And she’s not wrong, either!
–
In all seriousness, it’s nice to see some people start reacting to these two dorks in a way more befitting the way they’ve been acting.
Some people are reacting like this was a multi year relationship and some people are reacting like it was a week or two college fling relationship.
Kirdei
It’s not like they met on Tinder for the first time a couple weeks ago and decided it wasn’t working out. They were all friends prior to the cheating incident. So being betrayed by your friends still sucks.
Dot
Because it was both! It lasted for years IRL and a couple weeks in-universe.
Big Z
What Kirdei said: Regardless of the length of their most recent “relationship” with the lads, they have a history that bears onto the situation (whether it’s Joe and Joyce growing as people together as friends and then briefly dating before she just abruptly decided “naw”, or Dorothy using Walky as “emergency dick” and “go away, I need you to not be a distraction” alternately), and it’s a significantly worse look for DoJo than “oh, well, we were dating our respective boyfriends for so little time it practically doesn’t matter”. I would be much more willing to credit that if they had each been dating some random with no history attached.
Psychie
Honestly, even if they were dating some random they just met, the fact that they led their respective partners to believe they were in exclusive relationships and then immediately cheated isn’t remotely cool regardless of prior history. Like, the prior history does make it worse, because these are established characters that we have an attachment to, and in-universe people in their immediate social circle that they will be interacting with regularly and purport to care about (and have other people in their circle who do care about them), but it would still be bad if these were random guys they met on tinder a couple weeks ago because of the indication of commitment that was broken. They made a commitment and then violated it, that’s not cool whether the commitment was seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, or centuries old.
Andy
Some of them have history and some have a semester plus a couple weeks. All the dating couples, just a semester.
Asma has some real shit going on in her life… possibly like some of the commenters you mention, but she’s still handling what she’s going through better than a lot of people would.
Well, on behalf of every single person who’s ever so much as heard of this comic, I unilaterally reject Asma’s apology, because she’s performed no wrongdoing of any sort.
clif
Hey, I assumed she was apologizing to Sal, who after coming out on the premise that Asma wanted to hang out with her is now being walked out on.
Wizard
Hanging out with people you don’t like in hopes of meeting their hot friend whose name you don’t even know isn’t a huge sin, but it is kinda dumb. Not that anyone in this strip has a monopoly on that.
I mean, why should Dorothy and Joyce apologize? It wasn’t like they misled her. Asma’s description would make me think of Sal before Alice too. Bit of a misunderstanding, and Asma is perhaps overreacting a lil’ bit but she’s got a lot of things so it’s all fair.
Psychie
Yeah, how was Asma wronged? Sure, there have been a series of misunderstandings, but she’s assigning malice when there is none. They didn’t try to co-opt the protest, they made an honest attempt to be better toward her when they realized they upset her and extended a sincere offer of friendship, and had a perfectly reasonable misunderstanding from Asma’s description of Alice. It’s not their fault they failed to read her mind to magically divine who she was talking about when multiple people in their circle fits the description provided, they assumed it was the one who is closer to them and a bigger part of their lives, that they’ve been seen hanging out with regularly instead of like once or twice, that’s a perfectly reasonable mistake to make.
They didn’t lie to her, or try to trick her, or try to hurt her, they literally have no idea what went wrong here. Asma did this to herself and they aren’t deserving of her ire.
I think she’s apologizing because Sal saying ‘you know where I live’ is making Asma consider this MIGHT be construed as an abuse of power situation, like Billie and the… Maple Leafs RA, blanking on her name
I think she’s apologizing because Sal saying ‘you know where I live’ is making Asma consider this MIGHT be construed as an abuse of power situation, like how the administration viewed Billie and the… Maple Leafs RA, blanking on her name
Why wouldn’t she apologise? She is walking dismissively away as soon as Sal turns up, no explanation to Sal. What is Sal to think? Very rude.
And unnecessarily rude to two other people: if she doesn’t like them, rebuffs attempts to converse, why go with them? They were presumably being used as a means to an end. Too right it was a mistake. And what has she got against them beyond her own assumptions anyway?
Walky’s love life recently has been especially ridiculous from Sal’s perspective. I really don’t get where the expectation she should care so much about it comes from. He’s had 3 girlfriends in a week.
clif
And has recently had confirmation on her phone that her prediction of how long it would take him to have another was technically wrong but broadly correct.
