I was talking to my friend who works with kids and after a while, she said to me: ”You probably have ADHD” and I was like ”Pfff, nah, i’m just lazy and need to work on myself.”
I asked a professionally-qualified friend whether she thought I might be autistic and before I even finished she question she said “Jesus [expletive] Christ, C, have you seriously never been diagnosed?”
Speaking of depression, is anyone else here old enough to remember all those PSAs on TV about depression? They’d be going through a list of possible symptoms and finish by saying if you have several if those symptoms, you should talk to a mental health professional to find out if it’s depression. And I’d be going through most of them, saying, “But EVERYBODY goes through that, sometimes.” Or “Everybody feels like that!”
Then, in the early 00s, I was talking to a psychiatrist for something unrelated, and I mentioned how, on this one medication I’d been taking, I realized that, most of my life, it was like I’d been under overcast skies, and I never realized it until I saw the sun shining through the clouds.
I like how the neurodivergent person says something and the neurotypicals all inject some erroneous motivation into it. Joyce just wants to express a thing and everyone jumps to “that’s not as shocking as you think it is”. Ok, I don’t recall saying it was shocking. I’m just excited. Your shocked reaction or lack thereof was not included in my mental calculus to tell you a thing.
Right but on the other side, as a neurodivergent person… it’s pretty rude to just go around telling people who you’ve had sex with. If they wanted to know, they’d ask
My friends tell each other when and who we’re banging all the time. I think I’d be so bored and lonely if I had to worry about rules of propriety with my friend group, it’s so stressful!
Honestly, I think the “if they wanted to know, they’d ask” mindset can, itself, be a nuerodivergent take. It’s one I struggle with when it comes to friends, opening up and knowing that’s okay without direct prompting. (And if they don’t know there’s something in that area– whatever it may be– they probably won’t ask about it.)
For how it is here, I don’t know that Joyce is close enough with these people/not meshing with the context for it to be an appropriate vibe, but I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as “rude.”
Also: in my experience, at least, many neurotypicals seem to have ways of nonverbally “asking” (and, likewise, nonverbally emphasising that they’re not asking) that other neurotypicals seem to instinctively recognise but I completely miss . If I waited to be asked about stuff, I wouldn’t talk much.
(Actually, I often do, and so I don’t. Thankfully, most people seem to have less expectation of mind reading in text communication like this.)
Theres also just, like, individual factors. Like, I’m sex-repulsed. I don’t care if my friends fuck nasty-style (good for them!) But I don’t wanna hear it uninvited, y’dig?
It seems pretty common for this friend group, at least. Becky & Dina did basically the same thing as Joyce here. Lucy told everyone she knew about needing three dates so she could have sex with Walky. Sal told several people about needing to have sex with Danny before Joyce & Joe could beat her.
I sincerely doubt Taffy has problems with a woman being silly. That being said Joyce is a little weirdo, and I feel like almost everyone around her could agree.
Every now and then I make a broad joke or ask a broad question about women and people jump all over my shit saying its not used that way any more. I shall now use your comment to disprove that statement.
She’s perfectly valid in getting silly with it. What is not valid is the utter lack of self-awareness in saying this in front of the friend who is the ex of the gf you cheated with.
Oh my god it’s not a feminist issue. You can criticize a woman without it being sexist. Joyce is literally here flaunting that she just had sex with Dorothy in front of the guy Dorothy cheated on and his sister.
“god forbid a woman do anything” is a common joke in reply to things like this. My favorite usage is “god forbid a woman have hobbies” when talking about like, a female character that kills people or something. No one’s making it a feminist issue, it’s a silly tee hee haha joke
It’s going exactly how I expected. My desire for friction was almost entirely dependent on Lucy or Jacob and Lucy never fails to disappoint me lol. It’s up to Jacob to hop on that high horse now, he’s the “honestly-kinda-too-judgmental” friend. If he’s also 100% cool with it, I call BS. Bro was upset with Joyce over the cheating he himself committed (which she started with the romcom shenanigans but like… it was his choice to follow through) lol.
I honestly think Jacob might be more upset by his own cheating than other people cheating. I mean, personally, I hold myself to a different standard than other people. Like, when other people cheat or do wrong, I give them the benefit of the doubt. No such benefit can really be given to myself.
Galasso probably had it figured out before her, and when he was asked what his sexuality was, he responded “Fool, we don’t serve TEA at Galasso’s Pizza (and subs), sexual or otherwise!”
I just don’t see the appeal of the Walky-Amber ship anymore. They were great together for the first time but they broke up off-panel over the pettiest bullshit imaginable so that Willis could reset the drama clock and in the process Amber was gutted as a serious romantic pairing. Which Willis seems to be writing her as self-aware of, which makes it even stupider. It’s like “rule of drama” instead of “rule of funny” and at this point it’s spread to so many characters I can’t take any of their emotions seriously anymore because they feel like a pack of sockpuppets who may at any time perform a swerve to derail a story for drama, so I can’t get invested anymore. This is basically the same reason I had to stop reading Girl Genius, because so many successive asspulls page after page during a story climax meant there was no reason to care about anything that happened because it could just be undone on the next page and then redone again and then undone again until it felt like no development was ever really “real”. In the same way, it’s getting to the point that a minority of the Dumbing of Age characters feel “real” to me in any of their actions. Amber isn’t a person, she’s a plot device.
I don’t have an issue with Amber’s characterization, I just have an issue with the fact that Amber still has to come to terms with her anger. Shoving Walky hard enough to knock over the table and send him sprawling was a big deal, even if he didn’t get injured by it.
Amber being a ‘garbage person’ was one thing. Amber being a potential domestic abuser is another, and she needs help–help that she can accept–if she doesn’t want to walk that road.
The fact that no one present at the Halloween party has commented on that incident is probably the biggest disappointment I have with the group as a whole.
At this point, I can only hope karma will correct some of her transgressions… and what of poor, forgotten Joe? Walky’s hurting, but Joe has yet to have ANY resolution, ffs! When’s gonna be my time, Lord?
Why would he do that? Joyce did it for true love that means everything is justified and he should be congratulating her! Haven’t you seen how sweet she is /s
But for real someone has got to say something to her right? Surely tomorrow’s strip isnt just more “well we all knew it would happen so your behavior is fine”
He’d be the most justified ngl. Joyce has either no empathy about who she hurts in pursuit of her happiness with Dorothy, or a shocking lack of regard for someone who is supposed to be her friend, or absolutely no self-awareness of why continuing to gloat after seeing Walky might be what we like to call a dick move.
I appreciate Lucy’s polite “get over yourself, this surprises no one” and Sal just not touching the subject, though. Voices of reason here.
Interesting as well that there’s been zero comment from Jacob here, given he also has a pretty good reason to go “well, I thought you were a sweet girl but you led me to emotionally cheat on Raidah and broke us up, and then it seems you cheated on Joe and are now being an ass to Walky”.
Speaking of Joe, hope he’s doing alright. See also Dina and Becky…
I do atleat hope theres some acknowledgemeet that Joyce was an ass about breaking the news to Walky, even if he and Dorothy were not too serious he did deserve a respectful breakup from Dorothy who just completely forgot dropped the ball and let Joyce be mean to avoid confrontation.
She doesn’t have empathy for Walky specifically I think. She starts crying when she actually stops to think about hurting Joe, and she’s not happy with hurting Becky although that one is more just, unintended collateral, since neither of them were dating Becky. Anyway she just actively chooses not to think about any of that to not harsh the vibe. Walky can get fucked as far as she’s concerned tho
“but you led me to emotionally cheat on Raidah and broke us up”
I literally cannot tell you how nasty the bile that hit my throat upon reading that misogynistic crap. Jacob was a willing participant in that whole mess, and arguably had MORE reason to be blamed, since at the time, he was the one with commitments. What Joyce did wasn’t nice, and his decision to cut her off was a reasonable one, but he has no ground whatsoever to critique her at this point. I’m hoping his current silence is him recognizing that.
Fair enough! Jacob tends to get hit with the ‘can do no wrong’ brush by a large portion of the commentariat, so I wasn’t seeing that aspect of your suggestion. I kind of like the idea of him being openly hypocritical, so long as it gets addressed in the story, as well. I’d giggle like a schoolgirl if Joyce came back at him with, “Remind me again, which one of us was in a relationship when we kissed?”
Also because Joyce was the active party there. She was the one who deliberately set out to break them up. Yeah, Jacob screwed up by kissing her and arguably by playing along at lunch with his brother, but Joyce had been working towards that for weeks.
Oh man, is there some science on how emotions affect your memories? I’m really sure now that I let most of the cringe slide because I used to like her…
I have a bad feeling that the result of all the “lol, everybody saw this coming” jokes will be that Joyce concludes she actually did nothing wrong. This will carry through to biology in which she will find a way to make Joe, Becky, and Dina feel even worse about the situation.
I still predict she will try to fuck Joe at least one time before breaking it off.
I actually disagree. I think Willis is setting both Joyce and Dorothy up for a nasty fall. Dorothy’s already starting to crack from the dual pressures of reckoning with her political illiteracy and failing to justify her actions as an exception to the rule. Joyce is on track to alienate her entire friend group either by hurting them directly or being even more cringe than usual. Sooner or later she’s going to get hit with an extreme negative reaction she can’t paper over with her and Dorothy’s “true love.”
I also kinda think that a little bit of comeupance might be coming *eventually*, but I still am frustrated with the pacing. I realize the overall pace of the comic makes this tricky. But still, I wish we’d get to it faster somehow instead of seeing so many saccharine Joyce/Dorothy moments that I really would’ve enjoyed much more if they’d been held until the dust had settled. There could’ve easily been more Becky screentime the last few weeks instead.
I think some of that might be deliberate on the grounds that 1) I’ve been reading Willis for a decade and am well acquainted with their brand of sadism and 2) Willis wants us to feel how obnoxious their relationship is to everyone else in Joyce and Dorothy’s orbit. Notice how nobody’s said anything positive about this development.
Yeah, it really comes down to this. When a comic has moved like 4 months in real time over, what, 15 years? we just should expect every single story beat to take an agonizingly long time. Because it literally always has. Nearly everybody down here is so impatient for the story to get to the part that they think is the Good Part, that it’s starting to feel like I’m reading Pro Wrestling Reddit. Meanwhile, I’m just here, accepting that this is Joyce’s heel turn, and that she will turn babyface again later, because she’s the central character the narrative is built around, and so she won’t stay a heel forever.
And it’s not like he’s allergic to time-skips. A “Three Weeks Later” bit that shows where the fallout happened–maybe with a few flashbacks to different people telling Joyce to just go away–would’ve been a lot less agonizing for the folks who hate this whole thing, and likely would still satisfy Doyce shippers, assuming the two of them are still together at that point.
Instead, the pace of the comic plus the pace of the plot within the arc have combined to turn this whole bit into a bit of a slog, one that may read better during an archive trawl, since it’ll still go pretty quick.
I think it’s important here to note the anger at Joyce specifically for slighting Walky may be misplaced. Dorothy is the one we should be pissed at for this. She’s currently experiencing a different kind of hell. I would actually love to see Joe here witnessing how his ex is behaving after cheating on him. This needs to be a full wild fire.
Regarding Dorothy, yes, she’s the one we should be angry with, but unlike Joyce, she still feels guilty, and it’s incredibly sad that she’s deceiving herself and believing her actions are some kind of “exception.”
Before that treacherous kiss, Dorothy was already carrying a heavy burden of hatred. Yes, she messed up, but that hatred had reached unjust levels.
And seeing that level of hatred continue to grow with all of this has only made me remain neutral with the character. I don’t hate her, but what she did makes me sad and angry.
She rubbed it in Walkys face and thats when I straight up started disliking Joyce isntead of just rolling my eyes. That was just being mean to be mean. Anger is not misplaced and they are both in the wrong for different reasons when it comes to Walky.
I’ve said it many times before that it feels like there is a double standard here where Joyce is horrible for mocking Walky in the very same spirit he would mock her emotions for Dorothy when he was dating her. I don’t understand why.
I can only speak for myself here. And I think both have taken it too far at times.
The difference (at least, to me) is that Walky mostly mocked Joyce for her relationships. With Dorothy, with her religion. Yes, he also made some backhanded remarks about her upbringing, and he called her ‘brainwashed’ once, which was definitely not great. But many of his remarks, while mean, mostly were attacks on her beliefs and upbringing.
Joyce’s attacks were typically on Walky’s character. She would call him a troll, jerk, disgusting, etc. They felt generally more personal. There’s also the part where she shows a blatant lack of compassion or empathy for Walky. When Walky made a mean remark, he later apologised (even if it was at the behest of Dorothy). This is Joyce’s first interaction after she laughed at Walky while yanking Dorothy away, and she’s just rubbing it in his face.
So yeah, that’s part of why I feel Joyce has been meaner to Walky than the other way round.
You put it pretty well.
Joyce and Walky always rib each other but often times the source and nature of what Joyce is mocking and how Joyce mocks him rubs me the wrong way. I can’t express it in any other way than saying that not all teasing is equivalent teasing.
In the same way Becky’s “bit” about hating Dorothy also often rubbed me the wrong way because at a certain point it was almost indistinguishable from Bullying.
I don’t know what to believe anymore or where the line is on the Joyce v Walky rivalry. I used to think they crossed the line of simple sibling rivalry long ago and they were both just being jerks. I don’t know how this is worse than Walky calling Joyce a lesbian multiple times and bragging about getting to make out with Dorothy in front of her. I agree that at some point this behavior just becomes bullying but it only seems to be bullying when Joyce does it to Walky. It all feels bad to me. To me Joyce and Walky has been nothing but two romantic rivals competing over a girl in the most toxic way possible while being told “Hey they’re still friends. This is all cute and fun sibling bickering.” But like no it’s not. Walky has siblings and even his relationship with Jennifer who shoved him in lockers mind you, was never this level of petty and antagonistic.
I also despised the Becky performative rivalry stuff too. I can accept Becky as a fictional character doing stuff I disagree with for gags or whatever but don’t piss on me and tell me it’s rain. Especially now that she’s having a full crisis of faith thanks to her it’s totally performative rival stealing her not girl.
I remember the second season of Star Trek: the Next Generation, when Dr. Pulaski replaced Dr. Crusher. They tried to reprise the dynamic from the Original Series in which McCoy and Spock were constantly giving each other **** (in a friendly way), but because Data never responded to Pulaski’s barbs with anything but innocent earnestness and puzzlement, it just came across as kicking a puppy.
See for me I don’t necessarily see “haha wow you’re so gay for my girlfriend” to even be that…insulting? Joyce is a bit obsessed with Dorothy. In a very noticeable way. “wow you’re so into this person, do you have a crush on her or something” just doesn’t feel that scathing? I had friends tease me about a platonic friend too sometimes and I never felt insulted by it. I find it weird to compare that to “hey I stole your girlfriend. The woman you love is leaving you for me and I am rubbing it in your face hahaha”. Like just not even in the same ball park to me.
Add to that that Walky was right about Joyce being into Dorothy, even though she wasn’t up to accepting it at the time and it looks more like a way of dealing with someone inappropriately crushing on your partner when you can’t actually call them out directly, because they don’t even know that’s what they’re doing.
But mostly, for me, this particular bit from Joyce was bad because of the context. It was crushing Walky by getting Dorothy to cheat on and then dump him and then mocking him for it. A huge emotional blow and then kicking him while he was down. Walky’s said some shit he shouldn’t have said, but he never did anything that hurt her as directly as a breakup does and I don’t think he was ever that mean about any of the painful stuff that he didn’t cause.
@thejeff I don’t agree with that first part. Walky’s main character flaw is an inability to confront people or problems. Even if his teasing was a way of addressing Joyce and Dorothy’s very obvious attraction which he was aware of he could and should have talked with either of them about it. The truth is closer to the conversation he had with Alice and Billifer. He never actually took it seriously until he lost. Like even Joe was capable of talking to Dorothy about her crush on Joyce. (Although I guess that didn’t workout for him either).
As far as the context of the cheating I get that and I do think it adds an extra bitterness to what is normally their toxic back and forth and it is making Joyce extra obnoxious. That’s why I do think Walky should flip out and finally confront Joyce or Dorothy, preferably both about it. My problem is really just the framing of Joyce as the villain when their exchanges have always been at least this level of teasing antagonism or whatever this “friendship” has been since they met.
@Sirksome, it’s fair to say he should have confronted it more directly, but at the same time any attempt to do so would have crashed hard against Joyce’s walls of denial up until maybe the last couple of days before the Kiss. Most of the teasing about it was back in the first semester, when it was just Joyce being weirdly romantic/possessive of his girlfriend.
And I really disagree that Joyce’s gloating over it was the same level as their previous antagonism, mostly because as I said, it was coming right with the emotional blow of getting dumped.
@Sirksome
Ill just say again “haha you seem like you have a crush on this person” is pretty bog standard teasing compared to “haha your girlfriend just dumped you.”
Not even that, it’s “haha I stole your girlfriend.” Like that’s fucked! That’s a fucking horrible, cruel thing to say to someone, and it’s so much worse than anything Walky has ever said to her, and yes I’m counting the brainwashed thing because Joyce also believes that about her past self now!
I just wanna chime in to say the reason Walky’s “lmao you’re a lesbian” jokes kinda hit wrong for me are because the joke is literally “lmao you are gay”. The punchline is her being gay. Him being correct doesn’t make the fact that it is a bit homophobic to make a joke about someone where the punchline is “wouldn’t it be hilarious if you were gay”. Much like how Joe saying Dorothy is a lesbian for rejecting his advances doesn’t get undone just because Dorothy turned out to be bi. It’s still shitty to assume a woman only isn’t into you because she’s exclusively a lesbian (because the assumption is that guy must be so amazing that all individuals attracted to men are into him on sight), and it’s still shitty to consistently make jokes about Joyce lezzing out and munching on his girlfriend when she hasn’t made that realization herself. I don’t look fondly on men who’ve made jokes about me being a lesbian or treating my rejection of them as “oh you’re a lesbian”.
I can see it from that standpoint. Ironically I think of Joe and Walky’s teasing being different in that regard. Whole heartedly agree the “you dont like me so you must be gay” thing is just full on being a dick.
The walky one has a bit more of a nebulous feel depending on how charitable you’re being to Walky’s intent. Its not uncommon to tease someone about having a crush on a friend they seem really close to. Especially if they insist theyre not into that person romantically. The humor coming from the dichotomy between their affection for the person and their claims its not romantic. Joyce once told walky and Billie she shipped them for example and if she were to tease walky about it regularly it would be annoying but not…cruel. I feel like if Joyce told Walky she did have a crush on Dorothy he’d stop teasing her about it because its no longer humorous.
It kinda gets complicated when you add sexual orientation to the mix. I dont get the vibe that walky is saying “you like dorothy and thats gay and being gay is bad.” Moreso that Joyce’s apparently lack of attraction to women is also sorta the reason why she would consider dorothy a romantic option. You could also argue that while walky sees no issue with gay people that he’s mocking Joyce’s repressed fundie outlook and that the “joke” is that she’d be offended by the insinuation she likes a girl. Which honestly doesn’t make it much better. In the same way people have pointed out that people mocking the idea that Trump may have sacked a dick to “own him” is still in itself reinforcing regressive stereotypes. So I can see that seeming a lot shittier from that reading.
