That’s a good point, actually. She had to go find Lucy to share too much information. Did that take less time than the space between panels four and six?
Probably not, especially since she then got soft serve and ran into Raidah.
But my comment was more about the finally gonna be interacting with other character part of the comment above than the comic itself saying this is the longest time apart.
Yep, they’re already hitched up. Only stuff left is ceremonies, paperwork, and so much sex. One thing in progress; they’ll get to the other two things eventually.
Yeah, and moving fast can bite us in the ass. I fell in love on the first date earlier this year, and it was a wonderful experience for about three weeks before the most predictable heartbreak of my life somehow snuck up on me.
That sucks. Heartbreak is always awful, predictable or not.
In my case (of U-Hauling, not heartbreak, fortunately), she and I had known each other for years and had been BFFs for the past two before she finally asked me out… a month after we’d both graduated from undergrad college.
One reason I’m so invested in Joyce and Dorothy is because their story – college best friends unexpectedly (to them anyway) becoming lovers – is because that’s also my story. They tug on some very deep emotions for me. Yes, even when they’re being cringe. Actually, given how cringe I can be, maybe especially then.
People will take different things from stories. I think it is lovely that Joyce and Dorothy resonate so deeply with you and remind you so much of your own life, and my own feelings on the pairing aside I think that’s something to celebrate.
For me, it was a week between first date and “I love you”. And then 4 months to moving in together. And it only took that long because we lived eight hours apart with an entire other state between the ones where we lived.
well seemingly she couldn’t find a hat that matched the exact color of the old one, since the new one’s lighter! the old one was close to PMS 5285 while this new one is like… PMS Cool Gray 6?
I think it’s good that Willis added in characters critiquing the optics of the protest kiss as a bit of triage for his own failings there, but it’s had the knock-on effect of kind of flattening all the drama regarding the kiss to just the optics of it being at an anti-genocide protest while the cheating has gone to the wayside. It would be a bigger deal in a college friend group than it so far has been presented to be!
It’s not *supposed* to contain all negativity ever, it’s supposed to specifically contain repetitive minor complaining about Joyce/Dorothy.
Also “some people who dislike Joyce/Dorothy are being rude to me, so I’m gonna go be rude to the people who go out of their way to be polite about it” is a bad strategy for peaceful comment section navigation.
Yeah, that’s the stuff that isn’t getting contained. The repetitive “I’m looking for reasons to derail other comment threads to hate on the protagonist and her girlfriend.”
Also “rules for thee not for me” is also not a good strategy for a peaceful comment section. If someone’s gonna complain about BarerMender’s comment, they sure as sugar shouldn’t be hating willy nily outside of the thread. (to be clear I am not pointing fingers at you)
As I have said over, and over, and over, the containment thread is for kvetching and insubstantial complaining about DoJo and the direction of the story. It has not, and has never been, a catchall for any and all critique, including substantive critique, of the strip or characters. What you need to do here, rather than vaguing me in my own thread, is to turn down your sensitivity and come to terms with the fact that not all critique of these characters counts as “hating.”
@Vaishino
1) you may or may not note (but it’s pretty much fact) that the volume of non-substantial “I hate these two” posts outside the containment thread is a FRACTION of what it was prior to Dot starting this.
2) BarerMender is the rare repeat offender who seems to mostly/only post pro-Doyce shots in the containment thread.
3) pretty sure all of us snarking at BM are 100% committed to only posting substantive discussion outside the thread since it was incepted.
Well they made out with each other while both being in relationships with other people…so yeah, it had actual cheating. Not to mention Joyce has left Joe dangling in regards to a will they/won’t they on a poly relationship (And yes, dangling. Joyce didn’t give a definitive no, and in fact said that she’d be back to give him an answer, which she has not) and has as of now neglected to let her knew “true love” know that she isn’t 100% broken-up with the guy she was seeing beforehand.
@Miroku idk how long you’ve been in the comments, but people have been debating in here for months over what you just said “actually counts” as cheating, and whether or not Joyce has “actually” broken up with Joe. The fact these debates have room to exist at all is a failure to properly execute the cheating bit, IMO. I personally have other issues with it (the cheating is bland, boring, and as of right now completely perfunctory to the story), but that is one opinion among many.
They have. That’s part of what’s causing the conflict. The characters and the narrative are both calling it cheating and minimizing it at the same time.
The actions definitely cross the line, but they do so about as minimally as is possible and the reactions all around go even farther – treating it more as a break up then anything.
Honestly, I think you could say as much as 75% of the non-bigoted dissatisfaction is coming from a place of “I was told there would be cheating, not a coming-out storyline where the cheating is so mild and quickly resolved that there’ll be debates on whether there was cheating at all even when everyone involved in-universe has used that word.” (the other 75% of the dissatisfaction is a combination of “Joeyce shippers who feel shortchanged” and “people who thought Joyce had become better than whatever this is”.)
I actually got a lot more comfortable with this arc when I decided to think about it as more of Willis dipping their toes into writing cheating stories and not really committing to the mess.
I know I’d be a lot more into the story if the cheating was actually treated like cheating instead of like what we’d get after time skipping past all of the previous relationship degradation and (almost) all of the current relationship buildup at some point between the date with Joe and the tear gas wedding.
Imo its less about that, and more about the cheating being completely irrelevant to where the story is at now. All the Consequences(tm) these two are lined up for would have been here waiting for them even if they had “done the right thing” and properly broken up with their boyfriends, because the fallout of their actions is completely disconnected from the cheating.
I shall heed the risk of writing a comment way too long and shant say more (and I already wrote what I think about it elsewhere on my tumblr).
I mean, I think that’s roughly what I’m trying to imply with “it’s not a cheating story, it’s a coming out story” — the tension between those two is especially hard to cope with, given that it’s kind of an asshole move to be irritated about a cute drama-free coming-out story, but as you say all the Consequences are so far focused on either “other people” or “the coming-out bits” or “the political/protest bits”.
That’s basically been my complaint – most of this sequence of events would have played out exactly the same if Dorothy and Joyce had been single when they kissed, and the chorus of people saying “well I thought you wanted consequences” anytime something bad happens which is not actually related to the cheating doesn’t help matters.
also also, with regards to the latter, none of the “consequences” are coming back on them – they get to stroll/skip through the chaos holding hands and schmoopily gazing into each other’s eyes, soaking in their sappy sapphic NRE, while everyone else in their friend group deals with the fallout.
By consequences, do people mean that they want some big things to happen, narratively, as a specific result of the cheating?
Or that they want Dorothy and Joyce to be narratively punished for their self-described-as-cheatin’ ways?
Because I thought people wanted the first one, but now I think people want consequences that specifically negatively impact Joyce and Dorothy, do I have that right?
(Tone is not accusatory; I’m genuinely curious how people are reacting to the story.)
Negative things happening to Joyce and Dorothy as consequences of their cheating isn’t necessarily a punishment, but a natural conclusion, especially in a college-age friend group.
@Leorale Speaking only for myself, there’s two points.
Firstly, I don’t want Dorothy and Joyce to be punished, I want their choices to actually mean something and for the narrative to fully commit to taking those choices seriously. Right now, as said above, the cheating is completely irrelevant to the story, to the point that removing it would change nothing about the outcomes we’ve seen so far. What that does is *damage Joyce and Dorothy’s agency as characters*. If all that matters is the result and not how they got there, i.e., the whats and the whys and the hows of their choices, then their choices are rendered irrelevant. This is one of the biggest reasons I’ve said they’re an incredibly boring couple. It’s not just that they’ve been super saccharine, but that there’s nothing else to them right now BUT that, because nothing else they’ve chosen to do has been met with any ripple effects within the narrative, only the result has. I am specifically referring to relationship ripples here and not the protest stuff because that is a whole different can of worms.
Secondly, for me, narrative consequences for Joyce and Dorothy are actually secondary – what I want is for Joe, the *only character in the main cast who explicitly has cheating trauma as THE core feature that informs literally ALL of his other character traits, the foundation upon which they are built*, to have more than a “well, this sucks” reaction, which is indistinguishable from just having his heart broken by any old break up. Making the “I hate cheating” character in your cast get cheated on is the easiest layup in the world, so the fact his reaction has been so muted, that he’s holding himself together is, to me, a massive squandering of his narrative potential.
Hence why I am hoping I’m wrong when the shoe on this drops in the next chapter or two, and we circle back to see that no, actually, Joe’s very first love and first relationship ending with him being cheated on just like his mother fucking suuuuucks actually.
yeah…. it’s monday morning so I was hoping they’d have atleast passed their friends by now but I guess not. Like I don’t hate this ship at all but it’s kinda feeling like fluff with how seperated they’re beginning to feel from everyone else though I guess they’re properly setting up a contrast between how absolutely terrible Walky is doing compared to Dot & Joyce right now.
But again, atleast it’s monday morning so I know they’re going to have to face her friends sooner or later just cuz of shared classes.
They feel like filler. Not even the good kind. This is no zanpakuto rebellion filler, this is fucken. Don kanonji making a sentai squad filler. Naruto fighting an ostrich or w/e idk I don’t watch naruto
You don’t watch Naruto, but that show has the perfect track, “Afternoon of Konoha”, that they use in all their filler episodes, and it’s perfect bgm for whenever we just get a DoJo comic with nothing else going on.
This whole “hey we’re physically separated for the first time in hours” being a worry for Joyce is at least interesting, since 100% of the times she’s been separated from Dorothy since the protest, she has been alone with Joe and ~50% of those resulted in sexy times.
I wonder if Joyce deep-down KNOWS she has this tendency to have romantic object permanence problems.
Also, less a Hater Moment and more of an Editor Brain Moment, I think there’s a bit of a proofreading gaff that fell through the cracks – Joyce says this is the longest away she’s been from Dorothy, but we saw her yesterday away from Dorothy when she was getting soft-served and Missing Raidah’s Fucking Point. And, notably, without any of the Joyce-brand clinginess that we’re setting up the the punchline of this comic, which only highlights the discordance between the scenes.
Now, this does confirm that the Raidah scene was a post hoc insert, but it’s also a good example of post hoc scenes can’t just be tossed in willy-nilly and the surrounding story needs to be tweaked to accommodate their existence, because otherwise you have a two thirds of the strip completely failing to recognize the other third of the strips, because that last third didn’t exist at the time of writing. There’s a seam between the two that’s minor, but noticeable.
This isn’t a Dunk on Willis moment even though it’s in the hater thread, shit happens, stuff gets shuffled, and I have seen so much worse when it comes to proofreading in webcomics. Just a Leo Pointing moment on behalf of my editor brain.
To be fair, she was also away from Dorothy longer than this when they went off to talk to Walky and Joe, so even without the scene with Raidah she would’ve been wrong. Counterpoint to my own point, she was just getting ice cream when Raidah talked to her, which isn’t directly related to getting to fuck Dorothy, but breaking up with their boyfriends is.
I think that you’re right, that this was likely a continuity issue from inserting strips, but it can still work if Joyce is just saying something poorly thought through / factually incorrect about how she loves Dorothy. She does that sometimes, especially regarding timelines (she claimed, retroactively, that she fell in love with Dorothy at first sight).
I’ma blame the unreliable narrator.
That, or she thinks the softserve was Dorothy.
Finally, I get to post in one of these. This isn’t so much a hater comment, but more of a “I’ve been oscillating between annoyed and bored with these two for months and I’m looking forward to them finally interacting with other characters outside of each other so they actually feel like three-dimensional characters again” comment. We’ll have to see how long that holds.
I don’t even care what they do. They could be the biggest asses ever to the people around them and I would eat that up compared to the fiftieth round of smoochy-face
My enclosure is a sad concrete box right now! I need keys jangled for me!!
I mean, Donovan is BASICALLY a zoo tiger, right? That seems like the sort of thing that’d add some hilarious enrichment to the enclosure of ANY large predator.
In Joyce’s defense, I don’t think she was aware that was what she was saying. Had someone put it to her directly like that, I suspect she would have been like “oh, oh god no.” The only reason she said that to Raidah is because she (Joyce) is probably oblivious to the reason for the protest. She was there just to protect her sister, then she saw Dorothy. I would not be shocked if the reason for the protest was not something that ever entered her mind as a serious concern.
If one does not know that, it can certainly come off as self centered and self important, so it is not like I blame Raidah for taking that comment as intentionally harmful when it might be better described as being made in ignorance, or at least with tunnel vision mode activated.
