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I mean, you don’t know for sure that God’s not a hot girl. That, and supposedly he loves everybody, or some shit, and that’s a set that inherently includes geeks! I say you two should get brunch, it’s worth a shot.
I mean… he’s not wrong tho? Hot guys get away with creepy shit all the time. Just cause they’re hot. Which is shitty, but it happens that way so much and it sucks.
I know, right? Despite Rachels obvious annoyance and Joes apparent obliviousness, I still feel like he has about a 50 percent chance to be in her bed within a half hour.
I mean, that’s the problem with Schrodinger’s Buff Propositioner: The fact that he’s buff means that you have to be nicer when turning him down, on the off chance that he’s willing to murder you.
And it sucks how our polite suffering through a harassment is treated as tacit support for more of it or somehow a sign of our “unfairness”. It’s like, just let me enjoy my very rare night out because of fucks like you in peace.
I think part of it is that win or lose, its whats expected so most of the time it doesn’t end up resulting in any serious consequences in the long term.
Meanwhile, behaving like a decent intelligent being who is capable of even basic levels of civility and propriety usually gets twisted into various other sorts of claims?
If someone is told that this is how the “game” is played, but meets with only failure, they’re more likely to start making claims that the odds are being rigged against them or that other people are cheating them out of their perceived “reward” than to actually sit down and analyze the fact that they’ve probably been given information that isn’t actually true…and probably shouldn’t be true either.
Which is also horrible, but it being whats “expected” by all sides is part of what lets people “get away with” that sort of behavior even if they’re not as “successful” with it.
Yup. The system can’t fail, it can only be failed. And if it’s supposed to work all the time and it’s working very rarely, then it must be the fault of all the women who are breaking this perfect system rather than that the system is just an off-putting piece of garbage more about performing a sexist masculinity at other guys by mistreating women.
“Hot” guys also get called on creepy shit all the time. But they are just unbelieving that this could -possibly- be a reaction to them. So it doesn’t matter. Just brush it off, if the chick’s a frigid bongo maybe the next one will be properly grateful….. : -/
Oh, like Jeff Boomhauer on “King of the Hill”. Bobby wanted to learn how to be a hit with the ladies from this beady-eyed mumbler. So he tagged along with him to a women’s shoe store and saw Boomhauer pull a fake salesman’s act by approaching several women with a shoe. Boomhauer annoyed most of the women he tried this with but finally scored a phone number from one of them. Bobby was disgusted to realize that Boomhauer’s supposed success with women was due only to persistence not actual magnetism or charm.
This is actually the approach recommended by one Ivan Vorpatril, though in less creepy terms.
From Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance:
———–
Ivan sat in the dark and contemplated his progress. It was not heartening.
Not that his reputation for success with women was undeserved, but it was due to brains, not luck, and steady allegiance to a few simple rules. The first rule was to go to places where lots of women already in the mood for company had congregated — parties, dances, bars. Although not weddings, because those tended to put the wrong sorts of thoughts in into their heads. Next, try likely prospects till you hit one who smiled back. Next, be amusing, perhaps in a slightly risque but tasteful way, until she laughed. Extra points if the laughter was genuine. Continue ad lib from there. A 10:1 pool of trials to hits was not a problem as long as the original pool contained ten or more prospects to start with. It was simple statistics, as he’d tried to explain to his cousin Miles on more than one occasion.
Agreed. Plenty of others, like Joyce, Walky, Billie, Ruth and Amber, are undergoing painful but necessary character development; it’s time for Joe to do the same.
Why would Joe change? His current behavior still gets him the results he is after often enough to merit staying the course. Until the results start changing, the behavior is going to continue.
Usually by this point the women he approaches either start fawning over him or tell him to fuck off. Rachel just called him out on his Johnny Bravo schtick. He didn’t immediately retreat, she didn’t immediately turn and walk away.
One undesirable result is not going to change any habitual pattern of behavior. You need a trend of undesirable results to alter behavior, and one positive can undo the lessons of a string of negatives.
We are all the main characters of our own story, and all it takes is one small victory for us to flip the narrative.
I’d say that age and cumulative bad experiences would eventually cure this, but we’ve already seen that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
I hope Billie never stops believing Sal is AmaziGirl. Like, even when Amber is found maskless in the park after her full mental-breakdown Billie still thinks it’s just a ploy to hide Sal’s true identity.
In some ways, I’m waiting for Sal to start doing the whole vigilante thing with Amazi-Girl and for Billie to accuse Amber of being (Sal’s vigilante alter-ego). Later on, when it all comes out, I suspect that Walky will enjoy telling Billie that she was as wrong as it was possible to get.
Joe majored in Engineering in Walkyverse because he liked Transformers. He later became an engineer / mad inventor for SEMME and created Ultra-Car. But he was embarrassed by and refused to admit his geekdom, especially to women he was, erm, courting. This schism between his geek side and his hunk side eventually sabotaged his, erm, romances because he wasn’t willing to be intellectual with the people he was sexual with and vice versa. Eventually he got into an online romance with a fellow engineer and there was a long arc of him waffling and wavering and whining about even meeting her in person coupled with lots of fan speculation about who this unknown person was. (As usual, Willis was trolling us all.)
IIRC Willis jettisoned the geek in Joe for DoA because Ethan already filled the niche of tall square-jawed Jew who’s into Transformers. Also his Hawaiian shirt, which clearly was the source of his character depth.
On a fourth hand, Joe’s appearance is interesting in light of the theory that Ryan’s tailing Dorothy, and its corollary that Joe noticed that. Including the ‘no, just …no’ interaction with Rachel. Walky and Dotty just walked past there… was Ryan about to come by?
. . . and it juuust clicked for me that the out-of-universe reason Joe is “ranking Rachel so high” is because they were a major Item in the Walkyverse.
Wow, is Rachel really tall? She looks super tall in panel one, and Joe is barely leaning down to flirt with her, and he’s like the tallest person in the comic.
Everything she did after that track was way better, it just didn’t have as much broad pop appeal. Mostly because she tried to add, like, actual artistic merit to her art, which mainstream audiences hate.
Refuses to admit it? He probably doesn’t even realize it. They don’t exactly teach the kind of young men who end up like Joe that emotional and social needs are things they should expect they need to satisfy. You gotta put your ding-dong in warm stuff. That’s the really important male experience!
On a personal note, myself and several friends have been body shamed lately.
1. I have been flooded with unwanted advice from someone (kinda a friend but not quite) about how I need to get on diet supplements (…no). A relative has been telling me how I need to exercise like her (also no because what she does is expensive, overboard, and not for somebody with a weak left side and asthma). My dad insults me a lot. I know I’m 60lbs overweight, but I’m also tall with broad shoulders, big boobs, wide hips, big butt, and long legs, so it’s spread out and I’m done being ashamed of it.
2. A friend of mine is skinny, but not super skinny. She tries to put on weight, but her body won’t let her. We all know guys and gals like that. She catches a lot of crap for it. It’s literally destroyed some of her friendships. She’s a grown ass woman who gets bullied and accused of disorders and she’s a sweetheart, gorgeous, talented and rocks some awesome body art which she ALSO catches crap for because people can be dicks sometimes.
3. Another friend of mine has huge boobs. Her last bra was a 38J if I remember correctly. She catches crap for that when shopping for bras or anytime they’re visible. She wears men’s clothes because women’s doesn’t fit now for the most part which is basically the reason she doesn’t get hit on a lot (I don’t think she’d notice anyway because she’s ace). She has to wear men’s tall to cover her belly (which any bust gal will understand). She thinks she’s fat, but she’s not. She’s told she’s overweight because she’s all boobs and that turns any shirt into a tent! The latest bathroom drama even hits her because her in men’s clothes with short hair and no makeup means sometimes she catches crap just going to the restroom. She is so tired of them that she’s thinking of having them reduced to an A if she can get her insurance to cover it.
I’m so sorry that you and your friends are bodyshamed. I hope you all can manage it. Don’t hesitate to vent (usual commentators know I don’t) and to hell with reducing the amount of our very flesh to accomodate social pressure.
It’s cool hun. I guess I just wanted to show that just about every woman out there gets body shamed regardless of shape or size. Hell, a former coworker of mine got body shamed all the time for being too pretty! It’s like no matter what you look like, somebody out there is gonna find a way to make you feel bad about it. I know on average women get it worse than men, but men still get it with some individuals worse than others. I know my country isn’t the worst in the world about body shaming, but that doesn’t make what we do any better. So I wish it didn’t happen anymore to any of us.
As someone who is especially the second case there of being super skinny and not being able to put on weight, well its difficult to understand the fact that other people are the opposite sometimes. I know that its pretty frustrating for me at least that all nutrition related books are built around the idea that the healthy way to live is to start by losing 20 pounds that I can’t afford to lose.
That said, it is still pretty awful behavior to hassle people about their body regardless? I mean, even for people who do have health problems due to their weight, saying horrible things to them isn’t a good way to help them be healthier. That goes for both directions, though the worst I tend to get is people either trying to pawn food off on me, my parents hassling me about making sure to eat (cause its sometimes hard for me to get my 2k daily calories anyways on top of having trouble gaining weight properly), or people saying I should go eat a sandwich as a joke sometimes?
Sorry that you and your various friends have to deal with stuff thats probably worse than that.
That “eat a sandwich” comment is so fucking annoying. I still get it, even though I’m a perfectly healthy 120-130lbs, depending on the season. Like, sorry I have a relatively-skeletal frame? I eat plenty, thanks. People can keep their stupid comments in their pocket.
I can’t agree with you both more. A lot of people forget that body shaming happens to all body types. I wish it didn’t happen at all.
And super agree with healthy nutrition thing. There’s too much emphasis on weight loss, how being skinny means eating too little, how being fat means eating too much, looks, and whatever industry is paying the most money to become essential (like dairy). It’s a train wreck.
Another personal story to needlessly throw at yall! Feel free to skip
Several years ago, I got too poor to buy food. My partner at the time (who I was sharing a home with and been with 7 years) wouldn’t give me a break on the utilities (he made about three times what I did), so I cut back some on food and stretched my budget as best as I could. I started getting sicker and sicker, but didn’t know why. I gained like 25 lbs (which was about 80 lbs overweight total), so doctors all told me to eat less and exercise, but I was too tired to do much and I told them I didn’t know how I could eat less. I got a sleep test. My stomach was so big. Periods became erratic sometimes skipping several months. I stayed nauseous. My insurance covered all the doctor visits which was good, but nobody could figure it out what was going on. I kept being told I needed to lose weight though. I thought I was eating a lot and figured it was because the food was poor quality because that’s all I could afford. Finally I asked to be referred to a nutritionalist who had me write down a food diary for a week or two before our appointment. I was meticulous (typing it on my phone and sending it to my email to print out for her), but ate normally. When I showed it to her, she asked me if that was all of it. Turns out I had been starving myself. I’m a curvy 5’9″ and the most I ate was the one day a week I visited my dad and even that was only about 1200 calories. My average was 800 with my lowest only 300. I had a swollen fatty liver and my stomach was so big because I wasn’t getting enough nutrition to keep my intestines taut. I wasn’t getting enough iron which was why my sleep test showed I had very frequent PLMD (muscle twitch wakes you up part way) meaning I was tired from not enough food AND no deep restful sleep. If I kept it up, I would die. My partner was there when she said this and promised he would help. … he bought me one week’s worth of groceries, got mad at the extra cost for groceries, and the next month agreed to give me $50 off the electric for food which at least got me to 1000 to 1500 calories a day with help from my dad (who basically threw food at me and made me take home leftovers) and fixed a lot of health issues. The weight I gained from not eating (because my body was in starvation mode and trying to save everything) slowly started coming off.
It’s been over 2 years. Sometimes I still have to remind myself to eat because I often just don’t get hungry. It’s created the weirdest thing with my dad though because he’ll say my stomach looks big and ask if I’ve been eating enough and offer me stuff from his pantry. Half of the time it’s just him seeing things while the other half requires me to remind him that periods exist XD
Christ, that’s fucked. What the hell was your partner on about, anyway? If you shared the same house, surely you had the same refrigerator, or were you not allowed to eat food you didn’t buy? Not trying to pry, just trying to understand how the hell you can be living with someone and actively allow them to starve.
Well, he was selfish and self centered. He bought a lot of games on pre order, football merchandise from his home state, meals from his work cafeteria, fast food, frappé, Batman stuff (including clothes, games, graphic novels, and novelties), music, ice cream (2 to 4 gallons total a month which I couldn’t eat because I’m allergic to whey), and so on. If he wanted to go see a movie, I had to pay for gas because he said that was only fair (we lived about 40 minutes from the nearest place). Same went for if he wanted to go eat at one of the places not in our small town. If I cooked for both of us, we split the cost. I was also supposed to do the dishes, but when I got too weak for that… yeah he still didn’t do the dishes and left them to pile up. We knew whose food was whose and he would say he didn’t want me to go hungry and I could have some of his, but in reality I could only have a little unless I replaced it (which was about the amount someone could take without someone else noticing). I was also allergic to many things he bought (whey, MSG, and mushrooms).
When we broke up, he left me before my birthday for a 21 year old. He kept the house and land saying he’d pay my dad for the land. He’s now 3 months behind paying my dad for the land. He also kept my furniture.
*TMI Ahead*
He was also selfish sex wise. Foreplay (which was never oral) was like 2 minutes to non existent because he went straight to it. Sex also lasted a while which often led to me badly irritated afterward. He often made me feel like crap when I didn’t get off like I was defective (and I believed him). It was over when he orgasmed leaving me by myself to take care of myself even if the sexual contact was a BJ (which took 10 to 30 minutes and he was above average width and yes you just heard the majority of people who like penis havers mentally yell HELL NO). He didn’t respect consent either. If I masterbated alone and he caught me, it obviously meant I wanted sex right then and there. There were times I said no or that I wasn’t in the mood which he took as a game. And months after the relationship was over, he raped me while he was over to discuss stuff.
*TMI Over*
So… yeah. If you wonder what kind of guy could do that, there’s your answer. Most people have no clue though because he seems non threatening and like a real sweetheart. It’s part of the reason why a lot of my family didn’t believe me.
Sorry you had to go through all this – I’m glad you seem to have recovered from that (periods are a whooole different matter. I can gain up to 6lb – it’s usually less – for up to two weeks because of them and my hormones thinking I don’t need any feeling of satiety in those weeks).
Plus the body shaming of you and your friends – it’s just fucked up. *offers hugs, if wanted*
As if people have any right to comment on another persons appearance or lifestyle or anything, and to top it off, without even knowing them. It certainly can damage one’s self-esteem and make things worse.
As for your first comment:
1. Because there aren’t things like genetics, body types, different values and personalities /sarcasm off.
One should only give advice when asked for…
As long as you are comfortable with how you are and how you look and are healthy (which I think is now the case?) and are active (in the sense of not only sitting or lying throughout the whole day, as that can be bad for the health) and ESPECIALLY after what you went through… you can definitely stop being ashamed. Everything concerning your body – just do it for yourself. I had to learn that too – because in the end I have to be happy with myself and my body, not someone else.
2. People are very over-stepping their boundaries sometimes. You can’t control how your body processes food – only what goes into it. Sounds as if she might’ve a really fast metabolism – if other possible health-factors have been reviewed (e.g. diabetes, celiac disease etc.). I hope she finds a way to achieve what she wants to achieve!
3. That reminds me of a school friend of mine who was completely thin but also had very large breasts – reduction surgery helped her – especially because her back was hurting non-stop from the extra weight. :/
Again – people should stop thinking their opinions matter in judging someone else they don’t even know (they sadly do because of this fake superiority over them) – I hope you can all push through that shit, my thoughts are with you.
(sorry if this sounds ranty or strange, it’s just I had my fare share of body shaming – also from my family, so stuff like this gets me on the edge
Also, glad to know someone who gets the period thing. Kid you not, I usually have to go to my chiropractor after because the swelling can pop me out. I highly recommend by the way. Between less migraines and less lower back trouble after my periods, I swear by them now.
I’m comfortable most of the time with most people. We all have those people who can cut us to the quick and we all have days that we can’t handle harshness.
Me too! She’s moving soon, so I’m hoping the reduced stress will help. She has anxiety issues and when that goes up, she gets a sick stomach making it hard for her to eat all the food she needs to put on weight.
She’s having to try other things before they will do surgery. One was exercise which made us laugh because no matter how much you exercise, you aren’t gonna knock much off a J cup! -_-
It is not ranty or strange. Have you seen my posts over the months? Now THAT is a collection of strange! And I have yet to be banned or ostracized. Don’t be so harsh on yourself.
