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Yes, I know we all love the drama of this strip, but some have shown an unhealthy need for Joyce’s friends to be inconsiderate monsters and Sarah and Dorothy have shown that although they did not agree at first, they reconsidered and let Joyce not have pressures and have your future successes and mistakes.
I mean Sarah’s likely still not happy about it but has dropped her feelings down from “I must sabotage this now” to “ehh I’ll just kill him if/when he fucks up”
My guess is conflicted, culminating in guilt! I think there’ll be a part of her that’s happy for Joyce, or feels like she should be, and a part of her that’s upset without understanding why she feels so possessive of Joyce, and in the end she’ll settle on feeling guilty for not being happier for Joyce or the way she responds because she’s in the sort of vulnerable state where she’s looking for reasons to beat herself up.
panel 7: [voice from off panel] it was really awkward.
panel 8: [Horse eating mac and cheese] how they were sitting. that was awkward. the kiss was cute.
She’s embarrassed, it’s not how people see her or how she used to see herself. It’s a big step for her! Lovely how she takes the time to thank Dorothy for all that helping, Dorothy could really use some boosting now.
I’m torn between whether it would be better for Dorothy to leave Indiana U and go to Yale or not. Dorothy clearly has been traumatized by multiple violent events here and only will encounter reminders every day. Plus, their drama is clearly tearing her down further.
Maybe Yale would be a better place for her mentally.
Yes, and it seems that Dorothy like Walky is finding college harder than she expected. She might have to leave Yale for an easier school. Although considering which dumb-ass awful politicians went to Yale apparently without learning a single thing…
Is she? She had that bit last semester when her grades were slipping and she had to break up with Walky, but I don’t think she’s shown signs of struggle since then. Am I forgetting something from this semester?
Struggling in college can be much more than just struggling academically. She’s clearly struggling emotionally as it is (and maybe socially too), and if she did transfer, even if she kept up with the increased workload that might come with Yale, the stress could/would likely make her emotional headspace worse. I had similar issues in school, where I struggled with depression, anxiety, and undiagnosed ADHD (didn’t find get the ADHD diagnosis until after undergrad and a masters degree because I couldn’t keep a job) that made me have a lot of difficulties socially and emotionally. But since I was able to keep my grades up, a lot of people wouldn’t recognize or acknowledge the difficulty I was having, which seriously delayed my ability to get the help I needed.
I remember someone here once mentioning that Yale isn’t necessarily harder to graduate from for students that study there. The problem is that it is very hard to get into in the first place.
(Sorry, can’t verify that…so take it with a grain of salt)
I’d love to see Dorothy work through, and past, the perfectionist saviour mentality, and manage to sit with where she is now and what she can offer. And then hopefully move onto Yale at that point, prepared to actually succeed, and happy to stay in contact long-distance without constant anxiety.
Okay, maybe it’s because I moved a lot as a kid, but the idea that maybe Dorothy should pick IU over Yale confuses me so much. She doesn’t even like IU or Indiana.
Dorothy has one really good friend here, in Joyce. But Joyce will obsessively stay in touch, and Dorothy can make way more new pals at a new school, too.
Yale’s an objectively more prestigious school, and she can do anything from there (not just attempt a presidency that she no longer wants).
Early on, Dorothy actually objected, onscreen, to narratives where, when a female character displays an ambition that isn’t love, the plot serves to “correct” that character… and that was such a cool moment! And like, sure, Dorothy has changed, but it seems like a self-betrayal for her to let the plot correct her towards (platonic) love instead of any ambition.
Ivies are harder to get into, but not always harder to succeed in — particularly since it’s where Dorothy won’t have to completely break herself with the toughest classes and heaviest extracurriculars in crazy impress-the-hell-out-of-Yale mode, because she’ll already be there. She could rest on her laurels just a little bit, take some way-calmer Sophomore classes, and heal.