Which kinda explains why people are so torn on whether or not Joyce’s treatment is equivalent behavior. It’s all sorta based on how youre viewing the intent of Walky’s teasing.
I definitely think Walky’s teasing came from the angle like you mentioned, where since Joyce is a religious fundie that the idea she’d be into a girl is something she’d be upset/offended by and thus why he teased her with that. He’s definitely teased her about her religious beliefs before, I actually think his LOOK IT’S THE RAPTURE joke is HILARIOUS, but repeatedly suggesting she’s a lesbian when she’s not comfortable with it and is clearly upset by it (their little tussle here for example https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/godpertunity/ ) is where it tips from lighthearted humor to being a bit of a jerk. It’s also a very Joyce specific tease because I definitely don’t think Walky finds the idea of being gay to be bad, and I agree that if Joyce owned her attraction to Dorothy then Walky would have stopped with those jokes because then it wouldn’t be funny.
Gentle counterpoint to the idea that Walky was making those jokes because he could tell she was into his girlfriend and didn’t know how else to handle it:
He didn’t just make fun of Joyce for being attracted to Dorothy, he also made fun of her for being attracted to Jacob.
I think the punchline in both cases is honestly the same. “Haha, you’re a repressed Christian fundamentalist, your own sexuality makes you uncomfortable and the way you react when it’s pointed out is funny.”
Not intentionally homophobic, but. Not as sympathetic as “poor guy just didn’t know how to confront the issue of Joyce’s interest in Dorothy” either, imho.
(Disclaimer: I do think Joyce saying what she said was a big dick move, I just happen to think it’s about on par with this sequence where Walky keeps making fun of Joyce for being a sexual being until his sister reminds him that she was sexually assaulted so he should stop when she says “stop”, rather than a huge escalation.
This sequence was out of line and Walky eventually got called on it; I hope Joyce eventually gets called out in turn.)
(Clarification: I misspoke there, and there’s no edit button. Joyce wasn’t sexually assaulted, she was roofied. But that’s still what Sal was talking about when she took Walky to task for not stopping.
Also I don’t really think the two incidents are equivalent, just that they’re both cases where the belligerent friendship dynamic went over a line.) (I don’t wanna argue about which was worse, I think they’re extremely hard to compare. I only keep bringing this up because folks keep saying Walky has never deliberately hurt Joyce, and that sequence reads as very deliberately hurtful to me? He forgot Ryan and didn’t mean to step in that specific thing, but he was definitely being mean on purpose, hence his retort to Dorothy when she asked him to stop.)
@StClair I agree with you about Data. If they’d wanted to recreate the original series dynamic, l always felt that Worf would have been a better target for Pulaski’s ribbing, because I’m certain that he could have delivered some withering deadpan put-downs of his own right back to her.
The difference is that I dislike Dorothy for intruding on a conversation she had no place in to dunk on Walky and not let that conversation take place. And however urgent the emergency that demanded the interruption, it wasn’t so urgent that she couldn’t double back and take another shot. I don’t think Walky ever doubled down on an insult that landed harder than he expected except to remind Dorothy that she thinks basically the same thing about Joyce’s religion or wasn’t actually saying it to her face.
Joyce already thinks she did nothing wrong. I’m still….trusting the process. I’m confident she’ll at least get a wakeup call about the whole centering her white self thing but, not so much about the interpersonal stuff
The issue I have with this take is that she did not, in fact, “center her white self”. WILLIS centered her in a story arc in a way that left a bad taste in a lot of folks’ mouths, but her actions within the story were not about anything akin to “main character syndrome” or whatever. She wasn’t posing for the photo, and she’s even agreed that them being centered by other parties was probably not great.
Blame Daisy for making that photo the front page. Blame the anonymous photographer. Blame the administration for calling in the cops and creating a post-facto reason for breaking up the protest. Blame the cops for being Bastards, as they all are. Maybe even blame Amber for escalating the situation so that the cops had that much more cover, PR-wise, for using excessive force.
One could, I suppose, condemn her for not really knowing about the Bulmerian situation in the first place, and I’ll accept that reasoning from the first person who can point to their critiques of the other 99% of the cast who apparently had no idea where Bulmeria is, let alone who was killing whom.
If shit gets dire enough with Becky, Dina might be tempted to take out her frustration on Joyce. They’ve had problems before and she could justify it to herself as payback for Joyce blowing up her spot.
Several months ago I recall a preview panel (which I didn’t actually see, only saw the discussion thereof) of Dina absolutely flipping fucking shit on Joyce, and that strip was supposed to be a year out from when it was previewed; therefore, we can presume this is coming in due time.
Dina would be the person to check Joyce, especially because of past issues between each other. Dina’s disdain for Joyce originally was neurodivergent support, a support system in general came easy for Joyce. Dina as a POC and neurodivergent didn’t have it easy. Joyce gets support from the friend group she’s currently trying to blow up.
Come finding her orientation, and Joyce gets a support system from her father and sister that a lot of LGBTQ kids could only dream of. Becky included. Hell, Joe, originally considered scumbag numero uno on campus changing enough to support Joyce having “what she deserves” is like drawing a royal flush.
Would that Dina is within earshot of any of those brags plus being the residual damage (I don’t think that would annoy Dina or she would fault Joyce so much as the nonchalance of it all), the hammer probably falls.
Remember when people had conversations? Remember when people reacted to things that happened?
Now it’s just Joyce and / or Dorothy saying the same thing over and over and over again while everyone else goes yeah okay and the cycle repeats. Nobody else seems to care about it, but Doyce is the only thing the comic cares about now so it’s just the story equivalent of styrofoam.
The last however many months could be cut down by a quarter and nothing of any consequence would be lost.
Everyone keeps saying it’s building to something but all I can think of is the potential man meme. Putting up with months of the plot spinning its wheels because something *might* happen is not at all compelling.
It’s bad writing, bad pacing, and extremely disappointing because prior to this things actually happened and even if I didn’t like them I could see why others did but this is just baffling why people are enjoying this.
Every time Doyce appears, I prefer not to say anything; in fact, I’ve been almost completely silent. But with this thread, at least we can vent better, and yes, I want to believe that Dorothy becomes interesting again when she’s not with Joyce, and the latest strips seem to show that.
I think this is again a symptom of possibly DoA’s biggest flaw and most legitimate criticism which is pacing. This is a flaw a lot if not possibly all strip a day format comics and webcomics in general have. Imagine reading a typical 18 page manga chapter at one page a day or even just 4 or 5 panels a day. It would take weeks to finish a chapter. It takes forever for anything to happen when reading in real time but I think the Doyce era will ultimately be a small blip when reading in book form. I’m not even sure we’re building to something as much as we’re just cleaning up fallout and establishing a new working equilibrium in character relationships from Doyce happening.
I do get that, but so much in this arc has been utterly pointless (as an aside I meant to say cut down to a quarter, not by a quarter). Like two or three strips on Joyce’s birth control with Hank which went nowhere. But we don’t see the convo over lunch.
Strips of them walking around hallways for what felt like weeks that could just be totally excised from the plot with no difference.
And with regards to the book vs reading here, daily is the primary medium so any plotting should, imo, be focused on making that flow well. That we got a double strip recently shows it can be done. Like mangas don’t publish a page a day because that is a terrible format for telling any sort of long form story unless you keep things really tight.
Even so, DOA is bad at pacing on aggregate, and this current arc is an absolutely bloated mess. If it reads better in book form it’ll be because you can skip past all the nothing that happens quickly.
In fairness to Willis, I think part of the issue is that up until now, the pacing has largely worked in his favor. Sure, it’s been the subject of good-natured joking up until now, but that’s all I’ve really seen in the comments here prior to this arc.
That’s because the plots themselves were fairly high-energy. Whether rapidly building humor (Mary v. Carla), high-action (Toedad’s rampage) or even romantic hijinks (Joyce and Jacob), the slow pace of the comic contrasted with the nature of the arcs, letting us see small details that might’ve been overlooked with a more frantic pacing structure.
Here, alas, we’ve got an arc that would benefit from some skipped intervals, or even just a time-skip with flashbacks, like the Ruth/Billie breakup.
Is it bad pacing, if time in the comic is still moving at the exact same speed it always has? We’ve gone through, IIRC, 4 months of comic time in 15 years of real time. And a huge chunk of that, is timeskip. The reality is, one day in DoA time actually takes the better part of a year, and so it’s only a problem now, because we happen to be stuck on the particular set of days where every human teenager is at their most annoying – right after they’ve finally had sex.
It’s a case of a plotline being a bad fit for the comic’s established pacing. I think Willis would’ve been wise (and the story itself better served) by changing up the format to work the story better. Hell, imagine if we went from The Kiss to a month later, and Doyce were still together and being infatuated with one anotoher–but a significant portion of the cast had pretty much cut them off as being too toxic. Toss in a flashback panel/strip here and there where someone tells one of them off.
i’ve been reading DOA for a while and I don’t usually comment, and maybe I haven’t been reading long enough to really “know” Joe, but currently I am am 100% caught up on “what about Joe???” when it comes to Dorothy/Joyce situation
Clearly Joyce is more “at home” and happy now, but (and this feels terrible to say this as a gay) she was adorable with Joe, and she’s insufferable now lol
I’ve actually spoken with quite a few of my lesbian friends who’ve stated that the preferred Jojo to Doyce and how they’re conflicted cuz thy’re usually all in on lesbian ships and some even usually hate straight ships.
Kinda crazy the dichotomy between the two couples.
I’m gay and was rooting for Joe to get with a man, and despite my disliking of Joyce in general, was still at peace with JoJo because it was genuinely cute.
Well that’s down the river, can Joe go get a threesome with Ethan and Asher?
You would reward Asher with a threesome with not one but two tall built fuck machines!? Can we get Joe to STEAL Ethan from Asher?….After the threesome of course.
This does remind me that it’s something of a pattern with Joyce.
She really was truly hateful at the start of the comic as a unreconstructed fundy, but we all knew the whole point of the comic was her changing that, so it was tolerable.
She reverted to similar behavior when she came out as atheist, in the sense of being sure she was right about everything and very obnoxious about it, not in terms of the bigotry. She toned that down fairly quickly though.
Now again, she’s come out as gay and as having had sex and is doubling down and being really obnoxious about that. Hopefully the pattern will hold and she’ll tone it down soon enough.
I think she was already talking as he walked outside and just caught the tail end of it.
In college before I transitioned I was in my apartment living room and someone said, “Well who hasn’t slept with your Roommate?”
I looked at all of us in the room and went, “Well, none of us, much to Roommate’s disappointment!”
We were all laughing as Roommate walked in and we all clammed up guiltily. Roommate got upset and went, “Aw c’mon!” and stormed into their room. It was all funny, just the obvious laughing cut short as they walked in. We called them back and they laughed and were ok. Roommate was very much early Joe coded at the time.
Dumb college relationships are dumb and messy. Heck people cheating in college is not even that uncommon.
But people cheating in college and behaving like Joyce has and then the whole friend group just shrugging and going “eh guess it was always going to happen” is just weird.
I get so bored of the “it ain’t Smarting of Age” argument being used to wave off stuff like this. Yes, they’re stupid college kids and they won’t act rationally always, or even often.
But the general mean-ness and over the top behavior from Joyce especially, and the lack of meaningful reactions from the rest of the cast, can’t really be explained away by that same argument.
I think in isolation, it couldn’t; but, I think in the context of the totality of everybody’s relationship with Joyce, it’s less unreasonable. Everyone’s established relationship with Joyce is, “well, she’s annoying, and she’s ultimately well-meaning, but she’s also a weird home-schooled cult kid, and that’s not really her fault.”
There really is an established pattern, of Joyce being allowed to get away with murder, in a social sense. She’s always been held to a different standard. So, what we’re experiencing in real time, right now, is the process of Joyce wearing out everybody’s good will, as they gradually recognize that she’s actually being more insufferable than ever, but also, no longer actually seems well-meaning or innocent, in the process.
The unfortunate downside of that narrative choice? All of the characters in the strip, need to deal with this Joyce for 4-5 days, to reach their breaking point, and they are on Day 2. Whereas, in proportion, the readership is literally going to be stuck in this narrative device for 8-12 months in real time, and nobody is dealing with that well…which is, perhaps, something that Willis should have comprehended in advance, but they’re apparently blinded by how cute their self-insert darling is, to them, personally.
I was just thinking how some of this might pay off in interesting ways eventually (basically my mantra since shortly after the kiss), but at this point the level of focus they’re getting while I’m waiting for that to happen has already worn me out.
This ship would definitely be in the category of “innately interesting” to me, too. (Queer ship emerging with long established characters? Who have had a long potential buildup within their previous dynamic? Yes, please.) And I felt set for that after the kiss…so I’m all the more disappointed by how uninteresting I’ve found it.
It’s interesting to combine this idea that Joyce has always been “allowed to get away with murder, in a social sense” and “held to a different standard” with the other discourse about Walky always being so mean to her that her gloating over winning Dorothy is justified.
Joyce has an awful side that is unrelated to her neuroatypical social issues and fundamentalist upbringing (well maybe not that). Basically, she loves rubbing her successes in other people’s faces and gloating.
Frankly, it’s part and parcel of the worst parts of fundamentalism to believe (somewhat heretically, if you’ve actually read anything that Jesus guy had to say) that “things are going well for me” means “I am morally justified in what I’m doing, because all good things come directly from God and that means I’m being REWARDED for my actions by getting to have sex with Dorothy, which I’m enjoying, therefore it’s good, therefore it’s from God, therefore it’s correct and blessed.”
It’s basically prosperity gospel, but for atheist fuckin’.
Hilariously, it’s probably the one thing that Jesus was 100% unambiguous about that bad things happen to good people and vice versa but it still gets ignored.
I’m very burned out on Joyce gushing about Dorothy, but I do have to give credit for that last two-panel delivery. It’s insufferable but it’s well executed for sure.
what really sucks is how Joyce’s character has bascially eroded down to just being “I am fucking Dorothy and am going to make it everyone else’s problem!”
like we’re not getting any conflict here it’s all just “love love Dorothy love” and having her be snippy and lash out if anyone brings up the issues she is bringing up as a result like rubbing it in Walky’s face that she torpedoed his relationship with her or how she seriously hurt Joe and Becky with her actions.
Hell at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if Becky decided to try what her mother did and when Joyce finds out she calls Becky selfish for it or something like that.
The one thing I see people struggling to understand is that Joyce is ultimately avoidant. Why hasn’t she put the pin in things with Joe? Why isn’t she going and comforting her literal best friend in the world, who she accurately predicted in advance would be spiraling right now? Why is she getting repeatedly side-tracked with unrelated side-quests that vaguely represent her receiving moral absolution from people she thinks she’s wronged, while not actually putting in the work to do right by the people she’s actually wronged?
Well, uh, it probably has to do with the fact that, she has fully lived a life under the narrative, that she doesn’t actually have any agency in her outcomes, on account of being a Christian woman; so, now that she isn’t that second thing, she’s finally at a point in her life where she’s able to make deliberate choices, and lo and behold, she’s fucking bad at it, and there are a bunch of meaningful downstream consequences of that choice.
But, she doesn’t actually have any experience dealing with the consequences of choices she’s made, and so that’s scary. There’s no script for that in her life; it’s a task that she doesn’t have a point-by-point set of instructions to deal with, so therefore, it’s terrifying, and therefore, she’s avoiding even thinking about those things. Avoiding thinking about it, to the point of not even acknowledging that it’s a real possibility, is previously how she was dealing with the premise of sexual urges, after all. To paraphrase her own words, “well, I must be one of those asexuals, [because if I’m not, I will have to] preemptively marry half of the town!”
So, we take her being habitually avoidant of anything that has ever made her slightly anxious for any reason, and then put that in the context of her finally breaking some of her programming, and starting to make choices; and, those choices have both positive and negative downstream outcomes; it’s ultimately unsurprising, that she would literally put Joe and Becky’s well-being out of her mind, entirely, and instead hyper-fixate on the outcomes that make her feel free, and in control, and deeply euphoric in a self-satisfied way, for the first time in her entire life.
Because, she’s a clinical-grade black and white thinker, and so she can’t effectively hold in her mind, both the positive and negative consequences of her choices. There cannot be any middle ground between “I am heroically gay for kissing a girl,” and “I have wronged everybody I cared about and owe them care and reparation,” in Joyce’s mind, because middle ground does not exist, only objective, immutable binaries.
After all…if Joyce were to accept that part of what she did was okay, and part of what she did was wrong, that means that her decision to accept agency and make choices, could lead her to make wrong choices, and be a bad person; she wants the benefit of agency, but is unwilling to actually confront the downsides. That worldview is too complicated for her to accept right now, in the face of her fear; she’s been craving the comfort of her old life and her old ways, ever since she became an atheist. So, she’s throwing herself into the one detail in her life, that’s not a burning shambles, with zealous aplomb.
In the most extreme reading, Joyce can’t allow herself to accept the idea, that her exercising her agency, and making the choice to kiss/love/be with Dorothy, could be wrong; after all, since she is conditioned by her upbringing to only see binaries, accepting that her choice could have been more wrong than right, is akin to accepting that she was wrong to try to be free from her life obligation to be a proper Christian woman, and that would make her a horrible person, who broke both of her best friends’ hearts, for nothing. This is much like how Becky has a deep-seated need for identities to be binary and immutable, because if they aren’t, from her perspective, her Dad was right, and she got him killed, and got herself excommunicated, for nothing.
I really don’t want even more stressful things to happen in this comic, but the longer we go on with this, the more likely it starts to seem that Becky is very much in danger.
I feel like it’s easy to attribute everything to Joyce’s fundamentalism and/or neuroatypicality but there’s also a number of other people in Joyce’s peer group that have…absolutely nothing similar. We have a sample size of how people are raised in their environment (Becky and Carol) as their church’s women.
It’s possible that it might be simply…Joyce doesn’t want to deal with things that are emotionally harmful WHEN THEY HARM HER. Which is not an unreasonable thing for anyone.
And this might simply be an unflattering light she can and is at times selfish when it hurts others and…doesn’t care.
@Throwatron at this point you can just assume, even if I don’t put an explicit +1 under each and every post, you have my full agreement and appreciation.
I hate the “she hurt Joe AND Becky” narrative. She hurt Joe, yes. But Becky’s hurt has as much (and arguably more) to do with Becky’s issues than with how Joyce handled this sequence. Becky has been in a state of denial for months, in a way that was hideously unfair to Dina, and while I don’t want her to do anything akin to self-harm, I do think she needs to take a good, honest look at her relationship with Joyce. If you remove the sexuality aspect, she’s basically been doing the ‘friendzone’ complaint this entire time.
Becky has no claim over Joyce’s romantic love, and she really needs to accept that and move on–and that’s on her to do.
(Please note: Becky is probably my favorite character as both a character and as a person–she’s absolutely someone I would hang with. I just wish she had someone who could lay down the hard truths for her and help her get to a place of acceptance.)