Yeah – they can be really tough (yours sounds really bad – but glad you found a way to deal with it a bit better! A chiropractor sounds like a good idea!) My two best friends cannot survive them without pain killers because otherwise they’d not even be able to walk upright, let alone do anything besides crying out of pain :(. Mine are less hurtful, but I get the emotional and hormonal imbalance the (two) week(s) preceding it pretty bad (including swelling up like a balloon) – I can (and tend to) eat so much that I look pregnant and I have to stare at my stomach to remind myself that I’ve eaten enough food and that I should feel satiated (even though I usually could just keep going) – I call it “food pregnant” (it’s become a running gag among me and my friends as means to cope with it, though I can control it with trying to not be around food sources or compensating with movement). My solution is sports – however vulnerable I feel when going to train (I’m training at a gym), training usually involves me focusing only on myself and listening to my most favourite music – it’s my meditation and it helps me control my missing satiation for these periods (once I’ve done something sporty on a day I also usually feel less hungry). And then I mostly have sore muscles (legs or arms – which kinda diverts the suffering a bit from the torso) and the activity helps me with headaches too – but that’s only my personal way of being able to cope with it. I might suggest the chiropractor to my friends, though, it sounds like it could really help them! (thanks for the tip!!)
In dealing with such people I’m mostly glad I have my friends to really back me up and support me emotionally when I have such days…
Glad to hear she’ll be able to reduce some of her stress by moving – a change and less stress can definitely help! (stress can be really affecting gaining/losing weight – and it puts on extra stress because, additionally, even though you might be dieting or like your friend tring to gain weight, the body kind of doesn’t want to work with you, because it’s in continuous alarm and clings to what it has (more fat) or drains extra energy – and it messes with you mentally because you’re thinking “I’m following my plan, I’m doing everything like I should do – why doesn’t it work??!”) I really hope it gets better for her after that!
That IS laughable. Especially considering how you described her. I mean, I did lose most of my cups with losing weight from being overweight – but only because that’s my body type (I’m a ‘pear’ and lose fat mainly in the upper body – the rest of my body only if the upper doesn’t have any left to spare) and I only had D (now I’m between B and A). Exercise might help a little bit, but I doubt it, especially because it could put additional strain onto her body (I imagine sports that could help like running would be – even with a very good sports bra – extremely uncomfortable, or swimming – but then the outfit or finding a fitting one and subjecting oneself to further unnecessary comments of other people – it IS laughable). :/
Even though I should be like…140 cause of how tall I am?
I really wish nutrition books would just say how to eat healthy and try to list cheap and easy ways to do so, cause trying to eat like they say you shouldn’t doesn’t get me the weight I need either.
Do you also still wear the same clothes you did in junior high? I kid you not, I still fit in most of my shirts from back in the 8th grade. The only reason I’ve started getting new clothes is because people buy them for me, and also my shoulders and hips have started getting broader since I hit my prime. It’s actually gotten a bit embarrassing since, well, I still sort of dress like an 8th grader from 2008.
I agree, though, nutrition books could really use an overhaul. I’d have to put on like 60lbs just to start using one, which is completely counterproductive.
I did not expect Rachel and now I’m totally for more Rachel appearances. Aaaaand here comes the shiptease, or the mysterious ship that sometimes comes by in the night and might catch on fire because of flying sparks and fists and watch me drive this metaphor into the bottom of the mariana trench.
She shut him in the other universe before he developed a character. I would highly doubt this universe will be any different in Rachel taking Joe’s shit.
Oh, it’s not ok. But he’s also not really wrong about good-looking guys getting away with shit like that, or shit like that working the way they intend, more often than not-so-good-looking guys. Basically, Jerkass Has A Point (no links to that site because I value your time as well as my own).
I will take the controversial position that his behavior doesn’t come across as Rapey. Skeezy, dehumanizing, mysoginistic, sexual harrassy, maybe illegal, but not rapey.
Like, I think it would be a totally reasonable response for a woman to be uncomfortable with his aggressiveness, even concerned, worried, or afraid. Even mace him in the eyes, but when it comes down to it, I don’t think he’d rape anybody.
Normally I would make fun of Joe for being a bad nerd for violating his scale…..
But scales do get broken all the time. Its possible to go higher than a 10 out of 10 on the hardness scale, you can split atoms (atoms means indivisible) and IQ scores keep changing.
Great to see Rachel again. Don’t know what is up with her legs in panel 1 though.
He’s obviously got some hidden depths he is determined to ignore to be his idea of what a ladies man having fun in college is. He doesn’t strike me as someone particularly comfortable in his own skin. I don’t know? He just seems to be trying so hard to be this asshole?
I think he’s insecure. He seems to be trying very hard to keep all of his interactions as shallow as he can get away with. I wonder if he’s afraid people wouldn’t like him if he really opened up? Or at least I think that might be what is going on below the surface. I’m not sure if he’s aware of it.
I’m sure his parents divorce and his dad’s whole horn dog thing have definitely got something to do with this. He’s avoiding real relationships because real relationships could equal real pain. He’s chasing shallow sex because he thinks that’s what he’s supposed to want but putting so much effort into avoiding real connections is definitely taking a toll on him.
Yeah, we’ve had pretty heavy implications along those lines. His whole… thing… is a lot more understandable when viewed from that perspective, though he’s still being a huge shit by doing it.
Yeah, I mean I really want Joe to be the likable character he sometimes hints at being able to be, but he’s pretty committed to his coping method of being the biggest Bro on campus. I mean he’s very open to Danny about why he does it so we get that insight, but it really makes it hard not to go “Dammit Joe!” most of the time.
I mean he’s more likable than his Roomies version starts as, but also maybe more disappointing because you know there’s some good stuff to his character underneath the douchey candy coating?
Yup. “Hey, I’m not a creepy asshole, I don’t tell women who repulse me that they repulse me to their face. Nor am I a literal pedophile. Clearly, you can see how nice and awesome I am that I have cleared both of those extremely low social bars, so please ignore how I’m faceplanting on this other extremely low social bar and find it charming instead.”
If he absolutely must randomly flirt with a woman, why can’t he do it without utilising that stupid scale, anyway? I’m pretty sure a personalised compliment with some actual thought behind it would go a lot further than an arbitrary number. On top of all the other problems (of which there are many), it’s just lazy.
I think he doesn’t want to personalize because that would require a small amount of effort and might mean having to get to know the person he’s trying to sleep with (even just a little bit) and he is apparently looking for the most shallow/empty hook ups he can possibly get. He is being very lazy.
I think he really wants a woman to justify his f-ing scale. Then he can tell himself that Rozz and Dorothy were wrong because a woman was cool with it.
Yup, the point for these PUA types becomes the system, not the people.
And I suspect for Joe, part of the appeal is it keeps all of his “conquests” dehumanized because he’s absolutely terrified of developing romantic feelings for the women he “pursues” if he doesn’t reduce them to numbers and their sexual utility as a meatsack fleshlight.
I’d forgotten what a crummy move to refer to ” the 1s” is after seeing him bring up “pedostache” to.a.stranger, unprompted, even though there isn’t one in sight.
1. Is Joe still tailing Dorothy and Walky to make sure “Ryan” isn’t following them?
2. Will Joe finally receive the slap to the face that is warranted?
The way he got immediately distracted by Rachel leads me confirms (in my eyes at least) that he was just following them because he’s feeling a bit lonely.
I think well enough of Joe that I doubt he’d be so easily sidetracked if he were actually worried about some kind of creeper possibly following his friends around.
Seriously like…has this ever worked for him? I’m guessing probably but not with a really shallow easily flattered person after he’s been shot down a few times before. Not anyone he’d end up having a real connection with. Which I guess is what he’s determined to avoid.
I seriously doubt that. I was asking specifically how often ranking women works for him. She already expressed a dislike of that. However they first hooked up I doubt it involved Joe just walking over to her and tossing out a number value of her worth.
Well, he just said he doesn’t generally tell women. My guess is he usually only mentions it to people he’s not much trying for (like Dorothy), but honestly thought “you’re so hot you broke my ranking system” was a good lead-in.
Anyway, if this is him accidentally getting Feelings for a girl after he’s pissed her off, I am All On Board. I could use more Sven Bianchi-style schadenfreude.
It’s one of my problems with how we’ve seen Joe here.
We’ve never actually seen his “game” work. We’ve seen it fail horribly, with his date with Joyce and his attempt with Sarah – both of whom needed to resort to yelling, threats and/or actual violence to get him to back off. (Insert standard disclaimer about how Joyce’s behavior during the date was even more awful than his.)
The only two we know he’s gotten together with on screen (Roz & Penny) seem very likely to have made the initial moves themselves – or at least responded positively immediately. Likely because he is physically hot.
We’ve heard him talk about frequent sex, not always in contexts where it’s likely he’d be making it up.
We’ve never witnessed him hit on anyone successfully. We’ve never seen his “game” work. And yet it apparently does.
I kind of want to see that. I want to see how he copes with rejection that isn’t crossing over into threats or someone who’s open to a date, but not immediate sex or how hard he pushes someone who’s interested but hesitant.
I agree that I’m kind of morbidly curious but I also think if I were Willis I would be really deeply anxious about how showing Joe get laid would go over right now. So I’m not sure I expect to see him succeed with anyone for a while
Yeah, I’d just like to see some of his fabled success play out. One of my problems with Joe as a character (as opposed to Joe as a person) is that his prime trait is kind of an Informed Attribute – We’re told he’s this big stud, but when we see his attempted seductions they’re fairly pathetic. It’s hard to imagine them working at all, other than on the few women who basically decide to jump him before he even opens his mouth.
That might be what’s actually going on, but I’m not sure it’s intended.
If on average, say, one woman out of twenty is interested in casual sex with a hot asshole, and Joe hits on fifty random women per day, he’s going to get laid 2.5 times per day on average. Quality trumps quantity.
I really don’t think Joe actually needs to be a master seducer in order to have sex regularly. There are plenty of women who just also want to have sex. All Joe needs to do is meet one of them fairly regularly. He doesn’t have to actually have game as long as he’s putting himself out there consistently.
That’s all possible, but it’s just speculation. Which is why I’d like to see more of it.
And honestly, creepy as this behavior is, it’s on the low end of creepy. Sadly the evidence isn’t really in favor of Joe just asking a lot of girls and politely going away when they say no. More like he keeps pushing until he gets a yes or they get really emphatic about making him back off (and then he’ll keep throwing out comments.)
I’ll also note that you’ll get more success that way when you’re trying it with drunk girls at parties, which Joe very likely does.
So, I’m pointing this out, not because I think you meant it this way, but because society has normalized it to the point where we all say it without thinking, but “drunk girls at parties” are not having consensual sex with people. Legally, as well as morally, someone who is drunk enough to go home with someone they wouldn’t go home with sober is being raped.
Also, alcohol is the most popular tool in the toolbelt of confessed rapists. They find someone who is already drunk and then they ply them with more alcohol, aided by bartenders who admit that they habitually over-serve women (mixing drinks with more alcohol than they put in the same drinks when ordered for men), getting these women black-out drunk. And then they take advantage of them, knowing that their victims will blame themselves and be blamed by society. Rapists do not generally use “date rape drugs”, because those stay in the system and can be used as evidence of a crime. Alcohol? Not considered evidence of anything, despite again the fact that drunk people cannot legally consent to sex.
So yeah, if Joe actually does ply drunk girls at parties, he’s a rapist, full-stop.
It’s not smart to shiptease. I mean, sure, you think you’ll just take your bows, but instead you’ll get a stern response in the wake of doing so. All that effort rigging it up and it’s a total no-sail. You’re liable to get decked, and by someone with prow-ess too, by someone who has you completely out-mast. Seriously, it will keel you dead in the water.
… still, being re-galed with a shiptease should be more entertaining than sitting in the doldrums.
…How long did it take you to come up with that many ship puns? Having you been storing them for a rainy day or did you just think of all these in the past half hour? Either way, I’m actually kind of impressed.
About two minutes of typing. I’ve got a small dictionary of standards I can float out there whenever I want. Most of them can be ported into a variety of situations, and there are a few themes that I can anchor a dozen puns to at once.
…. all in all that means you get more punning bilge.
Yay all these puns! Pretty sure I’m the only one who wins when the comments turn into a punfest though. To most people it’s probably a form of cruel and unusual pun-ishment.
Yep. That is literally the strategy. There’s no need to cultivate personality or charisma when if you approach enough women you’ll eventually find one that’ll go “Eh, you’ll do. Just stop talking.”
Ha, it just occurred to me that PUAs are spammers. …that’s one of those things so obvious in retrospect that I don’t understand how I didn’t think of it before.
I’m dead serious on that too. I’ve witnessed it in action and it works. No one could wrap their head around why anyone would agree to sleep with the “Joe” in question when he was such a douchebag that nobody liked and the secret? He just flirted with every girl and took advantage of the ones that were either into it or too polite to tell him to fuck off to just hang on and on until it maybe went somewhere or not.
And I say “take advantage” not in the sense that the sex was not consenting (god forbid I hope that was never an issue, though I have no reason to believe it was), but more than one girl said afterward that he was just straight-up lousy at sex which hopefully is an advantage that this Joe ACTUALLY has.
Yes, casual sex is okay for everyone, but the strategy as employed involves positioning EVERY woman he encounters. Anywhere. With little regard to the situation.
Which, as Rachel is noting, is not cool. Not many women appreciate random dudes approaching them out of the blue to inform them of how much he’d like to fuck them. Especially not completely unsolicited, right as they exit the room where they sleep.
I dunno, “positioning” paints a much more amusing mental image. I’m picturing some guy just walking up to a woman, looking at her really focused-like, bending her elbow about 30 degrees further inward, nodding to himself, and then just walking off with a satisfied smile on his face. Still a weird thing to do, and definitely boundary-violating, but ultimately harmless.
Fuck YEAH, Rachel! Is it a hard and fast rule that Walkyverse/Shortpacked couples aren’t going to happen again, or is this going to be the one that gets Joe’s head out of his ass, manually?
everything sounds more menacing if you add “manually” to the end
Not so much a hard-and-fast rule as it is the author being satisfied with how he wrote the romances in the old universe.
Joyce/Walky, for example, got enough coverage, so Willis doesn’t really feel like retreading old ground. Billie/Ruth is in DoA because of how little presence it had in the Walkyverse.
I imagine we won’t get Joe/Rachel again here. Nothing long-lasting, anyway.
Interestingly, this kinda comes up in Shortpacked that one time in the alternate dimension. The Joe that Rachel was attracted to was the one able to grow out of his college behavior.
She comes to barely a head below the top of the door frame. Even with Willis’s large (but not as large as they used to be) heads, that makes her exceptionally tall for a woman.
A standard doorframe is about 6 and a half feet. There’s essentially zero chance that these are weird custom jobbies that are shorter than that.
Her height, relative to the doorframe suggests her height is somewhere in the range of 5’11”. Taller than the average American man (who comes a bit shy of 5’10”).
That is exceptionally tall for a woman. (The average for an American woman is ~5’4″.)
Yes, tall women exist. I’m not sure why you’re acting like that is an insult to her.
It’s always weird to me how other people think about height, even though it’s perfectly understandable with most people’s experiences.
For me, my mom is six feet tall. That means my entire life my idea of what a tall woman is has been set at six feet, so I don’t see 5’11” as being exceptionally tall. A woman would have to be over six foot for me to think much of it.
I’m 5’8″, and I don’t consider myself tall at all, even though I know I’m above average.
See…I’m pretty sure to most people tall and short are very subjective.
If you’re over 6’…everyone who doesn’t match your height by more than a few inches is short and most things are made for tiny people. And only basketball players or the like tend to be tall.
And then there’s me at 5’0″ for whom everyone falls into several categories: “shorter than me or about my height HOLY FUCK THAT’S SHORT”, “tall” and “basketball player”
i d k like. i guess your wording hit my “lISTEN just because there’s a statistical average for women of 5’5″ doesn’t mean that there isn’t going to be a statistical likelihood of women hitting 6 feet” button a bit
also how many times i’ve listened to tall women wishing they were shorter
and this one bombass lady being like 6’3″ and wearing heels anyways
Yes, but practically speaking no. Practically speaking even documented sexual harassment for years has even odds of being taken seriously by colleges. (Or workplaces, etc.)
Reporting this shit is not easy or fun and often as not you wind up catching heat for it. I mean hell I couldn’t even report bullies in the sixth grade without the school taking their side and blaming me instead? The school sat is all down with a counselor and the bullies said they weren’t doing anything wrong and were just trying to be my friend (ah yes the well-known friendship overture of following someone around calling them a lesbo all day), and the counselor believed them and I got in trouble.
