The legendary early-aughts webcomic that inspired a wave of webcomic creators.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Fantomestein
Beka Duke
Desperate for companionship, Frankenstein's Monster pretends to be the Opera Ghost. A grave mistake.
2 Slices
RJ Morel
After a case of mistaken identity, will awkward Daisuke find help from excitable Mamo, or will his love life be thrown completely off track?
The Otherknown
Lorian Merriman
Chandra is a 12-year-old accidental time traveler with a reluctant new dad, who happens to be a member of a feared galactic crime syndicate.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Countdown to Countdown
Velinxi
Iris Black is a self-proclaimed inventor with the curious ability to bring his drawings to life, and yearns to find a space where he can use his powers freely.
Slightly Damned
Chu
Rhea Snaketail returns from the dead, befriending a Demon who falls in love with an Angel. The afterlife ain't what it used to be!
Beeserker
TJ Cordes
This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Paint the Town Red
Windy, Winter Jay Kiakas
Winona runs a werewolf shelter with partner in crime, Odile in the Gothic city of Merlot. One day they take in an injured vampire, and soon unravels many of the dark secrets of Merlot.
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It’s possible. Though it’s a level of awareness that I’m not sure I can see earlyDoA!Danny having, so I doubt it was something she told him while they were still dating.
It’s possible that she told him and he didn’t comprehend until later when he had done more introspection. Like, he understood it on a surface level as a general “fact” that Dorothy had told him, and then later when he actually sat down and tried to sort himself out he remembered that “fact” but now had the proper context to understand how it was relevant to him, personally. That understanding led him to be able to give the fact to Joe when Joe was doing a similar sort of introspection but didn’t already have the “fact” in his head.
If you think of the information itself as a key that opens a door in your head, having the key doesn’t do you a whole lotta good until you go looking to open the door. Danny might have had the key but didn’t go looking for the door until later, Joe was trying to open the door but needed the key.
I mean, if Dorothy could surmount the Sisipheyan rock of her own personal issues, they might bury the hatchet pretty easily with some frank conversation, and, Willis being merciful, love could bloom
So in other words, it’s absolutely never gonna happen
I just think that a triangle that relies on two people who begrudgingly tolerate each other at best getting along is a triangle with a major point of failure.
Agreed, and while my supposition was meant to indicate they could work up to a better relationship than that with some minor mutual effort, I also acknowledge that it’s incredibly unlikely.
My personal interpretation is Joe’s prob’ly putting 2 and 2 together that Joyce is bi and doesn’t realize it. Why else would proving they can touch without romance or sexuality require an “until” statement?
Like what? Oh, do you mean that she did not consider the possibility that Joyce and Joe did the horizontal tango? In that case, I think Joyce wears her heart on her sleeve and has some strong feels about that sort of thing. Therefore, a Dorothy could probably tell.
You mean she failed to consider the possibility that Joyce had “character growth” that meant she now did associate all forms of phycial contact with sex, and therefore needed the same disentangling as Joe? Because, honestly, I never considered that either.
Okay, I’ve reread the strip and I’m now seeing her comment in panel 3 as less “I don’t think Joyce has any trouble with the concept of non-sexual physical contact” and more “I think Joyce should probably be more cautious about physical contact with you“. Which is kind of crappy, but I still can’t see it as failing to recognise character growth.
For the record this is what I was thinking of too. Dorothy makes the assumption that Joyce can separate sexual and non-sexual physical contact, despite zero evidence to support that premise, as well as evidence shown to the audience, in the form of events outside Dorothy’s knowledge, that she probably can’t as of this moment
I mean that in other strips we as the audience, but also importantly Joe as a character, have been shown that Joyce needs to normalize physical contact with the opposite sex. She refuses to lay down when Joe is asleep because she’s worried about what she might do. Joe saw that event, made a comment based on that knowledge, and Dorothy walks up and assumes that Joe is talking out of his ass
I’m trying to place that avatar, because I feel like I’ve seen this before, and I’ve got to say “long unskippable cutscene” “nihilism” and “-us van something” are all not helping me narrow it down at all.
Gaius is the old-school of FFXIV villains, kids these days are all about the PC’s evil self-proclaimed bestie Zenos or the incredibly outrageous and 100% done Ancient king of serving conga, Emet-Selch.
You’re correct and they’re pulling your leg. It’s actually Gaius van Baelsar from critically acclaimed MMORPG FFXIV, now with a free trial through level 70 including all Stormblood content.
Thag, I can’t believe you haven’t heard of the critically acclaimed action RPG Kingdom Hearts 2. You can play through the entirety of the base game fully remastered AND experience the award-winning Final Mix content, with no restrictions on playtime.
Yea FFXIV advertising is a meme. Like people literally have reaction images with that text that come up whenever anyone mentions Genshin Impact. It’s fine it’s fine it’s fine.
The actual, non-smartass answer is: It was an image of Gaius van Baelsar, from Final Fantasy XIV (free through the third expansion!), paired with an edit of an iconic quote of his. After a bigger villain tricks him into setting off a magical nuke called Ultima, he looks around at the damage and says “Such devastation. This was not my intention!”, despite summoning the power of three captured gods to try and murder you like two minutes ago.
SMN here. It’s great for my ADHD, cuz it’s simple and colorful (go ahead, make fun of that it’ll make you* look really cool), but on days when I can manage more complex planning, I’m a big fan of RDM for being super flashy.
I feel like he’s trying to find a way to have the joke be funny but realizing no matter how he plays it it’s just going to sound like “hurr lesbians hot durr”. And he’s sad because that’s an image he doesn’t want to have be his anymore but it’s refusing to leave him, maybe he can’t ever change how people see him; maybe it’s better to just throw it all away and go “should I leave you two alone for an hour?”
