Even that’s a bit weird because as many noted yesterday his lie was incredibly obvious. I think in reacting to her own trauma Joyce is neglecting to realize Joe has some too. Kind of the exact opposite of hers honestly. He’s worried about being seen as a predator and she’s worried he would try to prey on her. Great relationship conflict honestly. This is good stuff.
Nymph
Joyce is autistic and was drunk – things that seem incredibly obvious to you, as a reader, might not have been at all obvious in-world, to Joyce.
He had a chance to communicate directly with her when she was sober and talking about having a drinking party, he chose to try and skirt the issue and then lied about it (obvious or not, it’s still a lie).
So Joyce has feelings about it. And her trauma has been triggered (which isn’t really a thing you can logic yourself out of).
IDK it makes sense to me.
BorkBorkBork
Honestly, I think that Joyce has been doing some of what Lucy’s been doing with Walky: she’s got a version of Joe and expectations in her head that don’t fit the person in front of her. She didn’t ASK if he wanted to get drunk; she declared it. Just like she didn’t ASK if she was ready to be intimate; she’s loudly proclaimed to her friends that he’s going to be doing sex stuff to her soon.
Autism can be a reason, but it’s not an excuse. She’s been basically parading Joe around like her toy boyfriend who does what she wants, instead of as a person. And I get, much of that is probably the rush of all these big changes, but she can’t stop treating him with respect.
Nymph
You and I fundamentally disagree on the vibes of those situations you’re talking about, but that’s okay.
BorkBorkBork
I guess a chunk of that is dealing with my neurodivergence, and I’m probably projecting onto Joyce. Both I and my wife were adult diagnoses – me first with ADHD, her later with autism – and one of the parts of my journey was understanding that just because some things are far harder for me or don’t come naturally, doesn’t mean that then that it’s an excuse. It means that I understand better some of my gaps, and have to employ other tools to meet with others.
Otherwise, wife and I would have no chance. Each of us hurt by the other, each demanding that the other just accept the hurt action because that’s how we’re built. Not even sure how we’d parent our daughter, who is both autistic AND has ADHD. (take a wild guess how we learned later in life that, oh, these quirks of mine aren’t just character flaws or weird preferences)
We all life on the same world and have to learn to meet each other where we can. Everyone comes from somewhere else but the main thing we can all agree on is everyone should be treated with the same respect, understanding, and kindness that you expect of others.
BorkBorkBork
Also if I misunderstood your point and the main area that you and I disagree with on is something different, my apologies for the text wall. >.<
Nymph
Yeah that’s absolutely not the part I meant. It was your first paragraph I wholly disagree with tbh.
Nymph
And the comment about her “toy boyfriend” from the second para.
For whatever it’s worth, though, saying “things that seem incredibly obvious to you, as a reader, might not have been at all obvious in-world, to Joyce” isn’t me saying “autism is an excuse and Joyce should be allowed to disrespect people and do whatever she wants and never learn”.
It’s literally just a reason I gave as a suggestion for why the overwhelming number of people who think an untreated, untherapized 18yo autistic person should just magically be able to see through lies while drunk is super weird to me.
BorkBorkBork
Yeah, I can see that. I guess, my thought is – in the morning prior to the part, she did a TON of things that seemed really off. Like, when Becky was making her feel guilty because she saw through her excuse, grabbing Joe and saying, “Here, you deal with it, that’s what you’re for.” (6/9) Then deciding that they were totally going to have sex and announcing it. (6/20). Then deciding that the two of you are totally going to get drunk and completely ignoring his protestations beforehand (6/21, 7/11)
She’s not treating him like a human being with his own autonomy and will. She’s treating him like something that she has control over because of her relationship. Honestly, this might’ve been how Carol and Hank functioned – she was ABSOLUTELY outraged that he had a different opinion than her.
It put Joe in a position where he clearly did not feel like he could talk to her about not drinking. And so decided the best course of action was to give her the night she was demanding, while keeping her safe.
Yes, Joe should have talked to her, should have leveled with her – but him needing to pull her aside and talk to her, is only happening because she didn’t -once- stop the Joyce Train and ask HIM, “Hey, would you like to go to Becky’s Keg Party with me?” Or, “Hey, I feel like I’m ready to have sex; do you feel the same?” Or even, “Hey, do you feel comfortable [doing whatever the hell June 9th was]?”
Nymph
Again. We don’t agree on this. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand your points, it was that I don’t agree with them.
MadScientist520
Yeah, I feel like she’s caught up in the excitement of finally being able to rebel and not taking his feelings into the equation.
Akane
That’s a good take, bork!
buddy
theyre also college freshmen so lets not let them be too emotionally aware
Mark
This makes much sense, and I hope that Joe will soon ask her “who, exactly, is your boyfriend: me, or my public image that I’m trying to lose?”
Marillius
If it’s a reason, it is there for automatically not an excuse. The difference between the two is that a reason is an acceptable explanation of why something happened, and an excuse is an attempt to weasel out of responsibility.
In the case of being autistic, ‘I didn’t know about this social norm’, particularly for someone inexperienced like Joyce, is a very good reason for a lot of her behavior. Further more she has proven, through action and words, that if someone points out something she is doing is wrong she is willing and ready to change.