Oh I know the odds of proactive measures being taken in response to complaints are terrible even in liberal spaces like say my university *grim* and I’m sorry that happened to you. Hell, every woman who’s ever made or considered making a harassment complaint probably knows how tough it is to make a case, I meant that legally even a single instance counts as harassment.
it’s enjoyable to see joe being told off. but it keeps happening. and he doesn’t seem to have an ounce of ability to listen
i am an engineering student. two weeks ago, a dude approached me and said something along the lines of me being in the “top percentile of” the girls here. expressed confusion as why i wouldn’t prefer him over the less nerdy guys. there really is no self awareness lmao
I’m getting the feeling that there is a genuine failure in our culture in teaching men how to relate to women (let alone how a man should ask a woman out on a date without coming across as either pathetic, weird, creepy or genuinely threatening).
I basically have that feeling except taken to the next level of feeling like there’s a general failure in our culture in teaching humans how to relate to each other as well as doing so in ways that are not easily considered creepy or improper in general, but yes, it perhaps goes doubly for men towards women?
Cause at least if you get raised in the system, someone or several someones probably enforce behavioral rule sets on how someone is supposed to act towards others of the same sex based on the person’s assigned sex?
Double standards are super confusing though. Especially when the rule sets often change based on age groups instead of any actual logical reasoning.
Oh he understands. He just mentally sorts himself into the category that is somehow “immune” to the consequences of how offensive and offputting his shtick is because he’s that full of his “skills” in the “game”.
Well, the idea that Joe is watching Dorothy’s back is officially disproved now.
He would be shocked to learn that his behavior is sexual harassment. But it is. Because of content. Also:
Why do some guys never learn it’s incredibly impolite and annoying when they start talking to you from behind? Not to mention in some situations, this kind of behavior spells DANGER is really large letters?
If you wanna flirt, come from a position where you can make eye-contact, continue only, if eye-conatct and follow-up smile are reciprocal (probably wrong word, not a native speaker).
Also good to try to work out whether the smile is genuine, though I feel like Joe wouldn’t care about that point too much, at least when first making contact. You know, since at least fourth panel he doesn’t seem to care about her facial expression at all.
As an exceptionally tall and lanky person who moves very quietly by nature….
I’ve generally learned that circling around so someone can see you is a good idea when trying to not spook them. Like mainly when it comes to living the retail job life, but yeah…talking from the front tends to give a better reaction.
Not that I ever know what appropriate compliments on people’s attire or hair or whatever are, so I generally play it safe? Even if sometimes I do really really like people’s boots.
Randomly stumbling upon a link and reading up to the most recent comic page is the norm for my webcomic experiences! And the backlog behind that page is pretty significant. I found that one a few years ago via a TV Tropes link to a much older strip, and even then the backlog took a day or two of marathoning to finish!
Yes, I’ve got the impression even his assholes learn a lesson over time.
Even Diane who started out as rather an asshole (dating guys so they will buy her things) has started to develop a less merchenary attitude. Only aberrations and vampires don’t (up to now).
And we’ve been waiting for 2 dates to happen for more then a year now. If you think DOA is slow, …
Yup, pretty much nailed that dead on. Heck, we’ve already seen the initial sign of that with how he’s treated Sarah and Joyce for rejecting him loudly and unequivocally, where he openly harasses them for being “crazy women”.
A woman who caused an actual consequence for him would get a much more focused stream of entitled resentment.
I’ve long thought that the only thing that saves Joe from this experience on a regular basis is that there is something strangely ridiculous about him. I suspect that a lot of the women find it hard to feel genuinely threatened by him because he’s more obliviously weird in his aggression than he is creepy or frightening.
What saves him is the social pressure on women “not to make a scene”. Like, society reacts extremely hostilely when a woman goes apeshit on a creeper. The woman “overreacted”, was being “a percussion instrument”, was being “unfair”, was “crazy” and so on.
So we’re expected to swallow this shit, even if it’s creepy. Even if it’s frightening or legitimately dangerous or off-putting for us. And that’s the shittiest part of what Joe is doing. He’s exploiting social niceties and form in order to do this creeper shit, knowing that when a woman goes off on them, that it’s “her fault”.
And the worst part is he knows it, because his response when someone goes off on him (because it’s the only way to make him back off) is to lean heavily on those social norms and make a big deal about how “unhinged” the person is being and how unfair it is that they blew up at him.
Anyone else think that this strip was going on hiatus from the title, then think “Damn you Willis!” when this turned out not to be the case, or was that just me?
It crossed my mind briefly, but after I read the comic. And now I wonder – if Willis goes on hiatus, will the title be “Hiatus 2” or “Hiatus for Real”?
Welp, I wanted to see his “game” to see if it was any different than the creeper shit he pulled on Joyce. Careful what you wish for, I suppose.
Panel 1: Hmm, it’ll be interesting to see how that offer’d go. On the one hand, she’s probably one of the most suited for covering things at least of the main cast that Dorothy trusts, but on the other, I could definitely see Billie taking it the wrong way.
After all, that assignment used to be hers, but she was taken off the beat, so being handed it back could end up feeling patronizing to her or a reminder of her failings rather than a second chance to prove herself or a reconnection to something that can make her feel like a success again.
My hunch is Billie will react poorly, but I like to live in hope that she won’t.
The rest: (deep sigh)… let me be frank. I’m not a fan of Joe’s shtick and given some of my experiences I’m less likely than most to find his shit endearing. And I’m especially not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt after he echoed the worldview that gets a lot of aces correctively raped.
Like, I want him to grow as a character. I think escaping this kind of idea that this is what it means to be a sexual man is a major growth moment for a lot of young men. I think he’ll get there in time, but in the meantime, this behavior is not acceptable and it’s not acceptable for a lot of different reasons.
So for this reaction, I’m gonna do it a little bit differently and not go strictly panel by panel, but rather by action/theme/revelation.
Unsolicited boner updates: So there’s a certain type of dude that really does seem to believe that every woman in the world desperately needs to know about the state of their boner or that they deeply care about the state of their boner.
And as such, that it is socially appropriate to inform us about whether or not their boner considers us someone worthy of fucking or not and that we’ll somehow be grateful if their boner says we are.
It’s super common among PUAs, MRAs, and street harassers and it’s what underlies most sexist pile-ons such as when a feminist is told repeatedly how they will never find a man or they’re being super unsexy when they are talking about harassment or sexism.
And it’s toxic as hell. Because it does so much awful shit all at once. It presumes a world where the man’s sexual satisfaction is a public good and random strangers should feel obliged to care and do something about that (which leads to a lot of crimes by entitlement including stalking, sexual assault, street harassment, and resenting women who say no). It also reinforces a notion that a woman’s worth is defined solely by whether or not folks want to fuck her.
And the thing is, it’s always inappropriate. Even in a sex club, unsolicited boner updates are creepy as fuck and frequently tie into a lot of dangerous culture, but it’s even worse when it’s tied to general harassment like this, because when you’re going about your day, you really don’t want or expect to get this shit thrown at you.
It’s also something I particularly intensely loathe because when you’re trans and ace this shit gets fucking dangerous. Someone who feels you need an unsolicited boner update is very likely to go off when they realize someone is trans, because now their boner has been “tricked” and this must be “avenged” and is very likely to see one’s aceness as a “problem” to be “solved”.
One of my near-misses with being murdered began as an unsolicited boner update. They can go bad really really fast.
Especially because as we see here, the person doing them expects us to act with gratitude for receiving these updates. After all, they said we were hot/that they’d want to bang us/that we have a higher ranking. Why are we being such a percussion instrument to reject that or find it offputting? It’s like we can’t even take a compliment.
Like, Joe really does expect to receive something for the kindness of rating her highly on his random BS scale. Like that’s some incredible gift rather than a dudebro harassing a woman the literal second she leaves her room. And Rachel understands like a lot of women that rejecting that coldly can easily turn dangerous as the spurned dudebro feels slighted by the “ingratitude”.
And the sick part is if the woman was to take it as a compliment, that usually pisses off these types just as much. Like, there’s so many stories from folks who’ve responded to the flood of boner updates their dating profiles receive positively by stating that yup, they totally know that they’re a fox only to have the boner updater go off on them and try and neg them for being so “conceited”.
Because at the end of the day, it’s not about a compliment, it’s about a script the boner updater has written in their head. That we should be shy and demure and grateful for this type of shitty harassment, but not so grateful that we look like the type of person that wouldn’t take this shit. And we’re supposed to eat our feelings of discomfort or our worries that this can so easily go wrong (I mean, look at this, Joe is camped outside her literal unlocked door, if he was less a Joe and more a Ryan, this could go violently awfully bad QUICK) and just take it.
So yeah, dudes, don’t ever do this. It’s always going to be creepy and awful and our not macing you says nothing other than you’re exploiting social convention that makes it so we’re supposed to politely tolerate your ass.
Ugggh this is like a few days ago where a guy just can’t keep shut about “how beautiful” I looked in my cosplay, I couldn’t even check myself in the mirror because he HAS to make a comment about “how I was cosplaying one of his first crushes ” and stuff; and it really gave me a huge dysphoria to the point I’m seriously thinking to not cosplay female characters again
Joe and consent: Additionally, we also once again see Joe’s “game” and it’s as awful as we’ve seen it with Sarah and Joyce and at this point, I feel it is safe to say that this is Joe’s “game”. That this is how he hits on women. And well, it does not say good things about his practice of consent.
Like, first of all, he intentionally avoids noticing body language and let’s be frank, Rachel’s body language, much like Sarah’s is not particularly subtle. She goes from neutral to outright glaring at him by the end, with increasingly upset/hostile eyebrows.
And here’s the thing. There’s no way that he really can’t read body language that obvious, which means he is actively ignoring it and convincing himself that this is a part of playing “hard to get” and thus an invitation to press harder.
And well, that fucks his supposed consent bona fides, because creating situations where the only way to get rid of the Joe remora is to blow up violently at him and suffer the social consequences of that is not one that creates a fully consensual space and is deeply exploitative of the pressure women are under never to give a no because encounters like this can go violently wrong if they do give a hard no.
And because as we’ve seen, he keeps pressing even after a no, hoping to convince it into a yes. If he’s not a rapist, it has only been by accident, because these moments he creates when he hits on women do not create a space where it feels fully safe to reject him without consequence and he actively ignores when he is making women uncomfortable.
That last panel: This I feel is the most condemning panel of Joe’s in the entire strip. Because with all the other ones, maybe you could somehow say he wasn’t realizing how offputting and creepy he was being or that he somehow was hit by a meteor that makes it so he can only read the body language of dudes, but with this one…
He knows his actions are creepy. That they’d be considered harassment. That they are the sort of thing that would make a woman skeeved out and uncomfortable. He knows this. But somehow convinces himself it’s all okay because he’s “handsome”. Even though he’s seen from evidence that no, people still view him as a creep and only ever sleep with him despite the hostile bullshit of his “game” rather than because of it.
And the thing is this is a worldview deeply tied to a particularly vile strain of MRA thought. And that is that women don’t actually dislike being harassed, mistreated, abused and only react poorly to it because the person doing it isn’t “masculine enough” or isn’t “handsome enough” or isn’t “rich enough”. And that some mythical Chad doing all the behaviors that women tell them to stop doing would be rolling in genitals doing the same exact shit.
And it’s fucked up, because it allows the harasser to minimize their own actions and the response to them. Their techniques aren’t failures, they’ve just been failed by women’s “unfair” standards and “oppression of betas” that make it so their creeping is interpreted as creeping. And it leads to the belief that they just need to be more “alpha” in their creepy objectification and harassment to see the success the mythical Chad who sleeps with 20,000 women a second sees.
And Joe completely buys into it here. Like, he knows that what he is doing is offputting and creepy, but believes he’s that Chad, that “alpha” who is handsome enough to pull it off without it being creepy and weird.
But it is creepy and weird. And getting harassed by a handsome guy does not seem flattering but is a very good way to view that guy as less and less handsome the more he does it. Because what Joe and the MRAs who push this shit believe is wrong. Actions like this are offputting no matter who they come from. They just might be overlooked for how offputting they are.
And the fact that Joe sees how offputting his actions are. How harmful and creepy they are when he watches his father do them or when he thinks about someone who isn’t him doing them. The fact that he sees that and still does it, filling himself up with excuses of why it’s okay and actively ignoring body language and unambiguous statements of how little the women he is targeting like this shit, is not fucking okay. And demonstrates an absolute loathing of the agency of women in this little pre-conceived narrative of his.
And it’s made all the worse because of his context here. Rachel just left her room, is in the woman’s side of the dorm, is trying to just enjoy her day. And Joe is camped out, coming from the side, leaning in at her with his elbow right up against the door to cut off an angle of escape and aggressively creeping on her and ignoring her every attempt to unsubtly communicate that this is making her uncomfortable. Like, this is terrible bad boundaries and adds an “implication” in the Always Sunny sense to his action.
See he’s not a bad “pedostache” man who would escalate this in bad directions if she rejected him, but he’s fully trading on the threat folks like that carry, the threat that would be one of them right outside her unlocked door. That if he was one of those “bad men” this would go violently wrong for her and it hamstrings her full ability to reject him directly, because someone willing to storm into a women’s sleeping area just to creep on women who just left their rooms is already demonstrating a frightening approach to boundaries.
(sigh)
I don’t like hating Joe and his actions. I want him to be better. Maybe an encounter with Ryan or seeing what he did will clue him in to the dangerous line he’s been walking and how awful his treatment of women is. Maybe he’ll realize independently that his PUA garbage is a bag of hot bullshit.
But this? This cannot sustain itself indefinitely. Cause this is getting more and more awful and boundary-pressing by the strip.
Yeah, that last panel really switches the gears from “can’t read body language” to “oh, that doesn’t really apply to ME.” Dude, you’re the one who’s THERE!
And also, “Joe remora” made me chuckle more than it had any right to.
I think you may be reading far more into this than there is simply because I think it presumes JOE is a lot smarter and more aware than he seems to be. Everything about Joe seems to imply he thinks this is charming and that women find it amusing. You say, “Surely, he can’t be that dense that he sees Rachel is uninterested.”
But he does recognize this would be creepy and let’s be frank. Almost no one is as bad as Joe is pretending to be when it comes to reading the very unsubtle body language Rachel and Sarah have given him. Especially not when he is given them his supposed full attention.
Like, I see this with creepers all the time. They’ll claim that they’re just so bad at body language when called out on the dismissive way they ignore clear signs of distress in the people they are pursuing. But actual people with actual neuroatypical reasons for being bad with body language don’t show this much willful ignorance of body language as this and show a lot more concern and distress when told that their behavior is offputting.
Like, he knows he’s being a shitbird, he just convinces himself that it must still be charming or that the woman is playing hard-to-get or that this is the only way to get the girl. Justifications for bad behavior.
And it frustrates me because creepers exploit people’s desire to see this play-acting as genuine all the time to get away with boundary-pushing crap like this. Pretending to be somehow incapable of recognizing boundaries or body-language even though if they were really as bad as they say they are at it, they wouldn’t be able to hold down a job or interact with 90% of society without being thrown in jail.
And it also frustrates me because folks who are on the autism spectrum like some of my students get all the fallout from this neurotypical lying creeper bullshit even though the vast majority of them are more careful about social boundaries than their neurotypical peers.
You hit it right on the head. I’m on the spectrum, and have a very tenuous grasp of body language. I still don’t act how Joe’s acting. See, even though my innate understanding and ability to read body language is lacking in several ways, I’ve actually managed to learn it the way a high school student learns a subject they’re not particularly good at: Memorisation.
This person making this face or standing in this position means they’re feeling this particular way. It’s a case-by-case thing, most of the time, but I can still generally apply the more common expressions and postures to a stranger and have at least a decent idea what they’re emoting. It’s not fool-proof, by any means, and there are definitely times I flub a social encounter entirely by not reading a person properly, but it’s still effort.
“I can’t read body language” is not, barring extreme cases, an excuse. If it’s true, it’s a valid reason for a certain degree of behavior, but it’s not an excuse to act however you please.
Oh, c’mon, look at that last panel. *I*’m terrible at body language and even I can tell that’s a death glare there. There’s no way you can count someone as people and still think they’re interested when they’re looking at you like THAT.