It’s a little over a week from when Walky introduced Lucy to his parents as his girlfriend. Then introduced Amber as his girlfiend, in his ‘shenanigans’ to wreck dinner with their parents (and Danny) to somehow get them to approve of Lucy. Whom he was misleading and she rightly dumped him. Then doomed rebound with Dorothy. Not even doomed because of Joyce. The writing came pre-written on the wall.
Both Sal and Walky have trouble conveying genuine vulnerability so they can only really express their feelings through, in Sal’s case, a kind of casualness that makes it seem she doesn’t care at all.
In Sal’s defence, not only did she not think Walky still held Dorothy on a pedestal of sorts when he got back with her, but if you go alllll they way back to the first time Sal’s mentioned, Walky tells Billie that he has had basically nothing to do with her since she was sent away to boarding school (which was what, 4 years in universe for them?) and while Walky’s made strides in trying to show up for Sal they’ve mostly been when Sal’s not around to actually see him process his complicated feelings about their seperation/relationship with thier parents. It would be nice to see her make the effort on her end to have his back after seeing Walky try, but I also think for Sally Walkerton, it’ll take a bit more before she feels like she can show him that kind of support.
Wonder who Danny is mad at more: his ex-girlfriend that gave bisexuals a bad name by cheating, or someone he barely talks to who broke his best friend’s heart (and I guess also gave bisexuals a bad name by cheating).
I would assume Dorothy? Both because he like actually knows her, but also because he expects better from her.
He doesn’t really know Joyce that well, and I don’t think he has high expectations of the girl who can’t be bothered to learn his name after months of being in the same social circles.
They’re in the same social circle like I’m in the same social circle as my state politicians. Like, it’s one degree of Kevin Bacon separation but that’s a pretty wide degree, I don’t think they’ve spoken to each other more than twice lol. She knows a lotta people who know Danny and Danny knows a lotta people who know Joyce, but they’ve never sat at a table together.
Dot
? He’s her (ex?) boyfriend’s best friend, current girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend, and current boyfriend of her friend Sal. They’re in the same circles.
Thag Simmons
Do you attend your state politicians parties? Are they dating your best friend? Are literally all your closest friends also their friends?
Cbwroses
They don’t hang out.
I don’t think he’s ever eaten lunch with the majority of the friend group or walked to class with the math group.
Danny’s gone to Joyce’s parties, but that’s more or less the extent of their personal interactions.
His relationship with Joyce is basically as Sal’s plus 1, because when he and Joe hangout, they don’t do so with the friend group.
Lucy is a much bigger part of the friend group, and that’s saying something considering that up until the last couple weeks, she was only there cuz of Walky.
If Joyce were the sun and the friend group was the planets, Danny would be Pluto: in orbit around her, but not very close, and, arguably, not a real planet/friend.
Himself, becuase Dorothy actual got laid and he was queerbaiting character thats thinks BI means making stupid puns
kdmw
Are you saying Danny is queerbaiting? How?
signseeker
Queerbaiting involves a media creator indicating that their work will include LGBTQ characters and then not doing so. Danny isn’t “queerbaiting” just because he and Ethan didn’t end up fucking.
Dave
I mean, he soooooooorta was? Danny was revealed to be bisexual specifically so that Ethan could have a hypothetical romantic partner (this was explicitly stated by Willis at the time that it happened, it was significant since Danny has decades of pre-Dumbing of Age history and Willis established that sexual orientations are consistent across both the Walkyverse and here), but even before Mike bit the big one it culminated in both Danny and Ethan agreeing that they could never ever smooch for the sake of not betraying Amber. If Joyce and Dorothy being best friends was queerbaiting, I’m unsure how Danny and Ethan’s story hasn’t been the same thing.
Marcie’s in a similar boat where she was revealed as bisexual but her plotline of yearning for Malaya was seemingly aborted; we saw the beginning of a conversation where something SEEMED like it was beginning to develop seven whole years ago, like the very start of a flame kindling, and Marcie’s only showed up as a background character a few times since. She got way more story focus on her bisexuality than Danny did, in fairness. And of course we know what ended up happening with Billie and Ruth.
Bisexual characters don’t HAVE to end up in same gendered relationships and it’s biphobic in real life to say someone isn’t bisexual if their partner is a different gender than their own, but it does seem like the same gender side of bisexuality was scarce on the ground up until Joyce and Dorothy got together, I think?
Hannah
This is a reply to Dave.
I don’t think Dorothy and Joyce being best friends was queerbaiting, what would have been queerbaiting would have been never acknowledging that they were attracted to eachother. Danny and Ethan were both acknowledged in story to be attracted to eachother so I don’t think that counts
Joyce’s inability to remember Hat Guy’s name is a running gag, an ironic reversal of the Walkyverse, where most of her Roomies! personality was “Danny’s psycho stalker”. But sure, of course, she’s the worst human being who ever existed.
