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Eh, I can see that character saying something like that with a sort of snide self-superiority, sort of a “of course YOU would say that” sort of thing, so it still fits.
I’m honestly not sure. Joe’s not exactly a friend, but they’re not enemies I think. They’re just two people with VERY different approaches to life. I think Joyce trusts Joe to a certain extent since he’s made it very clear that he’s no longer interested in her at all.
Pretty sure that they have a kind of similar relationship as in It’s Walky. They challenge each other with their polar opposite views on life, but there’s a bit in each that the other secretly admires or envies and their constant clashing is a sign that they care for each other, as opposed to ignoring or being apathetic to one another.
I kind of agree though I think that or they would be great friends cuz it seems like that to me. Though we don’t know what will happen to drive them apart or push them together. Though its certainly interesting they have gotten that way.
Mature? He just doesn’t have the body hangups other people have or the sex hangups. From what I understand he doesn’t mistreat or lie to the women he sleeps with… it’s always consensual…
To be able to do that with as many people as he’s been with and not have a riot on his hands takes some very serious ability to not piss people off.
He might be more mature than a lot of people at that college.
He harasses women and doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Not all that devoted to consent, even if he makes sure to pressure them into saying ‘yes’ and not just immediately into sex.
He also can’t express his feelings or even admit to having them, and is constantly disrespectful to Leslie, and is really bad about making inappropriate jokes and comments.
His biggest issue – as I see it – is that he’s really bad at picking up on when he should back off, or just stay out of something. He keeps trying or keeps pushing longer than he should, and in class he doesn’t seem to consider that maybe now isn’t a good time for a joke when one of your classmates is on the verge of tears.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have at least some of those issues when I was his age. Especially when it came to recognizing when is a really bad time for sexual humor, but Joe still needs to grow out of these things. I’m optimistic that we’re seeing the beginning of that growth, but he’s not there yet, and I have high standards for the quality of gentleman who’d be good enough for Joyce. :I
I do, however, like them as friends. I could see it being good for both of them.
He does take no for an answer. He made a pass at Sara and when she expressed her disinterest (okay, her disgust), he immediately backed off. I’d have to dig through the archives to find his exact wording, but I think he said “message recieved.”
Sarah was pretty damn emphatic about it and backed up by Joyce, who’d had him beaten not long before.
We’ve never actually seen him deal with a less extreme rejection, which is a shame, because it would clear up a lot of things about Joe. Either make it clear that he is a problem or that his ideas of consent really are sufficient despite his aggressive flirting. We really haven’t seen his “Game” at all – except for the date with Joyce, that bit with Sarah and a few random comments. We’ve never actually seen a successful seduction by Joe, just the aftermath, with Roz & Penny. Though he’s apparently been having a lot of sex off camera, we don’t know how he’s getting it. Or for that matter what the women think about it afterwards.
The date with Joyce hinted at some problems: the attempt to bribe Mike to go away, constantly working to turn the conversation back to sex, etc. Completely overshadowed by how horrible Joyce was with the punching and all, but valuable as a bit of insight into how Joe works.
And then the very next day, it took even more angry shouting from Sarah before he quit. He did completely accept Sarah’s rejection, and even apologized for his behavior, but he still has plenty of room to improve there.
Yeah, a “caring about consent” that forces people to angrily confront the person harassing them in order to get them to stop is not an actual “caring about consent”, because it forces the one being harassed to do something that is socially regarded as a sign of bad manners and temperament in order to get the person to leave them alone.
He also has a habit of acting dismissively to any girl he pushes to angrily telling him off when he’s pushing against a social boundary. Specifically, I’m meaning here that when he is screamed at, he immediately acts like “whoa whoa whoa, where is this coming from and acting like the person is crazy for not thinking he’d take a simple no, even though when he’s learned of a boundary, he’s often stepped right over it, even when a person told him to stop it.
Sometimes to the level of screaming at the back of a fleeing person to tell her friends he didn’t touch her, because his reputation as someone who is technically not a rapist matters more than his actual actions not making women feel that uncomfortable where the only way to get him to stop is to scream in his face.
And the Sarah example is not a good one of him respecting boundaries, because in his “apology” to her, he’s still trying to hit on her, talking about harnessing her angry energy and how “any guy” would try and do the same.
Basically acting like his bad behavior was universal, diminishing said bad behavior, and trying to use social capital to try and get the person telling him off to look socially crazy and overreacting and his actions of red flag behavior to be overlooked.
That wasn’t the day before – closer to two weeks, but the point stands she had absolutely told Joe to fuck off before. What DID happen the day before was him see her threaten his dad with testicular torsion because he wouldn’t back off.
He flirts somewhat aggressively, and doesn’t give a shit about how *other* people feel when he’s pursuing their friends. In his mind, the only valid source of discouragement is the woman in question. But he takes that pretty dang seriously.
Really? I have exactly the opposite reaction. These two have negative chemistry – I never want to see them interact. The weekend texting seemed like an unexplained OOC moment, but now they’re back to their usual “These two people are toxic and awful together” default, and I continue to want them to have nothing to do with each other.
I think they are acting like friends?… Like Joe’s actually doing what she told him to and not just telling her to fuck off, they are bickering friendly-ways. Nor would Joyce just message a stranger like that?…
Yeah theres certainly a connection, as ypu say she wouldn’t message a stranger like that but hose last panels, to me, suggest they’re not at friendship level yet, not far off though
People can be friends and still be toxic and awful together. I think these two bring out the worst in each other, and I don’t really care if they’re friends – I just want them to stop interacting.
Sometimes, a friend is someone you can BE toxic with, and still be friends at the end of the day. Joyce wouldn’t argue so passionately with Joe if she didn’t care about him.
Not at all. Look at his first answer. Not a complaint about being nagged, not an affirmation of his own right to do what he wants, not a quick dismissal or a lack of response, but a jab at her language. And then, after the second message, he actually did was she asked even if he was crabby about it.
Try to come up with any other character in this story who, upon requesting Joe to stop ogling a woman was not ignored, quipped or laughed at but actually heeded.
I’ve not heard it either, but I knew what she meant.
And, honestly, I don’t have a problem with it here. Sure, it’s dumb as a sex prevention strategy. But I do think it’s rude to stare at someone’s breasts in a non-sexual context.
I pdon’t think a romantic type relationship would end in anything but tears (or explosions) but a good, solid, friendship would do the both of them very well
But I’m not sure who is likely to accept a platonic friendship between male and female, Joe with his wanting to Joe every girl he meets or Joyce with her every man is a potential husband
I wonder if Joyce has – possibly subconsciously – dumped that idea of every man is a potential husband? She’s not the person she was when she “dated” Joe.
Eventually I think she will but I’d imagine that when somethings been ingrained into you at such an early age its probably quite to get rid of, I mean her church and her mom probably put expectations on her on what a “proper” wife should be
Also I’m binge watching Reboot right now. The Village People show up and sing about how much the BS&P sucks and that’s probably the best summation I can give.
It’s coming back to life with some kind of live action hybrid thing. All I know is that it makes it sound like Code Lyoko and also it’s different to a thing I liked when I was a kid, ergo it’s probably bad.
I feel about it the same way I feel about Cartoon Network bringing back the Powerpuff Girls and Johnny Bravo; why even bother? Why are we curtailing bright new ideas in favour of ideas that were old before the new target audience was even born?
Then again, maybe it can give an ending to that 15-year old cliffhanger.
I think it’s weird to talk about continuing to use the same character as the death of new ideas… or more accurately, treating that like a new thing, I guess. Mickey Mouse is old enough to have been responsible for the extending of copyright like, thrice. And sure, Mickey’s boring af (Unless I’ve missed a relatively recent development, which is def possible), but Donald’s not much younger, and he’s gotten a pretty vibrant and incredibly long-lived series of comics that lead to multiple new spinoffs.
This doesn’t really mean a new Reboot is a good idea, and yeah, I haven’t heard anyone who was happy with the new PPG (though I don’t exactly talk to a lot of kids, so who idk there), but it’s not like these are bad things for having the same name or even the same premise. I mean, heck, we’re on the website of an enormous transformers nerd (Albeit a nerd who would tell you a lot of it isn’t good, so there’s that)
More than that, we’re on a webcomic that’s built on the premise of rebooting all his old characters into a new continuity.
Is Willis so bereft of new ideas that he can’t do anything but recycle his Walkyverse characters into a college setting? (Rhetorical question, obviously. The answer is: I don’t care, because he’s doing it so well.)
I mean I think there’s a crucial difference between one dude retooling his old characters in a new setting and a massive company reviving that old thing you liked when you were ten.
Stuff like Transformers and TMNT, they never really went away from pop culture. All the old CN stuff died years ago and none of the original creators are involved. That’s why I’m down for Samurai Jack; because Gendy Tartakovsky is returning to it.
Okay, now for a conversation I actually wanted to have, because jfc.
TMNT *did* die. It went like, a decade without significant injections into the pop culture. And well… Carl Barks didn’t invent Donald Duck. The fact that the old creators are gone is a big part of why we can be sure new ideas will be a part of it – new authors are going to bring their own spin on things. Premise counts so much less than execution. A new Johnny Bravo, a new Reboot, etc, might suck and it might not. Either could end up brilliant, or would-be brilliant but for executive meddling, or any of a dozen other things. Heck, even passion isn’t necessarily going to lead to anything good (Hello comics and Warhammer 40k).
Like, particularly in Samurai Jack’s case, I can see why you’d want the original head guy back – the story never got resolved. So if you wanted that resolution, that /too/ makes sense to me. But if it’d been a new thing, well, that could still be neat – it’s not like SJ was particularly high concept in the first place. A lot of it was, to the extent possible, choreography porn. I mean, it was def entertaining, but it doesn’t seem that big a deal whether or not we get a ‘proper’ continuation or not.
TMNT didn’t really stay dead for *that* long. Discounting the Next Mutation (because we all do), the franchise was off TV from 1996 to 2003, but was still humming along in comic form before returning on 4Kids, and when that ended it only took three more years for them to come back again. I don’t think there’s any point in time where a kid couldn’t have some passing knowledge of the turtles since they came out.
As for Reboot’s revival, well, I’m not really concerned as to its quality, whether it’s good or not it’s just not for me. What I don’t understand is in taking this old, dead franchise that last appeared fifteen years ago, whose main selling point was in being a trailblazer of CGI animation in the 90s, and handing it to today’s market.
It’s a lot like the last decade’s fascination with remaking old movies. What’s the point of making it if it’s just the same t hing, and if you want to do something different, why bother starting with an existing IP?
But you’re correct that fiction can be interpreted by someone outside the main creator, that’s basically the crux of modern fiction. I feel like there’s a difference between reimagining an old work (two of my favourite movies, The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly and The Thing, are remakes), or continuing on from an existing franchise like how modern cape comics work, and taking an old thing and just making it again, though.
It doesn’t really seem that common to just make a thing again. Like, I don’t really watch TV, so if JB is just a high-def remake I’ll be a little surprised, but everything I gathered from the PPG hate was that they did actually change and recast things (nfc what). It’s almost inevitable, I’m pretty sure. Without a shot-for-shot remake, I have trouble viewing something as ‘taking an old thing and making it again’.
In Reboot’s case, I’m pretty sure it’s that they just want to keep doing it. Like, creators have desires (Didn’t y’all in Canada get the actual finale? Or was that a cliffhanger too?), and sometimes they’re not just ‘money’ Of course, they could still be trying to cash in, but it seems an odd choice, for the reason you pointed out yourself (It /does/ happen. Everything I gather from Willis indicates this is what the Robotech dudes keep doing)
As far as ‘the last decade’s fascination’, I’m not so sure. Adaptations, sequels, and public domain stuff has been the basis of a lot of fiction for… well, a while. I’m not really convinced it’s a thing we’re doing especially hard now, so much as that it’s just more obvious since we’re doing more popular things (How many Romeo and Juliet iterations are there, exactly?). Some english or movie nerd somewhere probably did the actual legwork, so now I’m curious, but I don’t have the language out of hand to check.
And while the requirement to not have your own interpretation might not be ‘shot for shot remake’, I genuinely can’t see what else it would be. There’s a reason director and cast are considered relevant even just staging a reproduction of say, Shakespeare or Beckett. I didn’t see the new The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, would it actually qualify?
We got a finale that also ended in a cliffhanger. 15 years later and I am still incredibly bitter about it.
As for The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, I got my wires crossed. The original movie with The Man With No Name, A Fistful of Dollars, was basically an American adaptation of the Akira Kurosawa film Yojimbo, and I assumed that it was the same for the sequels.
I’ll still believe if when I see it. ReBoots been “coming back” for a decade now.
Theres been one image, which seemed to have a reflection of MegaByte (who wont be the same with a different voiceactor). However, a few years earlier there was a teaser, which was a Gamecube falling.
And there was this thing where they crowdsourced (sort of) a bunch of concepts – and one got made into a comic.
Clearly people at Mainframe/Rainmaker still want to make the franchise, but each time they try to bring it back it doesnt seem to get anywhere.
I think its just hard for them to get funding.
Yep…pretty sure he’d have Big Cass doing the ripping off of heads. (I really wish I was awake/creative enough to figure out what his patter would sound like in that situation….)
The BS&P was the thin stand-in for Standards and Practices, from the one where Megatron gives Enzo an amazing birthday gift? The ABCs ref makes me think they were something else, but I can’t really remember a whole lot of other times the Village People showed up.
“Unforgettable….” is the only line I know from that song, and I only know it as ‘that song neither Fong nor I know’. IAMA: Music Barbarian.
Apparently Megabyte was voiced by that guy who did your narration in Dungeon Keeper 2 (I rewatched that bit to make sure I remembered the voice quote). What an archetypally evil-voiced guy!
That’s a hell of a labor of love. I think that’s semi-accurate play? They’re certainly actually /trying/ (Fingers are satan, and whether those are the right chords or not, they’re at least hitting strings). It’s not Kyoani levels of animation, but they’re insane and directed by some sort of minor deity of cinematography. It’s still a ton of attention to detail, and it was nominally unnecessary. Also, yes, perfectly hilarious. I mostly remember Dot’s frustration about how anything interesting got nixed by Standards and Practices, not knowing what was being said as a kid.
Dire Straits. Yes, I absolutely know who they are. I totally did not learn that bands exist primarily from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Yes =>
I was once flicking over channels and heard his voice on some religious documentary once. Was really weird hearing Megabyte talk about christ and such.
Because she’s texting buddies with Joe, not Walky.
\
I mean, Joe himself said he thought it was a trap, and that he shouldn’t look. I assumed they talked about him feeling trapped all the time, and so she’s trying to help.
Well, until the last panel when he was angry, and not just flippant.
I’m pretty sure it’s because he’s dating Dorothy combined with them not really being friends, certainly not to the level where Joyce would want to give him access to her phone number that she doesn’t.
Like, she’s accepted that her best friend is dating someone she views as super toxic for her and has already made clear her objections to the man and his behavior. So, I’d bet she’s done what a lot of other people in friendships do when their friend is dating an asshole and just stopped calling out shit, because the friend loves this person for reasons and it would feel rude to them to keep harping on how woefully inappropriate their actions are.