The combination of those two factors means that anyone who is her friend, and understands her faults, and is not autistic, is accepting the social contract of informing her when she makes such mistakes so that she can correct them. It is only bad behavior when she has been informed and refuses to change, something she does do sometimes, but something she has been trying to be better at.
As such, saying that her autism is ‘a reason, but not excuse’, shows that you do not understand the basics of autism, social contracts and more.
Ironically in this case, autism has literally nothing to do with the situation. Joyce was DRUNK and has very little experience being drunk. She has significantly less culpability for her actions while inebriated and her choice of words. Not none, but less. Thus, her telling Joe to get drunk, while bad, and something she should be capable of understanding from her own experiences without explanation, is less of a ‘she did a bad’ and more of a ‘she was drunk and can’t be taken as seriously’.
Quite literally the reason Joe likely avoided getting drunk, so he didn’t do something with Joyce when both of their cognitive functions were hampered. Ironically the same reason Joyce herself is currently dealing with trauma, because her cognitive function was hampered but Joe’s wasn’t and that scares her.
Mistakes were made on all sides, and the mistakes were made before consumption, not during. Communication is the key to most of life’s problems. And when it’s not, it’s because someone is being dishonest.
Pylgrim
You are correct, but Joe was in a really difficult position. He obviously had real and valid reasons not to be drunk. Saying that right in the middle of the party when Joyce was having a great time would have been a massive buzzkill. On the other hand, pretending and (hopefully) not being caught on the lie would protect everybody’s feelings.
Nymph
“He had a chance to communicate directly with her when she was sober and talking about having a drinking party”
Felian
i agree, it does make sense that Joyce has a trauma reaction, and while i don’t expect Joe to *expect that*, open communication IS the key.
Thanatos Lives
I don’t think he is worried about how other people would perceive him. I think the problem is that Joe doesn’t trust himself. It’s a commonly held belief that being drunk brings out the “true self.” I think Joe believes that his true self is someone who is just interested in sex and using women for his pleasure. Something he has been fighting against this whole arc. I think he’s worried that if Joyce is drunk, she’ll be more likely to give in to sex and if he is drunk, he’ll actively pursue it. He has been making a lot of effort going at a pace that isn’t going to hurt Joyce and he doesn’t trust himself to keep that perspective when compromised.
Ultimately she should have had this conversation before she started drinking.
It’s flatly not okay to pressure someone into drinking, and she wasn’t able to adequate communicate that it would have been better for him to leave rather than stay around sober.
Freemage
So very much this. Her failure to communicate ~prior~ to chugging down, coupled with her decision that he was going to need to, is just wrong. It may be understandable, but it’s wrong even so, and hopefully someone will help her see that.
Bash
But Joe also should have brought it up when Joyce said she wanted to go to a party that was centered around drinking alcohol. When he agreed to go, wasn’t there an implication that he would be participating?
Nymph
Also she literally asked him once. That’s not what “pressuring” is.
BorkBorkBork
She didn’t ask him once. She never asked him.
Becky invited them to the keg party, which Joyce talked over Joe to accept. He then asked if they could do date stuff, and she said “we can go to the keg party.” He tried arguing, saying “Look, you already got drunk with Dorothy,” and she told him again she wanted him to be drinking with her. THEN she got him his own drink, giving him extra because he’s a “Big Boy”.
And then AGAIN before they drank, he was questioning her, asking “Hey, are you sure this is a smart idea?” and she said “We’re adults, we can handle it.” Then, “Makeouts, Joe! I require drunken make-outs! Why am I not being smooched upon?”
The only time she asked him anything was angrily asking “Why aren’t you being drunk with me, Joe?”
What the hecking heck do you mean that’s not pressuring.
StClair
Yup, this.
GreyICE
It’s like poor communication is the source of many relationship issues.
I don’t really think that does imply that he will be drinking. Normally, going to a party where people are drinking and not drinking is fine.
PhyrexianRogue
Joyce wasn’t (intentionally) pressuring Joe, she thought they were both happy and going to have fun drinking together. And she had no reason to doubt that since Joe didn’t speak up about his own reservations.
Joe was trying to be nice and not disrupt Joyce’s entertainment, but unfortunately the ‘secretly not drinking’ part probably triggered Joyce more than merely ‘not drinking’ would have.
The ‘drink or no’ is not a conversation she needed to have, it’s a conversation they both needed to have.
Rook
It would have been fine if Sarah hadn’t opened her mouth about it.
She just had to jump in and tell Joyce that Joe didn’t drink (neither did Jacob).
I feel she wanted to hurt some relationship because she failed to get with Jacob (her fault) and Lucy winded up with Jacob.
I gone to parties with a date, where she got drunk and I didn’t drink at all and didn’t tell her. Most ended where I just took her home, put her in bed and went to sleep on the couch or we both sat on the couch and she went to sleep on me. Never do anything with drunk people because what they may have wanted to do drunk wouldn’t be what they would do sober.
PhyrexianRogue
Then he might’ve gotten away with it this time, but it would’ve still been a ticking bomb for any future drinking occasions.
