now, and when you wear these items of clothing despite being an actively unsafe person for queer people to talk to, that it becomes a problem.
Like, don’t wear the lesbian shirt if you’re gonna get pissy if you’re mistaken for a lesbian, it’s that simple.
I swear we get a taste of an interesting storyline every once in awhile and suddenly back into “Joyce & Dorothy want to fuck” strip #85 lol
I suspect you aren’t paying attention.
In other matters, I wonder what the over/under is on whether these two will remember to invite Sal to go bowling.
Honestly, the setup of Asma revealing she likes hot women in leather jackets, only for Joyce to show up in a leather jacket is great set up for continuing the joke that it looks like these two here are fishing for a 3rd.
Hm. The polyamory no one expected.
Relevant strip:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/nexttime/
Maybe we’ll find out that Asma is as good as bowling as she is with a broom as a poking stick.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/02-but-the-sun-still-shines/chase/
I just imagined Dorothy in that outfit with some more butch styling, and Joyce in femme fighter pilot look, and. Um. Quite a nice thought.
That said, it’d be nice to follow Asma for more than one or two strips at a time.
Some green/khaki long sleeved overalls with a cinched waist and button down front would definitely go well with the jacket!
This all feels like a setup for Joe to be hit in the face with an emotional hammer when he sees Joyce next, cause it looks like she will be radiating happiness, confidence and overall hotness.
I realise I have 2 comments on what this scene can set up in quick succession – only goes to show that this is potentially more plot relevant than people might think! We’ll have to wait and see, as always.
Many years ago a friend joined me at BayCon, choosing to dress up a little as a Space Marine/Elli Quinn. She found a reasonable fitting ex-USAF flight suit with a gazillion zips and pockets. Already it looked good but she chose to wear it with the front zip pulled down to near-waist level to reveal a very red lacy bra, and with the thigh-side zips open to expose a matching garter belt and black stockings. To my surprise she got more “wow” comments from other women but I certainly enjoyed watching.
The Asma strips were added after the fact, so they’re put in where they won’t disrupt things too much.
I’m not sure how that’s going to affect the bowling night – unless that’s after where the buffer was at the time of the additions
oof, if so then we’re not getting to bowling for a year real time.
I hope they’re planning on a longer detour, yeah, but I would bet after the next chapter is over? Which is still another month or so minimum.
The dangers of buffer!
I’ve dressed up as a character of mine. Granted, it was a City of Heroes character who was basically me getting Tron’ed into City of Heroes (isekai before I knew the term), but that counts.
Despite having been amused at the “what’s the point of lingerie if you’re just gonna take it off” commenter opinion several strips ago, here I am, basically the exact same opinion:
“All this cosplay shit just seems like fucking with extra steps”
Don’t knock it til you try it. Although, it’s somehow less hot when it’s characters you write. You’re more likely to be aware of continuity or characterization errors.
I’d cosplay my own characters but most of my characters are girls.
I’d cosplay my own but I’d need buckets of body paint and I’d feel weird and cringey as hell for going as one of my own peeps. Internalized shame is great at ruining everything lol.
Most cosplayers use long gloves for the hands or exposed parts. I guess it depends on how covered your character is, but the goal is to only need to paint the face/neck!
In my area there are Monster Drag workshops, where everyone can give internalised shame at dressing up and garnering attention a boot out the door together. 😀
Why should that stop you?
I cosplay most of mine; most of my in-depth characters get made up first for larpin’ then get written down later.
you don’t buy candy without wrappers, half the fun of opening the treat is the design of the crinkly stuff.
Have you never been to a candy store? Cuz they have like bins of candy without wrappers that you scoop into plastic bags and buy by weight.
Yes, but most candy is advertised using colorful wrappers or food coloring.
I prefer to buy candy with less packaging. Reduces waste.
The wrappers are just going to get shucked and discarded.
tbf you can’t wear lingerie (or at least not *just* lingerie) in public to drive your partner wild in the moments when you aren’t fucking them. The leather jacket, by contrast, can be worn to class.
Sometimes it’s not being seen outright, it’s them KNOWING you’re wearing it underneath that’s enough.