Oh yeah she definitely didn’t *mean* “my white gayness is more important than genocide”, but intention aside that is what she said. And the comments defending that moment really sucked
She didn’t mean it, but she also didn’t not mean it. I do think it’s somewhat reasonable she wasn’t thinking in terms of the genocide, since Raidah had just brought up the photo but in terms of “You’re not going to be able to work in your field because you’re gay!”, not in terms of distracting from the protests.
Like it was an incredibly shitty thing to say and it was MEANT to be an incredibly shitty thing to say. Unfortunately I also get why her brain went where it did.
Well, that’s because Raidah can’t just be simply wrong. She has to go the extra mile in order to Not Even Wrong territory, a space normally occupied by anti-evolutionists.
She starts from a bad premise, applies faulty reasoning, and then her conclusion makes no sense even with those two factored in. And then some portion of the commentariat lauds her for telling hard truths, and I’m left befuddled.
Oh I buy that for sure. I don’t think Joyce was meant to be in the right there. The biggest problem was that not everyone seemed to agree on that. A white 18 year old recent ex fundie from bumfuck Midwestville saying some out of pocket tone deaf shit like that is to be expected. The amount of grown ass adults who should know better arguing on her behalf saying she did nothing wrong (on the Patreon at least, since comments were off when it reaches the main site) was the really bad part. I dont wanna see that happen again
I’m sure Willis still wants us readers to find this cute, but it still doesn’t work for me because of Doyce’s shitty behavior during and after they got together. That includes the stuff they did at the anti-genocide protest, which they apparently can reference without even realizing the harm they did to other characters with their actions there.
Thank fucking god they’re gonna be forced to spend a few hours apart, maybe they can be interesting again. Then again last time she was away from Dotty Joyce said the most triggeringly racist bs I’ve ever seen come from her mouth so. Let’s just hope she doesn’t bother any brown women. Maybe if I’m really lucky Joe will get to exist again
As a non-USAvian, I didn’t know it was thanksgiving. Who thanks who for what, or does everyone just eat and drink too much and spend a fucktonne of money. Sorry, a fuckton.
The ham/turkey divide is one of those great dichotomies that most people never realize is a dichotomy because they’ve only encountered people on their own side of it.
See, my family says “fuck convention and turkey in general” and has chicken instead.
Rotisserie chicken when we’re with the extended family, and fresh homemade buffalo chicken wings when it’s just our immediate family.
Mine often has lasagna, of all things, because it’s just as decadent and delicious and food-coma inducing, requires a similar amount of time and preparation, and is – for those of us who attend more than one dinner around this time – not More Turkey.
I did have an Italian friend in my college years who I ate with a few holidays who did lasagna – though I can’t remember this many years later if those were Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Turkey is the MOST DIFFICULT meat, but the rewards of doing it correctly outweigh the skill curve (assuming one is committed to making GOOD turkey, which I am).
My original post before I edited it way down was a lot more “if I’m cooking, I turn into someone who hates all poultry”.
I like the way chicken tastes and turkey CAN be totally fine, I think they’re both generally a lot milder flavor-wise than other options.
But my attempts to cook them have been so unpleasant. 😭
I thought it was pretty universally agreed that turkey takes way too long to cook and is too easy to mess up, to be worthwhile. But I respect your dedication to Good Turkey.
As a non American, it’s the dayish before everything goes on sale for Christmas presents. Most black Friday sales start before that but not all apparently
Plus some other countries have thanksgivings of their own on different days — Canada and Australia I think both have a day called Thanksgiving? But I might be misremembering about Australia, it might be a different country.
In 1620, a bunch of religious extremists, who happen to have been my ancestors, immigrated to America without permission, set up a compound under religious law, and refused to assimilate into the culture or adopt the dominant language or religion. Thanksgiving is the federal holiday when we celebrate their needing to take welfare from Americans to survive.
I don’t know if this is apocryphal, but theoretically it’s the day that companies have made enough sales in a year to start making a profit, and this are ‘in the black’ instead of red.
That’s corporate propaganda to feed the consumerist narrative. It was originally named “Black Friday” by the retail workers who had to work it, because IT IS HELL!
It’s because that’s the day when people stand in line all night to make a run for all the cheap stuff offered during the day. I think people have been trampled to death when stores opened.
It’s sweet in isolation but in the context of them only being a couple for a day and some change… yeesh. I’m the biggest cuddlebug you ever will see, but even I don’t get this clingy until a few months in.
(Obligatory yes this relationship was simmering for months, doesn’t make it less odd)
Yes Dot, for a couple who have only just met and barely knew each other beforehand it’s amazing how clingy Joyce is being. Have you considered you’re the odd one out here? Or considered that Joyce’s entire life as we knew it when we first met her has changed? The one constant in all of that has been her friendship with Dorothy. Even her best childhood friend hasn’t turned out to be who she thought she was. I don’t blame her in the slightest for clinging to her single point of stability in this whole mess. But hey, that’s just me, I’m a weirdo.
So we have the people who are tired of the cuteness, and people who are tired of the people who are tired of the cuteness saying so, even in a single thread set aside for that. So the first group should just… not say anything, anywhere. Do I have that right?
This isn’t the kvetching thread, just thought that might have been missed here; it’s in response to someone who (ostensibly) doesn’t see a problem with Joyce’s behaviour.
I’m personally less concerned with keeping negativity isolated to said thread the more people come into said thread and dump content-less arguments against the negativity.
it’s double funny because Dot is consistently among the politest commenters when it comes to, as she’d say, kvetching. Dot only really gets short with people when they’re engaging in obvious caucasity, or messing up peoples’ pronouns.
It’s triple funny because the original point of “hater containment” was to keep all the “I just dislike this, in a vaccuum” comments in one place, but a fair number of people seem to think it also should mean that NO negativity of any kind should be allowed outside it, even if it’s in-context for a discussion.
Yeah I’ve been pretty consistent in saying that the containment thread is for insubstantial kvetching first and foremost, I’ve always been supportive of substantive conversations happening elsewhere between reasonable people with disagreements.
I mean, she’s clearly not the odd one out considering the thread of people who agree with her, who are usually all over the comments when she’s not around to keep it concentrated in one place. No need to be an asshole here bc someone doesn’t like your otp. Yeah, you ARE being a weirdo
Given the pushback you got here, I think we’ve figured out who the odd-one-out is. It’s kind of an irrelevant piece of information, but it seemed important to you so I’m glad we got that all sorted!
More like it’s amazing how clingy Joyce is being when a) she wasn’t like this in previous relationships, or even when she feared Ryan could show up at any moment, b) they’ve been in a relationship for all of a day and a half, and c) for all the jokes about how attached she was to Dorothy, she actually did spend a lot of time not with her up until this relationship began. Literally the entire reason Dorothy first started realizing her feelings for Joyce was because Joyce was now spending less time with her and preparing to get railed by her boyfriend. So yes, Joyce going “oh gosh it feels so wrong to separate from my girlfriend for the time span of one class” is, indeed, weird.
Her origin as a character are in Being A Stalker.
Joyce is still Joyce, only her circumstances have changed, and Being Creepy And Obsessed With (the idea of) Romance has been Core Joyce since Day One.
It’s so funny being over here having followed (basically) this webcomic for 25 years and seeing people surprised at character traits that have been consistent – although not front and center – for the entire run of this iteration of the series.
In their defense, I’m almost certain Tatooine doesn’t have public education, and even if it did, the Skywalkers wouldn’t be among the class of people who qualify.
And Leia’s son falls under the heading of “Skywalker boys”. She never fell to the Dark Side, nor even showed any serious temptation. Her father, her brother, and her kid are a different story.
I always see this kind of discussion along the lines of “autistic Joyce exhibits autistic traits – we are surprised and appalled!”
For context, having intense feelings is a potential autistic trait, having a person become a special interest is also one (particularly common with autism in female-socilialised autistics apparently), experiencing “liminance” is common with autism and adhd (intense crushes that get worse in limbo/rejection circumstances).
Autism is listed as a social disorder for a reason, it comes with “socially unacceptable” or misunderstood behaviours like those listed above and more. This storyline is addressing that very well actually – how judgemental/accepting are people willing to be to the characters, how much slack do they have, what happens when the consequences of their traumas and disabilities affect others necessary, where do accommodations begin and end for social disabilities etc.
As an autistic ADHD person it can be quite hard to see how judgemental people are day in and day out, especially knowing the effects that has when you encounter it in real life.
Something not addressed yet is how those who are seen as “high masking” might actually get given less sympathy when they do mess up socially than those who are not, because they are seen as more able / less disabled and therefore more responsible for not messing up a situation. Even though that is not the case.
Anyway, sorry, bit of a digression and I have migraine brain today so I am all over the place, but I think my point is that autism and adhd contain behaviours that get labelled “stalkery”, and I don’t see that discussed or acknowledged or talked about in a rational and helpful way, with real understanding and sympathy outside the odd short video affirmations on social media.
Just to add on to everything you’ve said here which was said perfectly, “high masking” is also treated as something that’s easy which makes things difficult for everyone. When people think masking is easy, it puts down those who can’t and characterizes them as just being “lazy” or “not caring” AND masking is incredibly exhausting and frequently leads to burn out, which also goes into what you said where those who mask then get little sympathy when they become burnt out. Makes me think of when people are like “well why can’t you do *insert task here*, you were able to do it last week”. And again, leads to people putting the inability as being due to laziness or some other failing when it’s a lot more complicated than that.
My own experiences with masking usually have to do with my difficulties with auditory processing. I’ve often found that neurotypical people around me don’t understand that it takes a lot of concentration when I’m in a busy social setting in order for me to 1) filter out the sounds of crowds and other such loud noises and 2) concentrate to fulfill the proper social etiquette that is required for conversing during social events. I almost never agree to social events on a whim and require prep time in order to psych myself up because it’s a lot of work and it is difficult to explain to neurotypical people sometimes because they view it like “oh you just have to work harder to listen? Why can’t you just listen normally? It’s not hard” when going to parties, theme parks, restaurants, clubs, bars, so many of these things can be so LOUD and overwhelming and when there’s fifty million sounds around me, it makes it harder to listen to the people I’m supposed to be engaging with.
…Sorry for ranting a bit there, it’s just one of those things I don’t get a chance to commiserate on often.
The Walkyverse is a big multiverse. Lots of alternate realities. Universes where drama tags are unpulled; universes with toy store owners planning world dominance are thrust into heroically saving humanity from breakfast cereal commercials, even worlds where teenagers buy each other leather jackets and hats.
There is a plush Dina for sale. Dina exists in a plush form.
Which probably means that EVERYONE, hypothetically, exists in a plush form.
Which, if so, makes it all but certain that there’s a branch of the Walkyverse in which every character exists as a Muppet version of themselves. Every character, from Joyce to Billie to Blaine to Fuckface, all exist in a felty , Muppety simulacrum of life, except for New College Transfer Student Chris Pratt, who is just real life Chris Pratt, because per the laws of the universe there has to be a famous human actor *somewhere.*
And then that got me thinking, that if there’s a branch of the Walkyverse that is almost entirely muppets, and if one of the main characters was, in another multiverse, a sentient car that had its consciousness put into an android resembling a 20something girl who can fling pies at people through a trap door in her chest, you can GUARANTEE that there’s a universe where a Joyce made almost entirely out of some space-age metal, after saying goodbye to Dorothy, transforms into a 1994 Harley-Davidson Road King and roars off into the distance because she’s late to rendezvous with Ultra Carla and Amazi-Gear as they work together to unshackle their fellow students from their parental control units and the supercomputer which controls them all like a hive mind.
And if that’s the case, I have to ask… why ya holding out on us Willis? Is that a Patreon exclusive or something? What, you give us titties, but no Transformers? That’s what the kids REALLY want!
Now I’m thinking about the characters of Dawson’s Creek being in a brief conversation cameo in a particular muppet movie, because that’s a real thing that happened that wasn’t connected to anything else. We’ll know I’m thinking spell check sucks. If the cast of this comic were characters in Dawson’s Creek, who would be who and why?
I love these two together, and I love that it feels like they’re letting each other have something they didn’t quite dare to before. “Today the people dress the way that they please / The way they tried to do in the last centuries / Closer than you know / Love each other so / Androgynous”
Right? Like maybe these sweet kids can just have this, as a treat, before the next rape, violent kidnapping, SWATing, murder, need for violent self defense, shooting, emergency room visit, political shittery, unfair disappointed parents, disappointments for parents, battery, abuse, stabbings plural, hate crime, microaggression, accidental or ignorant racism, etc. All of them could use a break.
