557

Moratorium
Posted on July 22, 2025 by David M Willis

557 thoughts on “Moratorium”

  1. Justnobodyfqwl

    I need more of this sloppy awful making out like, right now

    1. Elf grrl

      Next slipshine teaser dropped

    2. Sharizard

      That ‘i can’t help it i just have to kiss you’ energy. Gah. I can’t get enough of it!

  2. Bootshivers

    Puns: the true aphrodisiac

    1. Doctor_Who

      Joyce: mistress of seduction.

      1. Rodrigo

        Joyce can pull gay guys and straight girls with her triangle smile

    2. True Survivor

      Huh, you know we’ve always assumed that fatherhood led to a predilection for terrible puns, but it makes more sense if causation is reversed.

      1. Yet_One_More_Idiot

        Wait wait wait… “until we’ve sorted everything out”?

        So is Dotty implying that she actually intends to end their current relationship and get together, like, properly?

        My shippy heart can’t take this! <3

        1. Sharizard

          At the very least, she’s trying to be responsible about it, though what the actual plan is is hard to say. Joyce is extremely smitten with Joe that even after making out with Dorothy all day i can’t see her having the will to break up with him.

        2. I_Only_Comment_Occasionally

          He’s going to break up with her and really struggle with not going back to his old womanizing ways.

        3. Yeet

          I don’t know, him bringing it up to dorothy in a friendly manner isn’t exactly indicative of him not seeing this coming at all or instant regression

        4. VicMortimer

          Gross. No.

          Polycule.

        5. yet_one_more_idiot

          Actually, yeah, THIS. A polycule is always the better solution! ^^

          Not sure Joe would want to go with it, with all he’s been doing to be a responsible and monogamous bf – pretty certain Walky would though.

        6. ZombieKyrik

          I don’t know if Walky likes Joyce enough for this; let alone whether he is physically attracted to Joyce.

        7. DanLovatClark

          Not all members of a polycule are required to be dating all other members. Walky could happily date Dorothy and no one else and still have a valid relationship, even if Dorothy is also dating Joyce, who is also dating Joe.

          You’re not required to even LIKE all your metamours, although it probably helps.

    3. Queen Anthai

      I mean, it’d work on me.

    4. Pocky

      she learned from Becky lol

  3. Amós Batista

    Do I have to watch them kissing in every strip? Ok, good.

  4. Mada

    ..Yeah, they’re down bad.

    1. Rabid Rabbit

      Not yet, but I’m sure one of them will go there soon.

      1. Throwatron

        i mean, i can’t see any reason either of them would be good at it. not that it’s likely to matter

        1. Decidedly Orthogonal

          Dorothy is quite likely to have experience on the receiving end, and if you don’t think she took notes on what felt good, you’ve not being paying attention. It’s clear to me that her spirit guide is BATMAN.

          …

          And he can breathe in space.

        2. Jen D

          And therefore he, and therefore Dorothy, can breathe in other spaces where it’s hard to properly respirate.

          You can fill in your own speculation as to where I am thinking of.

        3. Erik

          There’s a great line in the first Kate Kane book – she’s in a hot tub with her vamp GF, and they’re kinda arguing; the vamp says something like, “There are people who would think in this situation that it’s an advantage to have a girlfriend who doesn’t have to breathe…”

        4. Tatterhood

          But Batman doesn’t go down.
          https://www.vulture.com/2021/06/batman-cant-go-down-on-catwoman-dc-says.html

        5. Taffy

          YES HE DOES. HE’S THE BEST AT IT.

      2. Steamweed

        Place yer bets, everyone. Who licks first?
        1. Dorothy
        2. Joyce
        3. Both: It’s yin-yang 69 time!

        (payouts doubled if it’s right there outside the dorm entrance)

        1. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          Judging from today’s strip – I’ll bet that Joyce makes a pun that causes Dotty to lose all self-control and go down on her.

    2. zee

      Down apocalyptic

  5. Dot

    Oh good. It keeps going.

  6. NGPZ

    LMFAO IM DEAD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA XD

  7. shadowcell

    ah, such roommates

    1. Grimeyville

      Famously gals being pals.

  8. Sapph-o

    Wow. Just wow.

  9. Rose by Any other Name

    Dorothy said it. I will now – and only now – concede that she and Walky are in a relationship. Apparently.
    Also, these two are reminding me of me and my wife and I love them.

    1. Alongcameaspider

      I might be wrong but I am like 75% sure it’s been said at some point since they got back together

      Granted neither of their hearts seem really into it, but still

      1. Throwatron

        I think Walky would have been pretty into it…if he didn’t recognize almost immediately, due to knowing Dorothy so well, that she was the one who wasn’t all the way in. She didn’t mean it that way at that time, but her “I can afford to make mistakes at this, because this doesn’t matter” was impossible for Walky not to clock. He’s smarter than most readers give him credit for. Dorothy may not have realized she was talking about more than one thing; Walky realized.

        1. Mr.Morningstar

          Walky is not dumb for sure, there’s been multiple instances kf the comic outright pointing out he’s not dumb, just lazy, and with a bit of adhd.

          He was ifni recall a straight A student in school, he just didn’t need to study, the difference is college is a different beast so what used to work for him before isn’t enough now.

          He’s also perceptive of other people, he was joking but he copped joyce and dorothy being kinda into each other first.

          People underestimate him constantly in and put of the comic.

        2. Joy

          I relate to that, just… downspiraling in college and dropping out. I was used to doing a lot of extra studying in the first month and then coasting through the semester, using the extra time I bought myself to prepare for the next semester’s content!

          In college, though, you don’t get to have the next semester’s syllabus ahead of time, I guess? Not only that, but my college 100 professor kept insisting that I don’t work ahead, which made things harder for me. On top of that I experienced bigoted harassment on campus and sexual harassment on campus which made everything more difficult, and I had to spend a lot of the time and energy I would’ve spent doing homework just taking the bus. I also didn’t have wifi at home and my laptop at the time was really slow.

          I stopped going to college and the thought of going back stresses me out. I hope he doesn’t have to deal with… all that.

        3. Dot

          It certainly helped that her comment fed directly into the inferiority complex he’s had about Dorothy for a while now. I don’t think he’s ever thought that he’s good enough for her.

        4. Grimeyville

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/04-for-me-it-was-tuesday/undertaking/

          What would you say if I told you that Dorothy may have felt the same way, just never voiced it.

        5. Dot

          I’d say that’s more symptomatic of Dorothy’s recent doom spiral than an inferiority complex about Walky specifically.

        6. Li

          I think she felt that way a little early on in their relationship, and then the Pajama Jeans storyline happened, and she was confronted directly with that unconscious assumption and how shitty it was.

          The line you’re underlining with this link is definitely more Dorothy reacting to being repeatedly told that she’s better than “this”, better than “that”, and getting more and more frustrated because she feels like a pile of garbage. So instead of trying to argue with Booster, someone she barely knows, about Walky being better than they think he is — she argues with the other half of the statement, about not being better than “this”.

          It’s pretty much exactly Garbage Roof sentiments, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen argued means that Amber and Walky had low opinions of each other, but Dorothy really does get the most uncharitable readings sometimes.

    2. Taffy

      What, cuz they’re gay?

      1. Rose by Any other Name

        I mean, yes, but also because they’re a pair of autistic dorks who love that fact about one another. One of the things my wife and I love about one another is that we get each other in a way no one else does, and have for a long time. Our brains are compatible in a way we were with no one else. My wife will make the perfect dumb joke and my heart will swell with love because that same stupid joke was already in my head.

        This is also why I can’t imagine having a romantic relationship with anyone who already wasn’t my best friend first. Which, you know, also the case with Joyce and Dorothy.

        I’m feeling a lot of parallels is the point.

        1. Taffy

          My girlfriend and I do the same thing! Always good to click with somebody. Makes life easier.

      2. thenamelesssamurai

        Do you have a source on that avatar btw? Really like that one.

        1. Taffy

          Willis drew it, I just recolored Joyce and made her look at the camera. The gravatar is the largest version of the image that exists.

        2. thenamelesssamurai

          Gotchha. Fair. Any chance you have the source of the original drawing them

        3. Taffy

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/workedout/

      3. feli

        It’s called bisexual, I believe.

    3. ScienceOfFantasy

      Dorothy and Walky are in a relationship, yeah, but it’s really not a healthy one. I haven’t gotten the impression either one are really invested in it, for different reasons.

      That said, it’s still gonna hurt Walky when the news drops. Probably for the best in the long run.

    4. Bittersweet

      She’s said it several times, both inside and outside of this storyline lol. When they got back together, she said things were all back to how they used to be, even.

      1. Jerach

        “back to how they used to be” including her fear of committing to it too most likely

    5. Li

      She said something like “that’s up to you [Walky]; I’d like us to be”, and then she did use being with Walky and Joe respectively as a reason to not do anything at the end of previous storyline. That said, I’m still not sure how much of that is because she actually thinks Walky would be upset*, and how much was just her grasping at straws to pump the brakes.

      *Pls note that she (and Joyce) can think their boyfriends would be fine with this and still be wrong.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Joe will absolutely not be fine with this.

        1. Li

          Okay, I didn’t say he wouldn’t be? I expressly said it’s possible for Joyce to think otherwise and be wrong. So I’m not sure why this reply was made to me.

        2. morleuca

          the best part about that is that Joyce is going to so confused about it, as Billifer had explained to her it was fine to occasionally hook up with your galpal, and it wouldn’t mean anything.

  10. Taffy

    JOYCE YOU ARE NOT HELPING ?

    1. John Campbell

      That kind of depends on what the goal is, doesn’t it?

      1. Taffy

        True. If the goal is to get Dorothy splashin’ like it’s Holiday World, Joyce is helping immensely.

    2. Reltzik

      This was a slow burn relationship that took 15 years before it finally hit it off. And I maintain that 15 year latency is, in fact, hell ping.

      1. stellatedHexahedron

        forget joyce, somebody should be kissing *you*

  11. Alongcameaspider

    So bad puns turn Dorothy on, Walky never had a chance

    1. Nono

      Okay but Dorothy didn’t laugh at j’acuzzi so how much does she REALLY appreciate puns

      1. John Campbell

        They’re just at the stage of their relationship where it doesn’t actually matter what Joyce says, Dorothy will think it’s adorable and hilarious and an excuse for kissing.

      2. Laura

        When was that?

    2. Wack'd

      walky’s puns are too good

  12. John Campbell

    Or a lesbatorium.

    1. Steamweed

      Lezzatorium?

  13. Cholma

    Just two dorks being dorks.

  14. Opus the Poet

    It’s like morons should be less-ons.

    1. Reltzik

      I can think of a few morons that could use a few lessons.

      1. Plain Marie

        A+ >-D

    2. Tatterhood

      Less-offs, even

  15. Nono

    Oh I get it.

    This is just Claire from QC as a ship. Dorothy is the uptight micromanaging part, Joyce is the puns.

    1. Taffy

      Nah, these two encourage others to have fun in their presence.

      1. Thing 2

        I had such a struggle with this gravatar. Joyce’s face and ear tirned into a kind of daffy duck beak for me and I couldn’t get past it for ages.

        1. Nymph

          I don’t think that’s Joyce. I think that’s Carol, hence the grey hair.

        2. Yumi

          I don’t think it’s Carol. Her hair isn’t in that style, and she doesn’t look that much like Joyce overall. I think it’s supposed to be anti-Joyce, with the “anti” thing coming from a Kingdom Hearts thing or something. (I’ve never actually played Kingdom Hearts, and this is just what I vaguely remember from Taffy from who knows when.)

        3. Nymph

          Ahhh that makes sense too, thanks.

        4. Taffy

          Bingo. I don’t recall the context, but somebody said something at the time that made me want to turn Joyce into a Nobody. A little tweaking and back lighting later, here we are.

        5. Li

          I really genuinely miss when it seemed like typical Nobodies had some sort of palette swap! Darn it, Nomura.

        6. Taffy

          I’m Extremely Normal About™ Larxene, and I really wish I could play Kingdom Hearts 3 with mods, so I could make her eyes the right color. That game changing everyone’s eyes to yellow without changing their skin or hair as well, it just felt half-assed. Roxas and Naminé being so distinct from Sora and Kairi made it surprising when you learned they were spin-off memes of existing characters. Now everyone just looks pretty much the same as their source and they all wear identical coats, so it makes the cast too same-y in design. Hell, if someone’s new to the series, I wouldn’t blame them for thinking Ansem and Xemnas are just the same guy from different angles at first.

        7. Li

          I completely agree with the second half and you have my sympathies for the first half!

          It absolutely just feels lazy. I guess confirmation that the tear drops on Axel’s face were tattoos, since they were gone when he went back to being Lea*? That’s it, nothing else changed even a little, I get that Roxas and Namine were Different ™, and I guess that gave Nomura an excuse to introduce Ventus (though why he bothered, since there’s no coherent explanation for Vanitas to look like Sora)………. but ugh.

          BTW, if you want my tin foil definitely-not-canon-but-Nomura-can’t-take-it-away-from-me explanation for Namine at this point, it’s that she’s Sora’s Nobody, because Sora’s trans. Since Roxas retroactively became Ventus’s Nobody, and Princesses of Heart aren’t supposed to “make” Nobodies because no darkness, Namine is Sora’s Nobody now. This also explains Xion. Nomura definitely didn’t mean any of it this way because he’s not that cool, but he’s never going to Joss it either because it’s not popular enough in fandom for him to even know I’m thinking it.