OTOH, she trusts Walky enough to walk alone with him – he’s definitely inside the OMG I can’t be alone outside envelope. She hangs out with him without Dorothy around, when it’s not strictly necessary.
I don’t think she hates him quite as much as she puts on. He’s definitely not good enough for Dorothy, in her opinion, but who would be? He irritates her, but I’m not sure it’s in a completely bad way.
My impression is that her standard for “keeps Ryan anxiety at bay” escorts wasn’t that restrictive, it just has to be someone that she knows personally. Less about the individual’s moral character than them not being a stranger.
Yep, that and while Joyce doesn’t respect Walky as a moral individual, she does view him as safe. As someone that isn’t going to attack her. And so, yeah, any port in a storm, though I will note that she didn’t once use him alone to walk to class in the post-Ryan era.
I think Joyce has been warming up to him lately, considering how she’s been keeping his bad grades a secret from Dorothy. Rather than ratting him out, she tried to get him to get a tutor, and has been discreetly encouraging him to study more.
The way she asked him to talk to Sarah earlier so she’d feel included also seemed rather friendly to me. Admittedly, her other options at the time were Mike, and an extremely cranky Billie, but I think she trusts that Walky can be alright when he keeps his head out of his ass.
I think the reason she focused on Joe rather than him may be more practical: She can’t actually see if Walky is still ogling Leslie from where she’s sitting.
Joe, on the other hand, is sitting next to her where she can see his face, and Joyce’s attention (and irritation) would have already been directed towards him because of him barely acknowledging her saying hello, so it makes sense he’d be the one to get scolded
It took me so long to figure out what she was referring to. I thought Jillian and Holtzmann were two of her students who were just really loud or something ~_~
Holtzman is also one of the first queer female characters in a mainstream movie like that. My wife and I are fans, though we haven’t named our boobs after her.
Of course Leslie has. I mean, it was that character in Ghostbusters that got a lot of bi girls who formerly thought of themselves as straight to realize they were bi.
Given the person Leslie is hoping to seduce, I can see definitely see why she would want to borrow that awesome power.
I think the insult would be if you said that they look better. Granted, I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is [Insert Compliment That Won’t Get Me Banned Again Here].
Yeah, that sentence didn’t parse to well, huh? The intent was to a give a compliment that would counteract the previous sentence and avoid a ban, ala jokingly talking myself into a corner.
And to the ‘Again’ comment, I had posted a reply comment that was meant to be supportive of a decision they had made, and agreeing with them that a jerk was a jerk. That also didn’t parse out. I didn’t realize it until after a couple of days of unsuccessfully posting, and going back through my browser history, looking for comments that no longer exist. At least, I’m assuming that’s the cause.
I could not tell either. I’m also disappointed that I had not seen this strip before voting for “hottest DoA lady”, as Leslie just vaulted into the top 3. Who knew that she could spice up so nicely?
Oh, and it would be very difficult to not stare. In fact, if someone walked into a room with my wife and I, my wife would probably tease me for trying so hard NOT to stare. After all, she would find it hard not to stare and she’s not really into that sort of thing.
While this is hilarious, I’m confused about why they’re so tetchy with each other. I thought their weekend texting really ended on a pretty good note. Not sure what caused this change in tone now that they’re together.
Two steps forward, one step back. Also, Joe’s instinct to project “masculinity” in person. She’s irritated he won’t acknowledge their connection. He’s irritated at her return to Fundie talk.
Well Joyce isn’t happy with Joe for staring at Leslies breasts, Joe responded with a put down, Joyce repeated herself and Joe went full sarcastic and it went down hill from there (or got better depending on your pov)
However I can’t help but feel theres something underlying to all this, like did the text messaging between Joe and Joyce lead Joyce to think Joe had changed and so is hurt by Joes actions?
Is Joe thinking Joyce is being a bit possessive and that its none of her business whose breasts he stares at?
Flashbacks for both of them about how their date went?
Ok seriously if Mike tries a round two then I sincerely hope that Joe uses his height/weight advantage and serves Mike one helluva beatdown, I’m talking Amazi-Girl level smackdown because while I dislike some of the main cast and wouldn’t want to associate with a few of them I actively hate Mike and I’d like to see Joe get some payback because he was remarkably restrained the first time
That’s very possible. I can definitely see Joyce thinking that Joe on Monday would be doing less of his usual caveman shtick and so the combination of ignoring her initially and perving on the teacher probably has her feeling a bit hurt like, was I wrong to open up to Joe, has he changed at all?
Perhaps it is -because- they had such good communication during the weekend that they are being tetchy now.
Joe is one of those people that face-to-face has an image to maintain. I won’t go into all of it, just the relevant one for this post: It involves not showing feelings, as that is some sort of weakness, and also boring and leading to drama, and stupid.
But Joe can be more honest when texting, Joyce found out on Friday. She asked him a question through the phone, and he responded more honestly. Or at least, he didn’t respond in an actively dismissing way.
And this is how Joyce and Joe ended up talking to each other quite a lot during the weekend; Joe would be increasingly more open, and willing to listen to Joyce…
…And then, two strips ago, Joyce thinks that maybe he will be more open to her in person too. But instead he shuts himself in so much, that he barely acknowledges her “hello, Joe!” before going back to his mode.
And Joyce, who is a person to wear her emotions on the sleeve most of the time, doesn’t understand why that is happening. At first, it confuses her, and then it starts to annoy her. And that’s even before Joe starts with the leering behaviour.
Which pushes Joyce into this strip… But whatever it is that is currently bugging Joe, he’s now so shut in about it that he doesn’t even want to think about it. True, he’d probably stare at Leslie no matter what; but he’s also looking for a distraction of thinking about whatever is troubling him.
And Joyce is interrupting him from that distraction. So Joe goes into all-war mode. Not just shut in, but spikes out.
And this hurts Joyce further. To her, he’s now betraying that bond they had reached during the weekend. So she fires some salvoes back.
It sounds quite plausible, miscommunication being a feature of this strip though I’m still wondering if theres any lingering memories of their date and how a pair of boobies:
And yes, that part probably didn’t help either. I did not include it because I think the recent happenings were more important to explain Mandy’s question, but I can just imagine Joe actually understanding Joyce’s first text, and then getting reminded of the last time he ogled at someone’s breasts in her presence…
*until I meet someone who is actually right, that is.
I said it once, I’ll say it again. Joyce and Joe had chemistry way back in the original, and they have it now, and I want aaaaaallll the interaction. ALL OF IT AWWW YISS
Dio is not the protagonist. He is, however, the protagonist’s rival.
There’s a girl who likes JoJo. Dio forces a kiss out of her, and then confirms it’s her first kiss. “You thought your first kiss would be with JoJo, but it was me! Dio!”
I know that. But that doesn’t mean you watched the first two arcs in english. It is a treat even if you know everything that happens. I ended up catching it while a couple of friends learned what Jojo’s was and it was absolutely a good use of my time. And I rarely watch any variant of TV.
I’ve only seen snippets of the dub, but I have been really impressed by what I’ve seen. Given the setting of Victorian London and Depression New York, it’s more natural to hear it in English. I’m like that for Baccano too.
Oh Phantom Blood has no business being done by Americans. Battle Tendency is genuinely improved by it, but Phantom Blood… well, we’re not exactly good at mimicking british accents, yeah? XD
Uuugghhh, I can’t stand the hand-clap-emojis-to-empahsize-every-damn-word thing. It makes the whole sentence read like they’re speaking in that really slow condescending way people do when they think you’re too stupid to understand what’s being said.
Yep, it’s actually like a less aggressive form of slamming your hand on a table for emphasis, for example. Not really meant to imply that the person is slow. Its like typing: “Listen. To What. I am saying”. Replace periods with claps and voilà! More emphasis.
I thought that is what the euphemism ‘Man Cave’ meant; a place where a guy could be drunk and not be seen by the kids, while he plays with his #6-Hard pentels, prismas, Bristol velum, and photo-chop? And India Ink, if you are old.
Not because staring is wrong in the abstract if someone’s deliberately flaunting… though it becomes a gray area if they mean to be flaunting for someone else…. ugh, tangled web, not going there….
Leslie should be the one telling them to stop staring, only that she doesn’t give a damn. I mean, she obviously knew it was going to happen and did it anyway. An neither Joe nor Walky are stereotypical enough to stare at the teacher’s boobs for an entire class. I think.
And depending as to the level of toxic masculinity floating around, those insults would get far worse. They aren’t pleasant, for those receiving them, or those that are dehumanized by them.
Yeah its a tough one I mean Leslie is putting her Holtzmanns out there, presumably for the purpose of appearing attractive to Robin but unfortunately the Holtzmanns are also quite aesthetically pleasing to Joe and Walky so of course they’re going to be interested in looking
However I agree with Joyce that leering/staring is something Joe should stop doing because it is disrespectful especially in the classroom
Leslie’s outfit would be completely acceptable in any professional setting I’ve ever worked in.
The fact that a woman dressed like that can reasonably expect to be leered at and catcalled is a problem with men. Calling it “wrong” is basically blaming her for men who can’t reign in their dicks and be respectful around someone they find attractive.
I’ll grant you the fact that this is a comic and we don’t really know how a real world Leslie would look right now. There’s very noticeable cleavage and there’s what looks like the top of her bra on display though.
I must have missed the dicks and the insults, my bad. So far all I’ve seen is too guys staring.
And I don’t agree, something being wrong is not the same as placing all the blame on someone. I don’t even think there’s any need for blame here whatsoever, to be honest.
What you’re “granting” me amounts to “oh well you meant a real-world equivalent of that outfit, but I’ll assume you really meant one that I already think would be acceptable”. Willis does both anatomy and clothing with enough detail and realism that we can absolutely know what that outfit would look like on a real person.
Joe’s eyes never left Leslie’s chest for a solid minute at least. Not only that, it was painfully obvious that was the case, as evidenced by Leslie noting he finally looked away. Furthermore, he’s not listening to a single word she’s saying. All of which is really disrespectful.
Looking? That’s fine. Visibly checking someone out? Less so, though in some settings/situations it can be acceptable. Not even making the slightest attempt to be discreet and leering, slack-jawed at someone for minutes at a time? Really creepy and extremely rude
And yes, by saying it’s OK for Joe to stare, but it’s “wrong” for Leslie to dress that way because can’t stop staring, IS blaming Leslie for Joe’s bad behavior.
“And yes, by saying it’s OK for Joe to stare, but it’s “wrong” for Leslie to dress that way because can’t stop staring, IS blaming Leslie for Joe’s bad behavior.”
Is this one of those “If she doesn’t want this happening to her, she shouldn’t have dressed like that!” things? I thought we were supposed to grow out of that in the 21st century.
What Fart Captor said, saying that a woman dressing up slightly is wrong because she should expect to receive creepy attention from men is victim-blaming and gross.
And I find it especially gross as a teacher who is a woman, because I know how low the bar can be for students to fetishize and be gross about their women teachers unless reigned in hard about it and how that idea of public consumption can put both student body and teachers at risk.
I don’t think that’s her bra — I think it’s a v-neck cami. I have one on right now with that exact same v-neck shape.
I’d agree that showing a bra would probably be against the dress code of most jobs. (I’d remind you, though, that Leslie is teaching college students, not children.) But that doesn’t mean it’s morally wrong to dress that way, or that it’s an invitation for sexual harassment.
Not hard at all. All I did, or tried to, was point out that there’s a totally natural reason for they to stare. People jumping at them like they were trying to grope Leslie like savages are taking this whole skit completely out of proportion.
There is a real problem in the world, and I guess that’s why many are apparently blind at the fact there’s more than the extreme, utterly despicable actions some take. People are going to look at people they find attractive now and forever and that’s perfectly fine.
Where the hell have I said what he’s doing is okay? The first thing you replied to has me saying that they’re wrong. It’s ridiculous and exaggerated and allegedly comical but wrong.
I don’t know what to make of that analogy, because all I’m seeing there is that no matter what one side is alway going to be wrong.
And that’s something else we agree on. I’m not even going to open the can of worms that trying to decide where one ends and other starts because that’s hella subjective.
All I’m saying is that I feel lik many are reacting as if even the looking was unwarranted, which is not.
It is unwarranted. Students leering at their teacher, like customers leering at service professionals is incredibly rude and dismissive and the way we’re trained to overlook things like leering, sexist comments, and attitudes towards women’s bodies as public consumptive object is what leads to the stuff like groping.
And that’s a personal experience a lot of people have where they know the creepy staring is part of a larger social attitude towards the idea that a woman being sexually attractive to a man makes her at fault for “leading him on” or “dressing sluttily” and all the things angry men do in response to people they believe are trying to “trap” them.
THis is like, 5 flavors of bullshit, which is almost impressive given that it’s short. From the top:
Nobody should care about ‘natural’ reasons while they’re babbling across the globe on a box or rectangle in a room that can be lit 24/7 and that is kept at a relatively comfortable temperature through the use of either absurd amounts of power, excellent engineering, or both. This notwithstanding that Leslie’s irritation is just as ‘natural’, but isn’t important apparently.
Savages. Nice. Christ.
Nobody’s jumping at Joe like he’s being the worst. People are saying him (and wally) are being jackasses in this specific context. And they are. That they could be moreso isn’t really a salve.
I find it amazing that you’re deploying this rhetoric against me or Cerb or similar. That’s legitimately hilarious.
“There is a real problem in the world, and I guess that’s why many are apparently blind at the fact there’s more than the extreme, utterly despicable actions some take.”
You’re saying this /while trying to say it’s okay for two boys to ogle someone, because they aren’t sexually assaulting someone/. Well. Fucking. Played. You are a master at this, I can see.
People can look at lots of things. People shouldn’t stare. Basic courtesy, right up until it’s a hot woman apparently. Like, this isn’t even controversial outside that context.
Yeah, Leslie’s resigned acceptance that it was going to happen doesn’t mean she’s okay with it. That’s why she’s actually glad Joe is arguing with Joyce, since it means he finally stopped ogling her.
Yep, that is 100% service professional/teacher/librarian speak for “eh, if I complain about this, it’ll lead to an argument and possibly me being disciplined. So for her, it’s ugh, hey there social consequences for trying to look nice for someone, reminding me yet again that my body as a lesbian is considered a nice toy for the boys to fetishize. Yay, remind me to add that to the lesson plan.
I know I’m the dowdy feminist type, but I really hate the common cultural idea that a woman dressing up specifically for one person is open to public consumption.
Like, for fucks sake, it should not be risky for a person to try and dress up for someone they are interested in or even just to feel a bit more confident about themselves and their looks, without having a crowd of assholes interpreting them as “being on the menu” for suggestive comments, creepy leering, street harassment, and so on…
And similarly, I loathe this idea that a woman existing and being considered sexually attractive to a man, means it is then her fault when he acts inappropriately, violently, or sexually aggressive towards her, not just because it’s a weirdly consumptive way of looking at women and regarding them not as individuals but products for public consumption.