Joyce and Walky! had an ongoing storyline but that was mostly paywalled off, most of the free strips are one-off gags. You didn’t have to read the ongoing drama unless you wanted to seek out and pay for it, so enjoying the fluffy gag-a-week antics was more tolerable as it wasn’t directly interrupting stories-in-motion.
Would likely affect the enjoyment and value I get out of this comic by about zero. I don’t think Willis knows how to stop including the parts I like even if they wanted to.
I’m going to go to bat for redditors as a population and say that they’re actually about normal. What the subreddit would need to be as good would be a long history of being as aggressively moderated as this place is. If you don’t moderate the assholes and bigots out anywhere big enough they’ll stick around and it will become their space. Well moderated subs (even about contentious topics) are often really good. But that’s also an astronomical amount of work, and Willis already does it here.
I’d be down for a Like button, so long as there wasn’t a matching Dislike button. Once those get introduced, it turns into a cowardly numbers game where people just assume that more number = more better.
I like that Joyce bought Dorothy a hat, even if it’s nearly identical to the other one. Helps with the people who thought Dorothy was buying clothes for Joyce just to turn her into a dress up doll and make it more clear that this is a mutual relationship. Dorothy bought Joyce a jacket, Joyce bought her a hat. Maybe they’re not equal as far as price goes but what matters is that the other person loves it and appreciates the gesture.
Also both items of clothing are CONSPICUOUSLY items that they know will be liked and worn by the other, by virtue of being very similar to something Dorothy / Joyce already liked and wore a lot!
It’s genuinely the least dressing each other like dolls ever.
Someone still needs to explain to me why all thos churchy types talked about what “shame” it was that Becky got a different haircut. Like, y’all… undercuts are peak and she was rocking it! Who are these strange humans who dislike ladies in suits and short hair?
Conservatives, generally, find violations of traditional gender roles very upsetting regardless of the form they take.
But also certain things are deeply ingrained. A lot of people in the comments ALSO complained for weeks and months about Becky’s “ugly” haircut, because on some level we have all been socialized to expect female characters to appeal to us aesthetically, much more so than with male characters, and it’s a job of work to get that stuff out of your system.
even the bible thumpers i was raised among were not that weird. my policy is, if it ain’t your hair, you don’t get an opinion. if someone came round and demanded i grow a mustache, i would tell them to take a hike… assuming i didn’t just laugh in their face.
as for getting all upset over a fictional cartoon character’s haircut… dawg, i’m not saying i’m some kinda zen master, but there are a thousand and one real problems to get upset about. who has time to get their underoos in a wad over something that has zero impact on your or anyone else’s life like that?
I remember one of the main talking points I saw people say as far as Becky’s haircut goes, she was given a twenty from Billie and impulsively got her haircut. Commenters who were against this namely would point out “Becky’s homeless and has no money, she should have saved that twenty to buy herself food! Now she’s even more of a burden on Joyce!”. The real reason for the outrage is that… well, some people just didn’t like Becky at that point. Becky’s loud, she can be a bit rude, she’s blunt, and even though she’s hardly the only character like that… something about Becky really just made some people so mad.
One of my favorite bits in the whole comic with how it completely recontextualizes Becky’s using her first money to get a rad haircut, without even directly commenting on the controversy about it.
Hell yeah! Kinda takes me back to my only actual partner (I refuse to consider the two boyfriends I had actual romantic partners of mine, dating them was pretty much just comphet in action), we bought each other dorky little hats. I bought them a ballcap with the autobot symbol on it, they got me a winter hat with strings <3
Also a sidenote since I'm seeing being people be weird about the kvetch thread and the concept of others have other opinions, I just wanna make it clear that my eyerolling in my original post isn't directed towards everyone that doesn't like Joyce and Dorothy. I consider myself more neutral and enjoying the ride, but I can 100% see why some people have the issues they do with the relationship and how it is handled. It's just a shame when there's some bad apples on frankly all sides making everyone look foolish. I believe that in the end, this is just a webcomic and we can all have our own interpretations without going to personal attacks or random accusations just to cut each other down. You've been a trooper with the kvetching thread, Dot, and I admire your tenacity.
Oh I’ll co-sign this too. Apologetically, since I think my above comment was sorta quoting Dot, and it was not meant to be targeted like that orz the phrasing just stuck in my head.
I know a lot of people are fed up with the NRE, but honestly it’s pretty relatable, as someone who loves very strongly and very loudly. My partner and I got married last month and we’re the same flavor of clingy, and we still lament every time we have to split up. Granted, we live in separate countries, so usually there’s good reason for it, but in the first week, we would also get mopey if we had to split up for so much as a toilet break, so I totally understand Joyce’s grumbling.
Respectfully, can you please not link to pages where the characters use the C-word? It really disrupts my narrative that nobody considers any of this cheating to any degree.
Read this before the comments above it and was wondering when Joyce said the word that gets replaced with Congo. I mean she’s part of the queer community now, she can say it as long as she means it as a compliment
I think Joe is gonna struggle with how much he wants to be with her the moment he sees her in that jacket. And Joyce struggles every time she sees Joe with her self control.
oh hey an acknowledgement that while they may be OK in the long term, what’s going on right now is not really healthy, and they’re going to have to grapple with that to grow past the combination of self-revelation high and trauma bonding. Can’t wait!
Folks, the point of a “Hater Containment Thread” is more “Haters can vent their spleens here and not spoil other people’s enjoyment” rather than “Ah, all the haters will be HERE so I can confront them.”
In matters of polls, always choose the more convoluted and tangled option.
Thus, I am firmly in the camp of “grappling with the knowledge that selecting the other answer will mean my response will be untrue starting tomorrow, making me a liar.” Happy (belated) Indigenous Peoples’ Week!
Joyce needs to meet Joe somewhere where there isn’t a lockable door. Or a door at all. Then they can talk without it turning into a sex act. Maybe. No laundry rooms.
Man, the part of me that’s a dad with a daughter is definitely having some internal “‘I love you’?! You two dorks are A) still kids, B) have been dating for two days, and C) have known each other less than a year. Pump the fuckin’ brakes already!”
The part of me that remembers being a teenage dorkus of a college freshman knows that’s par for the course, and that yelling at them about it doesn’t help, but private mockery can and should continue.
Yeah, the dynamic is pretty understandable. Joyce has been in two actual relationships, and both of them have sort of been her fantasy. Joe really wanted to do things right and not have a casual hookup, so he pumped the brakes at prudent spots, made sure to get enthusiastic consent, etc.
For all that Joyce realizing she’s queer is healthy, two people coming to that realization about each other simultaneously is a wildly different dynamic, because it’s like a part of you that used to confuse you finally makes sense. Neither of them really want to take anything slowly, because why would you want that when you think you finally figured yourself out?
It’s certainly culturally constructed, no disagreement there.
I think a lot of the REASON that the culture in many English-speaking nations is weird about it is that it’s one word that covers a lot of different states in a language that has no real remaining formality markers — like, where something like Russian allows you to distinguish between любовь, страсть, влюблённость, обожания, and влечение (and a couple others!).
So at least in terms of my post, I’m generally advising my kid that sometimes people say “Love you” and mean “as a friend” or “as a romantic partner” or “as a sexual object” or even “as someone I’m still in NRE with and who knows what my long-term feelings are after the initial hormonal burst fades” and you gotta make sure you’re on the same page before you say it back.
Right… in Spanish, I think you’d use “te amo” and “te quiero” in different contexts, for example. Those both translate to “I love you in English, but one carries the connotation of a deeper, more personal, and possibly more intimate type of love. In English, the meaning of phrases like “I love you,” “I adore you,” etc. is a lot looser, so it’s a lot more important to ensure that if you and someone else are saying them to each other you need to both be meaning the same things when you do, because otherwise someone might get hurt. That results in a greater social importance placed on the weight of the word.
Learning japanese is a trip cuz I learned Dai simply means Big, or large quantity of.
Which made me realize
“suki” I like you
“Daisuki” I like you a LOT
and of course
Aishiteru “I love you”
For the record, it does depend somewhat on context. Western fandom has genuinely made a bit too much out of 愛してる, especially western shipping fandom that reallllllly wants every use of “love” to be not just explicitly and only romantic but “she wouldn’t even SAY that if she didn’t psychically know he feels the same way about her!!!!”, which is just wishful thinking combined with misinformation.
(For the record, 愛する and its variants do in fact sometimes get used by family members in perfectly platonic ways. Like everything big and dramatic, it’s more common in fiction, but it happens even in fiction that’s trying to be more grounded. It’s not a casual thing, it’s definitely something that happens when characters are having a moment of “I know I haven’t always been demonstrative, but just so you know, I do love you.”
But “always and forever romantic”? No!)
Anyway like with everything else, you still gotta take into account the characters’ personalities — there are a LOT of characters who will make even big romantic declarations with a simple 好きだ!
But yeah, different words still exist X3 I was just also definitely guilty of some simplification in my earlier comment.
That’s interesting to me, because the way (middle/high school) Spanish is taught in the area of the US I grew up in, there’s a LOT of care around the distinction between te amo and te quiero. Granted, I had exactly one year of that before I had four years of French, which has the same lack of linguistic distinctions as English but seems to be culturally less hung up on it.
I think it’s mostly that last. It feels important and significant to say it, like you’re moving the relationship to a new stage, but especially when you’re a teen without a lot of relationship experience it’s really hard to tell the rush of infatuation from real long term love.
And then what do you do if your partner says it and you don’t feel it back? As we saw with Walky & Lucy. Especially early on, when things are still developing. Do you say it and basically lie? Do you refuse and deal with a “you don’t love me?” confrontation?
Folks, Joyce can’t take this as an opportunity to go talk to Joe, because she has math class. With Walky, who is being made to go to class by his excellent roommate Booster.
my absolute dream would be for Lucy and Walky to reconnect as friends and for Lucy to help Walky finally finally FINALLY acknowledge that how Dorothy treated him was unacceptable.
Heck, as much as it needed to happen and he definitely went on to a better understanding of himself and a healthier relationship, how Dorothy treated Danny wasn’t great either.
Very true, although Lucy doesn’t really know that. It’d be fun to see Danny and Joe hash it out once Danny learns what happened, though. Maybe throw in Sal for extra juiciness.
Honestly sure she had a crush on him the whole time but they did have a really nice, casual friendship. Walky talked about how he couldn’t be nothing with Lucy but honestly? That was his most normal friendship. That was literally the only one where they could just link up to watch cartoons and shoot the shit, no drama. Sounds like he could be nothing with her before they dated. I hope they can go back to that, Lucy’s crush is dead now and I doubt Jake’s the jealous type
I’m having trouble pinpointing anything Dorothy had to do with Lucy breaking up with Walky. They went to church together, he said something that made her realize their relationship was completely one-sided, and she broke it off.
Other way around. She helped get them together by telling Walky Lucy was interested. It’s strongly implied she did that because she was already being tempted to get back together with Walky.
In retrospect, it’s not entirely clear whether she was already in a subconscious “deflect from interest in Joyce” phase or if she was genuine about it then.
People are always gonna have discussions that aren’t just sunshine and unicorn farts hater thread or no; its not targeted harassment just because someone had a more negative take
You’re ththe one trying to arbitrate where people are or aren’t allowed to express things. You can’t just sequester any opionion you don’t like into some hypothetical corner, lol.
“You’re ththe one trying to arbitrate where people are or aren’t allowed to express things.”
Funny, the only place I did that was just quoting Dot from the Hater thread as a means of showing hypocrisy, but don’t worry, your clique’s coming out to attack me as a group has just deterred me from commenting in the future. Excellent bullying, very toxic, I’m sure y’all are high fiving on discord.
Lucy had been struggling for months to say something about her feelings to Walky. That period was only a nice normal friendship from Walky’s PoV, from Lucy’s it was a form of slow torment, and she would have said something eventually.
Like sure, Dorothy’s actions and motives there were sketchy, but she did not singlehandedly ruin a platonic friendship by making Walky aware of Lucy’s crush.
I think she did but not by any fault of her own. Jennifer put it best. Dorothy doesn’t quite recognize the hold she still has over walky. If booster or amber had told him about Lucy he might have been like “yeah whatever” but because it was Dorothy, someone who’s opinion and judgement he places in high regard I feel like he was more inclined to follow her advice. Now it’s not Dorothy’s fault walky puts her on a pedestal anymore than I think its walky’s fault that Lucy puts him on a pedestal. I wouldn’t say dorothy ruined their friendship per se but I think having them get together in the way they did may have changed their dynamic too fast/too drastically and cracks started to form.
Oh I wasn’t imagining anyone else saying anything.
