Dina is having the worst day of her life right now, and has every right to call Joyce out like this.
Silver lining is, at least Joyce is finally facing this truth about herself and her feelings with sober senses and bringing at least some kind of closure with it. *plays “Soft Light” from Super Paper Mario on hacked muzak*
the problem is that while Joyce may be acknowledging that she’s being selfish she’s also spinning it with the mentality that she’s the victim in the whole thing and that she’s “sacrificing” to make it work. She doesn’t really care that she hurt Joe badly or damaged Sarah’s trust in her by doing so no no the real problem is that she felt bad doing it so she’s the one who was hurt the most in all this.
Going on about her Sacrifices while the person she Sacrificed is in ear shot.
Bryy
Gottaa love ho she goes “I’m sorry…. wait no i’m not. not at all”.
Adept
I wonder if we are supposed to find Joyce relatable or endearing? This pseudo-self-aware spiel undid any sympathy I had for her yesterday. I don’t think I would continue to associate with her.
Chris Phoenix
She didn’t say “I’m not sorry.” She said “I’ll be selfish.”
She didn’t go on about her “sacrifices.” She mentioned her choices (how much she threw away) parenthetically to show how much she wants Dorothy.
eh, whatever
I wonder if we are supposed to find Joyce relatable or endearing?
[Edit: oh great, the blockquote tag doesn’t work anymore! *headdesk*]
I think we’re supposed to watch her as she becomes aware of the situation. This strip is the beginning of a scene that’s going to last at least one more strip; I see no need to draw conclusions, such as a moral judgment, at this point. We don’t have enough information yet!
Dina is absolutely right, especially in panel 2. Not sure where Joyce is going with this because Becky and Dina’s issues have nothing to do with whether Dina is being ‘selfish’ or not.
I disagree with this entirely. Valuing yourself isn’t giving up on someone. It’s the opposite that has happened here, Becky has given up on Dina whether it was said or not. It shouldn’t be on Dina to go to Becky and convince her she’s good enough, Becky has to figure that out herself.
Owlmirror
But I don’t think that Becky thinks that she’s too good for Dina. To the contrary, I think that Becky thinks that Dina thinks that Dina is too good for Becky. And Dina thinks that Becky thinks that Becky is too good for Dina. *
Or in other words, what we have here are two cases of low self-esteem, and a failure to communicate.
=__________________________
*: I originally wrote those sentences with pronouns, but realized that made it confusing.
People generally don’t enjoy being in relationships where their partner considers them their silver medal.
Vukodlak
So basically if you get turned down by the girl you like. You can’t ask anyone out again because the next person will be the silver medal?
clif
Those are the rules.
Take it up with the anti-silver defamation league.
But I’m always pleased by evidence that you too have an inner Mike.
clif
What the heck. I have no idea how that last line repeated from a previous comment. But I’m going to blame it on Mike’s ghost.
Bill Erak
I think Sirk has a point. Don’t get me wrong I want beckysaur back together RIGHT NOW but There’s a difference between ‘asking someone else out’ and rebounding.
Dina is a rebound. Becky’s feelings for Joyce were stronger than her feelings for Dina, at least in that moment. Hopefully it was a momentary shock-related thing, years of pinning just exploding. But Dina does have a right to feel slighted, and it’s mainly on Becky to try to solve this.
I feel like if my partner wanted me to give up on our relationship because of their hangups about another person, I would also maybe not want to continue that relationship.
thejeff
If that is what Becky actually wants, sure.
If she’s just upset and spiraling about how I’ll leave her like she did and everyone does because she’s the problem, maybe not.
It’s more selfish (positive) for Dina to finally say “Y’know what. I deserve more than being 1st runner up in the heart of my loved ones”
Sirksome
I am very confused by what Joyce is getting at here. Even if Dina wants to still be with Becky being selfish here just feels like more work Dina would have to do and I honestly believe Dina has done more than enough.
NGPZ
THIS. Dina deserves much better TT~TT
Thing 2
Sirksome: You expect what Joyce says to make sense??!
Lys
@Skirksome: Joyce is saying that Dina should ignore Becky’s internal conflict and continue the relationship despite it, because that’s pretty much what Joyce did with Dorothy. You remember how Joyce got together with Dorothy? She had previously rejected Joyce’s advances, right before the big date with Joe. Then at the protest Dorothy was practically begging Joyce to leave her. Despite this, Joyce ignored Dorothy’s pleas and charged into her arms anyway, and was rewarded with everything she wanted. Consequently, Joyce is advising Dina to do the same: Be selfish! Ignore Becky drama! Obtain Becky kisses!
