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It’s not an all girl hall. It’s not even an all girl FLOOR. It’s just an all girl wing. They can walk down the hall into the boy’s wing whenever they want.
Why would walking around outside in your underwear be an issue? They give at least as much coverage as a bikini, and most nudity ordinances I’ve heard of (I’ll admit I’ve done zero actual research on the subject) typically specify coverage of the labia and nipples, for women. So panties would meet that requirement just fine.
Universities not being public places might make for different rules, if the university actually bothered to codify a dress code.
I think this is part of a big buildup and payoff about a) Joyce’s Boundary Issues (indirectly) and b) Joyce’s constant fetishization of Sal making her uncomfortable.
Joyce is supposed to be everyone’s friend, and Sal is honestly kind of sick of her right now. I think Joyce is realizing this—and maybe, as the girl everyone expects to be perfectly wholesome and forgiving, finding some empathy in her to understand the situation of somebody who is supposed to be her polar opposite but faces surprisingly similar struggles.
Or maybe she’s gonna be screaming about PRE-JOYCE-MATCHMAKING HANK-PANKY. We’ll see.
No.. that was 100% appropriate. Joyce literally just came into her room, without asking. Then did not remotely let her respond to anything. Interrupted her.
Basically joyce just invaded her space and started screaming at her. and acted like it was Sal’s fault for the tirade.
100% approriate being upset.
Yes. Still, there’s a whole lot of teen in this. Literally every human in earth experiences this, if he or she suddenly breaks habits they had for a long time. Not behaving like your surrounding expects you to always will get you looks. It’s just that the expectations of your social circle vary.
And a lot of people feel caught up in this “cage”. Others aren’t aware that this cage exists, because it has exactly the shape they feel comfortable with. Sal is not as special or alone with this as she thinks. She’s just hyper-aware of it, probably due to her upbringing.
Sal’s expressed annoyance with this outside the context of ‘breaking a long standing habit’. For example, venting about her mom having her pegged as a hoodlum, regardless of what else she does, because she hangs out with Marcie. She’s also mentioned wthat when her damage becomes apparent, her friends tended to abandon or turn on her (except Marcie). Like, it’s still a very teenager thing to say but there’s more to it than that here.
In this context, it is about other people’s expectations and reactions. Her being unable to meet her mothers expectations and the conflict and emotional neglect that followed probably made her so touchy about all this. Being seen as a criminal by the world and her family probably didn’t make it any better.
Yes, but my point is that it’s not just about the scar she’s snapping at Joyce about right now. There’s more to it than that and it’s been building for a long time. Not to mention the rejection she’s experienced for mentioning similar issues to past non-Marcie friends probably does make her feel like nobody else understands.
Very true. First impressions are hard to break.
And yet, you can have fun with this too….
My second job in chemistry was working in an exploration camp in the Yukon analyzing samples for gold content. When I packed my clothes in Vancouver, I got the usual flannel shirts and jeans but I also bought a few of the loudest Hawaiian shirts I could find. I actually asked the store clerk for the most garish. When I got to camp and settled in, I wore flannel and denim for a month to build the expectation. Then, I switched over to Hawaiian shirts.
Minds. Blown.
It’s not actually hard, assuming you know how to curtsy at all. It just looks really silly, because the dress is supposed to hide the fact that curtsying looks really silly.
Considering the knife apparently went all the way through the hand, I’d be VERY surprised if it didn’t still have pain. Double especially since it’s impaired function.
Sal’s been unfortunately dealt a bad hand (not an intended pun). She’s written off a lot as a thug, often but not exclusively for racist reasons, with people having a pretty poor understanding of her.
Granted, she keeps people at arm’s length a lot, bristling when Dorothy tried to get to know her, and being very slow to open up to Walky a lot of the time, with Danny and Marcie being some of the only people she’ll let her guard down with, so no one really CAN judge her for who she is, not a certain set of expectations, but really, she’s hardly alone on feeding a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Come to think of it, it’d be harder to find a cast member who hasn’t fed into a problem with how they were treated by others in an effort to minimize the damage it’d do to them, rejecting others before they can be rejected, etc. Which is a testament to how realistic Willis’ writing really can be, I guess, because lord knows, I’ve been there.
So I hear there’s this thing where minorities get extra scrutiny. Laugh too loudly, smile too much or not enough, wear your hair in any nonstandard way… and people inspect you for it.
They did a test – they gave an identical law essay to a bunch of law firm CEOs. When they put a black man’s picture at the top, the CEOs found way more typos and made really harsh comments. White man’s picture, they said how great the essay was.
So if Sal is stressing about being always inspected and expected to behave in certain ways, she’s probably just reporting on her daily (stressful) life.
There’s also the ‘doll test’. A group of small children (around 4-5) were presented with a white and a black doll. The white one was always ranked as prettier, better behaved, nicer, etc. than the black doll. They did a retest a couple years ago (2013ish?) and that result still held up.
One of the interesting things about that experiment is that it holds true regardless of the race of the child.
In one of the videos, it’s heartbreaking when one of the little black girls realizes what she’s saying. I think they’d asked her which one was like her, after she’d just been describing the white one as the nice, pretty one.
It is interesting, but not surprising. It’s also been shown when children’s tv is more diverse, the self esteem of little girls and children of colour goes up substantially.
My 2.5 year old daughter was recently pretending to be a frog. And she tried to refer to herself in the third person, and started to say “he” and then stopped, confused. I had to tell her that frogs could be girls.
And we’ve done our best to raise her without gender assumptions and expose her to lots of female characters. And we don’t even have a TV.
Maybe we should have simply refused to have any kids’ books with 7 male characters to 1 female (they are ubiquitous, though).
But it’s even in the language. She refers to her gender-neutral toys/objects as “guys.”
I was a practicing feminist long before I had a daughter, but there are things I didn’t realize about how very hard it is to raise a girl as an equal citizen – even in the heart of “blue” urban U.S., two miles from Google headquarters. I’m rather appalled to see how it plays out.
Jokes aside, good handheld condenser mics are expensive but they can take a beating. I dropped an SM58 last week, which made a nice flat spot in the windscreen. Fixed it by pounding it back out on the handle of a screwdriver clamped in a vise.
Clones of Shure mics (57s and 58s) by Behringer, PylePro, and no-name Chineseium foundries sound just as good for a fraction of the price.