Adding extra steps to fucking is pretty much universally appealing. Kink, foreplay, dressing up, going on dates, making out… all of these could easily be described as “fucking with extra steps” if they end in fucking. I’m not sure when we decided that was a negative?
of note: for the purposes of this comment I am treating foreplay and fucking as separate things, even though they aren’t in my mind, because I know what some people feel about foreplay being “pointless” and lord that’s a weird opinion.
I started my whole comment by acknowledging the lingerie thing, so I feel like my understanding of “having fun with the preamble” ought to be clear.
This one just felt over the top, maybe because it’s Doyce, maybe because they’re already SO baseline horny, it reminded me of Lucy obsessing over “so this…THIS is technically a third date, right? And on the third date…” and I’m like “look just fuck already, we all know that’s what you’re after and that’s okay”
Mm, I think there’s a pretty vast difference between “Despite us being terminally horny and having acted on it, here are some things you could do/wear to make me even MORE horny” (good, actually, in most relationship contexts) and “I am super horny, but have put up arbitrary barriers in between me and satisfying that, which I will then try to logic my way back out of by counting arbitrary things as ‘dates’.” (potentially harmful in a lot of ways).
Yeah, Lucy’s mentality was actively bad for her. Also super common, sadly.
I mean, I figure the distinction is if the extra steps are things you enjoy, or things you do to avoid feel guilt or shame about sex.
The former is ‘happy fun times’ the latter is ‘Well, if you can’t rid yourself of those hangups, I’d rather you go through those steps rather than feel bad about it’
With Lucy it felt like she didn’t particularly WANT the date, just felt she had to. But Joyce and Dorothy here very much enjoy the outfits.
Fucking is inherently boring, you need to add shit to make it anything better than a way to kill time
The extra steps make the whole thing a lot more fun
As long as we’re being immoral might as well be president.
Dorothy is more qualified than she thought!
(though i see her more in a legislator light than executive)
That jacket ain’t jet black. Plus we’d need aviators.
suit and tie? cool cool cool cool
we need a rad chick emergency cool cool cool cool
Honestly, the one thing I dislike about today’s strip: the jacket colour. It irks me on an instinctual level, somehow. Maybe because it feels like it’s almost but not quite something? #28383f — not even a “proper” grey, but not committing to its not-greyness. It just feels like the chromatic incarnation of missed opportunity.
…I wonder if this comment actually made sense to anyone but me.
isn’t that a bomber? looking at the cuffs and waist
idk much about but i just associate bomber jackets with that ‘fuzzy’ part on the collar and such/basically what America from Hetalia (cringe, i know, sorry) wore XD
IMHO, if it’s not a “bomber jacket” it’s because of the lapels — IIRC the defining features of a “bomber jacket” are “high elastic waist so you can sit in it without unzipping”, “elastic/tight cuffs so your sleeves don’t go over your hands”, and “high collar that buttons around the neck”. The furry/insulated lapels are not strictly part of the style, and what’s definitely NOT are folded-down suit-style lapels — those look more like the kind of generic clubbing jacket you’re more likely to find at a big-box store that’s already putting out spring stock since it’s Jan/Feb.
you’re right I didn’t think about the neck. there’s literally one hanging across the room from me but I didn’t think about it hard enough
I used to be the kind of dorky high school kid who insisted on a nylon bomber jacket with the fur lapels (which I thought looked great with my Civil Air Patrol uniform and Clark Gable rat mustache), so it’s kinda a special interest for my past self. =P
Honey, sweetheart baby. I just want to wear a bomber Jacket. We don’t have to make it a THING.
Not everything HAS to be about US.
Aw, so cute! Took me a minute to figure out that Joyce wants Dorothy to dress up as President Doris. At first I thought Joyce just had an unforeshadowed pantsuit fetish.
Joyce and Dorothy have totally-foreshadowed powerful-girl fetishes!
(i totally don’t know what that’s like. no clue.)
Absolutely adorable, as per usual. Keep it up!
who needs to write fanfic of your own comic strip when you can BE fanfic of your own comic strip?
“Fanfic of your own [media]” is just the most incredible phrase. It’s technically meaningless yet it still tells a story.
It’s not all that uncommon. Even George Lucas himself made all that “prequel” fanfic for his own Star Wars setting.
Too resigned to feel anything.