I doubt Sarah had any nefarious intent here, she cares too much about Joyce to deliberately hurt her like that. Poke fun at, sure. Deliberately trigger traumatic memories, no.
Not trying to disregard your experiences, but I don’t think those are quite the same situation. Simply not drinking (openly or not) is indeed a sensible choice in such situations, and in normal circumstances it is probably the best one. However, in this particular instance Joyce has actual trauma about someone only pretending to drink with her. That’s what’s causing the main problem here, not the not joining in the drinks itself.
Not that lying is good, but as far as I can remember, this “you can’t be sober if I’m drunk” rule is not one Joe agreed to prior. So once Joyce starts drinking, his options are 1. to drink, which he doesn’t want to, which would be kind of coercion on Joyce’s part, 2. Don’t drink, and potentially cause an argument with a now-inebriated Joyce over her trauma response, or 3. pretend to drink, and hope she never finds out (unwise) or talk to her about it later when she’s not drunk (which is happening now, but Sarah forcing the issue meant he couldn’t choose a time he felt comfortable discussing it with Joyce).
Basically, if Joyce is going to enforce a rule that Joe must be drunk when she is, *and then gets drunk*, Joe is put in a position where he either is coerced into drinking, leaves, fights with her right then and there, or puts off that fight until later. It might be easy to say that the least-bad option would be to simply leave, but that would have caused the fight to happen immediately as well, also when she’s still drunk.
Joyce’s trauma is real, and wanting to feel safe around her partner is a valid one, but personally I feel that forcing her partner to engage in heavy drug use without his consent is pushing it too far; that’s a completely unreasonable rule to hold him too unless *she* agrees not to drink without *his* consent, which, unless I am misremembering, she didn’t ask of him.
Felian
Good perspective!
None of this was previously discussed, so while i understand that this triggers Joyce’s trauma, it’s not fair on Joe to suddenly conjure up a rule and pretend it had existed before she got drunk.
The only way to solve this, if she wants to stick to this rule, is to tell Joe her boundary, not put a rule on him:
Rule: “you are not allowed to be sober when i’m drunk“
Boundary: “since i can’t feel safe in a situation where i am drunk and you are sober, i can’t have you be in my vicinity when i am drunk and you are not“ > she can drink, but she has to do that somewhere where Joe isn’t.
Maybe it’s not fair, but it is realistic. People do this sort of thing all the time. It’s entirely possible Joyce didn’t even have this rule beforehand but just realized it bothers her now (or even if she did realize it, she didn’t think to discuss it because people don’t always have perfect foresight).
The notion that both people in a relationship will always behave 100% rationally and fairly is completely unrealistic (and a standard I see people holding others to, fictional or not, far too often these days).
What really matters isn’t whether a couple can avoid making any mistakes, it’s how they DEAL with those mistakes after the fact, and talk through and learn from them.
Probably because it’s not really an argument. This is just how her trauma made her feel going forward. This was a trigger for her, and understandably so. I imagine not understanding someone’s intentions, or not being on the same level as them would be scary for her (when it comes to alcohol). I don’t think either of them is to blame, it’s just that communication should’ve happened. They’ll hopefully work through this since they’re talking now.
Trauma doesn’t follow perfect logic, particularly not when someone’s just hit something upsetting a moment ago. She’s not deciding to be upset, this is an understandable knee-jerk reaction. Give ‘er a bit.
please remember that trauma, that is causing her to hold her hand like that, stemmed from someone getting her drunk at a party, on purpose to take advantage of her, logic isn’t going to be at the forefront of her mind, right now it’s all flashbacks and fear. ~<3
If they’re both drunk and something happens, they were drunk. If they were both sober, we made a choice. If she’s drunk and he’s sober, that’s too much like him taking advantage of her.
It’s not an entirely logical reaction, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Yes, everybody should have talked to everybody more, but Joyce isn’t exactly making the best decisions in her whole rebelling against her upbringing phase.
Trauma responses don’t always make sense to people outside the traumatized person’s brain. Heck they don’t always make sense to the person who is inside the traumatized brain. If trauma responses always followed logic, they’d be much easier to treat and recover from.
Regardless of whether or not it’s rational to be comparing this situation to her past trauma because the situation is clearly different, there are enough similarities to remind her of it and therefore be triggering.
And honestly that’s basically what he should say, I think. He doesn’t trust himself not to screw up and hurt her, he’s terrified that he’ll hurt her. The way his dad hurt his mom, over and over. He wants to be good for Joyce, not bad for her. Etc.
Though the hallway’s not an ideal place for it, admittedly.
Which might be incompatibility. If Joyce wants Joe to be bad with her, but Joe wants to be good for her.
anonymsly
I think it’s honestly less incompatibility than Joe’s issues coming front and center where Joyce can really see them for the first time. He’s so scared of ‘ruining’ her, and the base of that is him thinking he is nothing but poisonous trash no matter how he tries not to be, and that does need to be dealt with.
And yet, for some reason, I kind of want a week of strips that just follows Mary around while she does Mary things. We really only see her when she is being antagonistic or crazy and thus, she is sort of the boogeyman of the hall. Still behind all the cruelty and insanity she clearly has her own very weird life going on separately from the main cast. I want to watch that train wreck just to see what it could possibly be like.