He already kind of suspects, doesn’t he? For instance, when Amber quips “I’m pretty sure Dorothy’s straight,” he seems to immediately know what she’s implying. Plus he knows about their “laundry days.”
i can’t rly think of the last platonic male she could physically hug that’s not among her relatives; i’m sure ethan could use a hug tho not sure when they’ll get a chance to interact next
I’m also sure Joe’s roommate is both available for hugging on request and sufficiently not A Guy Associated With Sexuality to Joyce that the experiment should be made
–Dave, and then we need to test how much of an outlier hugging Sal would be. with consent of course, gotta pass the ethics board
ps: also, a good sub-name for this whole strip would have been Sinfest but that’s memetically polluted now
well, if she can learn dan’s name but i think he’s gonna focus on sal, tho a double date with them would prolly be more pleasant than a double date with walky/lucy would’ve been
Dorothy’s potential queer revelation: that meme of a guy at a blackboard sweatily diagramming shit and progressively yelling about it more and more until it’s jump-cut to a hydrogen bomb going off
The sheer volume of guilt Joyce would have upon realization that she and Becky COULD have been a thing will kick start the revival of the Catholic Church in a tri-state area.
Yeah but like, it’s Joyce. She’d immediately seek Becky out to apologize or her attempt to let it fester would be so comically obvious Becky would call her out on it. She ain’t gonna die on that hill.
Or just too repressed for most of her life to have allowed for the possibility, it’s not like that’s at all uncommon sadly. That’s not my read of things right now but it could easily have happened that way.
Yup. Not even just when people are repressed. I was raised in a very NOT homophobic family (both my parents were theatre majors, which tended to be a pretty accepting crowd even back then, had gay friends, and explained what “gay” meant by the time I was in like, 2nd or 3rd grade) but I didn’t realize I was bi until my mid-30s.
Mainly just because being attracted to both (and being attracted to women less frequently than men) it was easy to just assume I was straight because society conditions us to view that as the “default.” And since I was growing up in the 90s, I wasn’t really exposed to much in the way of discussion about variable examples of identities. When people like me, who were mostly attracted to men, were attracted to a girl, it was dismissively called a “girl crush” in a way that implied it wasn’t a *real* crush, and I internalized that and was just…oblivious for decades.
Becky might feel pretty bad about it, but like hell that’s how Joyce would frame it and Becky would, I am 99% sure, accept a bi Joyce, especially if said bi Joyce was confessing everything to her like a leaky dam made of tears and guilt, a scenario I find incredibly likely. Like, I know the comic’s Dumbing and all but there’s dumbing and then there’s shit that wouldn’t happen.
Joyce does not hold anything back, ever.
Which is endearing (to a point, where it becomes “a bit much”) but don’t, like, ask her to keep a secret.
She’d try, as earnestly as she does everything else, but uhhh…
i can see the ‘entertainment’ of shipping them as fictional charas, but irl if i was in that friend group i’d feel bad for becky given how long she’s carried a torch for her(or whatever that metaphor is), not that she’d be obligated to date becky just because she was first into her
This is probably the root of Becky’s dislike of Dorothy, even if Joyce doesn’t have outright romantic feelings for Dorothy, Joyce’s feelings for her are a lot closer to romantic than they are for Becky.
Honestly that’s one reason I’m not into the pairing. Becky’s been through so much that “Joyce is into women, actually, it’s just YOU she finds repulsive” feels terrible. If these were real people, Becky would have to get over it, accept that these things happen sometimes, she’s happier with Dina anyway, etc. But since they’re NOT real people, it just seems cruel. Becky has her flaws to work on, but she doesn’t deserve cruelty.
That’s just me overly and illogically sympathizing with a fictional character in a free comic strip, though, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . Cruelty to her isn’t real; it’s storytelling
I feel very similarly re: Becky and it being cruel to her, which doesn’t help at all with my other primary reasons for Not Being Into Joyce/Dorothy (see my other comments, see also: Dorothy’s whole current jealousy/protection/obsession complex)
I’m not a fan of the Joyce/Dorothy ship either.
And just as you mention, those complexes that Dorothy shows only make her appear as the villain of the story, and in my opinion it is not fair that some see her that way.
I may be wrong, but Joyce also has some possessive details about Dorothy.
I don’t think it’s responsible to label anyone a villain in this situation. Like, Dorothy isn’t in the wrong for how she feels, nor is Joyce, no one has actually crossed any lines and I fully admit I’m engaged in supposition and vibe checking.
I think the framing of “she finds Becky repulsive” makes it feel cruel, but uh, that’s clearly not how she feels. She does love Becky, she loves her very much, she just loves her in a way that is fundamentally not compatible with the way Becky wanted Joyce to love her.
That core truth remains the same whether Joyce is capable of same-sex attraction or not.
That’s absolutely true from an objective standpoint that we have as the audience, and I think it’s good you point that out because as audience members we should keep it in mind, but in this particular case I think we’re all on the same page: we recognize the objective truth that Joyce’s romantic rejection of Dorothy isn’t a rejection of Dorothy the person, it’s just that rejection experience from Becky’s perspective is a little, uh, too familiar. And painful! It sucks!
IN A VACUUM, though, I also believe Becky and the audience both know that that perceived cruelty isn’t a reason to disqualify Joyce/Dorothy.
Hence my mentioning of the other, much more disqualifying reasons Dorothy keeps collecting.
The rejection is painful and it sucks, for both of them honestly, but it’s also a turning point and both characters manage to grow from it and end in better places than they started.
So yeah, in terms of reasons Dorothy and Joyce maybe shouldn’t be a thing it does not rank highly for me.
I think that while Becky was developing a crush, Joyce was thinking of Becky as a surrogate sister. Romance with Becky feels weird, but a girl that she met when she was already eighteen is a different story.
I think “repulsive” is a very strong word. If Joyce is into women, but not Becky, it may be that she found her overly familiar/sororal, or that the timing was wrong, and she wasn’t willing to admit it to herself (as she still isn’t, if it’s the case), or maybe just that she still felt Ethan had her heart, or that Becky just didn’t stack up to Dorothy.
It is not cruel to not reciprocate a crush. It happens all the time in real life. Whether or not Joyce is actually attracted to women, she is clearly not attracted to Becky in that way. Joyce is under no obligation to return her feelings even if she discovers at a later point that she is not as straight as she thought she was. Sure that sucks for Becky, but nobody is ever obligated to reciprocate someone else’s romantic advances regardless of gender.