Ribbon mics are the fragile ones. Some of them burn out if you hook up phantom power, which is an option on most every audio board.
In psychology, “patterning” is the basic human need to behave the way you think people expect of you. Trying to rebel against it is maybe the coolest thing I’ve seen Sal do.
Billie’s problem is equal but opposite of Sal’s. She wants to be the “cool, alpha bongo cheerleader” type the Forest Quad residents believe her to be. Contrast today’s strip to a few days ago, when Ruth noticed Billie casually drop a Star Wars reference.
Am I reading the tone of the last panel wrong, or is it Joyce thinking what I’m thinking, how very often panel 3 is Joyce’s situation, too? She’s also got the very identifiable “brand”, coupled with the notoriety that the Ross situation brought her.
Though, it could also very well just be guilt at upsetting Sal, since obviously, she does like her quite a bit.
I didn’t even consider that as a possibility, but that’s great insight and now I hope it’s actually true (in addition to feeling guilty for upsetting Sal; I want both, both is good)
Joyce gets pigeonholed too! She’s made lots of progress but whenever she learns a new truth she is reprimanded for not knowing it in the first place. People are shocked when she actually adapts to their criticisms. Dorothy sees this and respects her for it, Jacob too. Sal likes to act as if the world is out to get her, but in reality most of the characters grapple with similar problems. Dorothy, Dina, Jacob, Ethan, Joe, Roz, and Walky have all spoken about feeling boxed in at some point and that’s just scratching the surface. Yes, Joyce is out of line, but Sal is not the only victim.
I read it that way too! Joyce should be able to relate with Sal pretty well on this. That intense fear of violating the expectations of her family and community did way too much to define how she grew up. And yeah, after visiting home and seeing how both she and Becky were treated differently, she probably got a large dose of feeling ‘boxed up’.
I agree! That is exactly the way I took her expression to mean.. Joyce is always getting overreactions whenever she breaks out of her box… So many times in fact that is a running concept in this comic..
If that ain’t the crux of Sal in a nutshell, I dunno what is. It is SO satisfying to see her lay it out this bluntly. This is incredibly satisfying for me.
I mean, she kinda did with Danny earlier, but she used nicer words and didn’t come out and lay everything out. Well, yesterday (strip time) was a long, emotional roller coaster for her and she’s not having it.
I’m happy. I’ll be over here, thoroughly enjoying Sal strips as they come.
And yeah, this had to be frustrating. Yesterday was probably one of the few times she’s taken her gloves off where people could see her and now, yep, right on queue for the freak out. I wonder how many nosey/invasive questions she got from boarding schoolmates about it? Whether she was trying out something new without gloves or she was just hanging out in her room when she’s alone, I imagine she’d do it gloveless much more often if it didn’t end like this so often.
It’s kind of a catch 22 with Sal, I guess. The gloves get questions, while trying to prevent questions about the scar. People ask about the lack of gloves, but only because Sal’s always wearing them.
I guess being “glove lady” was a more comfortable thing than having to talk about being stabbed, but the irony is that the scar thing would only really be weird the once or twice, since once answered, that’d kill the mystery and people would probably not really linger on it. The gloves, on the other hand (tee hee) were more of an enigma to be solved.
On the other hand, she’s more likely to get direct questions about the scar. A few people might ask about the gloves, but I think more people would just wonder to themselves. Or assume it’s because she rides a motorcycle.
Not to mention, Sal may very well have had her own reasons to not want to look at that scar. The only time we’ve seen her with her gloves off were when she was alone and/or confronting Amber.
Very true, she even slept with them on, and it’s not like Billie was going to ask about it, she almost certainly knew about the stabbing, anyway, so it’s not for her benefit before they switched rooms around.
Billie didn’t even know about the robberies, so I doubt she knew about the stabbing. God only knows how many busybodies wanted to know about it in Tennessee though. She didn’t wear gloves with her uniform on Freshman Family Weekend, so who knows if she wasn’t allowed to at school or if her parents just don’t want her to. All I know is she kept her hand behind her back the whole time.
> the scar thing would only really be weird the once or twice
No, see, the scar thing would only really be weird once or twice* PER PERSON, including the most absolutely incidental run-ins with every stranger on the street, store clerk, whatever. The gloves are only a thing to someone around Sal often enough to notice how much she wears them. To someone who only sees her in a situation in which it is appropriate to be wearing gloves, they are entirely unnoteworthy, whereas the scar certainly would be.
(Note: while it would only be once or twice for some people, others will actually just always very obviously notice it forever. Source: have had a large and noticeable scar since middle school. No, it doesn’t hurt. No, you may not touch it.)
Speaking as someone who has fairly obvious signs of past injury a good chunk of the time, it’s not just the questions, it’s the staring and the assumptions.
Some folks are too polite to ask and just stare instead as if that’s better. And if they don’t ask they make up an explanation in their heads. This is why, at a previous workplace, people thought I was in a physically abusive relationship. And then the folks who had made up this sordid story in their heads about my tragic home life were uniformly pissed the fuck off when they found out that I do a contact sport and therefore often have bruises.
They were pissed. With me. For not having the story they expected.
That’s why I think Sal doesn’t want to show her scar to people. As much as she doesn’t want to be Dorothy’s project, I think she also doesn’t want to be others’ tragic story.
Gloves are convenient, but not the only option. Would concealer hold up on the back of the hand? I mean the opaque stuff for covering acne scars and tattoos. It would at least make the scar less obvious by blending in with her skin tone, but Sal probably isn’t the type to touch it up all day every day.
Obviously there’s not much you can do about the palm, but it’s easier to hide and that’s a common area for wounds anyway.
Or she could do like Gary Burghoff did on MASH, keep that hand in a pocket or behind a clipboard a lot. (Kidding.)
I feel for her in so far as it’s not any more her fault what “everybody” does than anyone else’s, and Sal’s just dumping on a safe target, but obviously, Joyce had it coming to a degree.
That said, better to do it to Joyce than Malaya, who would just have more ammo for “Sal’s throwing a pity parade” jabs.
I don’t think you are. Willis reads the comments he knows how people feel about her boundary issues.
I think this is just supposed to be laying the ground work for some character growth
Next I hope Walky tells her off for scolding with absolutely zero authority, and next after that I hope Dorothy gives her a figurative rap over the knuckles for taking offence on Dorothy’s behalf without a shadow of any right to medle in Dorothy’s sex life, and that as a result she starts to keep her high-handed and ignorant judgemental nonsense to herself.