– The guy she stole Dorothy from
– The above guy’s sister (and girlfriend of the best friend of the guy she cheated on)
– The above guy’s sister-in-all-but-genetics
– The guy whose previous relationship she homewrecked
Why are any of these people still giving Joyce the time of day? I’m amazed they haven’t defenestrated her from the friend group, or at least the walking carpool.
This is actually one of those few situations I’m comfortable using that old hat of “it’s not Smarting of Age”. In most contexts that phrase is functionally a thought terminating cliche, but hers, I think it’s appropriate because we have a bunch of teenagers who, let’s be honest, do not have the best emotional intelligence or handle on how to deal with a situation like this. Also, keep in mind none of the people here have shown a tendency to jump the gun in social situations without more info.
I think it’s because they’ve all had 18-36 hours to react to this new development, and their entire prior experience with Joyce as a peer, comes from the perspective of them inherently giving her a ton of leeway, because they know she’s socially underprivileged, and improbably unworldly.
Like, it really is just inertia. Every person who tolerated Joyce up to this point, is numb to the fact that she is regularly doing and saying completely bone-headed, off-the-cuff, beyond-the-pale stuff from an average person’s social perspective; they attribute it to her literally not knowing better, and have learned to let it slide.
The dissonance comes from the fact that, as readers, we have to swim in this perspective of Joyce for 6-8 months at a time, as opposed to the characters 18-36 hours. All of them were aware of the fact that Joyce and Dorothy were catastrophically co-dependent and horny for each other; all of them were aware of the fact that, the second she pratfell into her first orgasm, Joyce was going to be insufferable about it for days or weeks. But, it’s going to take them a couple of days time to recognize, “okay, hold up, this version of Joyce is the most annoying one, yet, and I actually don’t think I can tolerate it.”
They meet her with continued rote tolerance, because that’s been an effective strategy for dealing with her until now, and also because they think that doing so has been fair, given her awful background, and thus, her justified lack of worldliness.
So, I predict that we’re going to see characters gradually stop giving Joyce the time of day; unfortunately, I also predict, that a huge portion of the readership is going to find the time-frame at which that plays out, excruciatingly slow and grating.
It sure would be nice if even a few of the people in Joyce’s friend group actually criticize her for her extremely shitty behavior lately. Maybe that might finally make her think about how badly she’s been treating most other people these days. So far we’ve had Sarah when she found out that Joyce and Dorothy hadn’t properly broken up with their boyfriends before getting together, and that’s it.
I feel like we’re hitting a pattern of the moment Joyce learns something new about herself she immediately becomes the worst version of said thing.
Like back when she lost her religion and had to start literally dressing in black and white while going around talking like a reddit atheist telling people how dumb they are for still having something they believe in.
Can someone in the comic please have an original thought? It’s hella weird to me that everyone’s had the identical reaction of “OBVIOUSLY you two started dating, EVERYONE knew you would”. Am I the only one who thinks that’s rude and pretentious?? Let people define their own relationships!
I imagine the way they got together also took some of the excitement out of it for people
Like if they got together without the cheating aspect I imagine people would have been more excited for them instead of brushing it off the way they’re doing now
If i could pay money to fast forward to biology class with Becky and Dina and Joe i would. Like i actually dont mind this, i don’t Care if Joyce is being annoying, being annoying is het biggest character trait. It really only bothers me when real people get annoying on her behalf. I’m just happy she and dotty and separate for a while. BUT there’s a fucking mine right in front of us of delicious drama and we gotta wait till like Tuesday or something to watch it explode, and that knowledge hurts
I historically say this, and it’s historically true when she’s excited; however, I think we’ve gone past that. She’s genuinely blocking Joe and Becky out of her head, at this point. Not consciously so, but also, very deliberately. She’s subconsciously protecting herself from the reality of actually dealing with the fallout she’s created, because she doesn’t actually know how to reconcile the fact that she doesn’t feel bad about how her choices have affected her, with the fact that she knows how badly her choices have affected others. She’s craving the certainty of morality that came with her faith, but hasn’t adjusted to the fact that when you have no faith, you’re then actually responsible for the moral implications and consequences of your choices.
There’s no way any attempt at poly from Joyce wouldn’t devolve into “I’m still seeing Joe sometimes, but we’re just not gonna tell Dorothy because I see any conflict with my one true love as an existential threat.”
My crazy meta idea is that’s going to happen and Willis will eventually reveal that the cheating plot he was talking about was not the Kiss, but Joyce cheating on Dorothy with Joe.
My meta-meta idea is that a lot of people are going to be shocked when the majority of the DoJo-dislikers continue to be annoyed at Joyce if that happens. 😀
Dorothy always thought Joyce was attracted to Walky. I think Charles is right. Dorothy will have minimal issues with Joyce doing it, but will need coaxing to join.
I think Dorothy/Joe would be very interesting because her distaste seems to have been jealousy (that came from such an ugly place she considered Joe dating Joyce to be similar to HER BEING KIDNAPPED).
Yeah. Remember when she pointed out she only put up with Joe because she was dating Danny and had hoped dumping Danny would mean not having to talk to Joe again?
To be fair I’d argue most social relationships are smell based if you argue that people who smell really bad definitely effects the relationships they can have.
Joe called Jacob his “main man” once and they’ve had actual conversations while at the gym, I think that goes above “guy you see while working out and grunt and maybe nod at.”
They were friendly enough for Jacob to tell Joe to be careful about Joyce, which really felt out of place at the time but was apparently more or less good advice.
Jacob is also kind of self-righteous and like… yeah. I like him, but he can definitely be a little “holier-than-thou” at times and this would be a great time for him to be like that.
I held off on doing the patreon for the longest time, but last night I literally had a dream about me subscribing to it and when I woke up I decided hell, if Willis is gonna inception me that’s some damn good advertising and probably worth a couple bucks.
I live and breathe for the promise of angry Walky. I need to see this man crash out, I need it in my bones. I want him to crash out, have an angry arc, and then beat the actual hell outta incelerator somehow. Point A to Z, idk how we get there, I just know I wanna see my man rage and yell at the sun
Unfortunately, Walky is constitutionally incapable of being regular aggressive, and is currently too self-doubting to be passive aggressive. I believe that the time for Walky to get angry will come, but first must be Walky’s journey toward a sense of self based in something other than comfort-seeking and ironic detachment.
He’s actually not. Lest we forget, Walky punched Asher, a dude who everyone acknowledges can definitely personally mince-meat him, because he ratted Sal out to the cops.
One of Wally’s biggest character flaws in the Walkyverse was that he was absolutely full of rage and would routinely go way too far whenever he got pissed off, with disastrous consequences. I don’t think Walky should have anger issues to that extent (it was a pretty common thing back in the Walkyverse, and a lot of that tendency got funneled into Amber here), but there’s at least some precedent.
I think I said this before but if I were Walky’s friend, and I didn’t know Joyce and Dorothy’s lore, I would be barking in his ear to go nuclear on these bongos.
You know, it’s perfectly possible for all these things to be true simultaneously.
Astariel is correct that Joyce is holding the colllar of her jacket up to her nose.
Joyce is correct that she is smelling Dorothy’s aroma on her.
Stormtide is correct that it is far too early for the jacket to have picked up Dorothy’s scent.
Betsumei is correct that Joyce is *also* sniffing her hand.
Joyce you’ve had that jacket for 15 minutes, there is no way Dorothy smell is on it yet. Unless she is just constantly engulfed in a cloud of perfume like a middle schooler who just discovered the magic of body mist. Or she deliberately spritzed it with something of hers before running off.
Do people still tell people to do that these days? My mom always told me to spray guys’ stuff with perfume and I can’t tell if that was normal mother-child advice or one of the weird social rules she made up (like a man needing to propose in <4 months or it being impossible to cheat outside of marriage)
I stg I read this as a your mom joke at first, and was deeply confused. It didn’t even register for like 30 seconds, that it could just be a sincere statement. I had to go reread Bittersweet’s post to see what I was missing, which was nothing.
I was curious about the smell too, especially if Dorothy has a certain perfume she uses. I don’t remember the smell of any of my exes, but then again I’ve lived with a smoker all my life so my nose is kinda dulled. As for the advice, that’s definitely a weird one. Like she told you to spray stuff that belonged to guys around you, with your perfume? Sounds like she was hoping that would, like, fend off other suitors or something. Main advice my mom ever gave was just “spray your neck and wrists, rub lightly” as far as where to spray my stuff.
why the hell is Joyce smelling her JACKET in the last panel? that’s the jacket that she bought this morning, it doesn’t smell like anything except store
she exchanged shirts with Dorothy, she should be smelling her shirt, like c’mon
Taking another comment section break! I’m enjoying the comic but. Mostly don’t feel like I’m enjoying the conversation rn, and I definitely don’t feel like I’m being the kind of chill positive presence I wanna be.
Only announcing because I know folks get worried sometimes over names disappearing. Just in case. We’ve all got enough stress rn without unnecessarily adding to it, I figure.
I can assure you have been one of the most chill people in these comments. I think sometimes you are a bit hard in yourself for not being always positive, ehich i think it’s unrealistic to expect of yourself. Gonna miss you and hope you have a nice break.
Just doubling down on this, because I’ve written Too Many Words tonight already, and I don’t want to just re-word the same sentiment, so I’m stealing it.
It’s also just… overwhelmingly negative around here rn, which is? You know, how people are feeling. I’m not asking anyone to stop sharing that, that wouldn’t be fair.
I do wish there were somewhere to talk about DoA where it was more positive? But I don’t even begin to have the energy to start creating my own space so I’m also not gonna complain that no one else made it for me.
I recently was reading the arc back in 2022 where Joyce is getting confronted by Dina about being spanked as a kid, and I found an old comment of mine complaining that seemingly every character was getting on Joyce’s case, calling her out, or passing moral judgment on her.
Kind of funny to think about that complaint in context of this arc, where I actually wish most of the characters would get on her case MORE.
This light snark is a decent appetizer but I wish to FEAST on the disapproval of her acquaintances!
I think if you asked Joyce and Walky two days ago (their time), they’d tell you it’s mostly banter and call the other their friend. Joyce would say it through gritted teeth and not fully understand why. Walky would crack wise about Joyce’s undying love for Dorothy, but wouldn’t laugh about it like he used to.
I wonder if Walky has picked up on how much more “real” Joyce’s animosity towards him feels now.
I think he always kind of knew. A huge part of Walky’s thing, is pretending to be emotionally incompetent, so that nobody ever expects him to actually perform emotionally.
However, he was the Golden Child in his family for a reason; he’s a master of emotional deflection, and we’ve seen him defuse emotional situations with the right quip at the right time, several times. He actually knows way more than he lets on, about how everybody around him is feeling, and what the outcomes of those feelings may be, because he’s actually spent his entire life desperately trying to avoid emotional conflict.
His unwillingness to accept his own emotions, isn’t because he doesn’t understand them; he’s not incompetent, he’s avoidant. But, he knows that playing incompetent, means that you get the bulk of your peers to internalize that false incompetence, and thus it simplifies his need to avoid conversations where he’s socially expected to reciprocate the act of feeling.
So, Walky always knew that he was “keeping the peace” with Joyce, because he knew deep down that her caustic jealousy towards him vis a vis Dorothy, was not as much of a joke as Joyce was letting on; after all, he probably also knew damned well that, for his whole childhood, his sister was deeply jealous of the fact that his mother loved him, and resented her. He just never wanted to confront it, because confronting your emotions, requires feeling them, and Walky would rather avoid that stuff, entirely.
I’d also add that its a pretty classic ADHD side effect as well. Between having a delayed emotional maturity, difficulty regulating emotions, and impulsivity, you quickly learn that intense or emotional situations lead to trouble, so you find ways to cope. One of them many of us learn is that by saying the right funny/absurd/irrelevant thing in situations that make you uncomfortable you can ease the mood and not have to deal with it anymore. I’d call it less of an avoidance mechanism and more of a survival/masking technique, if everyone’s suspicions of Walky are true
I was always skeptical about them being friends, and I was surprised when Walky called her a friend to Booster a couple strips ago. They’ve both been downright vitriolic to each other on occasion, even before this lastest explosion.
Just gonna make a little jot down of “Joyce directly stating that Dorothy smells attractive” for the people who kept insisting Joyce being in love with Dorothy came out of nowhere…
It’s genuinely hilarious, I got prompted to read some books 1-4 strips by a comment a few days ago, and like…”Joyce is DEFCON 1 HORNT for Dorothy” is objectively the punchline of so many strips, like, consecutively in batches. The fact that anybody ever missed that, just makes me sad about the education system.
Granted, Joyce was in a sort of Schrodinger’s gay state for nearly 15 years: was she gay, or socially ignorant? Until observed collapsing (onto Dorothy,) the superposition stood, and similarly to in-universe, you get desensitized to “yeah, Joyce is just like that.”
Joyce being cringe has usually been the punchline ever since, though… Critique what you want, but I don’t think this is what authorial approval looks like.
Walky needs to either blow up on Joyce or freeze her out completely. Anything in between means we’ll find Walky’s self-respect buried several miles beneath the Earth’s crust.
So we’re doing an “obnoxious baby gay” Joyce story to match the “obnoxious baby atheist” story huh. That tracks since Joyce didn’t actually learn any lessons about not applying her fundie thought processes to new ways of thinking and just learned to be quiet around Becky, an outcome I’m not sure she can get away with again.
I think there is something hypocritical about how we treat Joyce’s baby atheist phase, because we don’t criticize Becky or Lucy the same amount for the exact same sort of thinking.
Yes, Joyce thought of Atheism as morally and intellectually superior… But Becky at the time, and Lucy still think of Christianity as morally superior. Not to the extreme of “all non-Christians are worthless”, but still in the patronizing “Aren’t we benevolent for accepting you despite your faults” where the “fault” is not being Christian.
To me it feels like a double standard, where we expect Atheists to respect and celebrate other people’s religions, but don’t demand that religious people respect and celebrate Atheism as something morally equivalent to their own beliefs.
Becky especially doesn’t use(or current used) her religion as a moralistic crutch. She was openly dating Dina and respected her in spite of their different views on religion. Becky’s post-fundy religion has always been deeply personal to her own life experience rather than tearing down or looking down on other people’s believes.
I think the quote Becky literally says to Joyce is “maybe your faith should have been less about who you’re better than.” Because she doesn’t expect to be celebrated for her relgion but she does ask for a baseline level of respect to not be called an idiot for believing in a god.
Because she believes in a “loving god” who won’t punish non-believers, but just won’t let them use the bouncy castle.
Her religious views are moderate, in that they can tolerate the existence of atheists, but they were still fundamentally condescending.
I’d say her respect for Dina was way less “I think your atheism is equally valid” and more “I love a lot of other things about you and it isn’t my job to try to reform you”.
Yeah, that whole arc was deeply unfair to Joyce. Athiests are constantly being told that we need to respect other people’s religious beliefs, but it’s never reciprocal.
The issue in that arc was never that Joyce was an atheist – that was never what Becky was upset about. Becky spells it out explicitly, her issue was that Joyce lied to her and made fun of her behind her back by calling anyone who believes in g-d stupid. There’s nothing wrong with being an atheist, and those beliefs should be as respected as anyone else’s, but it’s not okay to mock the faith of others who are not otherwise engaging in harmful behavior, and especially when you know that your best friend’s faith is important to her.
I suspect Becky still would have had issues if Joyce had been more open about it – and that worrying about that is a big reason Joyce wasn’t. But it wouldn’t have been as bad.
See, for me the primary problem isn’t when someone says that they think less of other people, but rather it is that they think it, even if they are smart enough to keep quiet.
Joyce was talking poorly about theists by claiming they were stupid to believe in god…
To me this doesn’t seem that much more offensive than a Theist thinking atheists are foolish/sinful/misguided for not believing in god.
And I don’t really care if they say it to my face or if they keep in their head. If someone thinks I am in any way less morally deserving for not believing in their particular mythology, I have a problem with that. That isn’t a belief system I have any respect for.
Even if Lucy’s thought process is likely patronizing, she has the self awareness to try to be polite. Lucy’s also been honest about who she is, even when it would have benefitted her to downplay her religiosity around Walky. What made Joyce an ass was pretending to still believe around Becky, making fun of those beliefs around other people, then doubling down when Becky caught the two-faced behavior. The double standard exists certainly, but doesn’t really apply to Joyce nuking her friendship.
I’d argue that no one really has a right to know someone’s internal religious beliefs. If someone has a change of faith, I think it is fundamentally their decision about who to tell and when.
Is the point of the current arc just to make Joyce the most insufferable possible character you could write? Cause i feel thats all that’s been accomplished the past 6 months
nah; we’ve had weird super sexists, the Jennifer arc, cops using violence against kids, and professors who are so up their own asses that I can’t really put Joyce on the same level as them. lol
None of those things are insufferable, because to suffer something, implies you would tolerate it; I don’t think you’d actually suffer through tolerating any of those, so they’re not insufferable, they’re just objectively noxious.
But, historically, Joyce has been insufferable to everyone around her, yet tolerated due to the context of her life; now that she’s further intensified every trait she has that could be grating to a peer, she’s running the risk of being suffered no longer.
P sure this strip was written months before the longing arc came to its peak. You can even see on the Tumblr from the date on the preview panels, this was supposed to be uploaded like three weeks ago. Ig that was posted before the buffer edits
I will never understand people who somehow do not “get” the concept of person-smell (not as in stink from not showering/heavy sweating/dirty/etc, and not as in wearing heavy perfumes, just the smell of a clean-but-otherwise-not-externally-scented person (past the smell of soap/shampoo/deodorant)). The precise nature of the smell varies from person to person, and when it is someone you care about, it is pleasant and comforting.
Look, I’m not saying go around sniffing people, but… Sniff your loved ones, with their consent.
I think it’s just one of those things where every person has a different sensory threshold for each of their senses. I know such things exist objectively, but my sense of smell has historically been blunted, so I don’t get those experiences strongly; meanwhile, some people are so sensitive in that regard, that they sometimes find just existing in public to be an ordeal, because everything smells too much.
I don’t think it’s not a thing, I just don’t think it’s a thing with a coat purchased 15 minutes ago that only Joyce has worn. I’m a super smeller, I can track people down by smell in a department store like a bloodhound, my life is olfactory hell lol. But right now all that coat should smell like is pleather and maybe sweat depending on if Joyce wore it on the return jog. Maybe cold.
Personal question for focus that’s unrelated to this except for the fact that Joyce is on the screen (which is what reminded me of this, so): for those who are autistic (or possibly otherwise neurodiverse), do you share this information with healthcare providers? Assuming it’s not already in their records.
My doctor and apothacary both know so we could work on a plan for me to make sure i’ll always have my medication stocked even if my mind is too scattered to collect my orders immediately
I’ve had too many providers try to gaslight and blame mental health for symptoms later proven to have a physical medical cause, when I’d never once spoken of any mental health concerns, ever. That shit is on a need to know basis only.
That’s sort of my concern. Yesterday, I was updating a patient history form for a doctor, I see, and autism was in the list of things they were asking about… I just skipped it, went with the approach of not answering most and just checking “yes” for a couple.
I disclose depression and anxiety because I take meds for depression and anxiety, so it’s gonna come up anyway. I received my official autism diagnosis around a year and a half ago now, which is helpful for me in part because I knew I’d be starting grad school. But most medical providers, I don’t feel inclined to tell because so many doctors already seem ready to look down on patients.