          * Also this name is literally pronounced Leah in the Japanese version, Ria, リア. The fact that all the characters in the English version pronounce it “Lee” is base cowardice.

          Thank you for coming to my Kingdom Hearts mini TED talk.

        8. Taffy

          I can’t wait for Kingdom Hearts 4 to come out in 2030 and have a 12-minute cutscene of Sora chancing by one of those buildings where you talk to a therapist person about gender, walking in to ask what it’s all about, having a very Gender conversation with someone in the waiting room, and walking out with an appointment to come back next week and a Pride flag keychain for his Keyblade.

        9. Li

          I would unironically love that. The cringier the better tbh.

      2. Amara

        When Claire isn’t on the clock, she’s very encouraging of fun. Isn’t she one of the most frequent weed smokers in that comic?

        1. Pergola

          You may be thinking of her mom.

        2. Yugnat

          Actually according to a fair share of QC readers, Claire is literally just Satan.

        3. Taffy

          I don’t interact with other readers of that comic much, so I’m not familiar with the extreme caricature opinions of Claire, but I see her as a massive joysuck after a certain point.

  16. AGV/Ruby

    Oh dear, Joyce has found the cheat code

    1. NGPZ

      “you press up up down down left… erm…”

  17. sisterofdarkoneko

    LEZATORIUM LEZATORIUM LEZATORIUM

  18. Reaver

    This is so friggen messy someone pass the popcorn.

    1. NGPZ

      ?

    2. Taffy

      ??

    3. I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

      ??

    4. Florence

      ?

    5. Laura

      I get the feeling we’ve maybe done this game before, but…

      …What’s your favorite topping to put on popcorn?

      1. Taffy

        More popcorn.

        1. Clif

          <3

      2. Dara

        Honestly it’s more caramel corn or kettlecorn for me. Popcorn is good too tho’, but dang, kettlecorn.

      3. NGPZ

        I love rainbow popcorn, real good, but I swear if it ain’t the heroin of the flea market XD

        1. Laura

          Huh. I had never heard of rainbow popcorn before!

          Today I Learned…

          https://www.wikihow.life/Make-Rainbow-Popcorn

      4. Laura

        Nice. I’m a honey and peanut butter kinda fool, myself.

        Garlic butter and honey is pretty decadent too, though.

        Or chocolate, peanut butter, and melted marshmallows!

        No, no: garlic, ginger, cayenne, sesame seeds, and nutritional yeast!

      5. Dara

        Oh, but, I remember – we used to get this white cheddar salt dust to put on popcorn we made at home, and that was quite good. So for true popcorn, I’ll say that.

      6. Ray Radlein

        A Terry Pratchett described in Moving Pictures, “if you put butter and salt on top of it, it tastes like salted butter”

      7. Laura

        Yummers, all of ’em! ;-9

      8. morleuca

        Yeast extract and tamari is pretty good. Also getting the movie theatre concessions guy to make you popcorn cooked in the butter topping instead of the usual oil is amazeballs.

      9. pig

        Parmesan cheese! Or m&ms, but not at the same time
        .

      10. Wack'd

        i’m a purist. butter, salt, and that’s it

      11. Reaver

        Enough butter to drown a man and enough salt to kill all of the demons in Hell

      12. Laura

        Dish delish! ;-9

  19. Irreleverent

    More like lezatorium.

  20. Amós Batista

    Fine, we need the 2 person that are talking about latim yesterday here.

    1. Dara

      You rang?

      Moratorium is absolutely as much of a Latin derivative as it sounds. Less, though – I had to look that one up because although I knew there was no way in hell it was from Latin I didn’t know if it was Celt or Germanic or what.

      Turns out it’s proto-Germanic, arriving in English by way of Old English via Anglo-Frisian. Hypothetically, it goes all the way back to Proto-Indo-European, which means basically that as a word, it’s old as balls.

      1. Jeff K!

        I had to check – “ball” also hypothetically dates back to Proto-Indo-European, which means that as a word, it’s old as less!

        1. Dara

          nice ◕ ◡ ◕

        2. Amós Batista

          obrigado ?? thanks

  21. Shakes

    If every strip of this webcomic going forwards is to be nothing but these two girls kissing I must inform you about am okay with that.

    1. Taffy

      Finally, a webcomic worth reading. No shade on Willis’s prior works, but Joyce & Dorothy’s Big Makeout Road Trip is cash money in the bank.

    2. Astariel

      I agree!

  22. NinjaNick

    It’s an addiction.

    1. Lumino

      I can’t make a full sized dissertation on it (on phone) but this relationship is reminding me way too much of Billie and Ruth.

      Sure it’s cuter, but equally self-destructive.

      1. Throwatron

        It’s the raw naked codependency that’s similar.

        1. Wack'd

          they seem pretty clothed to me!

        2. Dot

          Give it time.

        3. Proxiehunter

          They have to shower eventually or they’ll start to smell.

      2. Astariel

        Equally self-destructive as a literal suicide pact? I think you’re exaggerating.

        1. Lumino

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/cantleave/

          Both of them ran into a hostile area covered by ACTIVE SNIPERS.

          They are wildly self-destructive and call it ‘love’. It’s the furthest fucking thing from it. Both of them are completely destroying their lives and painting it as a good thing. Watch the fallout from this, because it’s coming.

          Watch how both of them did irreversible damage to their interpersonal relationships, personal standards and goals, and tell me it’s “Less destructive” than what Billie and Ruth had.

  23. Embe13

    Joyce has mastered the dad pun we’re doomed!

  24. darkoneko

    ooh this is gonna be a disaster and very interesting to watch 😀

  25. Reflex76

    Just doing one of Jake’s 15 Tiers every twenty seconds.

    1. Laura

      Hm?

      1. Taffy

        https://youtu.be/_HJY8xcJOEg

        1. Taffy

          Fuckin slippery fingers. Jake the Dog, from Adventure Time explains relationships to his best bro Finn, who’s just confused by the end of it.

        2. Laura

          Ah. Never seen Adventure Time until now, so I’m just as confused as Jake’s friend, but, thank you!

        3. Taffy

          And if you’re confused about why Finn is wrapped in foil like a burrito, it’s to protect him while he hangs out with his girlfriend (at the time), the Flame Princess. She’s made of fire and he’s made of human, see.

        4. Laura

          Wow. OK. Now I know! Thanks!

        5. Giffem

          and that’s why YOU STAY AWAY FROM TEIR 15!!!

          jake on the other hand had puppies roughly right after that. he did not avoid 15

  26. RassilonTDavros

    Perfect, no notes.

  27. Heatth

    Ok, they have a plan, everything is fine now.

    1. Taffy

      Not a shred of doubt.

    2. Kyulen

      If they could get around to actually following that plan, that would be great.

  28. Bwsab

    I am a Joe / Joyce shipper. …but awwww!

    1. Elf grrl

      Yeah, kinda hard to be upset when these two are this adorable together. Sucks its going to hurt a lot of feels along the way.

      1. IntangibleMatter

        I’m a sicko and along for the ride no matter what happens. All possibilities will both sting and be cute as hell

    2. Vulcanodon

      Yeah, somewhere in my head there’s a thing that creates a whole universe fork just so whatever couple can be cute and happy together. So Joyce and Dorothy is one universe, and there’s another for each of them with Joe and Walky respectively.

      1. Li

        I think that this is kind of literally how most shippers operate.

        Person 1: “I really hope A starts dating B!”
        Person 2: “But B is currently in a happy relationship with C.”
        Person 1, confused: “…And?”

        Not necessarily because the shipper hates C. But because C has nothing to do with their shippy feelings, not really.

        I think most of us have operated on this level at least once. Not necessarily hoping C gets dumped or cheated on, but just…….. not thinking about C at all in the context of their shipping.

        Me, I continue to hope the poly thing works out, because I think it would be interesting and also cute.

        But I think pocket universes where X happening doesn’t necessarily lead directly to Y? Are completely normal ways of interacting with fandom.

  29. Freezer

    I was about to say “It’s refreshing that they didn’t jump straight into dancing the Clamdango and are actually considering their boyfriends in all this…”

    But the arc is still young.

    1. True Survivor

      The half-lidded sexy eyes Joyce is making in the last panel does not provide confidence in their capacity for restraint.

    2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Not in the street!

      They might frighten the horses.

  30. Alongcameaspider

    What are the odds Joe or Walky are watching from one of the windows, or that pictures of their first kiss are already plastered all over the internet?

    1. Thag Simmons

      Feel pretty high, honestly.

    2. Bittersweet

      I’m lowkey expecting that literally every single person they know is about to be on the other side of that window, which will be even funnier because that window is opaque for us for artistic reasons, but lit windows are usually not opaque for people outside of them irl lol

    3. Nono

      It’s also been established that the acoustics in the area are pretty good, solid chance a lot of people have heard them.

    4. Cass

      Highly suspecting that Joyce fearing Hank would find out about Jocelyne because of photos from the protest is instead about to lead to her immediately being thrown out of the closet herself when she’s barely figured out she was in one.

    5. Kyulen

      That seems likely, or maybe somebody working for a local news organization has already taken a picture or video of them kissing at the protest.

      1. Mr D

        Okay so, question, last week there were a fair number of people talking about the news taking a picture of them.
        Was that shown anywhere? Or is this, like, a safe assumption that a protest would have news people reporting and taking pictures?
        Or is this something in a patreon comic that I missed?

        1. Kyulen

          I’m just assuming there might have been some news people there taking pictures, but I haven’t seen the patreon comics so I don’t know for sure.

        2. Thag Simmons

          Neither of the Patreon strips at the protest feature a visible photographer

        3. Mr.Morningstar

          No, but there WAS a picture of jocelyn in some news article or on TV that hank saw, so it’s prolly safe to say there was some journalists and photographers there.

    6. Reltzik

      Mmm…. midling-low. Walky’s gonna be watching cartoons, not watching out the windows or browsing images from the protest. Joe’s trying to find things to distract himself from being horny for Joyce, so he’s not going to be looking for her.

      Of course, if Amber was fronting, rather than AG, odds would be VERY high of those pictures getting to Walky very quickly via anonymous routes. And since she’ll be fronting eventually, and since they share memories… yeah, Walky’s going to find out before long.

      1. Laura

        Hopefully — depends where and how AG is, right now…

        1. Steamweed

          I’m hoping A-G/Amber wasn’t cop-piled and arrested. I can see her being off-camera, watching these two, having escorted them distantly to make sure they get home. I can also see her not interfering at all.

        2. Sharizard

          A-G/Amber getting arrested and having to deal with cops connected to her dad works annoyingly well with her character that i can see it happening.

        3. thejeff

          If Amber gets arrested as Amazi-Girl, cops connected to her dad are the least of her problems.

  31. Matt Beardface

    Step one: dump boyfriends due to startling new romantic revelations.
    Step two: crisis adverted!

    1. Kyulen

      If only they would actually get to step one.

  32. Dante

    Girls. GIRLS. I AM NOT COMPLAINING.

    But you two are courting danger here oh my god slkdjgskld every throw of the die right at the entrance of y’all’s building makes it riskier.

    1. Taffy

      Which one is Danger?

      1. IntangibleMatter

        “We’re not flirting with disaster, we’re rounding third base and asking if disaster has any condoms.” – John Oliver

        1. Steamweed

          That man is great for quotes!

    2. Amara

      If this is the main entrance, yeah. But I’ll have you know that rarely used staircases are great places to have illicit make outs. Especially in a college campus with a lot of buildings and staircases.

      But yeah this is right here out in the open, even if it is a side entrance it’s still too visible. They’ll need to start using some secret stairs.

  33. Amós Batista

    How Joyce embraces and kiss Dorothy so easily and comfortable. I’m loving this

  34. Syl

    embracing her queerness has given Joyce access to the Jocelyne bad pun skill point

    1. Throwatron

      the bad puns are inside the queer kids, all along

  35. Staszu13

    Ok panel four my official favorite Willis World (including both Walkyverse and Dumbiverse) bit ever. Lessatorium. Har har

  36. Dara

    whelp guess it’s time to update the icon but not the way anyone might expect

    (gravatar’s slow to update, it’s supposed to look like this)

  37. Friday

    We’re going to pan up and Becky will have seen all of this.

    1. StClair

      Yeah, I’m waiting for the Becky panel.

  38. HueSatLight

    I wonder if they’re not on the same page. Like Joyce thinks “sort things” is establishing a polycule, and Dorothy’s trying to hatch a plan for them to break up with Walky and Joe without looking bad.

    1. GholaHalleck

      I can hear Joyce now: “I can be like Danny, only you *both* get to bang me!”

    2. morleuca

      or just take a moment to detach from the moment, clear their heads, and spend some time actually thinking on things and what either of them actually wants.

  39. Elf grrl

    THE SICKOS HAVE IT!

    1. Steamweed

      Was there ever any doubt?

  40. mommert

    It’ll be really interesting to see at what pace the honeymoon phase of… whatever they’re gonna do wears off. It’s obvious how much the happy hormones are raging right now lol

    1. GholaHalleck

      I’m hoping its when Dina slaps Joyce for being a heel to Joe.