Jeremiah
We see it and it turns out that outside of being a weird asshole and doing art her life is unbelievably boring.
pope suburban
Mary is the Joe to our Sarah, a hate sink where we can release all the bad feelings we have.
Marvelman
Mary will probably become a congresswoman.
GreyICE
It’s probably pretty boring. People who like to meddle in other people’s lives rarely have anything interesting going on in theirs.
ESM
Mary’s shtick is that she desperately wants friends but just can’t stop being evil, but now she’s so ineffectual at being evil that Becky/Dina don’t even find her offensive anymore, and it makes me really want to see a storyline where Mary and Becky get stuck together for a while and allllllmost become unironically friends.
I think Mary has a bit more to her than just being a villainous asshole. Not enough that she should have this heroic face turn or anything and be accepted into the group, but I think a storyline that flirted with the idea could actually be a lot of fun. Mary has, dare I say it, untapped Vriska energy.
Thag Simmons
Eh, Mary appearing to have sympathetic or nuanced qualities before revealing that she’s exactly as awful as she’s always appeared to be is a recurring thing with her. She’s a bit of a glass onion.
Pergola
Lovely phrase!
Sirksome
Mary feels like the type of person that grew up normal but because she’s young and white she probably fell down an alt right pipeline trying to carve out some identity and fell into her religious self righteousness, but if really challenged on it, she would crumble as fast as Joyce did.
Becky somehow carving a friendly relationship with her would be funny because Mary is essentially just Joyce but she never met Becky or likely had a real friend ever.
Jeremiah
I don’t remember even a single instance where Mary showed the slightest desire to be friends with any of the characters. Only time she interacted purely positively was when she was kind of love drunk due to her boyfriend. Mary is a fully one dimensional hate sink (honestly like a fundamentalist republicans are) and that’s fine, she doesn’t need to be anything more.
Mano308gts
She had a pretty positive rapport with Joyce revolving around art, making art for Sara/Joyce’s door, their party, etc.
Needfuldoer
She was neutral at best, way back near the beginning when she invited some of the others to church. Then they turned out to be their own people and not Mary clones, so she wrote them all off.
Like the first two Mary storylines were “Mary starts to be friends with people but then they are Sinful and she is simply incapable of not torching everything over it”.
She’s since turned into kind of evangelical Galasso. “Bush-era evangelical” was getting a little dated as a reference (not that there aren’t homophobic evangelicals, obviously, but her vibe is distinctly pre-Trump), so it was either make her sillier, make her more like the modern alt-right, or enter the Vriscourse route by having her more sympathetic, but I kind of miss that early Mary who was never going to not be an asshole but felt bad about not having friends. I think there’s a lot of untapped comedy potential with that tension, especially as Mary is increasingly silly and defanged.
thejeff
Wait, what two storylines?
There was the bit where she was part of the group looking for a church to go to.
I didnt put this together in my head until i read a bunch of these comments, but….Mary’s here because she can overhear about them getting drunk and try to threaten them because it’s illegal? Now that my brain is on this track I’m not looking forward to it
I was never in the dorms when I went to IU, but I *do* work for a company that delivers alcohol in Bloomington, so I’ve had to learn some of the relevant policies. My understanding is that it’s less an issue of underage drinking (because it’s the morning after and the alcohol is likely mostly out of their systems by now) and more an issue of being against dorm policy. The dorms are all dry, even if you are over 21 it is against the rules to have alcohol in the dorms, I don’t know what the specific penalties are for getting caught, but I do know it can escalate to getting kicked out of the dorm and possibly expelled from the university if you have serious or numerous enough violations.
All that said, a student reporting that she overheard a conversation between two other students in the hallways about possibly getting drunk is not sufficient evidence for any kind of disciplinary action. Mary would need to go to Ruth first, who may or may not conveniently forget about overhearing the party the night before, and even if she went over Ruth’s head, at most there would be a check of Joyce’s and Joe’s rooms for alcohol, which won’t turn anything up since that isn’t where the party was. Mary doesn’t know there was a party or where it was located, and for all she knows this exchange is hypothetical. I fully expect her to tattle, but I don’t expect it to go anywhere, especially since she has a documented history of actively trying to get other people in trouble, so she isn’t exactly a reliable source.
224 thoughts on “Both be”
Sol
Aww Joe 🙁
Aww Joyce 🙁
Aww 🙁
Sirksome
Lol. I don’t get this argument. I get Joyce’s trauma, but I don’t get her not trusting Joe for trying to respect her and his own reputation.
Reltzik
I think the lying part is the bulk of the problem.
Sirksome
Even that’s a bit weird because as many noted yesterday his lie was incredibly obvious. I think in reacting to her own trauma Joyce is neglecting to realize Joe has some too. Kind of the exact opposite of hers honestly. He’s worried about being seen as a predator and she’s worried he would try to prey on her. Great relationship conflict honestly. This is good stuff.
Nymph
Joyce is autistic and was drunk – things that seem incredibly obvious to you, as a reader, might not have been at all obvious in-world, to Joyce.
He had a chance to communicate directly with her when she was sober and talking about having a drinking party, he chose to try and skirt the issue and then lied about it (obvious or not, it’s still a lie).