I just want to add to everything Cerberus and JBento said with:
Isn’t it also reading a lot into this strip to assume Joe is this selectively bad at reading body language, facial expression, and tone? He’s displayed a lot of ability to pick up on these things in other situations. (Joyce wouldn’t have been talking to him when she was at home and stressed out if he hadn’t made himself emotionally available for her, for example. And he picks up on Danny’s cues just fine — well enough to see conversations he doesn’t want to have coming, and to try to nip them in the bed.)
Perhaps it is but I get the impression Joe thinks this is how it’s supposed to go with women being hostile toward the idea of a relationship or aggressive before he widdles them down. It’s not actually that uncommon of a view of romantic behavior in television (which is awful) and cartoons (which is doubly awful) as the idea being there’s meant to be a kind of Tsundere hot/cold thing versus open warmth and honesty about your feelings.
Why do I give Joe the benefit of the doubt when 99% of the time and a 1% margin of error in real life that they are a bunch of creepers? I think because he seemed genuinely upset when Dorothy revealed his words hurt her rather than some kind of playful banter they were engaged in. Joe’s immaturity really strikes me as someone who seems to think life functions like an anime or When Harry Met Sally.
The weird thing is that most of his justification seems to be “Hey, this works for me, so it can’t be unacceptable behavior for me specifically to do.”.
Which yeah is really horrible…and kind of disappointing when he has a major example in his family of why he shouldn’t want to act that way? Though his father might be part of why he’s decided that its what’s expected of him? Or at least why doing things this way is the best way to try and get what he wants on a superficial level where he can avoid thinking about anyone’s feelings?
Maybe someone should tell Joe that he’s a walking talking teachable moment? Though yeah, the most disappointing thing is that he’s kind of the posterboy for “Toxic Masculinity thats brushed off as harmless because its not like he’s committing any crimes”.
I mean, are guys generally that obsessed with sex to the point that they seem to think its something that everyone should do whenever possible and is the surest way for anyone to find even a temporary measure of happiness? Cause thats what it always seems to be sold as by those sort of crowds at least.
Sex is pretty awesome and for those people who enjoy it, they should be able to practice it in the way they want to and as often as they can as long as people are adult as well as consenting. It really is like chocolate or video games only better. The problem is society has created rigid social constructs that breaking down the idea of, “How does one approach someone for it” and how it relates to friendship or love is still a mystery for many because of toxic ideals of the past/present.
…. has anyone thought to ask AMAZI-GIRL how she feels about being handed off to another journalist with which she hasn’t established a relationship of trust?
Well, both of their main issues are the fact that they’d rather ignore the reality of their behavior patterns and the consequences that arise from them than actually behave in a mature fashion, at least until they’re backed into a corner.
I mean they also try their best to toe the line of what makes getting what they want easiest to do without actually having to care about it as a general rule, but that doesn’t make their behavior otherwise generally less like that of a spoiled child.
Joe and Faz are pretty comparable in their behaviors as well, except Faz is the “creepy lil’ twerp” variant who Joe is dissing except for not having the facial hair that apparently goes along with it? They both use the same sort of playbooks though.
Dammit, Joe, you JUST got dressed down for this one of the people you seem to respect the most. I know you are capable of becoming a mature, decent person. Stop being awful.
Keep in mind the only women he treats with any respect are his best friend’s ex (and thus banging her would be a violation of the Bro Code), and Joyce, who kicked herself off his Do List.
To be fair, on their first and only date, Joyce brought along Mike and encouraged him to physically attack Joe for thought crimes, so…yeah, he has pretty good reason to call her a crazy woman.
I hope Joe goes through an arc where he makes acquaintance with more women to the level he has with Joyce (but not in the same manner–I’m not saying that).
Of course, it’s not her task, nor anyone’s, to change his behavior.
But I notice that his on-panel interactions with Joyce are the closest thing he shows to actually being friends with a woman, or conversing without his “goal” in mind.
Yeah, I figured that, but I posted this anyways because the laugh potential for Joe meeting Sal and the subsequent verbal thrashing I’m pretty sure she’d give is too good.
And because the alt-text made me wonder if Joe was mistaking Rachel for Sal – whom he would only know from Danny’s description (which was ‘girl who rides a motorcycle and barely wears clothes’) and any remarks he made about tutoring her afterwards.
I’d be disappointed if Joe’s survival instincts are so poor that he can’t immediately see that Sal is an anti-personnel mine waiting to go off if he disturbs it.
Boy, I was confused. I interpreted panel 2 to be Rachel leaving Joe’s room after having fun times with him, so he was rating her sexual ability. Which made the following panels very confusing. It took a few re-reads before it clicked. And in the first panel, my first thought was, wow, she is very tall.
Yeah, one should still keep an eye on a situation that looks sketchy, even if you’re 100% sure someone has it covered.
For instance, if Marcie and Sal were in a bar and some asshole came up to pester Sal the way Joe is Rachel, I’d expect Marcie to keep an eye on that, even if she knows Sal can handle it.
Sad thing is, Joe is absolutely right. A few fringe cases outstanding, most women HIGHLY prefer being obnoxiously hit on by a hot dude than a not-hot dude. lol
Well, yeah, that’s true, but a lot of guys will use that the way Joe’s using it here – in a way reminiscent of Winston Churchill’s “now we’re haggling” scenario.
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 ⋅ 17h
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
www.ebay.com/itm/23609767...
selling my netflix war for cybertron megatron -- the walmart exclusive one that came with pinpointer and lionizer (but being sold here without pinpointer and lionizer)
Gran... IS ALIVE?
okay, juliette still has brown hair, so this is probably definitely a flashback
i'm just surprised that the comic has remembered her, at all
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 17h
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 5d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3d
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o shit shiptease
And we know that Willis doesn’t like to revisit Walkyverse ships.
….. though Grace/Mandy/Sierra are still a thing…
Grace/Mandy/Sierra is the eternal threesome. It spans all universes.
(they’re in every panel of LAWSOME, just a little bit too far to the right)
And more prominently, Ruth/Billie.
I don’t think he’s ever said that? Just that he doesn’t feel -obligated- to revisit ships.
No, he said on tumblr he doesn’t like to revisit ships if he’s satisfied with how he wrote them in Walkyverse.
However, as time goes on, the number of things he feels he could write better increases.
what even is a SEMMF
I dunno, but screw SEMMF.
Honestly, I think this strip is about a ship getting torpedoed to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
It basically started the same way in Walkyverse. Much character development is in Joe’s future.
I’d say this is 90% the way it started in the Walkyverse
all that’s missing is Joe talking to Danny
I tried a Google search for “hot girls who love geeks”.
It told me how to find God’s love.
…
I mean, you don’t know for sure that God’s not a hot girl. That, and supposedly he loves everybody, or some shit, and that’s a set that inherently includes geeks! I say you two should get brunch, it’s worth a shot.
good heavens, if joe were less buff, he might be some kind of CREEP
but he’s hot, so it’s OK
joe you are terrible
Did anyone else experience a page crash trying to comment?
On an iPad?
I mean… he’s not wrong tho? Hot guys get away with creepy shit all the time. Just cause they’re hot. Which is shitty, but it happens that way so much and it sucks.
that doesn’t make it okay
I know, right? Despite Rachels obvious annoyance and Joes apparent obliviousness, I still feel like he has about a 50 percent chance to be in her bed within a half hour.
If only she had replied “You ARE a creep” instead of a sarcastic “how lucky for me”. Joe’s reaction to that would have been so fun.
I mean, that’s the problem with Schrodinger’s Buff Propositioner: The fact that he’s buff means that you have to be nicer when turning him down, on the off chance that he’s willing to murder you.
He is wrong. Sexual harassment from hot guys does not feel better. As women keep saying at length but no one seems to believe us.
Like, yes, hot guys “get away with” creepy shit, but so do all guys? The majority of creeps find their behavior pretty reinforced by society.
This. This. So much all of this.
And it sucks how our polite suffering through a harassment is treated as tacit support for more of it or somehow a sign of our “unfairness”. It’s like, just let me enjoy my very rare night out because of fucks like you in peace.
I think part of it is that win or lose, its whats expected so most of the time it doesn’t end up resulting in any serious consequences in the long term.
Meanwhile, behaving like a decent intelligent being who is capable of even basic levels of civility and propriety usually gets twisted into various other sorts of claims?
If someone is told that this is how the “game” is played, but meets with only failure, they’re more likely to start making claims that the odds are being rigged against them or that other people are cheating them out of their perceived “reward” than to actually sit down and analyze the fact that they’ve probably been given information that isn’t actually true…and probably shouldn’t be true either.
Which is also horrible, but it being whats “expected” by all sides is part of what lets people “get away with” that sort of behavior even if they’re not as “successful” with it.
Yup. The system can’t fail, it can only be failed. And if it’s supposed to work all the time and it’s working very rarely, then it must be the fault of all the women who are breaking this perfect system rather than that the system is just an off-putting piece of garbage more about performing a sexist masculinity at other guys by mistreating women.
“Hot” guys also get called on creepy shit all the time. But they are just unbelieving that this could -possibly- be a reaction to them. So it doesn’t matter. Just brush it off, if the chick’s a frigid bongo maybe the next one will be properly grateful….. : -/
Also interesting what the autofilter did with the “b” word there….
You must be new here. The ‘bongo’ filter has been around for a while.
Joe isn’t hot. He’s a creepy jerk with a five o’clock shadow. He’s just a trenchcoat and an alley away from being a flasher.
Joe is that guy who knows his approach will get him spurned or disdained nine times out of ten, because for him, the tenth time is worth it.
Oh, like Jeff Boomhauer on “King of the Hill”. Bobby wanted to learn how to be a hit with the ladies from this beady-eyed mumbler. So he tagged along with him to a women’s shoe store and saw Boomhauer pull a fake salesman’s act by approaching several women with a shoe. Boomhauer annoyed most of the women he tried this with but finally scored a phone number from one of them. Bobby was disgusted to realize that Boomhauer’s supposed success with women was due only to persistence not actual magnetism or charm.
This is actually the approach recommended by one Ivan Vorpatril, though in less creepy terms.
From Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance:
———–
Ivan sat in the dark and contemplated his progress. It was not heartening.
Not that his reputation for success with women was undeserved, but it was due to brains, not luck, and steady allegiance to a few simple rules. The first rule was to go to places where lots of women already in the mood for company had congregated — parties, dances, bars. Although not weddings, because those tended to put the wrong sorts of thoughts in into their heads. Next, try likely prospects till you hit one who smiled back. Next, be amusing, perhaps in a slightly risque but tasteful way, until she laughed. Extra points if the laughter was genuine. Continue ad lib from there. A 10:1 pool of trials to hits was not a problem as long as the original pool contained ten or more prospects to start with. It was simple statistics, as he’d tried to explain to his cousin Miles on more than one occasion.
————————
Why the dancing shouting why the shrieks of pain the lovely music why the smell of burning autumn leaves
Oh Joe, never change! LOL ^_^
No Joe, please change immediately.
To me, Joe’s like the Iron Sheik: so terrible you can’t help but laugh.
But, to each their own.
D…does Joe actually fuck peoples’ asses to make them humble?
…are any of those people Hulk Hogan?
JOE X HULK HOGAN FOR NEXT SLIPSHINE PLS IT’S BASICALLY CANON NOW
Agreed. Plenty of others, like Joyce, Walky, Billie, Ruth and Amber, are undergoing painful but necessary character development; it’s time for Joe to do the same.
This, yes please.
Why would Joe change? His current behavior still gets him the results he is after often enough to merit staying the course. Until the results start changing, the behavior is going to continue.
I think the results changed this time.
Usually by this point the women he approaches either start fawning over him or tell him to fuck off. Rachel just called him out on his Johnny Bravo schtick. He didn’t immediately retreat, she didn’t immediately turn and walk away.
One undesirable result is not going to change any habitual pattern of behavior. You need a trend of undesirable results to alter behavior, and one positive can undo the lessons of a string of negatives.
We are all the main characters of our own story, and all it takes is one small victory for us to flip the narrative.
I’d say that age and cumulative bad experiences would eventually cure this, but we’ve already seen that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
I hope Billie never stops believing Sal is AmaziGirl. Like, even when Amber is found maskless in the park after her full mental-breakdown Billie still thinks it’s just a ploy to hide Sal’s true identity.
At this point Joe is beginning to edge close to Faz level of unwelcomed advances.
More importantly, Faz’s level of total obliviousness!
I was originally typing a response to this specific post, then stopped and refreshed the page, yet it replied to this post anyways.
My brain (what’s left of it) was trying to put the Sal comment with the Joe/Rachel part of the strip. Very confusing.
Eh. She has her occasional moments of clarity.
it’s like she’s the anti-Lois
In some ways, I’m waiting for Sal to start doing the whole vigilante thing with Amazi-Girl and for Billie to accuse Amber of being (Sal’s vigilante alter-ego). Later on, when it all comes out, I suspect that Walky will enjoy telling Billie that she was as wrong as it was possible to get.
Fuck you Joe. Again. And not in the way you’re thinking.
fuck you, Joe
in the least sexual way possible
“but why not just make ten the hottest?”
“…you go to eleven”
“Because 11 is the prime ranking.”
“… so you’re majoring in STEM too?”
What is Joe majoring in?
At the moment probably undecided. It might be a spoiler for his character development if he picks the same major as the old universe
What was that? I’ve only briefly skimmed certain sections of that universe.
((Lotsa Walkyverse spoilers warning))
Joe majored in Engineering in Walkyverse because he liked Transformers. He later became an engineer / mad inventor for SEMME and created Ultra-Car. But he was embarrassed by and refused to admit his geekdom, especially to women he was, erm, courting. This schism between his geek side and his hunk side eventually sabotaged his, erm, romances because he wasn’t willing to be intellectual with the people he was sexual with and vice versa. Eventually he got into an online romance with a fellow engineer and there was a long arc of him waffling and wavering and whining about even meeting her in person coupled with lots of fan speculation about who this unknown person was. (As usual, Willis was trolling us all.)
IIRC Willis jettisoned the geek in Joe for DoA because Ethan already filled the niche of tall square-jawed Jew who’s into Transformers. Also his Hawaiian shirt, which clearly was the source of his character depth.
Isn’t the geek in Walkyverse Joe just… Carla’s dad in this ‘verse?
I think the idea Joe can’t be a geek and a dudebro is dumb because there’s plenty of them in RL.
CT: Yup! Oddly enough, the fact that it’s a dumb idea doesn’t stop Joe from embracing it.
On the one hand, good old ship
On the other hand, the comments are going to be on fire tonight
On a third hand, Joe, stop ruining everything
And on the fourth hand, let go of my hand
On a fourth hand, Joe’s appearance is interesting in light of the theory that Ryan’s tailing Dorothy, and its corollary that Joe noticed that. Including the ‘no, just …no’ interaction with Rachel. Walky and Dotty just walked past there… was Ryan about to come by?
They’re back in the dorm, right? I don’t think we need to read too much into characters who live in the dorm showing up in the dorm.
Joe’s not ruining EVERYTHING.
…. Ethan’s fairly unharrassed.
…how long have you had three hands? Do you think you should see a doctor about that?
Is the third hand the pie hand?
No, it’s the gripping hand.
Is that a “Mote in God’s Eye” reference?
Crazy Eddie.
Technically, it’s a ‘The Gripping Hand’ reference.
(Yes, Niven wrote a sequel.)
Didn’t think there were this many people here old enough to have read that. Or maybe just people in classic SF.
Are you kidding, that book, and sequel, are so good I have read them many times.
And they still scare me.
“In another universe, maybe.”
(Sorry if I stole tomorrow’s punchline, Willis.)
. . . and it juuust clicked for me that the out-of-universe reason Joe is “ranking Rachel so high” is because they were a major Item in the Walkyverse.
Wait until Joe finds out she’s really a Life Model Decoy! :O
Joe being Joe, nothing surprising here.
Dunno, I thought he had a bit more game than this.
Wow, is Rachel really tall? She looks super tall in panel one, and Joe is barely leaning down to flirt with her, and he’s like the tallest person in the comic.
She does appear to be somewhat of a stick, although to my (admittedly untrained) eye, her proportions in panel 1 seem sort of off anyway.
Yeah, she’s always been tall.
She looks like she’s the third or fourth tallest on the floor. Though there are several that are very close in height.
Joe thinks she is 5′ ELEVEN
…. oh shit I can’t believe it took me this long for it to click which Rachel this is in Prime Walkyverse.
It’s the Rachel that matters.
This is dumbingverse Rachael.
Walkyverse Rachael is not this Rachael. She’s an other Rachael, but not Other Rachael, and also not Other-Other Rachael.