Anonymous
I echo this.
“Is it selfish to stay in a relationship with someone you think doesn’t love you? Because that sounds rather self-sacrificing.”
Imo both are correct answers. Dina and Becky could put in the work and overcome this and grow stronger from it. On the flip side, dina or Becky have every right to look at their relationship and decide that it would be better not to salvage it, but to try to bury the feelings and move on.
it’s really the most joyce thing ever for her to stumble into something actually profound in this last panel after floundering a bit in her opening. sometimes you need to be a bit selfish! you gotta sometimes!
People were discussing yesterday if it was really the best idea to let Joyce handle this, surely Dorothy can words better. But I think this is exactly why Dorothy let plan “say some dinosaur facts or something to get Dina back with Becky” go ahead without comment – Joyce flounders but her heart is usually in the right place.
Why does everyone assume she’s talking about Joe?
.
When Joyce started college last semester, she was a fundie so deep in the closet she didn’t realize she was there. Her plans were to get an education degree, get the even more important husband, get married, pop out kids, and use her education degree to home-school them. Degree is optional in all of this. She’s thrown out that entire life plan, the one she’s likely had in her head ever since she realized that boys and girls were different, for Dorothy. She’s abandoned the idea of ever having a good relationship with her mother. In her mind, she’s probably why her parents divorced. She lost Becky as a best friend. She has literally given up everything except Joe and Dorothy, and she may be forced eventually to choose just one of them.
.
Joe’s a great guy (now that he’s experienced some character growth), but it’s not all about him.
None of that was for Dorothy, though. That’s the pain point we’re talking about here. No one is denying Joyce has given up a lot, we’re denying that any of it was for Dorothy specifically, and that Joyce is (yet again) doing a mental rewrite of her history to retroactively place Dorothy at the center of it, because that’s the kind of character she is.
100% in favor of putting seeing the bony poindexters come together. dorpy would explode several times over from the various forms of erotic torture dina’d put her through
Like after all that’s happened I really don’t think she’s earned the right to be this voice of sincerity and reason. She has been such an insufferable little shit and I really need her to do some actual self-reflection before I will tolerate this kind of thing out of her.
It’s also “funny” to hear Joyce talk about how much she “threw away” for Dorothy, because as far as I can tell at this point she’s thrown away exactly two things:
– her relationship with Joe (but not, apparently, Joe’s friendship, because for all we know he’s still standing there with that stupid grin on his face)
– some portion of Sarah’s good regard.
Thus far, there have been no other negative consequences for her related to the specific decision to date Dorothy — and hell, even Sarah’s reaction isn’t about the relationship, just the specific (cheating doofus) way she chose to go about it.
Frankly it just sounds like one more episode of “Joyce thinks she’s in a romantic fantasy” — at best, I can only assume that she is assigning “everything that happened at the protest and afterwards” to the bin of “this is because I love Dorothy”, which is absurd.
Jon
See my longish post above about Joyce’s life plan that she was firmly committed to at the beginning of freshman year, and her familial relationships. She’s given up a lot more than you seem to recall.
Big Z
@Jon – 90% of what you mentioned is not anything like a sacrifice. If I go to the restaurant and decide to get steak, I have not “sacrificed” my original plan to get fried chicken.
At MOST, I could give you “losing Becky’s friendship”, but even that isn’t inherent to “dating Dorothy”, it’s inherent to the choice she made of HOW to do it and HOW to talk about it.
But I do not credit “I made an unforced choice, and therefore I have sacrificed my previous choice” in this context.
–
Edited to add: My first example was a bit flip, but as a real one — I changed my entire life plan during my second year of college, to a different major and different religion and a bunch of other things. I can’t even imagine referring to that choice as something I “sacrificed”, because ultimately the old stuff was what I *thought* I wanted, and the new stuff was what I *actually* wanted, and it’s no sacrifice at all to trade what I didn’t want for what I realized I did. All of Joyce’s heavy choices about who she was and what she wanted came LONG before The Dorothy Realization/Decision.