To hopefully be even clearer: That’s why I said I was being illogical. I was treating Becky and Joyce as *characters*, not people, but then still reacting as if cruelty to Becky matters in that context. It doesn’t; she’s not real.
Thank you. Everyone acts like Joyce being queer would mean that she owes Becky reciprocal romantic feelings. But that’s just not how the real world works. One-sided crushes happen all the time. It might hurt Becky, but she’s a big girl who has a loving partner; she can deal with it.
childhood friends aspect aside it’d be great if ppl don’t take it personally like how ppl used to raise an eyebrow/keep distance if they find out someone their gender is gay but doesn’t mean they chase them, like how every girl that is willing to flirt with some guys or dates for fun doesn’t mean they’ll say yes to everyone
Not to kick Dorothy when she’s down, but panel 3 is an example of her ‘wisdom’ being mediocre. Joyce spent all night awake, afraid of cuddling with Joe.
And maybe it’s the way the first three panels are drawn, but it feels like she’s air-dropping into a personal conversation too. Just doing some confirmation bias, re: Dorothy’s crush/jealousy. And I think Joe’s noticing it too, from Dorothy’s face in the last panel.
Well, one night of Karaoke is not enough to fix all the problems she has, it is obvious that there is still a lot of character development in Dorothy that is needed.
Honestly, I don’t want Dorohty to go through any more hardships than lead to something fatal.
Joe’s expression clearly shows that he feels threatened, but with Joyce’s last comment, he may also be thinking something else.
She could be a lot more content if she realized she was ordinary. She’s going to keep making hardship for herself until she does.
I don’t know if he’s feeling threatened (the emotion), but I think he’s learning new context for why Dorothy threatened him in Taco Bell. He might be fantasizing about Joyce and Dorothy together, but he seems to think about Joyce sexually with a different part of his brain than he’s horny for everyone else.
I remember, when her parents went to visit her, they never seemed to pressure her, if not quite the opposite, they just wanted her to look for something that would make her happy.
And Dorothy made it clear that she wants to be at the top and not look for something so simple and that should be being Dorothy’s character development….simple things and being someone normal is not bad.
Not private in a nobody else was meant to hear way but definitely in the sense that Joes words were only seeking Joyce’s opinions and Dorothy interjected were her opinion wasn’t beng sought out and making a couples conversation about herself.
It’s fairly common in real life, and it’s often not a big deal. But I think how it’s visually presented here means it has significance. i think it has to do with jealousy she doesn’t think she’s having, and I think we’ve seen her presented doing the same thing before.
Dotty. Really. You’re gonna spend last night belting an anthem about how managing Joyce’s feelings and problems is wearing you out, why doesn’t she notice your feelings etc., and then bust this particular move, the next morning? Really, Dots? You gonna live like this? It’s not the coolest look in town! Joe has a shirt about this look!
I do think that song was less pointedly about Joyce and more about her general relationship to her peers, and the expectations she holds herself to. After all, she decided she wanted to sing it upon Sal and 2 of her exes crashing the party – if anything, the song was directed at Walky, who has been insisting she’ll be fine the entire timeskip (April 11, 2023 strip “Up an’ at ’em” is a great example), and he along with Danny, Joyce, Mike, and Amazigirl are depicted as people who she seems to believe have great expectations of her (based off of panel 2 of August 18, 2023’s strip “Get me out”). But, again, I don’t think it was necessarily about someone specific. It was a very literal cry for help, “I am not okay,” because she has so much unresolved trauma, she can’t admit it unless she’s buzzed and feels she has no other option.
not having either of her romantic interests at this point reciprocate and being in desperate need of intimacy (emotional, physical, sexual) is definitely not helping, though, but I’d also argue she’d not be a great partner at the moment considering the emotional state she’s in…
I remember during 2020 I realized that it had been an entire year since I had touched another human being. Now I’m back in the real world but I still can’t help but notice I very rarely actually have physical interaction with people. Sucks.
Honestly, I’m there too. I’ve got exactly two friends I consider close enough for casual physical contact and one of them lives in a different country. Been coming to terms with how touch starved I might be ever since Danny brought it up to Joe.
Without a full archive binge and clear definition for what we’re counting as a lesbian experience I’m not comfortable trying to place where it is on a count, but it is definitely not the first.
I don’t think I’d count either one of those. Not without Joyce thinking at least “oh, so that’s what’s happening here. OK….” She was horrified by the earlier encounter and (I’m convinced) would be horrified by what has been suggested here about the latter.
Ok am I the only one initially confused because of the word break Demon-stration” and Joyce was about to make some sort of religious comment because she emphasized “demon”?
Perception has been a dump stat in almost every campaign I’ve been in. One party member with a high passive is all you need if the party never splits, because they’ll just notice everything for you, and then everyone else can spend those points on a more useful stat. Give everyone a good Perception score and the DM will just make every other character a fucking ninja, in a senseless attempt at “balancing” the game.
I mean, things can change, this strip still going to go for many years most likely. Can you imagine the earliest versions of these characters doing some of the things they do now?
Rewriting because I shouldn’t be allowed to write anything at 5 AM:
Joe, you shouldn’t left your girlfriend hug her friend like this!
You better do what is necessary to do: go back to your dorm and give the most tight hug to Danny.
Oof, yeah, i didn’t think about it but that’s gotta suck. Those things are fragile, to the point where mine had tape on one side and wire on the other to keep it together for like 6 months
… so, wait. If this interaction implies to onlookers something romantic between Dorothy and Joyce…. does that mean Dorothy’s NEVER getting her face back?
“I’m on the fence on whether that’s a detangling joyce’s need”
Still figuring out if Dorothy is trying hard to be a politician or her soul is a 60 years old teacher.
The reason Joyce is such a good friend for Dorothy is because she understands that Dorothy’s problems have nothing to do with her. So while Dorothy’s going every way catastrophising half to shit, Joyce is literally just having a spine, not being affected positively or negatively by Dorothy’s actions too strongly but still enjoying her company as a person. Let her have this.