So Joyce has feelings about it. And her trauma has been triggered (which isn’t really a thing you can logic yourself out of).
IDK it makes sense to me.
BorkBorkBork
Honestly, I think that Joyce has been doing some of what Lucy’s been doing with Walky: she’s got a version of Joe and expectations in her head that don’t fit the person in front of her. She didn’t ASK if he wanted to get drunk; she declared it. Just like she didn’t ASK if she was ready to be intimate; she’s loudly proclaimed to her friends that he’s going to be doing sex stuff to her soon.
Autism can be a reason, but it’s not an excuse. She’s been basically parading Joe around like her toy boyfriend who does what she wants, instead of as a person. And I get, much of that is probably the rush of all these big changes, but she can’t stop treating him with respect.
Nymph
You and I fundamentally disagree on the vibes of those situations you’re talking about, but that’s okay.
BorkBorkBork
I guess a chunk of that is dealing with my neurodivergence, and I’m probably projecting onto Joyce. Both I and my wife were adult diagnoses – me first with ADHD, her later with autism – and one of the parts of my journey was understanding that just because some things are far harder for me or don’t come naturally, doesn’t mean that then that it’s an excuse. It means that I understand better some of my gaps, and have to employ other tools to meet with others.
Otherwise, wife and I would have no chance. Each of us hurt by the other, each demanding that the other just accept the hurt action because that’s how we’re built. Not even sure how we’d parent our daughter, who is both autistic AND has ADHD. (take a wild guess how we learned later in life that, oh, these quirks of mine aren’t just character flaws or weird preferences)
We all life on the same world and have to learn to meet each other where we can. Everyone comes from somewhere else but the main thing we can all agree on is everyone should be treated with the same respect, understanding, and kindness that you expect of others.
BorkBorkBork
Also if I misunderstood your point and the main area that you and I disagree with on is something different, my apologies for the text wall. >.<
Nymph
Yeah that’s absolutely not the part I meant. It was your first paragraph I wholly disagree with tbh.
Nymph
And the comment about her “toy boyfriend” from the second para.
For whatever it’s worth, though, saying “things that seem incredibly obvious to you, as a reader, might not have been at all obvious in-world, to Joyce” isn’t me saying “autism is an excuse and Joyce should be allowed to disrespect people and do whatever she wants and never learn”.
It’s literally just a reason I gave as a suggestion for why the overwhelming number of people who think an untreated, untherapized 18yo autistic person should just magically be able to see through lies while drunk is super weird to me.
BorkBorkBork
Yeah, I can see that. I guess, my thought is – in the morning prior to the part, she did a TON of things that seemed really off. Like, when Becky was making her feel guilty because she saw through her excuse, grabbing Joe and saying, “Here, you deal with it, that’s what you’re for.” (6/9) Then deciding that they were totally going to have sex and announcing it. (6/20). Then deciding that the two of you are totally going to get drunk and completely ignoring his protestations beforehand (6/21, 7/11)
She’s not treating him like a human being with his own autonomy and will. She’s treating him like something that she has control over because of her relationship. Honestly, this might’ve been how Carol and Hank functioned – she was ABSOLUTELY outraged that he had a different opinion than her.
It put Joe in a position where he clearly did not feel like he could talk to her about not drinking. And so decided the best course of action was to give her the night she was demanding, while keeping her safe.
Yes, Joe should have talked to her, should have leveled with her – but him needing to pull her aside and talk to her, is only happening because she didn’t -once- stop the Joyce Train and ask HIM, “Hey, would you like to go to Becky’s Keg Party with me?” Or, “Hey, I feel like I’m ready to have sex; do you feel the same?” Or even, “Hey, do you feel comfortable [doing whatever the hell June 9th was]?”
Nymph
Again. We don’t agree on this. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand your points, it was that I don’t agree with them.
MadScientist520
Yeah, I feel like she’s caught up in the excitement of finally being able to rebel and not taking his feelings into the equation.
Akane
That’s a good take, bork!
buddy
theyre also college freshmen so lets not let them be too emotionally aware
Mark
This makes much sense, and I hope that Joe will soon ask her “who, exactly, is your boyfriend: me, or my public image that I’m trying to lose?”
Marillius
If it’s a reason, it is there for automatically not an excuse. The difference between the two is that a reason is an acceptable explanation of why something happened, and an excuse is an attempt to weasel out of responsibility.
In the case of being autistic, ‘I didn’t know about this social norm’, particularly for someone inexperienced like Joyce, is a very good reason for a lot of her behavior. Further more she has proven, through action and words, that if someone points out something she is doing is wrong she is willing and ready to change.
The combination of those two factors means that anyone who is her friend, and understands her faults, and is not autistic, is accepting the social contract of informing her when she makes such mistakes so that she can correct them. It is only bad behavior when she has been informed and refuses to change, something she does do sometimes, but something she has been trying to be better at.
As such, saying that her autism is ‘a reason, but not excuse’, shows that you do not understand the basics of autism, social contracts and more.
