I can’t say I would be 100% on anyone. Even the straightest or gayest person I can think of I wouldn’t be shocked if I heard they hooked up with a an unexpected partner. People are complex and I feel like there’s nothing about a person I could ever attribute to 0% or 100%.
90% sure is as far as I’d go on anyone. And even then I’m kinda high balling it.
” I think, like, everyone thinks about it or tries it out eventually. We get curious. It’s basically inevitable. “
— Jennifer “Billy” Billingsworth
Thag Simmons
She’s got something of a biased perspective.
Wagstaff
Well, still worth considering what she said there. Even a stopped clock is right two times a day.
King Daniel
Willis’s hovertext from that quoted comic said Billie was biased there, IIRC.
Wagstaff
The point still stands. Even blood-thirsty emperors on one occasion express worthwhile thoughts.
The author is incidental. The idea always stands or falls on its own merits. Many people may have converged on the same thought.
Clif
Vampire emperors to the side, many people may have converged on the same thought and the thought still be wrong. Many people converged on the thought that homosexuality was a mental illness and could be cured.
thejeff
Yeah, but it’s still a dumb idea and a bad one to use to make this argument, since the whole point of the line is that Jennifer is bisexual and in denial about it. It’s not a deep insight into what straight people are really like, it’s a misrepresentation of straights so that she could keep thinking of herself as one.
“Everyone” doesn’t try it. It’s not “inevitable”. She’s just in denial about what her attractions mean about her sexuality.
Now some people who present as straight are in denial or are closeted, so Yotomoe’s point that you can never be sure about someone is well taken. That’s just not what Jennifer was saying.
Clif
It may have been Yotomoe’s point, but it wasn’t Wagstaff’s. Wagstaff’s point was that Billie may have been in denial and that may have been authorial intent, but that didn’t keep her from being right. And in evidence of her being right alluded to the fact that many other people had converged on the same thought.
Unless I lost track of the conversation, which is always possible.
thejeff
Yeah, and I was saying that’s wrong, partly because it’s not the same as Yotomoe’s point, which does make sense.
JBento
Sorry, we’re digital now. A broken clock doesn’t give any time.
Clif
and most digital clocks are only right once a second.
Some Ed
There are 24 hour analog clocks which would only be right once a day if they were stopped. Some clocks report not just the time of day but also the date to one extent or another, so it could be that it’d only be right once a year, or maybe if it was really fancy it could be stuck saying it was February 29, 91.
I’ve seen plenty of analog clocks that lacked hands, so gave no time. Also, if the clock’s designed… poorly for our time keeping system, it can present a time that’s just wrong. For example, I’ve seen clocks that reported 26 or more hours or 70+ minutes and seconds, and a 13 hour clock that also reported if it was AM or FM. (To be clear, it was not a clock radio, and if it was running, it would switch between the two readings every 13 hours.)
There’s also the analog clocks that were broken in such a way their mechanism would still run, just not correctly, such as the one that ran about 10% slower than it should, so it was right once about every 5 days. That’s not stopped, but the first version of that quote that I saw said “broken clock”, rather than “stopped clock”.
The quote was wrong before it was outdated. Sure, 0s and 6s on that scale are quite rare, but the idea that the scale only has integer values or even sufficient is interesting to me. It was a model that was interesting at the time when the Kinsey Institute made it, but I’m pretty sure that at least some people in that institute have since figured out that it’s just a single axis, of which there are at least a couple that are interesting, and not everyone is even there.
I mean, where do asexual people fit on the Kinsey scale? How about pure demisexuals? I mean, you could put the demis as a 3, but I feel like that suggests something about them that’s not necessarily the case.
There’s also this interesting idea that ‘everybody thinks or tries’. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but since we’re not telepathic and none of us know *everybody*, it seems like it’s a pretty big leap to make.
thejeff
You may have seen “broken” first, but the original version is closer to “stopped” and it’s only there that it makes sense. Obviously there are ways to break even an old analog clock so that it’s never right, but stopped does make sense.
Leorale
Broken or not, a clock only measures an agreement between people. It’s not like clocks measure some objectively true 4 o’clock or whathaveyou. All time measurements are made up.
Dogs (and wizards) are never late.
sabotabby
No. There are people who are 100% gay, and people who are 100% straight, and statements like this negate them. Most people might be a little bi, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to negate those who aren’t. Furthermore, there are asexual and aromantic people who have no interest in anyone, and implying that everyone is a little bit bi can be extremely alienating to these people and make them feel broken. This is NOT one of those situations where a broken clock is right twice a day.