Let Dorothy have her moment getting between Joe and Joyce AGAIN? After she said that they’d be alright and that she needed to stop meddling? I saw a comment further up the page that Joyce spent the entire night wide awake on the opposite side of the bed from Joe. She DOES need the detangling. Dorothy’s back on her bullshit.
Someone is citing the MA constitutional provision explicitly allowing the state to impede federal marshals enforcing the fugitive slave act, DAMN the average citizen is radicalized
you’re laughing. the largest antebellum plantation house burned down & there are brides who will not get to spiritually absorb the poisoned spectral energy of the land for their big day, & you’re laughing.
Me if I ever see Tony Hawk: Hey you’re Tony Hawk the famous skateboarder. That’s right I recognise you. Won’t be able to get any content out of this will you, you piece of shit
How to read all 28 issues of my Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane run on Marvel Unlimited:
1: The first four issues were published as the miniseries "Mary Jane."
www.marvel.com/comics/serie...
today in #9chickweedlane i learned we have to be shown children learning and relearning what sex is, for Reasons, even though they already clearly know and have prepared nuanced questions about it!
also that Gran must hate, if she's still alive, how Old Juliette is the same but with gray hair
one of my favorite things is when a commenter explodes WHEN DO THESE CHARACTERS GET THERAPY but directed towards a character who canonically has a regular therapist
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 2d
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
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Dotty’s face was never seen again
THE MERGING IS COMPLETE
POWER OVERWHELMING
(this was a Starcraft reference, right?)
She will be assimilated
Heh-heh; I said Ass
I am so sorry! I was trying to click off the alt text and I accidentally reported your comment!
GIVE ME YOUR FAAAAAACE
(someone had to)
Your FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE
Neither was Joe’s zipper.
Now I’m wondering what the odds are that Danny picked that up from Dorothy in the first place.
It’s possible. Though it’s a level of awareness that I’m not sure I can see earlyDoA!Danny having, so I doubt it was something she told him while they were still dating.
It’s possible that she told him and he didn’t comprehend until later when he had done more introspection. Like, he understood it on a surface level as a general “fact” that Dorothy had told him, and then later when he actually sat down and tried to sort himself out he remembered that “fact” but now had the proper context to understand how it was relevant to him, personally. That understanding led him to be able to give the fact to Joe when Joe was doing a similar sort of introspection but didn’t already have the “fact” in his head.
If you think of the information itself as a key that opens a door in your head, having the key doesn’t do you a whole lotta good until you go looking to open the door. Danny might have had the key but didn’t go looking for the door until later, Joe was trying to open the door but needed the key.
“I got it from A-gnes, she got it from Jim / We all agree it must have been Lou-ise who gave it to him …”
–Dave, a little song, all about FRIENDSHIP
Friendship with benefits and also venereal disease. Good old Tom Lehrer.
His expression in the last panel makes me think this is not helping Joe disassociate this sort of behavior from sexual thoughts.
A trait he shares with many of the readers, of course.
He’s trying, the poor bloke, and I bless him for that
To be fair, they masturbated together in a laundry room, and Joe knows about this…
Given the looks on both Joe and Dorothy’s faces, I think the feeling might be mutual.
**crosses fingers and chants**
Polycule, polycule, polycule…
Maybe a little too much bad blood between Joe and Dorothy for that to be long term viable?
I mean, if Dorothy could surmount the Sisipheyan rock of her own personal issues, they might bury the hatchet pretty easily with some frank conversation, and, Willis being merciful, love could bloom
So in other words, it’s absolutely never gonna happen
I just think that a triangle that relies on two people who begrudgingly tolerate each other at best getting along is a triangle with a major point of failure.
Agreed, and while my supposition was meant to indicate they could work up to a better relationship than that with some minor mutual effort, I also acknowledge that it’s incredibly unlikely.
yeah but it would be dramatic and hot
Joe: You two do what you need to do. I’ll be over here by the wall.
The proper term is “I’ll be in my bunk.”
He can’t watch from his bunk.
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell *can* be polyamory, I guess… I don’t think anything else would work with those two
His expression looks to me like, “Oh, no, am I already loosing the new-found love of my life?”
My personal interpretation is Joe’s prob’ly putting 2 and 2 together that Joyce is bi and doesn’t realize it. Why else would proving they can touch without romance or sexuality require an “until” statement?
Love how Dorothy fails to consider that things may have occurred that she’s not aware of
Like what? Oh, do you mean that she did not consider the possibility that Joyce and Joe did the horizontal tango? In that case, I think Joyce wears her heart on her sleeve and has some strong feels about that sort of thing. Therefore, a Dorothy could probably tell.
More like “Joyce can have character growth outside of Dorothy’s influence”.
You mean she failed to consider the possibility that Joyce had “character growth” that meant she now did associate all forms of phycial contact with sex, and therefore needed the same disentangling as Joe? Because, honestly, I never considered that either.
Okay, I’ve reread the strip and I’m now seeing her comment in panel 3 as less “I don’t think Joyce has any trouble with the concept of non-sexual physical contact” and more “I think Joyce should probably be more cautious about physical contact with you“. Which is kind of crappy, but I still can’t see it as failing to recognise character growth.
I don’t know if this is what Jacob Crawford meant, but it’s what I thought of. https://www.dumbingofage.com/cuddle/
For the record this is what I was thinking of too. Dorothy makes the assumption that Joyce can separate sexual and non-sexual physical contact, despite zero evidence to support that premise, as well as evidence shown to the audience, in the form of events outside Dorothy’s knowledge, that she probably can’t as of this moment
I mean that in other strips we as the audience, but also importantly Joe as a character, have been shown that Joyce needs to normalize physical contact with the opposite sex. She refuses to lay down when Joe is asleep because she’s worried about what she might do. Joe saw that event, made a comment based on that knowledge, and Dorothy walks up and assumes that Joe is talking out of his ass
Feels like a reach.
tbf most ppl aren’t as self reflective/sometimes don’t notice obvious things til they’re pointed out from another person’s perspective
Didn’t Joyce say something about cherishing those moments when she’s breathing the same air as Dorothy? And didn’t Dorothy find that a little freaky?