      But then I fully expect her to forget she and Joe were actually friends by the end of this.

      1. Jay

        I never even thought of Dina being the one to go after Joyce because of the honestly extremely healthy friendship she’s formed with Joe.

        This is now the only timeline I want to happen, I would love for Dina to go absolutely off on someone

      2. Grimeyville

        Dina has a laundry list of reasons to slap Joyce, as she’s suggested in the past.

        This will be the latest addition.

      3. Nymph

        Kinda hoping Dina doesn’t do physical violence to a woman for kissing someone. That’d be super weird.

        1. Dot

          I don’t think it’s the kiss in itself she’s likely to object to.

        2. Nymph

          Kinda hoping Dina doesn’t do physical violence to a woman for [whatever you think she’ll object to]. That’d be super weird.

        3. Wack'd

          dina has been known to tackle people and literally tear their clothes off with her teeth for getting dinosaur facts wrong

        4. Wack'd

          tear their clothes off with her teeth (nonsexual)

        5. GholaHalleck

          But maybe Nymph thinks that’s okay? I forget if she tackled a dude or a woman, that might matter too, considering the unnecessarily gendered language up there.

        6. Nymph

          It’s unnecessary to call Joyce a woman? lmao okay buddy. Let’s try this again for those who are struggling to understand:

          I hope [Character Name] doesn’t slap [Anyone] for doing [Anything that isn’t also physical violence]. That’d be super weird.

          Good enough? I’d prefer the people in the comic didn’t commit unnecessary physical violence, especially in a calm and non-comedic way (I accept slapstick violence because this is a comic and I accept that some things might happen in a comic that stretch belief)

          Sorry you didn’t like someone disagreeing with you and (for whatever reason) calling Joyce a woman.

        7. GholaHalleck

          Reply button died, so just gonna pop this here. “I don’t like seeing non-comedic violence” would have worked.

          You could have also said “I hope Dina doesn’t slap Joyce”

          Saying it the way you said it leads to an implication that you’d be fine with the slap happening to a dude. Which is gross. Saying it twice in the same fashion feels double gross, which is why I said what I said.

          Intended? No idea. Hopefully not.

        8. Taffy

          ACAB

        9. GholaHalleck

          The tone police is a paramilitary organization without funding of the government or beholden to it’s laws.

        10. Taffy

          APMCAB too

        11. Nymph

          I’ll say shit how I want to say it and explain when I want to explain. I’m not responsible for your paranoia about implications, and I said it twice the exact same way on purpose to show word substitution in the sentence.

          I’m happy with what I said, no matter what you took from it. Find someone else to be weirdly controlling to lmao

        12. Bobin

          Yeah but if you use words and setences wrong then people will probably derive the wrong meaning from them. I could say “cat’s are devilspawn” and, no matter how much I want it to, that sentence will never mean “I bought milk yesterday.”

          Adding that Joyce is a woman in the context of your sentence definitely implied that her being a woman was significant as to whether or not you would be comfortable with someone doing violence to them.

        13. Taffy

          It is not necessary or useful to force every sentence to be as neutral as possible.

        14. Yumi

          Including “woman” doesn’t seem like it means nothing, but it’s a reach to get to “an implication that you’d be fine with the slap happening to a dude.” To me, it would highlight how you’re hoping a woman gets slapped for kissing someone.

          Now, I don’t know your history and if there’s any pattern of wishing for physical violence against female characters (especially for engaging in sexuality) more than male characters. I would guess not, honestly. But it is something you can see happen in a lot of spaces. (And then you can try to avoid those spaces, but unfortunately, it can leak out.)

          Again, including “a woman” there doesn’t seem like it means nothing. But it’s also not totally clear what it does mean, so I don’t agree with your response.

  41. Taffy

    Haha, I am enjoying these fictional queers doing messy things and misbehaving for purposes of story reasons.

  42. Isactuallyabear

    Hehe, they’re reminding me of my and my not-quite-girlfriend, not-quite-just-friend online. I love doing silly wordplay and she loves it when I do it and sends me smooches over it. Something I’ve been learning is that being dorky is super cute and attractive when someone you like is doing it. Which is something I’ve been experience from both ends.

    Okay, fine, I guess I’m one of the sickos (at least, for now).

    1. Taffy

      Being ? funny ? fucking ? pulls ?

      1. Jon

        I managed to wangle my beautiful wife that way. (We first met in an AOL chatroom, where I was going by “Sir Rhosis of Lyvair”; when we first met in meatspace, at a picnic, someone mentioned the nice spring weather and we broke into a spontaneous duet of “Poisoning Pigeons In the Park”.)

  43. Sol

    Maybe it’s just me being aggressively aro/ace but like I consume (and create) a lot of allo content and I still just. Do not fucking get this. Like maybe if you’re on a mind-altering drug that alters your inhibitions and shit, but it’s not even an “we’re high on adrenaline and in the moment” passion situation anymore it’s been a *while*, and they’re still being this shitty? These are supposed to be characters we’ve been shown to have strong moral codes and care about other people, but apparently even after being reminded of the fact they HAVE RELATIONSHIPS THEY’RE IN they still can’t just fucking stop making out? Again, really fucking sucks to see characters I once liked just being uncharacteristically garbage. Especially considering Joyce kind of has first-hand knowledge that messing with relationships doesn’t really end up great? The whole Jacob thing? Not sure which is worse. On the one hand that one was more pre-meditated, on the other hand it didn’t get nearly as far and Joyce was very much an outsider to that whole relationship so wouldn’t care as much. Hm. Vote now in the polls? lol

    If Willis wanted a cheating arc so bad because “it’s a college webcomic” (??) I would’ve bought it more from Ruth and Billie, two people who’ve had some… questionable morals (*gestures at their whole relationship, Ruth’s entire abusive deal to the floor, Billie’s unhealthy dynamics with popularity and mean girl outlook*) and still very much hung up on each other, and hey maybe Willis could finally do something interesting with Jason, who I feel probably should’ve been written out of the strip along with Penny. Guy just has nothing to do here, when was the last time we even saw him? Like a year-ago?

    *Insert heavy rain jason meme here*

    1. IntangibleMatter

      Being horny or mutually attracted to someone can and will make you do incredibly stupid things despite your better judgement or morals, and will frequently continue as a snowball if something got kicked off in a spur-of-the moment thing.

      I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t find it entirely unbelievable at all

      1. Liara

        Absolutely, attraction’s one helluva drug, especially at that age

        Source: was in college once

      2. PumpkinCake

        “I wouldn’t normally have cheated, I was just too horned up” is even more unbelievable than “It wasn’t my fault, the alcohol made me cheat.”
        I guess it’s a good enough explanation for why these characters are acting out of character, but if they try to use that as an excuse, I’ll lose the last shred of respect I hold for them.

    2. Li

      I get it, I also have trouble understanding temptations to cheat that don’t involve some type of sex pollen, but is there nothing you feel extremely tempted by even though you don’t want to want to do it?

      Like maybe there genuinely isn’t, some people have much better impulse control than others due to brainweirds, but it’s not fundamentally different from any other unwanted temptation.

      1. Sol

        I have never been seriously tempted to do something that could have massive repercussions for me and people I care about, no. Little ones like binge-eating some chocolate despite trying to diet, sure, that only affects me, and it’s like… two chocolate bars. But I have been in several situations where it would have been INCREDIBLY easy for me to be a very manipulative person to a friend, and I didn’t do that, because ultimately I valued them as people and I have a strong moral ethic that I adhere to. Fuck man I have been in situations where it would’ve been super easy to steal from Giant Canadian Grocer(tm) and I still didn’t because Stealing is Wrong ™.

        1. Sol

          Why did one of the (TM)’s become little and the other one didn’t? Is it a spacing issue? Let’s test:

          Crimes(TM)
          Crimes (TM)

        2. Sol

          Not a spacing issue, and also not a capitalization issue, I am at a loss.

        3. Sol

          Wait maybe it has to be tiny text? I thought I had capitalised the second instance but maybe not.

          Crimes ™

        4. Sol

          I am now the owner of useless knowledge! And so is everyone else in this comment section I guess. Go forth with this knowledge, please use it for evil, or what’s even the point?

        5. pig

          Testing ™
          One, two(tm)
          Testing(testing)

        6. AK

          This is one of those things that had me convinced for a long time (through my teenager years) that having a sex drive must be a terrible thing that was profoundly distracting and made people do stupid shit.

          While that impression wasn’t like. 100% wrong? It’s much more of a desire structure and impulse control problem. Gods know I will do dumb impulsive shit to achieve things that are emotionally charged enough in my desire structures, it just looks more like jumping through hoops to avoid things that make me anxious (or for a while lying to my partner to avoid stuff that made me anxious, whoops) or doing a lot of work for very little reward if I get fixated on an outcome. As far as I can tell a sex drive just generates a bonus desire structure, and people get to develop impulse control as they learn to handle that desire structure, same as with any other desire structure.

          Hoooopefully that makes sense? I tried.

        7. Laura

          Yes, that makes perfect sense.

          I get what you’re saying. If one has never strengthened a particular “impulse control” response to desire, then figuring out how to control it, doesn’t always just come naturally.

          Thank you for that insight. It’s helpful.

        8. Li

          I think this is basically it!

          Also some people have a big head-start on impulse control, because some people’s brains are just wired very differently. It can certainly be developed like a muscle, but some folks start out with a naturally buff “muscle” and some people struggle to gain “muscle”, no matter how hard they try.

          It’s unfortunate when the folks in the first group then start crowing about how much better they are as human beings than the folks in the second group. When it’s basically like bragging that you’re so good at resisting chocolate, but you’ve actually just never liked how chocolate tastes in the first place.

        9. Li

          Oh I see.

          I thought you wanted to better understand other people, but you just wanted an excuse to feel superior to them.

          I needn’t have bothered lol.

        10. Sol

          I feel like you’re reading too much into what I said, Li. I’m not wanting an excuse to feel superior, I just don’t get it, and nothing you said helped me get it. Thoughts are different to actions, and it’s not like this is a situation where you need to make a choice that’s gonna suck no matter what, this is a choice of “hurt someone I care about” or “dont”.

        11. Yumi

          I actually think this is absolutely a situation where you need to make a choice that’s gonna suck no matter what. The cheating can up the impact, but someone was going to get hurt. But maybe you mean “the situation” as just “kiss now or not kiss now”?

        12. Sol

          Re-reading my post, maybe it’s not so clear that some of it was sort of ribbing myself? I don’t think myself morally superior for not stealing when given the chance, I was making fun of myself for being such a fucking square sometimes, but without tone it probably doesn’t come across that way.

        13. Li

          Well, that was just the first question. There would’ve been more, but yeah, the reply read as hostile to me. Tone is hard online. I don’t really remember where I was going with it anymore anyway.

          So I’ll instead say: I think they’re just meant to be caught up in several highs at once and not thinking clearly, simple as that. And I do think both of them have been shown to have… shall we say, under-developed impulse control? Dorothy, after she asked Walky for a “pause” on their relationship; and again when she tried to kiss him after he said he and Lucy were probably over. Joyce, over and over and over again throughout the comic — pretending to be Jacob’s girlfriend was a spur of the moment impulse, for example, but we’ve also seen it in more neutral contexts, and in moments of righteous anger, like when she exploded at her older brother John in loving but thoughtless defense of Becky.

          They’ve both also been depicted as having high sex drives, both within and outside of relationships, but like, even taking the horniness completely out of the equation, and putting aside that Dorothy is specifically breaking right now under the strain of too much self-denial in service of questionable future reward…

          Yeah. Bad impulse control in a lot of circumstances, from both of them.

          And I think that might be a little bit of a neurodivergence thing, and a little bit of a temperament thing — they both grew up as the type of Good Little Girl who just… didn’t often want things they weren’t allowed to have, and therefore didn’t get a lot of real-world practice resisting. In Joyce’s case, the obvious exception is sex… sort of… but she was also so afraid of wanting sex for a long time that I don’t think it actually took much effort to resist throwing herself at boys? She wanted it, and she was terribly ashamed of wanting it, but the potency of the shame and the fear of hell, plus her own inexperience, were sufficient “blockers” on the path to the point where she didn’t need to actually exert much in the way of willpower to resist.

          I hope that’s more edifying.

      2. Bittersweet

        I mean… yeah, but not sexually. I was kind of raised with the firm belief that there was no such thing as uncontrollable lust or horniness. Because there are a lot of horrifying implications to “I’m so attracted to this person that I cannot be responsible for my actions” being a thought process.

        Hell, I was even specifically raised to not take that or use that as an excuse for cheating specifically (for a far less dramatic statement). If drunk people don’t get a pass on cheating when on a mind altering substance, why would I give a pass to two random sober people just because they’re horny lol.

        This whole arc has me questioning my sexuality because it’s such an alien experience to me, and I’ve known and accepted that I was bi since I was 4 years old lol (I didn’t know the term until I was like 10 though.) I’m concerned I might be on the ace spectrum because it’s so unusual to me.

        1. Formerly Glenn

          Naw, I think the people that are just like “this is understandable” are just bad people.

          Like… it’s really not hard to not cheat on someone, even in your messy late teens/early 20s.