King Daniel
Basically this. Claiming “everyone” is bi is saying for example, basically, that Becky would be happy in an opposite-sex relationship “if she just found the right guy”, which is just…eughh.
Wagstaff
She merely said that everyone “tries it out eventually”. Does that imply that they couldn’t discover that they weren’t bi?
Spencer
There’s a couple conversations going on.
“Everyone gets curious” in the sense that I don’t think there are as many folks who identify as Straight that are total Kinsey 0s, but that really only manifests when discussing attraction in harsh, compartmentalized labels of Straight, Gay and In-Between. If Walky goes “Jacob if I had to pick a guy” I don’t think that stops making him Straight like he’d identify, it means there’s this one minute crack in an otherwise solid state of “I like girls.” As a statement I think “everyone gets curious” is more along the lines of “it’s a fairly common and natural thing to feel even if feeling it is as far as it goes for you”, but then my only experience with that curiosity was, actually, definitely having the capacity to fall in love with other men and want to smooch their lips and touch their butts, so maybe I am also biased.
The other conversation is that Billie absolutely meant it as “look I only went down on my high school girlfriend as much as I did because I was curious, okay? It didn’t mean anything, I’m Straight”, and because Billie is a cartoon character we do know for a fact that she has an equally large capacity for attraction for men and women and that this statement is one intended to illustrate Billie’s denial at anything that could Other her.
thejeff
Yeah, while it could be reduced to “Everyone gets curious” even if the result of that curiosity is a quick, “Nope, not for me”, the quote as a whole implies far more than that. Especially in the context it came from.
It is far from a useful representation of human sexuality.
thejeff
So Becky doesn’t really know she’s a lesbian until she “tries out” a guy?
Wagstaff
I was really just agreeing with what Yotomoe said when I quoted “Jennifer”. Looking back, I guess I kind of took that out of context, and for that blunder, I am sorry.
Evidently, Becky is as certain she’s a lesbian as much as it is possible for literally anyone to be certain of something like that.
Yotomoe
o3o Didn’t think this’d get people so divisively mad. I didn’t mean to say that people ain’t what the say they are and that shouldn’t be respected. More that people aren’t necessarily computers that just fulfill one role like a logical binary. We’re complex and how we filter what we like has a BAZILLION factors that even we ourselves may not understand. It’s just my personal feelings on the matter of attraction and how we see it. Especially since people often times try to force people into a box. These terms are made to explain how we feel to others. They aren’t confining definitions that we must steadfastly adhere to or a box that everyone has to figure out where they fit in.
thejeff
I don’t think most of us have a problem with what you said. I know I didn’t.
It was Wagstaff using Jennifer’s quote in support, which goes a lot farther than you did that sparked the disagreement. Even if he didn’t really mean it that way.
Roborat
Well, a stopped analogue clock. A stopped digital clock would just be blank.
Needfuldoer
*Laughs in broken SMPTE timecode clock*
Jamie
I can’t tell whether or not that was an intended pun on BIased.
I imagine Joyce isn’t gay but she would still marry Dorothy in a heartbeat. In the same way that my best friend is gay but he still says he’d marry his friend(a girl).
He Who Abides
I dunno, staring at another woman’s rack while talking about crawling in there doesn’t help a “not gay” case. My theory is that Joyce is deeply closeted bicurious, but I’m willing to accept whatever orientation she turns out to be.
Yotomoe
Not a bad point. I just always took it to represent the SHEER power of Billie’s Billies.
He Who Abides
Possible, though her phase of “I wanna dress Sal in my clothes” doesn’t really help her case either.
If it’s not just a platonic crush up to 11, I think of Joyce as biromantic but heterosexual. There are aspects of other women Joyce is attracted to, but not sexually.
thejeff
That’s kind of my impression.
Even her much cited comment on Jennifer’s breasts doesn’t read as sexual to me.
Still, it could just be her deep repression of everything sexual even more amplified in the case of same sex urges.
I mean, I don’t think she’s entirely serious, although it’s become a running gag at this point that literally everyone but Joyce things Joyce has it for Dorothy.
Pretty sure the point of that sentence is not really Dorothy’s orientation but a subtle hint for Joe to acknowledge that his feelings for Joyce are romantic.