Such demonstration. This was not my intention.
This is what you get for that fifteen minute-long unskippable cutscene about how to believe in Joe is to believe in nothing, Dorothus van Keensar!
I’m trying to place that avatar, because I feel like I’ve seen this before, and I’ve got to say “long unskippable cutscene” “nihilism” and “-us van something” are all not helping me narrow it down at all.
It’s from Kingdom Hearts 2.
Well, I was assuming Final Fantasy, so I’m close!
They’re messing with you, it’s the final boss of FF14 a real reborn, Gaius Van Baelsar.
Well now my bit just looks stupid!
Ah, so my instincts were correct. I even would have gotten the game right, although I think I was assuming this guy was a different FF14 character.
Gaius is the old-school of FFXIV villains, kids these days are all about the PC’s evil self-proclaimed bestie Zenos or the incredibly outrageous and 100% done Ancient king of serving conga, Emet-Selch.
You’re correct and they’re pulling your leg. It’s actually Gaius van Baelsar from critically acclaimed MMORPG FFXIV, now with a free trial through level 70 including all Stormblood content.
Thag, I can’t believe you haven’t heard of the critically acclaimed action RPG Kingdom Hearts 2. You can play through the entirety of the base game fully remastered AND experience the award-winning Final Mix content, with no restrictions on playtime.
was not expecting these levels of MMORPG advertising in the comments to-day
–Dave, not that there’s anything wrong with that
Yea FFXIV advertising is a meme. Like people literally have reaction images with that text that come up whenever anyone mentions Genshin Impact. It’s fine it’s fine it’s fine.
Ask Me About LOOM
The actual, non-smartass answer is: It was an image of Gaius van Baelsar, from Final Fantasy XIV (free through the third expansion!), paired with an edit of an iconic quote of his. After a bigger villain tricks him into setting off a magical nuke called Ultima, he looks around at the damage and says “Such devastation. This was not my intention!”, despite summoning the power of three captured gods to try and murder you like two minutes ago.
I don’t wanna raid with y’all. Too many NIN players.
MCH main. Lends itself well to my rotation of “hit him with everything that’s not in cooldown”. 🤭
SMN here. It’s great for my ADHD, cuz it’s simple and colorful (go ahead, make fun of that it’ll make you* look really cool), but on days when I can manage more complex planning, I’m a big fan of RDM for being super flashy.
*That’s the Royal You, for the record.
It may not have been Dorothy’s intent, but last panel Dorothy is smiling.
much hug
so affection
very friends
WoW
Okay, Chekhov’s Implied Lesbian Romance is getting really hard to ignore.
Poor Joe. They are just rubbing it in his face (or well here it is actually each other’s but you get the drift).
I feel like he’s trying to find a way to have the joke be funny but realizing no matter how he plays it it’s just going to sound like “hurr lesbians hot durr”. And he’s sad because that’s an image he doesn’t want to have be his anymore but it’s refusing to leave him, maybe he can’t ever change how people see him; maybe it’s better to just throw it all away and go “should I leave you two alone for an hour?”
“… I’ll be in my bunk, er I mean loft bed”
We’re not in Act Three yet.
Dumbing of Age Book 14: Many Men Suffer From This
That would a great title.
definitely a top contender imo
…Honestly, that would be fucking hilarious.
+1
Joyce, that’s the best worst pickup line I’ve ever heard.
Good, Dorothy is touch starved, too.
I feel like Joyce is rather badly failing to make her point.
She’s got less sex entangled with touch than Dorothy even.
…I mean I’m not sure how sexual this is but it’s certainly reading at least a little romantic
wonder how retroactively frustrated becky was with joyce back then given her affectionate naure
oh the _romance_ factor between those two has been breaking the meter for some time now
Joe In The Last Panel: Hold up
He already kind of suspects, doesn’t he? For instance, when Amber quips “I’m pretty sure Dorothy’s straight,” he seems to immediately know what she’s implying. Plus he knows about their “laundry days.”
she was also like ‘technically dorothy’ when she talked about holding hands with ppl romantically lol
I feel like Joyce’s only experiences of touch with men are sexual in nature. She could definitely do with some detangling, let’s be honest.
i can’t rly think of the last platonic male she could physically hug that’s not among her relatives; i’m sure ethan could use a hug tho not sure when they’ll get a chance to interact next
I’m also sure Joe’s roommate is both available for hugging on request and sufficiently not A Guy Associated With Sexuality to Joyce that the experiment should be made
–Dave, and then we need to test how much of an outlier hugging Sal would be. with consent of course, gotta pass the ethics board
ps: also, a good sub-name for this whole strip would have been Sinfest but that’s memetically polluted now
well, if she can learn dan’s name but i think he’s gonna focus on sal, tho a double date with them would prolly be more pleasant than a double date with walky/lucy would’ve been
So how long until Joyce realizes she’s queer?
Honestly, I don’t think Joyce’s queer revelation is gonna be the problem
Like, at all
Dorothy’s potential queer revelation: that meme of a guy at a blackboard sweatily diagramming shit and progressively yelling about it more and more until it’s jump-cut to a hydrogen bomb going off
Joyce’s potential queer revelation: Oh no! Anyway,
The sheer volume of guilt Joyce would have upon realization that she and Becky COULD have been a thing will kick start the revival of the Catholic Church in a tri-state area.
Yeah but like, it’s Joyce. She’d immediately seek Becky out to apologize or her attempt to let it fester would be so comically obvious Becky would call her out on it. She ain’t gonna die on that hill.
“So listen, Becky, turns out that I’m bi after all, I’m just so completely not into you specifically that I just assumed I was straight. My bad.”
Or just too repressed for most of her life to have allowed for the possibility, it’s not like that’s at all uncommon sadly. That’s not my read of things right now but it could easily have happened that way.
Yup. Not even just when people are repressed. I was raised in a very NOT homophobic family (both my parents were theatre majors, which tended to be a pretty accepting crowd even back then, had gay friends, and explained what “gay” meant by the time I was in like, 2nd or 3rd grade) but I didn’t realize I was bi until my mid-30s.