(Side note, the person I saw for university accommodations asked how long I’ve had autism. My dude. You work in disability services. Let’s think this one through.)
my ADHD and C-PTSD are both officially diagnosed and on files and such, and tend to be talked about early if not immediately with new healthcare providers.
The autism is quite specifically Not Talked About with healthcare providers (aside from my trusted counsellors), because the downsides of getting an official dx are Vast (can affect thing like ability to adopt children, immigration, and such) and the upsides (for me personally) are non-existent, esp because I can ‘sort’ any symptoms that need to come up under the ADHD or C-PTSD with them.
I’ll admit I’m not officially diagnosed, I’m in the South, I’m AFAB, and by the time I started realizing I could be neurodiverse I was mid to late 20’s so the chances of me being able to get diagnosed were like, pffft. The only healthcare provider I’ve talked to about my suspicions have been my therapist, who basically stated that she agrees with my hunches about having ADHD and CPTSD. I know it isn’t the same as being officially diagnosed but at least on the C-PTSD front, trust me. You don’t go through what I did as a 7 year old and NOT get C-PTSD from it.
Yeah, I figure I may as well. If they decide to deny me something over it later on, I’m fine to assume they were just gonna do that no matter what. The medics can’t give me that yummy guanfacine for to put in my smoothies if I don’t tell them about the ADHD.
Neither me nor my daughter are officially diagnosed because I don’t feel like that’s a safe thing to seek rn. I teach her my coping skills so she doesn’t have to figure crap out (which has led to a far more functional child than I ever was. Albeit when I’m too late it’s far harder to notice a nonverbal shutdown like she has than it was to notice me crashing tf out because I happened to wear jeans, socks, and a blanket or stood under overhead light too long.)
Like, there’s definitely something. The stimming. The literalism. The toe walking (which I also did as a child, now it’s medical). The discomfort with eye contact and sensory processing difficulties of different kinds. My husband says he’s pretty sure everyone in my family has it to some degree, idk about that, but I know my sister’s a doctor with a psych degree and she was the first to bring it up about my daughter (also begged my mom to get me evaluated as a toddler), so I’m pretty confident there’s something up.
Anyways, doctors can pry any of my mental health history out of my cold dead posts because I can’t trust them with anything. I’ve been told a 5 month period was because of marital unhappiness and stress, doctors (as individuals) are about as trustworthy to me as cops.
Diagnosed ADHD, not diagnosed for anything else, but also actively not interested in getting any kind of paperwork for anything right now. I’ve been checking “no disabilities” boxes on job applications, even when they explicitly include ADHD, because I do not trust those forms to be as anonymous as they claim.
Very fair. I see a couple health care providers, but when I have issues that come up outside of what they address, my basic move is “no, I don’t,” being alive is so fucking expensive.
I’m not diagnosed autistic and my bitch ass psychologist took my ADHD diagnosis away in highschool so I don’t even get to have that on paper. So the only doctors who know are my childhood neurologist that prescribed me concerta and my psychiatrist to whom I’ve complained about losing official ADHD status, who himself is also ADHD as fuck. And probably my gp somewhere in there idk. Either way it’s not something I disclose often if only cuz I don’t have the paper to back it up
The first things she told her were “hi”, “I’m, uh, Joyce”, and “are you making fun of me?”. And then she talked about Billie before talking Lucy asked her about Walky.
Bless her heart. She’s so excited about being sexually active. Since she was raised to believe that her grandmother is up in the sky watching/judging her and that premarital sex was to be avoided like the plague, this is a huge leap forward for Joyce.
I’m inclined to give her some slack. She’s in love.
Sal is not being a good sister to Walky. Walky has actively worked at, and succeeded in being a better brother, but Sal is not doing the same.
Dorothy cheated on Walky with Joyce. Joyce actively encouraged Dorothy to cheat on Walky. Joyce shows up and gleefully announces “I had sex” with Dorothy… and Sal’s response is to compliment Joyce on her jacket.
Joyce is an AH, and all of the friend group, except maybe Sarah, seems totally fine with that.
Walky is also not a good brother to Sal. Even though he was a child, and so we don’t really hold him accountable for his actions, he 100% benefited from hoovering up all of his family’s love and attention and good graces, while Sal took on the brunt of a staggering amount of abuse and injustice.
So, when judging Sal for not being gung-ho about jumping to Walky’s defense, it’s worth considering it in the context of their entire relationship, where Walky has only just recently even begun to consider, that maybe he should have spent some of his good will as the Golden Child, actually defending his sister from how shitty the rest of the family treated her, or even just had the willingness to show his emotional support for her directly.
There’s also the fact, that Sal specifically is loaded with trauma from all of the times she tried to support the people she cared about outside her family, only for it to blow up in her face, every time, with massive consequences for herself and everybody around her that she did care about. Trying to stand up for Marcie, ended with Marcie getting permanently maimed; trying to run with Asher, ended up with her getting stabbed and sent to juvie or boarding school or w/e. Sal’s unwillingness to stand up and fight, anymore, is just as much a shield for her, as Walky’s emotional avoidance is for him. So, it’s odd to judge Sal for her coping behavior, without equally judging Walky for his.
Walky wasn’t a great brother when he was a young child following the leadership of their parents… in the past.
Since starting University he and Sal have talked about the bad dynamic with their parents and Walky has actively worked to be better. Lately he has actually been a pretty good brother to Sal, or at least he has demonstrated that he cares about her and her wellbeing.
I think you are jumping into speculation about Sal’s coping mechanism. Sal being someone “unwilling to support people” isn’t something I think we’ve seen demonstrated in the comic. You’ve put together a rationale for why she might have such a trauma response, but not given evidence that it is something she actually has.
And regardless of why she has decided to not give a shit about Walky’s wellbeing, that still isn’t being a very good sister.
—
If we are talking about Walky’s avoidance, I’d point out that we have seen Walky multiple times confront people in defence of people he cares about. For example, standing up to his parents, confronting Asher, confronting Lucy’s brother, etc…
His coping strategy is primarily a problem for himself because he fails to recognize and care for his own feelings and mental state. But in his interpersonal relationships lately he has been a good brother and a good boyfriend.
Sal supposedly copes by not caring when people are an AH to Walky, but she does care when people are an AH to her.
Walky copes by accepting that he “deserves it” when people are an AH to him, but he still cares and confronts people when they are an AH to Sal.
I honestly don’t judge Sal that much because I’m not sure how much she even knows about what happened. She doesn’t seem the type to follow along with this shit very well, like does she even know Walky and Dorothy got back together? You gotta keep in mind, over the course of ONE WEEK, (as in, last weekend to this weekend), Sal has watched the following happen regarding her brother’s love life:
Walky started out dating Lucy.
At dinner with their parents, Walky brought along Amber, for shenanigans, and passed her off as his girlfriend.
Walky’s back together with Lucy, the Amber thing was just a misdirect for their parents.
Walky and Lucy have broken up.
Walky got back together with Dorothy and she MAY NOT know about this. The closest she wound have come to noticing it is if she saw the two of them together (keep in mind Sal arrived later at the party, so she wasn’t privy to the whole Lucy-Dorothy-Walky confrontation) and MAAAAYBE if she assumed the two walking together at for that one class means they’re back together.
Walky and Dorothy are now broken up and I think Sal would only know this IF she knew they got together by dint of ‘well obviously if Joyce is with Dorothy she’s not with Walky anymore’. I think it’s a lot to assume she doesn’t care when she might just not KNOW. Again, in just the past week and change, her brother’s love life has been such a rollercoaster that I don’t blame her for not being all that checked in on what the fuck is happening.
Also just gonna slide this in but upon being informed that Lucy and Walky broke up, she invited him out to take his mind off things so trust, I’m sure once she realizes the depths of what exactly went on here with her brother being cheated on, she’ll be there for him.
Also also Sal’s spent the weekend having helped rescue Amber and getting her help under the table with help from the mob I THINK IT’S PRETTY UNDERSTANDABLE IF SHE ISN’T 100% INFORMED ON THE WALKY-DOROTHY-JOYCE CHEATING TRIANGLE. She was kinda dealing with someone bleeding out and being on the run from the cops.
This is actually really kind of adorable. Shes so excited to have shed some of her hangups. And Lucy being somewhat amused and going yeah we all kind of saw this coming is legit funny. Poor walky he seems to be taking it hard but surviving
Hey, the hater containment thread is exactly for this: there’s loads of likeminded people above you, 100+ comments of folks happily venting together. It looks like fun up there!
No need to respond to a random person posting some polite positivity with “no actually it’s awful”.
Or heck! You could make your own top-level, there’s plenty of that, too! Like another 40+ comments at this time that are doing that, plus a backup hater containment thread.
I’m aware but its kind of jerk behavior to reply too someone harmlessly being amused by joyce and LUCY. I FIND IT FUNNY THAT LITERALLY EVERYONE PREDICTED THIS. THANKS FOR YOUR UNHRLPFUL RUDE OPINION.
Given the results of that reader demographics poll a while back, I’m surprised this shit doesn’t happen more often. I guess most of the more blatant ones are gone already.
The fun thing about autism is that you’re always the last to learn something about yourself
😛 In the same way I was the last one to know I was Neurodivergent
I was talking to my friend who works with kids and after a while, she said to me: ”You probably have ADHD” and I was like ”Pfff, nah, i’m just lazy and need to work on myself.”
You can probably guess the rest.
“…and the rest is (medical) history”
Advertising campaign:
“Spectrum stuff: It Ain’t Subtle.”
I asked a professionally-qualified friend whether she thought I might be autistic and before I even finished she question she said “Jesus [expletive] Christ, C, have you seriously never been diagnosed?”
I remember when I got super depressed during my mid 20s, and realized that I had some form of chronic depression
Worked on it, got medicated, then found out from my parents that I was diagnosed with depression back when I was 10 YEARS OLD!
The doctor told me all about my Asperger’s (the term was still in use at the time) and ADHD, but didn’t think the depression was worth mentioning
Speaking of depression, is anyone else here old enough to remember all those PSAs on TV about depression? They’d be going through a list of possible symptoms and finish by saying if you have several if those symptoms, you should talk to a mental health professional to find out if it’s depression. And I’d be going through most of them, saying, “But EVERYBODY goes through that, sometimes.” Or “Everybody feels like that!”
Then, in the early 00s, I was talking to a psychiatrist for something unrelated, and I mentioned how, on this one medication I’d been taking, I realized that, most of my life, it was like I’d been under overcast skies, and I never realized it until I saw the sun shining through the clouds.
The doctor said “Yeah, that’s depression.”
As somebody who was diagnosed with autism literally last week, I resemble that statement!
Ayup. Mood.
Congrats on getting your diagnosis. I hope it is helpful going forward.
Congratulations on getting a more formalized bunch of information about yourself. Hopefully not too many surprises, and some help for you from now on!
oh wow so glad for ya! :)
HAVA NAGILA!
I like how the neurodivergent person says something and the neurotypicals all inject some erroneous motivation into it. Joyce just wants to express a thing and everyone jumps to “that’s not as shocking as you think it is”. Ok, I don’t recall saying it was shocking. I’m just excited. Your shocked reaction or lack thereof was not included in my mental calculus to tell you a thing.
Right but on the other side, as a neurodivergent person… it’s pretty rude to just go around telling people who you’ve had sex with. If they wanted to know, they’d ask
Iiiiis it?
My friends tell each other when and who we’re banging all the time. I think I’d be so bored and lonely if I had to worry about rules of propriety with my friend group, it’s so stressful!
Honestly, I think the “if they wanted to know, they’d ask” mindset can, itself, be a nuerodivergent take. It’s one I struggle with when it comes to friends, opening up and knowing that’s okay without direct prompting. (And if they don’t know there’s something in that area– whatever it may be– they probably won’t ask about it.)
For how it is here, I don’t know that Joyce is close enough with these people/not meshing with the context for it to be an appropriate vibe, but I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as “rude.”
Also: in my experience, at least, many neurotypicals seem to have ways of nonverbally “asking” (and, likewise, nonverbally emphasising that they’re not asking) that other neurotypicals seem to instinctively recognise but I completely miss . If I waited to be asked about stuff, I wouldn’t talk much.
(Actually, I often do, and so I don’t. Thankfully, most people seem to have less expectation of mind reading in text communication like this.)
Theres also just, like, individual factors. Like, I’m sex-repulsed. I don’t care if my friends fuck nasty-style (good for them!) But I don’t wanna hear it uninvited, y’dig?
I guess! Not my particular flavor of neurodivergence so it felt very oddly restrictive.
But why would I tell anybody? Who cares?
/introvert
Oh I always care, I’m a nosy bug!!
It seems pretty common for this friend group, at least. Becky & Dina did basically the same thing as Joyce here. Lucy told everyone she knew about needing three dates so she could have sex with Walky. Sal told several people about needing to have sex with Danny before Joyce & Joe could beat her.
Yes, I know you didn’t mean that Sal was worried about Joyce and Joe having sex with Danny before she did, but I chose to interpret that way anyway.
neurodivergence at least always gives us something to be surprised about.
I won’t ever say how old I was when I found out.
“When do I know about me before others know about me?”
“That’s the neat part! You don’t!”
LOL. You should try combining that with having another brain issue and finally getting on the right medication.
HOLY SHIT!? I’ve been here the whole time?????
No one was surprised I had scoliosis after I found out lmfao
Little weirdo
god forbid a woman get a little silly with it
Willis seems fine with it.
I sincerely doubt Taffy has problems with a woman being silly. That being said Joyce is a little weirdo, and I feel like almost everyone around her could agree.
She’s not that little, looks around average height
It’s relative; I’m tall, so she’s little to me.
And you’re likely pretty tiny compared to, for example, Rigil Kentaurus, which is one of the smaller stars. Like you said, it’s all relative.
Not compared to Joe and Jacob.
Some people feel little no matter their actual height. It is odd. Like, not dismissively either.
i’m just a lil guy, and i do not acknowledge my lumbering mass as a meaningful detail in this equation
About 5.5 heads high? Average is 7.25? Though she’s a cartoon so she might be taller in the live action telenovela.
oh i’m not accusing taffy of anything, i’m just broadly lamenting
because i’m a broad and i feel the need to lament
Every now and then I make a broad joke or ask a broad question about women and people jump all over my shit saying its not used that way any more. I shall now use your comment to disprove that statement.
And the random avatar kills it.
Women can and should get a little silly with it. My girlfriend is extremely silly with it, and she’s a woman.
She’s perfectly valid in getting silly with it. What is not valid is the utter lack of self-awareness in saying this in front of the friend who is the ex of the gf you cheated with.
Oh my god it’s not a feminist issue. You can criticize a woman without it being sexist. Joyce is literally here flaunting that she just had sex with Dorothy in front of the guy Dorothy cheated on and his sister.
“god forbid a woman do anything” is a common joke in reply to things like this. My favorite usage is “god forbid a woman have hobbies” when talking about like, a female character that kills people or something. No one’s making it a feminist issue, it’s a silly tee hee haha joke
Oh okay I missed that, apologies
He just lost his girlfriend. Have some pity on Walky /s
Huh, this is not going how I expected.
It’s going exactly how I expected. My desire for friction was almost entirely dependent on Lucy or Jacob and Lucy never fails to disappoint me lol. It’s up to Jacob to hop on that high horse now, he’s the “honestly-kinda-too-judgmental” friend. If he’s also 100% cool with it, I call BS. Bro was upset with Joyce over the cheating he himself committed (which she started with the romcom shenanigans but like… it was his choice to follow through) lol.
I honestly think Jacob might be more upset by his own cheating than other people cheating. I mean, personally, I hold myself to a different standard than other people. Like, when other people cheat or do wrong, I give them the benefit of the doubt. No such benefit can really be given to myself.
I think there could still be hope for Lucy to keep going. Joyce got the punchline but Lucy might have more to say!
I genuinely hope Joyce realizes what a butt she’s been to Walky and might come back down to Earth a bit… or maybe even remember Joe.
Joyce really was the last to know, huh.
Galasso probably had it figured out before her, and when he was asked what his sexuality was, he responded “Fool, we don’t serve TEA at Galasso’s Pizza (and subs), sexual or otherwise!”
Wait, this DoA universe Galasso knows what sex is??
We know he figured it out at least once.
We know his wife figured it out at least once.
She’s always been the brains of the operation.
I love how proud Joyce is of her girlfriend. She also got a rare Sal compliment.
Poor timing by Walky. He’s probably wishing he stayed in bed right now.
Walky will survive this, and I suspect if he gets back with Amber then any animosity between him and Joyce will be minimal.
Hm… Walky/Amber and Joyce/Dorothy double dates?
I’m all for Walky/Amber, but I think that double date would be extremely uncomfortable for everyone involved.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
I just don’t see the appeal of the Walky-Amber ship anymore. They were great together for the first time but they broke up off-panel over the pettiest bullshit imaginable so that Willis could reset the drama clock and in the process Amber was gutted as a serious romantic pairing. Which Willis seems to be writing her as self-aware of, which makes it even stupider. It’s like “rule of drama” instead of “rule of funny” and at this point it’s spread to so many characters I can’t take any of their emotions seriously anymore because they feel like a pack of sockpuppets who may at any time perform a swerve to derail a story for drama, so I can’t get invested anymore. This is basically the same reason I had to stop reading Girl Genius, because so many successive asspulls page after page during a story climax meant there was no reason to care about anything that happened because it could just be undone on the next page and then redone again and then undone again until it felt like no development was ever really “real”. In the same way, it’s getting to the point that a minority of the Dumbing of Age characters feel “real” to me in any of their actions. Amber isn’t a person, she’s a plot device.
I’m hovering near that point myself. It’s very sad.
That’s kinda where I am with Ruth and Billie right now.
I don’t have an issue with Amber’s characterization, I just have an issue with the fact that Amber still has to come to terms with her anger. Shoving Walky hard enough to knock over the table and send him sprawling was a big deal, even if he didn’t get injured by it.
Amber being a ‘garbage person’ was one thing. Amber being a potential domestic abuser is another, and she needs help–help that she can accept–if she doesn’t want to walk that road.
The fact that no one present at the Halloween party has commented on that incident is probably the biggest disappointment I have with the group as a whole.
Everyone inflicts violence upon Walky so it’s fiiiiiiine /s
I know it’s mean; but the last panel with Walky deadpan just slayed me. Like schadenfreude os too strong for me.
If Walky must walk through the fire, he might as well do it all at once.
Gremlin Joyce gotta be one of my favorite Joyces
Verily, the anti-Joyce walks among us.
Don’t trust smells.
… “But the legend of the smell lives on.”
— Abridged Kirito, probably
Joyce actually showing restraint.
She could have easily shoved her fingers in Walky’s face and said, “guess where *these* have been!”
Give her time.
She should’ve said that. Make.? Everyone.? Worse.?
Yes!???
At the rate she’s going it’s surprising she didn’t knee him in the crotch as she said it.
At this point, I can only hope karma will correct some of her transgressions… and what of poor, forgotten Joe? Walky’s hurting, but Joe has yet to have ANY resolution, ffs! When’s gonna be my time, Lord?