I hope that Dina (correctly) points out that this is a conversation she needs to be having with Becky instead, because *she* is the one who gave up on Dina, not the other way around. But Joyce wouldn’t do that, because she’s currently avoiding uncomfortable conversations with the people she actually needs to be having conversations with.
Becky can join Joe in that club! They might have t-shirts ready by the time Joyce actually gets around to either of them.
I think my feelings on that are going to depend on how effective this talk ends up being. Because I do like this as Joyce characterization, but it doesn’t feel like it should be persuasive.
242 thoughts on “Kindest”
NGPZ
Dina is having the worst day of her life right now, and has every right to call Joyce out like this.
Silver lining is, at least Joyce is finally facing this truth about herself and her feelings with sober senses and bringing at least some kind of closure with it.
*plays “Soft Light” from Super Paper Mario on hacked muzak*
Thag Simmons
Dina was held at gunpoint once and kidnapped, so maybe not the worst day of her life.
Cameron Stone
No, being lectured to by Joyce is worse, for Dina especially.
Astariel
Technically, she wasn’t kidnapped, she just followed social cues.
DJTsurugi
she sorta… kidnapped herself along with everyone else who was kidnapped. ~<3
Needfuldoer
Joyce was kidnapped. Dina tagged along of her own volition.
ProfNekko
the problem is that while Joyce may be acknowledging that she’s being selfish she’s also spinning it with the mentality that she’s the victim in the whole thing and that she’s “sacrificing” to make it work. She doesn’t really care that she hurt Joe badly or damaged Sarah’s trust in her by doing so no no the real problem is that she felt bad doing it so she’s the one who was hurt the most in all this.
Yotomoe
Going on about her Sacrifices while the person she Sacrificed is in ear shot.
Bryy
Gottaa love ho she goes “I’m sorry…. wait no i’m not. not at all”.
Adept
I wonder if we are supposed to find Joyce relatable or endearing? This pseudo-self-aware spiel undid any sympathy I had for her yesterday. I don’t think I would continue to associate with her.
Chris Phoenix
She didn’t say “I’m not sorry.” She said “I’ll be selfish.”
She didn’t go on about her “sacrifices.” She mentioned her choices (how much she threw away) parenthetically to show how much she wants Dorothy.
eh, whatever
I wonder if we are supposed to find Joyce relatable or endearing?
[Edit: oh great, the blockquote tag doesn’t work anymore! *headdesk*]
I think we’re supposed to watch her as she becomes aware of the situation. This strip is the beginning of a scene that’s going to last at least one more strip; I see no need to draw conclusions, such as a moral judgment, at this point. We don’t have enough information yet!
the Lurker
According to the tags, it’s just Dina and Joyce.
nothri
Okay Joyce but you’d better duck on the off chance she takes your advice.
Jon
Dina/Becky. Because Joyce/Dorothy is already built into the structure of the universe.
apocryphascribe
Exactly, it would be a wasted vote! I’d argue we need Billie/Ruth there instead.
clif
That would be a toughy, alt text.
But I’m always pleased by evidence that you too have an inner Mike.
Holly
But what if the poll was
Dina/Joyce
Becky/Dorothy
break edit test 1
break edit test 2
br br break edit test 3
br/ br/ break edit test 4
break edit test 5
Jon
Then I vote for br/ br/ break edit test 4.
jeffepp
Well, at least she’s aware of that part of her nature.
Pocky
its more than most people lol
Doopyboop
Dina is absolutely right, especially in panel 2. Not sure where Joyce is going with this because Becky and Dina’s issues have nothing to do with whether Dina is being ‘selfish’ or not.
Jon
Dina is giving up on Becky because she thinks that’s what Becky wants. She never asked if that was what Becky wanted, though.
Sirksome
I disagree with this entirely. Valuing yourself isn’t giving up on someone. It’s the opposite that has happened here, Becky has given up on Dina whether it was said or not. It shouldn’t be on Dina to go to Becky and convince her she’s good enough, Becky has to figure that out herself.
Owlmirror
But I don’t think that Becky thinks that she’s too good for Dina. To the contrary, I think that Becky thinks that Dina thinks that Dina is too good for Becky. And Dina thinks that Becky thinks that Becky is too good for Dina. *
Or in other words, what we have here are two cases of low self-esteem, and a failure to communicate.
=__________________________
*: I originally wrote those sentences with pronouns, but realized that made it confusing.
Cameron Stone
People generally don’t enjoy being in relationships where their partner considers them their silver medal.