I mean. To be fair, it’d be like if Sneakers O’toole didn’t have his sneakers on. You’d at least be like “Hey Sneakers O’Toole. Where are your Sneakers?”
This week has just been breaking point after breaking point for Sal, and I am caught between being proud of her for finally not bottling up anymore and sad that her healing process keeps getting interrupted.
If it gets her to actually put into words what her feelings are, what she’s going through, etc, it might at least contribute to that healing process. Even if this obviously is more the rage catharsis than the bike ride with Danny was.
I’m glad Joyce is finally getting told off for her nosiness but it’s a bit sad that it’s over a reaction anyone could have had instead of for being a busybody as she was being with Walky and Amber
While Sal is about 80% right, it’s worth noting Sal won’t tell anyone anything about herself, which makes people even more likely to pidgeonhole her. There’s not much to go on!
‘Wader’? I’m just trying to think how that could even be misspelt. Wayder? Waider? Weyder? Wade-er? – okay, I just thought of four possibilities. Guess it’s not as hard as I thought.
You can also try not assuming things about people you don’t have much info on instead of going to pigeonholing. That’s an option too. (General ‘you’ here, not the OP specifically).
BBCC – Assumptions are things everyone makes all the time. It is something our brain does automatically. You assume, for instance, that right now there is no one behind you even though you haven’t visually checked to confirm it every five seconds.
There are things to be said about assumptions. Many of them are bad. Most of them are correct. Some of them are not. It’s less important that you don’t make assumptions, like continuing to assume that everyone is not one second away from stabbing you and starting a horrific event where you ‘defended yourself’, and more important that you are aware of internal and external biases when you make said assumptions.
As someone who is autistic, assumptions regularly kill conversations for me. It is the words behind the words, the assumption that I hear them, that I can speak them, that I do that often brings me trouble. Yet you aren’t going to start talking as precisely as I am typing to every individual you meet (anymore then you are currently not typing so precisely despite making an assumption that I would understand exactly which assumptions you think are bad.)
There is a difference between assuming everyone isn’t a second off from a murder spree and assuming what a person is like without knowing much about them.
Most assumptions are based on something. Some of the things are stupider than others.
What I’m getting at is assuming a person is not a second away from a murder spree is a subset of assuming you know what a person is like without knowing much about them. Its just one of the least harmful subsets. But you believe it because mass murderers are rare.
Its generally a safe assumption that if someone is wearing a shirt with a team mascot they like that team. But they could be wearing a Vikings shirt because they love How to Train your Dragon. And when I bought that Tiger hoodie because I like cats it got a little annoying having people ask me about whatever it was.
Just try to figure out what assumptions you need to make to survive in this world and which ones are bad, and be open to accepting when your assumptions are proven wrong.
When Cerb and I had our short-lived podcast, our second episode was about Joyce, and we called it “Redemption”.
Because more than any other main character in the Dumbiverse (except maybe possibly Ruth), Joyce’s overall DOA arch is about redemption. At the time being, Cerb and I focused mostly on how she was growing out of her prejudiced religious upbringing and starting to do good things in the face of them. But since that episode, we’ve seen that Joyce has more things to redeem herself for; mainly her way of overstepping boundaries, thinking that classic story tropes of romance is actually applicable to real life (when in truth, they are often so very harmful).
Will she eventually learn how wrong this is? I think so. Because a core tenet of Joyce is that she actually does care for people. I mean, really really cares for people. She’ll stand up for the ones she loves in ways I can’t say for sure I would; because I’m probably too much of a coward for that.
And this moment, this last panel right here? Yep, that’s one of those moments when she’s starting to figure out that she might very well be doing something wrong. And the thing about Joyce realising she’s wrong (admittedly sometimes on the late side)… Well, that’s when she wants to right those wrongs hard.
She’ll get there. I know she will. Our little cinnamon bun still have a few raisins in her; but once those are gone, she’ll be a perfect cinnamon bun.
Sal’s in a jumpy mood this morning. I do have to say that, for someone who doesn’t want to be ‘boxed’ (categorised, basically), she’s done a lot of work to do it to herself.
No, seriously (and I can’t believe that I’m actually posting this), Malaya is right in some ways. Sal has, consciously or otherwise, created a ‘persona’ that she shows to the rest of the world. It’s so strong and so consistent that she can’t be surprised if, when she chooses to drop it, that those who know her will be confused or even concerned for her well-being.
That said, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the revelation of this arc is that Sal doesn’t like Joyce, she never has liked her and wants to have as little to do with her as possible. I’m not sure that’s what’s going to happen but I’d say it’s a 50/50 proposition at the moment. It’s difficult to be sure because Sal is unusually snappy due to the emotional loads she’s been facing over the last few days.
My own take is that Sal doesn’t consider Joyce either Malaya level OR Marcy level, but insignificantly in-between, mostly harmless, if mildly annoying sometimes. It would be interesting to know Sal’s internal dialog which led to her removing the glove.
1: Sal’s still 18, and still learning a lot about life as it is.
2:Even so, she’s definitely not surprised, because she’s clearly spelling it out for Joyce that she already knows how these things go.
3: She still has every right to be upset that it keeps happening. I mean, this isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last; but just the same way that sooner or later, the water drop torture -will- suddenly transform from “slightly annoying” to “oh my fucking god let me out of this!!!”; so does all those times people keep acting like that wind her up until she finally blows.
And as such, there’s a lot worse ways to react than the way she did. She could simply say “fuck you!” over and over instead of doing what she did, which was explaining what was actually wrong with this picture.
Racism is predictable. Sexism is predictable. All kinds of absolutely shitty behaviors are very predictable. There’s no planet where a shitty thing being predictable should mean a person shouldn’t get angry about it happening. Fuck that
My point isn’t that they’re the same, but that being predictable has absolutely no bearing on whether someone should be “allowed” to be mad about it
You’re blaming Sal for being upset that other people do something shitty consistently. Shitty things being consistent and predictive might wear a person down until they just give up and take it because it’s the path of least resistance, but at no point would that make it okay. Being able to see it coming would only make it MORE frustrating, until it broke your spirit. Fuck. That.