Or conversely; he’s developing really strong affection for Joyce, is angry at himself for not doing more to support her, and then is also projecting that anger onto friends for not doing more as well.
Hmm … it’s true we haven’t seen anyone tell him, and it’s true he hasn’t mentioned it specifically, but since she basically told everyone else at the end of the first book — and he’s Danny’s roommate as well as Amber’s stepbrother now — I imagine she’s probably told him by this point. Especially the way he phrases it in the first panel: “…THERE for her … EVERY TIME”. It would be an odd thing to say if he thought she was just someone who happened to be at the Ryan assault party.
183 thoughts on “Absent”
Ana Chronistic
I mean, come on. SISTER.
/insert IDontKnowWhatIExpected.gif
Clif
Telling Amber she’s bad and expecting disagreement.
Librain
But they’re not on Garbage roof!
John
If you have Garbage Roof in your heart, you can carry it anywhere.
Librain
Was the real Garbage Roof the friends we made along the way?
Thag Simmons
I feel like the smart thing here is to let Carla have the cake.
UrsulaDavina
And so began the Great Cake Wars of 20XX.
Clif
2021 until next year.
RassilonTDavros
“20XX”
Ultra Car was always my favorite Megaman boss.
i mean anything’s better than oil man
powerpowerpow
Ultra Car sounds more like an Maverick than it does a Robot Master tbh.
Needfuldoer
The Great Cake Wars of 20X6.
Carla, her mouth flashing between tiny-closed and ridiculously-open but her jaw doesn’t move: “Is this a challenge over the lastpieceofcake?!”
Amber’s mental voiceover, while she’s shown in profile in a three-frame running animation loop: “I have to get that cake before Carla gets that cake!”
Jimmy
“Thousands of years ago…”
Stephen Bierce
I thought Carla prefered pie.
Clif
Only for revenge.
Ana Chronistic
She prefers Mary get the pie
In the FAAAAAAACE
Carla's #2 Fan
Carla deserves the cake
Clif
Many have deserved the cake but I got there first.
StClair
“I suggest a new strategy – let the Rutten win.”
Deanatay
AMBER VS CARLA
FOR ALL THE CAKE (well, the last slice)
RassilonTDavros
“I’m pretty sure Dorothy’s straight.”
I mean, we were all thinking it, but… how sure are you, exactly, Amber? Like, on a scale of… I dunno, zero to six
King Daniel
Dorothy herself said she’s probably a zero, so
Sirksome
Probably a 0 or a 6. Whichever end is the very straight end. Right next to Sal.
Yotomoe
I can’t say I would be 100% on anyone. Even the straightest or gayest person I can think of I wouldn’t be shocked if I heard they hooked up with a an unexpected partner. People are complex and I feel like there’s nothing about a person I could ever attribute to 0% or 100%.
90% sure is as far as I’d go on anyone. And even then I’m kinda high balling it.
Wagstaff
” I think, like, everyone thinks about it or tries it out eventually. We get curious. It’s basically inevitable. “
— Jennifer “Billy” Billingsworth
Thag Simmons
She’s got something of a biased perspective.
Wagstaff
Well, still worth considering what she said there. Even a stopped clock is right two times a day.
King Daniel
Willis’s hovertext from that quoted comic said Billie was biased there, IIRC.
Wagstaff
The point still stands. Even blood-thirsty emperors on one occasion express worthwhile thoughts.
The author is incidental. The idea always stands or falls on its own merits. Many people may have converged on the same thought.
Clif
Vampire emperors to the side, many people may have converged on the same thought and the thought still be wrong. Many people converged on the thought that homosexuality was a mental illness and could be cured.
thejeff
Yeah, but it’s still a dumb idea and a bad one to use to make this argument, since the whole point of the line is that Jennifer is bisexual and in denial about it. It’s not a deep insight into what straight people are really like, it’s a misrepresentation of straights so that she could keep thinking of herself as one.
“Everyone” doesn’t try it. It’s not “inevitable”. She’s just in denial about what her attractions mean about her sexuality.
Now some people who present as straight are in denial or are closeted, so Yotomoe’s point that you can never be sure about someone is well taken. That’s just not what Jennifer was saying.
Clif
It may have been Yotomoe’s point, but it wasn’t Wagstaff’s. Wagstaff’s point was that Billie may have been in denial and that may have been authorial intent, but that didn’t keep her from being right. And in evidence of her being right alluded to the fact that many other people had converged on the same thought.