        2. Nymph

          I also make moral judgements of people based on what cartoons they enjoy. That’s a very normal thing to do and it makes total sense.

        3. Li

          Wow, I’m a bad person for understanding why this situation is happening. It doesn’t even matter that I’ve never cheated or, indeed, been remotely tempted to cheat in my life. I’m now bad just for comprehending the feelings of people who are different from me. New low reached!

        4. Taffy

          Eat a fuckin’ calzone about it.

        5. pig

          I really don’t think it’s a universal experience, and I really don’t think you need to reevaluate whether you’re aspec based on this alone. I am definitely not on the ace spectrum (though I suppose you just have to take my word for that), and in college I had plenty of allo friends with whom I openly discussed matters of sexuality and desire. And exactly one had this sort of impulse control issue around horniness, and zie never cheated.

        6. Li

          Who said “cannot be held responsible for their actions”. Because it sure wasn’t me.

          I also explicitly said that some people have better impulse control than others due to brain wiring. You can also train it up, like exercising a muscle, but some people have a natural headstart without needing to try.

          For some kids, the ole “you can have two cookies if you wait an hour or one cookie now” experiment was a bewilderingly easy choice; for some kids it was painfully difficult. That’s not because the second group of kids are all worse people and the first group are all better people? (And I don’t think the experiment took food security into account.)

          You can be ace and still experience some sexual desire, that’s gray ace for you, but also you can not be ace and still not have ever been tempted to cheat.

      3. Thing 2

        Well, there’s Darulio. He had sex pollen, or irresistable pheremones, or something…

      4. Big Z

        I’ll even cop to having been tempted to cheat! And I’ve also been involved in relationships that were disapproved of by many of my acquaintances and social circles for various reasons — mostly, that a lot of people are VERY opposed to polyamory even when they KNOW you and your partner both approve.

        And I have NEVER been in such a NRE high, even in my college days, that I’d be so uncircumspect as to make out repeatedly in front of the glass front doors to a building that contained people I knew would disapprove of what I was doing!

        1. Big Z

          Fuck’s sake, ladies, even the densest high school sophomore knows to find a goddamn bush to hide in before resuming the illicit kissing!

        2. Li

          I was legitimately just trying to explain to someone who said this whole thing was incomprehensible. I regret saying anything because apparently they didn’t actually want to better understand this stuff, but that is what I was trying to do.

        3. Big Z

          Heh, I honestly think there’s a subset of people who can’t even imagine this being a course of action, as opposed to angrily shaking their heads and pointing out the big glass windows.

        4. Li

          I’m one of them in so many ways!!

          But I’ve had it pointed out to me: yo, doofus, that’s not a moral high horse, it’s just that you don’t find that particular action appealing. And you’re also kind of accidentally dumping on, say, people with addictions.

          My mom’s been a heavy smoker all my life, and it smells horrible and makes me cough so I’m not remotely tempted by it. Alcohol also just tastes terrible to me.

          But there are other behaviors I actually have trouble regulating — like, say, commenting here, even though sometimes it’s very very stressful and unpleasant.

          I wanted to point that out compassionately, and I got a “I’ve never been tempted to do anything that would HURT PEOPLE” response, and a “people who say this is understandable are just bad” response, so. lol, lmao. Joke’s on me. :/

        5. AK

          Many people do not move through the world trying to be understanding and kind to strangers who are different from them. The internet in particular can be pretty brutal about trying to score points off of folks who introduce nuance to conversations. Unfortunately I think a lot of social media has kind of made it the culture.

          Anyway, just commenting to say I see you and I’m sorry that people are attempting to punish your instinct towards compassion. It’s a good instinct, I like reading you in large part because of it.

        6. Li

          This is very kind of you to say. Well, the second half is, the first half is just depressing truisms that I agree with.

          I will absolutely cop to not always succeeding!! Sometimes we all fail to live up to the better (not necessarily spiritual) angels of our natures. ._. But I do try, heh.

    3. Sol

      Wait I had an idea on how Willis can utilise Jason. It came to me in a flash of inspiration while being mad looking at another piece of deportation BS coming from the states. How incredibly privileged he is, being a white brit, able to stay on his visa illegally with no repercussions, when there are people of colour who *were born in the US* being sent off to camps and disappeared never to be seen again to a foreign country.

      Though admittedly that might be a *bit* too “real” for DoA which already struggled with the Palestine protest expy.

      1. Bittersweet

        As someone who is fairly white-passing yet whose mother is definitely not and at risk of losing her naturalization status (Her: “it’s just criminals” as though she herself had not committed many crimes. Like that doesn’t matter regardless, but tf woman YOU are in the demographic you’re using to excuse this!) I am unsure whether I would be able to read that storyline.

        Like, if it became the background for relationship drama while I’m staying up all night trying to watch the news and figure out if and when shit hits a tipping point that sees me sending my daughter unaccompanied on a one way flight to her godmother in Canada, I think I would drop the comic for real. And while I hated this storyline, DOA is actually probably my favorite webcomic, I just can’t deal with something so close to me being bungled. I would rather it not come up at all in this comic. Because it’s gonna be highly unpleasant to read no matter how well it’s written.

        1. Sol

          Yeah I agree, hence the “might be a bit too real” addition at the end. Sometimes it’s okay to not tackle a topic, even if realistically it would impact at least some of the cast.

        2. Laura

          Sending hopes and caring, for your mom. ?

    4. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      As Wolverine said, “Love makes you crazy.”

    5. Kyulen

      I liked Joyce and Dorothy as characters before, but this arc has really lowered my opinion of them a lot. Mainly because of the cheating, but also partly because the Bulmeria protest which was clearly a stand-in for the pro-Palestine anti-genocide protests on college campuses last year ended up just being a background event for Joyce and Dorothy realizing their feelings for each other.

      1. Nymph

        To be fair, the second part isn’t Joyce or Dorothy’s fault. That was an author choice. For the two of them, it was just a place they happened to be, not a dramatic backdrop for a smooch.

      2. Steamweed

        “It’s not our faults that we’re publicly kissing and cheating on our boys! The author’s making us do this!” Hey, works for me. Always blame the author.

        1. Nymph

          I specifically meant the way the scenes were laid out to problematically make the two of them “main characters” of a protest that had nothing to do with them. That’s… literally just Willis laying out the scene that way.

          In Joyce and Dorothy’s actual world, hardly anyone was paying attention to them. They were just two people kissing at a protest, which happens all the time.

    6. Bobby

      honestly I’m with you there, but I recognize that it’s because I cant relate to the attractiondrug that allos go through (also aro/ace).

      With all the build up Joyce and Joe have had and them finally getting together after years, and how quickly this has steamrolled all that, has made me disinterested in seeing where things go. This is coming from someone who’s very gay ok like yay for more sapphics but man

      1. Jay

        yay for more sapphics till willis gets bored of this relationship and crashes it for another.

    7. HueSatLight

      For Dorothy, it fits. This kind of hypocrisy makes sense. She was judgmental about Joyce and Jacob, it was academic to her. Her advice and “wisdom” are largely not from experience. And now she’s experiencing it and making bad decisions. I like it. Dorothy’s just as much a dumbfuck as any other character. I don’t know if I didn’t notice it in volume one (fall semester) or if how Willis wrote her changed, but she’s a lot more interesting to me after I realized it. Jennifer and Dorothy are a lot alike, similar levels of competence that they both overestimate. But Jennifer gives off the impression of less competent than she is, and Dorothy the impression of more.

      As for Joyce, I don’t know. Feels like the plot might be directing some of her actions. This storyline has been from Dorothy’s POV, though. Maybe there’s some Rashomon stuff going on.

      1. GholaHalleck

        It’s less that Willis changed how he wrote her, and more that the plot expanded to show she’s been talking out of her ass this entire time.

        I know I could kinda say that in a nicer way, but honestly? That’s what she’s done. She rolled everyone into thinking she was a put together person, who was a bastion of morality, but her moral compass doesn’t have a needle.

        1. Formerly Glenn

          Her moral compass lots its needle when she threw her whole dream away after one dumb kid questioned her motivations.

        2. Doopyboop

          I would argue that a lot of the changes for Dorothy’s character come from the kidnapping incident. I know it might be a bit simple to say “that was a traumatic day for her” but… it was a very traumatic day for her. We’ve been shown that she’s having nightmares about it.

          It’s one thing to stand by and say “hey guys, you should always do the right thing. Justice good.” and it’s another to be knee-deep in the thick of a terrifying situation that ended with the deaths of two people, two of her friends losing their parents, and watching someone she loved be snatched away and driven off into the horizon where she, for a moment, thought she’d never see her again. Dorothy followed the rules, she helped everybody escape, but two people still died and Joyce was still taken away for a bit there. And honestly, when you’re experiencing PTSD, a lot of your confidence and self-esteem in yourself is gonna be tanked. It isn’t just because Raidah pointed out that President bad, it’s that she knows Raidah’s not wrong. Raidah was just the last straw on her back. Like a mirror held up to her face saying “your ideals aren’t as solid as you think they are, your ideas don’t hold up at all. You’re nothing but a child playing pretend to be president”.

        3. thejeff

          I think this is in character for Dorothy. It’s not so much that her moral compass doesn’t have a needle, but that she has trouble following it. We see that here, where she’s the one protesting and trying to set limits, but unable to hold to them. And we can see that, in different circumstances, all the way back to her first kiss with Walky. Not a moral issue then, but still her deciding she shouldn’t do something then going ahead with it anyway.

    8. Seralyna

      I mean you just used an example that shows why this makes total sense for joyce. She is someone who has shown that she doesn’t see relationships as Sacred, because she was willing to do the jacob thing. Even if she came to the conclusion that “Intentionally trying to break two people up is wrong”, the fact that she had to come to that conclusion is an indication of this tendency, right?

      Add on the fact that this time she’s breaking HERSELF up, and she actually really wants the thing she is doing it for, for like, positive reasons and not just kinda spite. It’s not hard to see how this is a pretty easy thing for her to do.

      For Dorothy I think its a little different. For joyce, her opinion on relationships in general is kinda loose and she doesn’t take them as seriously or think about how others feel in them as much. For dorothy, she just genuinley doesn’t think her relationship with walky is significant IMO. It’s very easy to dismiss walky as a rebound, and conveniently believe his own dismissal of his own feelings, because joyce just means SO MUCH to her, and walky, I don’t think does.

      1. pig

        I had totally forgotten about the Jacob thing. Suddenly this present situation makes more sense to me and seems more consistent with Joyce’s character, beyond the “figuring out sexual morality post-deconstruction” theme that’s been ongoing.

      2. HueSatLight

        no, I did not.
        I see her acting like she doesn’t know she’s cheating, and the Jacob incident shows she knows she’s crossing a boundary.

        1. HueSatLight

          sorry, miscounted indents. please ignore “no. I did not”

    9. PhyrexianRogue

      Given that Dorothy has been on a ‘doing the sensible thing doesn’t help, it just makes me miserable’ arc for ages now, it’s not that surprising that she’s just doing it instead of having the usual reservations.

      And Joyce is Joyce, with all the lack of knowledge and experience about this stuff in general.

      It’s easy to see why this is probably a bad decision (even Dorothy’s sensible part seems to realize that), but it’s not a particularly unexpected or illogical development.

    10. eh, whatever

      *shrug* Extroverts.

    11. Dot

      For all Ruth and Billie’s issues, disloyalty was never one of them. In fact, Ruth broke up with Billie in part because if anything they were unhealthily loyal to one another to the point of codependency.

      Dorothy I expect this sort of thing from. She has been spiraling for weeks, and that’s resulted in her repeatedly disrespecting other people’s interpersonal boundaries – trying to take Walky from Lucy, trying to sabotage Joe and Joyce by teaching Joyce to masturbate, and now this. Meanwhile Joyce has been primed by Billie to think it doesn’t count if she makes out or even sleeps with her best friend. I’m disappointed in them to an extent, but these are precisely the characters to be exploring this with. I just wish it was more interesting to watch!

      1. Mr.Morningstar

        ..althoooough ruth did say she’d get back with Jennifer in a heartbeat despite being with Jason rn so.. I dunno

        1. Scruffy looking nerfherder

          Yeah, but she also immediately went to Jason and told him he was free to leave her after she said that and was very candid to him about still being hung up on Jennifer.

          Light years better than what Joyce and Dorothy are putting out.

    12. Balger

      Yeah joyce went frrom stereotype ‘jesus freak’ to the stereotype of the ‘greedy/cheating Bisexual’ after losing all her morals leaving christianity. Like you said at this point its not adrenaline, not the ‘moment’ or anything like this this is 2 people now discussing how to cover up their cheating.

      1. Proxiehunter

        I’m surprised you’re reading “no more kissing, no more hand holding” as an attempt to cover things up rather than an attempt to stop what they’ve been doing for the past few hours.

        1. Dot

          Well I’m not seeing “come clean to our partners” in Dorothy’s plan…

        2. Proxiehunter

          Give her time to get past step one of the plan. She’s having a hard time with that step. After we know what the rest of the steps are we’ll know if come clean to our partners is there or not.

          Until then assuming that isn’t in the plan is just speculation that people seem to keep getting preemptively upset over. Getting preemptively upset really doesn’t accomplish anything useful or good.