Oh I think Joyce can relate to that very much indeed.
Her entire life has been about living up to societys expectations, and it still is. Shes seen what happens to people that break norms.
I think we will be seeing some heavy introspection from Joyce now, possibly culminating in her realizing her own identity.
Yeah, I was going to say that too. You just kinda have to power through the first few days/weeks until people get used to it being the new normal. Or just wear one day on, one day off. Eventually people just get desensitized to it.
Not a lotta people here picking up that Joyce perfectly fits Sal’s rant too. Joyce is showing any amount of sexual interest? JOYCE DOESN’T HAVE SEXUAL INTEREST! Joyce said a swear after a REALLY traumatic incident? JOYCE DOESN’T SWEAR EVER! And so on.
this reminds me of the first time i dyed my hair. one of my friends at the time had a literal jaw dropping thing. her mouth just hung open in disbelief that i could do that.
Panel three, is no joke. It is exactly why it is so hard for people to change. Eat better, stop smoking, come out, anything. It’s the reason I don’t talk about chronic pain on Facebook – I can’t talk about it as a topic without it turning into “No, really, thank you all for your advice, but, I already tried… no wait, but… OK that’s enough!”
People need room to experiment and try things and move past things and grow.
Now she needs Dorothy to tell her to butt out of Dorothy’s sex life and point out that she is a remarkably naive young woman all of whose notions come from fiction, even more ignorant of real life and relationship issues than the typically teenager, and that her attempts to act as love-morals enforcer are as encroaching as they are inept.
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(Jim Lee Era)
⚧️Coming Out
Hailey Piper 
nerve
DON’T TOUCH IT!
Sometimes those things explode.
Bye Joyce
Did she just walk out of the room without pants on?
Lack of pants may beat lack of gloves on the noteworthiness meter.
Eh, we’ve seen Billie and Sarah walk around plenty in their undies, in their rooms or out. It’s not that wild in an all-gal hall.
Is it all-girl? I thought only their floor was all-girl…
Either way, I’d buy that she’s rushing to the bathroom to get some space thus pants aren’t required.
It’s not an all girl hall. It’s not even an all girl FLOOR. It’s just an all girl wing. They can walk down the hall into the boy’s wing whenever they want.
Pants optional
College isn’t for experimenting, why not experiment with being a nudist? Pants are so restricting anyways!
ITYM “is for experimenting.”
Eh I mean Billie walked all the way from her dorm to Ruth’s room in her undies. Lack of pants doesn’t seem that noteworthy here.
As long as she stays in her wing it’s not a big problem. You’re just not allowed to walk into the rest of the campus in your undies.
Tell that to Billie.
AN ALPHA BONGO WEARS WHATEVER SHE WANTS!
EXCEPT POSSIBLY A LEAFS DRESS
Why would walking around outside in your underwear be an issue? They give at least as much coverage as a bikini, and most nudity ordinances I’ve heard of (I’ll admit I’ve done zero actual research on the subject) typically specify coverage of the labia and nipples, for women. So panties would meet that requirement just fine.
Universities not being public places might make for different rules, if the university actually bothered to codify a dress code.
Gondor has no pants. Gondor needs no pants!
Pants are an illusion.
Underpants doubly so.
Very clever. You should write Reader’s Digest, they’ve got a page for people like you!
She could have shorts on, but the blouse hangs lower.
I fully expect Joyce to go back to being angry at Walky tomorrow. And somehow it’ll be HIS fault that Sal got angry at her.
I think this is part of a big buildup and payoff about a) Joyce’s Boundary Issues (indirectly) and b) Joyce’s constant fetishization of Sal making her uncomfortable.
Joyce is supposed to be everyone’s friend, and Sal is honestly kind of sick of her right now. I think Joyce is realizing this—and maybe, as the girl everyone expects to be perfectly wholesome and forgiving, finding some empathy in her to understand the situation of somebody who is supposed to be her polar opposite but faces surprisingly similar struggles.
Or maybe she’s gonna be screaming about PRE-JOYCE-MATCHMAKING HANK-PANKY. We’ll see.
“No one else will ever understand!” Sal regresses into ‘angsty teen’ mode at the drop of a hat, it seems.
No.. that was 100% appropriate. Joyce literally just came into her room, without asking. Then did not remotely let her respond to anything. Interrupted her.
Basically joyce just invaded her space and started screaming at her. and acted like it was Sal’s fault for the tirade.
100% approriate being upset.
Yes. Still, there’s a whole lot of teen in this. Literally every human in earth experiences this, if he or she suddenly breaks habits they had for a long time. Not behaving like your surrounding expects you to always will get you looks. It’s just that the expectations of your social circle vary.
And a lot of people feel caught up in this “cage”. Others aren’t aware that this cage exists, because it has exactly the shape they feel comfortable with. Sal is not as special or alone with this as she thinks. She’s just hyper-aware of it, probably due to her upbringing.
Sal’s expressed annoyance with this outside the context of ‘breaking a long standing habit’. For example, venting about her mom having her pegged as a hoodlum, regardless of what else she does, because she hangs out with Marcie. She’s also mentioned wthat when her damage becomes apparent, her friends tended to abandon or turn on her (except Marcie). Like, it’s still a very teenager thing to say but there’s more to it than that here.
In this context, it is about other people’s expectations and reactions. Her being unable to meet her mothers expectations and the conflict and emotional neglect that followed probably made her so touchy about all this. Being seen as a criminal by the world and her family probably didn’t make it any better.
Yes, but my point is that it’s not just about the scar she’s snapping at Joyce about right now. There’s more to it than that and it’s been building for a long time. Not to mention the rejection she’s experienced for mentioning similar issues to past non-Marcie friends probably does make her feel like nobody else understands.
Very true. First impressions are hard to break.
And yet, you can have fun with this too….
My second job in chemistry was working in an exploration camp in the Yukon analyzing samples for gold content. When I packed my clothes in Vancouver, I got the usual flannel shirts and jeans but I also bought a few of the loudest Hawaiian shirts I could find. I actually asked the store clerk for the most garish. When I got to camp and settled in, I wore flannel and denim for a month to build the expectation. Then, I switched over to Hawaiian shirts.
Minds. Blown.
Teleported. She didn’t even have the curtisy to go through a window.
It’s difficult to curtsy when one isn’t wearing a dress.