If this was something I was watching, I’d mute this and ask people to let me know when they’re gone.
Guess I could still ask…
it’s a daily strip so…come back in 3 months? At least it’s not something that updates only once a week like other webocomics
Three months?
These two dorks had just begun wearing out their welcome three months ago — August 24th was “Joe tries to talk Joyce into poly instead of breaking up”.
Spent some time looking at the person above Dorothy’s head, trying to decide if it is a poster, or a person up high to, say, watch for shoplifters..
Lot’s of department stores have sales posters of people wearing their products. So that’s what I would assume until proven different.
Particularly given the proportions. Either that’s a poster, or this store employs security personnel who are at least nine feet tall.
Well, to be fair, if I was able to employ security who were up in the 2.7m height range, and not impaired by that, I think I probably would!
But, yeah, poster was kinda where I got to!
Goes without saying, subtext.
Ahahahahahaha
I still have yet to have a real leather jacket in my arsenal. Not to look hot for people but because it really does look cool
Not as cool as Sal, of course.
Yes, I want drama to happen.
Have Dorothy’s parents show up to be horrified she gave up Yale and turn out to be REALLY invested in her career.
Have Dorothy hit by a football.
Have Joyce discover she’s the Chosen One of the Gemstone Empire and must battle her aunts.
#letjoycewearbomberjackets
The only thing stopping her is the fact that they can’t find a bomber jacket.
A travesty! A huge injustice!
#fuckthatstoreinparticular
So did we skip over Dorothy’s poli sci class or is this store just open really early in the morning? 🤔
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/02-im-the-problem-its-me/thesystem/
Yeah, I read that strip, that’s why I thought we’d see the poli sci class. I guess that was like 7 in the morning and Joyce was afraid to make Dorothy late for class, so did we do a time jump to after class or is this store open at 7am? And they decided they had time to go before Dorothy’s class? It
Oh waaait. Posted too early. I missed some important info in the first panel. Thanks!
You’re welcome! It does make me wonder what ‘time’ this is taking place, the comic being during winter and Indiana makes it harder to gauge based on the outdoor lighting. Could be 5 am, could be 8 am!
Okay, but it couldn’t be 5am… *if* the outdoor lighting is at all accurate.
Someone upthread worked out that the nearest mall to the IU campus is about a mile and a half away, the stores open at 8am on Mondays, and the sun rises around 8am in January.
What are you, a school cop?
I’m just invested! Becky’s in that class, maybe the protest will come up? Ripe ground for drama
I’d bet anything that Becky is skipping, but the protest coming up is honestly a good call. Robin was there too, after all!
I think Calc is before that with Lucy, Jennifer, Sal and Walky…we can hope for drama there as well.
I wonder what time Dorothy’s class is. It’s an early class, but when I was in college, it wasn’t uncommon for someone’s classes to start at 10:20am or later. In fact, I think I only had one semester where a class started before that. (Tangent: “Wait, how the fuck was it I almost never found time to eat breakfast…oh, right, I was mostly losing my mind, okay.”)
So her class could start at 9am this semester and still be considered early, even if she was in an earlier class first semester.
I didn’t go to uni in the US but I only had one 8AM class through my whole studies. Sometimes they would start at 9am.
lol even tho it’s outdated term to use, i think cosplaying your own chara would be a pretty ‘baller’ move
Oooh cute clothing montage
I feel like Dorothy’s response is super weird. Like…Joyce just wants to wear a bomber Jacket. She likes them. People often include things they think are cool in the art they create.
I mean, Joyce has “cosplayed” as Julia Gray before. Julia is her idealized self-insert and she does definitely want to look like her sometimes.
Which is fine, for the record, but this is definitely an established thing, not Dorothy assuming for no reason.
Yeah I’m rereading it and I guess she’s being more affirming than Judgey. I dunno the way she’s phrased this comic to just feel awkward.
Oh I wasn’t even gonna argue that, I think it’s a matter of opinion. 🙂 I just wanted to pop in and note that the very first time Joyce borrowed Sal’s leather jacket, it was followed by her posing against a wall with gloves and sunglasses on, trying her best to look Like A Cool Girl, and Julia Gray later wore a very similar expression in her introduction.