Unless I lost track of the conversation, which is always possible.
thejeff
Yeah, and I was saying that’s wrong, partly because it’s not the same as Yotomoe’s point, which does make sense.
JBento
Sorry, we’re digital now. A broken clock doesn’t give any time.
Clif
and most digital clocks are only right once a second.
Some Ed
There are 24 hour analog clocks which would only be right once a day if they were stopped. Some clocks report not just the time of day but also the date to one extent or another, so it could be that it’d only be right once a year, or maybe if it was really fancy it could be stuck saying it was February 29, 91.
I’ve seen plenty of analog clocks that lacked hands, so gave no time. Also, if the clock’s designed… poorly for our time keeping system, it can present a time that’s just wrong. For example, I’ve seen clocks that reported 26 or more hours or 70+ minutes and seconds, and a 13 hour clock that also reported if it was AM or FM. (To be clear, it was not a clock radio, and if it was running, it would switch between the two readings every 13 hours.)
There’s also the analog clocks that were broken in such a way their mechanism would still run, just not correctly, such as the one that ran about 10% slower than it should, so it was right once about every 5 days. That’s not stopped, but the first version of that quote that I saw said “broken clock”, rather than “stopped clock”.
The quote was wrong before it was outdated. Sure, 0s and 6s on that scale are quite rare, but the idea that the scale only has integer values or even sufficient is interesting to me. It was a model that was interesting at the time when the Kinsey Institute made it, but I’m pretty sure that at least some people in that institute have since figured out that it’s just a single axis, of which there are at least a couple that are interesting, and not everyone is even there.
I mean, where do asexual people fit on the Kinsey scale? How about pure demisexuals? I mean, you could put the demis as a 3, but I feel like that suggests something about them that’s not necessarily the case.
There’s also this interesting idea that ‘everybody thinks or tries’. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but since we’re not telepathic and none of us know *everybody*, it seems like it’s a pretty big leap to make.
thejeff
You may have seen “broken” first, but the original version is closer to “stopped” and it’s only there that it makes sense. Obviously there are ways to break even an old analog clock so that it’s never right, but stopped does make sense.
Leorale
Broken or not, a clock only measures an agreement between people. It’s not like clocks measure some objectively true 4 o’clock or whathaveyou. All time measurements are made up.
Dogs (and wizards) are never late.
sabotabby
No. There are people who are 100% gay, and people who are 100% straight, and statements like this negate them. Most people might be a little bi, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to negate those who aren’t. Furthermore, there are asexual and aromantic people who have no interest in anyone, and implying that everyone is a little bit bi can be extremely alienating to these people and make them feel broken. This is NOT one of those situations where a broken clock is right twice a day.
King Daniel
Basically this. Claiming “everyone” is bi is saying for example, basically, that Becky would be happy in an opposite-sex relationship “if she just found the right guy”, which is just…eughh.
Wagstaff
She merely said that everyone “tries it out eventually”. Does that imply that they couldn’t discover that they weren’t bi?
Spencer
There’s a couple conversations going on.
“Everyone gets curious” in the sense that I don’t think there are as many folks who identify as Straight that are total Kinsey 0s, but that really only manifests when discussing attraction in harsh, compartmentalized labels of Straight, Gay and In-Between. If Walky goes “Jacob if I had to pick a guy” I don’t think that stops making him Straight like he’d identify, it means there’s this one minute crack in an otherwise solid state of “I like girls.” As a statement I think “everyone gets curious” is more along the lines of “it’s a fairly common and natural thing to feel even if feeling it is as far as it goes for you”, but then my only experience with that curiosity was, actually, definitely having the capacity to fall in love with other men and want to smooch their lips and touch their butts, so maybe I am also biased.
The other conversation is that Billie absolutely meant it as “look I only went down on my high school girlfriend as much as I did because I was curious, okay? It didn’t mean anything, I’m Straight”, and because Billie is a cartoon character we do know for a fact that she has an equally large capacity for attraction for men and women and that this statement is one intended to illustrate Billie’s denial at anything that could Other her.
thejeff
Yeah, while it could be reduced to “Everyone gets curious” even if the result of that curiosity is a quick, “Nope, not for me”, the quote as a whole implies far more than that. Especially in the context it came from.
It is far from a useful representation of human sexuality.
thejeff
So Becky doesn’t really know she’s a lesbian until she “tries out” a guy?