It’s even more difficult to curtsy while going through a window. But if anyone could do it, Sal could.
It’s not actually hard, assuming you know how to curtsy at all. It just looks really silly, because the dress is supposed to hide the fact that curtsying looks really silly.
..and in recent Curtsy News….
To be fair, she’s got a lot to be angsty about.
She barely got to finally show the scar, of course it’s still a sore subject
You’d think the scar would’ve stopped being sore years ago.
Considering the knife apparently went all the way through the hand, I’d be VERY surprised if it didn’t still have pain. Double especially since it’s impaired function.
The real issue is that she needs to use her Rosary beads to seal her wind tunnel so that it does not grow to consume her whole body.
thankfully she isn’t perving on any girl that walks while ignoring the hot girl with a huge crush who is always beside her…
But dinosaurs.
Butt dinosaurs?
Space Raptor Butt Invasion
You’d be surprised
Well, maybe if she stopped punching people so much.
Sal’s been unfortunately dealt a bad hand (not an intended pun). She’s written off a lot as a thug, often but not exclusively for racist reasons, with people having a pretty poor understanding of her.
Granted, she keeps people at arm’s length a lot, bristling when Dorothy tried to get to know her, and being very slow to open up to Walky a lot of the time, with Danny and Marcie being some of the only people she’ll let her guard down with, so no one really CAN judge her for who she is, not a certain set of expectations, but really, she’s hardly alone on feeding a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Come to think of it, it’d be harder to find a cast member who hasn’t fed into a problem with how they were treated by others in an effort to minimize the damage it’d do to them, rejecting others before they can be rejected, etc. Which is a testament to how realistic Willis’ writing really can be, I guess, because lord knows, I’ve been there.
She’s a teen. With angst. Not sure why she shouldn’t express that
So I hear there’s this thing where minorities get extra scrutiny. Laugh too loudly, smile too much or not enough, wear your hair in any nonstandard way… and people inspect you for it.
They did a test – they gave an identical law essay to a bunch of law firm CEOs. When they put a black man’s picture at the top, the CEOs found way more typos and made really harsh comments. White man’s picture, they said how great the essay was.
So if Sal is stressing about being always inspected and expected to behave in certain ways, she’s probably just reporting on her daily (stressful) life.
And ten minutes later, I find this article:
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/27/680470933/after-h-s-wrestler-told-to-cut-his-dreadlocks-or-forfeit-adults-come-under-scrut
A racist referee gave a Black wrestler 90 seconds, in the middle of a match, to get his dreadlocks cut or forfeit.
There’s also the ‘doll test’. A group of small children (around 4-5) were presented with a white and a black doll. The white one was always ranked as prettier, better behaved, nicer, etc. than the black doll. They did a retest a couple years ago (2013ish?) and that result still held up.
One of the interesting things about that experiment is that it holds true regardless of the race of the child.
In one of the videos, it’s heartbreaking when one of the little black girls realizes what she’s saying. I think they’d asked her which one was like her, after she’d just been describing the white one as the nice, pretty one.
Oh, jeeze. Our society with its implicit brainwashing has a lot to answer for.
It is interesting, but not surprising. It’s also been shown when children’s tv is more diverse, the self esteem of little girls and children of colour goes up substantially.
My 2.5 year old daughter was recently pretending to be a frog. And she tried to refer to herself in the third person, and started to say “he” and then stopped, confused. I had to tell her that frogs could be girls.
And we’ve done our best to raise her without gender assumptions and expose her to lots of female characters. And we don’t even have a TV.
Maybe we should have simply refused to have any kids’ books with 7 male characters to 1 female (they are ubiquitous, though).
But it’s even in the language. She refers to her gender-neutral toys/objects as “guys.”
I was a practicing feminist long before I had a daughter, but there are things I didn’t realize about how very hard it is to raise a girl as an equal citizen – even in the heart of “blue” urban U.S., two miles from Google headquarters. I’m rather appalled to see how it plays out.
They are all 18 so yes.
It’s almost like she’s a literal teenager
*plays “Blue Moon” on the hacked Muzak*
I hope Joyce learned to not scream and point about people’s physical appearance today.
Probably. The question is whether the lesson will stick – and how she’ll apply it if it does.
You are a dizzy optimist.
Dunno about that. We’ve seen Joyce change a lot over the course of a few weeks. In comic time, of course. It’s, for us, been years and years.
It wouldn’t be the biggest change she’d made yet.
Is it just me, or is her hair on the verge of poofing out again?
*drops mic*
*catches mic before it hits the floor, those are expensive, geez*
Jokes aside, good handheld condenser mics are expensive but they can take a beating. I dropped an SM58 last week, which made a nice flat spot in the windscreen. Fixed it by pounding it back out on the handle of a screwdriver clamped in a vise.
Clones of Shure mics (57s and 58s) by Behringer, PylePro, and no-name Chineseium foundries sound just as good for a fraction of the price.
Ribbon mics are the fragile ones. Some of them burn out if you hook up phantom power, which is an option on most every audio board.
“Exhibit A! Now to leave the room and go be an exhibitionist.”
Surely that fits everyone’s expectations of Sal and won’t attract any undue attention.
In psychology, “patterning” is the basic human need to behave the way you think people expect of you. Trying to rebel against it is maybe the coolest thing I’ve seen Sal do.
Now that you mention it, Billie is the other person this arc is probably about and she’s patterning as hard as she can.
That’d make sense, along with the parallels Joyce herself has to it, people acting shocked if she doesn’t fit a very particular script.
I do hope this might result in Sal letting people know her a little more, since she’s pretty sick of them just knowing her wall she puts up.
Billie’s problem is equal but opposite of Sal’s. She wants to be the “cool, alpha bongo cheerleader” type the Forest Quad residents believe her to be. Contrast today’s strip to a few days ago, when Ruth noticed Billie casually drop a Star Wars reference.
Except that Sal’s image is that of a rebel. Rebelling is what we expect her to do. So, not that cool.
Am I reading the tone of the last panel wrong, or is it Joyce thinking what I’m thinking, how very often panel 3 is Joyce’s situation, too? She’s also got the very identifiable “brand”, coupled with the notoriety that the Ross situation brought her.
Though, it could also very well just be guilt at upsetting Sal, since obviously, she does like her quite a bit.
Little of column A, little of column B.