Dorothy doesn’t know how to not completely break herself with the toughest classes and heaviest extracurriculars. Her studying habits were already bad at IU. Cramming everything all the time is counter productive.
I don’t think she would take the easy classes designed for the legacy admits. Yale is more prestigious, but that doesn’t mean that prestige is earned. She picked it because 17 or 15 or 13 year old Dorothy came up with a formula to min-max getting elected president without understanding the correlation between Ivies and the presidency.
And finally, she wouldn’t be sacrificing ambition to stay with a friend. She’d be staying where she wouldn’t burn out or hurt herself because that is the track she’s on right now, and there are multiple people at IU who care about her. If she goes to Yale she will be less likely to be a policy wonk or judge or rep or president etc.
Completely agree.
I’d love to see Dorothy progress through all of the above, to a point where she can attend Yale successfully and healthily, but for that to happen she needs to set up solid long-distance support AND actually work through her needs (rather than hiding everything from the therapist just in case she’s elected)
i feel like places like harvard and yale, assuming it’s not some ‘inherited’ thing or something one buys their way into, would chew up and spit an average student back out, let alone someone like dorothy whose just now struggling in college
I guess it depends on just how average a student she is! I have one of those academic brains that fit at a rigorous school, and I guess I always just assumed that Dorothy was roughly as IQ-heavy as I am, except without my ADHD, and way more hardworking. Her dialogue is pretty verbally quick for an average person. But I guess she could be more average, too, like if the snappy dialogue is more a function of being in a comic.
The problem Dorothy has is that she holds herself to such high standards that she puts herself under constant pressure and strain. The tougher classes and expectations at Ivy League are going to do that perfectly well without help.
Okay but this is literally exactly how Joyce described her ideal marriage to Dorothy back in that one Gender Studies assignment in Book 6. Minus the children and the fighter pilot, but those can come later. Dorothy has to know this.
From the strip immediately before that one:
Joyce: “the husband’s job is to protect and cherish his wife, and the wife’s job is to accept the decisions her husband makes.” ”
Dorothy: “That’s…not equal. One person is literally the boss of the other person.”
Also rather extraordinarily applicable to this strip, as much as it would gall Dorothy to admit it!
Joyce would be wrecking her own house, which she has shown zero inclination to do.
Also, Dorothy has stated quite firmly that she’s straight. Even if Joyce WAS inclined to homewreck herself, she has good reason to think Dorothy wouldn’t want that.
Dorothy has stated that she’s straight, but not especially firmly. Just, like, the default levels of firmness. “I’m pretty sure I’m straight, but I guess I could always be surprised.”
I have to admit, I often feel a little frustrated by this, like, compulsion the comments section often has to “correct” shippers, especially Dorothy/Joyce shippers. I don’t know if I get it. It feels needlessly combative sometimes.
(I actually do want to retract something I said–I remembered on reread that you were giving a pretty normal insight on Joyce’s motivations, not declaring that the overall ship is infeasible, so the second paragraph complaint doesn’t apply to you, anonymously. That’s my bad! I forgot that when I started writing my response.)
I don’t mind. I actually AM an anti-shipper of Dorothy and Joyce, because the universal insistence that there’s no way to have a close friendship that doesn’t involve sex is mind-meltingly frustrating to me.
Personally, I get that, but I think the constant erasure of lesbian/bisexual couples (and QPPs/romantic friendships, for that matter) is a slightly more prevalent issue these days? So that’s where I stand on it.
Part 7 NSFW. VERY NSFW.
Honestly I’m not SUPER happy with how I drew this but I wanted to get the concept out. Honestly could probably have made this like…longer but I wanted to get it out soon. Also sorry for any Assymetry between Amber and Joe’s scenes. I’m biased.
Firefox was trying to update itself in-the-background like a piece of malware and hoping I wouldn’t notice … Try it again now.
Honestly, I like Firefox except for this shit.
Nice!!