I think the line is fuzzy because she IS such a self-insert character, informed by what Joyce thinks is cool and Joyce’s desire to look cool.
(I do think Dorothy’s line of reasoning is less “don’t cosplay as Julia” and more “you don’t have to wear a bomber jacket to be cool”, but yeah, fully matter of opinion.)
Wanted to say exactly that.
No it definitely feels like Dorothy treating her romantic partners like a project is gonna cause problems in the same way the bill will come due for Joyce acting like only she and Dorothy exist
Yet more time that could have been spent bringing up Joe to Dorothy, or at least going back and giving Joe a fucking answer.
lmao
Dawg I *agree* with you but ts is getting spammy. Way beyond getting even.
It is desperately spammy, but sometimes that is someone saying their opinion when they have not yet said it. That seems less spammy overall than people who *keep* saying basically the same thing over and over again. You get to know them by the cringement of ‘oh no, its this person, they are going to tell us again’ (even when they don’t). (And I’ve been told off for repeatedly pointing out that a person repeatedly says the same thing, and fair enough too).
Aaaannnyyywway, another really cute strip. Looking forward to the double date of many misunderstandings with Asma and Sal!
Also I’m not telling anyone else what to do, yall are mostly grown adults and can make your own choices.
But if I were someone who actually wanted Willis to do me the favor of adding more strips with Asma or whoever my favorite character was, I think I would focus on leaving positive comments when those characters show up, rather than focusing on leaving negative comments on every other strip?
And that’s not even getting into how often the strips with Asma or whoever in them get comments like “can’t wait to switch gears right back to the boring stuff tomorrow 😭”.
Like, purely in terms of strategy, I know which type of comment would actually make me as a creator want to do more strips with your favorite character, and which set of comments would make me give up on ever pleasing you.
Oh and inb4 “are you saying we’re not allowed to criticize” — no, of course not!
I’m just saying I get whiplash reading comments like: “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SWITCH BACK TO ASMA,” which aren’t criticism so much as asking Willis to do you a favor and focus on characters you like better…? But phrased so unpleasantly.
If someone asks you to loan them $50 while also going out of their way to criticize how you spend money, are you going to want to give them $50?
Like how is this not obviously same thing? I genuinely don’t get it.
I don’t really think they are. To me, complaining (because yeah, that doesn’t read as criticism – not constructive one at the very least) doesn’t necessarily come with an expectation of something to happen about it due to the complaints. Like the comment you used as an example: I don’t read that as a genuine ask to Willis at all. It’s just a sentiment of “I don’t like this”, albeit a sort of obnoxious one. I can’t read anyone’s mind either though so it’s just a guess based on occasions I’ve wanted to complain, both in life generally & webcomics specifically.
Again: I’m not talking about people who are only complaining, I am talking about the whiplash of seeing specific folks very specifically beg Willis to do more of x y or z, but the only motivation they seem to be providing to Willis is “maybe, possibly, someday I might stop being so negative all the time”.
They’re not even being genuinely positive and encouraging on the strips they like, because even their compliments have a veneer of “I know this is the only tiny breath of fresh air I’m going to be allowed before it’s back to suffering your OTP” about them.
Folks who are just complaining with no stated expectations of Willis accommodating their wishes? That doesn’t give me whiplash.
No, that’s also what I’m talking about! Like I don’t think the intent of going, for example “please for the love of god switch back to Asma” has to be an actual plea to Willis even though it reads like one. Idk how to explain it any better without just repeating myself though.
I mean. Those words are literally a request for Willis to do something. If people don’t mean the words they’re saying, or if they’re doing it as a bit, oh well.
Yeah, I don’t read that as an actual request either. I’m more likely to interpret it as a “I would like for this to happen.” I think one factor is that people have experiences of both talking about media on the internet in spaces without creators/other involved (generally) present and talking about media in a place that is literally on the creator’s site (or directly attached to their media). So if I were to say on Tumblr, “You’re not going to make me care about Mako, please just move it along,” I’m not expecting Bryke to see that or for it to have a clear impact on the show. But the patterns we get used to expressing media reactions and such in can get carried into other spaces where it’s much more likely the creator will actually see them.