Is there a reason Rachel gets an additional a in your comment?
…. yes, but I’d have a hard time article-ating why.
I’m sure your input would be very vowel-able.
Joe, no. Just no. You need to grow some first.
*Waggles eyebrows suggestively*
Ugh Joe. Gross.
bah and humbug joseph, can’t someone invent time travel so I can skip to the beginning of your life reevaluation arc already
This sounds like a project for Carla.
Carla would probably rather make Joe re-evaluate his masculinity and virility.
By making a laser.
A space laser.
A space laser that evaporates Joe’s testicles. From space.
*looks for some Spinal Tap to play*
Well, “Big Bottom” doesn’t really fit, and “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” might send the wrong message! LOL
I was thinking “Diva Fever”.
“Break Like The Wind”? Lord knows we could all use the laughter…
Anything will do, as long as they bring their amps.
Oh, Jesus. Please tell me this is going somewhere. I don’t need to see Joe… *Joe* all over the hallway for no reason.
i joe
you joe
he/she/it joes
*bops butts over their Cyndi-Lauper-parodying-head*
…. okay, not really a parody, but I’m bopping you anyway.
…. just not like that.
i have no idea what you think i’m referencing
what even is a cyndi lauper
…. I swear, culture is dead.
I mainly just know “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” by her. Though apparently she did a song for the Goonies as well?
She also taught Paul Reiser to kiss, in Mad About You.
(Jamie: “Well thank you, you did a fine job!”)
Everything she did after that track was way better, it just didn’t have as much broad pop appeal. Mostly because she tried to add, like, actual artistic merit to her art, which mainstream audiences hate.
Cyndi Lauper is culture now?
*Sigh* I’m old. It used to be that she was considered the end of culture.
New culture is always the end of culture.
Hey, remember when Madonna was a cheap Cyndi Lauper wanna-be rip-off?
Gods I’m old.
I think we’ve hit the point where remembering that Britney Spears was a cheap Madonna wanna-be rip-off makes people feel old tbh.
Yes. Yes I do.
Did you try setting it to WumbJoe?
It might lead to a marriage, and somehow adopting Carla through time-travel shenanigans.
The question is, why the hell did Joe follow D&W all the way back here? Has he nothing else to be doing? Or nobody else, even?
Basically. Jacob may well be about the only new friend Joe has made in college, and I’m not sure he likes Joe that much.
Joe desperately needs real human companionship, though he refuses to admit it.
Refuses to admit it? He probably doesn’t even realize it. They don’t exactly teach the kind of young men who end up like Joe that emotional and social needs are things they should expect they need to satisfy. You gotta put your ding-dong in warm stuff. That’s the really important male experience!
Ugh, shut the fuck up, Joe.
*insert reference to Walkyverse continuity here*
*insert generic snarky response to tired “insert X statement here” formula here*
*insert non-sequitur here*
Wow… no Joe. Still creepy. Still super creepy. Also, funk people who body shame.
Also, good idea Dorothy. Free time by dropping the paper and giving it to someone who needs this right now.
On a personal note, myself and several friends have been body shamed lately.
1. I have been flooded with unwanted advice from someone (kinda a friend but not quite) about how I need to get on diet supplements (…no). A relative has been telling me how I need to exercise like her (also no because what she does is expensive, overboard, and not for somebody with a weak left side and asthma). My dad insults me a lot. I know I’m 60lbs overweight, but I’m also tall with broad shoulders, big boobs, wide hips, big butt, and long legs, so it’s spread out and I’m done being ashamed of it.
2. A friend of mine is skinny, but not super skinny. She tries to put on weight, but her body won’t let her. We all know guys and gals like that. She catches a lot of crap for it. It’s literally destroyed some of her friendships. She’s a grown ass woman who gets bullied and accused of disorders and she’s a sweetheart, gorgeous, talented and rocks some awesome body art which she ALSO catches crap for because people can be dicks sometimes.
3. Another friend of mine has huge boobs. Her last bra was a 38J if I remember correctly. She catches crap for that when shopping for bras or anytime they’re visible. She wears men’s clothes because women’s doesn’t fit now for the most part which is basically the reason she doesn’t get hit on a lot (I don’t think she’d notice anyway because she’s ace). She has to wear men’s tall to cover her belly (which any bust gal will understand). She thinks she’s fat, but she’s not. She’s told she’s overweight because she’s all boobs and that turns any shirt into a tent! The latest bathroom drama even hits her because her in men’s clothes with short hair and no makeup means sometimes she catches crap just going to the restroom. She is so tired of them that she’s thinking of having them reduced to an A if she can get her insurance to cover it.
I’m so sorry that you and your friends are bodyshamed. I hope you all can manage it. Don’t hesitate to vent (usual commentators know I don’t) and to hell with reducing the amount of our very flesh to accomodate social pressure.
It’s cool hun. I guess I just wanted to show that just about every woman out there gets body shamed regardless of shape or size. Hell, a former coworker of mine got body shamed all the time for being too pretty! It’s like no matter what you look like, somebody out there is gonna find a way to make you feel bad about it. I know on average women get it worse than men, but men still get it with some individuals worse than others. I know my country isn’t the worst in the world about body shaming, but that doesn’t make what we do any better. So I wish it didn’t happen anymore to any of us.
Body shaming is the worst. *hugs offered*
As someone who is especially the second case there of being super skinny and not being able to put on weight, well its difficult to understand the fact that other people are the opposite sometimes. I know that its pretty frustrating for me at least that all nutrition related books are built around the idea that the healthy way to live is to start by losing 20 pounds that I can’t afford to lose.
That said, it is still pretty awful behavior to hassle people about their body regardless? I mean, even for people who do have health problems due to their weight, saying horrible things to them isn’t a good way to help them be healthier. That goes for both directions, though the worst I tend to get is people either trying to pawn food off on me, my parents hassling me about making sure to eat (cause its sometimes hard for me to get my 2k daily calories anyways on top of having trouble gaining weight properly), or people saying I should go eat a sandwich as a joke sometimes?
Sorry that you and your various friends have to deal with stuff thats probably worse than that.
That “eat a sandwich” comment is so fucking annoying. I still get it, even though I’m a perfectly healthy 120-130lbs, depending on the season. Like, sorry I have a relatively-skeletal frame? I eat plenty, thanks. People can keep their stupid comments in their pocket.
I can’t agree with you both more. A lot of people forget that body shaming happens to all body types. I wish it didn’t happen at all.
And super agree with healthy nutrition thing. There’s too much emphasis on weight loss, how being skinny means eating too little, how being fat means eating too much, looks, and whatever industry is paying the most money to become essential (like dairy). It’s a train wreck.
Another personal story to needlessly throw at yall! Feel free to skip
Several years ago, I got too poor to buy food. My partner at the time (who I was sharing a home with and been with 7 years) wouldn’t give me a break on the utilities (he made about three times what I did), so I cut back some on food and stretched my budget as best as I could. I started getting sicker and sicker, but didn’t know why. I gained like 25 lbs (which was about 80 lbs overweight total), so doctors all told me to eat less and exercise, but I was too tired to do much and I told them I didn’t know how I could eat less. I got a sleep test. My stomach was so big. Periods became erratic sometimes skipping several months. I stayed nauseous. My insurance covered all the doctor visits which was good, but nobody could figure it out what was going on. I kept being told I needed to lose weight though. I thought I was eating a lot and figured it was because the food was poor quality because that’s all I could afford. Finally I asked to be referred to a nutritionalist who had me write down a food diary for a week or two before our appointment. I was meticulous (typing it on my phone and sending it to my email to print out for her), but ate normally. When I showed it to her, she asked me if that was all of it. Turns out I had been starving myself. I’m a curvy 5’9″ and the most I ate was the one day a week I visited my dad and even that was only about 1200 calories. My average was 800 with my lowest only 300. I had a swollen fatty liver and my stomach was so big because I wasn’t getting enough nutrition to keep my intestines taut. I wasn’t getting enough iron which was why my sleep test showed I had very frequent PLMD (muscle twitch wakes you up part way) meaning I was tired from not enough food AND no deep restful sleep. If I kept it up, I would die. My partner was there when she said this and promised he would help. … he bought me one week’s worth of groceries, got mad at the extra cost for groceries, and the next month agreed to give me $50 off the electric for food which at least got me to 1000 to 1500 calories a day with help from my dad (who basically threw food at me and made me take home leftovers) and fixed a lot of health issues. The weight I gained from not eating (because my body was in starvation mode and trying to save everything) slowly started coming off.
It’s been over 2 years. Sometimes I still have to remind myself to eat because I often just don’t get hungry. It’s created the weirdest thing with my dad though because he’ll say my stomach looks big and ask if I’ve been eating enough and offer me stuff from his pantry. Half of the time it’s just him seeing things while the other half requires me to remind him that periods exist XD
Christ, that’s fucked. What the hell was your partner on about, anyway? If you shared the same house, surely you had the same refrigerator, or were you not allowed to eat food you didn’t buy? Not trying to pry, just trying to understand how the hell you can be living with someone and actively allow them to starve.
Well, he was selfish and self centered. He bought a lot of games on pre order, football merchandise from his home state, meals from his work cafeteria, fast food, frappé, Batman stuff (including clothes, games, graphic novels, and novelties), music, ice cream (2 to 4 gallons total a month which I couldn’t eat because I’m allergic to whey), and so on. If he wanted to go see a movie, I had to pay for gas because he said that was only fair (we lived about 40 minutes from the nearest place). Same went for if he wanted to go eat at one of the places not in our small town. If I cooked for both of us, we split the cost. I was also supposed to do the dishes, but when I got too weak for that… yeah he still didn’t do the dishes and left them to pile up. We knew whose food was whose and he would say he didn’t want me to go hungry and I could have some of his, but in reality I could only have a little unless I replaced it (which was about the amount someone could take without someone else noticing). I was also allergic to many things he bought (whey, MSG, and mushrooms).
When we broke up, he left me before my birthday for a 21 year old. He kept the house and land saying he’d pay my dad for the land. He’s now 3 months behind paying my dad for the land. He also kept my furniture.
*TMI Ahead*
He was also selfish sex wise. Foreplay (which was never oral) was like 2 minutes to non existent because he went straight to it. Sex also lasted a while which often led to me badly irritated afterward. He often made me feel like crap when I didn’t get off like I was defective (and I believed him). It was over when he orgasmed leaving me by myself to take care of myself even if the sexual contact was a BJ (which took 10 to 30 minutes and he was above average width and yes you just heard the majority of people who like penis havers mentally yell HELL NO). He didn’t respect consent either. If I masterbated alone and he caught me, it obviously meant I wanted sex right then and there. There were times I said no or that I wasn’t in the mood which he took as a game. And months after the relationship was over, he raped me while he was over to discuss stuff.
*TMI Over*
So… yeah. If you wonder what kind of guy could do that, there’s your answer. Most people have no clue though because he seems non threatening and like a real sweetheart. It’s part of the reason why a lot of my family didn’t believe me.
Sorry you had to go through all this – I’m glad you seem to have recovered from that (periods are a whooole different matter. I can gain up to 6lb – it’s usually less – for up to two weeks because of them and my hormones thinking I don’t need any feeling of satiety in those weeks).
Plus the body shaming of you and your friends – it’s just fucked up. *offers hugs, if wanted*
As if people have any right to comment on another persons appearance or lifestyle or anything, and to top it off, without even knowing them. It certainly can damage one’s self-esteem and make things worse.
As for your first comment:
1. Because there aren’t things like genetics, body types, different values and personalities /sarcasm off.
One should only give advice when asked for…
As long as you are comfortable with how you are and how you look and are healthy (which I think is now the case?) and are active (in the sense of not only sitting or lying throughout the whole day, as that can be bad for the health) and ESPECIALLY after what you went through… you can definitely stop being ashamed. Everything concerning your body – just do it for yourself. I had to learn that too – because in the end I have to be happy with myself and my body, not someone else.
2. People are very over-stepping their boundaries sometimes. You can’t control how your body processes food – only what goes into it. Sounds as if she might’ve a really fast metabolism – if other possible health-factors have been reviewed (e.g. diabetes, celiac disease etc.). I hope she finds a way to achieve what she wants to achieve!
3. That reminds me of a school friend of mine who was completely thin but also had very large breasts – reduction surgery helped her – especially because her back was hurting non-stop from the extra weight. :/
Again – people should stop thinking their opinions matter in judging someone else they don’t even know (they sadly do because of this fake superiority over them) – I hope you can all push through that shit, my thoughts are with you.
(sorry if this sounds ranty or strange, it’s just I had my fare share of body shaming – also from my family, so stuff like this gets me on the edge
*accepts hugs and offers extra*
Also, glad to know someone who gets the period thing. Kid you not, I usually have to go to my chiropractor after because the swelling can pop me out. I highly recommend by the way. Between less migraines and less lower back trouble after my periods, I swear by them now.
I’m comfortable most of the time with most people. We all have those people who can cut us to the quick and we all have days that we can’t handle harshness.
Me too! She’s moving soon, so I’m hoping the reduced stress will help. She has anxiety issues and when that goes up, she gets a sick stomach making it hard for her to eat all the food she needs to put on weight.
She’s having to try other things before they will do surgery. One was exercise which made us laugh because no matter how much you exercise, you aren’t gonna knock much off a J cup! -_-
It is not ranty or strange. Have you seen my posts over the months? Now THAT is a collection of strange! And I have yet to be banned or ostracized. Don’t be so harsh on yourself.
*accepts extra hugs happily*
Yeah – they can be really tough (yours sounds really bad – but glad you found a way to deal with it a bit better! A chiropractor sounds like a good idea!) My two best friends cannot survive them without pain killers because otherwise they’d not even be able to walk upright, let alone do anything besides crying out of pain :(. Mine are less hurtful, but I get the emotional and hormonal imbalance the (two) week(s) preceding it pretty bad (including swelling up like a balloon) – I can (and tend to) eat so much that I look pregnant and I have to stare at my stomach to remind myself that I’ve eaten enough food and that I should feel satiated (even though I usually could just keep going) – I call it “food pregnant”
(it’s become a running gag among me and my friends as means to cope with it, though I can control it with trying to not be around food sources or compensating with movement). My solution is sports – however vulnerable I feel when going to train (I’m training at a gym), training usually involves me focusing only on myself and listening to my most favourite music – it’s my meditation and it helps me control my missing satiation for these periods (once I’ve done something sporty on a day I also usually feel less hungry). And then I mostly have sore muscles (legs or arms – which kinda diverts the suffering a bit from the torso) and the activity helps me with headaches too – but that’s only my personal way of being able to cope with it. I might suggest the chiropractor to my friends, though, it sounds like it could really help them! (thanks for the tip!!)
In dealing with such people I’m mostly glad I have my friends to really back me up and support me emotionally when I have such days…
Glad to hear she’ll be able to reduce some of her stress by moving – a change and less stress can definitely help! (stress can be really affecting gaining/losing weight – and it puts on extra stress because, additionally, even though you might be dieting or like your friend tring to gain weight, the body kind of doesn’t want to work with you, because it’s in continuous alarm and clings to what it has (more fat) or drains extra energy – and it messes with you mentally because you’re thinking “I’m following my plan, I’m doing everything like I should do – why doesn’t it work??!”) I really hope it gets better for her after that!
That IS laughable. Especially considering how you described her. I mean, I did lose most of my cups with losing weight from being overweight – but only because that’s my body type (I’m a ‘pear’ and lose fat mainly in the upper body – the rest of my body only if the upper doesn’t have any left to spare) and I only had D (now I’m between B and A). Exercise might help a little bit, but I doubt it, especially because it could put additional strain onto her body (I imagine sports that could help like running would be – even with a very good sports bra – extremely uncomfortable, or swimming – but then the outfit or finding a fitting one and subjecting oneself to further unnecessary comments of other people – it IS laughable). :/
I did, some of them
Okay, I’ll try not to 
Yay, a 120lb buddy!
Even though I should be like…140 cause of how tall I am?
I really wish nutrition books would just say how to eat healthy and try to list cheap and easy ways to do so, cause trying to eat like they say you shouldn’t doesn’t get me the weight I need either.
Do you also still wear the same clothes you did in junior high? I kid you not, I still fit in most of my shirts from back in the 8th grade. The only reason I’ve started getting new clothes is because people buy them for me, and also my shoulders and hips have started getting broader since I hit my prime. It’s actually gotten a bit embarrassing since, well, I still sort of dress like an 8th grader from 2008.
I agree, though, nutrition books could really use an overhaul. I’d have to put on like 60lbs just to start using one, which is completely counterproductive.