Panel… (counts) 10 Joe is SO HOT there’s that dumptruck ass that snagged Joyce. Also love Amber from above, and that boob grab
This doesnt feel all that lopsided. I feel like you could arrange these side by side for that classic split-screen feel, it would work great. Anyway lovely
at least her parents are seemingly fine for now, imagine if one of them got in an accident/hospitalized i’m sure that’d be damaging to her stress levels
Man, I really hope Dorothy takes this well, given that her whole thing was “You have to do selfish things for yourself” that promptly crashed and burned.
She did grant her blessing, but she’s maybe going to be rather envious. Not with Joe, probably, but from a general “Joyce is getting what could be dubbed as ‘action’ and I am not.”
She “granted her blessing” when she was going to attempt to break up Walky and Lucy, and it could easily be construed that she only did so to assuage her own guilt at homewreckin.
It’s just so nice that they’re sitting down and eating a nice hand-cooked meal of Kraft Macaroni and I’m Javert together, and it’s not yet some horrendous drama that will shatter their relationship.
I mean…. maybe a stable friendship IS going to be helpful for Dorothy in her identity-crisis-whatsit? So maybe this doesn’t count as her avoiding confronting the problem? Maybe?
That certainly causes trouble sometimes, but I don’t think its the main problem. Dorothy is so busy helping everyone that she doesn’t stop to examine who she is, just on her own.
Yeah, her self image is “I am the one who helps”. She lets it dominate her life, to the point of feeling guilty when she “has to” think of herself first. Her default coping strategy is “just buckle down and try harder”, which only feeds into her own self-doubt when it inevitably backfires. It’s a viscous cycle.
i don’t think becky would intentionally do so (do we know if dorothy actually formally replied back and send them a letter versus just not a follow up application or so), but i imagine it’d come up if joyce realizes “it’s pretty far into the year i would’ve expected yale to accept her” but idk how common/often iti is for someone to transfer colleges, let alone one of the ‘ivy league’ ones
I’m wondering if Dorothy needs Joyce to need her, like Dorothy is subconsciously keeping Joyce dependent on her whereas it’s looking more and more like Joyce has outgrown Dorothy and has actually surpassed her in many ways
Wouldn’t be surprised If she has a moment of jealousy not at the kissing but learning that Joyce asked Joe for support with her mother and not herself for this reason. While she accepts Becky and Sarah she gets angry with others who are shown as potential rivals for helping Joyce ( I.e. Jennifer).
I think the issue with Jennifer was less that someone else was helping Joyce and more that said person was being a condescending ass to her while managing to help Joyce in a way that she couldn’t figure out how to.
I mean, she’s saying it, but not saying it. Joyce helps Dorothy by being a consistent friend. By rooting for her even when she feels like she’s failing. By allowing Dorothy to mom at her – Nurturer types need people who let them do that and don’t see it as suffocating. Joyce thinks she’s only taking, but that’s not true – she’s giving love and acceptance. Joyce see’s value where others see control – and even if Dorothy is sometimes condescending, she doesn’t MEAN to be. Her heart is in the right place – she’s barely an adult, she doesn’t know how much she doesn’t know yet.
Dorothy is very well-written bc she annoys the shit out of me. Her self-imposed martyrdom is childish and naive, and also very apt for a passionate teenager. good writing!!
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Dotty: “Yeah, that sounds like a pretty stupid day.”
The REAL improvement was the friends we made along the way
I think it was the mac and cheese she made along the way.
The Mac and Cheese were the real friends we made along the way.
That sounds awfully like cannibalism.
That sounds delightfully like cannibalism!
The duality of Man.
* made out with along the way
Willis did real chef kiss with this strip!
You forgot to specify where.
(see alt text)
real chef kiss on the mouth
I like that Dorothy kind of looks like a chipmunk. Those little guys are nuts. Also crazy cute.
The girl has her charm
Do ya think Ruth is still here for all this.
Naw. Somebody has to untie Jason before he starves to death.
It’s okay, no one will notice.