Mainly just because being attracted to both (and being attracted to women less frequently than men) it was easy to just assume I was straight because society conditions us to view that as the “default.” And since I was growing up in the 90s, I wasn’t really exposed to much in the way of discussion about variable examples of identities. When people like me, who were mostly attracted to men, were attracted to a girl, it was dismissively called a “girl crush” in a way that implied it wasn’t a *real* crush, and I internalized that and was just…oblivious for decades.
Ouch!
Dammit, I talked about this.
Becky might feel pretty bad about it, but like hell that’s how Joyce would frame it and Becky would, I am 99% sure, accept a bi Joyce, especially if said bi Joyce was confessing everything to her like a leaky dam made of tears and guilt, a scenario I find incredibly likely. Like, I know the comic’s Dumbing and all but there’s dumbing and then there’s shit that wouldn’t happen.
Joyce does not hold anything back, ever.
Which is endearing (to a point, where it becomes “a bit much”) but don’t, like, ask her to keep a secret.
She’d try, as earnestly as she does everything else, but uhhh…
Ultimate Joyce revelation: Joyce is bi, but not attracted to Becky or Dorothy. How she acts with Dorothy is because she has a “skewed idea of what platonic lady friendship should be like“. She’s attracted to Sal.
You’re like a sister to me.
Surely “Queer Revelation” is already a band name.
Google says there is “Crystal Queer Revelation” but couldn’t find just plain old “Queer Revelation” with a quick glance.
“Detangling Joyce” would be a good band name also.
I don’t have any hope, sincerely.
all of Joyce’s facial expressions in today’s strip are so cute!!
That expression from Joe is already creating ideas in the last panel.
Oh yeah. OH yeah. Panel 5 Joe is figuring shit out.
the brightness behind his eye dots
So you imply you have already touched each other within those premises, then.
Cute
tho reminds me of that one meme like “why do you do x? to touch other men/women” or so
Joyce and Dorothy hugging outside a romantic and sexual manner, luckily this fanbase would never immediately hop to that conclusion.
i can see the ‘entertainment’ of shipping them as fictional charas, but irl if i was in that friend group i’d feel bad for becky given how long she’s carried a torch for her(or whatever that metaphor is), not that she’d be obligated to date becky just because she was first into her
This is probably the root of Becky’s dislike of Dorothy, even if Joyce doesn’t have outright romantic feelings for Dorothy, Joyce’s feelings for her are a lot closer to romantic than they are for Becky.
Honestly that’s one reason I’m not into the pairing. Becky’s been through so much that “Joyce is into women, actually, it’s just YOU she finds repulsive” feels terrible. If these were real people, Becky would have to get over it, accept that these things happen sometimes, she’s happier with Dina anyway, etc. But since they’re NOT real people, it just seems cruel. Becky has her flaws to work on, but she doesn’t deserve cruelty.
That’s just me overly and illogically sympathizing with a fictional character in a free comic strip, though, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . Cruelty to her isn’t real; it’s storytelling
I feel very similarly re: Becky and it being cruel to her, which doesn’t help at all with my other primary reasons for Not Being Into Joyce/Dorothy (see my other comments, see also: Dorothy’s whole current jealousy/protection/obsession complex)
I’m not a fan of the Joyce/Dorothy ship either.
And just as you mention, those complexes that Dorothy shows only make her appear as the villain of the story, and in my opinion it is not fair that some see her that way.
I may be wrong, but Joyce also has some possessive details about Dorothy.
I don’t think it’s responsible to label anyone a villain in this situation. Like, Dorothy isn’t in the wrong for how she feels, nor is Joyce, no one has actually crossed any lines and I fully admit I’m engaged in supposition and vibe checking.
I think the framing of “she finds Becky repulsive” makes it feel cruel, but uh, that’s clearly not how she feels. She does love Becky, she loves her very much, she just loves her in a way that is fundamentally not compatible with the way Becky wanted Joyce to love her.
That core truth remains the same whether Joyce is capable of same-sex attraction or not.
That’s absolutely true from an objective standpoint that we have as the audience, and I think it’s good you point that out because as audience members we should keep it in mind, but in this particular case I think we’re all on the same page: we recognize the objective truth that Joyce’s romantic rejection of Dorothy isn’t a rejection of Dorothy the person, it’s just that rejection experience from Becky’s perspective is a little, uh, too familiar. And painful! It sucks!
IN A VACUUM, though, I also believe Becky and the audience both know that that perceived cruelty isn’t a reason to disqualify Joyce/Dorothy.
Hence my mentioning of the other, much more disqualifying reasons Dorothy keeps collecting.
The rejection is painful and it sucks, for both of them honestly, but it’s also a turning point and both characters manage to grow from it and end in better places than they started.
So yeah, in terms of reasons Dorothy and Joyce maybe shouldn’t be a thing it does not rank highly for me.
I think that while Becky was developing a crush, Joyce was thinking of Becky as a surrogate sister. Romance with Becky feels weird, but a girl that she met when she was already eighteen is a different story.
I think that’s a plausible explanation.
I think “repulsive” is a very strong word. If Joyce is into women, but not Becky, it may be that she found her overly familiar/sororal, or that the timing was wrong, and she wasn’t willing to admit it to herself (as she still isn’t, if it’s the case), or maybe just that she still felt Ethan had her heart, or that Becky just didn’t stack up to Dorothy.
My read is Joyce wouldn’t say Becky is unattractive, but rather something along the linear of, “I love you like a sister.”
It is not cruel to not reciprocate a crush. It happens all the time in real life. Whether or not Joyce is actually attracted to women, she is clearly not attracted to Becky in that way. Joyce is under no obligation to return her feelings even if she discovers at a later point that she is not as straight as she thought she was. Sure that sucks for Becky, but nobody is ever obligated to reciprocate someone else’s romantic advances regardless of gender.
I didn’t say Joyce would be cruel. I said the story would feel cruel; I was speaking of the characters as characters, not real people.