Well, I certainly agree that a lot of folks post here like they think Willis will never see what they say. I just can’t understand the mentality, to the point where it literally didn’t occur to me as an explanation lol.
An interesting idea, but impossible if the character just isn’t showing up.
You could try leaving positive comments on strips without Joyce and Dorothy in them (generally), and occasionally noting in a non-passive aggressive way that you’re really interested in seeing more of [fave character] soon!
Like there are definitely still ways of asking for what you want that are more likely to get results, even without those specific characters showing up.
That sounds like a very passive-aggressive way to futilely try and get other characters to show up when I could instead voice an honest opinion.
Refer back up top where I said I wasn’t telling anyone what to do. Just what would make me, as a creator, way more likely to actually do what you seem to want Willis to do.
We had three days of Asma strips. Every single day, there were multiple comments along the lines of, “Well, I bet tomorrow we’ll switch back to Joyce and Dorothy and never see Asma again!” These tended to be the same people who have to start hater containment threads on all the Joyrothy strips.
They don’t “have to”, Dot was doing that in an effort to be neighborly.
I agree with the rest of your comment and it is literally the part of this that most bewilders me, but let’s not cast aspersions on the intent behind the hater containment thread.
I very rarely ask for more Walky and Amber because I feel like I’ll Jinx it. 😛 I doubt me asking for it would make Willis any more likely to include it.
You don’t have to ask for more Walky/Amber, and indeed asking directly for more of anything wasn’t really my suggestion.
The strategy I’m outlining is leaving positive comments expressing excitement when either of them show up, without also delving into how much you dread the inevitable return to Willis’s current OTP.
IMO, Willis has made it clear that they’re going to (keep) doing, per Carla, “whatever pleases me, generally.” This is their comic, and we’re just along for the ride.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/pleases/
…that’s a strange comic to choose to illustrate your point…? Carla, very much not doing what pleases her, but what was necessary to save Ruth’s life?
Anyway: that is indeed how art works 90% to the time, but people are still making demands, so. If they’re gonna be begging Willis for things anyway, they might as well do it in a way that has a better chance of working. And a much lower chance of actively antagonizing the artist.
Like I don’t know, is it all just a bit? Or do folks genuinely not realize that asking for what they’re asking in the way they’re asking for it would make most human beings less inclined to actually give it to them?
It was the quote that came most clearly to mind, context notwithstanding. I posted it at 3 am local time, just before going to a bed I should have been in at least two hours earlier, and had no desire
… well, to finish this post either, frankly. I’ve already said my piece, and I’m just explaining, not attempting to convince/influence anyone, as I doubt that’s possible on this point.
Most readers are American, most Americans are punishment-oriented and too afraid of being called cringe to earnestly encourage things they like.
If anyone tries to argue that verified fact, they are unfortunately teh epic cringezors.
I mean this explanation makes more sense than most.
idk, it really seems like there’s a whole lost art in this generation to something as basic as leaving comments on fanfics. More and more people will just comment angrily on an author’s, idk, Batman fanfics, to complain that they want the author to finish up their long-abandoned Teen Wolf fanfic.
Did we all just forget how to actually present ourselves as an audience worth trying to please? It’s weird.
Its not like its a lost art. Some people do that and some people don’t. This has been true since the days of people handwriting letters and sending them into magazines.
I mean, ask any artist who regularly posts their stuff on tumblr or BlueSky.
There has DEFINITELY been a sharp decline in reblogs, in comments being left at all. There’s definitely been an uptick in demands.
There is a very noticeable shift away from the idea that artists are people whose labor we appreciate, and towards the idea of “content creators” whose job it is to churn out content for our consumption.
Thats me. I’m any artist 😛
Honestly I do hate how few comments I get but outside of a few weird DMs I haven’t seen an uptick in requests or demands. Mostly just lots of likes and reblogs on the random stuff I put out (I’ll spend weeks on a Pic and itll to nowhere and then doodle something in an afternoon that blows up big.) Blusky in general gives me less engagement because there’s simply less people using it and my account is relatively new in contrast with my Twitter. I think a Lotta people are just avoiding social media right now (I basically don’t use it for anything but posting art) because everything is so depressing.
I’m talking about artists who have been actively posting to social media for like 20 years. They’ve definitely consistently talked about a noticeable drop in engagement on all platforms.