But also because that shit has had deep negative impacts on me and my friends. My gf and cousin both get endlessly street harassed even though both dress exceedingly modestly, because they both have large breasts and thus are viewed as “putting them out there” as it were regardless of how they dress. Similarly, I’ve had friends assaulted on the street because of how someone interpreted their outfit as trying to lure them sexually. And I’ve already shared the story of the person who wanted to circle back in his car and kill me because he felt so “cheated” out of the fact that the two lesbians he street harassed because “lesbians are hot” included one who was trans.
And that last part especially bothers me because as a trans woman, that whole “putting things out there” thing gets real scary real fast, because if I try and resolve dysphoria by dressing in ways that make me feel good about my body, I’m taking a risk that some person on the street will see that as trying to “trap” them into being attracted to me and try to murder me for it.
A good general rule is if you’re not on a date with them, it’s generally best to simply assume it isn’t.
If it’s somebody you know, a good option is “You seem to be dressed up nice today, what’s the occasion?” If their response gets real flirty, it might be for your benefit.
So Robin should ignore that Leslie’s all dressed up since they’re not on a date and Leslie’s not likely to get too flirty with her in front of the class.
The problem with this whole scenario is that Leslie is specifically dressing to show cleavage to get a reaction from someone who has no reason to think it’s aimed at her.
Fair enough. It does make me imagine this absurd scenario where I completely misread innocuous conversation for flirting, I then completely fumble my response and look like a total creepazoid, she slaps me on the face, then the police pull up and brand the word “PERV” into my forehead. Stupid anxiety..
Luckily the world does not work like a harem anime. If you misread a sign and make someone uncomfortable, they are much more likely to make an excuse and move on or try and ignore you than make a scene.
Is this like men naming their you-know? I.E. some do it and think everyone does, while some don’t and go “WTF?” when they hear the others everyone does?
[insert an “eeeeegh?” facial expression in reaction the possible meanings of the previous insert…. As well as doubt over the continued use of the phrase “insert X” as we are moving into some really weird territory here]
[Insert reference to comments made five months back, and a gracious awarding of a few points (not all of them; since We learned our lesson in handing them out all willy-nilly]
Serious coming analysis time: Much as I want this to be Joyce tsundering at Joe because how dare he, I really think what this boils down is that now that Joe’s shown that he’s not the macho horndog, that he responded to Joyce in an hour of need and helped her in a way nobody else could by relating through a shared, painful experience, Joyce has expectations for him, and that means he needs to straighten out.
Walky’s always going to be the drooling imbecile who doesn’t deserve Dorothy. It’s okay for Joyce to hate Walky, but if she saw the compassion he’s displayed towards Billie, Sal and Dorothy then she’d be more willing to believe that he’s not just some doofus.
I’m basing this entirely on two strips, mind, so it’s possible I’m jumping the gun, but what I think we’re seeing is Joe no longer being an easily labeled Macho Horndog. He helped Joyce when she needed him, so now he needs to be the good person Joyce thinks he really is all the time, and that includes averting his gaze from foul temptresses.
The protagonist is a Mafia hitman who decides to embark on a program of moral improvement by cloning himself with each clone having a more restrictive moral code. These restrictions are controlled by a series of pins in a circuit board, sorta.
During the book he has increasing troubles as his clones are murdered, and the voices of his earlier personas demanding that he pull out pins to gain more tactical flexibility at the cost of moral backsliding.
…hasn’t she seen at least some of that kindness towards Billie and Dotty? I guess the stuff with Billie’s not as obvious, but right now what I’m thinking of was… him being a bit of a twit and pissing off Billie. The most important point – that she feels close enough to Wally to name him her emergency contact.
I mean, she is always going to be pretty dismissive of him, I guess, but I’m not sure that’s a thing Wally can avert.
Hey, that’s like negative three days late for Joe.
Of course, it’s *time until marriage* early for Joyce, so I suppose it breaks even.
Wait, if it breaks even, doesn’t that mean NOW is when they should screw?
Is that how relationships work? That’s compromise, right?
Man, this is so complicated…
You live in apartments way above your payment scale!
And you get laid a lot, and life is pretty OK, so…
What is wrong with you?
Just appreciate your life
What is wrong with you?
This is First World Problem Night
What is wrong with you?
You’re a drama magnet toooooooo-ooooooo.
(Note that I do appreciate that the cast of Friends had some real problems that are just as real no matter how rich you are. But the intro song is… rather inaccurate as to describing the show.)
There was one episode I recall where Rachel was talking about the latest twist in the Ross saga and how she wasn’t sure what to do and Pheobe said it reminded her of living on the street and considering trading sex for food.
RACHEL: Okay, but how is that like my situation?
PHEOBE: Oh, it’s not. You see, that was an actual problem, and this is some high school crap.
“Avert” implies a change of direction, while “remove” is essentially the same thing as “move”, meaning that it allows a slightly greater number of options; Joe could shift his head a few metres across so that he is looking elsewhere while not changing the ‘direction’ of his gaze. You can still use ‘avert’ if you really want to even for this type of movement, but it would mean that you’re defining the direction of the gaze as relative to the thing being gazed upon, rather than to the one doing the gazing, which is a bit strange. Idiomatically, it would be ‘avert your eyes’, although ‘avert your gaze’ is slowly becoming more common, and this overrules all the previous discussion. Nonetheless, I think that ‘remove your gaze’ is the better way of saying it, at least for now.
Honestly, the inking’s fine. But I didn’t get she was referring to her breasts until I read the comments. Is that also the reason for the weird circles–she’s pointing them out?
Some cleavage has more attractive value than others. It’s not even a matter of the quality of the breasts (although Leslie’s seem quite fine), but context can greatly enhance the gaze-attraction of cleavage.
For example, when the cleavage in question belongs to an authority figure, like a teacher…
are we really sure that walky is actually looking at leslie? The guy behind Joyce kinda looks like him (same haircut) but not really. And in the last panel, Walky’s in front of Joyce. Idk.
Who could have guessed that the Joyce/Joe dynamic would be my favorite part of the strip? I like that Joe has a friendship with a woman that he isn’t trying to bang.
After like a minute of the surprise Joe really should control himself but good lord do I utterly despise when people use the clap emoji like that in text/posts. It’s like those additions to tumblr posts where they say whoever doesn’t reblog a post is a horrible person, only at least in the latters case it’s usually some worthless addition and you can reblog the original post. Not in this case.
Basically the way Joyce is writing is the equivalent of speaking really slowly for emphasis. You see it a lot on text posts on tumblr. It’s a way to be really condescending tbh.
The times I’ve seen it on Twitter (I’m not on tumblr) it seems to mean “This should really be a universal truth that everyone understands, but apparently it isn’t, so, yes, I’m going to say it really slowly and carefully”. And I’ve almost always agreed with what the people on my Twitter feed think are universal truths (yay for social media bubbles!) so I’ve thought “fair enough”.
I’ve never had it directed at me personally in a text, though. I think that would change my view somewhat…
35 fucking percent chance of 4 years of Trump? Halloween is over, throw out the damn pumpkin – it was rotten to start with.
Look, at this point it’s pretty clear a sizeable chunk of you USAmericans don’t care about the people who are going to be utterly screwed and endangered in a Trump presidency, so let’s try this:
I’m finishing some freelance work that pays in dollars, so please don’t tank your currency before I get paid and rid of them, okay? It’s capitalism! You lot like capitalism, right? Ra Ra Ra capitalism? Or anything, I don’t care anymore, just make it stop.
Side Question: What is a “tipping point” in this context?
Peaked just before the debates, I think. Or before the conventions. His chances dropped drastically in response to the differences between the conventions and particularly his response to Khan. Then he partly recovered because we have short memories and crashed again after the debates started and he flew off the handle a couple more times.
He’s recovering because he’s being kept on a really short leash and because the FBI has interfered in the campaign with a really badly timed info dump on emails.
If I had been smarter, I’d have quoted – here’s how I intended the post to be read:
Emperor Norton: “before Trump started his “I’m going to look like a complete and utter fucktool” campaign.”
You mean, two weeks into the primaries?
I’m not sure the FBI’s infodump can be called badly timed – from my understanding, the agent that started it had told Congress he’d keep them updated on any developments on the email front. There were developments, he updated them.
(for the record, I think both your primary POTUS candidates suck ass, with Clinton being preferable in that she’s terrible but not catastrophic, but aggravated by the fact that I’ve seen better-run campaigns for 5th grade class president)
Could you enlighten me what fivethirtyeight means by “tipping points” on their map?
For the “tipping points”, it’s where they take all the state and rank them in terms of the margin for each candidate. The state on that list that puts the winner above 270 electoral vote is the tipping point state. For example, if you take their current projection, the state that puts Clinton above 270 electoral votes is currently New Hampshire, and so that’s the (average) tipping point state. Where they give probabilities for each state being the tipping point state, that’s based on the number of times they ran the simulation and that state provided the 270th vote to the winner.
Ah, I see – then that’s why states that are worth a lot of votes but are firmly on one candidate’s side (like California) have pretty much nil chance of being a tipping point; since they’re not going to switch, they’re not going to be the ones that’ll make the candidate cross the victory line. Thanks.
I’ve been watching Obama farewell videos, both the Halloween and the ones where he and Michelle meet and greet people. They’ve filled my heart and joy and sadness – they’re both fantastic. Going to miss both of them.
Do note that fivethirtyeight is the outlier in the poll forecasts.
I suggest going to the one on New York Times which has a list of competing polls. Also PollyVote actually aggregates the poll aggregators, and is more stable.
Now that the commenters have pointed it out, I kinda do see all the ways a Joe/Joyce relationship would work out. It just didn’t at first because Joyce was still fresh off the Bible school bus, and Joe was still meathead who only wanted to bang. And that was really their only problem with each other – besides the Jewish thing, which Joyce doesn’t care about anymore.
But I’d still doubt it if I didn’t read a comic (exact timeline escapes me but it was either just before or during Parent’s Day) where Joe specifically said that he is a bit worried of turning into his dad. So maybe there’s an upcoming storyline where he tries to swear off indiscriminate sex?
This weekend, he demonstrated that he’s capable of being a considerate, caring person. She actually liked that guy. But now that they’re in the same room again, it’s right back to his old routine.
Leslie’s opening speech: Is really adorable. Like, it’s professional and welcoming and gets to the aspects of Robin that Leslie admires even though she despises her politics and why she is an appropriate invitee to the Gender Studies class even though there are heavy ulterior motives for why she wants her to come.
Robin is the first latina representative and one of the youngest women to hold office. Her politics are repellant, but there’s inspirations there that are relevant to those in her class even if it’s just “start your own political process to overthrow candidates like this”. And Leslie is mixing business and pleasure by having her deliver a useful lesson on the realities of being latina or a woman politician while also hoping that her outfit stirs some more chemistry in the congresswoman.
Joyce: I’m really proud of Joyce here, cause unlike previous times, I don’t believe that as much of the reason for her reaction is fundie ideology in the way it was last time she used it.
Like, in the fundie ideology, Leslie should be punished with stares for dressing wantonly, being queer, and otherwise fulfilling a fallen state. But she shouldn’t actually be in our world. In our world men staring at women like they were pieces of meat are doing something wrong and treating a teacher like a fetish object is gross in the extreme (though I might have real clear bias in this giving that I am a teacher).
And Joe needed to be called out for this shit and hard and Joyce would be the only one to do it. And we see immediately the social price she just paid for doing so, which is somewhat sad, but why it was necessary for the callout to occur.
(The one on Joe looks like it got spammed for a little bit, so it’ll be a little delayed)
Leslie: Oh, poor Leslie. Like, I recognize that resignment. I feel it in my bones. Where it’s just too exhausting to have the same fight, the same argument, especially when it’s about your own body rather than the theory. I mean, it’s a bit different having to say, please stop fetishizing me rather than having to say, please stop fetishizing people. Cause the focus on the self brings up so many cultural messages relating to self-blame, not wanting to raise a fuss, being perceived as selfish or “seeing things that aren’t there”, or risking angering someone to violence.
And Leslie as a teacher is somewhat more constrained on the discussions of the personal, because we are trained to shy away from the personal as much as possible, to not use ourselves as the example when anyone else can. So taking time out of a special guest, one with a tight schedule to call out a student at staring at her breasts wouldn’t be a good idea and could backfire more with said student trying to do what Joe did just now with Joyce with the teacher instead and now you’re fighting with a student instead of teaching.
And it’s a tough situation, so I understand the resignation. Especially since the act of leering already robs some of the confidence. She wanted to be a little cute for Robin as she visited and yet, she was considered up for public consumption and leered at and made to feel on the spot in an uncomfortable way even though she is professional as a teacher and acted like she didn’t notice.
Damn you, Cerberus, making social commentary on the comments section of of a social commentary comic, and then forcing us to read it! I could use my time for other stuff, but no, I have to read what you wrote! Why can’t you just turn off (apparently, there’s a switch, I guess? Somewhere?)?
(I don’t have to tag this as sarcasm, right? It’s obvious, isn’t it? No? Better be safe than sorry? Oki)
1. This is a comic that provides plenty of fodder for analysis. It makes total sense that someone would use it for something other than to unwind.
2. For many people, seeing their experiences reflected in media is, if not relaxing, cathartic or affirming.
3. Why not let Cerberus enjoy the comic the way she wants to without trying to make her feel like she’s doing it wrong? If you come to the comic to relax and your find the more analytical comments to be stressful, you can always ignore them. (For the record, I always enjoy Cerberus’s comments).
If you’re truly uninterested, you should probably just scroll past the comments.
Willis writes serious stories, and this comic has been moving in a serious direction since years ago, so there’s gonna be serious commentary and people bring their experiences into it. And some people enjoy speaking on social issues, god knows in the physical everyday life most people don’t want to talk about these things.
If it’s not hurting anyone, then it’s totally harmless and not our business to tell people that they’re consuming stuff the “wrong” way. Also, it’s totally shitty to assume that Cerberus is an SJW stick in the mud, which I’m guessing is what you meant by that last sentence.
If that’s not what you meant, there was definitely a better way to say: hey, lately this comic seems to be reminding you about a bunch of shitty stuff that’s happened. How are you doing? I hope you have been relaxing.”
Perhaps YOU come here to unwind and are disconcerted by the serious discussion?
Will forever be amused / depressed by the double standard that people employ when they ask “god, why are you taking this so seriously, shut up,” because it’s just so bizarre to see folks getting worked up at other people for, presumably, being worked up. The lack of self-awareness.
My current week has been dealing with just a bunch of fucked up shit with one of my trans students being sexually assaulted on campus by another student on campus, an incident I warned the administration was likely to happen the month before said incident and them getting suicidal as our administration completely botched the follow-up and allowed them to be harassed by all the rapists’ friends as they called him a liar.
So I’ve been running around getting sexual assault resources to the student and his core group of friends, getting suicidal ideation resources to the student and his core group of friends, shutting down victim-blaming horseshit, making sure that the student is as supported as necessary. This is in follow-up to learning last week that one of my other trans students had a suicide attempt on Monday and had been abandoned on resources because no one really wanted to bring it up and the admin it was reported to didn’t feel it important to inform the teacher specifically tasked with monitoring said student’s safety (that being me).