Wagstaff
I was really just agreeing with what Yotomoe said when I quoted “Jennifer”. Looking back, I guess I kind of took that out of context, and for that blunder, I am sorry.
Evidently, Becky is as certain she’s a lesbian as much as it is possible for literally anyone to be certain of something like that.
Yotomoe
o3o Didn’t think this’d get people so divisively mad. I didn’t mean to say that people ain’t what the say they are and that shouldn’t be respected. More that people aren’t necessarily computers that just fulfill one role like a logical binary. We’re complex and how we filter what we like has a BAZILLION factors that even we ourselves may not understand. It’s just my personal feelings on the matter of attraction and how we see it. Especially since people often times try to force people into a box. These terms are made to explain how we feel to others. They aren’t confining definitions that we must steadfastly adhere to or a box that everyone has to figure out where they fit in.
thejeff
I don’t think most of us have a problem with what you said. I know I didn’t.
It was Wagstaff using Jennifer’s quote in support, which goes a lot farther than you did that sparked the disagreement. Even if he didn’t really mean it that way.
Roborat
Well, a stopped analogue clock. A stopped digital clock would just be blank.
Needfuldoer
*Laughs in broken SMPTE timecode clock*
Jamie
I can’t tell whether or not that was an intended pun on BIased.
Thag Simmons
It was not
Maikeruu
I love how this implies that Joyce isn’t, especially for Dorothy, because everyone accepts that as a given at this point.
Yotomoe
I imagine Joyce isn’t gay but she would still marry Dorothy in a heartbeat. In the same way that my best friend is gay but he still says he’d marry his friend(a girl).
He Who Abides
I dunno, staring at another woman’s rack while talking about crawling in there doesn’t help a “not gay” case. My theory is that Joyce is deeply closeted bicurious, but I’m willing to accept whatever orientation she turns out to be.
Yotomoe
Not a bad point. I just always took it to represent the SHEER power of Billie’s Billies.
He Who Abides
Possible, though her phase of “I wanna dress Sal in my clothes” doesn’t really help her case either.
Thag Simmons
Yeah I’m leaning ‘Joyce ain’t straight’ too.
Needfuldoer
That was also Lucy’s first impression of her.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/proselytize/
Spencer
If it’s not just a platonic crush up to 11, I think of Joyce as biromantic but heterosexual. There are aspects of other women Joyce is attracted to, but not sexually.
thejeff
That’s kind of my impression.
Even her much cited comment on Jennifer’s breasts doesn’t read as sexual to me.
Still, it could just be her deep repression of everything sexual even more amplified in the case of same sex urges.
Raen
I mean, I don’t think she’s entirely serious, although it’s become a running gag at this point that literally everyone but Joyce things Joyce has it for Dorothy.
Johan
Dorothy says she’s cis het
InTheory
Regardless of the probability of anyone’s sexual orientation being at any point on any scale, what did Amber mean by her comment?
Pylgrim
Pretty sure the point of that sentence is not really Dorothy’s orientation but a subtle hint for Joe to acknowledge that his feelings for Joyce are romantic.
Sirksome
I think Joe’s expecting to much from a sibling he’s only had for like 2 months…also just Amber in general.
Jamie
Joe is building up the tallest damn pedestal he can so that he can explain that he’s not worthy of being mounted on it.
Makes sense that he’d build one for Amber while he’s at it.
He Who Abides
Oy oy?
MrSmith
Sounds about right
fridge_logic
Or conversely; he’s developing really strong affection for Joyce, is angry at himself for not doing more to support her, and then is also projecting that anger onto friends for not doing more as well.
Clif
Joe wasn’t there for the kidnapping so he has no idea he has an ex-superhero for a sister.
Lingo
Hmm … it’s true we haven’t seen anyone tell him, and it’s true he hasn’t mentioned it specifically, but since she basically told everyone else at the end of the first book — and he’s Danny’s roommate as well as Amber’s stepbrother now — I imagine she’s probably told him by this point. Especially the way he phrases it in the first panel: “…THERE for her … EVERY TIME”. It would be an odd thing to say if he thought she was just someone who happened to be at the Ryan assault party.
Pizzawiz
I’m sure Danny would like to talk about feelings with you Joe
bcb
Carla is also ace, so cake is clearly something she’s more likely to get than Amber.
Clif
Roller skates give her a speed advantage, so Amber better get a move on.
He Who Abides