It seems to be partly the porn purges, partly the rise of Internet harassment campaigns that dig through people’s reblogs to find Impure Ships and the like, but the chilling effect is very real, and the new generation of kids genuinely don’t seem to know how to interact with artists beyond liking posts silently and making rude demands.
As an aside its honestly very frustrating to read “any artist” and then have you clarify “oh but only ones who’ve been posting for like 20 years.” Which yknow. Is longer than the lifespan of Twitter, Tumblr, and most modern social media as we know it today. Basically feels like you’re discounting me as an artist and my experience entirely. Very fun.
That said I am a pretty underwhelming artist. Having fans is a recent development. Only within the last decade or so. But I’ve been drawing and posting art and in art spaces since the heyday of deviantart and newgrounds. I’ve observed the comment sections. Left reviews. Read everyone’s posts on walls. Gone through furaffinity comments. The whole 9 yards. So I’m speaking from experience when I say this shit has always existed. There’s less comments in general cuz modern sites don’t really insentivize comments over other things like “likes”. Engagement is trending downwards for sure we can agree on that. But theres still plenty of positive posts and plenty of posts not demanding or requesting things. But also negative posts, crazy demands, needlessly bigoted responses and other unpleasantness has always been part of posting art online.
But i guess I’m not someone worth listening to. Im not any artist.
I’m…
Sigh.
I didn’t mean to discount you as an artist. I’m just talking about a trend that’s been steadily worsening since around 2015.
I definitely didn’t figure you for sharing your art a lot outside of this space, though. You’d just struck me as more shy than that. I’m glad you are posting elsewhere, because you’re really good.
Sorry. You hit me right in the imposter syndrome. It’s kind of a sore spot. I overreacted a bit.
I’m sorry it hit you that way. It’s super not what I meant, but I can see where my phrasing just did not work out. 🫂 I hope you feel at least a little better now. Again: your art is great.
IMHO it’s a function of saturation. There’s SO much more out there, in terms of the sheer number of artists posting, fic writers, comics, etc, that people have become steadily more used to being able to find their particular niche instead of having to settle for finding the funny in Garfield and the horny in 9 Chickweed Lane or whatever.
But it’s a well-known phenomenon that giving someone too much of exactly what they want can turn them into a demanding brat instead of grateful for getting something better.
I don’t think the culture of how one reacts to “close to what I want but not perfect” art has had nearly enough time to react to “the internet” to develop new ways of dealing with that.
I’m sure that’s also part of it.
Mostly I blame algorithms (creating the illusion that content just appears out of the ether in your feed without anyone having put time and energy into it) combined with the “new normal” of digging through people’s reblog history to find problematic content.
And I do mean problematic: thoroughly harmless stuff like a weird fetish or a “bad” ship.
I know I personally stopped reblogging much at all in self-defense years ago. The best I can say about myself is at least I don’t hassle artists for not “producing” more, faster.
Yeah, the algorithms are not helping either. I wish I could be confident in the idea that wasn’t affecting the people who actually post here, but well.
“most Americans are punishment-oriented”
Ooo, this is kinda what I have been asking. Some of the comments give that impression. Which I find puzzling. This is a USA thing?
It’s a Calvinism thing. Sadly he’s also had a lot of influence in other parts of the world, too, but by no means universally.
I’d be curious to know how many people read comic without ever contributing to the artists/writers income, and THEN complain that they are not getting what they want.
comics
God i love this <3 they're so cute i just want them to make out in their Julia Gray cosplays ^^
Willis give me Dorothy and Joyce in matching suits and you will be reincarnated as a lotus flower
If it’s not a Bomber Jacket, it’s not a bomb jacket.
Is panel four meant to be a metatextual statement?
This is cute and all, but I reallyyy need to know what’s going on with Becky and Dina. :/
Cute Girls Doing Cute Things (and sometimes those “things” are other girls)
It’s been a while since the last ass-beating. I hope another character gets their ass beat or beats someone’s ass real soon.
I think purple Rachel and red Rachel should get in the ring. Purple Rachel *will* win.