In the words of Michael Stipe, I’ve said too much.
Well, usually I end up wearing out those range of old clothes before growing out of them, except sometimes when it comes to length issues.
Got on some supplements that were supposed to help fill me out a bit for a while, but all they did was make me even taller. X<
Metabolisms are super weird.
I did not expect Rachel and now I’m totally for more Rachel appearances. Aaaaand here comes the shiptease, or the mysterious ship that sometimes comes by in the night and might catch on fire because of flying sparks and fists and watch me drive this metaphor into the bottom of the mariana trench.
I hope she shuts him the fuck down. I really don’t want to see this asshole behavior rewarded.
I hope he realizes he dun goofed and apologizes without prompting, though I suspect he wouldn’t understand what he should be apologizing for.
She shut him in the other universe before he developed a character. I would highly doubt this universe will be any different in Rachel taking Joe’s shit.
I kind of want it to go down the exact same way it did there where it takes five years of strips to get to the You’ve Got Mail ending.
Joe’s 5 o’clock shadow still looks weird, to the archives…
Two and a half years. I think it took me two strips to forget Ethan had a new haircut.
Is….Is the comment section going to implode again?
i mean everything will probably be okay as long as we don’t get some troll douche going “oh actually joe’s behavior is perfectly okay”
Oh actually Joe’s behavior is perfectly okay! You see humans naturally rank each oth-*gets slapped in the face*
This would be funny, if it wasn’t an actual thing that was said, last time.
i rank all humans as a 5
out of 10,000
humans are the fucking worst
Carla? Is that you?
I always knew I liked butts.
wait
WAIT
butts, you’ve been using that name this WHOLE TIME just to get someone to say that, haven’t you?
Oh, it’s not ok. But he’s also not really wrong about good-looking guys getting away with shit like that, or shit like that working the way they intend, more often than not-so-good-looking guys. Basically, Jerkass Has A Point (no links to that site because I value your time as well as my own).
I will take the controversial position that his behavior doesn’t come across as Rapey. Skeezy, dehumanizing, mysoginistic, sexual harrassy, maybe illegal, but not rapey.
Like, I think it would be a totally reasonable response for a woman to be uncomfortable with his aggressiveness, even concerned, worried, or afraid. Even mace him in the eyes, but when it comes down to it, I don’t think he’d rape anybody.
That would suck hard.
To quote C. Montgomery Burns (in a friendlier tone, of course): My god, are you always on?
Depends who you ask. You wouldn’t believe how many people think I’m a bit off.
r u getting off
This strip’s reminding me of that one strip in Book 4 with Sierra and Joe that didn’t go anywhere and felt out of place.
Like what was up with that?
oh fuck off joe
Normally I would make fun of Joe for being a bad nerd for violating his scale…..
But scales do get broken all the time. Its possible to go higher than a 10 out of 10 on the hardness scale, you can split atoms (atoms means indivisible) and IQ scores keep changing.
Great to see Rachel again. Don’t know what is up with her legs in panel 1 though.
I don’t know about her panel-1 legs either, but whatever it is she’s taking it in stride.
Joe’s face in panel 3 is adorable until you read the text and are reminded that Joe is still a human trash fire.
Can’t wait for him to grow out of this crap
He has so much potential to be a decent guy, if only he’d give up this BORING, OBNOXIOUS RATING SHIT.
He’s obviously got some hidden depths he is determined to ignore to be his idea of what a ladies man having fun in college is. He doesn’t strike me as someone particularly comfortable in his own skin. I don’t know? He just seems to be trying so hard to be this asshole?
And that’s a sad reality. If he’d just drop the act, he’d probably be one of the most-liked guys on campus.
I think he’s insecure. He seems to be trying very hard to keep all of his interactions as shallow as he can get away with. I wonder if he’s afraid people wouldn’t like him if he really opened up? Or at least I think that might be what is going on below the surface. I’m not sure if he’s aware of it.
I have a feeling he’s a little bit like Paulo of Bittersweet candy bowl. There are some similarities.
Oh yeah. He is very actively (and in some cases even consciously) avoiding acknowledging his own feelings.
“Horny” and “mad” are about the only feelings he is willing/able to express or acknowledge, even to himself it seems.
I’m sure his parents divorce and his dad’s whole horn dog thing have definitely got something to do with this. He’s avoiding real relationships because real relationships could equal real pain. He’s chasing shallow sex because he thinks that’s what he’s supposed to want but putting so much effort into avoiding real connections is definitely taking a toll on him.
Yeah, we’ve had pretty heavy implications along those lines. His whole… thing… is a lot more understandable when viewed from that perspective, though he’s still being a huge shit by doing it.
Yeah, I mean I really want Joe to be the likable character he sometimes hints at being able to be, but he’s pretty committed to his coping method of being the biggest Bro on campus. I mean he’s very open to Danny about why he does it so we get that insight, but it really makes it hard not to go “Dammit Joe!” most of the time.
I mean he’s more likable than his Roomies version starts as, but also maybe more disappointing because you know there’s some good stuff to his character underneath the douchey candy coating?
Luckily for him, those two feelings pair up quite nicely, given the proper circumstances. It’s worked until today, at least.
Obligatory:
Be attractive, dont be unattractive.
(This no edit thing is kind of exhilarating, not knowing if your HTML is going to work and if you’re going to look like an idiot)
lack of ctrl-Z is the real drug
Looks like that relationship ain’t happening in this universe.
Oh, it’s happening.
Just, in a very different way.
…. “enemies” is a relationship, after all.
I mean this isn’t actually that far off from the way they met in the Walkyverse
This is actually fairly close to how first contact went down in the Walkyverse.
It took like five years for them to become an actual couple, most of which was Joe slowly becoming less of a butthole. So I guess there’s hope.
I feel like Billie and Amazi-girl would be a terrible combination. But who knows, Willis has made weirder duos.
Tbh, Joe, it’s always pretty weird when some guy comes up to comment on your looks.
Is Rachel the most frequntly-appearing character to wear lipstick?
…aside from Grace.
Joe, just fuck off. We already went through this shit not too fucking long ago.
Here’s a fucking thought: Why the fuck did he feel the need to even mention “the ones”? It’s kind of a non sequitur, isn’t it?
To show he’s “nice”?
Oh, of course. How did I not realise.
Yup. “Hey, I’m not a creepy asshole, I don’t tell women who repulse me that they repulse me to their face. Nor am I a literal pedophile. Clearly, you can see how nice and awesome I am that I have cleared both of those extremely low social bars, so please ignore how I’m faceplanting on this other extremely low social bar and find it charming instead.”
If he absolutely must randomly flirt with a woman, why can’t he do it without utilising that stupid scale, anyway? I’m pretty sure a personalised compliment with some actual thought behind it would go a lot further than an arbitrary number. On top of all the other problems (of which there are many), it’s just lazy.
I think he doesn’t want to personalize because that would require a small amount of effort and might mean having to get to know the person he’s trying to sleep with (even just a little bit) and he is apparently looking for the most shallow/empty hook ups he can possibly get. He is being very lazy.
I think he really wants a woman to justify his f-ing scale. Then he can tell himself that Rozz and Dorothy were wrong because a woman was cool with it.
This.
He’s also testing the “theory” that women must ONLY be mad about it if they’re low ranking.
Yup, the point for these PUA types becomes the system, not the people.
And I suspect for Joe, part of the appeal is it keeps all of his “conquests” dehumanized because he’s absolutely terrified of developing romantic feelings for the women he “pursues” if he doesn’t reduce them to numbers and their sexual utility as a meatsack fleshlight.
“Meatsack fleshlight” sounds like a creature entry in some obscure D&D manual.
I’d forgotten what a crummy move to refer to ” the 1s” is after seeing him bring up “pedostache” to.a.stranger, unprompted, even though there isn’t one in sight.
*sigh* goddamnit Joe
Thank you, Rachel. Shoot him down, and I hope others shoot him down too. He needs to pause and realize his behavior is Not Okay.
Unfortunately, Joe seems to be the kind of guy who’d not realize his actions are the ones that are problematic.
1. Is Joe still tailing Dorothy and Walky to make sure “Ryan” isn’t following them?
2. Will Joe finally receive the slap to the face that is warranted?
The way he got immediately distracted by Rachel leads me confirms (in my eyes at least) that he was just following them because he’s feeling a bit lonely.
I think well enough of Joe that I doubt he’d be so easily sidetracked if he were actually worried about some kind of creeper possibly following his friends around.
Well, that or he was keeping an eye on them until they got to a safe place (the dorm) and let himself get distracted then.
In which case, why bother coming up to the floor with them?
Seriously like…has this ever worked for him? I’m guessing probably but not with a really shallow easily flattered person after he’s been shot down a few times before. Not anyone he’d end up having a real connection with. Which I guess is what he’s determined to avoid.
Worked with Roz
i mean she wanted someone she could just have sex with but not form an emotional connection with
which works, i guess
I seriously doubt that. I was asking specifically how often ranking women works for him. She already expressed a dislike of that. However they first hooked up I doubt it involved Joe just walking over to her and tossing out a number value of her worth.
First, they constructed an asshole robot child, like, decidedly dickish.(Carla)
Then… they fell in R. E. S. P. E. C. T.
Well, he just said he doesn’t generally tell women. My guess is he usually only mentions it to people he’s not much trying for (like Dorothy), but honestly thought “you’re so hot you broke my ranking system” was a good lead-in.
Anyway, if this is him accidentally getting Feelings for a girl after he’s pissed her off, I am All On Board. I could use more Sven Bianchi-style schadenfreude.
He said that he doesn’t tell the “ones”.
He means he doesn’t tell the women he finds extremely unattractive how h rates them.
And he definitely still tells women their number even when it’s not nearly as flattering. I mean he offered to upgrade Roz to her face.
No, it has never worked for him.
Sometimes he finds women who are interested in casual sex regardless, and he then mistakenly thinks he did something that “worked”.
It’s one of my problems with how we’ve seen Joe here.
We’ve never actually seen his “game” work. We’ve seen it fail horribly, with his date with Joyce and his attempt with Sarah – both of whom needed to resort to yelling, threats and/or actual violence to get him to back off. (Insert standard disclaimer about how Joyce’s behavior during the date was even more awful than his.)
The only two we know he’s gotten together with on screen (Roz & Penny) seem very likely to have made the initial moves themselves – or at least responded positively immediately. Likely because he is physically hot.
We’ve heard him talk about frequent sex, not always in contexts where it’s likely he’d be making it up.
We’ve never witnessed him hit on anyone successfully. We’ve never seen his “game” work. And yet it apparently does.
I kind of want to see that. I want to see how he copes with rejection that isn’t crossing over into threats or someone who’s open to a date, but not immediate sex or how hard he pushes someone who’s interested but hesitant.
I agree that I’m kind of morbidly curious but I also think if I were Willis I would be really deeply anxious about how showing Joe get laid would go over right now. So I’m not sure I expect to see him succeed with anyone for a while
Yeah, I’d just like to see some of his fabled success play out. One of my problems with Joe as a character (as opposed to Joe as a person) is that his prime trait is kind of an Informed Attribute – We’re told he’s this big stud, but when we see his attempted seductions they’re fairly pathetic. It’s hard to imagine them working at all, other than on the few women who basically decide to jump him before he even opens his mouth.
That might be what’s actually going on, but I’m not sure it’s intended.
If on average, say, one woman out of twenty is interested in casual sex with a hot asshole, and Joe hits on fifty random women per day, he’s going to get laid 2.5 times per day on average. Quality trumps quantity.
*Quantity trumps quality. Holy shit way to typo the exact other way around.
yeah, this.
I really don’t think Joe actually needs to be a master seducer in order to have sex regularly. There are plenty of women who just also want to have sex. All Joe needs to do is meet one of them fairly regularly. He doesn’t have to actually have game as long as he’s putting himself out there consistently.
That’s all possible, but it’s just speculation. Which is why I’d like to see more of it.
And honestly, creepy as this behavior is, it’s on the low end of creepy. Sadly the evidence isn’t really in favor of Joe just asking a lot of girls and politely going away when they say no. More like he keeps pushing until he gets a yes or they get really emphatic about making him back off (and then he’ll keep throwing out comments.)
I’ll also note that you’ll get more success that way when you’re trying it with drunk girls at parties, which Joe very likely does.
So, I’m pointing this out, not because I think you meant it this way, but because society has normalized it to the point where we all say it without thinking, but “drunk girls at parties” are not having consensual sex with people. Legally, as well as morally, someone who is drunk enough to go home with someone they wouldn’t go home with sober is being raped.
Also, alcohol is the most popular tool in the toolbelt of confessed rapists. They find someone who is already drunk and then they ply them with more alcohol, aided by bartenders who admit that they habitually over-serve women (mixing drinks with more alcohol than they put in the same drinks when ordered for men), getting these women black-out drunk. And then they take advantage of them, knowing that their victims will blame themselves and be blamed by society. Rapists do not generally use “date rape drugs”, because those stay in the system and can be used as evidence of a crime. Alcohol? Not considered evidence of anything, despite again the fact that drunk people cannot legally consent to sex.
So yeah, if Joe actually does ply drunk girls at parties, he’s a rapist, full-stop.
possibly he talks a bigger game than he puts out
So, is anyone at all surprised by the new WTTFZ?
Come on, Willis.
It’s not smart to shiptease. I mean, sure, you think you’ll just take your bows, but instead you’ll get a stern response in the wake of doing so. All that effort rigging it up and it’s a total no-sail. You’re liable to get decked, and by someone with prow-ess too, by someone who has you completely out-mast. Seriously, it will keel you dead in the water.
… still, being re-galed with a shiptease should be more entertaining than sitting in the doldrums.
…How long did it take you to come up with that many ship puns? Having you been storing them for a rainy day or did you just think of all these in the past half hour? Either way, I’m actually kind of impressed.
About two minutes of typing. I’ve got a small dictionary of standards I can float out there whenever I want. Most of them can be ported into a variety of situations, and there are a few themes that I can anchor a dozen puns to at once.
…. all in all that means you get more punning bilge.
Ship puns?
…shit, I didn’t even notice at first
…. I need to stop being so subtle. Hold back less.
Yeah, you wouldn’t want to wreck your punning skills.
I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
Careful you don’t capsize the comments, there.
That’s a serious risk when I’m on a roll.
Yay all these puns! Pretty sure I’m the only one who wins when the comments turn into a punfest though. To most people it’s probably a form of cruel and unusual pun-ishment.
Depends on the tone they’re delivered. Or, you could say, pitched.
avast
How the hell does Joe have sex so often if he’s this ridiculously bad at flirting with women?
Some women see a body like his and don’t care what’s coming out of the mouth.
Apparently he has good stamina. And that has been spread through the grapevine or something.
If you ask every single woman you encounter, just as a matter of statistics plenty are going to say yes.
Yep. That is literally the strategy. There’s no need to cultivate personality or charisma when if you approach enough women you’ll eventually find one that’ll go “Eh, you’ll do. Just stop talking.”
Ha, it just occurred to me that PUAs are spammers. …that’s one of those things so obvious in retrospect that I don’t understand how I didn’t think of it before.
I’m dead serious on that too. I’ve witnessed it in action and it works. No one could wrap their head around why anyone would agree to sleep with the “Joe” in question when he was such a douchebag that nobody liked and the secret? He just flirted with every girl and took advantage of the ones that were either into it or too polite to tell him to fuck off to just hang on and on until it maybe went somewhere or not.
And I say “take advantage” not in the sense that the sex was not consenting (god forbid I hope that was never an issue, though I have no reason to believe it was), but more than one girl said afterward that he was just straight-up lousy at sex which hopefully is an advantage that this Joe ACTUALLY has.
I mean . . . that is a thing. Girls are allowed to be into shallow sex with hot guys they don’t much care for, just like guys are.
It’s still nice to see someone call him on the objectification of his “list.”
Yes, casual sex is okay for everyone, but the strategy as employed involves positioning EVERY woman he encounters. Anywhere. With little regard to the situation.
Which, as Rachel is noting, is not cool. Not many women appreciate random dudes approaching them out of the blue to inform them of how much he’d like to fuck them. Especially not completely unsolicited, right as they exit the room where they sleep.
*propositioning, not positioning
I dunno, “positioning” paints a much more amusing mental image. I’m picturing some guy just walking up to a woman, looking at her really focused-like, bending her elbow about 30 degrees further inward, nodding to himself, and then just walking off with a satisfied smile on his face. Still a weird thing to do, and definitely boundary-violating, but ultimately harmless.