I am saying that what they had while Lucy was passive-aggressively pining after Walky was not a platonic friendship, therefore Dorothy pointing things out to Walky didn’t ruin a platonic friendship. It just destroyed Walky’s illusion of a platonic friendship.
That raises an interesting question. Can a friendship be platonic if one member of the friendship is pining after the other? I always saw Platonic as a state of being rather than a state of mind. Like if youre crushing in someone and they’ve made it apparent they don’t want to be in a romantic or sexual relationship and you respect that while still holding a torch for them cuz feelings aren’t something you can turn off and on, is your relationship with that person still platonic?
I mean, my answer to that is kind of nuanced? Assuming a two-person relationship here for brevity:
I think that, as an omniscient narrator, I would not describe a relationship as “platonic” if there were secret romantic feelings on one side of it.
But by the same token, I would never describe a relationship as “romantic” if there weren’t romantic feelings on both sides of it.
What Walky and Lucy had prior to Dorothy opening her mouth was a relationship of asymmetric feelings, where Walky thought it was a platonic friendship and Lucy secretly wanted it to be a romantic relationship.
I’m not implying any malicious intent on Dorothy’s part. Obviously Lucy would have said something eventually and that would have been its own drama, but Dorothy accelerated that for ultimately selfish purposes. Dorothy isn’t evil, but she acted carelessly like she often does with regards to Walky, so I feel comfortable putting a lot of the blame on her.
I just think it’s unfair to say she ruined a “nice, normal” friendship, when Lucy and Walky never had a “nice, normal” friendship.
If anything I think they have a much better chance of actually having a friendship now that Lucy is no longer secretly pining after an oblivious Walky.
like I wasn’t talking about Dorothy’s intent at all, I was talking about her inability to destroy something that didn’t actually exist prior to her meddling.
Slow torment sounds a little dramatic to describe working up the courage to admit a possibly unrequited crush to a friend. I had a ton of unrequited crushes on a ton of friends in highschool, id never describe our hangouts as slow torment. I just liked being in their company
I also feel the need to add that I don’t mean to imply that unrequited feelings are inherently tormenting.
It’s more the secret-keeping, and the anxiety around the secret, that make the situation so unpleasant.
I’ve always personally found it a relief once the feelings are out in the open, regardless of reception. Rejections are sad, but at least you know and can start moving on emotionally.
I recognize this emotion from my wife’s and my early relationship, but after dating for 49 years this October we can spend long periods apart now without pain.
oh this is such a mood
I get this with friends too
re:poll missed it yesterday but my answer would have been
“Thursday”
was gonna go for the other one and then I read it fully through and realized it was a timezone joke
like c’mon, thanksgiving was last month, how could it be today yesterday?
Not sure where to make a Patreon suggestion, so I’ll just drop it here.
You know who could use a break? “Other Rachel”. After seeing her pinup image on Kemono.Cr, it occurs to me she could stand to find a little luvvin’ amongst all the plippity-plip of hormones raining down elsewhere inside her own dorm building.
Compared to the other ladies on her floor, she’s certainly not a flashy standout: by artist design, she’s short, a bit beefy and not generously curvy. But what’s wrong with a little Christmastime happy ending story for her?
Yesterday I read Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki! It’s a wonderfully-illustrated book about a messy, toxic gay relationship between two women which hit very close to home. I was able to write up a review for my blog, which is always nice to have happen. Right now I’m reading some old Forever People comics by Jack Kirby bc it’s a good comic to read while you’re stoned, but tomorrow I think I’ll start in on Wonder Woman: Dead Earth by Daniel Warren Johnson.
i can’t wait for joyce to say something like “what do you think of these names for our future children?” and dorothy to just have a record-scratch moment as she realizes what these “married forever” comments from joyce really mean
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yaaaay they finally gonna be interacting with characters other than each other! XD
Is Sarah nothing to you?!?
true but that was still so long ag XD
What about Lucy?
That was a panel.
That’s a good point, actually. She had to go find Lucy to share too much information. Did that take less time than the space between panels four and six?
Probably not, especially since she then got soft serve and ran into Raidah.
But my comment was more about the finally gonna be interacting with other character part of the comment above than the comic itself saying this is the longest time apart.
Eh it was two weeks ago.
In universe, that was yesterday.
And yesterday’s goooooooooonnnne
*Foreigner intensifies*
Are you wearing the belt? It only counts if someone here is wearing the belt.
“I understood that reference”, but in the voice of Master Shake
Nope, some joker left it on Head Games again.
Yeay maybe the grumpy folks can stop sharing their grumpyness in the comments!
Seems unlikely.
Nah, doing it is a real hoot and a half. 🙂
Never!
I live here
Not gonna happen
Not gonna happen. I’ve been a grump for going on 60 years, I don’t think that’s going to change soon.
We admire your dedication.
so long , so so long
but… forever ? are you really sure ? it’s been like 2 days.
I mean, Sapphics are known to move fast, but 2 days is a bit much.
I say this AS a confirmed U-Haul Sapphic myself.
Like, I have absolutely no ground to stand on.
Like Walky said they’vw basically already been married forever.
Yep, they’re already hitched up. Only stuff left is ceremonies, paperwork, and so much sex. One thing in progress; they’ll get to the other two things eventually.
My money is on Dorothy seeing to the paperwork next. By the books proper protocol kinda person as seems to be.
I’m thinkin’ you’re right.
Yeah, and moving fast can bite us in the ass. I fell in love on the first date earlier this year, and it was a wonderful experience for about three weeks before the most predictable heartbreak of my life somehow snuck up on me.
That sucks. Heartbreak is always awful, predictable or not.
In my case (of U-Hauling, not heartbreak, fortunately), she and I had known each other for years and had been BFFs for the past two before she finally asked me out… a month after we’d both graduated from undergrad college.
One reason I’m so invested in Joyce and Dorothy is because their story – college best friends unexpectedly (to them anyway) becoming lovers – is because that’s also my story. They tug on some very deep emotions for me. Yes, even when they’re being cringe. Actually, given how cringe I can be, maybe especially then.
People will take different things from stories. I think it is lovely that Joyce and Dorothy resonate so deeply with you and remind you so much of your own life, and my own feelings on the pairing aside I think that’s something to celebrate.
As a sister U-Hauler, I was like “…oh. It’s you.” and it wasn’t even two days, lol.
Yes, it Has Been A Minute and yes, we’re still together.
For me, it was a week between first date and “I love you”. And then 4 months to moving in together. And it only took that long because we lived eight hours apart with an entire other state between the ones where we lived.
Love the hat continuity! Love the yearning! Love these two! Chef’s kiss.
Hopefully they won’t need to run from anymore cops any time soon.
Let’s hope not.
How many copies of that hat is Joyce really likely to find?
“Grey beanie” is hardly something you need to go to a specialty haberdasher for
well seemingly she couldn’t find a hat that matched the exact color of the old one, since the new one’s lighter! the old one was close to PMS 5285 while this new one is like… PMS Cool Gray 6?
I for one appreciate your thorough understanding of colour value labels.
not hard to look it up in the page edit window of Chrome, and I assume Edge.t
Bc Chrome and Edge are the same browser now.
If it’s not Opera or Firefox, it’s almost certainly Chrome under the hood.
oof
NRE + soulmate energy comedown is real
NRE = New Relationship Energy? If so, can confirm.
Love you more than most
Soon it’ll be even longer!
Alright that tears it.
Hater containment thread ⬇️ kvetch here, don’t ruin the shippers’ fun.
I am so fucking bored of these two not doing anything besides being cute and sweet, I’m sorry.
FINALLY they gonna be interacting with characters other than each other, hopefully all storyline
hava NAGILA
hava NAGILA
hava HAGILA ve nismeha!
As am I, and I’m not sorry.
I want to see Joyce interact more with people who care about something more than what happened on the front page of the paper.
I think it’s good that Willis added in characters critiquing the optics of the protest kiss as a bit of triage for his own failings there, but it’s had the knock-on effect of kind of flattening all the drama regarding the kiss to just the optics of it being at an anti-genocide protest while the cheating has gone to the wayside. It would be a bigger deal in a college friend group than it so far has been presented to be!
I don’t recognize any failings.
Out! Out!
That’s great buddy, but this isn’t the thread for you
It is genuinely not hard to interact with this thread as a non-hater, BarerMender. You just keep tripping over a super low bar.
To be fair, it’s not like the haters keep the hate in the containment thread, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
It’s not *supposed* to contain all negativity ever, it’s supposed to specifically contain repetitive minor complaining about Joyce/Dorothy.
Also “some people who dislike Joyce/Dorothy are being rude to me, so I’m gonna go be rude to the people who go out of their way to be polite about it” is a bad strategy for peaceful comment section navigation.
Yeah, that’s the stuff that isn’t getting contained. The repetitive “I’m looking for reasons to derail other comment threads to hate on the protagonist and her girlfriend.”
Also “rules for thee not for me” is also not a good strategy for a peaceful comment section. If someone’s gonna complain about BarerMender’s comment, they sure as sugar shouldn’t be hating willy nily outside of the thread. (to be clear I am not pointing fingers at you)
As I have said over, and over, and over, the containment thread is for kvetching and insubstantial complaining about DoJo and the direction of the story. It has not, and has never been, a catchall for any and all critique, including substantive critique, of the strip or characters. What you need to do here, rather than vaguing me in my own thread, is to turn down your sensitivity and come to terms with the fact that not all critique of these characters counts as “hating.”
@Vaishino
1) you may or may not note (but it’s pretty much fact) that the volume of non-substantial “I hate these two” posts outside the containment thread is a FRACTION of what it was prior to Dot starting this.
2) BarerMender is the rare repeat offender who seems to mostly/only post pro-Doyce shots in the containment thread.
3) pretty sure all of us snarking at BM are 100% committed to only posting substantive discussion outside the thread since it was incepted.
“Hey, you haven’t ever done a cheating story, have you?”
“No, not really my thing.”
“You should try it.”
*writes a story in which only one person¹ actually calls the cheaters out for that, and is dismissed/ignored*
“… nailed it.” *fistpump*
(me, reading: “y’know what, your instincts were right the first time. in the future, just stick with that.”)
¹ so far, anyway
Imagine if Willis wrote a story with real cheating in it!
Well they made out with each other while both being in relationships with other people…so yeah, it had actual cheating. Not to mention Joyce has left Joe dangling in regards to a will they/won’t they on a poly relationship (And yes, dangling. Joyce didn’t give a definitive no, and in fact said that she’d be back to give him an answer, which she has not) and has as of now neglected to let her knew “true love” know that she isn’t 100% broken-up with the guy she was seeing beforehand.
I believe Willis has a plan.
Specifically, I believe Joyce will cheat on Dorothy with Joe.
@Miroku idk how long you’ve been in the comments, but people have been debating in here for months over what you just said “actually counts” as cheating, and whether or not Joyce has “actually” broken up with Joe. The fact these debates have room to exist at all is a failure to properly execute the cheating bit, IMO. I personally have other issues with it (the cheating is bland, boring, and as of right now completely perfunctory to the story), but that is one opinion among many.
Imagine indeed.
@C.T Phipps: I’ve been arguing for that too, though I don’t expect it at all.
It would be a hilarious meta twist for the Kiss to not be the cheating story Willis was talking about.
Joyce and Dorothy both called their OWN ACTIONS cheating.
They have. That’s part of what’s causing the conflict. The characters and the narrative are both calling it cheating and minimizing it at the same time.
The actions definitely cross the line, but they do so about as minimally as is possible and the reactions all around go even farther – treating it more as a break up then anything.
Honestly, I think you could say as much as 75% of the non-bigoted dissatisfaction is coming from a place of “I was told there would be cheating, not a coming-out storyline where the cheating is so mild and quickly resolved that there’ll be debates on whether there was cheating at all even when everyone involved in-universe has used that word.” (the other 75% of the dissatisfaction is a combination of “Joeyce shippers who feel shortchanged” and “people who thought Joyce had become better than whatever this is”.)
Definitely in the “I wanted an earth shattering kaboom of cheating drama and not this Schrodinger’s infidelity instead” camp.
I actually got a lot more comfortable with this arc when I decided to think about it as more of Willis dipping their toes into writing cheating stories and not really committing to the mess.
I know I’d be a lot more into the story if the cheating was actually treated like cheating instead of like what we’d get after time skipping past all of the previous relationship degradation and (almost) all of the current relationship buildup at some point between the date with Joe and the tear gas wedding.
fully beside the point but I giggled a little at 150% dissatisfaction total you wound up with
@Li One of those old-internet jokes I can’t let die. It ALWAYS adds up to 150%!