I didn’t even consider that as a possibility, but that’s great insight and now I hope it’s actually true (in addition to feeling guilty for upsetting Sal; I want both, both is good)
Joyce gets pigeonholed too! She’s made lots of progress but whenever she learns a new truth she is reprimanded for not knowing it in the first place. People are shocked when she actually adapts to their criticisms. Dorothy sees this and respects her for it, Jacob too. Sal likes to act as if the world is out to get her, but in reality most of the characters grapple with similar problems. Dorothy, Dina, Jacob, Ethan, Joe, Roz, and Walky have all spoken about feeling boxed in at some point and that’s just scratching the surface. Yes, Joyce is out of line, but Sal is not the only victim.
I thought that too. It also reminded me of the time when everyone was shocked that Dina dropped the f-bomb.
I don’t recall Dina ever mentioning the the fukuiraptor, but I suppose I might have missed it.
I read it that way too! Joyce should be able to relate with Sal pretty well on this. That intense fear of violating the expectations of her family and community did way too much to define how she grew up. And yeah, after visiting home and seeing how both she and Becky were treated differently, she probably got a large dose of feeling ‘boxed up’.
That’s what I got from it, too. Thank you.
Both. But I note that Joyce isn’t wearing her usual sweater vests today either. And she swore.
Joyce has done both before. Neither of them mean distress really anymore (though Joyce swears mostly when she’s angry).
It’s like you knew what Joyce was going to say in the next day’s comic
I called it! But I got chills today (next day) cuz I am not a Patreon member. I just noticed early.
I agree! That is exactly the way I took her expression to mean.. Joyce is always getting overreactions whenever she breaks out of her box… So many times in fact that is a running concept in this comic..
People don’t want you to be open, they want you to be consistent.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Ooh, nice use of Emerson there.
consistent people are dead people
I see consistent people — Just doesn’t have the same impact though.
*slow claps*
If that ain’t the crux of Sal in a nutshell, I dunno what is. It is SO satisfying to see her lay it out this bluntly. This is incredibly satisfying for me.
I mean, she kinda did with Danny earlier, but she used nicer words and didn’t come out and lay everything out. Well, yesterday (strip time) was a long, emotional roller coaster for her and she’s not having it.
I’m happy. I’ll be over here, thoroughly enjoying Sal strips as they come.
And yeah, this had to be frustrating. Yesterday was probably one of the few times she’s taken her gloves off where people could see her and now, yep, right on queue for the freak out. I wonder how many nosey/invasive questions she got from boarding schoolmates about it? Whether she was trying out something new without gloves or she was just hanging out in her room when she’s alone, I imagine she’d do it gloveless much more often if it didn’t end like this so often.
It’s kind of a catch 22 with Sal, I guess. The gloves get questions, while trying to prevent questions about the scar. People ask about the lack of gloves, but only because Sal’s always wearing them.
I guess being “glove lady” was a more comfortable thing than having to talk about being stabbed, but the irony is that the scar thing would only really be weird the once or twice, since once answered, that’d kill the mystery and people would probably not really linger on it. The gloves, on the other hand (tee hee) were more of an enigma to be solved.
On the other hand, she’s more likely to get direct questions about the scar. A few people might ask about the gloves, but I think more people would just wonder to themselves. Or assume it’s because she rides a motorcycle.
Not to mention, Sal may very well have had her own reasons to not want to look at that scar. The only time we’ve seen her with her gloves off were when she was alone and/or confronting Amber.
Very true, she even slept with them on, and it’s not like Billie was going to ask about it, she almost certainly knew about the stabbing, anyway, so it’s not for her benefit before they switched rooms around.
Billie didn’t even know about the robberies, so I doubt she knew about the stabbing. God only knows how many busybodies wanted to know about it in Tennessee though. She didn’t wear gloves with her uniform on Freshman Family Weekend, so who knows if she wasn’t allowed to at school or if her parents just don’t want her to. All I know is she kept her hand behind her back the whole time.
> the scar thing would only really be weird the once or twice
No, see, the scar thing would only really be weird once or twice* PER PERSON, including the most absolutely incidental run-ins with every stranger on the street, store clerk, whatever. The gloves are only a thing to someone around Sal often enough to notice how much she wears them. To someone who only sees her in a situation in which it is appropriate to be wearing gloves, they are entirely unnoteworthy, whereas the scar certainly would be.
(Note: while it would only be once or twice for some people, others will actually just always very obviously notice it forever. Source: have had a large and noticeable scar since middle school. No, it doesn’t hurt. No, you may not touch it.)
I meant per person, but I could have been clearer, sorry about that.
Speaking as someone who has fairly obvious signs of past injury a good chunk of the time, it’s not just the questions, it’s the staring and the assumptions.
Some folks are too polite to ask and just stare instead as if that’s better. And if they don’t ask they make up an explanation in their heads. This is why, at a previous workplace, people thought I was in a physically abusive relationship. And then the folks who had made up this sordid story in their heads about my tragic home life were uniformly pissed the fuck off when they found out that I do a contact sport and therefore often have bruises.
They were pissed. With me. For not having the story they expected.
That’s why I think Sal doesn’t want to show her scar to people. As much as she doesn’t want to be Dorothy’s project, I think she also doesn’t want to be others’ tragic story.
Gloves are convenient, but not the only option. Would concealer hold up on the back of the hand? I mean the opaque stuff for covering acne scars and tattoos. It would at least make the scar less obvious by blending in with her skin tone, but Sal probably isn’t the type to touch it up all day every day.
Obviously there’s not much you can do about the palm, but it’s easier to hide and that’s a common area for wounds anyway.
Or she could do like Gary Burghoff did on MASH, keep that hand in a pocket or behind a clipboard a lot. (Kidding.)
I imagine you’re supposed to feel a little for Joyce, but after how annoying she’s been for the last while, I’m just satisfied.
I feel for her in so far as it’s not any more her fault what “everybody” does than anyone else’s, and Sal’s just dumping on a safe target, but obviously, Joyce had it coming to a degree.
That said, better to do it to Joyce than Malaya, who would just have more ammo for “Sal’s throwing a pity parade” jabs.
it’s not the first time Joyce heavily go annoy Sal in her own room
I mean, it’s not like yesterday (strip time) ended so great for them.
…time sure flies
Time flies like an arrow; fruit lies like a banana!