There’s a great bit of banter from Dragon Age 2 agoing into that (from the perspective of the opposite gender): https://youtu.be/3siofVxzsbY?t=143
While I doubt Joe’s been told “Get away from me, you Pirate hag”, but it’s something similar for him no doubt.
Joe’s technique.
“Bedsheet angels” is one I hadn’t heard.
I don’t wanna hear it to a stranger from Joe. From someone in their partner’s “consent castle” it might be charming.
*squees happily at Robot Hugs reference*
I love the consent castle!
He matches his 5%-per-attempt success rate against 100 attempts per day.
Fuck YEAH, Rachel! Is it a hard and fast rule that Walkyverse/Shortpacked couples aren’t going to happen again, or is this going to be the one that gets Joe’s head out of his ass, manually?
everything sounds more menacing if you add “manually” to the endOoooooh! They were a couple in It’s Walky! I missed that subtext. This might be a wink to the audience or the beginning of something larger.
Ruth/Billie were a Walkyverse coupling, manually.
Willis even posted a couple of drawings of Walkyverse Billie and Ruth coupling manually.
Not so much a hard-and-fast rule as it is the author being satisfied with how he wrote the romances in the old universe.
Joyce/Walky, for example, got enough coverage, so Willis doesn’t really feel like retreading old ground. Billie/Ruth is in DoA because of how little presence it had in the Walkyverse.
I imagine we won’t get Joe/Rachel again here. Nothing long-lasting, anyway.
I hope it isn’t a hard and fast rule, but also I think I’d rather have Joe and Rachel stayed as far from each other as possible in this continuity.
Interestingly, this kinda comes up in Shortpacked that one time in the alternate dimension. The Joe that Rachel was attracted to was the one able to grow out of his college behavior.
Coooould be wrong but I suspect we aren’t going to see “Rachel pulls Joe’s head out of his ass”.
because that’s not Rachel’s job. Her purpose in the comic isn’t to make Joe suck less. That’s something he has to figure out for himself.
Joe, don’t rate women.
dont rate women, joe
Rate don’t joe, women.
Women, don’t rate Joe.
joe-joe no-no
Huh, I always thought Rachel was petite for some reason, but she appears to be insanely tall.
she’s just taller than walky, who is short
She comes to barely a head below the top of the door frame. Even with Willis’s large (but not as large as they used to be) heads, that makes her exceptionally tall for a woman.
??? someone has to be???
tall women exist, i guess is what im saying, and that doesnt make them insanely or exceptionally tall
like idk if she could barely fit through the door or something but like. how tall are the doors, even
A standard doorframe is about 6 and a half feet. There’s essentially zero chance that these are weird custom jobbies that are shorter than that.
Her height, relative to the doorframe suggests her height is somewhere in the range of 5’11”. Taller than the average American man (who comes a bit shy of 5’10”).
That is exceptionally tall for a woman. (The average for an American woman is ~5’4″.)
Yes, tall women exist. I’m not sure why you’re acting like that is an insult to her.
Tall women are my aesthetic.
Mine, too, FTR.
It’s always weird to me how other people think about height, even though it’s perfectly understandable with most people’s experiences.
For me, my mom is six feet tall. That means my entire life my idea of what a tall woman is has been set at six feet, so I don’t see 5’11” as being exceptionally tall. A woman would have to be over six foot for me to think much of it.
I’m 5’8″, and I don’t consider myself tall at all, even though I know I’m above average.
See…I’m pretty sure to most people tall and short are very subjective.
If you’re over 6’…everyone who doesn’t match your height by more than a few inches is short and most things are made for tiny people. And only basketball players or the like tend to be tall.
And then there’s me at 5’0″ for whom everyone falls into several categories: “shorter than me or about my height HOLY FUCK THAT’S SHORT”, “tall” and “basketball player”
i guess i know a lot of tall women
i d k like. i guess your wording hit my “lISTEN just because there’s a statistical average for women of 5’5″ doesn’t mean that there isn’t going to be a statistical likelihood of women hitting 6 feet” button a bit
also how many times i’ve listened to tall women wishing they were shorter
and this one bombass lady being like 6’3″ and wearing heels anyways
I would point out that my wording included quite specifically using a word with primarily positive connotations.
For the explicit record, I consider ‘tall’ a compliment for a woman.
Looking back…yeah, she’s always been one of the taller characters.
Don’t rate women, Joe.
joe rate women no
Dnt rt wmn j
O’ ae oe oe.
Is this how a meme dies?
amidst rapturous applause
I love how Dorothy and Walky talk through Dorothy’s new schedule . A+-boyfriending, Walky!
It’s even Billie’s gig to begin with
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/adult/
God dammit Joe.
I admit some curiosity towards how joe and rachel would get along outside of a world with robot cars and constant danger.
I didn’t think it would burn out in one strip though. haha
Joe, how can you have this little self-awareness?
Is she going to report him for sexual harassment? (Has anyone reported Joe for sexual harassment yet?)
Is a single occurrence enough to qualify as harassment? I’ve never been clear on that.
It is.
Learning is fun.
Yes, but practically speaking no. Practically speaking even documented sexual harassment for years has even odds of being taken seriously by colleges. (Or workplaces, etc.)
Reporting this shit is not easy or fun and often as not you wind up catching heat for it. I mean hell I couldn’t even report bullies in the sixth grade without the school taking their side and blaming me instead? The school sat is all down with a counselor and the bullies said they weren’t doing anything wrong and were just trying to be my friend (ah yes the well-known friendship overture of following someone around calling them a lesbo all day), and the counselor believed them and I got in trouble.
Oh I know the odds of proactive measures being taken in response to complaints are terrible even in liberal spaces like say my university *grim* and I’m sorry that happened to you. Hell, every woman who’s ever made or considered making a harassment complaint probably knows how tough it is to make a case, I meant that legally even a single instance counts as harassment.
Oh, yeah, for sure. I guess I wanted to add to Taffy’s learning experience.
have i mentioned i love rachel?
it’s enjoyable to see joe being told off. but it keeps happening. and he doesn’t seem to have an ounce of ability to listen
i am an engineering student. two weeks ago, a dude approached me and said something along the lines of me being in the “top percentile of” the girls here. expressed confusion as why i wouldn’t prefer him over the less nerdy guys. there really is no self awareness lmao
Yeah, but was his name Joe? Cause then you might have found our universal variant.
I’m getting the feeling that there is a genuine failure in our culture in teaching men how to relate to women (let alone how a man should ask a woman out on a date without coming across as either pathetic, weird, creepy or genuinely threatening).
I basically have that feeling except taken to the next level of feeling like there’s a general failure in our culture in teaching humans how to relate to each other as well as doing so in ways that are not easily considered creepy or improper in general, but yes, it perhaps goes doubly for men towards women?
Cause at least if you get raised in the system, someone or several someones probably enforce behavioral rule sets on how someone is supposed to act towards others of the same sex based on the person’s assigned sex?
Double standards are super confusing though. Especially when the rule sets often change based on age groups instead of any actual logical reasoning.
Just a quick reminder that Joe literally doesn’t understand why some women find his shtick so offensive.
Oh he understands. He just mentally sorts himself into the category that is somehow “immune” to the consequences of how offensive and offputting his shtick is because he’s that full of his “skills” in the “game”.
Well, the idea that Joe is watching Dorothy’s back is officially disproved now.
He would be shocked to learn that his behavior is sexual harassment. But it is. Because of content. Also:
Why do some guys never learn it’s incredibly impolite and annoying when they start talking to you from behind? Not to mention in some situations, this kind of behavior spells DANGER is really large letters?
If you wanna flirt, come from a position where you can make eye-contact, continue only, if eye-conatct and follow-up smile are reciprocal (probably wrong word, not a native speaker).
Somehow, he reminds me of Larry: http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=1920
Also good to try to work out whether the smile is genuine, though I feel like Joe wouldn’t care about that point too much, at least when first making contact. You know, since at least fourth panel he doesn’t seem to care about her facial expression at all.
As an exceptionally tall and lanky person who moves very quietly by nature….
I’ve generally learned that circling around so someone can see you is a good idea when trying to not spook them. Like mainly when it comes to living the retail job life, but yeah…talking from the front tends to give a better reaction.
Not that I ever know what appropriate compliments on people’s attire or hair or whatever are, so I generally play it safe? Even if sometimes I do really really like people’s boots.
After following this link, though, Larry seems to learn from his mistakes rather quickly, as opposed to Joe, who doesn’t.
And a few hours later, I’ve caught up to the most recent page. How the hell did that happen, and how long is the backlog before the linked page?
Randomly stumbling upon a link and reading up to the most recent comic page is the norm for my webcomic experiences! And the backlog behind that page is pretty significant. I found that one a few years ago via a TV Tropes link to a much older strip, and even then the backlog took a day or two of marathoning to finish!
Approximately 13 years. EGS has been around forever.
Jeez, and I thought The Order of the Stick was long. This appears to predate that one by a couple of years.
I wonder how much of that is because Larry doesn’t have the ability to fall back on delusions of grandeur?
Having people who can bring consequences down on him over the behavior probably helps reaffirm that its poor behavior as well.
That and you know, I think Dan tends to like presenting a more optimistic outlook in his work?
Yes, I’ve got the impression even his assholes learn a lesson over time.
Even Diane who started out as rather an asshole (dating guys so they will buy her things) has started to develop a less merchenary attitude. Only aberrations and vampires don’t (up to now).
And we’ve been waiting for 2 dates to happen for more then a year now. If you think DOA is slow, …
For freaks’ sake Joe, always with the coeds.
How long until somebody sues Joe for sexual harassment and/or gets a restraining order against him?
I wonder how he’d react to that.
Puzzlement and distress as he would not understand what he did wrong or why he is being unfairly persecuted in this manner.
It’s just possible he might start spreading slander about the plaintiff being ‘frigid’ and ‘afraid of her sexuality’.
Yup, pretty much nailed that dead on. Heck, we’ve already seen the initial sign of that with how he’s treated Sarah and Joyce for rejecting him loudly and unequivocally, where he openly harasses them for being “crazy women”.
A woman who caused an actual consequence for him would get a much more focused stream of entitled resentment.
Joe clearly needs a baseball to the face because sarcasm bounces off his thick head like bullets do off Superman’s fine Kryptonian chest…
this is incredibly relevant re: being woman/nb in today’s society
Bravo on that League of Evil sketch, Willis.
It’s also confirmation (sort of) that notRyan isn’t Leland, isn’t it?
Ladies and gentlemen…
The future “Mrs Joe” (I’m sure that’s how he’d announce it!)
#NotAllJoes !
Is rachel on some sort of stilts or platform boots?
Nah, seems like Rachel is taller than the average college girl.
Hey Johnna Bravo, you’re lucky you’re not getting maced.
I’ve long thought that the only thing that saves Joe from this experience on a regular basis is that there is something strangely ridiculous about him. I suspect that a lot of the women find it hard to feel genuinely threatened by him because he’s more obliviously weird in his aggression than he is creepy or frightening.
So, less “Get away from me” and more “And then there’s thisguy”?
What saves him is the social pressure on women “not to make a scene”. Like, society reacts extremely hostilely when a woman goes apeshit on a creeper. The woman “overreacted”, was being “a percussion instrument”, was being “unfair”, was “crazy” and so on.
So we’re expected to swallow this shit, even if it’s creepy. Even if it’s frightening or legitimately dangerous or off-putting for us. And that’s the shittiest part of what Joe is doing. He’s exploiting social niceties and form in order to do this creeper shit, knowing that when a woman goes off on them, that it’s “her fault”.
And the worst part is he knows it, because his response when someone goes off on him (because it’s the only way to make him back off) is to lean heavily on those social norms and make a big deal about how “unhinged” the person is being and how unfair it is that they blew up at him.
It’s really shitty.
On the “upside,” Rachel has proven to be more than willing to make a scene, so… violence in tomorrow’s strip?
Rachel’s gonna eat him. in a non ero way, anyway.
Is it me or does Rachel look like a fully grown woman?
I mean, that’s not an incorrect observation.
I think she is one of the older tenants so she is 20-something.
Time for you to hit the complaint button, Rachel.
It’s between his legs, and intended to be worked with your feet.
Anyone else think that this strip was going on hiatus from the title, then think “Damn you Willis!” when this turned out not to be the case, or was that just me?
It crossed my mind briefly, but after I read the comic. And now I wonder – if Willis goes on hiatus, will the title be “Hiatus 2” or “Hiatus for Real”?
Hiatus 2: Willis Bugaloo
Given the three-month buffer, seems unlikely.
Comic Reactions:
Welp, I wanted to see his “game” to see if it was any different than the creeper shit he pulled on Joyce. Careful what you wish for, I suppose.
Panel 1: Hmm, it’ll be interesting to see how that offer’d go. On the one hand, she’s probably one of the most suited for covering things at least of the main cast that Dorothy trusts, but on the other, I could definitely see Billie taking it the wrong way.
After all, that assignment used to be hers, but she was taken off the beat, so being handed it back could end up feeling patronizing to her or a reminder of her failings rather than a second chance to prove herself or a reconnection to something that can make her feel like a success again.
My hunch is Billie will react poorly, but I like to live in hope that she won’t.
The rest: (deep sigh)… let me be frank. I’m not a fan of Joe’s shtick and given some of my experiences I’m less likely than most to find his shit endearing. And I’m especially not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt after he echoed the worldview that gets a lot of aces correctively raped.
Like, I want him to grow as a character. I think escaping this kind of idea that this is what it means to be a sexual man is a major growth moment for a lot of young men. I think he’ll get there in time, but in the meantime, this behavior is not acceptable and it’s not acceptable for a lot of different reasons.
So for this reaction, I’m gonna do it a little bit differently and not go strictly panel by panel, but rather by action/theme/revelation.
Joe, weren’t you listening to us? We’re right over here on the other side of that fourth wall, saying “Don’t rate women, Joe!”
Unsolicited boner updates: So there’s a certain type of dude that really does seem to believe that every woman in the world desperately needs to know about the state of their boner or that they deeply care about the state of their boner.
And as such, that it is socially appropriate to inform us about whether or not their boner considers us someone worthy of fucking or not and that we’ll somehow be grateful if their boner says we are.
It’s super common among PUAs, MRAs, and street harassers and it’s what underlies most sexist pile-ons such as when a feminist is told repeatedly how they will never find a man or they’re being super unsexy when they are talking about harassment or sexism.
And it’s toxic as hell. Because it does so much awful shit all at once. It presumes a world where the man’s sexual satisfaction is a public good and random strangers should feel obliged to care and do something about that (which leads to a lot of crimes by entitlement including stalking, sexual assault, street harassment, and resenting women who say no). It also reinforces a notion that a woman’s worth is defined solely by whether or not folks want to fuck her.
And the thing is, it’s always inappropriate. Even in a sex club, unsolicited boner updates are creepy as fuck and frequently tie into a lot of dangerous culture, but it’s even worse when it’s tied to general harassment like this, because when you’re going about your day, you really don’t want or expect to get this shit thrown at you.
It’s also something I particularly intensely loathe because when you’re trans and ace this shit gets fucking dangerous. Someone who feels you need an unsolicited boner update is very likely to go off when they realize someone is trans, because now their boner has been “tricked” and this must be “avenged” and is very likely to see one’s aceness as a “problem” to be “solved”.
One of my near-misses with being murdered began as an unsolicited boner update. They can go bad really really fast.
Especially because as we see here, the person doing them expects us to act with gratitude for receiving these updates. After all, they said we were hot/that they’d want to bang us/that we have a higher ranking. Why are we being such a percussion instrument to reject that or find it offputting? It’s like we can’t even take a compliment.
Like, Joe really does expect to receive something for the kindness of rating her highly on his random BS scale. Like that’s some incredible gift rather than a dudebro harassing a woman the literal second she leaves her room. And Rachel understands like a lot of women that rejecting that coldly can easily turn dangerous as the spurned dudebro feels slighted by the “ingratitude”.
And the sick part is if the woman was to take it as a compliment, that usually pisses off these types just as much. Like, there’s so many stories from folks who’ve responded to the flood of boner updates their dating profiles receive positively by stating that yup, they totally know that they’re a fox only to have the boner updater go off on them and try and neg them for being so “conceited”.
Because at the end of the day, it’s not about a compliment, it’s about a script the boner updater has written in their head. That we should be shy and demure and grateful for this type of shitty harassment, but not so grateful that we look like the type of person that wouldn’t take this shit. And we’re supposed to eat our feelings of discomfort or our worries that this can so easily go wrong (I mean, look at this, Joe is camped outside her literal unlocked door, if he was less a Joe and more a Ryan, this could go violently awfully bad QUICK) and just take it.