All while dealing with the resurgence of unending suicidal ideation and the return of lots of rape flashbacks triggered by the whole administration level mishandling of the incident in question.
So, yeah, I’m riled up in my daily life. And I unwind, I process by analysis. It’s how I work. If I can see how the system works, it makes it less frightening, makes it make sense, shows what needs to be improved to change it. Additionally, I tend to be more aware of certain aspects because I have a horrifying collection of terrible life experiences that allows me to pick up on specific behaviors.
Dumbing of Age is one of my favorite comics. It’s half of my therapy at this point. Like, overanalyzing everything to the last nanometer is how I have fun (ask my partners), but overanalyzing this comic in particular provides immense healing for me personally and has had resonance for others which encourages me to continue providing it.
Earlier this week it literally kept me alive.
So does much relax me? You got me there. Relaxation is something I gave up hope for a long time ago. So I make due with what I can emotionally access. What refreshes me. At the moment, this is it. And when it’s too much and doesn’t refresh me, I bail and take care of myself instead. It’s how I roll.
Is it wrong to hope it was just apathy and not bigoty that you weren’t told about the student you mentioned in the second part of the second paragraph?
That’s fair, I wasn’t trying to be mean as some people here apparently interpreted it as. I don’t know you, I don’t pretend to, I was just making sure the comic was making you happy and not a source of frustration as it might’ve appeared so to one of the uninitiated.
Well now I feel kinda dumb. I honestly thought she dressed up this way as part of her lesson plan for the class, given that it’s gender studies (or similar?). Didn’t realize that Roz was actually being 100% facetious and that Leslie was just trying to look nice for her crush until after reading the comments.
Feeling kinda twitchy that I’ve not made a reference to Reginald in like a weeks or so. Or at least it feels like that. Time seems to have no meaning when thinking about the Duke.
Oh My God, Willis, one of the banner ads I have right now is advertising HETALIA…. not that I’m offended or anything, I’m just surprised to see it here since you did that shortpacked comic about the cosplayers.
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
It's #webcomicday? We have a special day???
Well, my name is Pat McHoarney and I draw 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd, a multigenerational story about women who all have sexy legs and probably other features. There was a grandmother, but she wasn't hot and so she died off-panel.
Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. Her partner, Billy Evans, is now trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics.” nyti.ms/3FbtZm9
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 5d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3d
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dang, Joe’s good at one-fingered typing w/o looking
He has lots of experience with using one finger
Perfect Gravatar to make that comment.
(Mine slightly less so to react positively to the comment.)
Eh, I can see that character saying something like that with a sort of snide self-superiority, sort of a “of course YOU would say that” sort of thing, so it still fits.
And your gravatar happens to be a perfect fit for the first letter of your nickname, WHAT ARE THE ODDS
Your gravatar’s facial expression is good for the exact level of snark in your comment.
If I recall correctly mine is completely abstract and thus breaks the chain.
CHAIN BREAKER
A man in Chicago broke the chain and was absorbed by a cat!
Sooooo, are they friends, frienemies, someone she trust doe to a similar situation? what is it between these two all of a suddn,
I’m honestly not sure. Joe’s not exactly a friend, but they’re not enemies I think. They’re just two people with VERY different approaches to life. I think Joyce trusts Joe to a certain extent since he’s made it very clear that he’s no longer interested in her at all.
Pretty sure that they have a kind of similar relationship as in It’s Walky. They challenge each other with their polar opposite views on life, but there’s a bit in each that the other secretly admires or envies and their constant clashing is a sign that they care for each other, as opposed to ignoring or being apathetic to one another.
Friends, huh? When I look at them, I think of a Japanese term, rhymes with ‘thunder day’.
If it’s the term I’m thinking of, you might come closer to the mark if you try rhyming it with “soon the day.”
Dotty where are you looking, while talking about Joe’s fingers~
Panel 6, second from the end, probably.
ah, sadly, I think I completely missed the point of that…
It took a few years(read: weeks) but I think Joe and Joyce would actually make a cute couple
I kind of agree though I think that or they would be great friends cuz it seems like that to me. Though we don’t know what will happen to drive them apart or push them together. Though its certainly interesting they have gotten that way.
i’d be lying if i didn’t agree with you.
I think Joyce would be adamant to wait until marriage. Likely wouldn’t set well with someone who have the libido of Joe
3but love trumps all !” yeah, whatev.
Please, don’t use those two words in the same sentence. *shudder*
To use the victorious trump card. I find that love trumps all.
Make America sexy again
I’m horrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.
Yes! They are so totes the Cutest ever!
I love them both.
I don’t know. He’d need to mature considerably before I’d consider him an acceptable source of smooches for Joyce
Mature? He just doesn’t have the body hangups other people have or the sex hangups. From what I understand he doesn’t mistreat or lie to the women he sleeps with… it’s always consensual…
To be able to do that with as many people as he’s been with and not have a riot on his hands takes some very serious ability to not piss people off.
He might be more mature than a lot of people at that college.
He harasses women and doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Not all that devoted to consent, even if he makes sure to pressure them into saying ‘yes’ and not just immediately into sex.
Word of God states pretty big on consent http://www.dumbingofage.com/cast/attachment/2014castjoe/
He also can’t express his feelings or even admit to having them, and is constantly disrespectful to Leslie, and is really bad about making inappropriate jokes and comments.
His biggest issue – as I see it – is that he’s really bad at picking up on when he should back off, or just stay out of something. He keeps trying or keeps pushing longer than he should, and in class he doesn’t seem to consider that maybe now isn’t a good time for a joke when one of your classmates is on the verge of tears.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have at least some of those issues when I was his age. Especially when it came to recognizing when is a really bad time for sexual humor, but Joe still needs to grow out of these things. I’m optimistic that we’re seeing the beginning of that growth, but he’s not there yet, and I have high standards for the quality of gentleman who’d be good enough for Joyce.
:II do, however, like them as friends. I could see it being good for both of them.
Word of god should probably be updated to include “in his own mind”.
He does take no for an answer. He made a pass at Sara and when she expressed her disinterest (okay, her disgust), he immediately backed off. I’d have to dig through the archives to find his exact wording, but I think he said “message recieved.”
Sarah was pretty damn emphatic about it and backed up by Joyce, who’d had him beaten not long before.
We’ve never actually seen him deal with a less extreme rejection, which is a shame, because it would clear up a lot of things about Joe. Either make it clear that he is a problem or that his ideas of consent really are sufficient despite his aggressive flirting. We really haven’t seen his “Game” at all – except for the date with Joyce, that bit with Sarah and a few random comments. We’ve never actually seen a successful seduction by Joe, just the aftermath, with Roz & Penny. Though he’s apparently been having a lot of sex off camera, we don’t know how he’s getting it. Or for that matter what the women think about it afterwards.
The date with Joyce hinted at some problems: the attempt to bribe Mike to go away, constantly working to turn the conversation back to sex, etc. Completely overshadowed by how horrible Joyce was with the punching and all, but valuable as a bit of insight into how Joe works.
It was not immediate. Sarah had literally told him to fuck off the day before the conversation you’re talking about:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/children/
And then the very next day, it took even more angry shouting from Sarah before he quit. He did completely accept Sarah’s rejection, and even apologized for his behavior, but he still has plenty of room to improve there.
Yeah, a “caring about consent” that forces people to angrily confront the person harassing them in order to get them to stop is not an actual “caring about consent”, because it forces the one being harassed to do something that is socially regarded as a sign of bad manners and temperament in order to get the person to leave them alone.
And we see Joe openly exploit that all the time, ignoring clear body language that the person he is targeting is uncomfortable with his attention (even ignoring when they openly warn their friends about him in front of him):
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/sitnext/
He also has a habit of acting dismissively to any girl he pushes to angrily telling him off when he’s pushing against a social boundary. Specifically, I’m meaning here that when he is screamed at, he immediately acts like “whoa whoa whoa, where is this coming from and acting like the person is crazy for not thinking he’d take a simple no, even though when he’s learned of a boundary, he’s often stepped right over it, even when a person told him to stop it.
Sometimes to the level of screaming at the back of a fleeing person to tell her friends he didn’t touch her, because his reputation as someone who is technically not a rapist matters more than his actual actions not making women feel that uncomfortable where the only way to get him to stop is to scream in his face.
And the Sarah example is not a good one of him respecting boundaries, because in his “apology” to her, he’s still trying to hit on her, talking about harnessing her angry energy and how “any guy” would try and do the same.
Basically acting like his bad behavior was universal, diminishing said bad behavior, and trying to use social capital to try and get the person telling him off to look socially crazy and overreacting and his actions of red flag behavior to be overlooked.
That wasn’t the day before – closer to two weeks, but the point stands she had absolutely told Joe to fuck off before. What DID happen the day before was him see her threaten his dad with testicular torsion because he wouldn’t back off.
He flirts somewhat aggressively, and doesn’t give a shit about how *other* people feel when he’s pursuing their friends. In his mind, the only valid source of discouragement is the woman in question. But he takes that pretty dang seriously.
Really? I have exactly the opposite reaction. These two have negative chemistry – I never want to see them interact. The weekend texting seemed like an unexplained OOC moment, but now they’re back to their usual “These two people are toxic and awful together” default, and I continue to want them to have nothing to do with each other.
I think they are acting like friends?… Like Joe’s actually doing what she told him to and not just telling her to fuck off, they are bickering friendly-ways. Nor would Joyce just message a stranger like that?…
Yeah theres certainly a connection, as ypu say she wouldn’t message a stranger like that but hose last panels, to me, suggest they’re not at friendship level yet, not far off though
People can be friends and still be toxic and awful together. I think these two bring out the worst in each other, and I don’t really care if they’re friends – I just want them to stop interacting.
Sometimes, a friend is someone you can BE toxic with, and still be friends at the end of the day. Joyce wouldn’t argue so passionately with Joe if she didn’t care about him.
Not at all. Look at his first answer. Not a complaint about being nagged, not an affirmation of his own right to do what he wants, not a quick dismissal or a lack of response, but a jab at her language. And then, after the second message, he actually did was she asked even if he was crabby about it.
Try to come up with any other character in this story who, upon requesting Joe to stop ogling a woman was not ignored, quipped or laughed at but actually heeded.
I’ve seen enough anime to know where this is going.
Anime is an acceptable substitute for human interaction right?
Ahh, more or less.
God, I hope so
Hope, like a car in a destruction derby, exists only to be crushed.
Life is like a brick on the strawberry tarte of our dreams [+/-]. Boulet
Joyce/Joe is like a shipwreck in the middle of the desert.
A shipwreck is still a ship, right?
it’s just a flesh wound! we can patch that right up.
like a car in a destruction derby
Or the Spanish announcers table in a wrestling match.
The great upside is that you can be sure you aren’t hurting other people, which is pretty much inevitable otherwise.
(See any comment thread here.)
i cant believe youd say something so hurtful to me
The outcome of this discussion was entirely predictable and hilarious.
Just sayin’.
“I have finally insulted EVERY SINGLE DEMOGRAPHIC.”
“No you haven’t! You forgot about THE WEEABOOS!”
“Anime is cartoons.”
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-“
Anime was a mistake.
It’s nothing but trash.
It’s the most innovative thing ever to come along and gives you entry into a vast unlimited universe of experience and all you whiney entitled ….
Oh, wait. You said Anime.
Nevermind.
Vid game joke. Nothing to see here. Move along.
If a large enough subset of society thinks it is, then it becomes socially acceptable, at least in terms of acceptance by a large portion of society.
The question is how you can make the Otaku fan base large enough.
I recommend having a plump, obnoxious Otaku billionaire run for the Republican nomination in 4 years. What could possibly go wrong?
American/Russia tension reaches critical levels as Obama declares Putin’s waifu to be shit.
Gods almighty, I would rather shoot myself than deal with a dominant, or even strong, anime fanbase, either in Merika or Japan.
‘Apple is clearly better than whatever backwater phone you have, you heathen!’
“Bounce your eyes”? I’ve never heard that expression before.
From the context, you should probably be thankful for that. I know I am.
She’s used it before.
Honestly, if you’re trying to make Joe avert his gaze in this context?
DON’T USE THE WORD “BOUNCE”.
Where is the LIKE BUTTON???
Also, don’t mention “like buttons”.
I swear that she has used that phrase before. Hell, I think she used it with Joe.
She has.
Throw your eyes on the GROUND! I’m an adult!
I’ve not heard it either, but I knew what she meant.
And, honestly, I don’t have a problem with it here. Sure, it’s dumb as a sex prevention strategy. But I do think it’s rude to stare at someone’s breasts in a non-sexual context.
I don’t think anyone – even Joe, – is disputing that. Just using fundamentalist-abstention terminology to say it.
“Shake your head, boy; your eyes are stuck.”
Is it weird that what I most wanna know is what those gold circles in Joyce’s text are?
The clapping hand emoji
Well, now I’m just picturing her text with a funky beat!
For the longest time I assumed it was praying hands.
That would fit Joyce…
on twitter it always looks like they were begging people to stop doing one crap on another so…
I’m just disappointed they’re not yellow flames.
I thought they Were, little balls of flame?
I first read them as angry little flames — and that is now my head canon.
Emojis, either the clapping
or waving 
one.
I think they’re supposed to be clapping hands. It’s something of a meme to use clapping hand emojis to emphasize something.
Another meme I’ve remained unexposed to. Even if I’d recognized what they were, I’d have thought they were applauding, and wondering why.
Hand claps. Smiley people hands are yellow.
They’re clapping hand emojis. They’re used for emphasis, sometimes even unironically.
Truly, the things you miss when you still have a flip phone… :/
Really, you’re not missing a thing.
Other than a phone bill inflated by data charges.
….Heh. Yeah, much, much weirder for the purposes of emphasis than any other construction written english has seen.
Damn those kids for trying to find workarounds tot he limitations of text!
The latest in making sure the only the cool people get things.
I thought mebbe they was jelly beans
She’s simulating clapping her hands in front of Joe’s face to break his boobie-trance.
I like to think of them as stand-ins for curses :v
Ditto, what you said. Also flip phone is going away with my 2G network.
I totally thought they were some sort of gold medallion thing, like the one on Meowth’s head.
So my brain was like “Joyce used PAYDAY! … for some reason…? … ^O__o^;; ??? “
….so why didn’t she text Walky who was both looking at the boobies and romantically involved with one of Joyce’s best friends.
Maybe like Walky throwing a toy at Dorothys head Joyce maybe has some sort of unresolved feelings for Joe and shes unsure of how to express them?
That’s the way I’m leaning.
I pdon’t think a romantic type relationship would end in anything but tears (or explosions) but a good, solid, friendship would do the both of them very well
But I’m not sure who is likely to accept a platonic friendship between male and female, Joe with his wanting to Joe every girl he meets or Joyce with her every man is a potential husband
Shenanigans await!
I wonder if Joyce has – possibly subconsciously – dumped that idea of every man is a potential husband? She’s not the person she was when she “dated” Joe.