I don’t know about that. A decomposing body can make quite a smell. Others in the residence might notice that.
Not so sure on that, ever been in a university dorm?
The conversation will turn dramatic, and then there will be a beat where Ruth just turns up with a bottle of ketchup .
A really fancy bottle of ketchup, too.
She doesn’t have a million dollars.
Having just plowed through the webtoon “Escape Room”, I get a very different vibe from your comment than you might’ve intended
She prolly either took off or nabbed teh leftovers off screen lol
Yeah you did, Joyce.
Drama bomb!
oh hey jacob
guess that means the gravatars reset
But his hair in that icon looks like bad food. : (
what do you mean? It has no resemblance to Brussel Sprouts.
It also has no resemblance to Russel Crow.
This revelation will certainly make Dorothy feel better
is it that much of a revelation, it’s not like joe/joyce was necessarily a secret
Alright, place yet bets folks, how’s Dorothy going to react to that?
She was fine with Joyce and Joe before, and it’s not like the smoshed so I think Dorothy would ok if not Happy. And also ask how did Sarah reacted.
Yes, I know we all love the drama of this strip, but some have shown an unhealthy need for Joyce’s friends to be inconsiderate monsters and Sarah and Dorothy have shown that although they did not agree at first, they reconsidered and let Joyce not have pressures and have your future successes and mistakes.
I mean Sarah’s likely still not happy about it but has dropped her feelings down from “I must sabotage this now” to “ehh I’ll just kill him if/when he fucks up”
If she shows up again, just hope Liz doesn’t say something stupid in the future.
What are the odds?
To be honest, I don’t have a clear answer, but they say “expect the unexpected”
Hey now, I never thought Dotty was an uncaring monster…
She’s a sMother.
Probably by asking how Joyce feels about taking that step in her relationship
Why do people still think Dorothy is against Joyce and Joe dating, she moved past that already
because she’s jealous, she expressed resignation, that doesn’t mean she’s moved past it.
“As long as it wasn’t on the penis”
“So, the buttcheek is fine, then.”
Depends on which one.
If she kisses the left, it’s fine. But if she kisses the one in the right, the rift will open, unleashing the seventeen shadow demons.
Some may call it this. Joe calls it the burrito he had earlier.
“He kissed me on the lips”
Which ones?
She’ll kiss Joyce, just to make this truly scientific.
My guess is conflicted, culminating in guilt! I think there’ll be a part of her that’s happy for Joyce, or feels like she should be, and a part of her that’s upset without understanding why she feels so possessive of Joyce, and in the end she’ll settle on feeling guilty for not being happier for Joyce or the way she responds because she’s in the sort of vulnerable state where she’s looking for reasons to beat herself up.
Although each one has their problems differently, I have noticed that Joyce has also shown to have a possessive side with Dorothy.
Well, she couldn’t have Walky monopolizing all Dorothy’s time.
*Dashes off to check Patreon.*
I do really like that Joyce wants to boost Dorothy back.
panel 3 makes me a little sad. she’s falling back into the pattern.
Not to mention that saying perfection to Dorothy is not appropriate at this time.
“I put Walky’s dick in my mouth. See, we’ve both done mouth stuff!”
Why does Joyce seem unsure about sharing that news?
Because Dorothy hates Joyce.
How did you come to that conclusion????
She said it in Panel 5.6, clearly.
panel 7: [voice from off panel] it was really awkward.
panel 8: [Horse eating mac and cheese] how they were sitting. that was awkward. the kiss was cute.
I know you meant to say Joe, but this is hilarious.
She’s embarrassed, it’s not how people see her or how she used to see herself. It’s a big step for her! Lovely how she takes the time to thank Dorothy for all that helping, Dorothy could really use some boosting now.
She’s still PG-rated, but she’s inching closer to PG-13 and she knows if/when she takes that step with Joe she’s going hard R and not coming back.
She’s going what, now?
Don’t worry about it.
The R stands for Ramrod.