Imo its less about that, and more about the cheating being completely irrelevant to where the story is at now. All the Consequences(tm) these two are lined up for would have been here waiting for them even if they had “done the right thing” and properly broken up with their boyfriends, because the fallout of their actions is completely disconnected from the cheating.
I shall heed the risk of writing a comment way too long and shant say more (and I already wrote what I think about it elsewhere on my tumblr).
I mean, I think that’s roughly what I’m trying to imply with “it’s not a cheating story, it’s a coming out story” — the tension between those two is especially hard to cope with, given that it’s kind of an asshole move to be irritated about a cute drama-free coming-out story, but as you say all the Consequences are so far focused on either “other people” or “the coming-out bits” or “the political/protest bits”.
Heh, somehow I thought this was a reply to my comment and not to StClair, but meh, nothing wrong with a lil’ yes-and.
And that’s because everything about the cheating aspect was minimized – from the cheating itself, to the consequences and reactions.
That’s basically been my complaint – most of this sequence of events would have played out exactly the same if Dorothy and Joyce had been single when they kissed, and the chorus of people saying “well I thought you wanted consequences” anytime something bad happens which is not actually related to the cheating doesn’t help matters.
also also, with regards to the latter, none of the “consequences” are coming back on them – they get to stroll/skip through the chaos holding hands and schmoopily gazing into each other’s eyes, soaking in their sappy sapphic NRE, while everyone else in their friend group deals with the fallout.
By consequences, do people mean that they want some big things to happen, narratively, as a specific result of the cheating?
Or that they want Dorothy and Joyce to be narratively punished for their self-described-as-cheatin’ ways?
Because I thought people wanted the first one, but now I think people want consequences that specifically negatively impact Joyce and Dorothy, do I have that right?
(Tone is not accusatory; I’m genuinely curious how people are reacting to the story.)
(Meant to also have italics on *big things to happen*.)
Negative things happening to Joyce and Dorothy as consequences of their cheating isn’t necessarily a punishment, but a natural conclusion, especially in a college-age friend group.
@Leorale Speaking only for myself, there’s two points.
Firstly, I don’t want Dorothy and Joyce to be punished, I want their choices to actually mean something and for the narrative to fully commit to taking those choices seriously. Right now, as said above, the cheating is completely irrelevant to the story, to the point that removing it would change nothing about the outcomes we’ve seen so far. What that does is *damage Joyce and Dorothy’s agency as characters*. If all that matters is the result and not how they got there, i.e., the whats and the whys and the hows of their choices, then their choices are rendered irrelevant. This is one of the biggest reasons I’ve said they’re an incredibly boring couple. It’s not just that they’ve been super saccharine, but that there’s nothing else to them right now BUT that, because nothing else they’ve chosen to do has been met with any ripple effects within the narrative, only the result has. I am specifically referring to relationship ripples here and not the protest stuff because that is a whole different can of worms.
Secondly, for me, narrative consequences for Joyce and Dorothy are actually secondary – what I want is for Joe, the *only character in the main cast who explicitly has cheating trauma as THE core feature that informs literally ALL of his other character traits, the foundation upon which they are built*, to have more than a “well, this sucks” reaction, which is indistinguishable from just having his heart broken by any old break up. Making the “I hate cheating” character in your cast get cheated on is the easiest layup in the world, so the fact his reaction has been so muted, that he’s holding himself together is, to me, a massive squandering of his narrative potential.
Hence why I am hoping I’m wrong when the shoe on this drops in the next chapter or two, and we circle back to see that no, actually, Joe’s very first love and first relationship ending with him being cheated on just like his mother fucking suuuuucks actually.
Very cool, thank you.
Do something interestiiiiiing, c’mooooon!
yeah…. it’s monday morning so I was hoping they’d have atleast passed their friends by now but I guess not. Like I don’t hate this ship at all but it’s kinda feeling like fluff with how seperated they’re beginning to feel from everyone else though I guess they’re properly setting up a contrast between how absolutely terrible Walky is doing compared to Dot & Joyce right now.
But again, atleast it’s monday morning so I know they’re going to have to face her friends sooner or later just cuz of shared classes.
They feel like filler. Not even the good kind. This is no zanpakuto rebellion filler, this is fucken. Don kanonji making a sentai squad filler. Naruto fighting an ostrich or w/e idk I don’t watch naruto
You don’t watch Naruto, but that show has the perfect track, “Afternoon of Konoha”, that they use in all their filler episodes, and it’s perfect bgm for whenever we just get a DoJo comic with nothing else going on.
This whole “hey we’re physically separated for the first time in hours” being a worry for Joyce is at least interesting, since 100% of the times she’s been separated from Dorothy since the protest, she has been alone with Joe and ~50% of those resulted in sexy times.
I wonder if Joyce deep-down KNOWS she has this tendency to have romantic object permanence problems.
I would certainly like to see her stumble her way into some increased self awareness, yes.
Idk if this counts as kvetching, but I thought they had their first class of the day together for some reason lol
It’s Monday, so Joyce has math. I’m not sure if we know what Dorothy is going off to take here.
They have polisci on tuesdays I believe.
Silver lining: if they are going to different classes, then they cannot bog down the comic with thirty more consecutive strips of Repetitive Schmaltz.
Thirty consecutive strips of alternating Joyce and Dorothy bemoaning that they’ve been separated too long.
Also, less a Hater Moment and more of an Editor Brain Moment, I think there’s a bit of a proofreading gaff that fell through the cracks – Joyce says this is the longest away she’s been from Dorothy, but we saw her yesterday away from Dorothy when she was getting soft-served and Missing Raidah’s Fucking Point. And, notably, without any of the Joyce-brand clinginess that we’re setting up the the punchline of this comic, which only highlights the discordance between the scenes.
Now, this does confirm that the Raidah scene was a post hoc insert, but it’s also a good example of post hoc scenes can’t just be tossed in willy-nilly and the surrounding story needs to be tweaked to accommodate their existence, because otherwise you have a two thirds of the strip completely failing to recognize the other third of the strips, because that last third didn’t exist at the time of writing. There’s a seam between the two that’s minor, but noticeable.
This isn’t a Dunk on Willis moment even though it’s in the hater thread, shit happens, stuff gets shuffled, and I have seen so much worse when it comes to proofreading in webcomics. Just a Leo Pointing moment on behalf of my editor brain.
To be fair, she was also away from Dorothy longer than this when they went off to talk to Walky and Joe, so even without the scene with Raidah she would’ve been wrong. Counterpoint to my own point, she was just getting ice cream when Raidah talked to her, which isn’t directly related to getting to fuck Dorothy, but breaking up with their boyfriends is.
I think that you’re right, that this was likely a continuity issue from inserting strips, but it can still work if Joyce is just saying something poorly thought through / factually incorrect about how she loves Dorothy. She does that sometimes, especially regarding timelines (she claimed, retroactively, that she fell in love with Dorothy at first sight).
I’ma blame the unreliable narrator.
That, or she thinks the softserve was Dorothy.
I wanna hate the schmaltzy stuff, but dammit am I weak to it.
Lucky
Finally they are separated. I’m ready for saccharine free strips.
Joyce, are you doing that thing where you make your whole identity based on your current fixation ..?
When does her Dorothy-themed wardrobe arrive? Maybe she couldn’t afford expedited shipping this time.
Her “Dorothy-themed wardrobe” has been her literally stealing Dorothy’s clothes lol
A highly effective strategy.
Dorothy’s clothes, plus the signature jacket that Dorothy picked out for her. She’s got this one on lock.
Finally, I get to post in one of these. This isn’t so much a hater comment, but more of a “I’ve been oscillating between annoyed and bored with these two for months and I’m looking forward to them finally interacting with other characters outside of each other so they actually feel like three-dimensional characters again” comment. We’ll have to see how long that holds.
I don’t even care what they do. They could be the biggest asses ever to the people around them and I would eat that up compared to the fiftieth round of smoochy-face
My enclosure is a sad concrete box right now! I need keys jangled for me!!
Lemme just roll you a pumpkin filled with ground beef into there.
I owe u my life
A pumpkin filled with ground beef? I’m terrified but interested in your recipe.
I mean, Donovan is BASICALLY a zoo tiger, right? That seems like the sort of thing that’d add some hilarious enrichment to the enclosure of ANY large predator.
Like a tiger I am ungovernable by man and my soul is beyond kenning
ah yeah that’d basically stuffed gord ya speakin of, it good :9
Drama! Please! (As long as Joyce doesn’t say some shit like her white queerness is more important than genocide again that was a real bad day for me)
In Joyce’s defense, I don’t think she was aware that was what she was saying. Had someone put it to her directly like that, I suspect she would have been like “oh, oh god no.” The only reason she said that to Raidah is because she (Joyce) is probably oblivious to the reason for the protest. She was there just to protect her sister, then she saw Dorothy. I would not be shocked if the reason for the protest was not something that ever entered her mind as a serious concern.
If one does not know that, it can certainly come off as self centered and self important, so it is not like I blame Raidah for taking that comment as intentionally harmful when it might be better described as being made in ignorance, or at least with tunnel vision mode activated.
I really don’t think what Joyce said in that strip is at all defensible. It’s one of the most shitheaded things she’s done lately.
Oh yeah she definitely didn’t *mean* “my white gayness is more important than genocide”, but intention aside that is what she said. And the comments defending that moment really sucked
She didn’t mean it, but she also didn’t not mean it. I do think it’s somewhat reasonable she wasn’t thinking in terms of the genocide, since Raidah had just brought up the photo but in terms of “You’re not going to be able to work in your field because you’re gay!”, not in terms of distracting from the protests.
This.
Like it was an incredibly shitty thing to say and it was MEANT to be an incredibly shitty thing to say. Unfortunately I also get why her brain went where it did.
What Li said. This is one of the things that I’m confident that Willis did entirely deliberately and intends to have Joyce get checked on it.
Well, that’s because Raidah can’t just be simply wrong. She has to go the extra mile in order to Not Even Wrong territory, a space normally occupied by anti-evolutionists.
She starts from a bad premise, applies faulty reasoning, and then her conclusion makes no sense even with those two factored in. And then some portion of the commentariat lauds her for telling hard truths, and I’m left befuddled.
Oh I buy that for sure. I don’t think Joyce was meant to be in the right there. The biggest problem was that not everyone seemed to agree on that. A white 18 year old recent ex fundie from bumfuck Midwestville saying some out of pocket tone deaf shit like that is to be expected. The amount of grown ass adults who should know better arguing on her behalf saying she did nothing wrong (on the Patreon at least, since comments were off when it reaches the main site) was the really bad part. I dont wanna see that happen again
As I’m not on the Patreon, I didn’t see any of that.
Wow, that’s… wow.
Sheesh, that was the patreon comments? It’s hard to imagine them being worse than the ones here, but I keep hearing horror stories.
We made it to 72 hours this time!
I refuse to be bamboozled again that we’ll get a stretch of comics that aren’t “Joyce/Dorothy smooch page #85”
I refuse the bamboozling I yells ya
I’m sure Willis still wants us readers to find this cute, but it still doesn’t work for me because of Doyce’s shitty behavior during and after they got together. That includes the stuff they did at the anti-genocide protest, which they apparently can reference without even realizing the harm they did to other characters with their actions there.
I think we’re about to see whether or not Willis’s goal is for everyone to find this cute.
Understandably too long of a delay for loads of people, but as has been pointed out: Joyce shares this class with Walky, Lucy, and Sal.
Hey, did you hear you’re Lead Hater now? Does the title come with a cool hat?
Did someone actually call me that lol
Yuuuuup. I’m actually jealous.
Bring me a soda, peasant.
I think I’d rather be your arch-nemesis, actually.
(adjusts cooler, black version of Dot’s “Lead Hater” hat to make it sit at a more rakish angle)
This rebellion will not go unpunished.
Since Big Z is busy being an arch-nemesis, what kind of soda do you want?
Sprite, please, or a lemon-lime equivalent.
will mountain dew, perhaps?
Actually no I don’t like Mountain Dew. Starry is fine in a pinch, though.
Citrus sodas are just Dirty Dr. Pepper with fewer steps.
As Lead Hater I’ll have you arrested for saying that.
Man we’re not even a day into this arc and we ALREADY hit the point where we had to team up to take down a greater villain?