          Speculating that step might not be in there is one thing. The problem is, as I said, that people are just assuming it already with no evidence.

    13. Hroethvitnir

      In all seriousness, sex drive intensity is a spectrum even if you’re not or don’t identify as ace. I have always experienced lust as something incredibly overwhelming, like can’t think, can’t *see* if they touch me (when you’re in public and can’t act on it) sort of thing.

      And said arousal is directly tied to the other person’s, so people thinking “failing to resist something you know (but can’t feel right now) will hurt someone you love” is the same as “not caring or actively enjoying the object of your lust not wanting it”.

      Guess what! I also feel very strongly about cheating, and have not, in fact, acted on these feelings! But it can ABSOLUTELY feel like being drugged to be aroused.

  44. IntangibleMatter

    Five bucks says one or both of their boyfriends are looking out the windows at them

    1. Bash

      I think its Becky, personally.

      1. Nymph

        Becky would be the least dramatic option. She doesn’t have a dog in this race other than her own hurt feelings that Joyce doesn’t like her like that.

  45. Kyulen

    Just tell your boyfriends and properly break up with them already.

    1. Matt Beardface

      Hear! Hear!

    2. Amara

      You’d be surprised how easy it is for some people to compartmentalize. Joyce is gonna have like 0% guilt and just keep doing this on the down low as much as she can, while Dorothy is already being eaten alive by guilt but the thrills are stronger – for now. I expect Dorothy to end things with Walky, but only her.

      1. Mr.Morningstar

        Okay joyce isn’t stupid, she knows cheating is wrong, if she actually tries to keep this hidden and cheats on joe that’s actually just out of characters.

        1. John Campbell

          Nah, you can make out with your BFF, even bang once, and still be just regular besties. Billie says, and she’s the expert in this kind of thing.

        2. HueSatLight

          This whole arc would be improved like a thousand percent if that Billie interaction weren’t there.

        3. Nymph

          She spent ages trying to get Jacob to cheat on Raidah and then kissed him while he was dating Raidah.

          I don’t actually think it’s THAT out of character tbh.

        4. Astariel

          Whoa there, that kiss was all Jacob. Joyce had no part in initiating that one.

        5. Taffy

          She sure participated, though.

  46. Dave Van Domelen

    A Les-atorium?

  47. Liara

    I am so hooked on this. Inject the drama right into my veins!

  48. Joy

    I’m glad that they’re just being happy at this moment.

  49. Kristine

    Why do I get the feeling that Joe is going to be a lot more reciprocal to this than Walky?

    Like I can see Joe going down for a poly relationship I can’t see walky going down for a poly relationship

    1. Reltzik

      … I could, actually. He and Dorothy getting back together was an extremely casual thing, emotionally. It’s possible he’d be relaxed about it and take advantage of the newfound freedom to spend some time with Amber.

      … I don’t think that’s SUPER likely, but I could see it. Maybe one chance in three?

    2. GholaHalleck

      This is not how poly happens. This is how break ups happen.

      I am so tired of people equating Joe’s refusal of committed relationships with being down for poly.

      Poly is NOT just everyone banging whoever they want whenever.

      Joe is not a sex crazed moron who is down for two girls kissing. We have established, numerous times, that version of him was a cover for his fear of hurting people.

      Joe MIGHT MAYBE go along with Poly for a while, because he doesn’t want to fully lose Joyce, but it will not be something he enjoys or really wants.

      Meanwhile, Walky is already seeing that Dorothy has clay feet. I doubt he’s going to be down for Dorothy punting him off the pedestal *again.*

      1. Amara

        Joe is going to be down for poly not because he’s into it, but because he thinks his personal feelings are irrelevant with the weight of his past on his shoulders. And Joyce is shameless enough to do it anyways, is my prediction. And that’s if it even gets discussed and Joyce’s gal kissing doesn’t become a (im)proper illicit affair-style relationship.

      2. Nymph

        This is absolutely sometimes how a first experience with polyamory happens.

        Poly CAN be banging whoever you want whenever you want, it really depends on your boundaries and the boundaries of your partners.

        I don’t think we can really know Joe’s opinion on the situation for sure, so it’s actually fine for people to think he’ll be okay with poly even if it doesn’t mesh with your understanding of who Joe is as a character.

        I do agree it’s unlikely he’ll have a good time, but he might!

        1. GholaHalleck

          If Joe thought “Just bang whoever” poly was a viable option, I think he would have tried it before turning into Horn Dog Batman.

          I also think Joe would have had the Poly Talk *before* snogging anyone other then his SO.

        2. Nymph

          Maybe! We’ll find out, I guess.

    3. DashWallkick

      Joe’s a wife guy in the making and he’s going to either try to amicably break up with her or quietly ask her what she wants to do. Walky knows the end is coming.

    4. Jay

      If the poly angle is the way this gets resolved I’m going to think that’s a huge fucking cop out

      1. Nymph

        That’s fair! I’ll be excited to see some messy polyamory rep and excited to watch these morons figure out a way to make it work.

        1. Hroethvitnir

          Yessss. It’s not like Willis would plaster over the hurt feelings and general shit show going on here, but having these kids make a real go of it would make me so happy.

          People losing their mind and hooking up like this, then reality hitting and freaking out/talking to partner, them being monogamous for a while then deciding it could work is totally a thing. It’s also unlikely to work out, but so are all relationships at this age.

      2. HueSatLight

        They might try it, but I expect it would fail. Joyce seems like the only one that would be comfortable with it. Dorothy had a PTSD attack when Joyce went on a date with Joe. She bit Jennifer’s head off for taking Joyce to the walk-in clinic. Dorothy is too possessive.

        1. Bittersweet

          Dorothy is just too possessive to be in a relationship with Joyce rn imo, that clinic thing is definitely part of my hesitation to the ship overall. She’s got too many issues that directly affect her partners to really be in a relationship at all right now (and I say that very cautiously since I was often told I didn’t deserve love for my mental health issues, but Dorothy tends to be controlling, dismissive, or both of her partners and I think that’s the bigger issue as far as her dating goes), but specifically her and Joyce just… if these were two real people, this relationship would go off like a fireworks factory, it would be pretty at first and end horribly for everyone involved.

    5. Scruffy looking nerfherder

      I don’t know, Joe’s entire personality was painted by the hatred of infidelity and it’s effect on people. I really don’t see him agreeing to poly after his girlfriend exhibited the same flippant behavior that made him despise his own father and scared him away from anything but flings and booty calls unless Willis decides that their character doesn’t mean anything anymore.

      1. Big Z

        This right here.

        Joe would 100% be down to consider poly under ordinary circumstances, I would wager — but I have severe doubts he’d be willing to consider it as a patch on “oh, hey, I’m aggressively making out with Dorothy in a way that many would consider cheating, in public in front of the dorm”.

    6. Sajuuk-Khar

      I am and I remain the mad prophet of Dorothy X Joyce X Joe, and yes, a full reciprocal triangle, even if Joe and Dorothy balk initially. I think it’s got legs. It’s a solid boat. It will win the Suez Canal Grand Prix for shipping. If not now, then later.

      I don’t think it will “FiX tHiS” at all, it’ll probably be a fucking dramatic mess even if the ship comes in right away, but like, I didn’t hear no bell and I’m not scared of the morality police

      (Also for all the BUT THE CHEATING people: yeah, Joe’s whole expectation was that he would fuck up. You don’t have any better idea than I do as to what happens if Joyce fucks up. Stop playing.)

      I don’t think Walky fits in there mostly because I like seeing him and Joyce be incredible platonic shits to each other and also I like him with Amber. No deeper reasons, tbh, lmao

      1. GholaHalleck

        Danny walks up like “Bro, you just replaced me in the thruple.”

  50. Morrison

    ‘Maggie said “I guess now he’s TOW-Dad” and I married her all over again’ – David Willis.

  51. Derek

    these two are so fucking stupid

    1. Taffy

      I know, I love it.

  52. Mal

    This is very adorable. Like, so very adorable. And I still want them to face consequences. Nothing HORRIBLE. They’re teens, they’re figuring it out, that’s not easy. And a mistake, even a hurtful one, does not a terrible human make. In their own little bubble of bliss, it’s so sweet.

    But I still want reality to come knocking. Joe exists. And Walky exists. They don’t deserve this. And Becky exists–not in a “but SHE liked Joyce first, not fair!!” way, but a “she liked Joyce, and had complicated feelings about Dorothy, and is currently worried Dorothy is AWOL with no phone after watching Dorothy have a breakdown in their room, this is gonna be a lot” way. And there’s still a lot of baggage to unpack about Dorothy’s stress about Joyce’s safety and abandonment, and Joyce’s conservative upbringing still influencing her perspectives. This is very sweet, but all of that trauma doesn’t just disappear, either.

    Also the fact that this is happening just after Joyce’s Big Date with Joe keeps making this less sweet for me. It makes the cheating more stark to me. Again: messy, teens, emotions are hard, Joyce and Dorothy were already having Moments, I get it, I am not condemning these two to eternal misery as penance. But it’s a real sucker punch for Joe to have this happen, what, within 24 hours of their date? Especially after he talked to Dorothy? It’s very much “remember that friend I told you not to worry about? Well…” moment immediately after a night that felt important to both of them in some way. And I would like Joe and Walky to get to express their hurt in some way.

    1. Buli-Buli

      This. Dorothy and Joyce are very cute together, but this blossoming relationship NEEDS to have Consequences.

      Neither Joe nor Walky deserve to be cheated on.
      And neither will expect it since Dorothy and Joyce were the aggressors in pursuing those relationships.

      As for Becky…
      I’m expecting one of two things.
      Either Becky will either take the news –that what shot down Becky’s years long dream relationship wasn’t Becky’s gender, but Becky herself– poorly, until Dina distracts her. Becky will apologize.
      Or Becky will be shocked to discover that she really is over Joyce.

      The real question is will Becky approve on grounds of lesbian solidarity or dissaprove on grounds of standard ethics and morals.

      1. Dave

        Lesbianism alone is not enough to blind Becky to bad and good relationships. She actively worked to keep Ruth and Jennifer separate, and encouraged Joe to have sex with Joyce so that she can talk about raunchy experiences with her bestie. Plus, y’know, I’m pretty sure she takes the Ten Commandments seriously, and there’s a big one about adultery in there.

        1. Formerly Glenn

          Becky is too pure for this world.

          I really am looking forward to her disappointed face when she sees what Joyce and Dorothy have done.

      2. DashWallkick

        I think she’s just going to be really hurt and devastated that her longtime best friend was gay but not for her. Fortunately, Dina exists so it will not be crushing, agonizing loneliness.

        1. Tessea

          I worry that Becky might resent this on some level, and Dina might be hurt. I remember…. Sarah, i think, warning Dina that she might just be a rebound thing after Joyce’s rejection. Dina looked sad and said ‘I know’.

    2. Bash

      I trust Willis that there will be some consequences, and it won’t just magically resolve itself.

      1. Jay

        I both trust Willis that there will be consequences.

        but also distrust that those consequences won’t be very hand waved somehow

        1. Li

          Still? Did you see the tumblr post linked yesterday where Willis basically said a lot of why this is happening is because they’ve never written a truly messy cheating situation before?

          I think the mess and the consequences are a big part of the point.

          It might still not feel like enough, especially if Joyce and Dorothy get together anyway and stay together for a while, but handwaved away seems really unlikely.

        2. Sajuuk-Khar

          I hope Willis retcons it into being consequence-free because it’d be really fucking funny

    3. Icalasari

      I’m kind of expecting Becky to BE the consequence. She’ll find out about this, possibly be all, “I get it, it’s cool, I’ll keep your secret”, then talk to Dina about it and Dina gets upset, meanwhile Joyce and Dorothy are all, “Ah, we need to figure this out fast or things will blow up”

      1. Sajuuk-Khar

        This, except in reverse

        Dina is likely to be “ 😐 Well I don’t approve of this nonsense, but I’ll keep your secret, as a friend” and then Becky hulks the fuck out because MONOGAMY??? HONESTY???? JOYCE WHY ARE YOU KICKING IN THE BEDROCK SUPPORTS OF MY REALITY AGAIN?!??

  53. Pappenheimer

    Wordplay and lust…

    Long ago, when the world was young and my beard was red, there was a girl…we were walking out of the dorm talking, and I asked, “Do you like Kipling?”

    She replied, “I don’t know, I’ve never Kippled.”

    She was never in as much danger, I wager, of being seized and carried back upstairs – and even then, I was not a strong man, not was she petite.

    I still call her my Fullbright Girl; there is a song by Paul Simon that always brings the shape of her smile back to me.

    1. eh, whatever

      Are you sure that was even intentional?

      “And what is a lepo?”

  54. AlexaSpuds

    This so realistic in the fact that if my gf said a dumbass pun like that to me while I’m being anxious and trying to be serious there’s a good 85% chance I’m dragging her to bed immediately.
    Puns are a really great gay aphrodisiac.

    1. Throwatron

      dorksexuals of the world unite

  55. Fireprincesslily

    I mean come on, Naysayers. You gotta give em that one.

    1. Mr.Morningstar

      Literally most of us want them to not cheat and break up with thejr boyfriends. That’s all, it’s hard to enjoy it when there’s the dread of it blowing up horribly because breaking trust.