I still don’t fine these two cute, mostly because of their shitty behavior towards other characters before this. But also partly because I’m a bit weirded out by how controlling Dorothy seems to act towards Joyce. Rather than let Joyce wear the clothes she wants to wear, Dorothy has to stop her and make sure Joyce wears what Dorothy wants her to wear.
This is the most bad faith interpretation of what is going on here. Dorothy offered to buy Joyce a jacket, a jacket based off of a style that Joyce has been embracing by borrowing clothes from Sal. Joyce accepted the offer to buy her a jacket. If you mean Dorothy is ‘controlling’ her by ‘not letting her get a bomber jacket’, Dorothy literally says here that there is a limited selection of jackets in this store and honestly, a bomber jacket IS a style of jacket that might not be easy to find in a random store. You are within your right to not like these characters and this relationship, but you should just them based off of actual events within the comic and not angry fanfiction you create in your head.
Commenters getting angry for characters,
because those same commenters chose to look at story points in such a distorted way, so to make those points in their own heads seem disgusting, while the acts were never even bad?
Shocked! Shocked I say!!!
Read the comic, please
Joyce likes wearing leather jackets so much she borrows Sal’s on a regular basis.
Dorothy asked permission before even mentioning what she thought on the topic, and then insisted on getting Joyce a thing Joyce likes.
Joyce has shown zero signs that she’s unhappy here, except with the selection offered by the store.
It’s not that Dorothy can’t be controlling sometimes, it’s just that this isn’t an example of it at all. If anything, this is an example of the positive version of whatever weirdness she’s always had about Walky’s clothing. It’s literally just two girlfriends shopping together and being honest about what they think looks good on each other.
I notice you didn’t accuse Joyce of being “controlling” or “not letting [Dorothy] wear the clothes she wants to wear” when she asked Dorothy to slip into (and out of) a black pantsuit and necktie. Despite the fact that Dotty has never been seen in anything like that and we don’t know if she enjoys wearing outfits like that.
note for the tone/context blind people: No, I was not arguing that Joyce is actually being controlling here, just pointing out an inconsistency in the way these two women are viewed. I.e. Joyce getting treated as if she is a pushover or not capable of consenting properly, and Dorothy getting treated as if her every opinion is a law she’s laying down and like she has an imbalanced power dynamic with everyone around her.
It took me a few rereads to get this but despite what dorothy is saying following her telling Joyce they probably don’t have bomber jackets I think the rest of what she’s saying has nothing to do with bomber jackets. I definitely read it as her telling joyce not to buy one my first couple of read throughs.
Y’all are making us look bad with these dogwater misreadings for real….
On many levels, I think “cosplaying as your own OC” – especially if it is a self insert OC – is just trying to be the best version of yourself that you can be.
“Always be yourself, unless you can be Batman”…
Dressing up as your self-insert character is fundamentally inspired. This is a truth
Actually I’d say it’s not enough & Joyce should start acting like Julia Gray too. Let’s roleplay a bit!!!
“I know comic creators who use subtext and they’re all cowards.”
Came here to post that, but alas I am too slow.
Next thing you know, Joyce will have a house shaped like Julia Gray.
Lol, that’s a rather specific self insert fantasy acted out there Joyce.
Nothing wrong with it, but it’s very expensive on a student’s budget.
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if Dotty already had a pantsuit laying around.
Re: hovertext…yep, exactly. Lingerie takes many forms, and if suit-and-tie does it for you, by all means, get into that. (and then get out of that.
Willis, panel 3 is autobiographical, isn’t it? X)
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/itsadate/
At some point after Joyce is through her buffer Julia Gray is gonna smooch the president and all her readers are going to say it came out of nowhere.
Except for Daisy, who’ll be like, “Nice! She paid off that romantic tension I was talking about!”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/endgame-3/
https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3m6fhyuqzy22h
Truly an inspiring story.
I encourage everyone to look at the other replies in the chain so that yall know Willis isn’t talking about anyone here.
yeah I don’t use facebook, by now that place is just full of racist grandmas and shit and generally just isn’t my vibe
also re: captions, LOL XD
facebook?
I approve of the black pantsuit and necktie look.
add a pair of sunglasses and that’s basically just a WIB, right?
Suits = sexy time. Or so my wife tells me.
cute
Sure
Dress for the job you want.