Yay, missed the thread
Thank fucking god they’re gonna be forced to spend a few hours apart, maybe they can be interesting again. Then again last time she was away from Dotty Joyce said the most triggeringly racist bs I’ve ever seen come from her mouth so. Let’s just hope she doesn’t bother any brown women. Maybe if I’m really lucky Joe will get to exist again
No kvetching from me here aside from me being so happy they’ll finally stop eyefuckijg each other
Love your AWW profile pic tho
Aww, they’re so sweet! I know how you feel, last panel Joyce. Being apart sucks.
Ha! I have defeated your poll by not noticing it until today!
I just forgot to show up yesterday. Whoops?
I have waited until 12:13 Friday so I could lie and vote Thanksgiving.
As a non-USAvian, I didn’t know it was thanksgiving. Who thanks who for what, or does everyone just eat and drink too much and spend a fucktonne of money. Sorry, a fuckton.
It’s the day that USAicans eat US Avians, which are turkey birds
(yeah okay, we’re supposed to be thankful that we have so much food, but mostly like all US holidays it’s about eating too much and spending money)
Apparently, consumer surveys show about 40 percent of Americans had ham yesterday.
The ham/turkey divide is one of those great dichotomies that most people never realize is a dichotomy because they’ve only encountered people on their own side of it.
Is it regional? Turkey seems more traditional and more tied to Thanksgiving iconography specifically.
While ham and other roasts compete more broadly with turkey for Christmas dinner.
See, my family says “fuck convention and turkey in general” and has chicken instead.
Rotisserie chicken when we’re with the extended family, and fresh homemade buffalo chicken wings when it’s just our immediate family.
Mine often has lasagna, of all things, because it’s just as decadent and delicious and food-coma inducing, requires a similar amount of time and preparation, and is – for those of us who attend more than one dinner around this time – not More Turkey.
I did have an Italian friend in my college years who I ate with a few holidays who did lasagna – though I can’t remember this many years later if those were Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Turkey is the worst meat. Too easy to over or undercook. Dry poultry is sad, undercooked poultry is disgusting.
If I’m cooking it myself, beef. Roast beef is so much easier to monitor for “doneness”, and if it’s a little rare, it’s only more delicious.
Turkey is the MOST DIFFICULT meat, but the rewards of doing it correctly outweigh the skill curve (assuming one is committed to making GOOD turkey, which I am).
But roast beef is delicious and takes so much less time to cook!
I’m not arguing that point, mind you, but I just really love properly done turkey.
My original post before I edited it way down was a lot more “if I’m cooking, I turn into someone who hates all poultry”.
I like the way chicken tastes and turkey CAN be totally fine, I think they’re both generally a lot milder flavor-wise than other options.
But my attempts to cook them have been so unpleasant. 😭
I thought it was pretty universally agreed that turkey takes way too long to cook and is too easy to mess up, to be worthwhile. But I respect your dedication to Good Turkey.
Ham is so much better than turkey it’s not even funny. I feel like I’ll eat one slice of turkey as a sign of tradition and then load up on the ham.
As a non American, it’s the dayish before everything goes on sale for Christmas presents. Most black Friday sales start before that but not all apparently
Plus some other countries have thanksgivings of their own on different days — Canada and Australia I think both have a day called Thanksgiving? But I might be misremembering about Australia, it might be a different country.
In 1620, a bunch of religious extremists, who happen to have been my ancestors, immigrated to America without permission, set up a compound under religious law, and refused to assimilate into the culture or adopt the dominant language or religion. Thanksgiving is the federal holiday when we celebrate their needing to take welfare from Americans to survive.
That is both a more accurate and more charitable view than I usually give the holiday.
The commentariat, on balance, respectfully disagree.
… but it’s already not Thanksgiving. It’s Black Friday.
Why did the poll not accommodate me forgetting to check the comic all day?
Also, why is Friday black? I can’t imagine it’s the whole of the USA spending money to celebrate its own diversity of people of colour…
I don’t know if this is apocryphal, but theoretically it’s the day that companies have made enough sales in a year to start making a profit, and this are ‘in the black’ instead of red.
That’s corporate propaganda to feed the consumerist narrative. It was originally named “Black Friday” by the retail workers who had to work it, because IT IS HELL!
It’s because that’s the day when people stand in line all night to make a run for all the cheap stuff offered during the day. I think people have been trampled to death when stores opened.
This is me when my wife goes to work on Monday
Nothing clingy about Joyce.
It’s sweet in isolation but in the context of them only being a couple for a day and some change… yeesh. I’m the biggest cuddlebug you ever will see, but even I don’t get this clingy until a few months in.
(Obligatory yes this relationship was simmering for months, doesn’t make it less odd)
Yes Dot, for a couple who have only just met and barely knew each other beforehand it’s amazing how clingy Joyce is being. Have you considered you’re the odd one out here? Or considered that Joyce’s entire life as we knew it when we first met her has changed? The one constant in all of that has been her friendship with Dorothy. Even her best childhood friend hasn’t turned out to be who she thought she was. I don’t blame her in the slightest for clinging to her single point of stability in this whole mess. But hey, that’s just me, I’m a weirdo.
This feels disproportiinately hostile
Everyone is “so fucking bored” of reading the lead hater leading more hate. KtBear isn’t being hostile, they’re being exasperated
So we have the people who are tired of the cuteness, and people who are tired of the people who are tired of the cuteness saying so, even in a single thread set aside for that. So the first group should just… not say anything, anywhere. Do I have that right?
This isn’t the kvetching thread, just thought that might have been missed here; it’s in response to someone who (ostensibly) doesn’t see a problem with Joyce’s behaviour.
I’m personally less concerned with keeping negativity isolated to said thread the more people come into said thread and dump content-less arguments against the negativity.
She wasn’t even hating here?
also ‘lead hater’ lmao she’s not anyone’s leader
it’s double funny because Dot is consistently among the politest commenters when it comes to, as she’d say, kvetching. Dot only really gets short with people when they’re engaging in obvious caucasity, or messing up peoples’ pronouns.
It’s triple funny because the original point of “hater containment” was to keep all the “I just dislike this, in a vaccuum” comments in one place, but a fair number of people seem to think it also should mean that NO negativity of any kind should be allowed outside it, even if it’s in-context for a discussion.
Yeah I’ve been pretty consistent in saying that the containment thread is for insubstantial kvetching first and foremost, I’ve always been supportive of substantive conversations happening elsewhere between reasonable people with disagreements.
Drop and give me twenty
Ma’am, yes ma’am!
Lmfao. Lead hater. Lol, lmao even
Holy shit you’re not calling DOT of all people the lead hater, the one trying to make the comments more enjoyable for YOU people.
Im remembering your name and I’ll make sure you get plenty of bongoing
Stay good, Jay, stay good.
I do love the idea that, in a comment space that specifically has a “hater containment thread”, that Dot might be the “odd one out”.
I mean, she’s clearly not the odd one out considering the thread of people who agree with her, who are usually all over the comments when she’s not around to keep it concentrated in one place. No need to be an asshole here bc someone doesn’t like your otp. Yeah, you ARE being a weirdo
Given the pushback you got here, I think we’ve figured out who the odd-one-out is. It’s kind of an irrelevant piece of information, but it seemed important to you so I’m glad we got that all sorted!
More like it’s amazing how clingy Joyce is being when a) she wasn’t like this in previous relationships, or even when she feared Ryan could show up at any moment, b) they’ve been in a relationship for all of a day and a half, and c) for all the jokes about how attached she was to Dorothy, she actually did spend a lot of time not with her up until this relationship began. Literally the entire reason Dorothy first started realizing her feelings for Joyce was because Joyce was now spending less time with her and preparing to get railed by her boyfriend. So yes, Joyce going “oh gosh it feels so wrong to separate from my girlfriend for the time span of one class” is, indeed, weird.
Her origin as a character are in Being A Stalker.
Joyce is still Joyce, only her circumstances have changed, and Being Creepy And Obsessed With (the idea of) Romance has been Core Joyce since Day One.
It’s so funny being over here having followed (basically) this webcomic for 25 years and seeing people surprised at character traits that have been consistent – although not front and center – for the entire run of this iteration of the series.
I think that’s part of why I am able to detach and enjoy this so much for the sheer crapstorm
Because I remember Joyce’s origins are a bit stalkery
Ok, really stalkery
Ok, nearly horror movie material level stalkery
It’s a bit like being introduced to teen Anakin and being suddenly and strongly reminded of what his son was/will be like at that age.
“Oh, that’s right, I’d forgotten. Young Skywalkers are idiots.“
In their defense, I’m almost certain Tatooine doesn’t have public education, and even if it did, the Skywalkers wouldn’t be among the class of people who qualify.
I didn’t say they were uneducated, I said they were (whiny, angsty, lovestruck) idiots.
not unlike a good portion of this cast.
And Leia’s son falls under the heading of “Skywalker boys”. She never fell to the Dark Side, nor even showed any serious temptation. Her father, her brother, and her kid are a different story.
also true, and thank you for pointing it out/reminding me.
Also Dorothy
I always see this kind of discussion along the lines of “autistic Joyce exhibits autistic traits – we are surprised and appalled!”
For context, having intense feelings is a potential autistic trait, having a person become a special interest is also one (particularly common with autism in female-socilialised autistics apparently), experiencing “liminance” is common with autism and adhd (intense crushes that get worse in limbo/rejection circumstances).
Autism is listed as a social disorder for a reason, it comes with “socially unacceptable” or misunderstood behaviours like those listed above and more. This storyline is addressing that very well actually – how judgemental/accepting are people willing to be to the characters, how much slack do they have, what happens when the consequences of their traumas and disabilities affect others necessary, where do accommodations begin and end for social disabilities etc.
As an autistic ADHD person it can be quite hard to see how judgemental people are day in and day out, especially knowing the effects that has when you encounter it in real life.
Something not addressed yet is how those who are seen as “high masking” might actually get given less sympathy when they do mess up socially than those who are not, because they are seen as more able / less disabled and therefore more responsible for not messing up a situation. Even though that is not the case.
Anyway, sorry, bit of a digression and I have migraine brain today so I am all over the place, but I think my point is that autism and adhd contain behaviours that get labelled “stalkery”, and I don’t see that discussed or acknowledged or talked about in a rational and helpful way, with real understanding and sympathy outside the odd short video affirmations on social media.
Just to add on to everything you’ve said here which was said perfectly, “high masking” is also treated as something that’s easy which makes things difficult for everyone. When people think masking is easy, it puts down those who can’t and characterizes them as just being “lazy” or “not caring” AND masking is incredibly exhausting and frequently leads to burn out, which also goes into what you said where those who mask then get little sympathy when they become burnt out. Makes me think of when people are like “well why can’t you do *insert task here*, you were able to do it last week”. And again, leads to people putting the inability as being due to laziness or some other failing when it’s a lot more complicated than that.
My own experiences with masking usually have to do with my difficulties with auditory processing. I’ve often found that neurotypical people around me don’t understand that it takes a lot of concentration when I’m in a busy social setting in order for me to 1) filter out the sounds of crowds and other such loud noises and 2) concentrate to fulfill the proper social etiquette that is required for conversing during social events. I almost never agree to social events on a whim and require prep time in order to psych myself up because it’s a lot of work and it is difficult to explain to neurotypical people sometimes because they view it like “oh you just have to work harder to listen? Why can’t you just listen normally? It’s not hard” when going to parties, theme parks, restaurants, clubs, bars, so many of these things can be so LOUD and overwhelming and when there’s fifty million sounds around me, it makes it harder to listen to the people I’m supposed to be engaging with.
…Sorry for ranting a bit there, it’s just one of those things I don’t get a chance to commiserate on often.
Dorothy definitely being a high-masker (even to herself).
@Li: one of the reasons it’s so frustrating to see readers hold her to the impossible standards she holds herself to. I
@Holly and Doopyboop: Thanks, very helpful and worth being said.
yeeeeep
I am going to sit here and wait until after midnight to click Thanksgiving.
Mua, haha, haha.
(I have cornbread :))
Finally, my rainbow projectile vomiting problem might finally clear up.
Really might wanna get that checked out. 😂
Did they shoplift the hat?
Who knows how much that jacket cost. They may have had to!
be gay do crime is not a request.
Heed the lessons of Dina Saruyama.
Man, I get that people like Joyce and Dorothy being together, but I’m kind of getting tired of them…
Too much sugar will rot your teeth.
And leaves a bad taste in your mouth
aawwwwwwwwwwwww
I was thinking.
The Walkyverse is a big multiverse. Lots of alternate realities. Universes where drama tags are unpulled; universes with toy store owners planning world dominance are thrust into heroically saving humanity from breakfast cereal commercials, even worlds where teenagers buy each other leather jackets and hats.