(@see: #oldestjokeinthebook)
Messed it up! “Fruit flies”
I choose to believe that bananas are notorious liars.
Same.
I don’t think you are. Willis reads the comments he knows how people feel about her boundary issues.
I think this is just supposed to be laying the ground work for some character growth
I think you are. You can feel for a character, even while acknowledging it was earned.
Fair enough
Well that’s awkward
Honestly? Good.
Welp. Sal’s my new favorite. Sorry Becky.
Next I hope Walky tells her off for scolding with absolutely zero authority, and next after that I hope Dorothy gives her a figurative rap over the knuckles for taking offence on Dorothy’s behalf without a shadow of any right to medle in Dorothy’s sex life, and that as a result she starts to keep her high-handed and ignorant judgemental nonsense to herself.
Joyce’s sanctimonious busybody habits HAVE gone on for long enough…
come on, religious people always scold with the Highest Autority.
As an aside, this title is clever. “Exhibit” is about how Sal is treated by those around her. They’re always clever, but this one’s especially so.
Multiple meanings. In this case Joyce is exhibit A.
I mean. To be fair, it’d be like if Sneakers O’toole didn’t have his sneakers on. You’d at least be like “Hey Sneakers O’Toole. Where are your Sneakers?”
You think Sneakers O’toole never takes his sneakers off because he has a scar there from being stabbed after robbing a convenience store?
My running theory is that Sneakers O’Toole doesn’t actually have feet. He just has Sneakers growing directly out of his ankles.
Like Strong Bad’s boxing gloves?
Yeah, I can see that.
I’m going to have to google Sneakers O’toole, aren’t I.
I can relate, Sal.
This week has just been breaking point after breaking point for Sal, and I am caught between being proud of her for finally not bottling up anymore and sad that her healing process keeps getting interrupted.
If it gets her to actually put into words what her feelings are, what she’s going through, etc, it might at least contribute to that healing process. Even if this obviously is more the rage catharsis than the bike ride with Danny was.
Whatever helps.
*sings*
No one knows what it’s like
To be the rad Sal
To be the sad Sal
Be-hind blue gloooooooves…
Awwww. Joyce does get it.
Sal: “Wait, why am AH the one leaving? You just barged into MAH room and started shouting at me. GET OUT!”
she probably went to get either her pants and/or gloves
I’m glad Joyce is finally getting told off for her nosiness but it’s a bit sad that it’s over a reaction anyone could have had instead of for being a busybody as she was being with Walky and Amber
I think most people would have more tact than to scream “YOU HAVE A SCAR?!?!!!”
While Sal is about 80% right, it’s worth noting Sal won’t tell anyone anything about herself, which makes people even more likely to pidgeonhole her. There’s not much to go on!
There’s no d in pigeon. It’s the word that eliminated me in a spelling bee
That sounds a lot better than being eliminated by friggin “wader”.
‘Wader’? I’m just trying to think how that could even be misspelt. Wayder? Waider? Weyder? Wade-er? – okay, I just thought of four possibilities. Guess it’s not as hard as I thought.
Also, due to the vagaries of English pronunciation, Waiter is also an acceptable spelling. This is why you ask for the definition.
You can also try not assuming things about people you don’t have much info on instead of going to pigeonholing. That’s an option too. (General ‘you’ here, not the OP specifically).
BBCC – Assumptions are things everyone makes all the time. It is something our brain does automatically. You assume, for instance, that right now there is no one behind you even though you haven’t visually checked to confirm it every five seconds.
There are things to be said about assumptions. Many of them are bad. Most of them are correct. Some of them are not. It’s less important that you don’t make assumptions, like continuing to assume that everyone is not one second away from stabbing you and starting a horrific event where you ‘defended yourself’, and more important that you are aware of internal and external biases when you make said assumptions.
As someone who is autistic, assumptions regularly kill conversations for me. It is the words behind the words, the assumption that I hear them, that I can speak them, that I do that often brings me trouble. Yet you aren’t going to start talking as precisely as I am typing to every individual you meet (anymore then you are currently not typing so precisely despite making an assumption that I would understand exactly which assumptions you think are bad.)
There is a difference between assuming everyone isn’t a second off from a murder spree and assuming what a person is like without knowing much about them.
Most assumptions are based on something. Some of the things are stupider than others.
What I’m getting at is assuming a person is not a second away from a murder spree is a subset of assuming you know what a person is like without knowing much about them. Its just one of the least harmful subsets. But you believe it because mass murderers are rare.
Its generally a safe assumption that if someone is wearing a shirt with a team mascot they like that team. But they could be wearing a Vikings shirt because they love How to Train your Dragon. And when I bought that Tiger hoodie because I like cats it got a little annoying having people ask me about whatever it was.
Just try to figure out what assumptions you need to make to survive in this world and which ones are bad, and be open to accepting when your assumptions are proven wrong.
This is a better way of putting it, though I think it’s probably still for the best to not ssume things you don’t have evidence of.
And that way lies the wormhole of what counts as evidence.
Sal had to do it to Joyce.
When Cerb and I had our short-lived podcast, our second episode was about Joyce, and we called it “Redemption”.
Because more than any other main character in the Dumbiverse (except maybe possibly Ruth), Joyce’s overall DOA arch is about redemption. At the time being, Cerb and I focused mostly on how she was growing out of her prejudiced religious upbringing and starting to do good things in the face of them. But since that episode, we’ve seen that Joyce has more things to redeem herself for; mainly her way of overstepping boundaries, thinking that classic story tropes of romance is actually applicable to real life (when in truth, they are often so very harmful).
Will she eventually learn how wrong this is? I think so. Because a core tenet of Joyce is that she actually does care for people. I mean, really really cares for people. She’ll stand up for the ones she loves in ways I can’t say for sure I would; because I’m probably too much of a coward for that.
And this moment, this last panel right here? Yep, that’s one of those moments when she’s starting to figure out that she might very well be doing something wrong. And the thing about Joyce realising she’s wrong (admittedly sometimes on the late side)… Well, that’s when she wants to right those wrongs hard.
She’ll get there. I know she will. Our little cinnamon bun still have a few raisins in her; but once those are gone, she’ll be a perfect cinnamon bun.
I really enjoyed that podcast.
And very good analysis, your majesty. Joyce is self aware enough and willing enough to change that Sal’s lash out will hit exactly the right spot.