So yeah, dudes, don’t ever do this. It’s always going to be creepy and awful and our not macing you says nothing other than you’re exploiting social convention that makes it so we’re supposed to politely tolerate your ass.
Are you telling that there are real-life dudes who behave like Mature-rating Johnny Bravo O_o ?
Unfortunately quite a few. And worse yet, quite a lot of them like to target ace women for the “challenge”. So… yeah…
Hence my antipathy for Joe’s shtick.
I’m seriously out of facepalms to give…
Ugggh this is like a few days ago where a guy just can’t keep shut about “how beautiful” I looked in my cosplay, I couldn’t even check myself in the mirror because he HAS to make a comment about “how I was cosplaying one of his first crushes ” and stuff; and it really gave me a huge dysphoria to the point I’m seriously thinking to not cosplay female characters again
*appropriate gesture of support* I’m sorry that happened to you.
Joe and consent: Additionally, we also once again see Joe’s “game” and it’s as awful as we’ve seen it with Sarah and Joyce and at this point, I feel it is safe to say that this is Joe’s “game”. That this is how he hits on women. And well, it does not say good things about his practice of consent.
Like, first of all, he intentionally avoids noticing body language and let’s be frank, Rachel’s body language, much like Sarah’s is not particularly subtle. She goes from neutral to outright glaring at him by the end, with increasingly upset/hostile eyebrows.
And here’s the thing. There’s no way that he really can’t read body language that obvious, which means he is actively ignoring it and convincing himself that this is a part of playing “hard to get” and thus an invitation to press harder.
And well, that fucks his supposed consent bona fides, because creating situations where the only way to get rid of the Joe remora is to blow up violently at him and suffer the social consequences of that is not one that creates a fully consensual space and is deeply exploitative of the pressure women are under never to give a no because encounters like this can go violently wrong if they do give a hard no.
And because as we’ve seen, he keeps pressing even after a no, hoping to convince it into a yes. If he’s not a rapist, it has only been by accident, because these moments he creates when he hits on women do not create a space where it feels fully safe to reject him without consequence and he actively ignores when he is making women uncomfortable.
That last panel: This I feel is the most condemning panel of Joe’s in the entire strip. Because with all the other ones, maybe you could somehow say he wasn’t realizing how offputting and creepy he was being or that he somehow was hit by a meteor that makes it so he can only read the body language of dudes, but with this one…
He knows his actions are creepy. That they’d be considered harassment. That they are the sort of thing that would make a woman skeeved out and uncomfortable. He knows this. But somehow convinces himself it’s all okay because he’s “handsome”. Even though he’s seen from evidence that no, people still view him as a creep and only ever sleep with him despite the hostile bullshit of his “game” rather than because of it.
And the thing is this is a worldview deeply tied to a particularly vile strain of MRA thought. And that is that women don’t actually dislike being harassed, mistreated, abused and only react poorly to it because the person doing it isn’t “masculine enough” or isn’t “handsome enough” or isn’t “rich enough”. And that some mythical Chad doing all the behaviors that women tell them to stop doing would be rolling in genitals doing the same exact shit.
And it’s fucked up, because it allows the harasser to minimize their own actions and the response to them. Their techniques aren’t failures, they’ve just been failed by women’s “unfair” standards and “oppression of betas” that make it so their creeping is interpreted as creeping. And it leads to the belief that they just need to be more “alpha” in their creepy objectification and harassment to see the success the mythical Chad who sleeps with 20,000 women a second sees.
And Joe completely buys into it here. Like, he knows that what he is doing is offputting and creepy, but believes he’s that Chad, that “alpha” who is handsome enough to pull it off without it being creepy and weird.
But it is creepy and weird. And getting harassed by a handsome guy does not seem flattering but is a very good way to view that guy as less and less handsome the more he does it. Because what Joe and the MRAs who push this shit believe is wrong. Actions like this are offputting no matter who they come from. They just might be overlooked for how offputting they are.
And the fact that Joe sees how offputting his actions are. How harmful and creepy they are when he watches his father do them or when he thinks about someone who isn’t him doing them. The fact that he sees that and still does it, filling himself up with excuses of why it’s okay and actively ignoring body language and unambiguous statements of how little the women he is targeting like this shit, is not fucking okay. And demonstrates an absolute loathing of the agency of women in this little pre-conceived narrative of his.
And it’s made all the worse because of his context here. Rachel just left her room, is in the woman’s side of the dorm, is trying to just enjoy her day. And Joe is camped out, coming from the side, leaning in at her with his elbow right up against the door to cut off an angle of escape and aggressively creeping on her and ignoring her every attempt to unsubtly communicate that this is making her uncomfortable. Like, this is terrible bad boundaries and adds an “implication” in the Always Sunny sense to his action.
See he’s not a bad “pedostache” man who would escalate this in bad directions if she rejected him, but he’s fully trading on the threat folks like that carry, the threat that would be one of them right outside her unlocked door. That if he was one of those “bad men” this would go violently wrong for her and it hamstrings her full ability to reject him directly, because someone willing to storm into a women’s sleeping area just to creep on women who just left their rooms is already demonstrating a frightening approach to boundaries.
(sigh)
I don’t like hating Joe and his actions. I want him to be better. Maybe an encounter with Ryan or seeing what he did will clue him in to the dangerous line he’s been walking and how awful his treatment of women is. Maybe he’ll realize independently that his PUA garbage is a bag of hot bullshit.
But this? This cannot sustain itself indefinitely. Cause this is getting more and more awful and boundary-pressing by the strip.
Yeah, that last panel really switches the gears from “can’t read body language” to “oh, that doesn’t really apply to ME.” Dude, you’re the one who’s THERE!
And also, “Joe remora” made me chuckle more than it had any right to.
I think you may be reading far more into this than there is simply because I think it presumes JOE is a lot smarter and more aware than he seems to be. Everything about Joe seems to imply he thinks this is charming and that women find it amusing. You say, “Surely, he can’t be that dense that he sees Rachel is uninterested.”
Yes, yes he can be and is.
But he does recognize this would be creepy and let’s be frank. Almost no one is as bad as Joe is pretending to be when it comes to reading the very unsubtle body language Rachel and Sarah have given him. Especially not when he is given them his supposed full attention.
Like, I see this with creepers all the time. They’ll claim that they’re just so bad at body language when called out on the dismissive way they ignore clear signs of distress in the people they are pursuing. But actual people with actual neuroatypical reasons for being bad with body language don’t show this much willful ignorance of body language as this and show a lot more concern and distress when told that their behavior is offputting.
Like, he knows he’s being a shitbird, he just convinces himself that it must still be charming or that the woman is playing hard-to-get or that this is the only way to get the girl. Justifications for bad behavior.
And it frustrates me because creepers exploit people’s desire to see this play-acting as genuine all the time to get away with boundary-pushing crap like this. Pretending to be somehow incapable of recognizing boundaries or body-language even though if they were really as bad as they say they are at it, they wouldn’t be able to hold down a job or interact with 90% of society without being thrown in jail.
And it also frustrates me because folks who are on the autism spectrum like some of my students get all the fallout from this neurotypical lying creeper bullshit even though the vast majority of them are more careful about social boundaries than their neurotypical peers.
The best I’ve heard it described as was “they never fail to read the body language of their BOSS (unless their boss is a woman).”
Yup. This.
You hit it right on the head. I’m on the spectrum, and have a very tenuous grasp of body language. I still don’t act how Joe’s acting. See, even though my innate understanding and ability to read body language is lacking in several ways, I’ve actually managed to learn it the way a high school student learns a subject they’re not particularly good at: Memorisation.
This person making this face or standing in this position means they’re feeling this particular way. It’s a case-by-case thing, most of the time, but I can still generally apply the more common expressions and postures to a stranger and have at least a decent idea what they’re emoting. It’s not fool-proof, by any means, and there are definitely times I flub a social encounter entirely by not reading a person properly, but it’s still effort.
“I can’t read body language” is not, barring extreme cases, an excuse. If it’s true, it’s a valid reason for a certain degree of behavior, but it’s not an excuse to act however you please.
Oh, c’mon, look at that last panel. *I*’m terrible at body language and even I can tell that’s a death glare there. There’s no way you can count someone as people and still think they’re interested when they’re looking at you like THAT.
I’m someone who is deficient at being able to tell sarcasm even verbally, and even I can tell she’s being sarcastic here.
I just want to add to everything Cerberus and JBento said with:
Isn’t it also reading a lot into this strip to assume Joe is this selectively bad at reading body language, facial expression, and tone? He’s displayed a lot of ability to pick up on these things in other situations. (Joyce wouldn’t have been talking to him when she was at home and stressed out if he hadn’t made himself emotionally available for her, for example. And he picks up on Danny’s cues just fine — well enough to see conversations he doesn’t want to have coming, and to try to nip them in the bed.)
*bud.
I can’t even blame autocorrect, that was just my fingers being tired.
Perhaps it is but I get the impression Joe thinks this is how it’s supposed to go with women being hostile toward the idea of a relationship or aggressive before he widdles them down. It’s not actually that uncommon of a view of romantic behavior in television (which is awful) and cartoons (which is doubly awful) as the idea being there’s meant to be a kind of Tsundere hot/cold thing versus open warmth and honesty about your feelings.
Why do I give Joe the benefit of the doubt when 99% of the time and a 1% margin of error in real life that they are a bunch of creepers? I think because he seemed genuinely upset when Dorothy revealed his words hurt her rather than some kind of playful banter they were engaged in. Joe’s immaturity really strikes me as someone who seems to think life functions like an anime or When Harry Met Sally.
The weird thing is that most of his justification seems to be “Hey, this works for me, so it can’t be unacceptable behavior for me specifically to do.”.
Which yeah is really horrible…and kind of disappointing when he has a major example in his family of why he shouldn’t want to act that way? Though his father might be part of why he’s decided that its what’s expected of him? Or at least why doing things this way is the best way to try and get what he wants on a superficial level where he can avoid thinking about anyone’s feelings?
Maybe someone should tell Joe that he’s a walking talking teachable moment? Though yeah, the most disappointing thing is that he’s kind of the posterboy for “Toxic Masculinity thats brushed off as harmless because its not like he’s committing any crimes”.
I mean, are guys generally that obsessed with sex to the point that they seem to think its something that everyone should do whenever possible and is the surest way for anyone to find even a temporary measure of happiness? Cause thats what it always seems to be sold as by those sort of crowds at least.
Sex is pretty awesome and for those people who enjoy it, they should be able to practice it in the way they want to and as often as they can as long as people are adult as well as consenting. It really is like chocolate or video games only better. The problem is society has created rigid social constructs that breaking down the idea of, “How does one approach someone for it” and how it relates to friendship or love is still a mystery for many because of toxic ideals of the past/present.
Man, it took me WAY too much time to realise what the alt-text was about. I should probably sleep more.
*Remembers how fervently I used to ship JoJo*
*Holds Joycob closer*
JOE FOR FUCK SAKE YOU WERE DOIN SO WELL!
When?
When he was just a tiny face over text messages?
I wish there was a way to get notified about replies here
I just search for my name on here several times throughout the day so I can read posts that follow mine.
a better way than that. I do that too
Refreshing the web page manually proves how much you care? ;p
saaame
Regarding Panel 1….
…. has anyone thought to ask AMAZI-GIRL how she feels about being handed off to another journalist with which she hasn’t established a relationship of trust?
No, but it’s not like there’s many options.
I’m lowkey hoping Dorothy leans on Danny to do it. Though that’s probably not happening.
Actually given that the alt text just gave away the best joke for that interaction, I wonder if Billie refuses to take Dorothy up on that.
Holy crap, it just hit me: Joe is RobinLite!
Well, both of their main issues are the fact that they’d rather ignore the reality of their behavior patterns and the consequences that arise from them than actually behave in a mature fashion, at least until they’re backed into a corner.
I mean they also try their best to toe the line of what makes getting what they want easiest to do without actually having to care about it as a general rule, but that doesn’t make their behavior otherwise generally less like that of a spoiled child.
Joe and Faz are pretty comparable in their behaviors as well, except Faz is the “creepy lil’ twerp” variant who Joe is dissing except for not having the facial hair that apparently goes along with it? They both use the same sort of playbooks though.
Dammit, Joe, you JUST got dressed down for this one of the people you seem to respect the most. I know you are capable of becoming a mature, decent person. Stop being awful.
Keep in mind the only women he treats with any respect are his best friend’s ex (and thus banging her would be a violation of the Bro Code), and Joyce, who kicked herself off his Do List.
And he still makes rude jokes towards Dorothy about subjects that really hurt her, and goes calling Joyce a “crazy woman”
Point. I guess I should have said “treats any differently.”
To be fair, on their first and only date, Joyce brought along Mike and encouraged him to physically attack Joe for thought crimes, so…yeah, he has pretty good reason to call her a crazy woman.
I think Joyce is still on there, actually. He said she was only PRACTICALLY kicked off his list.
Sir Roger Moore is dead. 8(
I hope Joe goes through an arc where he makes acquaintance with more women to the level he has with Joyce (but not in the same manner–I’m not saying that).
Of course, it’s not her task, nor anyone’s, to change his behavior.
But I notice that his on-panel interactions with Joyce are the closest thing he shows to actually being friends with a woman, or conversing without his “goal” in mind.
That alt-text though: Oh please, oh please, oh PLEASE let Joe meet Sal at some point. I’m game for a good laugh.
I think you’re making the same mistake as I did – the alt-text is Billie talking to Amazi-Girl; it has nothing to do with Joe.
I mean, it doesn’t invalidate the laugh potential of the idea, it’s just not what it’s about (and I think Joe v Carla is better for laughs anyway).
Yeah, I figured that, but I posted this anyways because the laugh potential for Joe meeting Sal and the subsequent verbal thrashing I’m pretty sure she’d give is too good.
And because the alt-text made me wonder if Joe was mistaking Rachel for Sal – whom he would only know from Danny’s description (which was ‘girl who rides a motorcycle and barely wears clothes’) and any remarks he made about tutoring her afterwards.
I’d be disappointed if Joe’s survival instincts are so poor that he can’t immediately see that Sal is an anti-personnel mine waiting to go off if he disturbs it.
They’re good Rachels, Brent.
You just keep rating your Rachels 11s and 12s it makes no sense.
Boy, I was confused. I interpreted panel 2 to be Rachel leaving Joe’s room after having fun times with him, so he was rating her sexual ability. Which made the following panels very confusing. It took a few re-reads before it clicked. And in the first panel, my first thought was, wow, she is very tall.
Meh. Rachel doesn’t seem to be having any trouble handling herself. Not worried about it, calling “lolJoe” on this one.
Eeeeeh, “it’s not a problem because she can handle it” leaves a bad taste in my ethics.
Yeah, one should still keep an eye on a situation that looks sketchy, even if you’re 100% sure someone has it covered.
For instance, if Marcie and Sal were in a bar and some asshole came up to pester Sal the way Joe is Rachel, I’d expect Marcie to keep an eye on that, even if she knows Sal can handle it.
Honestly I’d expect Marcie would keep an eye on it because she knows Sal can handle it as well.
Since Marcie is the one who keeps Sal from picking fights and reacting in violent ways, at least according to Sal.
I was thinking more along the lines of ‘in case this goes south on the guy’s end’ but yes, in that specific example, yeah, that too.
Joe has a lot further to go before this “goes south” in a way that goes beyond “getting shot down for being a jackass”.
“doesn’t tell the ones”?
But he puts his rankings online.
With an RSS feed.
He probably doesn’t give the Ones the passcode to it either.
You know, cause he’s “nice” like that and therefore only wants to let anyone who isn’t a 1 know who the 1s on his list are? Or something?
someone needs to introduce joe to the ryan gosling meme
“So be not schmuck, be not obnoxious, be not bell-bottom bummer or asshole!”
Joe, you are failing at least two out of four criteria there. You are no Pablo Picasso.
Since my RSS sees only titles of the comics, I saw “Hiatus” and shat my pants.
I want someone (preferably Sarah or Billie) to take Joe down with these magic words.
“You’re insecure, you’re overcompensating, and you’re going to turn out just like your father.”
Sad thing is, Joe is absolutely right. A few fringe cases outstanding, most women HIGHLY prefer being obnoxiously hit on by a hot dude than a not-hot dude. lol
Well, yeah, that’s true, but a lot of guys will use that the way Joe’s using it here – in a way reminiscent of Winston Churchill’s “now we’re haggling” scenario.