There is a plush Dina for sale. Dina exists in a plush form.
Which probably means that EVERYONE, hypothetically, exists in a plush form.
Which, if so, makes it all but certain that there’s a branch of the Walkyverse in which every character exists as a Muppet version of themselves. Every character, from Joyce to Billie to Blaine to Fuckface, all exist in a felty , Muppety simulacrum of life, except for New College Transfer Student Chris Pratt, who is just real life Chris Pratt, because per the laws of the universe there has to be a famous human actor *somewhere.*
And then that got me thinking, that if there’s a branch of the Walkyverse that is almost entirely muppets, and if one of the main characters was, in another multiverse, a sentient car that had its consciousness put into an android resembling a 20something girl who can fling pies at people through a trap door in her chest, you can GUARANTEE that there’s a universe where a Joyce made almost entirely out of some space-age metal, after saying goodbye to Dorothy, transforms into a 1994 Harley-Davidson Road King and roars off into the distance because she’s late to rendezvous with Ultra Carla and Amazi-Gear as they work together to unshackle their fellow students from their parental control units and the supercomputer which controls them all like a hive mind.
And if that’s the case, I have to ask… why ya holding out on us Willis? Is that a Patreon exclusive or something? What, you give us titties, but no Transformers? That’s what the kids REALLY want!
I wasn’t paying attention. What was the question again?
Why do we have boring humans instead of Muppets or Transformers? Or Muppets who are also Transformers?
Robot tiddys
That’s why we read Questionable Content.
…and there was great rejoicing…
(Not, you know.. Re-Joyce-ing…)
Robot butts.
Now I’m thinking about the characters of Dawson’s Creek being in a brief conversation cameo in a particular muppet movie, because that’s a real thing that happened that wasn’t connected to anything else. We’ll know I’m thinking spell check sucks. If the cast of this comic were characters in Dawson’s Creek, who would be who and why?
Joyce does exist in plush form! It was a product waaaaaaaay back in the Keenspot days.
I love these two together, and I love that it feels like they’re letting each other have something they didn’t quite dare to before. “Today the people dress the way that they please / The way they tried to do in the last centuries / Closer than you know / Love each other so / Androgynous”
I hope that every comic is Joyce and Dorothy being cute from now on
Right? Like maybe these sweet kids can just have this, as a treat, before the next rape, violent kidnapping, SWATing, murder, need for violent self defense, shooting, emergency room visit, political shittery, unfair disappointed parents, disappointments for parents, battery, abuse, stabbings plural, hate crime, microaggression, accidental or ignorant racism, etc. All of them could use a break.
EXACTLY.
Wasn’t that what the whole Joyce/Walky comic offshoot was about? Did that cause a big ruckus or was it not minded because it was a side thing?
P sure it was also paywalled so you literally only got it if you *really* wanted it. It didn’t replace the main action
Joyce and Walky! had an ongoing storyline but that was mostly paywalled off, most of the free strips are one-off gags. You didn’t have to read the ongoing drama unless you wanted to seek out and pay for it, so enjoying the fluffy gag-a-week antics was more tolerable as it wasn’t directly interrupting stories-in-motion.
Oh man, I hope the opposite. I’m done with this sapp(h)y stuff already
I just want the drama man. This is supposed to be piping hot tea, where is my tea???? My cup is dry as a bone and ice cold!!!!
I second this. Let’s have nothing but sapphic cuteness as far as the eye can see.
Would likely affect the enjoyment and value I get out of this comic by about zero. I don’t think Willis knows how to stop including the parts I like even if they wanted to.
(only very slight huperbole)
I wish the comments section had like buttons, I don’t always wanna comment but I do wanna let people know I agree with them about stuff.
Anyway I love how sweet Joyce and Dorothy are together, I could enjoy one of these comics a day.
This one is especially cute. Hopeless dorks (affectionate).
Reddit would actually be the best website, but unfortunately, it has Redditors on it. Yeuch.
I’m going to go to bat for redditors as a population and say that they’re actually about normal. What the subreddit would need to be as good would be a long history of being as aggressively moderated as this place is. If you don’t moderate the assholes and bigots out anywhere big enough they’ll stick around and it will become their space. Well moderated subs (even about contentious topics) are often really good. But that’s also an astronomical amount of work, and Willis already does it here.
Hear, hear. I’m on a lot of subreddits that are pretty great, actually, but the reason they’re great is due to great moderation.
No anonymous/pseudonymous space survives as a good space without great moderation.
start signing of replies with
“I’m [Fireprincesslily] and I approve this message!”
I’d be down for a Like button, so long as there wasn’t a matching Dislike button. Once those get introduced, it turns into a cowardly numbers game where people just assume that more number = more better.
I like that Joyce bought Dorothy a hat, even if it’s nearly identical to the other one. Helps with the people who thought Dorothy was buying clothes for Joyce just to turn her into a dress up doll and make it more clear that this is a mutual relationship. Dorothy bought Joyce a jacket, Joyce bought her a hat. Maybe they’re not equal as far as price goes but what matters is that the other person loves it and appreciates the gesture.
Also both items of clothing are CONSPICUOUSLY items that they know will be liked and worn by the other, by virtue of being very similar to something Dorothy / Joyce already liked and wore a lot!
It’s genuinely the least dressing each other like dolls ever.
(Though I hope we’ll get to see Suit Dorothy 👀)
My heart would not be able to handle the sheer sapphic joy of seeing Dorothy in a suit, I barely survived suit Dina…!
I was a big fan of Becky in a suit during her “political consult for Team DeSanto” days. 😁
Becky in a tie always makes me happy.
Someone still needs to explain to me why all thos churchy types talked about what “shame” it was that Becky got a different haircut. Like, y’all… undercuts are peak and she was rocking it! Who are these strange humans who dislike ladies in suits and short hair?
Conservatives, generally, find violations of traditional gender roles very upsetting regardless of the form they take.
But also certain things are deeply ingrained. A lot of people in the comments ALSO complained for weeks and months about Becky’s “ugly” haircut, because on some level we have all been socialized to expect female characters to appeal to us aesthetically, much more so than with male characters, and it’s a job of work to get that stuff out of your system.
even the bible thumpers i was raised among were not that weird. my policy is, if it ain’t your hair, you don’t get an opinion. if someone came round and demanded i grow a mustache, i would tell them to take a hike… assuming i didn’t just laugh in their face.
as for getting all upset over a fictional cartoon character’s haircut… dawg, i’m not saying i’m some kinda zen master, but there are a thousand and one real problems to get upset about. who has time to get their underoos in a wad over something that has zero impact on your or anyone else’s life like that?
I remember one of the main talking points I saw people say as far as Becky’s haircut goes, she was given a twenty from Billie and impulsively got her haircut. Commenters who were against this namely would point out “Becky’s homeless and has no money, she should have saved that twenty to buy herself food! Now she’s even more of a burden on Joyce!”. The real reason for the outrage is that… well, some people just didn’t like Becky at that point. Becky’s loud, she can be a bit rude, she’s blunt, and even though she’s hardly the only character like that… something about Becky really just made some people so mad.
Your hair is your womanhood, and you must reclaim it.
One of my favorite bits in the whole comic with how it completely recontextualizes Becky’s using her first money to get a rad haircut, without even directly commenting on the controversy about it.
you know, i never put that together, but you are right. that simple haircut wasn’t just a fashion choice, it was a statement! 😲
I forgot to mention this but yes, I liked this!
Hell yeah! Kinda takes me back to my only actual partner (I refuse to consider the two boyfriends I had actual romantic partners of mine, dating them was pretty much just comphet in action), we bought each other dorky little hats. I bought them a ballcap with the autobot symbol on it, they got me a winter hat with strings <3
Also a sidenote since I'm seeing being people be weird about the kvetch thread and the concept of others have other opinions, I just wanna make it clear that my eyerolling in my original post isn't directed towards everyone that doesn't like Joyce and Dorothy. I consider myself more neutral and enjoying the ride, but I can 100% see why some people have the issues they do with the relationship and how it is handled. It's just a shame when there's some bad apples on frankly all sides making everyone look foolish. I believe that in the end, this is just a webcomic and we can all have our own interpretations without going to personal attacks or random accusations just to cut each other down. You've been a trooper with the kvetching thread, Dot, and I admire your tenacity.
Oh I’ll co-sign this too. Apologetically, since I think my above comment was sorta quoting Dot, and it was not meant to be targeted like that orz the phrasing just stuck in my head.
Gotta function as separate people, too, Joyce.
Does not compute. How can she be heroically gay without Dorothy always there right next to her?
Big if true.
But why?
Codependency is not good.
It’s super bad in real life.
But being fully honest, it’s something I like a lot in my ‘ships, eheheh.
Hearts All Around! <3
I know a lot of people are fed up with the NRE, but honestly it’s pretty relatable, as someone who loves very strongly and very loudly. My partner and I got married last month and we’re the same flavor of clingy, and we still lament every time we have to split up. Granted, we live in separate countries, so usually there’s good reason for it, but in the first week, we would also get mopey if we had to split up for so much as a toilet break, so I totally understand Joyce’s grumbling.
Hell, I get it. My husband and I met working at the same job and we were inseparable then, over ten years on and we still hate being apart.
Based on the current rate, we will now not see them together again for another month or so
Don’t trust webcomic time.
Theseus’ Ship has nothing on Dorothy’s Beanie.
My prediction is while Dorothy in class, THIS VERY DAY, she will go back to Joe for make outs or sex.
God that would be so funny
I wanna say I doubt it but she’s clearly not above it
With everything that’s happened of late, I suppose I can’t rule it out!
I could definitely see Joyce convincing herself that if she cheats on both of them it balances out
Well, she did say it was “fantastic” last time.
She also said it was cheating, so it’s not like she’s even making excuses for this tendency she has developed.
Respectfully, can you please not link to pages where the characters use the C-word? It really disrupts my narrative that nobody considers any of this cheating to any degree.
Read this before the comments above it and was wondering when Joyce said the word that gets replaced with Congo. I mean she’s part of the queer community now, she can say it as long as she means it as a compliment
If she does go back to Joe, it won’t be with the INTENTION of cheating. But who knows what her Romance Movie Brain might talk her into.
Insert Timmy Turner “please god let this happen because it would be so fucking funny” jpg
truth be told, i too would get a decent sensible chuckle out of this as well.
I think Joe is gonna struggle with how much he wants to be with her the moment he sees her in that jacket. And Joyce struggles every time she sees Joe with her self control.
The 3D chess of presenting this as a cheating arc but not specifying who is being cheated on.
Isn’t that just regular chess?
pfffft, all the cool kids know that anarchy chess is where it’s at these days.
PLEASE let this happen, this would salvage so much of the nothingburger cheating for me with a quickness.
Now a moment of clarity, please.
oh hey an acknowledgement that while they may be OK in the long term, what’s going on right now is not really healthy, and they’re going to have to grapple with that to grow past the combination of self-revelation high and trauma bonding. Can’t wait!
Love this freak4freak energy
Folks, the point of a “Hater Containment Thread” is more “Haters can vent their spleens here and not spoil other people’s enjoyment” rather than “Ah, all the haters will be HERE so I can confront them.”
In matters of polls, always choose the more convoluted and tangled option.
Thus, I am firmly in the camp of “grappling with the knowledge that selecting the other answer will mean my response will be untrue starting tomorrow, making me a liar.” Happy (belated) Indigenous Peoples’ Week!
Joyce: “Oh well, let me see what Joe is up to.”
About 6’5″.
Joyce needs to meet Joe somewhere where there isn’t a lockable door. Or a door at all. Then they can talk without it turning into a sex act. Maybe. No laundry rooms.
Man, the part of me that’s a dad with a daughter is definitely having some internal “‘I love you’?! You two dorks are A) still kids, B) have been dating for two days, and C) have known each other less than a year. Pump the fuckin’ brakes already!”
The part of me that remembers being a teenage dorkus of a college freshman knows that’s par for the course, and that yelling at them about it doesn’t help, but private mockery can and should continue.
Yeah, the dynamic is pretty understandable. Joyce has been in two actual relationships, and both of them have sort of been her fantasy. Joe really wanted to do things right and not have a casual hookup, so he pumped the brakes at prudent spots, made sure to get enthusiastic consent, etc.
For all that Joyce realizing she’s queer is healthy, two people coming to that realization about each other simultaneously is a wildly different dynamic, because it’s like a part of you that used to confuse you finally makes sense. Neither of them really want to take anything slowly, because why would you want that when you think you finally figured yourself out?