      1. Formerly Glenn

        I really really want this to blow up in their faces though. Everything is heading for some deliciously dumb drama.

        I do feel bad for Joe specifically. This is exactly in his trauma sensitivity zone. I feel less bad for Walky, because he obviously doesn’t want to be in this relationship with Dorothy anyways.

      2. Thing 2

        Literally most of us? Not what the poll implied!

        1. Mr.Morningstar

          Most of us “naysayers” I mean.

        2. Thing 2

          So… ‘Most of us naysayers’ (?People who say no to ‘cheating’?) say no to cheating…? Well, if that’s what you are saying, no, I can’t argue with that! Just not entirely sure why you’d say it, but, entitled to your opinion.

    2. Jay

      No. No I cannot give them this one cause again.

      THEY’RE BOTH STILL IN RELATIONSHIPS.

      *expletives*

      1. Taffy

        Hand it over ??

  56. Farmer_10

    Stop being cute and sort out your current relationships so I can enjoy this.

  57. Shadowydreamer

    Wake me when the cheating ends.

  58. Arianod

    “Oooh, I can’t not fuck her.”

  59. Nullset

    She is just feeling a very strong trauma response to that time she watched Amber stab that guy right here.

  60. Cycy

    I’m all for strips titled for Alanis Morissette songs, but I think this one’s a bit obscure.

  61. GLOSS

    So this is where we cut to Joe watching the news at the gym (since that’s always what’s on the TV there), where the video of those two making out on top of a hill with no one around them while tear gas canisters are being launched all around them becomes an iconic moment for the protest movement, right?

  62. Mr.Morningstar

    Considering the fact walky, Joe and becky were looking for the two of them earlier inhave a sneaking suspicion they’re gonna beg caught immediately and it’s gonna get super messy.

  63. Thing 2

    For a minute there, I thought the Relationship Paladins had given up/been swept away in an avalanche of Sickos/converted/left the building…

    1. Nymph

      Nah, but it was nice of them to let us have a day or so to enjoy this before they rushed back in.

  64. Fuzzy

    Man, the whiplash that Becky is gonna get when she flips from “there’s a 62% chance Dorothy’s dead right now and I failed to protect someone from suicide AGAIN” to “nvm Dorothy is alive and kissing Joyce, who likes kissing women-who-aren’t-me” is gonna put her in a neck brace.

  65. Kim

    <3 ?

  66. Ray Radlein

    Joe and Sarah are probably wildly concerned about Joyce right now, especially if they’ve seen the doubtlessly iconic kissing photo that put the two of them in the middle of the protest.

  67. JoeCovenant

    “We have to make a plan.”
    “Right – Tell no-one till we sort it out with…”

    “TONIGHT ON EYEWITNESS NEWS!!”

    “Ffffffffffffffffffffff……..!”

    1. CianM1301

      That brings up an excellent point, there’s a very real chance that Joe, Walky, Becky, etc. have already found out about Joyce and Dorothy via the news (especially considering that Alice found out via an article), and all we can do is sit back and wait for the inevitable confrontation(s).

  68. Sajuuk-Khar

    I bet you two wouldn’t make that kind of stupid puns if you knew that your evil, venomous infidelity pollen created by stupidly continuing to make out had literally just killed Joe (you see his dead body in tomorrow’s strip)

  69. Da Boy

    I’d be so happy for these dorks if it wasn’t for cheating.
    Also the longer they stand there, smooching it up the higher the chance Joe or Becky or Walky can just walk in on them.

    1. Sajuuk-Khar

      I’m surprised no one has died yet from the cheating radiation they’re giving off (cheating turns your body into plutonium)

      1. Da Boy

        Just wait for Joe to find out, he’ll explode into gory bits like one those goons from Hokuto no Ken whom Kenshiro punched.

    2. Heavensrun

      Or Jo *and* Becky *and* Walky.

      1. Da Boy

        Oh yeah all three just standing there together and staring would be peak comedy

        1. Taffy

          “Do we interrupt them?”
          “No no, I’m curious how this will play out.”

        2. Da Boy

          Walky has some snacks he offers to others.

  70. Taigan

    Oh jeeze. I just realized the next chapter is titled “not so smooth criminals.” Which makes me worry that the process of “sorting things” is probably going to be dragged out for a *long* time.

    1. Hroethvitnir

      Oh no. Please no.

      I mean, of course it is, but I might need to wait and come back to read it all at once if so.

  71. Sapph-o

    I just gotta keep reminding myself these teenage girls are written by a nearly 50 y/o white dude and that’s why there’s sometimes a big disconnect between how I experience a storyline as a wlw in my 20s and the actual authorial intent of said storyline… because I don’t THINK this storyline is intended to make me dislike Joyce or Dot but boy oh boy, it is. Top ten worst kind of sapphics to share community with.

    1. Da Boy

      I mean it IS Dumbing of Age about Teenagers making terrible decisions.

    2. Adeptus

      I feel you Sapph-o. I think Willis is going for Amour Fou like in French fiction. All consuming, often irrational and destructive passion. It’s very annoying to me as well (and I’m a white dude in my early fifties).

    3. C.T Phipps

      I think the messiness is absolutely intentional.

      1. Veronica

        It’s comedy drama, not comedy everyone makes good decisions and things work out as expected

    4. BorkBorkBork

      As a 40-year-old white dude, I feel I can say – age and race has nothing to do with it. You’re not feeling anything different towards these characters than pretty much most of us (other than those who are cheering them on mostly because they hold queer relationships as being of more value than non-queer… which is certainly an opinion).

      I don’t think that Willis is actively trying to “make you feel” one particular thing here. I think he’s trying to capture life, in all its stupid messiness. Everyone makes mistakes, some small, some big. You’re not supposed to love them for what they’re doing; you’re supposed to be feeling exactly how you are right now. Maybe a twinge of excitement, but also dread, and emphatic guilt, and pity, and several heaps of anxiety, and maybe even a smattering of disgust.

      But don’t let this kill your opinion of them. To mirror the Rachel/Joe thing: whether big or small, it’s not whether we make mistakes to begin with, it’s whether we learn from them and change.

      Toedad and Blaine and Clint and Carol and Mary and others aren’t villains because they did horrible things in the past. They are villains because they *continued* to do horrible things in the present. There are very few things that a person can’t eventually come back from. This is not one of those things.

      And despite the occasional accusation I’ve seen in the comments section over the years, Joyce isn’t a Mary Sue; she’s wrong many times, makes plenty of big mistakes. Jacob? Mistake. Ethan? Mistake. Her entire attitude the first month or two of college? Mistake. Joyce is defined by change and growth.

      1. perpetual summer

        I’d be a bit more careful throwing around “most of us” (I feel like we had a poll that doesn’t really support that statement, but even that aside, “many of us” serves the same purpose & is likely more accurate) aswell as assuming other commenters intentions behind their opinions – hard to not take that in bad faith.

        1. BorkBorkBork

          We totally did, the “Sickos” vs “Relationship Paladins” one. Ran for five weeks, June 7 to July 14. I paid close attention to that one.

          When I voted, in like the first 24 hours, it was 30% paladins, 70% sickos. That was right after the worst part of Dorothy’s spiral, after she freaked Becky out so badly that she called Walky over to get her, and Dorothy was in full-blown denial mode. Since then, we had Joe, Rachel, and Sarah working out together and the entire protest arc, and I noticed a lot more people getting frustrated with *how* it was happening, and not *that* it was happening. The poll ended at ~45 Paladins, ~55 Sickos.

          We can’t change our vote after we make it, and I know what I’m saying is just anecdotal and for all I know I’m dead wrong. But I did feel like public opinion shifted a bit during the protest arc. Not that they thought that they shouldn’t get together – that was ALWAYS popular – but that they didn’t end things first with their current partners.

          I do wonder – if the poll had happened weeks later it would have been weighted the same. Or, if it had been a simple “Joe vs. Dorothy” or “Cheat vs. First Break up” or “Mono vs. Poly” poll, where we didn’t have to just assume. If that had happened, would the results have been the same?

          Cause I’d have done Dorothy, Break up, and Mono, but that wasn’t available, so I chose “paladins.” And regretted it immediately. Because neither answer captured what I felt, and I felt like by choosing that, I was voting for something I didn’t want.

        2. Yumi

          The poll categories as they were are also hard to base anything on as a lot of people didn’t understand what they meant. Like, you could also say that in the first 24 hours, it was closer to when the comment that named the categories was originally made, so more people voting might have known what it was in reference to.

          If you’re just going by category names, like was probably true of a lot of people voting, “Relationship Paladins” does sound cooler than “Sickos”– even if I found being Team Sickos to be much more fun.

          As for the categories not feeling perfect or capturing how you feel, luckily the poll and how you voted in it ultimately doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t worry too much about what it reflects, personally.

        3. perpetual summer

          You’ve certainly thought about the poll more than me! I hope the part of my comment telling you not too generalize unnecessarily also got through. I really haven’t seen a ton of people talking about how it’s ok since it’s queer, let alone that they fundamentally value queer relationships more* and a lot of people acting like that’s what’s being said – it’s sort of frustrating seeing it misrepresented like that continuously.

          * which I honestly think is fine. I know people who are so tired of a lifetime of het couples being the focus in media that they just really don’t care or engage with them, and do value a queer relationship more in that sense. To each their own!

        4. Pergola

          Willis forcing a binary choice on the commentariat was not a good idea. Me? I didn’t vote.

        5. Thing 2

          There you go. You had a third choice. So Willis did not force a binary.

        6. Li

          Well, “force”. But nor did Willis provide a third option that could be meaningfully counted.

      2. Nymph

        “(other than those who are cheering them on mostly because they hold queer relationships as being of more value than non-queer… which is certainly an opinion).”

        Hi! That’s not why I’m cheering this on! Thanks so much for devaluing my (and other people’s) opinion just because I disagree with you and instead painting me with a brush that makes you more comfortable being disagreed with!

        Kind of a dick move, but you’re entitled to those!

        1. BorkBorkBork

          Sorry – I’ll admit I didn’t read every post, and I apologize for making you feel dismissed.

          I’m excited for this, but I’m dreading the rift that it’s going to have within their friend group. Walky, Joyce, and Dorothy are kind of the center, with most people having been a friend of, or knowing, one of them first. And while I shipped Dorothy x Joyce, Joe x Joyce has been developing for even longer, and I wish that one would have ended in something other than a train wreck. The only reason I can think of to be happy that its happening this way, now, in this circumstance, is if you just really want to sabotage a good relationship because it’s not the *right* one.

          I do see what you’re saying above about polyamory. And it could happen…. but somehow I don’t see a healthy poly relationship starting with an exclusive relationship that someone first cheated in. I’ve seen so many poly people say over and over, that if your reason for going poly is because you want an excuse to cheat, it’s not going to be a good relationship.

        2. Li

          Everyone keeps saying it’s “just because wlw” (or just because “lesbians”), but it’s obviously not.

          Please go back to the Jacob cheating arc. Please sample the comments there. Everyone involved was (presumed) straight, but there was still the exact same paladins / sickos divide.

          You are just describing shipper behavior. Shipper behavior, like war, never changes.

        3. Nymph

          Oh I absolutely don’t think it’ll be a healthy poly relationship. I wanna see it anyway. I like the drama of things coming together and falling apart in this comic and I’m likely to get bored to tears if it stagnates into everyone in happy/healthy relationships.

          But also, I just haven’t seen many people at all talking about “this is fine because it’s gay” whereas I’ve seen loads of people saying “how dare people think this is fine because it’s gay!” so it seems more like a supposition than a fact if I’m honest.

          I think most people who are excited about this have trended toward Yay mess! or Yay my ship! rather than Yay heteros matter less than us!

        4. Proxiehunter

          Every post? I’m not sure someone who boils down support of this relationship and/or plot line to people who “hold queer relationships as being of more value than non-queer” has actually read any posts from people enjoying this plot. Or at least read them in good faith.

          The only posts I’ve seen for which that might be a reasonable takeaway require the reader to ignore sarcasm directed at people who started making that claim before the sarcastic posts.

        5. Li

          Yeah, like, I do think there’s a handful of people who are definitely specifically going “LET’S GO LESBIANS/BIS”, which could be interpreted to be in favor of this specifically bc wlw…

          …but how many of them mean that literally and aren’t just memeing? And even if you take all of them at their word, it’s still a.) a tiny minority of comments on the subject, and b.) almost all one-time-only posters! People who drop a single top-level “whooooo” and then vanish!

          It’s hard to prove intent either way, though, so I’ve been sticking with: “we had this exact argument over Jacob/Joyce when they were getting close to cheating, just because it’s a (mostly) different group of people cheering right now doesn’t mean that this ship is getting a disproportionate amount of cheering”

          like the comments were bitterly divided back then too, and it felt like exactly the same sort of 60/40 split?

          but with noticeably fewer people dismissively saying Joyce was just horny for Jacob instead of that she had feelings for him

          even though Becky explicitly provided “she’s just horny” as an explanation for Joyce’s behavior in the strip itself

          almost like wlw relationships tend to be perceived by the public as hypersexual rather than More Pure and Good, weird, wonder if that bears out in our society or something

    5. JoeCovenant

      Meh – I’ve never liked Dorothy…

      1. Yumi

        I didn’t like her for a long time, but I’ve enjoyed her character more in recent years.