To hopefully be even clearer: That’s why I said I was being illogical. I was treating Becky and Joyce as *characters*, not people, but then still reacting as if cruelty to Becky matters in that context. It doesn’t; she’s not real.
Thank you. Everyone acts like Joyce being queer would mean that she owes Becky reciprocal romantic feelings. But that’s just not how the real world works. One-sided crushes happen all the time. It might hurt Becky, but she’s a big girl who has a loving partner; she can deal with it.
childhood friends aspect aside it’d be great if ppl don’t take it personally like how ppl used to raise an eyebrow/keep distance if they find out someone their gender is gay but doesn’t mean they chase them, like how every girl that is willing to flirt with some guys or dates for fun doesn’t mean they’ll say yes to everyone
Hey Dorothy! Mind ya business
That would be out of character, though. She’s constantly in somebody’s business, and I don’t really know what the point of her is without that trait.
I feel like this meddling is totally fine in a vacuum, especially since Dotty immediately gets comeuppance to her faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace.
It’s only concerning cause she spent the last night drunkenly voxplaying Gerard Way
Exactly
IMO, an important part of Dorothy’s character growth will be recognizing and figuring that out for herself. (“If I’m not that, then who/what am I?”)
Touch each other outside, romance or sexuality.
the supreme importance of the Oxford comma
That’s not an Oxford comma.
That’s a Harvard comma.
It’s a #000 comma.
It’s a comma chameleon.
it’s the absence of an Oxford comma, technically
–Dave, which is where everything goes horribly wrong, much of the time
Not to kick Dorothy when she’s down, but panel 3 is an example of her ‘wisdom’ being mediocre. Joyce spent all night awake, afraid of cuddling with Joe.
And maybe it’s the way the first three panels are drawn, but it feels like she’s air-dropping into a personal conversation too. Just doing some confirmation bias, re: Dorothy’s crush/jealousy. And I think Joe’s noticing it too, from Dorothy’s face in the last panel.
Well, one night of Karaoke is not enough to fix all the problems she has, it is obvious that there is still a lot of character development in Dorothy that is needed.
Honestly, I don’t want Dorohty to go through any more hardships than lead to something fatal.
Joe’s expression clearly shows that he feels threatened, but with Joyce’s last comment, he may also be thinking something else.
She could be a lot more content if she realized she was ordinary. She’s going to keep making hardship for herself until she does.
I don’t know if he’s feeling threatened (the emotion), but I think he’s learning new context for why Dorothy threatened him in Taco Bell. He might be fantasizing about Joyce and Dorothy together, but he seems to think about Joyce sexually with a different part of his brain than he’s horny for everyone else.
I remember, when her parents went to visit her, they never seemed to pressure her, if not quite the opposite, they just wanted her to look for something that would make her happy.
And Dorothy made it clear that she wants to be at the top and not look for something so simple and that should be being Dorothy’s character development….simple things and being someone normal is not bad.
Unexceptional? Unacceptable.
I _am_ told that one night of Kara-ok makes a hard girl humble though
Not much between despair and ecstasy.
She’s absolutely inserting herself into a private conversation. Something I think we’re going to see a lot of.
A private conversation taking place 30cm away from a half dozen other people in thier social group.
Not private in a nobody else was meant to hear way but definitely in the sense that Joes words were only seeking Joyce’s opinions and Dorothy interjected were her opinion wasn’t beng sought out and making a couples conversation about herself.
God forbid
It’s fairly common in real life, and it’s often not a big deal. But I think how it’s visually presented here means it has significance. i think it has to do with jealousy she doesn’t think she’s having, and I think we’ve seen her presented doing the same thing before.
Dorothy trespassing on private property by eating at a restaurant
Dotty. Really. You’re gonna spend last night belting an anthem about how managing Joyce’s feelings and problems is wearing you out, why doesn’t she notice your feelings etc., and then bust this particular move, the next morning? Really, Dots? You gonna live like this? It’s not the coolest look in town! Joe has a shirt about this look!
I do think that song was less pointedly about Joyce and more about her general relationship to her peers, and the expectations she holds herself to. After all, she decided she wanted to sing it upon Sal and 2 of her exes crashing the party – if anything, the song was directed at Walky, who has been insisting she’ll be fine the entire timeskip (April 11, 2023 strip “Up an’ at ’em” is a great example), and he along with Danny, Joyce, Mike, and Amazigirl are depicted as people who she seems to believe have great expectations of her (based off of panel 2 of August 18, 2023’s strip “Get me out”). But, again, I don’t think it was necessarily about someone specific. It was a very literal cry for help, “I am not okay,” because she has so much unresolved trauma, she can’t admit it unless she’s buzzed and feels she has no other option.
not having either of her romantic interests at this point reciprocate and being in desperate need of intimacy (emotional, physical, sexual) is definitely not helping, though, but I’d also argue she’d not be a great partner at the moment considering the emotional state she’s in…
Joyce looks like she’s drooling in Panel 4. This is very amusing to me.
this is The Way^{tm}
I remember during 2020 I realized that it had been an entire year since I had touched another human being. Now I’m back in the real world but I still can’t help but notice I very rarely actually have physical interaction with people. Sucks.
Honestly, I’m there too. I’ve got exactly two friends I consider close enough for casual physical contact and one of them lives in a different country. Been coming to terms with how touch starved I might be ever since Danny brought it up to Joe.
Oh totally, I was once huggier than a twelve-step group.
I believe in you. This issue is real. Hope this year you can get through this and receive the amount of hugs you deserved.
Aw. That’s rough! I feel for you. I would totally hug you now if i could
Does sharing a laundry ride with Dorothy count as Joyce’s first lesbian experience??
No! The Discourse! You brought it back…reanimated it! You fool! Run! Run for your liiiiiiife
No
rly thought this was gonna be a different kind of contrary evidence but god ur so right
Without a full archive binge and clear definition for what we’re counting as a lesbian experience I’m not comfortable trying to place where it is on a count, but it is definitely not the first.