That… is not how I’m used to hearing the phrase ‘hard R’. Good comment, but are you aware that usually refers to us of the N word?
*use
I’m torn between whether it would be better for Dorothy to leave Indiana U and go to Yale or not. Dorothy clearly has been traumatized by multiple violent events here and only will encounter reminders every day. Plus, their drama is clearly tearing her down further.
Maybe Yale would be a better place for her mentally.
Yale is so tied to the “I am going to work myself to the bone so I can maybe be president someday” dream that I feel like it probably won’t be
Yes, and it seems that Dorothy like Walky is finding college harder than she expected. She might have to leave Yale for an easier school. Although considering which dumb-ass awful politicians went to Yale apparently without learning a single thing…
Is she? She had that bit last semester when her grades were slipping and she had to break up with Walky, but I don’t think she’s shown signs of struggle since then. Am I forgetting something from this semester?
Struggling in college can be much more than just struggling academically. She’s clearly struggling emotionally as it is (and maybe socially too), and if she did transfer, even if she kept up with the increased workload that might come with Yale, the stress could/would likely make her emotional headspace worse. I had similar issues in school, where I struggled with depression, anxiety, and undiagnosed ADHD (didn’t find get the ADHD diagnosis until after undergrad and a masters degree because I couldn’t keep a job) that made me have a lot of difficulties socially and emotionally. But since I was able to keep my grades up, a lot of people wouldn’t recognize or acknowledge the difficulty I was having, which seriously delayed my ability to get the help I needed.
Nothing has been easy for her for a very long time. She makes things harder than they need to be, including her classes.
I remember someone here once mentioning that Yale isn’t necessarily harder to graduate from for students that study there. The problem is that it is very hard to get into in the first place.
(Sorry, can’t verify that…so take it with a grain of salt)
And away from her entire support group.
I’d love to see Dorothy work through, and past, the perfectionist saviour mentality, and manage to sit with where she is now and what she can offer. And then hopefully move onto Yale at that point, prepared to actually succeed, and happy to stay in contact long-distance without constant anxiety.
Huh, Walky! That’s new. And appropriate.
Isolating herself by 700 miles from the people who care about her, while she’s going through a pretty heavy existential crisis.
Okay, maybe it’s because I moved a lot as a kid, but the idea that maybe Dorothy should pick IU over Yale confuses me so much. She doesn’t even like IU or Indiana.
Dorothy has one really good friend here, in Joyce. But Joyce will obsessively stay in touch, and Dorothy can make way more new pals at a new school, too.
Yale’s an objectively more prestigious school, and she can do anything from there (not just attempt a presidency that she no longer wants).
Early on, Dorothy actually objected, onscreen, to narratives where, when a female character displays an ambition that isn’t love, the plot serves to “correct” that character… and that was such a cool moment! And like, sure, Dorothy has changed, but it seems like a self-betrayal for her to let the plot correct her towards (platonic) love instead of any ambition.
Ivies are harder to get into, but not always harder to succeed in — particularly since it’s where Dorothy won’t have to completely break herself with the toughest classes and heaviest extracurriculars in crazy impress-the-hell-out-of-Yale mode, because she’ll already be there. She could rest on her laurels just a little bit, take some way-calmer Sophomore classes, and heal.
Augh.
Dorothy doesn’t know how to not completely break herself with the toughest classes and heaviest extracurriculars. Her studying habits were already bad at IU. Cramming everything all the time is counter productive.
I don’t think she would take the easy classes designed for the legacy admits. Yale is more prestigious, but that doesn’t mean that prestige is earned. She picked it because 17 or 15 or 13 year old Dorothy came up with a formula to min-max getting elected president without understanding the correlation between Ivies and the presidency.
And finally, she wouldn’t be sacrificing ambition to stay with a friend. She’d be staying where she wouldn’t burn out or hurt herself because that is the track she’s on right now, and there are multiple people at IU who care about her. If she goes to Yale she will be less likely to be a policy wonk or judge or rep or president etc.