Wait for it.
that means Lucy’s gonna steal your woman, Joyce
?
⬇️ kvetch below, yall know the drill by now
Really hope Walky just tells her directly to her face to fuck off, I genuinely cannot stand her like this
She’s being very…wearing, yes.
I share the feel
Why would he do that? Joyce did it for true love that means everything is justified and he should be congratulating her! Haven’t you seen how sweet she is /s
But for real someone has got to say something to her right? Surely tomorrow’s strip isnt just more “well we all knew it would happen so your behavior is fine”
He’d be the most justified ngl. Joyce has either no empathy about who she hurts in pursuit of her happiness with Dorothy, or a shocking lack of regard for someone who is supposed to be her friend, or absolutely no self-awareness of why continuing to gloat after seeing Walky might be what we like to call a dick move.
I appreciate Lucy’s polite “get over yourself, this surprises no one” and Sal just not touching the subject, though. Voices of reason here.
Interesting as well that there’s been zero comment from Jacob here, given he also has a pretty good reason to go “well, I thought you were a sweet girl but you led me to emotionally cheat on Raidah and broke us up, and then it seems you cheated on Joe and are now being an ass to Walky”.
Speaking of Joe, hope he’s doing alright. See also Dina and Becky…
I’m not sure why Walky being there would stop the gloating, considering the last thing she said to him was “She’s mine now! I win, you lose.”
Well, last thing other than coming back in to laugh at him more.
I do atleat hope theres some acknowledgemeet that Joyce was an ass about breaking the news to Walky, even if he and Dorothy were not too serious he did deserve a respectful breakup from Dorothy who just completely forgot dropped the ball and let Joyce be mean to avoid confrontation.
She doesn’t have empathy for Walky specifically I think. She starts crying when she actually stops to think about hurting Joe, and she’s not happy with hurting Becky although that one is more just, unintended collateral, since neither of them were dating Becky. Anyway she just actively chooses not to think about any of that to not harsh the vibe. Walky can get fucked as far as she’s concerned tho
“but you led me to emotionally cheat on Raidah and broke us up”
I literally cannot tell you how nasty the bile that hit my throat upon reading that misogynistic crap. Jacob was a willing participant in that whole mess, and arguably had MORE reason to be blamed, since at the time, he was the one with commitments. What Joyce did wasn’t nice, and his decision to cut her off was a reasonable one, but he has no ground whatsoever to critique her at this point. I’m hoping his current silence is him recognizing that.
I want him to say something *because* it would be him being a hypocrite lol
Fair enough! Jacob tends to get hit with the ‘can do no wrong’ brush by a large portion of the commentariat, so I wasn’t seeing that aspect of your suggestion. I kind of like the idea of him being openly hypocritical, so long as it gets addressed in the story, as well. I’d giggle like a schoolgirl if Joyce came back at him with, “Remind me again, which one of us was in a relationship when we kissed?”
I don’t think it’s hypocritical for one reason.
Because Jacob acknowledged it was wrong, Joyce never did.
Also because Joyce was the active party there. She was the one who deliberately set out to break them up. Yeah, Jacob screwed up by kissing her and arguably by playing along at lunch with his brother, but Joyce had been working towards that for weeks.
? – Thank you for saying so.
Telling her to fuck right off would be a good start.
She said that?!
Oh man, is there some science on how emotions affect your memories? I’m really sure now that I let most of the cringe slide because I used to like her…
It was something along the lines of:
Lucy: I think I’m interested in Walky.
Joyce: hmm must be the residual Dorothy smell, because it can’t be the McNuggets.
Technically not the FIRST thing out of Joyce’s mouth when they met, but: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/02-but-the-sun-still-shines/offbase/
The signs were pretty clear; they just took a while to pay off lol
Thanks for the link! Very much appreciated. Just shows that the Willis has a plan and you better watch the signs carefully.
In terms of “this was always foreshadowed”, the strip I like to point to is the one from 2010 in which Leslie directly informed Joe and Walky that Dorothy and Joyce were in lesbians* with one another: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/02-uphill-from-here/why/
*note: they are both bi
I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up but somehow I’m still dissapointed jesus christ.
We stand together, brother.
I have a bad feeling that the result of all the “lol, everybody saw this coming” jokes will be that Joyce concludes she actually did nothing wrong. This will carry through to biology in which she will find a way to make Joe, Becky, and Dina feel even worse about the situation.
I still predict she will try to fuck Joe at least one time before breaking it off.
At this pint I think “Joyce did nothing wrong” is the takeaway we’re meant to have and this is the narrative working as intended.
Right now the main takeaway I’m getting is “Walky, Joe and maybe Sarah need better friends.”
Same.
I actually disagree. I think Willis is setting both Joyce and Dorothy up for a nasty fall. Dorothy’s already starting to crack from the dual pressures of reckoning with her political illiteracy and failing to justify her actions as an exception to the rule. Joyce is on track to alienate her entire friend group either by hurting them directly or being even more cringe than usual. Sooner or later she’s going to get hit with an extreme negative reaction she can’t paper over with her and Dorothy’s “true love.”
I also kinda think that a little bit of comeupance might be coming *eventually*, but I still am frustrated with the pacing. I realize the overall pace of the comic makes this tricky. But still, I wish we’d get to it faster somehow instead of seeing so many saccharine Joyce/Dorothy moments that I really would’ve enjoyed much more if they’d been held until the dust had settled. There could’ve easily been more Becky screentime the last few weeks instead.
I think some of that might be deliberate on the grounds that 1) I’ve been reading Willis for a decade and am well acquainted with their brand of sadism and 2) Willis wants us to feel how obnoxious their relationship is to everyone else in Joyce and Dorothy’s orbit. Notice how nobody’s said anything positive about this development.
Yeah, it really comes down to this. When a comic has moved like 4 months in real time over, what, 15 years? we just should expect every single story beat to take an agonizingly long time. Because it literally always has. Nearly everybody down here is so impatient for the story to get to the part that they think is the Good Part, that it’s starting to feel like I’m reading Pro Wrestling Reddit. Meanwhile, I’m just here, accepting that this is Joyce’s heel turn, and that she will turn babyface again later, because she’s the central character the narrative is built around, and so she won’t stay a heel forever.
I agree with your theory, but that doesn’t quite redeem it for me. Even if a plot line is obnoxious on purpose, it’s still obnoxious.
Yeah, it definitely strikes me that this is something Willis should have considered as a possible outcome.
And it’s not like he’s allergic to time-skips. A “Three Weeks Later” bit that shows where the fallout happened–maybe with a few flashbacks to different people telling Joyce to just go away–would’ve been a lot less agonizing for the folks who hate this whole thing, and likely would still satisfy Doyce shippers, assuming the two of them are still together at that point.
Instead, the pace of the comic plus the pace of the plot within the arc have combined to turn this whole bit into a bit of a slog, one that may read better during an archive trawl, since it’ll still go pretty quick.
I think it’s important here to note the anger at Joyce specifically for slighting Walky may be misplaced. Dorothy is the one we should be pissed at for this. She’s currently experiencing a different kind of hell. I would actually love to see Joe here witnessing how his ex is behaving after cheating on him. This needs to be a full wild fire.
Regarding Dorothy, yes, she’s the one we should be angry with, but unlike Joyce, she still feels guilty, and it’s incredibly sad that she’s deceiving herself and believing her actions are some kind of “exception.”
Before that treacherous kiss, Dorothy was already carrying a heavy burden of hatred. Yes, she messed up, but that hatred had reached unjust levels.
And seeing that level of hatred continue to grow with all of this has only made me remain neutral with the character. I don’t hate her, but what she did makes me sad and angry.
She rubbed it in Walkys face and thats when I straight up started disliking Joyce isntead of just rolling my eyes. That was just being mean to be mean. Anger is not misplaced and they are both in the wrong for different reasons when it comes to Walky.
I’ve said it many times before that it feels like there is a double standard here where Joyce is horrible for mocking Walky in the very same spirit he would mock her emotions for Dorothy when he was dating her. I don’t understand why.
I can only speak for myself here. And I think both have taken it too far at times.
The difference (at least, to me) is that Walky mostly mocked Joyce for her relationships. With Dorothy, with her religion. Yes, he also made some backhanded remarks about her upbringing, and he called her ‘brainwashed’ once, which was definitely not great. But many of his remarks, while mean, mostly were attacks on her beliefs and upbringing.
Joyce’s attacks were typically on Walky’s character. She would call him a troll, jerk, disgusting, etc. They felt generally more personal. There’s also the part where she shows a blatant lack of compassion or empathy for Walky. When Walky made a mean remark, he later apologised (even if it was at the behest of Dorothy). This is Joyce’s first interaction after she laughed at Walky while yanking Dorothy away, and she’s just rubbing it in his face.
So yeah, that’s part of why I feel Joyce has been meaner to Walky than the other way round.
You put it pretty well.
Joyce and Walky always rib each other but often times the source and nature of what Joyce is mocking and how Joyce mocks him rubs me the wrong way. I can’t express it in any other way than saying that not all teasing is equivalent teasing.
In the same way Becky’s “bit” about hating Dorothy also often rubbed me the wrong way because at a certain point it was almost indistinguishable from Bullying.
I don’t know what to believe anymore or where the line is on the Joyce v Walky rivalry. I used to think they crossed the line of simple sibling rivalry long ago and they were both just being jerks. I don’t know how this is worse than Walky calling Joyce a lesbian multiple times and bragging about getting to make out with Dorothy in front of her. I agree that at some point this behavior just becomes bullying but it only seems to be bullying when Joyce does it to Walky. It all feels bad to me. To me Joyce and Walky has been nothing but two romantic rivals competing over a girl in the most toxic way possible while being told “Hey they’re still friends. This is all cute and fun sibling bickering.” But like no it’s not. Walky has siblings and even his relationship with Jennifer who shoved him in lockers mind you, was never this level of petty and antagonistic.
I also despised the Becky performative rivalry stuff too. I can accept Becky as a fictional character doing stuff I disagree with for gags or whatever but don’t piss on me and tell me it’s rain. Especially now that she’s having a full crisis of faith thanks to her it’s totally performative rival stealing her not girl.
I remember the second season of Star Trek: the Next Generation, when Dr. Pulaski replaced Dr. Crusher. They tried to reprise the dynamic from the Original Series in which McCoy and Spock were constantly giving each other **** (in a friendly way), but because Data never responded to Pulaski’s barbs with anything but innocent earnestness and puzzlement, it just came across as kicking a puppy.
See for me I don’t necessarily see “haha wow you’re so gay for my girlfriend” to even be that…insulting? Joyce is a bit obsessed with Dorothy. In a very noticeable way. “wow you’re so into this person, do you have a crush on her or something” just doesn’t feel that scathing? I had friends tease me about a platonic friend too sometimes and I never felt insulted by it. I find it weird to compare that to “hey I stole your girlfriend. The woman you love is leaving you for me and I am rubbing it in your face hahaha”. Like just not even in the same ball park to me.
Add to that that Walky was right about Joyce being into Dorothy, even though she wasn’t up to accepting it at the time and it looks more like a way of dealing with someone inappropriately crushing on your partner when you can’t actually call them out directly, because they don’t even know that’s what they’re doing.
But mostly, for me, this particular bit from Joyce was bad because of the context. It was crushing Walky by getting Dorothy to cheat on and then dump him and then mocking him for it. A huge emotional blow and then kicking him while he was down. Walky’s said some shit he shouldn’t have said, but he never did anything that hurt her as directly as a breakup does and I don’t think he was ever that mean about any of the painful stuff that he didn’t cause.
@thejeff I don’t agree with that first part. Walky’s main character flaw is an inability to confront people or problems. Even if his teasing was a way of addressing Joyce and Dorothy’s very obvious attraction which he was aware of he could and should have talked with either of them about it. The truth is closer to the conversation he had with Alice and Billifer. He never actually took it seriously until he lost. Like even Joe was capable of talking to Dorothy about her crush on Joyce. (Although I guess that didn’t workout for him either).
As far as the context of the cheating I get that and I do think it adds an extra bitterness to what is normally their toxic back and forth and it is making Joyce extra obnoxious. That’s why I do think Walky should flip out and finally confront Joyce or Dorothy, preferably both about it. My problem is really just the framing of Joyce as the villain when their exchanges have always been at least this level of teasing antagonism or whatever this “friendship” has been since they met.
@Sirksome, it’s fair to say he should have confronted it more directly, but at the same time any attempt to do so would have crashed hard against Joyce’s walls of denial up until maybe the last couple of days before the Kiss. Most of the teasing about it was back in the first semester, when it was just Joyce being weirdly romantic/possessive of his girlfriend.
And I really disagree that Joyce’s gloating over it was the same level as their previous antagonism, mostly because as I said, it was coming right with the emotional blow of getting dumped.
@Sirksome
Ill just say again “haha you seem like you have a crush on this person” is pretty bog standard teasing compared to “haha your girlfriend just dumped you.”
Not even that, it’s “haha I stole your girlfriend.” Like that’s fucked! That’s a fucking horrible, cruel thing to say to someone, and it’s so much worse than anything Walky has ever said to her, and yes I’m counting the brainwashed thing because Joyce also believes that about her past self now!
I just wanna chime in to say the reason Walky’s “lmao you’re a lesbian” jokes kinda hit wrong for me are because the joke is literally “lmao you are gay”. The punchline is her being gay. Him being correct doesn’t make the fact that it is a bit homophobic to make a joke about someone where the punchline is “wouldn’t it be hilarious if you were gay”. Much like how Joe saying Dorothy is a lesbian for rejecting his advances doesn’t get undone just because Dorothy turned out to be bi. It’s still shitty to assume a woman only isn’t into you because she’s exclusively a lesbian (because the assumption is that guy must be so amazing that all individuals attracted to men are into him on sight), and it’s still shitty to consistently make jokes about Joyce lezzing out and munching on his girlfriend when she hasn’t made that realization herself. I don’t look fondly on men who’ve made jokes about me being a lesbian or treating my rejection of them as “oh you’re a lesbian”.
I can see it from that standpoint. Ironically I think of Joe and Walky’s teasing being different in that regard. Whole heartedly agree the “you dont like me so you must be gay” thing is just full on being a dick.
The walky one has a bit more of a nebulous feel depending on how charitable you’re being to Walky’s intent. Its not uncommon to tease someone about having a crush on a friend they seem really close to. Especially if they insist theyre not into that person romantically. The humor coming from the dichotomy between their affection for the person and their claims its not romantic. Joyce once told walky and Billie she shipped them for example and if she were to tease walky about it regularly it would be annoying but not…cruel. I feel like if Joyce told Walky she did have a crush on Dorothy he’d stop teasing her about it because its no longer humorous.
It kinda gets complicated when you add sexual orientation to the mix. I dont get the vibe that walky is saying “you like dorothy and thats gay and being gay is bad.” Moreso that Joyce’s apparently lack of attraction to women is also sorta the reason why she would consider dorothy a romantic option. You could also argue that while walky sees no issue with gay people that he’s mocking Joyce’s repressed fundie outlook and that the “joke” is that she’d be offended by the insinuation she likes a girl. Which honestly doesn’t make it much better. In the same way people have pointed out that people mocking the idea that Trump may have sacked a dick to “own him” is still in itself reinforcing regressive stereotypes. So I can see that seeming a lot shittier from that reading.
Which kinda explains why people are so torn on whether or not Joyce’s treatment is equivalent behavior. It’s all sorta based on how youre viewing the intent of Walky’s teasing.
I definitely think Walky’s teasing came from the angle like you mentioned, where since Joyce is a religious fundie that the idea she’d be into a girl is something she’d be upset/offended by and thus why he teased her with that. He’s definitely teased her about her religious beliefs before, I actually think his LOOK IT’S THE RAPTURE joke is HILARIOUS, but repeatedly suggesting she’s a lesbian when she’s not comfortable with it and is clearly upset by it (their little tussle here for example https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/godpertunity/ ) is where it tips from lighthearted humor to being a bit of a jerk. It’s also a very Joyce specific tease because I definitely don’t think Walky finds the idea of being gay to be bad, and I agree that if Joyce owned her attraction to Dorothy then Walky would have stopped with those jokes because then it wouldn’t be funny.
Gentle counterpoint to the idea that Walky was making those jokes because he could tell she was into his girlfriend and didn’t know how else to handle it:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/qualities/
He didn’t just make fun of Joyce for being attracted to Dorothy, he also made fun of her for being attracted to Jacob.
I think the punchline in both cases is honestly the same. “Haha, you’re a repressed Christian fundamentalist, your own sexuality makes you uncomfortable and the way you react when it’s pointed out is funny.”
Not intentionally homophobic, but. Not as sympathetic as “poor guy just didn’t know how to confront the issue of Joyce’s interest in Dorothy” either, imho.
(Disclaimer: I do think Joyce saying what she said was a big dick move, I just happen to think it’s about on par with this sequence where Walky keeps making fun of Joyce for being a sexual being until his sister reminds him that she was sexually assaulted so he should stop when she says “stop”, rather than a huge escalation.
This sequence was out of line and Walky eventually got called on it; I hope Joyce eventually gets called out in turn.)
(Clarification: I misspoke there, and there’s no edit button. Joyce wasn’t sexually assaulted, she was roofied. But that’s still what Sal was talking about when she took Walky to task for not stopping.
Also I don’t really think the two incidents are equivalent, just that they’re both cases where the belligerent friendship dynamic went over a line.) (I don’t wanna argue about which was worse, I think they’re extremely hard to compare. I only keep bringing this up because folks keep saying Walky has never deliberately hurt Joyce, and that sequence reads as very deliberately hurtful to me? He forgot Ryan and didn’t mean to step in that specific thing, but he was definitely being mean on purpose, hence his retort to Dorothy when she asked him to stop.)
@StClair I agree with you about Data. If they’d wanted to recreate the original series dynamic, l always felt that Worf would have been a better target for Pulaski’s ribbing, because I’m certain that he could have delivered some withering deadpan put-downs of his own right back to her.
The difference is that I dislike Dorothy for intruding on a conversation she had no place in to dunk on Walky and not let that conversation take place. And however urgent the emergency that demanded the interruption, it wasn’t so urgent that she couldn’t double back and take another shot. I don’t think Walky ever doubled down on an insult that landed harder than he expected except to remind Dorothy that she thinks basically the same thing about Joyce’s religion or wasn’t actually saying it to her face.
Joyce already thinks she did nothing wrong. I’m still….trusting the process. I’m confident she’ll at least get a wakeup call about the whole centering her white self thing but, not so much about the interpersonal stuff
The issue I have with this take is that she did not, in fact, “center her white self”. WILLIS centered her in a story arc in a way that left a bad taste in a lot of folks’ mouths, but her actions within the story were not about anything akin to “main character syndrome” or whatever. She wasn’t posing for the photo, and she’s even agreed that them being centered by other parties was probably not great.
Blame Daisy for making that photo the front page. Blame the anonymous photographer. Blame the administration for calling in the cops and creating a post-facto reason for breaking up the protest. Blame the cops for being Bastards, as they all are. Maybe even blame Amber for escalating the situation so that the cops had that much more cover, PR-wise, for using excessive force.