Ironically in this case, autism has literally nothing to do with the situation. Joyce was DRUNK and has very little experience being drunk. She has significantly less culpability for her actions while inebriated and her choice of words. Not none, but less. Thus, her telling Joe to get drunk, while bad, and something she should be capable of understanding from her own experiences without explanation, is less of a ‘she did a bad’ and more of a ‘she was drunk and can’t be taken as seriously’.
Quite literally the reason Joe likely avoided getting drunk, so he didn’t do something with Joyce when both of their cognitive functions were hampered. Ironically the same reason Joyce herself is currently dealing with trauma, because her cognitive function was hampered but Joe’s wasn’t and that scares her.
Mistakes were made on all sides, and the mistakes were made before consumption, not during. Communication is the key to most of life’s problems. And when it’s not, it’s because someone is being dishonest.
Pylgrim
You are correct, but Joe was in a really difficult position. He obviously had real and valid reasons not to be drunk. Saying that right in the middle of the party when Joyce was having a great time would have been a massive buzzkill. On the other hand, pretending and (hopefully) not being caught on the lie would protect everybody’s feelings.
Nymph
“He had a chance to communicate directly with her when she was sober and talking about having a drinking party”
Felian
i agree, it does make sense that Joyce has a trauma reaction, and while i don’t expect Joe to *expect that*, open communication IS the key.
Thanatos Lives
I don’t think he is worried about how other people would perceive him. I think the problem is that Joe doesn’t trust himself. It’s a commonly held belief that being drunk brings out the “true self.” I think Joe believes that his true self is someone who is just interested in sex and using women for his pleasure. Something he has been fighting against this whole arc. I think he’s worried that if Joyce is drunk, she’ll be more likely to give in to sex and if he is drunk, he’ll actively pursue it. He has been making a lot of effort going at a pace that isn’t going to hurt Joyce and he doesn’t trust himself to keep that perspective when compromised.
elebenty
Yeah, I agree.
Random832
Ultimately she should have had this conversation before she started drinking.
It’s flatly not okay to pressure someone into drinking, and she wasn’t able to adequate communicate that it would have been better for him to leave rather than stay around sober.
Freemage
So very much this. Her failure to communicate ~prior~ to chugging down, coupled with her decision that he was going to need to, is just wrong. It may be understandable, but it’s wrong even so, and hopefully someone will help her see that.
Bash
But Joe also should have brought it up when Joyce said she wanted to go to a party that was centered around drinking alcohol. When he agreed to go, wasn’t there an implication that he would be participating?
Nymph
Also she literally asked him once. That’s not what “pressuring” is.
BorkBorkBork
She didn’t ask him once. She never asked him.
Becky invited them to the keg party, which Joyce talked over Joe to accept. He then asked if they could do date stuff, and she said “we can go to the keg party.” He tried arguing, saying “Look, you already got drunk with Dorothy,” and she told him again she wanted him to be drinking with her. THEN she got him his own drink, giving him extra because he’s a “Big Boy”.
And then AGAIN before they drank, he was questioning her, asking “Hey, are you sure this is a smart idea?” and she said “We’re adults, we can handle it.” Then, “Makeouts, Joe! I require drunken make-outs! Why am I not being smooched upon?”
The only time she asked him anything was angrily asking “Why aren’t you being drunk with me, Joe?”
What the hecking heck do you mean that’s not pressuring.
StClair
Yup, this.
GreyICE
It’s like poor communication is the source of many relationship issues.
Not Billie’s. But, like, most people’s.
GoodbyBallad
I don’t really think that does imply that he will be drinking. Normally, going to a party where people are drinking and not drinking is fine.
PhyrexianRogue
Joyce wasn’t (intentionally) pressuring Joe, she thought they were both happy and going to have fun drinking together. And she had no reason to doubt that since Joe didn’t speak up about his own reservations.
Joe was trying to be nice and not disrupt Joyce’s entertainment, but unfortunately the ‘secretly not drinking’ part probably triggered Joyce more than merely ‘not drinking’ would have.
The ‘drink or no’ is not a conversation she needed to have, it’s a conversation they both needed to have.
Rook
It would have been fine if Sarah hadn’t opened her mouth about it.
She just had to jump in and tell Joyce that Joe didn’t drink (neither did Jacob).
I feel she wanted to hurt some relationship because she failed to get with Jacob (her fault) and Lucy winded up with Jacob.
I gone to parties with a date, where she got drunk and I didn’t drink at all and didn’t tell her. Most ended where I just took her home, put her in bed and went to sleep on the couch or we both sat on the couch and she went to sleep on me. Never do anything with drunk people because what they may have wanted to do drunk wouldn’t be what they would do sober.
PhyrexianRogue
Then he might’ve gotten away with it this time, but it would’ve still been a ticking bomb for any future drinking occasions.
I doubt Sarah had any nefarious intent here, she cares too much about Joyce to deliberately hurt her like that. Poke fun at, sure. Deliberately trigger traumatic memories, no.
Not trying to disregard your experiences, but I don’t think those are quite the same situation. Simply not drinking (openly or not) is indeed a sensible choice in such situations, and in normal circumstances it is probably the best one. However, in this particular instance Joyce has actual trauma about someone only pretending to drink with her. That’s what’s causing the main problem here, not the not joining in the drinks itself.