Completely agree.
I’d love to see Dorothy progress through all of the above, to a point where she can attend Yale successfully and healthily, but for that to happen she needs to set up solid long-distance support AND actually work through her needs (rather than hiding everything from the therapist just in case she’s elected)
Dorothy will be improved by a year at Yale.
Look, Lucy agrees!
I think she should transfer to Harvard. Forget IU and Yale!
Grade inflation FTW!
i feel like places like harvard and yale, assuming it’s not some ‘inherited’ thing or something one buys their way into, would chew up and spit an average student back out, let alone someone like dorothy whose just now struggling in college
I guess it depends on just how average a student she is! I have one of those academic brains that fit at a rigorous school, and I guess I always just assumed that Dorothy was roughly as IQ-heavy as I am, except without my ADHD, and way more hardworking. Her dialogue is pretty verbally quick for an average person. But I guess she could be more average, too, like if the snappy dialogue is more a function of being in a comic.
The problem Dorothy has is that she holds herself to such high standards that she puts herself under constant pressure and strain. The tougher classes and expectations at Ivy League are going to do that perfectly well without help.
Okay but this is literally exactly how Joyce described her ideal marriage to Dorothy back in that one Gender Studies assignment in Book 6. Minus the children and the fighter pilot, but those can come later. Dorothy has to know this.
Oooh, it’s Rerollin’ Time!
Wow. Good great memory. Thanks for pointing this out.
Dorothy doesn’t necessarily have to know, I wouldn’t remember something a friend said in class months ago
From the strip immediately before that one:
Joyce: “the husband’s job is to protect and cherish his wife, and the wife’s job is to accept the decisions her husband makes.” ”
Dorothy: “That’s…not equal. One person is literally the boss of the other person.”
Also rather extraordinarily applicable to this strip, as much as it would gall Dorothy to admit it!
Dorothy has already agreed to be the wingman of the fighter pilot.
Now kiss Dorothy on the mouth
Ew, no, why is this my gravatar now?!
‘cuz joyce ain’t no homewrecker
Ohhh?? Did this work????
Sorry, wrong reply, but I fixed my gravatar lol!!!
Joyce, wreck some homes!!
Homewrecker? Is Dorothy seeing someone?
Joyce would be wrecking her own house, which she has shown zero inclination to do.
Also, Dorothy has stated quite firmly that she’s straight. Even if Joyce WAS inclined to homewreck herself, she has good reason to think Dorothy wouldn’t want that.
I don’t mind her, but let’s see if I do better….
Dorothy has stated that she’s straight, but not especially firmly. Just, like, the default levels of firmness. “I’m pretty sure I’m straight, but I guess I could always be surprised.”
I have to admit, I often feel a little frustrated by this, like, compulsion the comments section often has to “correct” shippers, especially Dorothy/Joyce shippers. I don’t know if I get it. It feels needlessly combative sometimes.
oh no sorry jacob i cant abide a boy avatar
So how do I re-scramble? Asking for a friend.
To change the avatar, change the capitalization in our email
(I actually do want to retract something I said–I remembered on reread that you were giving a pretty normal insight on Joyce’s motivations, not declaring that the overall ship is infeasible, so the second paragraph complaint doesn’t apply to you, anonymously. That’s my bad! I forgot that when I started writing my response.)
I don’t mind. I actually AM an anti-shipper of Dorothy and Joyce, because the universal insistence that there’s no way to have a close friendship that doesn’t involve sex is mind-meltingly frustrating to me.
Personally, I get that, but I think the constant erasure of lesbian/bisexual couples (and QPPs/romantic friendships, for that matter) is a slightly more prevalent issue these days? So that’s where I stand on it.
we have to go back
“And how was your stupid day, Dorothy?”
“I had a nervous breakdown in Amber’s room about what I’m doing with my life.”