Maybe it’s the non american iin me, but i don’t see why saying “i love you” had to be such a big deal, especially if both people fell the same.
It’s certainly culturally constructed, no disagreement there.
I think a lot of the REASON that the culture in many English-speaking nations is weird about it is that it’s one word that covers a lot of different states in a language that has no real remaining formality markers — like, where something like Russian allows you to distinguish between любовь, страсть, влюблённость, обожания, and влечение (and a couple others!).
So at least in terms of my post, I’m generally advising my kid that sometimes people say “Love you” and mean “as a friend” or “as a romantic partner” or “as a sexual object” or even “as someone I’m still in NRE with and who knows what my long-term feelings are after the initial hormonal burst fades” and you gotta make sure you’re on the same page before you say it back.
Right… in Spanish, I think you’d use “te amo” and “te quiero” in different contexts, for example. Those both translate to “I love you in English, but one carries the connotation of a deeper, more personal, and possibly more intimate type of love. In English, the meaning of phrases like “I love you,” “I adore you,” etc. is a lot looser, so it’s a lot more important to ensure that if you and someone else are saying them to each other you need to both be meaning the same things when you do, because otherwise someone might get hurt. That results in a greater social importance placed on the weight of the word.
Add Japanese to the list of languages that handles this better than English, and ofc Latin.
I genuinely think the best we’ve got is the very clumsy “I LIKE-like you” of middle school.
Or “I’m in love with you,” which has a defined meaning but is very awkward to say to someone else on a regular basis.
Learning japanese is a trip cuz I learned Dai simply means Big, or large quantity of.
Which made me realize
“suki” I like you
“Daisuki” I like you a LOT
and of course
Aishiteru “I love you”
For the record, it does depend somewhat on context. Western fandom has genuinely made a bit too much out of 愛してる, especially western shipping fandom that reallllllly wants every use of “love” to be not just explicitly and only romantic but “she wouldn’t even SAY that if she didn’t psychically know he feels the same way about her!!!!”, which is just wishful thinking combined with misinformation.
(For the record, 愛する and its variants do in fact sometimes get used by family members in perfectly platonic ways. Like everything big and dramatic, it’s more common in fiction, but it happens even in fiction that’s trying to be more grounded. It’s not a casual thing, it’s definitely something that happens when characters are having a moment of “I know I haven’t always been demonstrative, but just so you know, I do love you.”
But “always and forever romantic”? No!)
Anyway like with everything else, you still gotta take into account the characters’ personalities — there are a LOT of characters who will make even big romantic declarations with a simple 好きだ!
But yeah, different words still exist X3 I was just also definitely guilty of some simplification in my earlier comment.
I speak Spanish and honestly they are pretty much interchangeable to me.
Very fair! I’m not a native speaker and I know this kind of stuff can vary between countries and regions as well.
That’s interesting to me, because the way (middle/high school) Spanish is taught in the area of the US I grew up in, there’s a LOT of care around the distinction between te amo and te quiero. Granted, I had exactly one year of that before I had four years of French, which has the same lack of linguistic distinctions as English but seems to be culturally less hung up on it.
I think it’s mostly that last. It feels important and significant to say it, like you’re moving the relationship to a new stage, but especially when you’re a teen without a lot of relationship experience it’s really hard to tell the rush of infatuation from real long term love.
And then what do you do if your partner says it and you don’t feel it back? As we saw with Walky & Lucy. Especially early on, when things are still developing. Do you say it and basically lie? Do you refuse and deal with a “you don’t love me?” confrontation?
I do not miss being a teenager!
Folks, Joyce can’t take this as an opportunity to go talk to Joe, because she has math class. With Walky, who is being made to go to class by his excellent roommate Booster.
And Lucy! Really pulling for Walky and Lucy to mend the rift a little bit between them and for Lucy to support Walky here.
It’s interesting in hindsight to realize just how Lucy has all the pieces of the puzzle to understand that Dorothy is kinda terrible?
my absolute dream would be for Lucy and Walky to reconnect as friends and for Lucy to help Walky finally finally FINALLY acknowledge that how Dorothy treated him was unacceptable.
Heck, as much as it needed to happen and he definitely went on to a better understanding of himself and a healthier relationship, how Dorothy treated Danny wasn’t great either.
Very true, although Lucy doesn’t really know that. It’d be fun to see Danny and Joe hash it out once Danny learns what happened, though. Maybe throw in Sal for extra juiciness.
Honestly sure she had a crush on him the whole time but they did have a really nice, casual friendship. Walky talked about how he couldn’t be nothing with Lucy but honestly? That was his most normal friendship. That was literally the only one where they could just link up to watch cartoons and shoot the shit, no drama. Sounds like he could be nothing with her before they dated. I hope they can go back to that, Lucy’s crush is dead now and I doubt Jake’s the jealous type
It was such a nice, normal friendship before Dorothy decided to blow it up in order to get Walky off the market! I hope it can come back.
I’m having trouble pinpointing anything Dorothy had to do with Lucy breaking up with Walky. They went to church together, he said something that made her realize their relationship was completely one-sided, and she broke it off.
Other way around. She helped get them together by telling Walky Lucy was interested. It’s strongly implied she did that because she was already being tempted to get back together with Walky.
In retrospect, it’s not entirely clear whether she was already in a subconscious “deflect from interest in Joyce” phase or if she was genuine about it then.
People are always gonna have discussions that aren’t just sunshine and unicorn farts hater thread or no; its not targeted harassment just because someone had a more negative take
You’re ththe one trying to arbitrate where people are or aren’t allowed to express things. You can’t just sequester any opionion you don’t like into some hypothetical corner, lol.
Stupid fucking threads wrong place
Not sure it would have mattered if you had put it in the right place, honestly.
“You’re ththe one trying to arbitrate where people are or aren’t allowed to express things.”
Funny, the only place I did that was just quoting Dot from the Hater thread as a means of showing hypocrisy, but don’t worry, your clique’s coming out to attack me as a group has just deterred me from commenting in the future. Excellent bullying, very toxic, I’m sure y’all are high fiving on discord.
I mean, this seems super unfair?
Lucy had been struggling for months to say something about her feelings to Walky. That period was only a nice normal friendship from Walky’s PoV, from Lucy’s it was a form of slow torment, and she would have said something eventually.
Like sure, Dorothy’s actions and motives there were sketchy, but she did not singlehandedly ruin a platonic friendship by making Walky aware of Lucy’s crush.
I think she did but not by any fault of her own. Jennifer put it best. Dorothy doesn’t quite recognize the hold she still has over walky. If booster or amber had told him about Lucy he might have been like “yeah whatever” but because it was Dorothy, someone who’s opinion and judgement he places in high regard I feel like he was more inclined to follow her advice. Now it’s not Dorothy’s fault walky puts her on a pedestal anymore than I think its walky’s fault that Lucy puts him on a pedestal. I wouldn’t say dorothy ruined their friendship per se but I think having them get together in the way they did may have changed their dynamic too fast/too drastically and cracks started to form.
Oh I wasn’t imagining anyone else saying anything.
I am saying that what they had while Lucy was passive-aggressively pining after Walky was not a platonic friendship, therefore Dorothy pointing things out to Walky didn’t ruin a platonic friendship. It just destroyed Walky’s illusion of a platonic friendship.
That raises an interesting question. Can a friendship be platonic if one member of the friendship is pining after the other? I always saw Platonic as a state of being rather than a state of mind. Like if youre crushing in someone and they’ve made it apparent they don’t want to be in a romantic or sexual relationship and you respect that while still holding a torch for them cuz feelings aren’t something you can turn off and on, is your relationship with that person still platonic?
I mean, my answer to that is kind of nuanced? Assuming a two-person relationship here for brevity:
I think that, as an omniscient narrator, I would not describe a relationship as “platonic” if there were secret romantic feelings on one side of it.
But by the same token, I would never describe a relationship as “romantic” if there weren’t romantic feelings on both sides of it.
What Walky and Lucy had prior to Dorothy opening her mouth was a relationship of asymmetric feelings, where Walky thought it was a platonic friendship and Lucy secretly wanted it to be a romantic relationship.
(See also: Sarah asking Lucy at one point if Walky knew he was her boyfriend yet: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/boyfriend-3/ )
I’m not implying any malicious intent on Dorothy’s part. Obviously Lucy would have said something eventually and that would have been its own drama, but Dorothy accelerated that for ultimately selfish purposes. Dorothy isn’t evil, but she acted carelessly like she often does with regards to Walky, so I feel comfortable putting a lot of the blame on her.
I just think it’s unfair to say she ruined a “nice, normal” friendship, when Lucy and Walky never had a “nice, normal” friendship.
If anything I think they have a much better chance of actually having a friendship now that Lucy is no longer secretly pining after an oblivious Walky.
like I wasn’t talking about Dorothy’s intent at all, I was talking about her inability to destroy something that didn’t actually exist prior to her meddling.
Slow torment sounds a little dramatic to describe working up the courage to admit a possibly unrequited crush to a friend. I had a ton of unrequited crushes on a ton of friends in highschool, id never describe our hangouts as slow torment. I just liked being in their company
It is a little melodramatic, but everything is melodramatic at that age.
I mean it kinda depends on the individual, the intensity of the crush, all of that.
But “secretly harboring feelings for a friend that you’re struggling to express” isn’t fun. It certainly complicates your side of the friendship.
I also feel the need to add that I don’t mean to imply that unrequited feelings are inherently tormenting.
It’s more the secret-keeping, and the anxiety around the secret, that make the situation so unpleasant.
I’ve always personally found it a relief once the feelings are out in the open, regardless of reception. Rejections are sad, but at least you know and can start moving on emotionally.
Ah thanks, I was wondering who Walky was going to be bumping into turning up late to class at the door, and had already forgotten.
Considering how rude Joyce was to him last time they bumped into each other and how he called her a friend, it’s going to be interesting.
Anyway, back to Carla! I’m sure everything is fine there.
I recognize this emotion from my wife’s and my early relationship, but after dating for 49 years this October we can spend long periods apart now without pain.
oh this is such a mood
I get this with friends too
re:poll missed it yesterday but my answer would have been
“Thursday”
was gonna go for the other one and then I read it fully through and realized it was a timezone joke
like c’mon, thanksgiving was last month, how could it be
todayyesterday?yeah that poll really shoulda had an answer for Canadian type Pokemon here XD
Oh BTW.
I got my Dina plush.
Not sure where to make a Patreon suggestion, so I’ll just drop it here.
You know who could use a break? “Other Rachel”. After seeing her pinup image on Kemono.Cr, it occurs to me she could stand to find a little luvvin’ amongst all the plippity-plip of hormones raining down elsewhere inside her own dorm building.
Compared to the other ladies on her floor, she’s certainly not a flashy standout: by artist design, she’s short, a bit beefy and not generously curvy. But what’s wrong with a little Christmastime happy ending story for her?
Either those were some very quick bathroom trips over the last two days or they were some very awkward ones.
ngl i do hope the codependency gets addressed 🤞🤞🤞
100% do not mean this in a hater way, it adds complexity to them
100%, one of a few angles for drama I’m genuinely excited to see pursued
finally, some bitter tea/coffee to go with all this saccharine crackerbread XD
C’mon guys. Dot is not the final boss. Your princess is in another castle.
I am a cute girl who is currently brushing her hair and reading comic books
Which fucking comic books? Better be a good answer. 🔪
Yesterday I read Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki! It’s a wonderfully-illustrated book about a messy, toxic gay relationship between two women which hit very close to home. I was able to write up a review for my blog, which is always nice to have happen. Right now I’m reading some old Forever People comics by Jack Kirby bc it’s a good comic to read while you’re stoned, but tomorrow I think I’ll start in on Wonder Woman: Dead Earth by Daniel Warren Johnson.
I have it on good authority that she’s Lead Hater, though.
Well, for values of “good” that include “some random person whose first post this week is to jump on Dot randomly”, anyway.
When will I get my Commentariat-Assigned title…
those are a thing? :0
Apparently!
I just realized Asma is the fifth character introduced.
Becky, Joyce, Hank, Billie, Asma. She’s in the third strip!
She has the sixteenth total line in the entire strip.
…and it took SIX DANG YEARS for Asma to have eyebrows.
i can’t wait for joyce to say something like “what do you think of these names for our future children?” and dorothy to just have a record-scratch moment as she realizes what these “married forever” comments from joyce really mean
That’s like me and my wife…
… except for the part of that being the longest we’ve been apart in two days.
We had to date MUCH longer to be separate that long.