Thag Simmons
I am aware of the joke and I think it’s a pretty funny joke, and being kind of petty and passive-aggressive to your girlfriend’s ex is very normal sort of behaviour.
I just think it’s likely that antipathy goes both ways.
287 thoughts on “Never should have”
IntangibleMatter
Asma sounds like one of the dozens of angry commenters who show up every day
Nono
Don’t be silly, we would never apologize.
clif
Fair.
Big Z
And she’s not wrong, either!
–
In all seriousness, it’s nice to see some people start reacting to these two dorks in a way more befitting the way they’ve been acting.
Andy
Some people are reacting like this was a multi year relationship and some people are reacting like it was a week or two college fling relationship.
Kirdei
It’s not like they met on Tinder for the first time a couple weeks ago and decided it wasn’t working out. They were all friends prior to the cheating incident. So being betrayed by your friends still sucks.
Dot
Because it was both! It lasted for years IRL and a couple weeks in-universe.
Big Z
What Kirdei said: Regardless of the length of their most recent “relationship” with the lads, they have a history that bears onto the situation (whether it’s Joe and Joyce growing as people together as friends and then briefly dating before she just abruptly decided “naw”, or Dorothy using Walky as “emergency dick” and “go away, I need you to not be a distraction” alternately), and it’s a significantly worse look for DoJo than “oh, well, we were dating our respective boyfriends for so little time it practically doesn’t matter”. I would be much more willing to credit that if they had each been dating some random with no history attached.
Psychie
Honestly, even if they were dating some random they just met, the fact that they led their respective partners to believe they were in exclusive relationships and then immediately cheated isn’t remotely cool regardless of prior history. Like, the prior history does make it worse, because these are established characters that we have an attachment to, and in-universe people in their immediate social circle that they will be interacting with regularly and purport to care about (and have other people in their circle who do care about them), but it would still be bad if these were random guys they met on tinder a couple weeks ago because of the indication of commitment that was broken. They made a commitment and then violated it, that’s not cool whether the commitment was seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, or centuries old.
Andy
Some of them have history and some have a semester plus a couple weeks. All the dating couples, just a semester.
not someone else
Asma has some real shit going on in her life… possibly like some of the commenters you mention, but she’s still handling what she’s going through better than a lot of people would.
GreyICE
Won’t explain herself, vaguely moralizing, a bit nonsensical? Checks out
Astariel
If Dorothy and Joyce had thought bubbles in panel 4:
Dorothy: “Of course Danny’s angry. We’ve acted terribly. I’m the worst.”
Joyce: “Who?”
anon
‘hat guy’ tho you’d think the ‘street cred’ of dating sal would make her remember his name now lol
mads_in_zero
“Hat Guy is dating Sal?”
“His name’s wonderbread! Ah mean, Danny. Shit.”
Dr. T
I’m quite certain she knows his name but she’s being a dismissive b-hole to him for the same she is a b-hole to Walky: They both dated Dorothy.
eh, whatever
No, we’ve been shown she doesn’t remember his face, only his hat.
ZombieKyrik
Well at least she’s giving them a heads-up? Also I’m glad at least one person from their friend group is “superpissed.”
Dot
I like everything about this strip except Asma apologizing.
Cameron Stone
No she’s saying sorry to us.
Taffy
Well, on behalf of every single person who’s ever so much as heard of this comic, I unilaterally reject Asma’s apology, because she’s performed no wrongdoing of any sort.
clif
Hey, I assumed she was apologizing to Sal, who after coming out on the premise that Asma wanted to hang out with her is now being walked out on.
Wizard
Hanging out with people you don’t like in hopes of meeting their hot friend whose name you don’t even know isn’t a huge sin, but it is kinda dumb. Not that anyone in this strip has a monopoly on that.
Bash
Walking out of a social event is pretty rude. She doesn’t need to grovel, but I understand why she said sorry.
Skychrono
Yeah, definitely this. Including the reluctance to say it.
Needfuldoer
She’s the one who deserves the apology. She’s the one who’s been thrust into the spotlight when she seemed happy with her background role.
Rosicrucian
I don’t know if “happy” is right here. “Resigned” might be more accurate.