“Well I had a PTSD nightmare and then I jimmied your lock and watched you sleep before I went back to bed.”
anyone else feel like they’re both joyce and dorothy here at the same time?
“Yeah? Show me. I’ll be Joe. Don’t worry, it’s just like before. You know, practice.”
I think I’d cry if I ever saw Dorothy cry
And even that, I’m really expecting she cries a bit.
What, you mean like this? https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/04-the-do-list/shrink/
Fun way to bring that up.
Oh COME ON. Not AGAIN!
Were Charlie and Liz options before?
Yeah.
they still are AFAIK
Dorothy: Can you give me a demonstration?
Did Joyce realize the homoerotic tension?
I’m not making another comment until the avatars change again
Use different capitalization for your email and it should roll again.
Lol, I was in the same boat
It’s Faz’s birthday, approximately. https://www.dumbingofage.com/stepdad/
A calendar is just a chart for time, isn’t it?
Part 7 NSFW. VERY NSFW.
Honestly I’m not SUPER happy with how I drew this but I wanted to get the concept out. Honestly could probably have made this like…longer but I wanted to get it out soon. Also sorry for any Assymetry between Amber and Joe’s scenes. I’m biased.
All the best people are biased toward symmetric ass.
Holy crap.
The warning was correct. Joe’s reaction, concern for consequences, is very in character!
Damn it, Chrome! The villainous browser willin’t display it.
same with firefox
but I could download it with lynx LOL
making a comment with lynx ahahaha
Weird. It seems to work for me
Works fine on the laptop
firefox is also choking on updating, so something fishy between IP and user.
Firefox was fine with it for me.
Firefox was trying to update itself in-the-background like a piece of malware and hoping I wouldn’t notice … Try it again now.
Honestly, I like Firefox except for this shit.
Goooosh
V nice
Nice!!
Panel… (counts) 10 Joe is SO HOT there’s that dumptruck ass that snagged Joyce. Also love Amber from above, and that boob grab
This doesnt feel all that lopsided. I feel like you could arrange these side by side for that classic split-screen feel, it would work great. Anyway lovely
Is Amber thinking about Joe and Danny?
She’s thinking about Walky
yep. I considered drawing them as Batman and Robin.
Does there exist an omnibus link where all of your works can be easily accessed?
thank you for your services kind sir <3 much enjoyed
I sense an imminent breakdown from Dorothy coming soon
Ironic I got Amber after saying that
Yeah, Joyce might be able to come to Dorothy’s aid sooner than she expects
at least her parents are seemingly fine for now, imagine if one of them got in an accident/hospitalized i’m sure that’d be damaging to her stress levels
Wait, when did Joyce kiss Joe on the mouth?
Been moving out of country so I suppose I could have missed…
Ohhhh wait that’s right; nevermind
Oh, are we rolling once more?
Okay one more just in case.
From Liz to lizard?
Hmm, how does one change it? I am alright with mine, but I dunno if I am feeling it.
I assume no less than three people have already told you by now, but you can change the capitalisation in your email address (if you’re using one).
Thank you, Taffy.
Or you could avoid the roulette by going to gravitar and choosing one.
roll’n roll’n
Man, I really hope Dorothy takes this well, given that her whole thing was “You have to do selfish things for yourself” that promptly crashed and burned.
She did grant her blessing, but she’s maybe going to be rather envious. Not with Joe, probably, but from a general “Joyce is getting what could be dubbed as ‘action’ and I am not.”
She “granted her blessing” when she was going to attempt to break up Walky and Lucy, and it could easily be construed that she only did so to assuage her own guilt at homewreckin.
Possibly so, though I choose to give her more benefit of the doubt than that.
I’m not sure what her current mental state is. Which makes me worry.
I also get that concern. Also, I find it really funny changing my avatar and it happening to look like Dorothy took over my profile to defend herself.
I think their relationship would feel less weird if they were actually dating.
You’re not wrong.