Eventually I think she will but I’d imagine that when somethings been ingrained into you at such an early age its probably quite to get rid of, I mean her church and her mom probably put expectations on her on what a “proper” wife should be
Or not
Because she suddenly has expectations of Joe.
Also I’m binge watching Reboot right now. The Village People show up and sing about how much the BS&P sucks and that’s probably the best summation I can give.
See also the liferaft gun.
And the part where Enzo fights the devil in Mortal Kombat and he rips peoples’ heads off just off camera.
Reboot messed me up when I was 6.
I think he was just crushing their heads, not ripping them off. I miss Reboot.
It’s coming back to life with some kind of live action hybrid thing. All I know is that it makes it sound like Code Lyoko and also it’s different to a thing I liked when I was a kid, ergo it’s probably bad.
I’ll give it a chance. It might even be better since they have an established mythology to build on.
I feel about it the same way I feel about Cartoon Network bringing back the Powerpuff Girls and Johnny Bravo; why even bother? Why are we curtailing bright new ideas in favour of ideas that were old before the new target audience was even born?
Then again, maybe it can give an ending to that 15-year old cliffhanger.
User Wins?
Wait. The powerpuff girls went away? How did that happen?
I think it’s weird to talk about continuing to use the same character as the death of new ideas… or more accurately, treating that like a new thing, I guess. Mickey Mouse is old enough to have been responsible for the extending of copyright like, thrice. And sure, Mickey’s boring af (Unless I’ve missed a relatively recent development, which is def possible), but Donald’s not much younger, and he’s gotten a pretty vibrant and incredibly long-lived series of comics that lead to multiple new spinoffs.
This doesn’t really mean a new Reboot is a good idea, and yeah, I haven’t heard anyone who was happy with the new PPG (though I don’t exactly talk to a lot of kids, so who idk there), but it’s not like these are bad things for having the same name or even the same premise. I mean, heck, we’re on the website of an enormous transformers nerd (Albeit a nerd who would tell you a lot of it isn’t good, so there’s that)
More than that, we’re on a webcomic that’s built on the premise of rebooting all his old characters into a new continuity.
Is Willis so bereft of new ideas that he can’t do anything but recycle his Walkyverse characters into a college setting? (Rhetorical question, obviously. The answer is: I don’t care, because he’s doing it so well.)
I mean I think there’s a crucial difference between one dude retooling his old characters in a new setting and a massive company reviving that old thing you liked when you were ten.
Stuff like Transformers and TMNT, they never really went away from pop culture. All the old CN stuff died years ago and none of the original creators are involved. That’s why I’m down for Samurai Jack; because Gendy Tartakovsky is returning to it.
Okay, now for a conversation I actually wanted to have, because jfc.
TMNT *did* die. It went like, a decade without significant injections into the pop culture. And well… Carl Barks didn’t invent Donald Duck. The fact that the old creators are gone is a big part of why we can be sure new ideas will be a part of it – new authors are going to bring their own spin on things. Premise counts so much less than execution. A new Johnny Bravo, a new Reboot, etc, might suck and it might not. Either could end up brilliant, or would-be brilliant but for executive meddling, or any of a dozen other things. Heck, even passion isn’t necessarily going to lead to anything good (Hello comics and Warhammer 40k).
Like, particularly in Samurai Jack’s case, I can see why you’d want the original head guy back – the story never got resolved. So if you wanted that resolution, that /too/ makes sense to me. But if it’d been a new thing, well, that could still be neat – it’s not like SJ was particularly high concept in the first place. A lot of it was, to the extent possible, choreography porn. I mean, it was def entertaining, but it doesn’t seem that big a deal whether or not we get a ‘proper’ continuation or not.
I don’t necessarily agree with that.
TMNT didn’t really stay dead for *that* long. Discounting the Next Mutation (because we all do), the franchise was off TV from 1996 to 2003, but was still humming along in comic form before returning on 4Kids, and when that ended it only took three more years for them to come back again. I don’t think there’s any point in time where a kid couldn’t have some passing knowledge of the turtles since they came out.
As for Reboot’s revival, well, I’m not really concerned as to its quality, whether it’s good or not it’s just not for me. What I don’t understand is in taking this old, dead franchise that last appeared fifteen years ago, whose main selling point was in being a trailblazer of CGI animation in the 90s, and handing it to today’s market.
It’s a lot like the last decade’s fascination with remaking old movies. What’s the point of making it if it’s just the same t hing, and if you want to do something different, why bother starting with an existing IP?
But you’re correct that fiction can be interpreted by someone outside the main creator, that’s basically the crux of modern fiction. I feel like there’s a difference between reimagining an old work (two of my favourite movies, The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly and The Thing, are remakes), or continuing on from an existing franchise like how modern cape comics work, and taking an old thing and just making it again, though.
It doesn’t really seem that common to just make a thing again. Like, I don’t really watch TV, so if JB is just a high-def remake I’ll be a little surprised, but everything I gathered from the PPG hate was that they did actually change and recast things (nfc what). It’s almost inevitable, I’m pretty sure. Without a shot-for-shot remake, I have trouble viewing something as ‘taking an old thing and making it again’.
In Reboot’s case, I’m pretty sure it’s that they just want to keep doing it. Like, creators have desires (Didn’t y’all in Canada get the actual finale? Or was that a cliffhanger too?), and sometimes they’re not just ‘money’ Of course, they could still be trying to cash in, but it seems an odd choice, for the reason you pointed out yourself (It /does/ happen. Everything I gather from Willis indicates this is what the Robotech dudes keep doing)
As far as ‘the last decade’s fascination’, I’m not so sure. Adaptations, sequels, and public domain stuff has been the basis of a lot of fiction for… well, a while. I’m not really convinced it’s a thing we’re doing especially hard now, so much as that it’s just more obvious since we’re doing more popular things (How many Romeo and Juliet iterations are there, exactly?). Some english or movie nerd somewhere probably did the actual legwork, so now I’m curious, but I don’t have the language out of hand to check.
And while the requirement to not have your own interpretation might not be ‘shot for shot remake’, I genuinely can’t see what else it would be. There’s a reason director and cast are considered relevant even just staging a reproduction of say, Shakespeare or Beckett. I didn’t see the new The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, would it actually qualify?
We got a finale that also ended in a cliffhanger. 15 years later and I am still incredibly bitter about it.
As for The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, I got my wires crossed. The original movie with The Man With No Name, A Fistful of Dollars, was basically an American adaptation of the Akira Kurosawa film Yojimbo, and I assumed that it was the same for the sequels.
I’ll still believe if when I see it. ReBoots been “coming back” for a decade now.
Theres been one image, which seemed to have a reflection of MegaByte (who wont be the same with a different voiceactor). However, a few years earlier there was a teaser, which was a Gamecube falling.
And there was this thing where they crowdsourced (sort of) a bunch of concepts – and one got made into a comic.
Clearly people at Mainframe/Rainmaker still want to make the franchise, but each time they try to bring it back it doesnt seem to get anywhere.
I think its just hard for them to get funding.
The series is named Reboot and people are mad when they reboot it
This is silly
I just want there to be a Reboot reboot so that the Reboot wiki can have a “Reboot (reboot)” article.
I need to watch Code Lyoko Evolution but being a huge CL fan I’m worried about what’s going to happen.
And yes Reboot needs to rectify that cliffhanger. But if they Digimon 02 Epilog it I will be beyond pissed
Dude, that sounds great, the Digimon 02 Epilogue was fine.
Well, I liked it anyways. Apparently this is very much an unpopular opinion. Ah well, we all like different stuff.
My mind went to Enzo Amore at first and boyhowdy was I confused…
Yep…pretty sure he’d have Big Cass doing the ripping off of heads. (I really wish I was awake/creative enough to figure out what his patter would sound like in that situation….)
It only got worse when the ABCs turned on them.
Traitorous dogs!
Yay ReBoot!
The BS&P was the thin stand-in for Standards and Practices, from the one where Megatron gives Enzo an amazing birthday gift? The ABCs ref makes me think they were something else, but I can’t really remember a whole lot of other times the Village People showed up.
“Unforgettable….” is the only line I know from that song, and I only know it as ‘that song neither Fong nor I know’. IAMA: Music Barbarian.
That episode was the the best.
I’m a sucker for those “villain engages in fun activity with the hero” episodes.
Also it has the models from the Dire Straits video for Money For Nothing show up, and that’s rad.
“Glitch…. BFG.”
Apparently Megabyte was voiced by that guy who did your narration in Dungeon Keeper 2 (I rewatched that bit to make sure I remembered the voice quote). What an archetypally evil-voiced guy!
That’s a hell of a labor of love. I think that’s semi-accurate play? They’re certainly actually /trying/ (Fingers are satan, and whether those are the right chords or not, they’re at least hitting strings). It’s not Kyoani levels of animation, but they’re insane and directed by some sort of minor deity of cinematography. It’s still a ton of attention to detail, and it was nominally unnecessary. Also, yes, perfectly hilarious. I mostly remember Dot’s frustration about how anything interesting got nixed by Standards and Practices, not knowing what was being said as a kid.
Dire Straits. Yes, I absolutely know who they are. I totally did not learn that bands exist primarily from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Yes =>
It’s cool they used stuff though.
Tony Jay! Also known as The Voice For That Disney Villain Who Legit Got A Song About Wanting God To Let Him Bang Somebody.
Oh my god, he was that asshole? *Checks to make sure Disney hasn’t done that twice* Yes, yes he was. Guess he was a hell of a villain.
Though he apparently didn’t do who I thought. My bad there XD
I was once flicking over channels and heard his voice on some religious documentary once. Was really weird hearing Megabyte talk about christ and such.
Maybe because he’s sitting in front of her she can’t see where he’s looking?
She doesn’t have to see him to know where he’s looking.
Because she’s texting buddies with Joe, not Walky.
\
I mean, Joe himself said he thought it was a trap, and that he shouldn’t look. I assumed they talked about him feeling trapped all the time, and so she’s trying to help.
Well, until the last panel when he was angry, and not just flippant.
I’m pretty sure it’s because he’s dating Dorothy combined with them not really being friends, certainly not to the level where Joyce would want to give him access to her phone number that she doesn’t.
Like, she’s accepted that her best friend is dating someone she views as super toxic for her and has already made clear her objections to the man and his behavior. So, I’d bet she’s done what a lot of other people in friendships do when their friend is dating an asshole and just stopped calling out shit, because the friend loves this person for reasons and it would feel rude to them to keep harping on how woefully inappropriate their actions are.
OTOH, she trusts Walky enough to walk alone with him – he’s definitely inside the OMG I can’t be alone outside envelope. She hangs out with him without Dorothy around, when it’s not strictly necessary.
I don’t think she hates him quite as much as she puts on. He’s definitely not good enough for Dorothy, in her opinion, but who would be? He irritates her, but I’m not sure it’s in a completely bad way.
My impression is that her standard for “keeps Ryan anxiety at bay” escorts wasn’t that restrictive, it just has to be someone that she knows personally. Less about the individual’s moral character than them not being a stranger.
Yep, that and while Joyce doesn’t respect Walky as a moral individual, she does view him as safe. As someone that isn’t going to attack her. And so, yeah, any port in a storm, though I will note that she didn’t once use him alone to walk to class in the post-Ryan era.
Like, she requested once, but that was more of an any port in a storm sort of situation:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/everybodys/
Actually, she did:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/progress/
I think Joyce has been warming up to him lately, considering how she’s been keeping his bad grades a secret from Dorothy. Rather than ratting him out, she tried to get him to get a tutor, and has been discreetly encouraging him to study more.
The way she asked him to talk to Sarah earlier so she’d feel included also seemed rather friendly to me. Admittedly, her other options at the time were Mike, and an extremely cranky Billie, but I think she trusts that Walky can be alright when he keeps his head out of his ass.
I think the reason she focused on Joe rather than him may be more practical: She can’t actually see if Walky is still ogling Leslie from where she’s sitting.
Joe, on the other hand, is sitting next to her where she can see his face, and Joyce’s attention (and irritation) would have already been directed towards him because of him barely acknowledging her saying hello, so it makes sense he’d be the one to get scolded
Joyce also told Becky that she missed Walky as well as Dorothy, Billie and Sarah when they were alone in her dad’s car.
Oh, I totally missed that one because it was implied rather than shown. So yeah, never mind on my point.
…Did…did she name her breasts after Kate McKinnon’s character from Ghostbusters? I mean, she is the best character, so…fair enough.
It took me so long to figure out what she was referring to. I thought Jillian and Holtzmann were two of her students who were just really loud or something ~_~
Took me a while to reslise too, but then I saw that she made air circles around her breasts and that tipped it for me.
I noticed that too but then was like, … but… boobs don’t make noise…?
More like Ghost-BUST-ers, am I right???
….Damnit, there’s got be a way to get a witty joke out of this.
Not a ghost of a chance.
I see this particular spectre has raised itself before us.
But you have to admire the spirit of the joke.
No I don’t. Y’all should have some seance.
Hots for a Jill-Off? Or is that too much? I have difficulty seeing where the line is for these jokes here.
Sorry, but your attempt was a bust.
now was this a pun on ghost or a pun on boobs?
-Is this some kind of a bust?
-It’s a fine one, ma’am, but we’re here for the ghosts, so put those sweater puppies away, ‘kay?
Thank you for pointing this out. I was thrilled but very very confused about the Holtz reference. XD
Leslie drawing yet more attention to and outright naming her boobs, out loud, in front of the entire class can’t be good.
It’s a private conversation she’s having with Roz. Everyone one else is paying attention to Joyce and Joe.
Holtzman is also one of the first queer female characters in a mainstream movie like that. My wife and I are fans, though we haven’t named our boobs after her.
Of course Leslie has. I mean, it was that character in Ghostbusters that got a lot of bi girls who formerly thought of themselves as straight to realize they were bi.
Given the person Leslie is hoping to seduce, I can see definitely see why she would want to borrow that awesome power.
Ah, so that is the joke in the last panel. I thought that was it, but wasn’t sure.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, now I get it
So are they gonna hate fuck the shit out of each other?
I wouldn’t be surprised.
I really would
I would let Joe take my virginity. Better someone with lots of experience than some scroob who might ruin it for you.
re: alt text
no idea man i was staring at leslie’s boobs
Is it a compliment or an insult to say “your inks look the same when you’re drunk”?
I couldn’t tell either. His artistry is so well honed it functions on reflex, a second nature.
Bravo Willis.
I think the insult would be if you said that they look better. Granted, I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is [Insert Compliment That Won’t Get Me Banned Again Here].
“again” ?
What kind of compliment have you been using?
Yeah, that sentence didn’t parse to well, huh? The intent was to a give a compliment that would counteract the previous sentence and avoid a ban, ala jokingly talking myself into a corner.
And to the ‘Again’ comment, I had posted a reply comment that was meant to be supportive of a decision they had made, and agreeing with them that a jerk was a jerk. That also didn’t parse out. I didn’t realize it until after a couple of days of unsuccessfully posting, and going back through my browser history, looking for comments that no longer exist. At least, I’m assuming that’s the cause.
I could not tell either. I’m also disappointed that I had not seen this strip before voting for “hottest DoA lady”, as Leslie just vaulted into the top 3. Who knew that she could spice up so nicely?