    6. Yumi

      I don’t know if that difference in identities (in addition to possibly mischaracterizing Willis’s gender) really accounts for the disconnect when there are other wlw in their 20s who don’t experience the story the way you do.

      1. miri

        I was going to say, I’m in my 30s and not my 20s but you’re not the spokesperson for wlw. I could eat this messy shit for breakfast, lunch, dinner AND dessert.

        1. Sapph-o

          “that’s why there’s sometimes a big disconnect between how
          *******I******* experience a storyline as a wlw” Reading is fun! I’m speaking for myself and only myself. Hence the use of “I” “my” “myself” personal pronouns.

        2. miri

          Sapph-o, I would like to gently suggest that you take a break from the comments section, as I believe you are taking things a little too personally. I am not attacking you, I am also speaking to my own experience and feelings.

      2. Sapph-o

        Willis afaik has not stated his current gender identity anywhere publicly, simply he/they pronouns (and we should all know atp pronouns do not = gender) hence why I used the generally accepted neutral “guy” and not “man” for them. If you don’t agree with my post u *can* just say that instead of citing ~possible~ transphobia. Good lord…

        1. Li

          You did not say guy, you said dude, and like. No, that’s not gender-neutral. It’s never been gender-neutral. “Hey my dudes and dudettes” was pretty much always the parlance, forever.

          Willis has also said not cis.

          So. Anyway.

        2. Sapph-o

          Cool I never called him cis ? and my mistake, I meant to type Dude in my reply. Which absolutely is widely used gender neutrally btw… I have never called anyone a dudette outside of that exact turn of phrase. Lmao.

        3. Li

          You could literally just apologize for careless wording instead of making it increasingly clear you think nonbinary pronouns and genders aren’t worth respecting ❤️ and that people who are trying to call your attention to it must just be trying to win debate points instead of genuinely concerned with the issue.

        4. JoeCovenant

          All depends on where you are, bud.
          Dude is not seen as gender specific where I am…

        5. Li

          @JoeCovenant: “a nearly 50-year-old white person can’t be expected to write teen queer girls well” doesn’t make any sense, so it’s obviously not true that Sapph-o meant the word gender-neutrally, regardless of your personal experience with it ? Thanks for playing.

        6. Nymph

          They have accepted congrats on coming out and changed their pronouns. I don’t blame you for not knowing that. However, I think now that you do it’s probably more important to correct your way of thinking about the nonbinary author (not a dude or a guy or a man).

          Especially when suggesting, as you did, that they lack the experience to write a story about queer teens coming to terms with being something they didn’t think they were.

          There’s no denying that they aren’t a woman either (at least unless they come out as binary trans), so part of your point definitely stands. Enby people who haven’t been teenagers for a long time are likely to experience some knowledge gaps when writing teenage women.

        7. Nymph

          And small note, as a nonbinary person:

          I don’t personally mind Dude, Guy, Man, Gal, Chick, Lady, etc… but it isn’t unreasonable for some nonbinary people to prefer not to be called those things. Just because you find them gender neutral doesn’t mean they don’t cause harm. I am very sure you wouldn’t enjoy having someone call you something you weren’t and insist it didn’t matter even after you asked them to stop.

          That said, Willis hasn’t asked you to stop so do whatever is in your heart! I would just be careful about defending them as “widely used gender neutrally” when that’s just an appeal to tradition in the face of people telling you it feels like misgendering.

        8. Yumi

          Yeah, I also often use and take “dude” as gender-neutral, but that’s not the same as “a dude.” Calling someone “a dude” is not something I’d consider gender neutral or expect people to.

          (“Man” can work in a similar way– if I’m talking to one of my cis female friends, and I say, “I don’t know, man,” she’s fine with that. If I were to say she’s a man, it’d be like… no.)

        9. Li

          Agreeing with both Nymph and Yumi.

          I worked hard to get “guys” out of my lingo because some trans women specifically drew my attention to it. It felt fussy to me at the time, but I respected their feelings and did it anyway, because my minor annoyance was less important to me than not making other people feel misgendered.

          And also yes, “dude” and “man” as exclamations feel different to me and more neutral than “a white dude”, especially in the context of criticizing said white person for not knowing how teen queer girls would feel.

        10. Li

          Like. Rewrite your sentence, Sapph-o, so that it’s “a nearly 50 y/o white person writing about queer teen girls” and try to honestly tell me or anyone else that it doesn’t sound like your description is almost completely beside the point.

          You said it because you think of Willis as a man. If you didn’t, it would’ve just been “an author who’s nearly 50”. ‘Cuz it’s not like Joyce isn’t white, or like you actually think Dorothy’s Jewish grandmother is relevant here.

        11. Yumi

          Holy shit, I didn’t think you were being transphobic before– was just trying to offer a minor note on it as I would have felt wrong engaging with the comment without doing so– but I do now.

        12. Sapph-o

          My trans experience is not your trans experience and that’s fine. If they ever verbalized a preference of terms I would obviously respect those but, again, afaik they haven’t? Thus, simply using my typical neutral vocabulary. I’m sorry that’s what you took from it, but I personally dont gender “guy”. “reply guy” “hey guys” “my guy” are all neutral to me.

        13. Yumi

          Yeah, I use those as neutral too (though I know it’s not alwaysa safe assumption that people will be okay with it, and I try to catch myself if I’m talking to people I don’t know). “A guy” would be different, though.

  72. Veronica

    Every day I expect us to cut back to Joe, happy and oblivious that his first real attempt at a relationship is about to come crashing down.

  73. Throwatron

    look, one thing i’ll give to dorothy, it does seem difficult to spend so much time in front of joyce and not be kissing her

    1. Astariel

      Absolutely!

  74. Tessea

    Oh god. Dorothy loves the goofy humor. I love these two dorks!

  75. Chasey

    Not a chance they can keep this under wraps until they’ve got their other shit “sorted.” (Not to mention, the longer they keep doing this in front of a glass freaking door the more chances there are of someone who knows them seeing.)

    1. Heavensrun

      I mean, it’s dark out and light inside, unless they get right up to the glass, nobody inside is likely to be able to see much through those doors except for the reflection of the interior of the building.

  76. Rogue 7

    The longer this goes on, the more our lack of insight into Joyce’s headspace gets to be a problem.

    1. Dot

      100%. It’s really starting to bother me how much this entire storyline has revolved around Dorothy.

      1. thejeff

        I think it’s intentional and important.

        I don’t think it’s a problem – at least until we actually do get to see what’s going on with her.

        1. Dot

          It’s certainly intentional, but it’s a choice I don’t like.

        2. thejeff

          I’m reserving judgement until we do get an idea what she’s thinking.

      2. Li

        Well, from Willis’s BlueSky, they didn’t think they needed to convince anyone that Joyce “the only conceivable reason girls could be attracted to Walky is because they can smell Dorothy on his clothes” Brown was queer.

        I thought it was to build suspense, but that possibility is much funnier to me.

        1. Rogue 7

          I mean, that’s not at all what I’m talking about. Today’s strip has Joyce passively agreeing with Dorothy and then making a pun- which while I understand is “bi culture”, I also assure you that one can very much be straight and still pun like a champion. Dorothy has been the one who’s realized “hey, we’re cheating” and her relationship is a lot less serious than JoJo. Dorothy was the one playing the martyr at the protest because life didn’t make sense to her. Joyce, the ostensible protagonist of our story, isn’t the one driving the action here. She’s…kind of being objectified.

        2. Li

          Okay, but my reply is all about why we haven’t gotten much insight into Joyce’s head and why it’s all been focused on Dorothy’s feelings: previously I thought that was to build suspense over whether Joyce returned those feelings or not, recently I was exposed to the idea that maybe Willis just put all their energy into Dorothy here because they thought she was the “harder sell” as queer (quoting Willis’s post there directly).

          You are ofc entitled to feel that it’s objectifying Joyce to spend this much time in Dorothy’s head, to think my proffered explanation is lacking, etc, but it was hardly off-topic.

        3. thejeff

          I can definitely see focusing on Dorothy as the “harder sell”. Even without getting the direct look, I don’t find it strange that Joyce did respond, but it was very hard for quite awhile to tell how much of it she was conscious of and how much she was in denial, pretending this was just normal best friend stuff.
          And even now, we’ve still got less idea what she’s thinking about the cheating side of things than we do for Dorothy. At least Dorothy keeps trying to pull back saying “we can’t”. She fails of course, but she keeps trying. We can see she thinks it’s wrong.

        4. Li

          And so I circle back to feeling like Joyce must think this is going to be okay with Joe, even if she’s totally and completely wrong, but. Well. Willis’s post that was linked yesterday did recontextualize some things. It’s totally possible what we’re getting is “Joyce just isn’t thinking clearly, and Joe’s feelings haven’t entered her mind beyond her earlier comment that he’s trying to be good for her”.

        5. Proxiehunter

          Joyce “Warm and safe forever” Brown queer? Unthinkable.

  77. Dafydd

    By the end of this comic all surviving characters will just be one big messy polycule, won’t they.

    1. Nymph

      Their social group’s smoochie chart is basically an ouroboros! (credit: Walky)

      1. Li

        Get in a big fuck pile and get it over with (Sal and Walky not being in the pile at the same time)!

        (credit: Charles, Walky’s dad)

  78. TGS

    The perspective difference between Joyce/Dorothy and us as audience seems like it is having a massive impact on how many people are processing this arc. In particular, the passage of time is playing such havoc right now. We as readers are given hours upon hours of real time to process and think about the full context of their situation, in addition to knowing things about the other people that neither Dorothy nor Joyce know. To Dorothy and Joyce, who are acting on months of feelings for each other, we are watching mere seconds of time pass. It is too short for mistakes to not be made, especially when what we are seeing is 5 months (or so) of dammed up feelings that have finally burst through. In those early moments that the wave sweeps you away; when new love is finally recognized for what it is, I think it is an incredibly common reaction to only see that person, to only think of the joy and happiness that you feel with them.

    This is NOT a situation where “just and horniness justifies awful behaviors”, because no one has said it is fine for them to cheat. They will definitely have to deal with the mess that they are only just now grasping that they are making. They are making a horribly short-sighted choice, born of feelings that cannot be ignored any longer. And they do not have the benefit of omnicience that we as audience members have. It doesn’t make it OK, but depending on how they handle this aftermath, it does make it human. And I would hope it makes it ultimately forgivable. Or at least understandable.

    Empathy for others is arguably the most important skill we need to have in a functioning society – one that I think far too many people lack, which helps explain our current awful timeline. But empathy is a learned skill – it is not innate for most people. Like any skill, it takes practice, and there will be mistakes. For Joyce and Dorothy, this is one of those moments. How they handle this will shape how forgivable it all is over time. It just strikes me as a very messy, flawed, imperfect, course of actions, which given their internal context and experience, seems a very understandable and human.

    1. Justnobodyfqwl

      Ok, but consider the mind of the average DOA poster: I’m very online, very moralistic, and very sensitive. Imagining cheating makes me think about being cheated on, which makes me even more sensitive. and I’m very online, so I have no conflict resolution skills. So these strips make me very very upset in a way that I feel I have a moral high ground on. When you put it all together, I’m going to be passive aggressive and snide about how much I dislike what’s happening. Hope this helps!

      1. Josh

        I know you are trying to be helpful, but this is an awfully condescending way to word it.

        1. Justnobodyfqwl

          See, this is a great example! When presented with the direct text (me being condescending), a DOA commenter has managed to

          1) completely misunderstand the text presented in front of them

          2) find a way to passive-agreasively morally chide me over it

        2. HueSatLight

          you’re just being an ass

        3. perpetual summer

          I think it’s nice that Josh was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that you were being genuine instead of just sort of being a shithead! Probably not the most productive attitude to have in this comments section lately but I can commend them for that

        4. Dot

          Why are you being an asshole

        5. Taffy

          What’s the value in being a dickhead about this?

      2. TGS

        It doesnt help, and I find your tone to be, frankly, asshole-ish. You aren’t addressing the comic, you are using it as a chance to take cheap shots at some members of the readers that you disagree with. I fail to see how that helps anything. Sorry for being rude, but this was a head scratcher.

      3. Jay

        Hey you didn’t need to call me out like that

    2. Bittersweet

      I guess what I keep coming back to is that these characters aren’t omniscient, but they *do* have the info they would need to know that this will severely hurt at least one of their partners.

      Dorothy cheating idgaf about. She is a terrible girlfriend, always has been, it’s part of her character and I do enjoy that messy part of her. It’s a very believable flaw, because it doesn’t matter if Walky will or won’t take this poorly, she doesn’t care about Walky beyond what he can do for her. It’s something I want to see her grow out of, but it’s not a blindside.

      Joyce however? We can point at the Jacob/Raidah thing, but she should have learned a lesson from it (and regardless, Raidah was not someone she cared about.) She has thrown away family over the deep love and care she feels for her friends, she always goes to bat for them even if it reflects poorly on her, Joyce up until this moment has always been a Great Friend. Like, cheating on Joe is terrible as a girlfriend, but it’s also terrible as a friend and that’s where the hang up comes in for me.