And as we all know, if there’s one thing this comic strives to avoid, it’s weird relationship dynamics!
i mean putting her on a pedestal and such prolly would be an even bigger imbalance than just friends
I’m not saying it’s healthy just that if you’re teaching someone to masturbate while holding hands it’s slightly less weird if you’re dating them.
Yesterday was cute, but was not my favorite strip.
This might be my favorite strip.
It’s just so nice that they’re sitting down and eating a nice hand-cooked meal of Kraft Macaroni and I’m Javert together, and it’s not yet some horrendous drama that will shatter their relationship.
I mean…. maybe a stable friendship IS going to be helpful for Dorothy in her identity-crisis-whatsit? So maybe this doesn’t count as her avoiding confronting the problem? Maybe?
“Helping my friends improve their lives” is kind of her North Star.
Problem is, what she thinks of as “helping” and what actually is helping aren’t always in sync.
That certainly causes trouble sometimes, but I don’t think its the main problem. Dorothy is so busy helping everyone that she doesn’t stop to examine who she is, just on her own.
Yeah, her self image is “I am the one who helps”. She lets it dominate her life, to the point of feeling guilty when she “has to” think of herself first. Her default coping strategy is “just buckle down and try harder”, which only feeds into her own self-doubt when it inevitably backfires. It’s a viscous cycle.
Oh man lost opportunity. Any chance Becky will spill the beans?
I think her immediate concern would be the whereabouts of her serving of mac n’ cheese.
mmm… mac and cheese and black beans.
i don’t think becky would intentionally do so (do we know if dorothy actually formally replied back and send them a letter versus just not a follow up application or so), but i imagine it’d come up if joyce realizes “it’s pretty far into the year i would’ve expected yale to accept her” but idk how common/often iti is for someone to transfer colleges, let alone one of the ‘ivy league’ ones
I’m wondering if Dorothy needs Joyce to need her, like Dorothy is subconsciously keeping Joyce dependent on her whereas it’s looking more and more like Joyce has outgrown Dorothy and has actually surpassed her in many ways
Oh, didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I, see you cryin’…
Dotty’s always seen Joyce as a project to fix.
Her continued emotional well being is going to depend on how she handles her project doing better then herself.
Wouldn’t be surprised If she has a moment of jealousy not at the kissing but learning that Joyce asked Joe for support with her mother and not herself for this reason. While she accepts Becky and Sarah she gets angry with others who are shown as potential rivals for helping Joyce ( I.e. Jennifer).
Rivals who perhaps Dorothy looks down on…
I think the issue with Jennifer was less that someone else was helping Joyce and more that said person was being a condescending ass to her while managing to help Joyce in a way that she couldn’t figure out how to.
“On the mouth? What about–”
“Tushie-biting is not first date material. Everybody knows that.”
it IS important to specify where indeed
DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!
“Watch this, [Joyce]… you can actually pinpoint the second when [Dorothy’s] heart rips in half!”
*glass shattering*
Uh oh
I caught up one day too early!!!
I mean, she’s saying it, but not saying it. Joyce helps Dorothy by being a consistent friend. By rooting for her even when she feels like she’s failing. By allowing Dorothy to mom at her – Nurturer types need people who let them do that and don’t see it as suffocating. Joyce thinks she’s only taking, but that’s not true – she’s giving love and acceptance. Joyce see’s value where others see control – and even if Dorothy is sometimes condescending, she doesn’t MEAN to be. Her heart is in the right place – she’s barely an adult, she doesn’t know how much she doesn’t know yet.
Dorothy is very well-written bc she annoys the shit out of me. Her self-imposed martyrdom is childish and naive, and also very apt for a passionate teenager. good writing!!
( that was supposed to be a plus one exclamation point )
Ohh this is why I was craving Mac and cheese for dinner. It was delicious (Kraft microwaved cup!)
i don’t even understand this joyce n joe relationship. not feeling it
Does anyone’s 1st relationship make sense?
Joyce doesn’t really understand how much she does for people, huh?