Shogeton
I mean, why should Dorothy and Joyce apologize? It wasn’t like they misled her. Asma’s description would make me think of Sal before Alice too. Bit of a misunderstanding, and Asma is perhaps overreacting a lil’ bit but she’s got a lot of things so it’s all fair.
Psychie
Yeah, how was Asma wronged? Sure, there have been a series of misunderstandings, but she’s assigning malice when there is none. They didn’t try to co-opt the protest, they made an honest attempt to be better toward her when they realized they upset her and extended a sincere offer of friendship, and had a perfectly reasonable misunderstanding from Asma’s description of Alice. It’s not their fault they failed to read her mind to magically divine who she was talking about when multiple people in their circle fits the description provided, they assumed it was the one who is closer to them and a bigger part of their lives, that they’ve been seen hanging out with regularly instead of like once or twice, that’s a perfectly reasonable mistake to make.
They didn’t lie to her, or try to trick her, or try to hurt her, they literally have no idea what went wrong here. Asma did this to herself and they aren’t deserving of her ire.
Thing 2
Thrust? Sh decided to go.
Rosicrucian
I think she does it reflexively.
rando
I think she’s apologizing because Sal saying ‘you know where I live’ is making Asma consider this MIGHT be construed as an abuse of power situation, like Billie and the… Maple Leafs RA, blanking on her name
rando
I think she’s apologizing because Sal saying ‘you know where I live’ is making Asma consider this MIGHT be construed as an abuse of power situation, like how the administration viewed Billie and the… Maple Leafs RA, blanking on her name
clif
Handing people their mail is not normally a power situation.
Rectilinear Propagation
You’re thinking of Ruth aka “Ruthless”.
Thing 2
Why wouldn’t she apologise? She is walking dismissively away as soon as Sal turns up, no explanation to Sal. What is Sal to think? Very rude.
And unnecessarily rude to two other people: if she doesn’t like them, rebuffs attempts to converse, why go with them? They were presumably being used as a means to an end. Too right it was a mistake. And what has she got against them beyond her own assumptions anyway?
Pocky
I mean, she did totally ot check who the leather jacket boots girl was before having them set this whole thing up. And dipping now is kind of rude.
Sirksome
Maybe next time Asma.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Is this some DoA version of the anime vanishing eyes thing?
Leorale
Sal’s rolling her eyes.
anon
well, yo ucan still see one of her eyes in the last panel
Amós Batista
hahaha
I want to try and put some full eyes on Sal in this page. It will be an interesting result
Warmth
The cyclopean are being revealed, the reckoning has begun!
Odo
I guess the joke is how much Sal doesn’t care about her brother?
Dot
She cares but she’s putting on a front because that’s how Sal operates.
Grimey
Eh I if this is the best we can get, I’ll take it.
Thag Simmons
I think she’s broadly unsympathetic to his obviously doomed rebound ending, and to his relationship woes in general.
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about him, but her empathy for his troubles is less than total.
Sirksome
Walky’s love life recently has been especially ridiculous from Sal’s perspective. I really don’t get where the expectation she should care so much about it comes from. He’s had 3 girlfriends in a week.
clif
And has recently had confirmation on her phone that her prediction of how long it would take him to have another was technically wrong but broadly correct.
clif
See https://www.dumbingofage.com/comic/whatinheck/
HueSatLight
It’s a little over a week from when Walky introduced Lucy to his parents as his girlfriend. Then introduced Amber as his girlfiend, in his ‘shenanigans’ to wreck dinner with their parents (and Danny) to somehow get them to approve of Lucy. Whom he was misleading and she rightly dumped him. Then doomed rebound with Dorothy. Not even doomed because of Joyce. The writing came pre-written on the wall.
Odo
So Sal is justified in being less sympathetic to Walky because he was recently dumped?
“You were dumped a week ago, and then got back in a relationship with your ex who then chose to cheat on you… get over yourself”
Reaver
Yes… Sal is justified to feel however she pleases about Walky and his string of ladies?
Coatl
It seems so… Sal’s lack of interest is going to backfire on him sooner or later.
Kyulen
I guess so. I’m glad that my sister and I care much more about each other than Sal seems to care about her brother.
anon
i wonder how much she’d adjust her opinion of his current state if she found out that amber slept over in his room
YourCousinJay
Both Sal and Walky have trouble conveying genuine vulnerability so they can only really express their feelings through, in Sal’s case, a kind of casualness that makes it seem she doesn’t care at all.
furubatsu
In Sal’s defence, not only did she not think Walky still held Dorothy on a pedestal of sorts when he got back with her, but if you go alllll they way back to the first time Sal’s mentioned, Walky tells Billie that he has had basically nothing to do with her since she was sent away to boarding school (which was what, 4 years in universe for them?) and while Walky’s made strides in trying to show up for Sal they’ve mostly been when Sal’s not around to actually see him process his complicated feelings about their seperation/relationship with thier parents. It would be nice to see her make the effort on her end to have his back after seeing Walky try, but I also think for Sally Walkerton, it’ll take a bit more before she feels like she can show him that kind of support.
chuckroast
Justified.