There was a podcast?
Yeah, what? Is there more to tell about that? It sounds awesome!
The Emperor left no link?
I’m sure that couldn’t be expected by the supreme ruler of the internet or anything…
Anyway, since our protector and sovereign is doing something much more important, I’m sure, here’s the podcast! Let there be much rejoycing!
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/podcasting-of-age
My blog has links, and my name has the link to my blog.
Yeah, but what about my instant gratification? You should have thought of my instant gratification.
With all due respect to the Emperor, his linked blog page contains many many many things. Thank you Bagge for your public service.
#YourBarbieDollNoMore
#SpiderSal
“But, but, we were supposed to talk about how much WALKY suck”
daaaaang joyce got rightfully dragged
Man, some days it’s impossible for me to read Sal’s lines without imagining Applejack’s voice.
I thought I was the only one! She does have a distinct voice in my head, but it slips into applejack every now and then.
Sal’s in a jumpy mood this morning. I do have to say that, for someone who doesn’t want to be ‘boxed’ (categorised, basically), she’s done a lot of work to do it to herself.
Not catering to people’s desire to know things about her does not make her responsible for them making vapid assumptions about her.
Agree. Leave the girl that wants to be left alone alone.
No, seriously (and I can’t believe that I’m actually posting this), Malaya is right in some ways. Sal has, consciously or otherwise, created a ‘persona’ that she shows to the rest of the world. It’s so strong and so consistent that she can’t be surprised if, when she chooses to drop it, that those who know her will be confused or even concerned for her well-being.
That said, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the revelation of this arc is that Sal doesn’t like Joyce, she never has liked her and wants to have as little to do with her as possible. I’m not sure that’s what’s going to happen but I’d say it’s a 50/50 proposition at the moment. It’s difficult to be sure because Sal is unusually snappy due to the emotional loads she’s been facing over the last few days.
Sal doesn’t owe Joyce anything.
My own take is that Sal doesn’t consider Joyce either Malaya level OR Marcy level, but insignificantly in-between, mostly harmless, if mildly annoying sometimes. It would be interesting to know Sal’s internal dialog which led to her removing the glove.
?
I’m not saying that Sal ‘owes’ anyone anything. I’m saying that she shouldn’t be surprised or angry when something pretty easily predictable happens.
1: Sal’s still 18, and still learning a lot about life as it is.
2:Even so, she’s definitely not surprised, because she’s clearly spelling it out for Joyce that she already knows how these things go.
3: She still has every right to be upset that it keeps happening. I mean, this isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last; but just the same way that sooner or later, the water drop torture -will- suddenly transform from “slightly annoying” to “oh my fucking god let me out of this!!!”; so does all those times people keep acting like that wind her up until she finally blows.
And as such, there’s a lot worse ways to react than the way she did. She could simply say “fuck you!” over and over instead of doing what she did, which was explaining what was actually wrong with this picture.
Racism is predictable. Sexism is predictable. All kinds of absolutely shitty behaviors are very predictable. There’s no planet where a shitty thing being predictable should mean a person shouldn’t get angry about it happening. Fuck that
Sal has a right to be mad about it.
Not all predictable behaviours are morally equal. I have no time for those who claim they are or that they deserve the same response.
My point isn’t that they’re the same, but that being predictable has absolutely no bearing on whether someone should be “allowed” to be mad about it
You’re blaming Sal for being upset that other people do something shitty consistently. Shitty things being consistent and predictive might wear a person down until they just give up and take it because it’s the path of least resistance, but at no point would that make it okay. Being able to see it coming would only make it MORE frustrating, until it broke your spirit. Fuck. That.
And right there is where Joyce gets it.
Panel five: How to look chastened.
Oh I think Joyce can relate to that very much indeed.
Her entire life has been about living up to societys expectations, and it still is. Shes seen what happens to people that break norms.
I think we will be seeing some heavy introspection from Joyce now, possibly culminating in her realizing her own identity.
true, but also like, just don’t wear your gloves for a week and no one will care anymore.
Yeah, I was going to say that too. You just kinda have to power through the first few days/weeks until people get used to it being the new normal. Or just wear one day on, one day off. Eventually people just get desensitized to it.
Until newcomers keep commenting on it.
‘Woah hey, did you know you have a scar on your hand?’
Oh but think of the rebuttals!
“Yeah, I want to collect them but just got one to start with. You know, see how I like it first.”
*Inspects other hand, then looks at the other person quizzically*
“AAAAH GET IT OFFA ME GET IT OFFA ME!” *Frantically brushes hand off like the scar’s a big spider*
Nah, that’s the kind of stuff Walky would do.
“You should see the other guy.”
Not a lotta people here picking up that Joyce perfectly fits Sal’s rant too. Joyce is showing any amount of sexual interest? JOYCE DOESN’T HAVE SEXUAL INTEREST! Joyce said a swear after a REALLY traumatic incident? JOYCE DOESN’T SWEAR EVER! And so on.
It looks like Joyce may be picking up on it…
Indeed she does, friend.
Reading comprehension skills. I has them.
Joyce has come a ways from when she gave Becky a tour of the residents. http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/introductions/
Mary’s description is still hilarious
The introduction to Billie in the next strip is still my favorite.
this reminds me of the first time i dyed my hair. one of my friends at the time had a literal jaw dropping thing. her mouth just hung open in disbelief that i could do that.
Three days after boxing day, and Sal REFUSES to be boxed in again.
#ChristmasIsForStupidPuns
Panel three, is no joke. It is exactly why it is so hard for people to change. Eat better, stop smoking, come out, anything. It’s the reason I don’t talk about chronic pain on Facebook – I can’t talk about it as a topic without it turning into “No, really, thank you all for your advice, but, I already tried… no wait, but… OK that’s enough!”
People need room to experiment and try things and move past things and grow.
Loving panel five.
God damnit willis
Yeah not sure why everyone’s forgetting they have an attached bathroom she could be storming into
Mmm delicious character growth.
I realize this may be sarcastic but the fact that Joyce is realizing this coming from someone she idolizes is very satisfying.
Now she needs Dorothy to tell her to butt out of Dorothy’s sex life and point out that she is a remarkably naive young woman all of whose notions come from fiction, even more ignorant of real life and relationship issues than the typically teenager, and that her attempts to act as love-morals enforcer are as encroaching as they are inept.