Vukodlak
So basically if you get turned down by the girl you like. You can’t ask anyone out again because the next person will be the silver medal?
clif
Those are the rules.
Take it up with the anti-silver defamation league.
But I’m always pleased by evidence that you too have an inner Mike.
clif
What the heck. I have no idea how that last line repeated from a previous comment. But I’m going to blame it on Mike’s ghost.
Bill Erak
I think Sirk has a point. Don’t get me wrong I want beckysaur back together RIGHT NOW but There’s a difference between ‘asking someone else out’ and rebounding.
Dina is a rebound. Becky’s feelings for Joyce were stronger than her feelings for Dina, at least in that moment. Hopefully it was a momentary shock-related thing, years of pinning just exploding. But Dina does have a right to feel slighted, and it’s mainly on Becky to try to solve this.
Thag Simmons
I feel like if my partner wanted me to give up on our relationship because of their hangups about another person, I would also maybe not want to continue that relationship.
thejeff
If that is what Becky actually wants, sure.
If she’s just upset and spiraling about how I’ll leave her like she did and everyone does because she’s the problem, maybe not.
Yotomoe
It’s more selfish (positive) for Dina to finally say “Y’know what. I deserve more than being 1st runner up in the heart of my loved ones”
Sirksome
I am very confused by what Joyce is getting at here. Even if Dina wants to still be with Becky being selfish here just feels like more work Dina would have to do and I honestly believe Dina has done more than enough.
NGPZ
THIS. Dina deserves much better TT~TT
Thing 2
Sirksome: You expect what Joyce says to make sense??!
Lys
@Skirksome: Joyce is saying that Dina should ignore Becky’s internal conflict and continue the relationship despite it, because that’s pretty much what Joyce did with Dorothy. You remember how Joyce got together with Dorothy? She had previously rejected Joyce’s advances, right before the big date with Joe. Then at the protest Dorothy was practically begging Joyce to leave her. Despite this, Joyce ignored Dorothy’s pleas and charged into her arms anyway, and was rewarded with everything she wanted. Consequently, Joyce is advising Dina to do the same: Be selfish! Ignore Becky drama! Obtain Becky kisses!
Anonymous
I echo this.
“Is it selfish to stay in a relationship with someone you think doesn’t love you? Because that sounds rather self-sacrificing.”
Bryy
Dina left because Becky was the problem, and she realized that. She made that pretty clear.
Amara
Imo both are correct answers. Dina and Becky could put in the work and overcome this and grow stronger from it. On the flip side, dina or Becky have every right to look at their relationship and decide that it would be better not to salvage it, but to try to bury the feelings and move on.
QueenofSodor
it’s really the most joyce thing ever for her to stumble into something actually profound in this last panel after floundering a bit in her opening. sometimes you need to be a bit selfish! you gotta sometimes!
mads_in_zero
People were discussing yesterday if it was really the best idea to let Joyce handle this, surely Dorothy can words better. But I think this is exactly why Dorothy let plan “say some dinosaur facts or something to get Dina back with Becky” go ahead without comment – Joyce flounders but her heart is usually in the right place.
Nono
Meanwhile Joe, off to the side, coughing and twiddling his thumbs as his girlfriend(?) talks about how much she’s given up for her Dorothy already
Lumino
Nobody in the DoA universe actually cares about what Joe thinks, least of all Joyce.
Jon
Why does everyone assume she’s talking about Joe?
.
When Joyce started college last semester, she was a fundie so deep in the closet she didn’t realize she was there. Her plans were to get an education degree, get the even more important husband, get married, pop out kids, and use her education degree to home-school them. Degree is optional in all of this. She’s thrown out that entire life plan, the one she’s likely had in her head ever since she realized that boys and girls were different, for Dorothy. She’s abandoned the idea of ever having a good relationship with her mother. In her mind, she’s probably why her parents divorced. She lost Becky as a best friend. She has literally given up everything except Joe and Dorothy, and she may be forced eventually to choose just one of them.
.
Joe’s a great guy (now that he’s experienced some character growth), but it’s not all about him.
Yotomoe
She didn’t give any of that stuff up “For Dorothy” is why.