Nono
Wonder who Danny is mad at more: his ex-girlfriend that gave bisexuals a bad name by cheating, or someone he barely talks to who broke his best friend’s heart (and I guess also gave bisexuals a bad name by cheating).
Thag Simmons
I would assume Dorothy? Both because he like actually knows her, but also because he expects better from her.
He doesn’t really know Joyce that well, and I don’t think he has high expectations of the girl who can’t be bothered to learn his name after months of being in the same social circles.
Bittersweet
They’re in the same social circle like I’m in the same social circle as my state politicians. Like, it’s one degree of Kevin Bacon separation but that’s a pretty wide degree, I don’t think they’ve spoken to each other more than twice lol. She knows a lotta people who know Danny and Danny knows a lotta people who know Joyce, but they’ve never sat at a table together.
Dot
? He’s her (ex?) boyfriend’s best friend, current girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend, and current boyfriend of her friend Sal. They’re in the same circles.
Thag Simmons
Do you attend your state politicians parties? Are they dating your best friend? Are literally all your closest friends also their friends?
Cbwroses
They don’t hang out.
I don’t think he’s ever eaten lunch with the majority of the friend group or walked to class with the math group.
Danny’s gone to Joyce’s parties, but that’s more or less the extent of their personal interactions.
His relationship with Joyce is basically as Sal’s plus 1, because when he and Joe hangout, they don’t do so with the friend group.
Lucy is a much bigger part of the friend group, and that’s saying something considering that up until the last couple weeks, she was only there cuz of Walky.
If Joyce were the sun and the friend group was the planets, Danny would be Pluto: in orbit around her, but not very close, and, arguably, not a real planet/friend.
Adam Black
Himself, becuase Dorothy actual got laid and he was queerbaiting character thats thinks BI means making stupid puns
kdmw
Are you saying Danny is queerbaiting? How?
signseeker
Queerbaiting involves a media creator indicating that their work will include LGBTQ characters and then not doing so. Danny isn’t “queerbaiting” just because he and Ethan didn’t end up fucking.
Dave
I mean, he soooooooorta was? Danny was revealed to be bisexual specifically so that Ethan could have a hypothetical romantic partner (this was explicitly stated by Willis at the time that it happened, it was significant since Danny has decades of pre-Dumbing of Age history and Willis established that sexual orientations are consistent across both the Walkyverse and here), but even before Mike bit the big one it culminated in both Danny and Ethan agreeing that they could never ever smooch for the sake of not betraying Amber. If Joyce and Dorothy being best friends was queerbaiting, I’m unsure how Danny and Ethan’s story hasn’t been the same thing.
Marcie’s in a similar boat where she was revealed as bisexual but her plotline of yearning for Malaya was seemingly aborted; we saw the beginning of a conversation where something SEEMED like it was beginning to develop seven whole years ago, like the very start of a flame kindling, and Marcie’s only showed up as a background character a few times since. She got way more story focus on her bisexuality than Danny did, in fairness. And of course we know what ended up happening with Billie and Ruth.
Bisexual characters don’t HAVE to end up in same gendered relationships and it’s biphobic in real life to say someone isn’t bisexual if their partner is a different gender than their own, but it does seem like the same gender side of bisexuality was scarce on the ground up until Joyce and Dorothy got together, I think?
Hannah
This is a reply to Dave.
I don’t think Dorothy and Joyce being best friends was queerbaiting, what would have been queerbaiting would have been never acknowledging that they were attracted to eachother. Danny and Ethan were both acknowledged in story to be attracted to eachother so I don’t think that counts
John Campbell
Joyce’s inability to remember Hat Guy’s name is a running gag, an ironic reversal of the Walkyverse, where most of her Roomies! personality was “Danny’s psycho stalker”. But sure, of course, she’s the worst human being who ever existed.
Thag Simmons
I am aware of the joke and I think it’s a pretty funny joke, and being kind of petty and passive-aggressive to your girlfriend’s ex is very normal sort of behaviour.
I just think it’s likely that antipathy goes both ways.