Oh, and it would be very difficult to not stare. In fact, if someone walked into a room with my wife and I, my wife would probably tease me for trying so hard NOT to stare. After all, she would find it hard not to stare and she’s not really into that sort of thing.
This is going to be a howling disaster; I just hope that repub scumbag gets the worst of it.
…OK, I get that Holtzmann is from Ghostbusters, but who’s Jillian?
That’s Holtzmann’s first name.
It’s her first name.
Spoilers: they’re her boobs
Is this Joyce defending Leslie from being leered at or is Joyce having flashbacks to their date
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/bliss/
Or both?
Yes.
There is also all sort of gender norms and fundie norms involved. Fun times.
Hands down my favorite friendship in this or the Walkyverse. There it is.
Julian and Holtzmann?
They’re not talking to each other.
They’re such firm friends they don’t need to say anything to communicate.
They’re always together! Nothing gets between them! (Except for the occasional lipstick case.)
I kinda wish we knew what Leslie was saying in panel 3. Is that weird? I can make out the rest.
Probably something about Robin’s official title/job.
Or to put it another way: Something, Something, Ninth District.
In honor of the clapping hands…
*plays Hall & Oates’ “Private Eyes” on the hacked Muzak*
God I love your cues sometimes. This is one such time
Unstoppable force, meet immovable object.
Can’t be the first time you had too work while drunk, This page alone proves that you probably had practice doing it.
Joyce is jealous of Joe again.
No she’s not! She’s concerned about his soul!
Needs more SEXO LOCO!
While this is hilarious, I’m confused about why they’re so tetchy with each other. I thought their weekend texting really ended on a pretty good note. Not sure what caused this change in tone now that they’re together.
Two steps forward, one step back. Also, Joe’s instinct to project “masculinity” in person. She’s irritated he won’t acknowledge their connection. He’s irritated at her return to Fundie talk.
Well Joyce isn’t happy with Joe for staring at Leslies breasts, Joe responded with a put down, Joyce repeated herself and Joe went full sarcastic and it went down hill from there (or got better depending on your pov)
However I can’t help but feel theres something underlying to all this, like did the text messaging between Joe and Joyce lead Joyce to think Joe had changed and so is hurt by Joes actions?
Is Joe thinking Joyce is being a bit possessive and that its none of her business whose breasts he stares at?
Flashbacks for both of them about how their date went?
Can’t wait to see how it plays out though
NEEDS MORE MIKE PUNCHING
Ok seriously if Mike tries a round two then I sincerely hope that Joe uses his height/weight advantage and serves Mike one helluva beatdown, I’m talking Amazi-Girl level smackdown because while I dislike some of the main cast and wouldn’t want to associate with a few of them I actively hate Mike and I’d like to see Joe get some payback because he was remarkably restrained the first time
NEVER ENOUGH PUNCHING?
NEVER ENOUGH MIKE.
That’s very possible. I can definitely see Joyce thinking that Joe on Monday would be doing less of his usual caveman shtick and so the combination of ignoring her initially and perving on the teacher probably has her feeling a bit hurt like, was I wrong to open up to Joe, has he changed at all?
Perhaps it is -because- they had such good communication during the weekend that they are being tetchy now.
Joe is one of those people that face-to-face has an image to maintain. I won’t go into all of it, just the relevant one for this post: It involves not showing feelings, as that is some sort of weakness, and also boring and leading to drama, and stupid.
But Joe can be more honest when texting, Joyce found out on Friday. She asked him a question through the phone, and he responded more honestly. Or at least, he didn’t respond in an actively dismissing way.
And this is how Joyce and Joe ended up talking to each other quite a lot during the weekend; Joe would be increasingly more open, and willing to listen to Joyce…
…And then, two strips ago, Joyce thinks that maybe he will be more open to her in person too. But instead he shuts himself in so much, that he barely acknowledges her “hello, Joe!” before going back to his mode.
And Joyce, who is a person to wear her emotions on the sleeve most of the time, doesn’t understand why that is happening. At first, it confuses her, and then it starts to annoy her. And that’s even before Joe starts with the leering behaviour.
Which pushes Joyce into this strip… But whatever it is that is currently bugging Joe, he’s now so shut in about it that he doesn’t even want to think about it. True, he’d probably stare at Leslie no matter what; but he’s also looking for a distraction of thinking about whatever is troubling him.
And Joyce is interrupting him from that distraction. So Joe goes into all-war mode. Not just shut in, but spikes out.
And this hurts Joyce further. To her, he’s now betraying that bond they had reached during the weekend. So she fires some salvoes back.
—-
At least, those are my thoughts on the situation.
It sounds quite plausible, miscommunication being a feature of this strip though I’m still wondering if theres any lingering memories of their date and how a pair of boobies:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4NvgfQt80xs/TFLp_9ClRRI/AAAAAAAACMk/4_6TUZwYWZg/s1600/boobies+pair+2.jpg
caused Joe to taste Joyces fists
I am very good at sounding quite plausible*.
And yes, that part probably didn’t help either. I did not include it because I think the recent happenings were more important to explain Mandy’s question, but I can just imagine Joe actually understanding Joyce’s first text, and then getting reminded of the last time he ogled at someone’s breasts in her presence…
*until I meet someone who is actually right, that is.
I know there is a lot if deeper meaning and subtext to this, but I’m currently too busy laughing.
I said it once, I’ll say it again. Joyce and Joe had chemistry way back in the original, and they have it now, and I want aaaaaallll the interaction. ALL OF IT AWWW YISS
Do you see that over the horizon?
That be the S.S. JoJo on its way to port.
*insert Dio meme joke here*
What’s a Dio?
About 2 and a half pounds.
So it’s a video game or something? I’ve never heard of it.
I’m thinking ‘something’, that which probably shouldn’t be referred to as ‘something’ to it’s fans…
He’s trying to set us up for “IT IS I, DIO” or possibly “Dio is someone who did nothing wrong.”
Who is Dio? Am I supposed to know him?
Is he protagonist of that game?
You expected a reasonable explanation, but it is I, a random Internet meme.
Dio is not the protagonist. He is, however, the protagonist’s rival.
There’s a girl who likes JoJo. Dio forces a kiss out of her, and then confirms it’s her first kiss. “You thought your first kiss would be with JoJo, but it was me! Dio!”
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/it-was-me-dio
Who the heck is JoJo? What are you guys even talking about? I’m so lost.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Manga, Anime, Other Stuff.
I’ve never heard of it. Is it any good? Should I read the anime?
For the first two arcs, you should in fact watch it dubbed. Speedwagon’s original english VA was simply magnificent. As was so much of the rest.
I mean it wasn’t good, but it was definitely magnificent.
guys i have a jojo grav
its sticky fingers from part 5
Never seen it. Thought it was a joke, but you never know.
I know that. But that doesn’t mean you watched the first two arcs in english. It is a treat even if you know everything that happens. I ended up catching it while a couple of friends learned what Jojo’s was and it was absolutely a good use of my time. And I rarely watch any variant of TV.
I’ve only seen snippets of the dub, but I have been really impressed by what I’ve seen. Given the setting of Victorian London and Depression New York, it’s more natural to hear it in English. I’m like that for Baccano too.
Plus, Joseph Joestar is voiced by Numbah One!
Oh Phantom Blood has no business being done by Americans. Battle Tendency is genuinely improved by it, but Phantom Blood… well, we’re not exactly good at mimicking british accents, yeah? XD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2AOLPAdZdc
Magnificent, but not good. XD
wryyyyyyyyy
Odd that is, coming into port, I thought that ship got dry docked.
I’ll ship it.
Chemistry is sometimes volatile. I see their intermittent feuding as a sign of strong feelings between them, as yet unresolved.
Why aren’t Jillian and Holtzmann tagged, as they should be?
And what about their friend Jessica?
Oh thank the Gods, at least two other people were wondering the same thing.
I wonder how Leslie’s going to respond when she finds out that Jessica girl is flirting over the same woman as her.
Not just tagging. We demand that they get their own separate character bios in the cast page!
It’s just basic fairness.
Quidquid cum plausibus scriptum sit altum legatur.
You did what now, to who?
“Whatever is written with handclaps reads as profound,” IITC.
Whatsoever is deep, let it be read with applause. Well, either that or you’re being invited to play nude Quidich before the legislature.
That sounds…uncomfortable.
OTP ! OTP !!
Jillian and Holtzmann?
Them, too.
Yes.
Uuugghhh, I can’t stand the hand-clap-emojis-to-empahsize-every-damn-word thing. It makes the whole sentence read like they’re speaking in that really slow condescending way people do when they think you’re too stupid to understand what’s being said.
Which is a pretty good description of what Joyce is doing.
I was imagining Joyce making an actual clap between each word, to maintain attention throughout the whole sentence.
Yep, it’s actually like a less aggressive form of slamming your hand on a table for emphasis, for example. Not really meant to imply that the person is slow. Its like typing: “Listen. To What. I am saying”. Replace periods with claps and voilà! More emphasis.
Did I hear “hand slamming on table” ?
You Kids. You kids. Everybody knows that the proper way to show more emphasis is to type everything in caps.
DON’T START THEM ALL SHOUTING AGAIN. IT HURTS MY EYES.
There needs to be an emoji for Prowl flipping a table. That would have worked well here
I thought was called Shatnering.
Dang Willis, if all the comics you draw while drunk are as funny as this one, you should do at least one drunk comic a week.
But what about his liver? And also what kind of drunk he his? There’s Maggie and the kids to think about too.
I thought that is what the euphemism ‘Man Cave’ meant; a place where a guy could be drunk and not be seen by the kids, while he plays with his #6-Hard pentels, prismas, Bristol velum, and photo-chop? And India Ink, if you are old.
Seriously, Joe, bounce your gaze.
Not because staring is wrong in the abstract if someone’s deliberately flaunting… though it becomes a gray area if they mean to be flaunting for someone else…. ugh, tangled web, not going there….
… but rather because you were right last comic.
IT’S A TRAP!
….
A BOOBY TRAP!
…..
Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.
I do believe that was one of the funniest things I’ve read on these boards. I shall certainly be tipping the waitress for that one.
They really need to stop wearing those stilettos…
This should help: http://instantrimshot.com/
Thank you.
Eh, personally I prefer this one: https://drumsound.net/
Sounds better, imo…
*slowclap*
Leslie should be the one telling them to stop staring, only that she doesn’t give a damn. I mean, she obviously knew it was going to happen and did it anyway. An neither Joe nor Walky are stereotypical enough to stare at the teacher’s boobs for an entire class. I think.
Also I can’t stand that emoji.
Walkie doesn’t have the attention span to
He’s likely to scream in frustration soon enough.
Actually, if you think about it, this is pretty unfair for the guys. Dammed if you do, weirdo if you don’t.
And depending as to the level of toxic masculinity floating around, those insults would get far worse. They aren’t pleasant, for those receiving them, or those that are dehumanized by them.
Yeah its a tough one I mean Leslie is putting her Holtzmanns out there, presumably for the purpose of appearing attractive to Robin but unfortunately the Holtzmanns are also quite aesthetically pleasing to Joe and Walky so of course they’re going to be interested in looking
However I agree with Joyce that leering/staring is something Joe should stop doing because it is disrespectful especially in the classroom
In the future everyone will have virtual reality glasses, so you can set things so only the right people get to see stuff.
Now that would solve a lot of issues
EVERYBODY NEKKID IN THE CLASSROOM
It’s wrong that students leer at their teacher.
Isn’t it wrong that said teacher is putting her breasts on display in a classroom as well?
No
I’m sorry, but I’m calling bullshit.
Leslie’s outfit would be completely acceptable in any professional setting I’ve ever worked in.
The fact that a woman dressed like that can reasonably expect to be leered at and catcalled is a problem with men. Calling it “wrong” is basically blaming her for men who can’t reign in their dicks and be respectful around someone they find attractive.
I’ll grant you the fact that this is a comic and we don’t really know how a real world Leslie would look right now. There’s very noticeable cleavage and there’s what looks like the top of her bra on display though.
I must have missed the dicks and the insults, my bad. So far all I’ve seen is too guys staring.
And I don’t agree, something being wrong is not the same as placing all the blame on someone. I don’t even think there’s any need for blame here whatsoever, to be honest.
What you’re “granting” me amounts to “oh well you meant a real-world equivalent of that outfit, but I’ll assume you really meant one that I already think would be acceptable”. Willis does both anatomy and clothing with enough detail and realism that we can absolutely know what that outfit would look like on a real person.
Joe’s eyes never left Leslie’s chest for a solid minute at least. Not only that, it was painfully obvious that was the case, as evidenced by Leslie noting he finally looked away. Furthermore, he’s not listening to a single word she’s saying. All of which is really disrespectful.
Looking? That’s fine. Visibly checking someone out? Less so, though in some settings/situations it can be acceptable. Not even making the slightest attempt to be discreet and leering, slack-jawed at someone for minutes at a time? Really creepy and extremely rude
And yes, by saying it’s OK for Joe to stare, but it’s “wrong” for Leslie to dress that way because can’t stop staring, IS blaming Leslie for Joe’s bad behavior.
“And yes, by saying it’s OK for Joe to stare, but it’s “wrong” for Leslie to dress that way because can’t stop staring, IS blaming Leslie for Joe’s bad behavior.”
I can’t fucking believe that even had to be said.
oh wait, i can.
Is this one of those “If she doesn’t want this happening to her, she shouldn’t have dressed like that!” things? I thought we were supposed to grow out of that in the 21st century.
All I’m seeing is Becky’s arguing with herself ._.
What Fart Captor said, saying that a woman dressing up slightly is wrong because she should expect to receive creepy attention from men is victim-blaming and gross.
And I find it especially gross as a teacher who is a woman, because I know how low the bar can be for students to fetishize and be gross about their women teachers unless reigned in hard about it and how that idea of public consumption can put both student body and teachers at risk.
I don’t think that’s her bra — I think it’s a v-neck cami. I have one on right now with that exact same v-neck shape.
I’d agree that showing a bra would probably be against the dress code of most jobs. (I’d remind you, though, that Leslie is teaching college students, not children.) But that doesn’t mean it’s morally wrong to dress that way, or that it’s an invitation for sexual harassment.
Oh, there’d definitely be a problem if they were. Public decency laws are still a thing on campus.
But that’s not what she’s done. She’s made herself look a bit hotter, sure. Why would that be inappropriate? Like, how hard is it to not /stare/?
Not hard at all. All I did, or tried to, was point out that there’s a totally natural reason for they to stare. People jumping at them like they were trying to grope Leslie like savages are taking this whole skit completely out of proportion.
There is a real problem in the world, and I guess that’s why many are apparently blind at the fact there’s more than the extreme, utterly despicable actions some take. People are going to look at people they find attractive now and forever and that’s perfectly fine.
But i guess you can’t say that here.
Oh, well as long as Joe isn’t groping her makes it completely okay then. It’s so respectful I couldn’t even see how respectful it was [/sarcasm]
The fact that there are worse things he could be doing doesn’t make what he’s doing okay.