Bizze
Not that lying is good, but as far as I can remember, this “you can’t be sober if I’m drunk” rule is not one Joe agreed to prior. So once Joyce starts drinking, his options are 1. to drink, which he doesn’t want to, which would be kind of coercion on Joyce’s part, 2. Don’t drink, and potentially cause an argument with a now-inebriated Joyce over her trauma response, or 3. pretend to drink, and hope she never finds out (unwise) or talk to her about it later when she’s not drunk (which is happening now, but Sarah forcing the issue meant he couldn’t choose a time he felt comfortable discussing it with Joyce).
Basically, if Joyce is going to enforce a rule that Joe must be drunk when she is, *and then gets drunk*, Joe is put in a position where he either is coerced into drinking, leaves, fights with her right then and there, or puts off that fight until later. It might be easy to say that the least-bad option would be to simply leave, but that would have caused the fight to happen immediately as well, also when she’s still drunk.
Joyce’s trauma is real, and wanting to feel safe around her partner is a valid one, but personally I feel that forcing her partner to engage in heavy drug use without his consent is pushing it too far; that’s a completely unreasonable rule to hold him too unless *she* agrees not to drink without *his* consent, which, unless I am misremembering, she didn’t ask of him.
Felian
Good perspective!
None of this was previously discussed, so while i understand that this triggers Joyce’s trauma, it’s not fair on Joe to suddenly conjure up a rule and pretend it had existed before she got drunk.
The only way to solve this, if she wants to stick to this rule, is to tell Joe her boundary, not put a rule on him:
Rule: “you are not allowed to be sober when i’m drunk“
Boundary: “since i can’t feel safe in a situation where i am drunk and you are sober, i can’t have you be in my vicinity when i am drunk and you are not“ > she can drink, but she has to do that somewhere where Joe isn’t.
Autogatos
Maybe it’s not fair, but it is realistic. People do this sort of thing all the time. It’s entirely possible Joyce didn’t even have this rule beforehand but just realized it bothers her now (or even if she did realize it, she didn’t think to discuss it because people don’t always have perfect foresight).
The notion that both people in a relationship will always behave 100% rationally and fairly is completely unrealistic (and a standard I see people holding others to, fictional or not, far too often these days).
What really matters isn’t whether a couple can avoid making any mistakes, it’s how they DEAL with those mistakes after the fact, and talk through and learn from them.
Blume
Probably because it’s not really an argument. This is just how her trauma made her feel going forward. This was a trigger for her, and understandably so. I imagine not understanding someone’s intentions, or not being on the same level as them would be scary for her (when it comes to alcohol). I don’t think either of them is to blame, it’s just that communication should’ve happened. They’ll hopefully work through this since they’re talking now.
RassilonTDavros
This.
DinaJoyce
Yup. Trauma triggers don’t logic well. But once she’s more calm, they can talk it out and communicate more clearly about their needs for the future.
S.R.
Trauma doesn’t follow perfect logic, particularly not when someone’s just hit something upsetting a moment ago. She’s not deciding to be upset, this is an understandable knee-jerk reaction. Give ‘er a bit.
Falcon
People with triggered trauma are going to be significantly less rational and considerate than they might otherwise typically be.
DJTsurugi
please remember that trauma, that is causing her to hold her hand like that, stemmed from someone getting her drunk at a party, on purpose to take advantage of her, logic isn’t going to be at the forefront of her mind, right now it’s all flashbacks and fear. ~<3
Joe Helfrich
If they’re both drunk and something happens, they were drunk. If they were both sober, we made a choice. If she’s drunk and he’s sober, that’s too much like him taking advantage of her.
It’s not an entirely logical reaction, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Yes, everybody should have talked to everybody more, but Joyce isn’t exactly making the best decisions in her whole rebelling against her upbringing phase.
Autogatos
Trauma responses don’t always make sense to people outside the traumatized person’s brain. Heck they don’t always make sense to the person who is inside the traumatized brain. If trauma responses always followed logic, they’d be much easier to treat and recover from.
Regardless of whether or not it’s rational to be comparing this situation to her past trauma because the situation is clearly different, there are enough similarities to remind her of it and therefore be triggering.
IntangibleMatter
This one is too emotionally raw so I’m instead gonna focus on the fact Mary is here.
Fuck you, Mary.
Lumino
And we all know she is going to use this new information to start shit.
Because the entire point of Mary’s life is to inflict suffering on others.
ghastlyGrenadine
Yeah! Fuck you, Mary!
AeromechanicalAce
Sadly, the problem isn’t about whether or not JOYCE trusts Joe.
JOE Doesn’t Trust Joe.
anonymsly
And honestly that’s basically what he should say, I think. He doesn’t trust himself not to screw up and hurt her, he’s terrified that he’ll hurt her. The way his dad hurt his mom, over and over. He wants to be good for Joyce, not bad for her. Etc.
Though the hallway’s not an ideal place for it, admittedly.
Nono
Which might be incompatibility. If Joyce wants Joe to be bad with her, but Joe wants to be good for her.
anonymsly
I think it’s honestly less incompatibility than Joe’s issues coming front and center where Joyce can really see them for the first time. He’s so scared of ‘ruining’ her, and the base of that is him thinking he is nothing but poisonous trash no matter how he tries not to be, and that does need to be dealt with.