One could, I suppose, condemn her for not really knowing about the Bulmerian situation in the first place, and I’ll accept that reasoning from the first person who can point to their critiques of the other 99% of the cast who apparently had no idea where Bulmeria is, let alone who was killing whom.
If Dina shows a violent impulse toward Joyce, it would be glorious.
Although, to be honest, she and Becky will just distance themselves from her.
The real problem here is Joe; I mean, he won’t hesitate to talk to her.
If shit gets dire enough with Becky, Dina might be tempted to take out her frustration on Joyce. They’ve had problems before and she could justify it to herself as payback for Joyce blowing up her spot.
Several months ago I recall a preview panel (which I didn’t actually see, only saw the discussion thereof) of Dina absolutely flipping fucking shit on Joyce, and that strip was supposed to be a year out from when it was previewed; therefore, we can presume this is coming in due time.
Huh.
Dina would be the person to check Joyce, especially because of past issues between each other. Dina’s disdain for Joyce originally was neurodivergent support, a support system in general came easy for Joyce. Dina as a POC and neurodivergent didn’t have it easy. Joyce gets support from the friend group she’s currently trying to blow up.
Come finding her orientation, and Joyce gets a support system from her father and sister that a lot of LGBTQ kids could only dream of. Becky included. Hell, Joe, originally considered scumbag numero uno on campus changing enough to support Joyce having “what she deserves” is like drawing a royal flush.
Would that Dina is within earshot of any of those brags plus being the residual damage (I don’t think that would annoy Dina or she would fault Joyce so much as the nonchalance of it all), the hammer probably falls.
Oh good gravy I plum forgot she had to have class with that combination. I’m already bracing for impact…
She should. Otherwise she’ll spend the rest of her life wondering what it would have been like. What is Uni for, if not experimenting.
This is all so god damn tedious.
Remember when people had conversations? Remember when people reacted to things that happened?
Now it’s just Joyce and / or Dorothy saying the same thing over and over and over again while everyone else goes yeah okay and the cycle repeats. Nobody else seems to care about it, but Doyce is the only thing the comic cares about now so it’s just the story equivalent of styrofoam.
The last however many months could be cut down by a quarter and nothing of any consequence would be lost.
Everyone keeps saying it’s building to something but all I can think of is the potential man meme. Putting up with months of the plot spinning its wheels because something *might* happen is not at all compelling.
It’s bad writing, bad pacing, and extremely disappointing because prior to this things actually happened and even if I didn’t like them I could see why others did but this is just baffling why people are enjoying this.
Yeah the Doyce world tour really should have been a Doyce walk around the neighbourhood.
Every time Doyce appears, I prefer not to say anything; in fact, I’ve been almost completely silent. But with this thread, at least we can vent better, and yes, I want to believe that Dorothy becomes interesting again when she’s not with Joyce, and the latest strips seem to show that.
Remember when DOA had a plot
I think this is again a symptom of possibly DoA’s biggest flaw and most legitimate criticism which is pacing. This is a flaw a lot if not possibly all strip a day format comics and webcomics in general have. Imagine reading a typical 18 page manga chapter at one page a day or even just 4 or 5 panels a day. It would take weeks to finish a chapter. It takes forever for anything to happen when reading in real time but I think the Doyce era will ultimately be a small blip when reading in book form. I’m not even sure we’re building to something as much as we’re just cleaning up fallout and establishing a new working equilibrium in character relationships from Doyce happening.
I do get that, but so much in this arc has been utterly pointless (as an aside I meant to say cut down to a quarter, not by a quarter). Like two or three strips on Joyce’s birth control with Hank which went nowhere. But we don’t see the convo over lunch.
Strips of them walking around hallways for what felt like weeks that could just be totally excised from the plot with no difference.
And with regards to the book vs reading here, daily is the primary medium so any plotting should, imo, be focused on making that flow well. That we got a double strip recently shows it can be done. Like mangas don’t publish a page a day because that is a terrible format for telling any sort of long form story unless you keep things really tight.
Even so, DOA is bad at pacing on aggregate, and this current arc is an absolutely bloated mess. If it reads better in book form it’ll be because you can skip past all the nothing that happens quickly.
Something something kill your darlings, you know?
In fairness to Willis, I think part of the issue is that up until now, the pacing has largely worked in his favor. Sure, it’s been the subject of good-natured joking up until now, but that’s all I’ve really seen in the comments here prior to this arc.
That’s because the plots themselves were fairly high-energy. Whether rapidly building humor (Mary v. Carla), high-action (Toedad’s rampage) or even romantic hijinks (Joyce and Jacob), the slow pace of the comic contrasted with the nature of the arcs, letting us see small details that might’ve been overlooked with a more frantic pacing structure.
Here, alas, we’ve got an arc that would benefit from some skipped intervals, or even just a time-skip with flashbacks, like the Ruth/Billie breakup.
Is it bad pacing, if time in the comic is still moving at the exact same speed it always has? We’ve gone through, IIRC, 4 months of comic time in 15 years of real time. And a huge chunk of that, is timeskip. The reality is, one day in DoA time actually takes the better part of a year, and so it’s only a problem now, because we happen to be stuck on the particular set of days where every human teenager is at their most annoying – right after they’ve finally had sex.
It’s a case of a plotline being a bad fit for the comic’s established pacing. I think Willis would’ve been wise (and the story itself better served) by changing up the format to work the story better. Hell, imagine if we went from The Kiss to a month later, and Doyce were still together and being infatuated with one anotoher–but a significant portion of the cast had pretty much cut them off as being too toxic. Toss in a flashback panel/strip here and there where someone tells one of them off.
i’ve been reading DOA for a while and I don’t usually comment, and maybe I haven’t been reading long enough to really “know” Joe, but currently I am am 100% caught up on “what about Joe???” when it comes to Dorothy/Joyce situation
Clearly Joyce is more “at home” and happy now, but (and this feels terrible to say this as a gay) she was adorable with Joe, and she’s insufferable now lol
I’ve actually spoken with quite a few of my lesbian friends who’ve stated that the preferred Jojo to Doyce and how they’re conflicted cuz thy’re usually all in on lesbian ships and some even usually hate straight ships.
Kinda crazy the dichotomy between the two couples.
Ok I’m glad it’s not just me haha
I’m gay and was rooting for Joe to get with a man, and despite my disliking of Joyce in general, was still at peace with JoJo because it was genuinely cute.
Well that’s down the river, can Joe go get a threesome with Ethan and Asher?
You would reward Asher with a threesome with not one but two tall built fuck machines!? Can we get Joe to STEAL Ethan from Asher?….After the threesome of course.
Joe + Ethan would make Danny so frustrated.
I would honestly. He’s been super chill post-timeskip.
And while recovering from a smoking addiction, which tends to make most people cranky.
I mean, Ethan in his current form, might be the social equivalent to a human cigarette XD
Asher should be rewarded. He killed a man, which is funnier than anything else any of these schmucks have done.
And considering the man, it’s also a bigger contribution to the world than anything these people have done and, honestly, are liable to do.
Honestly, Joyce was already somewhat hateful when she became an atheist, but I recognize that her relationship with Joe was acceptable.
This does remind me that it’s something of a pattern with Joyce.
She really was truly hateful at the start of the comic as a unreconstructed fundy, but we all knew the whole point of the comic was her changing that, so it was tolerable.
She reverted to similar behavior when she came out as atheist, in the sense of being sure she was right about everything and very obnoxious about it, not in terms of the bigotry. She toned that down fairly quickly though.
Now again, she’s come out as gay and as having had sex and is doubling down and being really obnoxious about that. Hopefully the pattern will hold and she’ll tone it down soon enough.
“That’s not soon enough!” – Fry
Yeah I’ve commented more since this arc began than in many many years of reading.
Joyce really rubbing it in with Walky RIGHT there. Does she have any concept of tact at all?
I think she was already talking as he walked outside and just caught the tail end of it.
In college before I transitioned I was in my apartment living room and someone said, “Well who hasn’t slept with your Roommate?”
I looked at all of us in the room and went, “Well, none of us, much to Roommate’s disappointment!”
We were all laughing as Roommate walked in and we all clammed up guiltily. Roommate got upset and went, “Aw c’mon!” and stormed into their room. It was all funny, just the obvious laughing cut short as they walked in. We called them back and they laughed and were ok. Roommate was very much early Joe coded at the time.
No. No she does not.
And this is far less rubbing it in than the last time she talked to Walky.
Dumb college relationships are dumb and messy. Heck people cheating in college is not even that uncommon.
But people cheating in college and behaving like Joyce has and then the whole friend group just shrugging and going “eh guess it was always going to happen” is just weird.
Especially when one of them is related to Walky and another is friends with Joe.
Yes, this exactly!!
I get so bored of the “it ain’t Smarting of Age” argument being used to wave off stuff like this. Yes, they’re stupid college kids and they won’t act rationally always, or even often.
But the general mean-ness and over the top behavior from Joyce especially, and the lack of meaningful reactions from the rest of the cast, can’t really be explained away by that same argument.
I think in isolation, it couldn’t; but, I think in the context of the totality of everybody’s relationship with Joyce, it’s less unreasonable. Everyone’s established relationship with Joyce is, “well, she’s annoying, and she’s ultimately well-meaning, but she’s also a weird home-schooled cult kid, and that’s not really her fault.”
There really is an established pattern, of Joyce being allowed to get away with murder, in a social sense. She’s always been held to a different standard. So, what we’re experiencing in real time, right now, is the process of Joyce wearing out everybody’s good will, as they gradually recognize that she’s actually being more insufferable than ever, but also, no longer actually seems well-meaning or innocent, in the process.
The unfortunate downside of that narrative choice? All of the characters in the strip, need to deal with this Joyce for 4-5 days, to reach their breaking point, and they are on Day 2. Whereas, in proportion, the readership is literally going to be stuck in this narrative device for 8-12 months in real time, and nobody is dealing with that well…which is, perhaps, something that Willis should have comprehended in advance, but they’re apparently blinded by how cute their self-insert darling is, to them, personally.
Nailed it again, IMO.
I can always count on you for the good comments when I scroll down.
I was just thinking how some of this might pay off in interesting ways eventually (basically my mantra since shortly after the kiss), but at this point the level of focus they’re getting while I’m waiting for that to happen has already worn me out.
This ship would definitely be in the category of “innately interesting” to me, too. (Queer ship emerging with long established characters? Who have had a long potential buildup within their previous dynamic? Yes, please.) And I felt set for that after the kiss…so I’m all the more disappointed by how uninteresting I’ve found it.
It’s interesting to combine this idea that Joyce has always been “allowed to get away with murder, in a social sense” and “held to a different standard” with the other discourse about Walky always being so mean to her that her gloating over winning Dorothy is justified.
I missed that other discourse completely. Could you link to it?
I mean it’s all relative. Joyce never got away with (social) murder in ALL situations, it depended on who she was being pitted against.
People were especially eager to blame every rude thing she said during her Nu Athiest phase on Liz, though.
Joyce has an awful side that is unrelated to her neuroatypical social issues and fundamentalist upbringing (well maybe not that). Basically, she loves rubbing her successes in other people’s faces and gloating.
To paraphrase a quote from Becky, “maybe your faith should have been less about who you’re better than.”
Frankly, it’s part and parcel of the worst parts of fundamentalism to believe (somewhat heretically, if you’ve actually read anything that Jesus guy had to say) that “things are going well for me” means “I am morally justified in what I’m doing, because all good things come directly from God and that means I’m being REWARDED for my actions by getting to have sex with Dorothy, which I’m enjoying, therefore it’s good, therefore it’s from God, therefore it’s correct and blessed.”
It’s basically prosperity gospel, but for atheist fuckin’.
Hilariously, it’s probably the one thing that Jesus was 100% unambiguous about that bad things happen to good people and vice versa but it still gets ignored.
I’m very burned out on Joyce gushing about Dorothy, but I do have to give credit for that last two-panel delivery. It’s insufferable but it’s well executed for sure.
what really sucks is how Joyce’s character has bascially eroded down to just being “I am fucking Dorothy and am going to make it everyone else’s problem!”
like we’re not getting any conflict here it’s all just “love love Dorothy love” and having her be snippy and lash out if anyone brings up the issues she is bringing up as a result like rubbing it in Walky’s face that she torpedoed his relationship with her or how she seriously hurt Joe and Becky with her actions.
Hell at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if Becky decided to try what her mother did and when Joyce finds out she calls Becky selfish for it or something like that.
No. Becky making an attempt is one of the things that would bring Joyce crashing back to earth.
The one thing I see people struggling to understand is that Joyce is ultimately avoidant. Why hasn’t she put the pin in things with Joe? Why isn’t she going and comforting her literal best friend in the world, who she accurately predicted in advance would be spiraling right now? Why is she getting repeatedly side-tracked with unrelated side-quests that vaguely represent her receiving moral absolution from people she thinks she’s wronged, while not actually putting in the work to do right by the people she’s actually wronged?
Well, uh, it probably has to do with the fact that, she has fully lived a life under the narrative, that she doesn’t actually have any agency in her outcomes, on account of being a Christian woman; so, now that she isn’t that second thing, she’s finally at a point in her life where she’s able to make deliberate choices, and lo and behold, she’s fucking bad at it, and there are a bunch of meaningful downstream consequences of that choice.
But, she doesn’t actually have any experience dealing with the consequences of choices she’s made, and so that’s scary. There’s no script for that in her life; it’s a task that she doesn’t have a point-by-point set of instructions to deal with, so therefore, it’s terrifying, and therefore, she’s avoiding even thinking about those things. Avoiding thinking about it, to the point of not even acknowledging that it’s a real possibility, is previously how she was dealing with the premise of sexual urges, after all. To paraphrase her own words, “well, I must be one of those asexuals, [because if I’m not, I will have to] preemptively marry half of the town!”
So, we take her being habitually avoidant of anything that has ever made her slightly anxious for any reason, and then put that in the context of her finally breaking some of her programming, and starting to make choices; and, those choices have both positive and negative downstream outcomes; it’s ultimately unsurprising, that she would literally put Joe and Becky’s well-being out of her mind, entirely, and instead hyper-fixate on the outcomes that make her feel free, and in control, and deeply euphoric in a self-satisfied way, for the first time in her entire life.
Because, she’s a clinical-grade black and white thinker, and so she can’t effectively hold in her mind, both the positive and negative consequences of her choices. There cannot be any middle ground between “I am heroically gay for kissing a girl,” and “I have wronged everybody I cared about and owe them care and reparation,” in Joyce’s mind, because middle ground does not exist, only objective, immutable binaries.
After all…if Joyce were to accept that part of what she did was okay, and part of what she did was wrong, that means that her decision to accept agency and make choices, could lead her to make wrong choices, and be a bad person; she wants the benefit of agency, but is unwilling to actually confront the downsides. That worldview is too complicated for her to accept right now, in the face of her fear; she’s been craving the comfort of her old life and her old ways, ever since she became an atheist. So, she’s throwing herself into the one detail in her life, that’s not a burning shambles, with zealous aplomb.
In the most extreme reading, Joyce can’t allow herself to accept the idea, that her exercising her agency, and making the choice to kiss/love/be with Dorothy, could be wrong; after all, since she is conditioned by her upbringing to only see binaries, accepting that her choice could have been more wrong than right, is akin to accepting that she was wrong to try to be free from her life obligation to be a proper Christian woman, and that would make her a horrible person, who broke both of her best friends’ hearts, for nothing. This is much like how Becky has a deep-seated need for identities to be binary and immutable, because if they aren’t, from her perspective, her Dad was right, and she got him killed, and got herself excommunicated, for nothing.
I really don’t want even more stressful things to happen in this comic, but the longer we go on with this, the more likely it starts to seem that Becky is very much in danger.
I feel like it’s easy to attribute everything to Joyce’s fundamentalism and/or neuroatypicality but there’s also a number of other people in Joyce’s peer group that have…absolutely nothing similar. We have a sample size of how people are raised in their environment (Becky and Carol) as their church’s women.
It’s possible that it might be simply…Joyce doesn’t want to deal with things that are emotionally harmful WHEN THEY HARM HER. Which is not an unreasonable thing for anyone.
And this might simply be an unflattering light she can and is at times selfish when it hurts others and…doesn’t care.
At times she doesn’t simply notice when she hurts people.
And one of the few people who can force her to notice has spent the entire weekend stuck in the NRE bubble with her.
10 out of 10, just too many commas (compensating for the people who don’t use enough).
@Throwatron at this point you can just assume, even if I don’t put an explicit +1 under each and every post, you have my full agreement and appreciation.
Bravo Throwatron. That was a great read.
I hate the “she hurt Joe AND Becky” narrative. She hurt Joe, yes. But Becky’s hurt has as much (and arguably more) to do with Becky’s issues than with how Joyce handled this sequence. Becky has been in a state of denial for months, in a way that was hideously unfair to Dina, and while I don’t want her to do anything akin to self-harm, I do think she needs to take a good, honest look at her relationship with Joyce. If you remove the sexuality aspect, she’s basically been doing the ‘friendzone’ complaint this entire time.
Becky has no claim over Joyce’s romantic love, and she really needs to accept that and move on–and that’s on her to do.
(Please note: Becky is probably my favorite character as both a character and as a person–she’s absolutely someone I would hang with. I just wish she had someone who could lay down the hard truths for her and help her get to a place of acceptance.)
She’s just. So. PUNCHABLE RIGHT NOW
Joyce continues to own the worst everything, worst character, worst ship, worst development. What record will she shatter next?!
Let’s see, we have…
– The guy she stole Dorothy from
– The above guy’s sister (and girlfriend of the best friend of the guy she cheated on)
– The above guy’s sister-in-all-but-genetics
– The guy whose previous relationship she homewrecked
Why are any of these people still giving Joyce the time of day? I’m amazed they haven’t defenestrated her from the friend group, or at least the walking carpool.
This is actually one of those few situations I’m comfortable using that old hat of “it’s not Smarting of Age”. In most contexts that phrase is functionally a thought terminating cliche, but hers, I think it’s appropriate because we have a bunch of teenagers who, let’s be honest, do not have the best emotional intelligence or handle on how to deal with a situation like this. Also, keep in mind none of the people here have shown a tendency to jump the gun in social situations without more info.
This is a clear time when “It’s not Smarting of Age” is just an excuse to justify bad writing.
I think it’s because they’ve all had 18-36 hours to react to this new development, and their entire prior experience with Joyce as a peer, comes from the perspective of them inherently giving her a ton of leeway, because they know she’s socially underprivileged, and improbably unworldly.
Like, it really is just inertia. Every person who tolerated Joyce up to this point, is numb to the fact that she is regularly doing and saying completely bone-headed, off-the-cuff, beyond-the-pale stuff from an average person’s social perspective; they attribute it to her literally not knowing better, and have learned to let it slide.
The dissonance comes from the fact that, as readers, we have to swim in this perspective of Joyce for 6-8 months at a time, as opposed to the characters 18-36 hours. All of them were aware of the fact that Joyce and Dorothy were catastrophically co-dependent and horny for each other; all of them were aware of the fact that, the second she pratfell into her first orgasm, Joyce was going to be insufferable about it for days or weeks. But, it’s going to take them a couple of days time to recognize, “okay, hold up, this version of Joyce is the most annoying one, yet, and I actually don’t think I can tolerate it.”