Just like how the fact that I could be punching someone in the face wouldn’t make it any more appropriate to be repeatedly pinching them.
And as I said before, there is a difference between looking and staring.
Where the hell have I said what he’s doing is okay? The first thing you replied to has me saying that they’re wrong. It’s ridiculous and exaggerated and allegedly comical but wrong.
I don’t know what to make of that analogy, because all I’m seeing there is that no matter what one side is alway going to be wrong.
And that’s something else we agree on. I’m not even going to open the can of worms that trying to decide where one ends and other starts because that’s hella subjective.
All I’m saying is that I feel lik many are reacting as if even the looking was unwarranted, which is not.
It is unwarranted. Students leering at their teacher, like customers leering at service professionals is incredibly rude and dismissive and the way we’re trained to overlook things like leering, sexist comments, and attitudes towards women’s bodies as public consumptive object is what leads to the stuff like groping.
And that’s a personal experience a lot of people have where they know the creepy staring is part of a larger social attitude towards the idea that a woman being sexually attractive to a man makes her at fault for “leading him on” or “dressing sluttily” and all the things angry men do in response to people they believe are trying to “trap” them.
THis is like, 5 flavors of bullshit, which is almost impressive given that it’s short. From the top:
Nobody should care about ‘natural’ reasons while they’re babbling across the globe on a box or rectangle in a room that can be lit 24/7 and that is kept at a relatively comfortable temperature through the use of either absurd amounts of power, excellent engineering, or both. This notwithstanding that Leslie’s irritation is just as ‘natural’, but isn’t important apparently.
Savages. Nice. Christ.
Nobody’s jumping at Joe like he’s being the worst. People are saying him (and wally) are being jackasses in this specific context. And they are. That they could be moreso isn’t really a salve.
I find it amazing that you’re deploying this rhetoric against me or Cerb or similar. That’s legitimately hilarious.
“There is a real problem in the world, and I guess that’s why many are apparently blind at the fact there’s more than the extreme, utterly despicable actions some take.”
You’re saying this /while trying to say it’s okay for two boys to ogle someone, because they aren’t sexually assaulting someone/. Well. Fucking. Played. You are a master at this, I can see.
People can look at lots of things. People shouldn’t stare. Basic courtesy, right up until it’s a hot woman apparently. Like, this isn’t even controversial outside that context.
Yeah, Leslie’s resigned acceptance that it was going to happen doesn’t mean she’s okay with it. That’s why she’s actually glad Joe is arguing with Joyce, since it means he finally stopped ogling her.
Yep, that is 100% service professional/teacher/librarian speak for “eh, if I complain about this, it’ll lead to an argument and possibly me being disciplined. So for her, it’s ugh, hey there social consequences for trying to look nice for someone, reminding me yet again that my body as a lesbian is considered a nice toy for the boys to fetishize. Yay, remind me to add that to the lesson plan.
I know I’m the dowdy feminist type, but I really hate the common cultural idea that a woman dressing up specifically for one person is open to public consumption.
Like, for fucks sake, it should not be risky for a person to try and dress up for someone they are interested in or even just to feel a bit more confident about themselves and their looks, without having a crowd of assholes interpreting them as “being on the menu” for suggestive comments, creepy leering, street harassment, and so on…
And similarly, I loathe this idea that a woman existing and being considered sexually attractive to a man, means it is then her fault when he acts inappropriately, violently, or sexually aggressive towards her, not just because it’s a weirdly consumptive way of looking at women and regarding them not as individuals but products for public consumption.
But also because that shit has had deep negative impacts on me and my friends. My gf and cousin both get endlessly street harassed even though both dress exceedingly modestly, because they both have large breasts and thus are viewed as “putting them out there” as it were regardless of how they dress. Similarly, I’ve had friends assaulted on the street because of how someone interpreted their outfit as trying to lure them sexually. And I’ve already shared the story of the person who wanted to circle back in his car and kill me because he felt so “cheated” out of the fact that the two lesbians he street harassed because “lesbians are hot” included one who was trans.
And that last part especially bothers me because as a trans woman, that whole “putting things out there” thing gets real scary real fast, because if I try and resolve dysphoria by dressing in ways that make me feel good about my body, I’m taking a risk that some person on the street will see that as trying to “trap” them into being attracted to me and try to murder me for it.
Other than being telepathic, how does one determine if said dressing up is for one’s consumption and not for someone else?
A good general rule is if you’re not on a date with them, it’s generally best to simply assume it isn’t.
If it’s somebody you know, a good option is “You seem to be dressed up nice today, what’s the occasion?” If their response gets real flirty, it might be for your benefit.
Oooh, that is actually useful. Thanks!
So Robin should ignore that Leslie’s all dressed up since they’re not on a date and Leslie’s not likely to get too flirty with her in front of the class.
The problem with this whole scenario is that Leslie is specifically dressing to show cleavage to get a reaction from someone who has no reason to think it’s aimed at her.
Leslie has good reason to think things’ll get flirty with Robin:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/hmmm/
Assume it’s not for you if she’s not directly flirting with you. Actually flirting, not talking.
Fair enough. It does make me imagine this absurd scenario where I completely misread innocuous conversation for flirting, I then completely fumble my response and look like a total creepazoid, she slaps me on the face, then the police pull up and brand the word “PERV” into my forehead. Stupid anxiety..
Luckily the world does not work like a harem anime. If you misread a sign and make someone uncomfortable, they are much more likely to make an excuse and move on or try and ignore you than make a scene.
It doesn’t?! God damnit this is unacceptable and I want a refund
Me, I’d give her a grin and a thumbs up, and then bounce my id elsewhere.
OOOOOOOH SHE NAMED HER BOOOOOOOBS I geddit
Is this like men naming their you-know? I.E. some do it and think everyone does, while some don’t and go “WTF?” when they hear the others everyone does?
[Insert Vaguely Sexual And ‘TMI’ Comment That Was Meant To Be A Light-Hearted Joke Here]
[Insert comment of imperial disappointment and admonishment here]
[Insert Bootlicking Comment Here]
[insert relief that it’s only the boots that were being licked]
[Insert Follow-Up Comment That The Emperor Is Relieved]
[insert an “eeeeegh?” facial expression in reaction the possible meanings of the previous insert…. As well as doubt over the continued use of the phrase “insert X” as we are moving into some really weird territory here]
[Insert Explanation That Is Summed Up With The Use Of An Overly Long Gag and Wish For Lost Points Back]
[Insert reference to comments made five months back, and a gracious awarding of a few points (not all of them; since We learned our lesson in handing them out all willy-nilly]
[Insert Bowing and Backing Away Motion While Lavishing The Emperor With Comments Here]
[Insert Irrelevant Nonsequiter that is Universally Ignored]
I thought I was the one who does that, Cliff. More often that not, I see to kill threads. Either that, or they take a whole different direction.
[abstract comment about abstract commenting with no relevance to anything]
[Hopelessly obscure reference that no one here could possibly get, except for the three who immediately do.]
NOT HARD ENOUGH
[Insert Captain America Saying “I Get That” Here]
At least they don’t have a hashtag.
An oversight, I’m sure.
Dammit that’s a pretty good pair of nicknames. Wonder if she also named her fists?
pity, fool ?
Good choice, what about ‘rad, most’?
Nah, That’s clearly Marcie’s Kingdom. With Sal, Amber and Carla as the other Knights
I’d read that.
Iron and Steel? Or too old, and 16 tonnes of air pollution?
Seems a bit wordy.
My miiind’s (and-sorta-not-really-friend) tellin’ me nooooo!
But my body…
My body’s tellin’ me yeeeeee-hessssss!
Serious coming analysis time: Much as I want this to be Joyce tsundering at Joe because how dare he, I really think what this boils down is that now that Joe’s shown that he’s not the macho horndog, that he responded to Joyce in an hour of need and helped her in a way nobody else could by relating through a shared, painful experience, Joyce has expectations for him, and that means he needs to straighten out.
Walky’s always going to be the drooling imbecile who doesn’t deserve Dorothy. It’s okay for Joyce to hate Walky, but if she saw the compassion he’s displayed towards Billie, Sal and Dorothy then she’d be more willing to believe that he’s not just some doofus.
So Joe isn’t allowed backsliding, as defined by Joyce?
[Skips obscure Zelazny reference.)
Kinda sorta, yeah.
I’m basing this entirely on two strips, mind, so it’s possible I’m jumping the gun, but what I think we’re seeing is Joe no longer being an easily labeled Macho Horndog. He helped Joyce when she needed him, so now he needs to be the good person Joyce thinks he really is all the time, and that includes averting his gaze from foul temptresses.
Wait, now I wanna hear the Zelazny reference…
Today We Choose Faces by Roger Zelazny.
The protagonist is a Mafia hitman who decides to embark on a program of moral improvement by cloning himself with each clone having a more restrictive moral code. These restrictions are controlled by a series of pins in a circuit board, sorta.
During the book he has increasing troubles as his clones are murdered, and the voices of his earlier personas demanding that he pull out pins to gain more tactical flexibility at the cost of moral backsliding.
And I was wracking my brain as to what that might be, while expecting some princely reference to Core Wins as a crowning victory over chaos.
…hasn’t she seen at least some of that kindness towards Billie and Dotty? I guess the stuff with Billie’s not as obvious, but right now what I’m thinking of was… him being a bit of a twit and pissing off Billie. The most important point – that she feels close enough to Wally to name him her emergency contact.
I mean, she is always going to be pretty dismissive of him, I guess, but I’m not sure that’s a thing Wally can avert.
I don’t see any difference between drunk and sober.
I thought the same but figured it’d be rude to say.
Is Holtzmann the name of Leslie’s dominant breast? Is there even such a thing as a dominant breast?
I do believe that they’re not exactly the same size, so perhaps the slightly bigger one then?
Jillian was the one trying to convince her to stop this foolish plan, which was silenced by Holtzmann’s demands for more cleavage.
Oh. Thank you for making that make sense. I thought it was just a random reference.
Wait… ghostbusters 2016 refrences? Oh god. Run The trolls, THE TROLLS! RUN!!! THEY’RE COMING! THE TROLLS ARE COMING! RUUUNNNNN!!!
So far they’ve been nice, well, at least the comments that I’ve seen. YMMV.
I’m honestly surprised there hasn’t been any Ghostbusters hate here. It’s refreshing.
WHY CAN’T I SLEEP??????
HELP ME I CAN T SLEEP FUCK THIS WORLDD
Um…
you know, fuck it, that’s what coffee’s for. I don’t care that I have two night shifts in a row. Fuck sleep i was never getting enough of it anyway
AAAAAAAAAAAAHHH
tthat said, love the comic. Could not tell you were drunk till you pointed it out
I’ve decided that since my shift starts in like less than three hours, there’s no point trying to get any sleep anymore. Just get food
ok but leslie naming her boobs Jillian Holtzmann is the gayest thing I have ever seen and she is now my favorite character
Problem for me is that Holtzmann just makes me think of Dune.
Would those two screw already.
They only started acknowledging each other in any positive capacity two days ago.
Hey, that’s like negative three days late for Joe.
Of course, it’s *time until marriage* early for Joyce, so I suppose it breaks even.
Wait, if it breaks even, doesn’t that mean NOW is when they should screw?
Is that how relationships work? That’s compromise, right?
Man, this is so complicated…
A good compromise means nobody is happy…
Yeah, it’s going to take some time just to get rid of all the animosity between them
Nice to see that this Leslie is also a fan of sci-fi movies.
SO NO ONE TOLD YOU LIFE WAS GONNA BE THIS WAY
*clap clap clap clap*
I was just thinking of that too, though I mostly think of the Evangelion version.
YOUR JOB’S A JOKE YOU’RE BROKE
YOUR LOVE LIFE’S DOA
wait
IT’S LIKE YOU’RE ALWAYS STUCK IN SECOND GEEEEAR
WHEN IT HASN’T BEEN YOUR DAY YOUR WEEK YOUR MONTH
OR EVEN YOUR YEEEEEEEEAR
crap…
You live in apartments way above your payment scale!
And you get laid a lot, and life is pretty OK, so…
What is wrong with you?
Just appreciate your life
What is wrong with you?
This is First World Problem Night
What is wrong with you?
You’re a drama magnet toooooooo-ooooooo.
(Note that I do appreciate that the cast of Friends had some real problems that are just as real no matter how rich you are. But the intro song is… rather inaccurate as to describing the show.)
There was one episode I recall where Rachel was talking about the latest twist in the Ross saga and how she wasn’t sure what to do and Pheobe said it reminded her of living on the street and considering trading sex for food.
RACHEL: Okay, but how is that like my situation?
PHEOBE: Oh, it’s not. You see, that was an actual problem, and this is some high school crap.
I can’t tell, but what are all those smilies Joyce is using?
Clapping hands. To indicate that HEY, I’M TALKING TO YOU, DAMMIT!
A slightly softer variant of slamming your hand on the table.
Or smacking them upside the head.
shouldn’t it be “avert”, not “remove”?
“Avert” implies a change of direction, while “remove” is essentially the same thing as “move”, meaning that it allows a slightly greater number of options; Joe could shift his head a few metres across so that he is looking elsewhere while not changing the ‘direction’ of his gaze. You can still use ‘avert’ if you really want to even for this type of movement, but it would mean that you’re defining the direction of the gaze as relative to the thing being gazed upon, rather than to the one doing the gazing, which is a bit strange. Idiomatically, it would be ‘avert your eyes’, although ‘avert your gaze’ is slowly becoming more common, and this overrules all the previous discussion. Nonetheless, I think that ‘remove your gaze’ is the better way of saying it, at least for now.
As long as we’re not talking about removing his eyes. That will be quite a different action altogether.
I really appreciate that Leslie’s being-sexy-for-Robin outfit still involves a sweater vest.
Honestly, the inking’s fine. But I didn’t get she was referring to her breasts until I read the comments. Is that also the reason for the weird circles–she’s pointing them out?
I believe so. She’s tracing circles around them in the air with her fingers
You would think that Joe has never seen cleavage before.
I bet Joyce wants to snuggle up between those puppies like she did Billie’s.
To be fair it is the first time Joe has seen Leslies cleaveage
Some cleavage has more attractive value than others. It’s not even a matter of the quality of the breasts (although Leslie’s seem quite fine), but context can greatly enhance the gaze-attraction of cleavage.
For example, when the cleavage in question belongs to an authority figure, like a teacher…
Joyce is far too annoyed with Joe to think about breasts right now.
But if she wasn’t, then you’d probably be right.
THAT IS, too annoyed to think about snuggling up in someone’s delightfully large cleavage.
Obviously she is thinking about breasts, just not like that.
Let the furious typing commence
Is that your battlecry as you go online?
Nah, it’s still “Something is WRONG on the Internet.” <3
Shouldn’t that be “Someone is wrong on the Internet.”?
(Italics mine, not in original. Underlining found in original.)
(Sorry, but that was irresistible. Plus, I got to look up old XKCD strips.)
(I really, really hope that I am not messing up the italics and underlining now! Odds are, I am.)
(Why do I keep making new paranthesises for every sentence?)
(Oh great, the old underlining code doesn’t work.)