Coatl
And with Mary around, worse
StClair
Yes, to all of the above.
Reltzik
I can’t exactly say I have sympathy for all parties here.
Thag Simmons
Yeah, Mary sucks.
True Survivor
And yet, for some reason, I kind of want a week of strips that just follows Mary around while she does Mary things. We really only see her when she is being antagonistic or crazy and thus, she is sort of the boogeyman of the hall. Still behind all the cruelty and insanity she clearly has her own very weird life going on separately from the main cast. I want to watch that train wreck just to see what it could possibly be like.
Jeremiah
We see it and it turns out that outside of being a weird asshole and doing art her life is unbelievably boring.
pope suburban
Mary is the Joe to our Sarah, a hate sink where we can release all the bad feelings we have.
Marvelman
Mary will probably become a congresswoman.
GreyICE
It’s probably pretty boring. People who like to meddle in other people’s lives rarely have anything interesting going on in theirs.
ESM
Mary’s shtick is that she desperately wants friends but just can’t stop being evil, but now she’s so ineffectual at being evil that Becky/Dina don’t even find her offensive anymore, and it makes me really want to see a storyline where Mary and Becky get stuck together for a while and allllllmost become unironically friends.
I think Mary has a bit more to her than just being a villainous asshole. Not enough that she should have this heroic face turn or anything and be accepted into the group, but I think a storyline that flirted with the idea could actually be a lot of fun. Mary has, dare I say it, untapped Vriska energy.
Thag Simmons
Eh, Mary appearing to have sympathetic or nuanced qualities before revealing that she’s exactly as awful as she’s always appeared to be is a recurring thing with her. She’s a bit of a glass onion.
Pergola
Lovely phrase!
Sirksome
Mary feels like the type of person that grew up normal but because she’s young and white she probably fell down an alt right pipeline trying to carve out some identity and fell into her religious self righteousness, but if really challenged on it, she would crumble as fast as Joyce did.
Becky somehow carving a friendly relationship with her would be funny because Mary is essentially just Joyce but she never met Becky or likely had a real friend ever.
Jeremiah
I don’t remember even a single instance where Mary showed the slightest desire to be friends with any of the characters. Only time she interacted purely positively was when she was kind of love drunk due to her boyfriend. Mary is a fully one dimensional hate sink (honestly like a fundamentalist republicans are) and that’s fine, she doesn’t need to be anything more.
Mano308gts
She had a pretty positive rapport with Joyce revolving around art, making art for Sara/Joyce’s door, their party, etc.
Needfuldoer
She was neutral at best, way back near the beginning when she invited some of the others to church. Then they turned out to be their own people and not Mary clones, so she wrote them all off.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/carpet/
ESM
Like the first two Mary storylines were “Mary starts to be friends with people but then they are Sinful and she is simply incapable of not torching everything over it”.
She’s since turned into kind of evangelical Galasso. “Bush-era evangelical” was getting a little dated as a reference (not that there aren’t homophobic evangelicals, obviously, but her vibe is distinctly pre-Trump), so it was either make her sillier, make her more like the modern alt-right, or enter the Vriscourse route by having her more sympathetic, but I kind of miss that early Mary who was never going to not be an asshole but felt bad about not having friends. I think there’s a lot of untapped comedy potential with that tension, especially as Mary is increasingly silly and defanged.
thejeff
Wait, what two storylines?
There was the bit where she was part of the group looking for a church to go to.
Thag Simmons
Really hoping that Mary is only in this comic as an incidental extra.
Steelbright
I didnt put this together in my head until i read a bunch of these comments, but….Mary’s here because she can overhear about them getting drunk and try to threaten them because it’s illegal? Now that my brain is on this track I’m not looking forward to it
Bogeywoman
Ooft. Or worse spreads a rumour that Joe got Joyce drunk and ~something happened~
Psychie
I was never in the dorms when I went to IU, but I *do* work for a company that delivers alcohol in Bloomington, so I’ve had to learn some of the relevant policies. My understanding is that it’s less an issue of underage drinking (because it’s the morning after and the alcohol is likely mostly out of their systems by now) and more an issue of being against dorm policy. The dorms are all dry, even if you are over 21 it is against the rules to have alcohol in the dorms, I don’t know what the specific penalties are for getting caught, but I do know it can escalate to getting kicked out of the dorm and possibly expelled from the university if you have serious or numerous enough violations.
All that said, a student reporting that she overheard a conversation between two other students in the hallways about possibly getting drunk is not sufficient evidence for any kind of disciplinary action. Mary would need to go to Ruth first, who may or may not conveniently forget about overhearing the party the night before, and even if she went over Ruth’s head, at most there would be a check of Joyce’s and Joe’s rooms for alcohol, which won’t turn anything up since that isn’t where the party was. Mary doesn’t know there was a party or where it was located, and for all she knows this exchange is hypothetical. I fully expect her to tattle, but I don’t expect it to go anywhere, especially since she has a documented history of actively trying to get other people in trouble, so she isn’t exactly a reliable source.
Deanatay