They meet her with continued rote tolerance, because that’s been an effective strategy for dealing with her until now, and also because they think that doing so has been fair, given her awful background, and thus, her justified lack of worldliness.
So, I predict that we’re going to see characters gradually stop giving Joyce the time of day; unfortunately, I also predict, that a huge portion of the readership is going to find the time-frame at which that plays out, excruciatingly slow and grating.
Agreed, on all counts.
Agreed. And extra points for actually using the word “defenestrated”.
It sure would be nice if even a few of the people in Joyce’s friend group actually criticize her for her extremely shitty behavior lately. Maybe that might finally make her think about how badly she’s been treating most other people these days. So far we’ve had Sarah when she found out that Joyce and Dorothy hadn’t properly broken up with their boyfriends before getting together, and that’s it.
I feel like we’re hitting a pattern of the moment Joyce learns something new about herself she immediately becomes the worst version of said thing.
Like back when she lost her religion and had to start literally dressing in black and white while going around talking like a reddit atheist telling people how dumb they are for still having something they believe in.
like she’ll mellow out I’m sure but the journey there is painful
Moderately ambivalent rather than hating, but this kind of joke is staring to wear on me.
Can someone in the comic please have an original thought? It’s hella weird to me that everyone’s had the identical reaction of “OBVIOUSLY you two started dating, EVERYONE knew you would”. Am I the only one who thinks that’s rude and pretentious?? Let people define their own relationships!
I imagine the way they got together also took some of the excitement out of it for people
Like if they got together without the cheating aspect I imagine people would have been more excited for them instead of brushing it off the way they’re doing now
I hate Joyce so much right now. To me is the most hated under 25 character. I hate her more than 3 R’s
Who are the three R’s?
Rachel, Robin, and… uh… Rebecca?
Raidah
If i could pay money to fast forward to biology class with Becky and Dina and Joe i would. Like i actually dont mind this, i don’t Care if Joyce is being annoying, being annoying is het biggest character trait. It really only bothers me when real people get annoying on her behalf. I’m just happy she and dotty and separate for a while. BUT there’s a fucking mine right in front of us of delicious drama and we gotta wait till like Tuesday or something to watch it explode, and that knowledge hurts
Dina and Joe absolutely need to have a moment about the damage that’s been done over the last couple days. They’re friends!
And Joe is but a distant memory.
Yeah…
Whatever resignations she had about him before are pretty much forgotten.
Will they come back? Who knows? But she’s claiming Dorothy so we’ll see how that turns out.
* RESERVATIONS
Damn, we need an edit button. Or at least a delete option.
They’ll come back the second Joe enters her field of vision. Joyce has no object permanence.
I historically say this, and it’s historically true when she’s excited; however, I think we’ve gone past that. She’s genuinely blocking Joe and Becky out of her head, at this point. Not consciously so, but also, very deliberately. She’s subconsciously protecting herself from the reality of actually dealing with the fallout she’s created, because she doesn’t actually know how to reconcile the fact that she doesn’t feel bad about how her choices have affected her, with the fact that she knows how badly her choices have affected others. She’s craving the certainty of morality that came with her faith, but hasn’t adjusted to the fact that when you have no faith, you’re then actually responsible for the moral implications and consequences of your choices.
This.
If…it…takes forever. I will wait for you…
For a thousand summers…I will wait for you.
Guess he doesn’t have any object permanence. Out of sight, out of mind?
Is he? Joyce got permission to keep both.
I mean, Dorothy will be fully okay with that.
As someone whose poly I would rather not have any poly relationship than one that began because of cheating. We have enough stigma already.
There’s no way any attempt at poly from Joyce wouldn’t devolve into “I’m still seeing Joe sometimes, but we’re just not gonna tell Dorothy because I see any conflict with my one true love as an existential threat.”
My crazy meta idea is that’s going to happen and Willis will eventually reveal that the cheating plot he was talking about was not the Kiss, but Joyce cheating on Dorothy with Joe.
The shocking twist from that is that if that happens everyone is also okay with it and there is no downside for Joyce.
My meta-meta idea is that a lot of people are going to be shocked when the majority of the DoJo-dislikers continue to be annoyed at Joyce if that happens. 😀
I’m banking on this outcome for two reasons
1. That’d actually be an insane misdirect on Willis’ part
2. It would be so fucking funny
Dorothy always thought Joyce was attracted to Walky. I think Charles is right. Dorothy will have minimal issues with Joyce doing it, but will need coaxing to join.
You’re kidding right? Dorothy does not like Joe. At all.
I think Dorothy/Joe would be very interesting because her distaste seems to have been jealousy (that came from such an ugly place she considered Joe dating Joyce to be similar to HER BEING KIDNAPPED).
Some did, but I’d be surprised if it’s ever revealed that’s all it was. She had plenty of reasons to dislike Joe long before she even met Joyce.
”It’s me, Dorothy. Your friend.”
Yeah. Remember when she pointed out she only put up with Joe because she was dating Danny and had hoped dumping Danny would mean not having to talk to Joe again?
Wait, so Joyce is a naked mole rat? Her social relations are smell-based?
Um, Google “how much of human relations are smell based?”
To be fair I’d argue most social relationships are smell based if you argue that people who smell really bad definitely effects the relationships they can have.
all of you folks smell like hot dusty cpu to me
Ron Stoppable is her cousin!
Lucy with the fucking ice cold burn there and I’m not even sure she did it on purpose
I don’t really see how that counts as a burn? Even an unintentional one.
No one said she was burning Joyce.
(Hint -Walky is standing right behind her.)
Ok, even with that i sm struggling to figure out what the burn is supposed to be.
Walky walking into frame; catching unintentional strays lol
Will Jacob have any opinions on his friend getting broken up with? No? We’ll see?
I don’t think Jacob and Joe are really friends? They se each other at the gym and that’s about it.
The bond of the gym bro is one of the strongest there is
Joe called Jacob his “main man” once and they’ve had actual conversations while at the gym, I think that goes above “guy you see while working out and grunt and maybe nod at.”
They were friendly enough for Jacob to tell Joe to be careful about Joyce, which really felt out of place at the time but was apparently more or less good advice.
Jacob is also kind of self-righteous and like… yeah. I like him, but he can definitely be a little “holier-than-thou” at times and this would be a great time for him to be like that.
I thought they were gym partners, not just people who happen to be at the gym at the same time.
Jacob and Lucy are the two most boring people in existence.
They don’t have anything to say about anything.
Justice for Walky goddamn man, lol
“Then, why was I the last to know? ”
“You’ve been talking about having alone time with Dorothy, while stroking her hair since the first week. You knew. “
… so Walky’s going to walk to class separately then, I take it.
… and Billie will probably go with him.
… maybe Sal? Hard to call.
They’re walking from the same place to the same place.
Yes but he won’t have to hear Joyce if he takes a different route.
He can walk ahead or behind
If he had any self respect he would.
So y’know.
He won’t.
Walky’s feeling like Cyclops here. Just bring on the floating butt.
Top (or possibly bottom) tier reference.
A truly incredible deep cut.
As deep as the cuts from Wolverine’s claws when they pull out a Reese’s
So is there some evil supervillain The Perfumer who is behind all this?
Musn’t… use… patreon…
You are broke! Your savings are dwindling between jobs.
Do not engage!!!
You would have to save it for special occasions anyway, or it just advances the agony by a day.
You’d only be paying for one day of advance warning, then you’re back to waiting 24hrs!
I swear that Willis should offer additional days at doubling costs for every additional day.
I held off on doing the patreon for the longest time, but last night I literally had a dream about me subscribing to it and when I woke up I decided hell, if Willis is gonna inception me that’s some damn good advertising and probably worth a couple bucks.
Fuck im taking a break from the Patreon bc holidays expensive, but i really wanna see your input over there. Its a unique kinda comment section
I wouldn’t normally advocate for Walky flipping out on anyone but I need to see this group collapse! He’s justified here! Do it Walkman!
I need angry Walky I need it I need it I need it
I live and breathe for the promise of angry Walky. I need to see this man crash out, I need it in my bones. I want him to crash out, have an angry arc, and then beat the actual hell outta incelerator somehow. Point A to Z, idk how we get there, I just know I wanna see my man rage and yell at the sun
Tbh I want literally anyone to be angry other than just Sarah one time. Gimme friction!
I’m begging any higher power that exists, let the teens have a TEEN FIGHT
WALKY, JUST DO IT, NO MERCY!!!
Unfortunately, Walky is constitutionally incapable of being regular aggressive, and is currently too self-doubting to be passive aggressive. I believe that the time for Walky to get angry will come, but first must be Walky’s journey toward a sense of self based in something other than comfort-seeking and ironic detachment.
He’s actually not. Lest we forget, Walky punched Asher, a dude who everyone acknowledges can definitely personally mince-meat him, because he ratted Sal out to the cops.
One of Wally’s biggest character flaws in the Walkyverse was that he was absolutely full of rage and would routinely go way too far whenever he got pissed off, with disastrous consequences. I don’t think Walky should have anger issues to that extent (it was a pretty common thing back in the Walkyverse, and a lot of that tendency got funneled into Amber here), but there’s at least some precedent.
Do it Walky. Let the Hate flow through you.
I think I said this before but if I were Walky’s friend, and I didn’t know Joyce and Dorothy’s lore, I would be barking in his ear to go nuclear on these bongos.
He doesn’t even need to get really anger, just some variant of “I deserve better than this.”
Not here and now though. It needs to involve Dorothy.
^– best suggestion I’ve seen re: all of this yet.
Kinda Joyce already chopped half of the group.
It will be a beaultiful disaster.
Joyce, girl, that jacket can’t smell that much like dorothy you *just* got it
Yes, but Walky doesn’t know that.
I think she’s sniffing her hand.
Nah, she’s holding the collar up to her nose.
You know, it’s perfectly possible for all these things to be true simultaneously.
Astariel is correct that Joyce is holding the colllar of her jacket up to her nose.
Joyce is correct that she is smelling Dorothy’s aroma on her.
Stormtide is correct that it is far too early for the jacket to have picked up Dorothy’s scent.
Betsumei is correct that Joyce is *also* sniffing her hand.
Remember, folks, to regularly wash your hands.
Joyce doing a lot of “fuck”ing lately. She’s rapidly clawing her way to the top of the chart. Tied with Ruth for 5th place now.
Joyce you’ve had that jacket for 15 minutes, there is no way Dorothy smell is on it yet. Unless she is just constantly engulfed in a cloud of perfume like a middle schooler who just discovered the magic of body mist. Or she deliberately spritzed it with something of hers before running off.
Do people still tell people to do that these days? My mom always told me to spray guys’ stuff with perfume and I can’t tell if that was normal mother-child advice or one of the weird social rules she made up (like a man needing to propose in <4 months or it being impossible to cheat outside of marriage)
I’m inclined to believe your mother had a propensity to believe strange things that weren’t true.
I stg I read this as a your mom joke at first, and was deeply confused. It didn’t even register for like 30 seconds, that it could just be a sincere statement. I had to go reread Bittersweet’s post to see what I was missing, which was nothing.
I was curious about the smell too, especially if Dorothy has a certain perfume she uses. I don’t remember the smell of any of my exes, but then again I’ve lived with a smoker all my life so my nose is kinda dulled. As for the advice, that’s definitely a weird one. Like she told you to spray stuff that belonged to guys around you, with your perfume? Sounds like she was hoping that would, like, fend off other suitors or something. Main advice my mom ever gave was just “spray your neck and wrists, rub lightly” as far as where to spray my stuff.
That must be it. I’ve never come across it; the closest is that my grandfather got perfumed love letters (a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away).
I believe that Betseumi has unravled the mystery above.
why the hell is Joyce smelling her JACKET in the last panel? that’s the jacket that she bought this morning, it doesn’t smell like anything except store
she exchanged shirts with Dorothy, she should be smelling her shirt, like c’mon
?
When are we going to get back to the Becky/Dina situation? I need more of that in my life.
Hi just wanted to say happy full moon hehehe ^-^
Really looking forward to when I can walk again so I can enjoy walking in the moonlight once more :’)
Internet gesture of support!! I hope you heal up soon. ?
awe thanks ;-;
I sure hope so too, by end of this weekend I’ll know whether or not it’s an infection, really really hoping it ain’t, so frickin scared TT~TT
Sending you strength and support! The moonlight will be waiting for you 🙂
Sigh, poor Walky.
Taking another comment section break! I’m enjoying the comic but. Mostly don’t feel like I’m enjoying the conversation rn, and I definitely don’t feel like I’m being the kind of chill positive presence I wanna be.
Only announcing because I know folks get worried sometimes over names disappearing. Just in case. We’ve all got enough stress rn without unnecessarily adding to it, I figure.
I can assure you have been one of the most chill people in these comments. I think sometimes you are a bit hard in yourself for not being always positive, ehich i think it’s unrealistic to expect of yourself. Gonna miss you and hope you have a nice break.
Just doubling down on this, because I’ve written Too Many Words tonight already, and I don’t want to just re-word the same sentiment, so I’m stealing it.
Thanks. ?
It’s also just… overwhelmingly negative around here rn, which is? You know, how people are feeling. I’m not asking anyone to stop sharing that, that wouldn’t be fair.
I do wish there were somewhere to talk about DoA where it was more positive? But I don’t even begin to have the energy to start creating my own space so I’m also not gonna complain that no one else made it for me.
Take care, and hope to see you back soon. I appreciate your efforts to always be level-headed and evenhanded in discussions here.
I try! I appreciate your efforts with the hater containment thread. It’s a neat lil community, I hope yall continue to have good conversations here.
The habit of commenting is hard to kick, heh. Trying again.
I will really miss talking to people here though.
I recently was reading the arc back in 2022 where Joyce is getting confronted by Dina about being spanked as a kid, and I found an old comment of mine complaining that seemingly every character was getting on Joyce’s case, calling her out, or passing moral judgment on her.
Kind of funny to think about that complaint in context of this arc, where I actually wish most of the characters would get on her case MORE.
This light snark is a decent appetizer but I wish to FEAST on the disapproval of her acquaintances!
Walky’s got this look on his face like “Somehow overhearing this sentence is the worst thing you’ve done to me this week” lmao.
Haha it’s okay it’s all good Walky doesn’t have feelings, he’s just a dumb idiot! /s
Yeah, Joyce is rubbing it.
She was never your friend, Walky.
I always thought their rivalry was just playful banter but this arc has shown a really ugly side of Joyce when it comes to Walky.
Joyce was always stewing with envy and spite toward Walky/Dorothy.
I think if you asked Joyce and Walky two days ago (their time), they’d tell you it’s mostly banter and call the other their friend. Joyce would say it through gritted teeth and not fully understand why. Walky would crack wise about Joyce’s undying love for Dorothy, but wouldn’t laugh about it like he used to.
I wonder if Walky has picked up on how much more “real” Joyce’s animosity towards him feels now.
I think he always kind of knew. A huge part of Walky’s thing, is pretending to be emotionally incompetent, so that nobody ever expects him to actually perform emotionally.
However, he was the Golden Child in his family for a reason; he’s a master of emotional deflection, and we’ve seen him defuse emotional situations with the right quip at the right time, several times. He actually knows way more than he lets on, about how everybody around him is feeling, and what the outcomes of those feelings may be, because he’s actually spent his entire life desperately trying to avoid emotional conflict.
His unwillingness to accept his own emotions, isn’t because he doesn’t understand them; he’s not incompetent, he’s avoidant. But, he knows that playing incompetent, means that you get the bulk of your peers to internalize that false incompetence, and thus it simplifies his need to avoid conversations where he’s socially expected to reciprocate the act of feeling.
So, Walky always knew that he was “keeping the peace” with Joyce, because he knew deep down that her caustic jealousy towards him vis a vis Dorothy, was not as much of a joke as Joyce was letting on; after all, he probably also knew damned well that, for his whole childhood, his sister was deeply jealous of the fact that his mother loved him, and resented her. He just never wanted to confront it, because confronting your emotions, requires feeling them, and Walky would rather avoid that stuff, entirely.
I’d also add that its a pretty classic ADHD side effect as well. Between having a delayed emotional maturity, difficulty regulating emotions, and impulsivity, you quickly learn that intense or emotional situations lead to trouble, so you find ways to cope. One of them many of us learn is that by saying the right funny/absurd/irrelevant thing in situations that make you uncomfortable you can ease the mood and not have to deal with it anymore. I’d call it less of an avoidance mechanism and more of a survival/masking technique, if everyone’s suspicions of Walky are true
I was always skeptical about them being friends, and I was surprised when Walky called her a friend to Booster a couple strips ago. They’ve both been downright vitriolic to each other on occasion, even before this lastest explosion.
Exactly. Friends.
In hindsight kinda wild how this all just stemmed from Walky calling her stupid for going to college soley because she wanted to find a man to marry.
Like I don’t think Joyce ever forgave him for that
Walky is still going to have a better class experience than Dorothy is having right now.
Really makes you wonder what O-what’s is’s classes were like on the regular lol
I can’t imagine having to get up at 6am every morning to go sit through the equivalent of a middle-aged dude-bro podcast. Dorothy really IS a Keener.
That Walkys look on camera is so on point.
Im tired of this too
Backup hating thread for when the OG one eventually gets reported ⬇️
I can never be silenced
Just gonna make a little jot down of “Joyce directly stating that Dorothy smells attractive” for the people who kept insisting Joyce being in love with Dorothy came out of nowhere…
It’s genuinely hilarious, I got prompted to read some books 1-4 strips by a comment a few days ago, and like…”Joyce is DEFCON 1 HORNT for Dorothy” is objectively the punchline of so many strips, like, consecutively in batches. The fact that anybody ever missed that, just makes me sad about the education system.
Granted, Joyce was in a sort of Schrodinger’s gay state for nearly 15 years: was she gay, or socially ignorant? Until observed collapsing (onto Dorothy,) the superposition stood, and similarly to in-universe, you get desensitized to “yeah, Joyce is just like that.”
Joyce being cringe has usually been the punchline ever since, though… Critique what you want, but I don’t think this is what authorial approval looks like.
Surprise, she’s gay AND socially ignorant!
The punchline of most of those was that Joyce was just socially ignorant. It’s now changed to Freudian slip
Walky needs to either blow up on Joyce or freeze her out completely. Anything in between means we’ll find Walky’s self-respect buried several miles beneath the Earth’s crust.
Well, it’d be awfully rude to go find it. He worked really hard, hiding it all the way down there, and you know how much Walky hates working hard!
Otoh he can join Joe in having absolutely zero self respect, it’d be the beginning of support group
You know it’s not the ideal way to start a friendship but these two fucking need it
Walky : can confirm
So we’re doing an “obnoxious baby gay” Joyce story to match the “obnoxious baby atheist” story huh. That tracks since Joyce didn’t actually learn any lessons about not applying her fundie thought processes to new ways of thinking and just learned to be quiet around Becky, an outcome I’m not sure she can get away with again.
I think there is something hypocritical about how we treat Joyce’s baby atheist phase, because we don’t criticize Becky or Lucy the same amount for the exact same sort of thinking.