Does this count as a “proto-lover’s quarrel”?
are we really sure that walky is actually looking at leslie? The guy behind Joyce kinda looks like him (same haircut) but not really. And in the last panel, Walky’s in front of Joyce. Idk.
This will end either with Joe and Joyce attacking each other or starting to make out. Either option will be equally disruptive to the class.
And equally entertaining to me.
Joe and Joyce arguing here is fucking hilarious.
Jillian and Holzmann are very special friends of Jessica, of course
That is because they are very… friendly.
I mean, just look at them, Bagge. Wouldn’t you too like to be their friends?
I’m sure they will be VERY friendly with #DeSantoHugeHonkers. There is a lot of politics to discuss.
Who could have guessed that the Joyce/Joe dynamic would be my favorite part of the strip? I like that Joe has a friendship with a woman that he isn’t trying to bang.
This pairing will be so amusing when they finally decide to sleep together in really funny Slipshine moment
After like a minute of the surprise Joe really should control himself but good lord do I utterly despise when people use the clap emoji like that in text/posts. It’s like those additions to tumblr posts where they say whoever doesn’t reblog a post is a horrible person, only at least in the latters case it’s usually some worthless addition and you can reblog the original post. Not in this case.
*By which I mean I hate those additions to posts just as much.
Huh? I didn’t get the meaning of the clap emojis. What does it mean?
Basically the way Joyce is writing is the equivalent of speaking really slowly for emphasis. You see it a lot on text posts on tumblr. It’s a way to be really condescending tbh.
The times I’ve seen it on Twitter (I’m not on tumblr) it seems to mean “This should really be a universal truth that everyone understands, but apparently it isn’t, so, yes, I’m going to say it really slowly and carefully”. And I’ve almost always agreed with what the people on my Twitter feed think are universal truths (yay for social media bubbles!) so I’ve thought “fair enough”.
I’ve never had it directed at me personally in a text, though. I think that would change my view somewhat…
WHAT IN THE UNHOLIEST OF FUCKS, YOU PEOPLE!!!
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/?ex_cid=2016-forecast
35 fucking percent chance of 4 years of Trump? Halloween is over, throw out the damn pumpkin – it was rotten to start with.
Look, at this point it’s pretty clear a sizeable chunk of you USAmericans don’t care about the people who are going to be utterly screwed and endangered in a Trump presidency, so let’s try this:
I’m finishing some freelance work that pays in dollars, so please don’t tank your currency before I get paid and rid of them, okay? It’s capitalism! You lot like capitalism, right? Ra Ra Ra capitalism? Or anything, I don’t care anymore, just make it stop.
Side Question: What is a “tipping point” in this context?
Can you believe it used to be even higher? But that was before Trump started his “I’m going to look like a complete and utter fucktool” campaign.
You mean, two weeks into the primaries?
Peaked just before the debates, I think. Or before the conventions. His chances dropped drastically in response to the differences between the conventions and particularly his response to Khan. Then he partly recovered because we have short memories and crashed again after the debates started and he flew off the handle a couple more times.
He’s recovering because he’s being kept on a really short leash and because the FBI has interfered in the campaign with a really badly timed info dump on emails.
If I had been smarter, I’d have quoted – here’s how I intended the post to be read:
Emperor Norton: “before Trump started his “I’m going to look like a complete and utter fucktool” campaign.”
You mean, two weeks into the primaries?
I’m not sure the FBI’s infodump can be called badly timed – from my understanding, the agent that started it had told Congress he’d keep them updated on any developments on the email front. There were developments, he updated them.
(for the record, I think both your primary POTUS candidates suck ass, with Clinton being preferable in that she’s terrible but not catastrophic, but aggravated by the fact that I’ve seen better-run campaigns for 5th grade class president)
Could you enlighten me what fivethirtyeight means by “tipping points” on their map?
For the “tipping points”, it’s where they take all the state and rank them in terms of the margin for each candidate. The state on that list that puts the winner above 270 electoral vote is the tipping point state. For example, if you take their current projection, the state that puts Clinton above 270 electoral votes is currently New Hampshire, and so that’s the (average) tipping point state. Where they give probabilities for each state being the tipping point state, that’s based on the number of times they ran the simulation and that state provided the 270th vote to the winner.
Ah, I see – then that’s why states that are worth a lot of votes but are firmly on one candidate’s side (like California) have pretty much nil chance of being a tipping point; since they’re not going to switch, they’re not going to be the ones that’ll make the candidate cross the victory line. Thanks.
The FBI’s prime directive – not being involved in politics in an election – was over-ridden by a political request. Bollocks.
Giuliani is Comey’s old boss.
It stinks of corruption.
Don’t be silly. Only Clinton can be corrupt. It’s, like, a law of nature.
Don’t forget Obama. Obama’s totally corrupt, and he’s going to take all your guns and force christians into FEMA camps. Any day now. Just you watch.
Aaaaaaany day now…
True. I’d forgotten that.
@jbento
I’ve been watching Obama farewell videos, both the Halloween and the ones where he and Michelle meet and greet people. They’ve filled my heart and joy and sadness – they’re both fantastic. Going to miss both of them.
Do note that fivethirtyeight is the outlier in the poll forecasts.
I suggest going to the one on New York Times which has a list of competing polls. Also PollyVote actually aggregates the poll aggregators, and is more stable.
Links:
New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html?_r=0
PollyVote: http://pollyvote.com/en/
Also, I forgot to mention that PollyVote has been more accurate than 538 in every election they’ve both covered.
Well, those are more comforting, at least. 16% chance of Trump is still ridiculously high considering it’s, well, Trump, but better.
Yes, but it’s the outlier because it has better methodology, unfortunately, particularly hinging on state polls.
I wonder what Leslie called her breasts before Ghostbusters came out.
Egon & Spengler I bet.
Leia and Organa.
God dammit XD
Now that the commenters have pointed it out, I kinda do see all the ways a Joe/Joyce relationship would work out. It just didn’t at first because Joyce was still fresh off the Bible school bus, and Joe was still meathead who only wanted to bang. And that was really their only problem with each other – besides the Jewish thing, which Joyce doesn’t care about anymore.
But I’d still doubt it if I didn’t read a comic (exact timeline escapes me but it was either just before or during Parent’s Day) where Joe specifically said that he is a bit worried of turning into his dad. So maybe there’s an upcoming storyline where he tries to swear off indiscriminate sex?
What the hell is going on between those two
Um… why does Joyce care what Joe stares at? In the words of marty mcfly, he’s an asshole!
She she think she has him on the road to recovery. Pushing him to become less-assholey.
This weekend, he demonstrated that he’s capable of being a considerate, caring person. She actually liked that guy. But now that they’re in the same room again, it’s right back to his old routine.
Joyce finds this frustrating.
Oh, and I -knew- that Joe did in fact know exactly what Joyce meant before he replied back to her in today’s strip.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/chaps/
Yup.
OTOH, “quit using crazy fundie jargon” isn’t a bad response, even if he can translate.
“Jillian” and “Holtzmann” are interesting names for one’s breasts…
Comic Reactions:
Leslie’s opening speech: Is really adorable. Like, it’s professional and welcoming and gets to the aspects of Robin that Leslie admires even though she despises her politics and why she is an appropriate invitee to the Gender Studies class even though there are heavy ulterior motives for why she wants her to come.
Robin is the first latina representative and one of the youngest women to hold office. Her politics are repellant, but there’s inspirations there that are relevant to those in her class even if it’s just “start your own political process to overthrow candidates like this”. And Leslie is mixing business and pleasure by having her deliver a useful lesson on the realities of being latina or a woman politician while also hoping that her outfit stirs some more chemistry in the congresswoman.
Joyce: I’m really proud of Joyce here, cause unlike previous times, I don’t believe that as much of the reason for her reaction is fundie ideology in the way it was last time she used it.
Like, in the fundie ideology, Leslie should be punished with stares for dressing wantonly, being queer, and otherwise fulfilling a fallen state. But she shouldn’t actually be in our world. In our world men staring at women like they were pieces of meat are doing something wrong and treating a teacher like a fetish object is gross in the extreme (though I might have real clear bias in this giving that I am a teacher).
And Joe needed to be called out for this shit and hard and Joyce would be the only one to do it. And we see immediately the social price she just paid for doing so, which is somewhat sad, but why it was necessary for the callout to occur.
Final comic reaction:
(The one on Joe looks like it got spammed for a little bit, so it’ll be a little delayed)
Leslie: Oh, poor Leslie. Like, I recognize that resignment. I feel it in my bones. Where it’s just too exhausting to have the same fight, the same argument, especially when it’s about your own body rather than the theory. I mean, it’s a bit different having to say, please stop fetishizing me rather than having to say, please stop fetishizing people. Cause the focus on the self brings up so many cultural messages relating to self-blame, not wanting to raise a fuss, being perceived as selfish or “seeing things that aren’t there”, or risking angering someone to violence.
And Leslie as a teacher is somewhat more constrained on the discussions of the personal, because we are trained to shy away from the personal as much as possible, to not use ourselves as the example when anyone else can. So taking time out of a special guest, one with a tight schedule to call out a student at staring at her breasts wouldn’t be a good idea and could backfire more with said student trying to do what Joe did just now with Joyce with the teacher instead and now you’re fighting with a student instead of teaching.
And it’s a tough situation, so I understand the resignation. Especially since the act of leering already robs some of the confidence. She wanted to be a little cute for Robin as she visited and yet, she was considered up for public consumption and leered at and made to feel on the spot in an uncomfortable way even though she is professional as a teacher and acted like she didn’t notice.
It’s somewhat frustrating.
Not speaking about this specific comic or conversation, but do you…ever turn off?
Most people come to comics to unwind, but it seems to rile you up more than anything. I can’t imagine much relaxes you as a result.
Damn you, Cerberus, making social commentary on the comments section of of a social commentary comic, and then forcing us to read it! I could use my time for other stuff, but no, I have to read what you wrote! Why can’t you just turn off (apparently, there’s a switch, I guess? Somewhere?)?
(I don’t have to tag this as sarcasm, right? It’s obvious, isn’t it? No? Better be safe than sorry? Oki)
/s
I think what you were going for was “Crossing the Line Twice”.
Putting a lot of time and thought into a series you’re a fan of is also a way to enjoy it.
Also maybe stop being a weird creep.
1. This is a comic that provides plenty of fodder for analysis. It makes total sense that someone would use it for something other than to unwind.
2. For many people, seeing their experiences reflected in media is, if not relaxing, cathartic or affirming.
3. Why not let Cerberus enjoy the comic the way she wants to without trying to make her feel like she’s doing it wrong? If you come to the comic to relax and your find the more analytical comments to be stressful, you can always ignore them. (For the record, I always enjoy Cerberus’s comments).
If you’re truly uninterested, you should probably just scroll past the comments.
Willis writes serious stories, and this comic has been moving in a serious direction since years ago, so there’s gonna be serious commentary and people bring their experiences into it. And some people enjoy speaking on social issues, god knows in the physical everyday life most people don’t want to talk about these things.
If it’s not hurting anyone, then it’s totally harmless and not our business to tell people that they’re consuming stuff the “wrong” way. Also, it’s totally shitty to assume that Cerberus is an SJW stick in the mud, which I’m guessing is what you meant by that last sentence.
If that’s not what you meant, there was definitely a better way to say: hey, lately this comic seems to be reminding you about a bunch of shitty stuff that’s happened. How are you doing? I hope you have been relaxing.”
Perhaps YOU come here to unwind and are disconcerted by the serious discussion?
Will forever be amused / depressed by the double standard that people employ when they ask “god, why are you taking this so seriously, shut up,” because it’s just so bizarre to see folks getting worked up at other people for, presumably, being worked up. The lack of self-awareness.
My current week has been dealing with just a bunch of fucked up shit with one of my trans students being sexually assaulted on campus by another student on campus, an incident I warned the administration was likely to happen the month before said incident and them getting suicidal as our administration completely botched the follow-up and allowed them to be harassed by all the rapists’ friends as they called him a liar.
So I’ve been running around getting sexual assault resources to the student and his core group of friends, getting suicidal ideation resources to the student and his core group of friends, shutting down victim-blaming horseshit, making sure that the student is as supported as necessary. This is in follow-up to learning last week that one of my other trans students had a suicide attempt on Monday and had been abandoned on resources because no one really wanted to bring it up and the admin it was reported to didn’t feel it important to inform the teacher specifically tasked with monitoring said student’s safety (that being me).
All while dealing with the resurgence of unending suicidal ideation and the return of lots of rape flashbacks triggered by the whole administration level mishandling of the incident in question.
So, yeah, I’m riled up in my daily life. And I unwind, I process by analysis. It’s how I work. If I can see how the system works, it makes it less frightening, makes it make sense, shows what needs to be improved to change it. Additionally, I tend to be more aware of certain aspects because I have a horrifying collection of terrible life experiences that allows me to pick up on specific behaviors.
Dumbing of Age is one of my favorite comics. It’s half of my therapy at this point. Like, overanalyzing everything to the last nanometer is how I have fun (ask my partners), but overanalyzing this comic in particular provides immense healing for me personally and has had resonance for others which encourages me to continue providing it.
Earlier this week it literally kept me alive.
So does much relax me? You got me there. Relaxation is something I gave up hope for a long time ago. So I make due with what I can emotionally access. What refreshes me. At the moment, this is it. And when it’s too much and doesn’t refresh me, I bail and take care of myself instead. It’s how I roll.
Is it wrong to hope it was just apathy and not bigoty that you weren’t told about the student you mentioned in the second part of the second paragraph?
That’s fair, I wasn’t trying to be mean as some people here apparently interpreted it as. I don’t know you, I don’t pretend to, I was just making sure the comic was making you happy and not a source of frustration as it might’ve appeared so to one of the uninitiated.
Well now I feel kinda dumb. I honestly thought she dressed up this way as part of her lesson plan for the class, given that it’s gender studies (or similar?). Didn’t realize that Roz was actually being 100% facetious and that Leslie was just trying to look nice for her crush until after reading the comments.
The Gender Studies version of dressing up as General Custer for your History class?
And as General Custard for your Cooking class?
Or General Relativity for Physics.
What about Sheriff Woody for Carpentry?
He’s overbooked, because Carpentry is always wrestling with Botany.
Mrs. Nesbitt for Creative Writing?
Sorry, she’s in the torpedo tube.
Do you think that Scorpion could sub for Home Economics?
You will not properly understand DoA until you read the comments in the original Klingon.
HISlaH!
Joyce has no rhythm CONFIRMED
Wow, Joyce texted the word “breasts” without blushing!
Feeling kinda twitchy that I’ve not made a reference to Reginald in like a weeks or so. Or at least it feels like that. Time seems to have no meaning when thinking about the Duke.
This is my first ever comment on this comic and this is why:
How has no one else expressed disappointment that the boobs aren’t tagged?
(amazing comic btw :3)
Oh My God, Willis, one of the banner ads I have right now is advertising HETALIA…. not that I’m offended or anything, I’m just surprised to see it here since you did that shortpacked comic about the cosplayers.
Your gravitar is perfect