I don’t think I’d count either one of those. Not without Joyce thinking at least “oh, so that’s what’s happening here. OK….” She was horrified by the earlier encounter and (I’m convinced) would be horrified by what has been suggested here about the latter.
hm
This is the most unhinged take I’ve ever seen in these comments.
You take that back!
How could you say something so controversial yet so brave??
hmm?
Are you trying to start a debate here? :p
It’s not working! Touch *harder*!
now KISS
What Joe is straining not to say in the last panel.
How did Joyce become the most well-adjusted DoA character? O_o
Dorothy’s blue supergiant core collapsed in on itself and began drawing the other stars’ anxieties into her event horizon
this is how some versions of cultivation levelling work yes
–Dave, soon she will qualify for Grandmistress of Anxiety, and the attendant powers and responsibilities and spreadsheets thereto
god I love this metaphor.
Over a decade of character development?
Character growth early bloomer.
Yeah, I don’t think Joyce is particularly touch starved. Not with other girls anyway.
Dotty’s smug face in the last panel is cute. I hope this indicates her little Aggretsuko moment helped.
Step by step, but at least it is an obvious result
Joyce’s mittens on Joe’s back are just so cute.
plus the realization about Joe’s circumference
–Dave, even with mittens on their tips barely touch … “so it’s not gay” no BAD meme get OFF of there
I was going to make a joke, but the alt-text beat me to it.
Ok am I the only one initially confused because of the word break Demon-stration” and Joyce was about to make some sort of religious comment because she emphasized “demon”?
Yes.
Isn’t perception fun?
Perception has been a dump stat in almost every campaign I’ve been in. One party member with a high passive is all you need if the party never splits, because they’ll just notice everything for you, and then everyone else can spend those points on a more useful stat. Give everyone a good Perception score and the DM will just make every other character a fucking ninja, in a senseless attempt at “balancing” the game.
“Would a hug help?” “No. But if I’m being smarter now, it means I should probably test your hypothesis anyway.”
It’s a revolution, a skinship revolution.
Joe’s brain, lower decks: “hol’ up a minnit there”
oh please Throuple them!
Nah, it’s not in any of their characters to be okay with that particular throuple.
I mean, things can change, this strip still going to go for many years most likely. Can you imagine the earliest versions of these characters doing some of the things they do now?
Yes.
Maybe I understand polyamory less than I thought, because Dorothy does not seem cut out for polyamory to me. She seems to experience jealousy too much. https://www.dumbingofage.com/sudden/ + the next one.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/faceless/
Joyce’s cutest moment ever! Distributing all hugs everybody deserves.
Joe, you shouldn’t left your girlfriend hug her friend like this!
Fo what any man would do: go back to your room and give the most bear hug to him!
Rewriting because I shouldn’t be allowed to write anything at 5 AM:
Joe, you shouldn’t left your girlfriend hug her friend like this!
You better do what is necessary to do: go back to your dorm and give the most tight hug to Danny.
Ouch. The glasses. The glasses!
Oof, yeah, i didn’t think about it but that’s gotta suck. Those things are fragile, to the point where mine had tape on one side and wire on the other to keep it together for like 6 months
No touchy! Noooo touchy! No touch.
Joe’s thinking about it isn’t he
… so, wait. If this interaction implies to onlookers something romantic between Dorothy and Joyce…. does that mean Dorothy’s NEVER getting her face back?
She became a victim to a Face Hugger
That’s doing nothing to decouple the scene from sexual undertones
Also doing nothing to decouple the scene from sexual undertones: the use of the word “coupled” in the context of sexual undertones.
**smooooooshhhh*
on a completely unrelated note here’s part 13 or whatever of the HIT FAN SMUT SERIES
Make Love Not War
enjoy, cuties (these 5-character zero-G scenes are such a b*tch to draw 🥵) (but i shall bravely do a few more
)
I like the yellow necktie. It’s a good touch.
These poses looks like some Renaissance painting.
Joyce and Dotty embracing that FalinxMarcille energy
I’ll bet Joe is remembering this:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/04-but-dont-give-yourself-away/cheating-2/#comment
It’s gotta be sooo relaxing to draw hands wearing mittens
No wonder Joyce’s hands are all over the place in this scene
I don’t care. This is a ffxiv reference. “This was NOT my intention”
If it wasn’t her intention, she shouldn’t have rebuilt the Ultima Weapon.
Awww
Joe’s puppy dog eyes are so cute
Wow. Joyce looks cuter than usual in these panels. That’s saying a lot since she usually looks pretty darned cute…
now make Dorothy and Joe hug.
“I’m on the fence on whether that’s a detangling joyce’s need”
Still figuring out if Dorothy is trying hard to be a politician or her soul is a 60 years old teacher.
Some day Dorothy will respect Joyce. Probably not any time soon in-universe.
The reason Joyce is such a good friend for Dorothy is because she understands that Dorothy’s problems have nothing to do with her. So while Dorothy’s going every way catastrophising half to shit, Joyce is literally just having a spine, not being affected positively or negatively by Dorothy’s actions too strongly but still enjoying her company as a person. Let her have this.
Let Dorothy have her moment getting between Joe and Joyce AGAIN? After she said that they’d be alright and that she needed to stop meddling? I saw a comment further up the page that Joyce spent the entire night wide awake on the opposite side of the bed from Joe. She DOES need the detangling. Dorothy’s back on her bullshit.
joe looks like he’s ready for threesome hug in that last panel lmao
we’ve already seen his gorilla arms are long enough
to just, like, go for it while whey’re distracted
my body could not fucking handle this slipshine if it happened. id just blink out of existence.
It did for April Fool’s Day one year.
I’m actually starting to wonder if Dorothy’s going to eventually try and get back together with Danny if she ends up staying.
Sorry, but no way two people with glasses can smush faces like that without extensive clacking. 0/10 realism literally unreadable.
This is so sweet. Let aside Joe’s big confusion seeing that, Joyce is just too sweet.
Joe just trying to suppress his sex brain from thinking of them lezzing out.
ok this is cute as fuck….
I… should not be feeling envious of Joyce.. or Dorothy… as a first reaction reading this.
And yet