Yes, Joyce thought of Atheism as morally and intellectually superior… But Becky at the time, and Lucy still think of Christianity as morally superior. Not to the extreme of “all non-Christians are worthless”, but still in the patronizing “Aren’t we benevolent for accepting you despite your faults” where the “fault” is not being Christian.
To me it feels like a double standard, where we expect Atheists to respect and celebrate other people’s religions, but don’t demand that religious people respect and celebrate Atheism as something morally equivalent to their own beliefs.
they don’t tho?
Becky especially doesn’t use(or current used) her religion as a moralistic crutch. She was openly dating Dina and respected her in spite of their different views on religion. Becky’s post-fundy religion has always been deeply personal to her own life experience rather than tearing down or looking down on other people’s believes.
I think the quote Becky literally says to Joyce is “maybe your faith should have been less about who you’re better than.” Because she doesn’t expect to be celebrated for her relgion but she does ask for a baseline level of respect to not be called an idiot for believing in a god.
Because she believes in a “loving god” who won’t punish non-believers, but just won’t let them use the bouncy castle.
Her religious views are moderate, in that they can tolerate the existence of atheists, but they were still fundamentally condescending.
I’d say her respect for Dina was way less “I think your atheism is equally valid” and more “I love a lot of other things about you and it isn’t my job to try to reform you”.
Yeah, that whole arc was deeply unfair to Joyce. Athiests are constantly being told that we need to respect other people’s religious beliefs, but it’s never reciprocal.
The issue in that arc was never that Joyce was an atheist – that was never what Becky was upset about. Becky spells it out explicitly, her issue was that Joyce lied to her and made fun of her behind her back by calling anyone who believes in g-d stupid. There’s nothing wrong with being an atheist, and those beliefs should be as respected as anyone else’s, but it’s not okay to mock the faith of others who are not otherwise engaging in harmful behavior, and especially when you know that your best friend’s faith is important to her.
I suspect Becky still would have had issues if Joyce had been more open about it – and that worrying about that is a big reason Joyce wasn’t. But it wouldn’t have been as bad.
See, for me the primary problem isn’t when someone says that they think less of other people, but rather it is that they think it, even if they are smart enough to keep quiet.
Joyce was talking poorly about theists by claiming they were stupid to believe in god…
To me this doesn’t seem that much more offensive than a Theist thinking atheists are foolish/sinful/misguided for not believing in god.
And I don’t really care if they say it to my face or if they keep in their head. If someone thinks I am in any way less morally deserving for not believing in their particular mythology, I have a problem with that. That isn’t a belief system I have any respect for.
Even if Lucy’s thought process is likely patronizing, she has the self awareness to try to be polite. Lucy’s also been honest about who she is, even when it would have benefitted her to downplay her religiosity around Walky. What made Joyce an ass was pretending to still believe around Becky, making fun of those beliefs around other people, then doubling down when Becky caught the two-faced behavior. The double standard exists certainly, but doesn’t really apply to Joyce nuking her friendship.
I’d argue that no one really has a right to know someone’s internal religious beliefs. If someone has a change of faith, I think it is fundamentally their decision about who to tell and when.
So like.
Is the point of the current arc just to make Joyce the most insufferable possible character you could write? Cause i feel thats all that’s been accomplished the past 6 months
nah; we’ve had weird super sexists, the Jennifer arc, cops using violence against kids, and professors who are so up their own asses that I can’t really put Joyce on the same level as them. lol
None of those things are insufferable, because to suffer something, implies you would tolerate it; I don’t think you’d actually suffer through tolerating any of those, so they’re not insufferable, they’re just objectively noxious.
But, historically, Joyce has been insufferable to everyone around her, yet tolerated due to the context of her life; now that she’s further intensified every trait she has that could be grating to a peer, she’s running the risk of being suffered no longer.
“never going to be shocking news to anybody”
Except for a bunch of people in the comments, apparently.
wouldn’t be the first time willis has taken brazen pot shots at his readership to vent his frustrations, lmao
P sure this strip was written months before the longing arc came to its peak. You can even see on the Tumblr from the date on the preview panels, this was supposed to be uploaded like three weeks ago. Ig that was posted before the buffer edits
Sal seriously yer gonna catch a cold
I love Joyce and Dorothy
They are the best.
My new Yankee Candle scent: Residual Dorothy Aroma, coming this winter
still not black enough, looks more like a bomber jacket
Ah, you had the same idea as me, yet you were far more brilliant with your execution. Bravo! :applause:
The strip Lucy is mentioning for those who do not want to / have time for an archive crawl:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/02-but-the-sun-still-shines/offbase/
Also, this strip confirming that Lucy had already picked up on Joyce’s attraction to Dorothy from that original comment, way back when.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/04-vote-for-robin/proselytize/
I’m kind of sad we didn’t get to see Joyce turn into the kind of puddle Wally meant. I mean, yeah, the Slipshine folks got to see the OTHER kind.
I dunno, to listen to some of the haters, she is absorbing all reality (within the strip.)
I will never understand people who somehow do not “get” the concept of person-smell (not as in stink from not showering/heavy sweating/dirty/etc, and not as in wearing heavy perfumes, just the smell of a clean-but-otherwise-not-externally-scented person (past the smell of soap/shampoo/deodorant)). The precise nature of the smell varies from person to person, and when it is someone you care about, it is pleasant and comforting.
Look, I’m not saying go around sniffing people, but… Sniff your loved ones, with their consent.
I think it’s just one of those things where every person has a different sensory threshold for each of their senses. I know such things exist objectively, but my sense of smell has historically been blunted, so I don’t get those experiences strongly; meanwhile, some people are so sensitive in that regard, that they sometimes find just existing in public to be an ordeal, because everything smells too much.
I don’t think it’s not a thing, I just don’t think it’s a thing with a coat purchased 15 minutes ago that only Joyce has worn. I’m a super smeller, I can track people down by smell in a department store like a bloodhound, my life is olfactory hell lol. But right now all that coat should smell like is pleather and maybe sweat depending on if Joyce wore it on the return jog. Maybe cold.
I have to get very close to people to notice. Like… an inch, at most two. I don’t get that close to enough people to do statistics with.
So Walky got out of bed anyway. Prop on him.
perfect gravatar-to-comment synergy here
Top kek, this panel made me cackle like a maniac in public.
Yay more kicking Walky while he’s down.
Personal question for focus that’s unrelated to this except for the fact that Joyce is on the screen (which is what reminded me of this, so): for those who are autistic (or possibly otherwise neurodiverse), do you share this information with healthcare providers? Assuming it’s not already in their records.
My doctor and apothacary both know so we could work on a plan for me to make sure i’ll always have my medication stocked even if my mind is too scattered to collect my orders immediately
I’ve had too many providers try to gaslight and blame mental health for symptoms later proven to have a physical medical cause, when I’d never once spoken of any mental health concerns, ever. That shit is on a need to know basis only.
That’s sort of my concern. Yesterday, I was updating a patient history form for a doctor, I see, and autism was in the list of things they were asking about… I just skipped it, went with the approach of not answering most and just checking “yes” for a couple.
I disclose depression and anxiety because I take meds for depression and anxiety, so it’s gonna come up anyway. I received my official autism diagnosis around a year and a half ago now, which is helpful for me in part because I knew I’d be starting grad school. But most medical providers, I don’t feel inclined to tell because so many doctors already seem ready to look down on patients.
(Side note, the person I saw for university accommodations asked how long I’ve had autism. My dude. You work in disability services. Let’s think this one through.)
my ADHD and C-PTSD are both officially diagnosed and on files and such, and tend to be talked about early if not immediately with new healthcare providers.
The autism is quite specifically Not Talked About with healthcare providers (aside from my trusted counsellors), because the downsides of getting an official dx are Vast (can affect thing like ability to adopt children, immigration, and such) and the upsides (for me personally) are non-existent, esp because I can ‘sort’ any symptoms that need to come up under the ADHD or C-PTSD with them.
I’ll admit I’m not officially diagnosed, I’m in the South, I’m AFAB, and by the time I started realizing I could be neurodiverse I was mid to late 20’s so the chances of me being able to get diagnosed were like, pffft. The only healthcare provider I’ve talked to about my suspicions have been my therapist, who basically stated that she agrees with my hunches about having ADHD and CPTSD. I know it isn’t the same as being officially diagnosed but at least on the C-PTSD front, trust me. You don’t go through what I did as a 7 year old and NOT get C-PTSD from it.
Yeah, I figure I may as well. If they decide to deny me something over it later on, I’m fine to assume they were just gonna do that no matter what. The medics can’t give me that yummy guanfacine for to put in my smoothies if I don’t tell them about the ADHD.
Neither me nor my daughter are officially diagnosed because I don’t feel like that’s a safe thing to seek rn. I teach her my coping skills so she doesn’t have to figure crap out (which has led to a far more functional child than I ever was. Albeit when I’m too late it’s far harder to notice a nonverbal shutdown like she has than it was to notice me crashing tf out because I happened to wear jeans, socks, and a blanket or stood under overhead light too long.)
Like, there’s definitely something. The stimming. The literalism. The toe walking (which I also did as a child, now it’s medical). The discomfort with eye contact and sensory processing difficulties of different kinds. My husband says he’s pretty sure everyone in my family has it to some degree, idk about that, but I know my sister’s a doctor with a psych degree and she was the first to bring it up about my daughter (also begged my mom to get me evaluated as a toddler), so I’m pretty confident there’s something up.
Anyways, doctors can pry any of my mental health history out of my cold dead posts because I can’t trust them with anything. I’ve been told a 5 month period was because of marital unhappiness and stress, doctors (as individuals) are about as trustworthy to me as cops.
Completely valid honestly.
Diagnosed ADHD, not diagnosed for anything else, but also actively not interested in getting any kind of paperwork for anything right now. I’ve been checking “no disabilities” boxes on job applications, even when they explicitly include ADHD, because I do not trust those forms to be as anonymous as they claim.
Yyyyup, love a “prefer not to respond” box, check a lot of “prefer not to respond” boxes.
I dont share any info with health care providers because I cannot afford to go to a hospital. If I get really sick or injured I’ll probably just die.
Very fair. I see a couple health care providers, but when I have issues that come up outside of what they address, my basic move is “no, I don’t,” being alive is so fucking expensive.
I’m not diagnosed autistic and my bitch ass psychologist took my ADHD diagnosis away in highschool so I don’t even get to have that on paper. So the only doctors who know are my childhood neurologist that prescribed me concerta and my psychiatrist to whom I’ve complained about losing official ADHD status, who himself is also ADHD as fuck. And probably my gp somewhere in there idk. Either way it’s not something I disclose often if only cuz I don’t have the paper to back it up
And to think they were passionate lovers in another universe…
Lucy has a memory which is not to be funked with.
The smell has been transferred.
hehehehhe
Mission accomplished!
Not technically the first thing, this is the third strip of them interacting together.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/02-but-the-sun-still-shines/offbase/
The first things she told her were “hi”, “I’m, uh, Joyce”, and “are you making fun of me?”. And then she talked about Billie before talking Lucy asked her about Walky.
Bless her heart. She’s so excited about being sexually active. Since she was raised to believe that her grandmother is up in the sky watching/judging her and that premarital sex was to be avoided like the plague, this is a huge leap forward for Joyce.
I’m inclined to give her some slack. She’s in love.
Yeah, it’s pretty adorable, honestly.
Took so long, I’m adoring this all
It’s good that Dorothy is getting her doctor-recommended RDA. 🙂
Sal is not being a good sister to Walky. Walky has actively worked at, and succeeded in being a better brother, but Sal is not doing the same.
Dorothy cheated on Walky with Joyce. Joyce actively encouraged Dorothy to cheat on Walky. Joyce shows up and gleefully announces “I had sex” with Dorothy… and Sal’s response is to compliment Joyce on her jacket.
Joyce is an AH, and all of the friend group, except maybe Sarah, seems totally fine with that.
Walky is also not a good brother to Sal. Even though he was a child, and so we don’t really hold him accountable for his actions, he 100% benefited from hoovering up all of his family’s love and attention and good graces, while Sal took on the brunt of a staggering amount of abuse and injustice.
So, when judging Sal for not being gung-ho about jumping to Walky’s defense, it’s worth considering it in the context of their entire relationship, where Walky has only just recently even begun to consider, that maybe he should have spent some of his good will as the Golden Child, actually defending his sister from how shitty the rest of the family treated her, or even just had the willingness to show his emotional support for her directly.
There’s also the fact, that Sal specifically is loaded with trauma from all of the times she tried to support the people she cared about outside her family, only for it to blow up in her face, every time, with massive consequences for herself and everybody around her that she did care about. Trying to stand up for Marcie, ended with Marcie getting permanently maimed; trying to run with Asher, ended up with her getting stabbed and sent to juvie or boarding school or w/e. Sal’s unwillingness to stand up and fight, anymore, is just as much a shield for her, as Walky’s emotional avoidance is for him. So, it’s odd to judge Sal for her coping behavior, without equally judging Walky for his.
Walky wasn’t a great brother when he was a young child following the leadership of their parents… in the past.
Since starting University he and Sal have talked about the bad dynamic with their parents and Walky has actively worked to be better. Lately he has actually been a pretty good brother to Sal, or at least he has demonstrated that he cares about her and her wellbeing.
I think you are jumping into speculation about Sal’s coping mechanism. Sal being someone “unwilling to support people” isn’t something I think we’ve seen demonstrated in the comic. You’ve put together a rationale for why she might have such a trauma response, but not given evidence that it is something she actually has.
And regardless of why she has decided to not give a shit about Walky’s wellbeing, that still isn’t being a very good sister.
—
If we are talking about Walky’s avoidance, I’d point out that we have seen Walky multiple times confront people in defence of people he cares about. For example, standing up to his parents, confronting Asher, confronting Lucy’s brother, etc…
His coping strategy is primarily a problem for himself because he fails to recognize and care for his own feelings and mental state. But in his interpersonal relationships lately he has been a good brother and a good boyfriend.
Sal supposedly copes by not caring when people are an AH to Walky, but she does care when people are an AH to her.
Walky copes by accepting that he “deserves it” when people are an AH to him, but he still cares and confronts people when they are an AH to Sal.
I honestly don’t judge Sal that much because I’m not sure how much she even knows about what happened. She doesn’t seem the type to follow along with this shit very well, like does she even know Walky and Dorothy got back together? You gotta keep in mind, over the course of ONE WEEK, (as in, last weekend to this weekend), Sal has watched the following happen regarding her brother’s love life:
Walky started out dating Lucy.
At dinner with their parents, Walky brought along Amber, for shenanigans, and passed her off as his girlfriend.
Walky’s back together with Lucy, the Amber thing was just a misdirect for their parents.
Walky and Lucy have broken up.
Walky got back together with Dorothy and she MAY NOT know about this. The closest she wound have come to noticing it is if she saw the two of them together (keep in mind Sal arrived later at the party, so she wasn’t privy to the whole Lucy-Dorothy-Walky confrontation) and MAAAAYBE if she assumed the two walking together at for that one class means they’re back together.
Walky and Dorothy are now broken up and I think Sal would only know this IF she knew they got together by dint of ‘well obviously if Joyce is with Dorothy she’s not with Walky anymore’. I think it’s a lot to assume she doesn’t care when she might just not KNOW. Again, in just the past week and change, her brother’s love life has been such a rollercoaster that I don’t blame her for not being all that checked in on what the fuck is happening.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/02-its-the-love-i-havent-got/themeeting/
Also just gonna slide this in but upon being informed that Lucy and Walky broke up, she invited him out to take his mind off things so trust, I’m sure once she realizes the depths of what exactly went on here with her brother being cheated on, she’ll be there for him.
Also also Sal’s spent the weekend having helped rescue Amber and getting her help under the table with help from the mob I THINK IT’S PRETTY UNDERSTANDABLE IF SHE ISN’T 100% INFORMED ON THE WALKY-DOROTHY-JOYCE CHEATING TRIANGLE. She was kinda dealing with someone bleeding out and being on the run from the cops.
Yeah if I were in Sal’s shoes I probably wouldn’t really know what was going on until someone explained it to me.
Smh, why doesn’t Sal just pay attention to the comic, so lazy…
Putting my foot down. We are not having this conversation again.
In the comic you’re reading, by a perfectly ordinary definition of cheating that many people subscribe to.
The same way Jacob cheated on Raidah
I mean, similar but with several notable differences.
You are being deliberately annoying
Listen dude, I had your back yesterday but this is just lazy.
Get a new schtick.
“I’ve nicked your girl friend and it sucks to be you, bo”
Joyce is the dominate member of this group. It’s fun watching her play the traditional male role in this game.
I’m kind of surprised Walky is even hanging out with them at this point.
He seems tp be taking it hard but be pretty resigned and lije he said he always felt it was fleeting with Dorothy
Okay Joyce, we get your happy, but you don’t need to rub it in Walky’s face.
Walky has spent the entire comic rubbing it in her face. She still owes him a lot of payback.
(My autocorrupt is getting the twins confused. It wants to corrupt “Walky” not to “Wally” but to “Sally”.)
Artificial intelligence right there!
This is actually really kind of adorable. Shes so excited to have shed some of her hangups. And Lucy being somewhat amused and going yeah we all kind of saw this coming is legit funny. Poor walky he seems to be taking it hard but surviving
This is actually just awful behavior.
Hey, the hater containment thread is exactly for this: there’s loads of likeminded people above you, 100+ comments of folks happily venting together. It looks like fun up there!
No need to respond to a random person posting some polite positivity with “no actually it’s awful”.
Or heck! You could make your own top-level, there’s plenty of that, too! Like another 40+ comments at this time that are doing that, plus a backup hater containment thread.
Ignore me. I’m just really tired and sad rn, heh.
I want it on the record that the backup containment thread was not my idea.
I mean it makes sense to have one. S’fine with me, at any rate.
I’ve noted it in the record.
Thank you. Keep up the good work and you’ll be promoted before you know it.
Merit-based employment? In this economy?
Or I could reply where I want to.
I’m aware but its kind of jerk behavior to reply too someone harmlessly being amused by joyce and LUCY. I FIND IT FUNNY THAT LITERALLY EVERYONE PREDICTED THIS. THANKS FOR YOUR UNHRLPFUL RUDE OPINION.
Jerk behavior like what Joyce is doing?
Another comic with Joyce in it; another comic that makes her even more unlikeable. This linear path line has to level off at some point, no?
https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3m7bagtvyy22e
Is this amateur hour or what.
Given the results of that reader demographics poll a while back, I’m surprised this shit doesn’t happen more often. I guess most of the more blatant ones are gone already.
somebody got very very angry because a webcomic haha
Next comic Joyce asks Walky for his shoes and Walky writes Danny a retroactive apology card, confusing the hell out of him
Man he can’t catch a break huh
Oh ye I finally got my Dina plush in my hands yesterday, yay!
I’m trying to post her surrounded by my other plushies on Tumblr but it keeps failing >:(
Tumblr can’t handle her
Welcome to the Dina plush club!
Bryy holding unto mine for safe keeping. Can I still join? ?
I wish I could post the ASDFmovie butterfly-steals-my-girlfriend meme.