Jon
Really? Who did she give all that up for?
apocryphascribe
None of that was for Dorothy, though. That’s the pain point we’re talking about here. No one is denying Joyce has given up a lot, we’re denying that any of it was for Dorothy specifically, and that Joyce is (yet again) doing a mental rewrite of her history to retroactively place Dorothy at the center of it, because that’s the kind of character she is.
John Campbell
I vote for Dina/Dorothy.
QueenofSodor
100% in favor of putting seeing the bony poindexters come together. dorpy would explode several times over from the various forms of erotic torture dina’d put her through
Dot
I don’t like that Joyce gets to be the one to have this talk with Dina.
Dot
Like after all that’s happened I really don’t think she’s earned the right to be this voice of sincerity and reason. She has been such an insufferable little shit and I really need her to do some actual self-reflection before I will tolerate this kind of thing out of her.
Needfuldoer
But she’s figuratively and literally the main character of this universe, so…
Big Z
It’s also “funny” to hear Joyce talk about how much she “threw away” for Dorothy, because as far as I can tell at this point she’s thrown away exactly two things:
– her relationship with Joe (but not, apparently, Joe’s friendship, because for all we know he’s still standing there with that stupid grin on his face)
– some portion of Sarah’s good regard.
Thus far, there have been no other negative consequences for her related to the specific decision to date Dorothy — and hell, even Sarah’s reaction isn’t about the relationship, just the specific (cheating doofus) way she chose to go about it.
Frankly it just sounds like one more episode of “Joyce thinks she’s in a romantic fantasy” — at best, I can only assume that she is assigning “everything that happened at the protest and afterwards” to the bin of “this is because I love Dorothy”, which is absurd.
Jon
See my longish post above about Joyce’s life plan that she was firmly committed to at the beginning of freshman year, and her familial relationships. She’s given up a lot more than you seem to recall.
Big Z
@Jon – 90% of what you mentioned is not anything like a sacrifice. If I go to the restaurant and decide to get steak, I have not “sacrificed” my original plan to get fried chicken.
At MOST, I could give you “losing Becky’s friendship”, but even that isn’t inherent to “dating Dorothy”, it’s inherent to the choice she made of HOW to do it and HOW to talk about it.
But I do not credit “I made an unforced choice, and therefore I have sacrificed my previous choice” in this context.
–
Edited to add: My first example was a bit flip, but as a real one — I changed my entire life plan during my second year of college, to a different major and different religion and a bunch of other things. I can’t even imagine referring to that choice as something I “sacrificed”, because ultimately the old stuff was what I *thought* I wanted, and the new stuff was what I *actually* wanted, and it’s no sacrifice at all to trade what I didn’t want for what I realized I did. All of Joyce’s heavy choices about who she was and what she wanted came LONG before The Dorothy Realization/Decision.
Grimey
You know who would have been great for this talk? Billie.
It would have been a fun parallel that while Ruth checked up on Becky, Billie for whatever reason ran into Dina.
clif
Oh, Billie would have given her good advice. We have every reason to believe.
Grimey
My favorite genre of Billifer.
Decent advice for everyone else–a human trashfire on dealing with her own issues.
Yotomoe
I concur.
apocryphascribe
I hope that Dina (correctly) points out that this is a conversation she needs to be having with Becky instead, because *she* is the one who gave up on Dina, not the other way around. But Joyce wouldn’t do that, because she’s currently avoiding uncomfortable conversations with the people she actually needs to be having conversations with.
Becky can join Joe in that club! They might have t-shirts ready by the time Joyce actually gets around to either of them.
Dot
Right? Becky is the one who hurt Dina here!
clif
Right, but Dina should be selfish enough to ignore that fact.
Needfuldoer
I think Joyce is avoiding that conversation by having this one instead.
Thag Simmons
I think my feelings on that are going to depend on how effective this talk ends up being. Because I do like this as Joyce characterization, but it doesn’t feel like it should be persuasive.
Fail Earnhardt
Panel 2 Dina knows it too and is probably setting up for a nasty dunk on Joyce
Hat
Especially since Joe was RIGHT THERE! They were having a moment! A friendship moment!
Although I suppose Joe is not the best person, at this moment, to say “you should stand up for yourself and the relationship you believe in.”
Jay
something something negative comment cause all I do is bongo and moan something something.
Jon
Try snaring instead of bongoing? I dunno.
Taffy
Add in some 808s, while you’re at it. Women love 808s.
clif
Here Jay is, emotionally wounded and moaning, and we’re talking about women’s BoBs?