      Because Joyce has shown to be more mercenary in romantic relationships, but not friendships, and Joe/Joyce *started primarily as a friendship*. She knows Joe’s dad was a serial philanderer. She knows that the fear of cheating on someone was a driving force in the mask he wore. This is not info only the reader knows, but info Joyce is privy to. Cheating on Joe has very little to do with disregarding their week long dating and everything to do with disregarding their several months long friendship. It’s the hurting someone she directly cares about that bothers me a lot, and the fact that she doesn’t seem to care about it at all.

      It’s just really, really hard to rationalize Joyce the cheater alongside Joyce who always came to bat for Billie, Joyce who took in and protected Becky, Joyce who turned herself into a torpedo because Sarah asked, and Joyce who (before the romantic jokes really started) stood up to Hank for Dorothy’s sake even though she was still very early on in her deprogramming. And I don’t believe that she would buy for a second the “you can make out with your friends and it mean nothing” as an excuse because that requires levels of emotional stupidity that Joyce has already well demonstrated not having.

      1. Big Z

        I suspect this is mostly Joyce acting on some combo of “impulse control issues”, “the Billifer excuse”, and “Joe said he wants me to be happy”, and I am fully expecting her to have some kind of crashout about it.

        1. TGS

          I suspect it has more to do with genuine love overriding all the other concerns. I don’t believe for a moment that either one of them are doing this with the intention of being awful people, and while I completely agree that intentionally doesnt change the fact that people will absolutely get hurt by this, I also believe that intentionally should count for something. What we are witnessing here, I believe, is the formal acceptance of a deeper and more intense love than either J or D have felt for any of their other partners. Both things can be true: it can be both an awful, selfish, hurtful decision to some (namely Joe and Walky) that deserves condemnation and consequences, and a romantic actualization of pent up love and self truth that deserves to be celebrated. I have no doubt there will be consequences to these actions, and how they deal with them will ultimately determine how quickly they can earn forgiveness from those impacted – or if they can earn forgiveness at all. I dont think anyone who is saddened by these actions is wrong – I too wish that they had dealt with J&W before embarking on this new relationship – and they deserve the fallout headed their way. But to say that it’s not somewhat understandable why they would make these mistakes seems to be holding both of them to a much higher standard than they deserve.

  79. perpetual summer

    I do sort of feel like it’s still too early to say this but so far Joyce & Dorothy are sort of boring together in the exact same way Joyce & Joe often are. Impatiently waiting for things to blow up

    1. Dot

      They’re “cute” together in a kind of generic sense, but I just don’t feel anything seeing them kiss, which as a lesbian I consider a fatal flaw.

  80. SarahTerra

    Joyce’s Sultry Eyes always get me, could look at them forever.

    I feel dirty rooting for cheaters but damn.

    Dorothy, Joyce: there was online footage of Jocelyne. There could easily be footage of you two kissing. AND MARY WAS THERE.

  81. Mako

    How long of time has passed in universe since the debut strip? Trying to wrap my head around how crazy this entire series has been

    1. Justnobodyfqwl

      It took 10 years to cover one semester of one year of college, WITH multiple times skips for several weeks. We’re currently in early second semester.

    2. HueSatLight

      This is the end of January freshman year.

      https://walkypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dumbing_of_Age_Timeline

  82. Steamweed

    Joyce, Joyce. Ya gotta tell Dorothy the good advice that Jennifer told you. It’s okay to bang your bestie, like, once. That’ll calm Dorothy’s fears. 😀

    1. Pergola

      This is a bit that I try very hard to ignore.

  83. Big Z

    Oh my god, get to the drama if we’re going to have drama. This is the most oversold, pointlessly drawn out kissing scene since The Princess Bride.

    1. TGS

      This implies that any part of the Princess Bride can be considered pointless. Which I find blasphemous.

      1. CianM1301

        If Westley and Princess Buttercup’s kiss was the 6th most passionate and pure kiss after the first 5, Dorothy and Joyce’s kiss at the protest was the 7th kiss.

        1. Big Z

          Wesley and Buttercup, as portrayed, aren’t even on the Kissing Illustrated Top 200 of All Time list.

        2. Proxiehunter

          To be fair Westley and Buttercup as portrayed on screen are Westley and Buttercup as imagined by a young boy who’s grandfather was reading him a story while he was ill. I’m not surprised they weren’t shown making out sloppy style considering.

        3. thejeff

          “Is this a kissing book?”

    2. Astariel

      Joyce and Dorothy kissing is its own point.

      1. Big Z

        Not really, no.

    3. Hroethvitnir

      Haha. I was chomping at the bit to Deal With It, because while I get making terrible decisions, it’s super duper time to come clean.

      But this strip was the one that really sold me on them, somehow. Joyce’s awkward smile after her pun and Dorothy’s adoration.

      It’s sweet (in an uncomfortable way, which is what the black and white thinkers need to learn to deal with. Whether or not you just viscerally hate it, mixed feelings are obviously still there and that’s called being human).

  84. Leishycat

    I’m rereading the comic from the beginning and like.. holy heck, this was telegraphed so long ago, and I didn’t really catch it. I blame spiro brain fog. I wish it could have happened in a way that wasn’t guaranteed to cause so much heartbreak, but I suppose if the characters did things intelligently they’d have to change the title. And ‘Smarting of Age’ doesn’t really have the same ring to it.

  85. Skychrono

    Boy I wish I could be one of those relationship sickos so I didn’t feel so uncomfortable at all the cheating right now.

    1. Yumi

      Yeah, being able to enjoy it is nice.

    2. Li

      Gentle and sincere suggestion: you might want to give the comic a break for a bit and come back after this part of the story is over. Many folks have talked about how a given arc was easier to read through all at once than one day at a time. And Willis has expressly said they’re exploring cheating and messiness right now, so this isn’t going to just end immediately.

      1. Jay

        Sadly DoA is my crack.

        I NEED my daily dose, even if the daily dose is a mess

        1. Taffy

          Jay, Known Internet Crackhead, Found [Verb]ing Webcomics Directly

          I don’t actually know what you do with crack. Snort it like coke?* Inject it like morphine? Drink it like marijuana? The headline might be funnier if I knew more about drugs.

          *(is “crack” distinct from “crack cocaine”, distinct from “cocaine”?)

        2. Li

          No, crack and crack cocaine are the same thing. I think cocaine and (crack) cocaine are different in a way where crack is specifically cheaper to make / buy, and that difference was used by Reagan and subsequent “wars on drugs” to directly target lower-income people with worse penalties.

          Cocaine is the rich(er) person’s version of the same thing.

        3. Li

          When I wrote all of that I thought it went without saying that “lower-income” also disproportionately targeted Black folks. But just in case it didn’t. IIRC sometimes the same exact substance was also reclassified as crack in order to increase the harshness of the penalty for already-marginalized people, and of course in instances of cops planting drugs on people, it was always the drug with the harshest penalty.

        4. Proxiehunter

          Crack is cocaine processed into solid “rocks” rather than powder and the rocks are smoked.

        5. Taffy

          Thank you for the instructions on proper use of crack rocks. I will use this advice in my real life and I will tell people you were the one who helped me learn how to properly do crack.

        6. Proxiehunter

          No problem. Glad I could help.

      2. Skychrono

        Not a bad suggestion! But I think I’m too invested to entirely block it out of my mind, and between “go check what happened” and “the last memory I had was a negative one,” I would have to pick the former.

        1. Li

          Fingers crossed for you that it isn’t too unpleasant in the interim, then! 🙂

  86. Tesset

    I wasn’t around when Billie/Ruth was first happening, so question for y’all who were. Were the relationship paladins this loud back then too?

    1. Dot

      Well neither of them were cheating on anyone and their relationship was actually interesting to watch so no

      1. Justnobodyfqwl

        Wait, I’m sorry, have people managed to convince themselves that the dramatic Yuri 15 years in the making is an UNinteresting part of this comic? That’s deeply insulting to the proud warriors of Uninteresting Dumbing Of Age plots. Supervillain dads. Carla and Becky. Charlie and Malaya.

        1. Dot

          Kissing at a protest surrounded by tear gas is certainly dramatic in a superficial sense, but actually watching these two interact in a romantic context is agonizingly dull.

        2. Astariel

          Speak for yourself. I think this is the best the strip has ever been.

        3. Dot

          I am speaking for myself. I don’t know who else I’m meant to be speaking for.

      2. Tesset

        Amendment: I will only take answers from other sickos, or at least from relationship paladins willing to put down the pitchfork for like 3 seconds to answer instead of grandstanding more

        1. Dot

          I didn’t want them to get together but now that they have I’m going to assess what I have before me as a longtime fan and a dyke lol. Sue me.

        2. Bobin

          Was there, Billie and Ruth’s first kiss was pretty much universally beloved at that time. Granted it only lasted one strip before Billie told her to fuck off so there wasn’t exactly much time to discuss the moral implications of it

    2. Li

      So, despite what other folks may remember: yes, there were relationship paladins that were extremely anti-Jennifer/Ruth.

      No, it wasn’t specifically about cheating — instead it was about how they’d still started their relationship in the wrong way, because, you know, Ruth threw Jennifer over her shoulder and kept calling her fat and destroyed her cheerleader uniform, because Ruth was a giant fuckin’ mess and a victim of childhood abuse and, also, didn’t know she liked girls before she was so spun-out on Jennifer.

      It actually got very tiresome, because this group just kept bringing up how the relationship had begun badly, so the current relationship was necessarily abuse, for years.

      When they finally broke up, the paladins celebrated, and then wrote varying fanfic about how and why the relationship had ended — fanfic that for some of them persists to this day, where they’ll insistently tell you that Jennifer dumped Ruth for being toxic, or that Ruth dumped Jennifer for being toxic. Neither of these actually describe what happened in the breakup we saw on screen, but some paladins just could not accept that Ruth actually broke up with Jennifer in a misguided attempt to save her.

      1. Li

        (Some paladins also definitely latched on to the wrongs Jennifer did later, like lying about giving up alcohol!) (But the start of the relationship being bad and wrong and therefore the whole relationship being doomed was all anti-Ruth stuff.)

        1. Doopyboop

          Yeah I recall some comments rooting for a break up for a long time before one ever happened.

        2. Li

          Yep. Relationship Paladins take many forms! It’s not always about cheating. They were also very vocal back when Danny first started crushing on Ethan, first because Danny was dating Amber at the time (and also, bizarrely, for some paladins because Ethan was “dating” Joyce), and then eventually just because it would Definitely Destroy Amber if Danny and Ethan got together too soon after Danny and Amber broke up.

          So, the same kind of argument that’s currently being made about Becky, basically.

        3. Doopyboop

          Regarding Becky, I also remember commenters who were upset about Becky kissing Joyce that one time. Also really pissed about her getting her haircut because “Becky is homeless and should be smarter with her money she could have bought food/clothes with that 20 instead of a haircut” almost as if Becky is an impulsive teenager who just needed a little haircut distraction to feel a bit more affirmed in herself after an awful experience… mebbe…

        4. thejeff

          One of my favorite Willis bits was that being called back to around a year later in the kidnapping.
          Your hair is your womanhood, and you must reclaim it.
          It was far more than just an impulsive teenager needing a little haircut distraction.

        5. Li

          ‘Twas! Which I think a lot of readers immediately recognized, because doing something like that with your hair as part of coming out is very common — especially for a queer kid in Becky’s specific situation of having been raised with aggressively policed regressive gender roles.

          Becky didn’t present it that way, of course. Because she’s Becky, and like Walky, she often fronts as a carefree goofball.

          But Doopyboop is correct that the outrage over Becky’s alleged waste of $20 USD (which just, gets sadder and funnier as time passes) had similar roots to outrage over other questionable choices characters make.

          And there was a definite correlation among the commentariat at the time between “Becky now has an ‘ugly’ haircut” and “I now hate Becky and everything Becky does”. Which Willis observed at the time, of course.

          Subconscious biases suuuuuck. One of them is a kind of entitlement to character designs not changing, which is noticeably more ferocious when the character in question isn’t a white cis straight dude.

          How dare Jacob’s hair not be pretty anymore, as another example.

        6. Li

          (I happen to think Jacob’s hair is rad, the same way I think Becky’s hair is rad, but I imagine the complainers would definitely characterize it as an ugly change, not just a change.)

        7. thejeff

          To be fair, both Danny and Ethan were among the Relationship Paladins who thought it would destroy Amber.

        8. Li

          I mean, yeah, but by the time they’d said as much, the paladins had been banging that particular drum for like a year already, haha.

          Also, them and the readers being wrong about Amber doesn’t mean they’re wrong about Becky (or Joe, or Walky) — it just struck me as another discourse parallel.

  87. HueSatLight

    Sarah’s going to take Joe’s side. Maybe even more than Joe will.

    1. Dot

      And the funny part is it’s largely due to Joyce’s influence that she’s going to care as much and as vocally as she will.

      1. HueSatLight

        Ya, Joyce got her to give Joe a second chance. Plus Liz stole her boyfriends.

        1. Dot

          I mean just compare to when Joyce was doing her thing with Ethan, easily as bad as what she’s doing now, and Sarah’s reaction was basically “look not my business.” It’s a testament to Sarah’s development, primarily spurred by her relationship with Joyce, that I can’t see her reacting like that this time.

        2. HueSatLight

          You’re right. She is more… gregarious isn’t the right word, but something like that.

        3. Dot

          “Invested” would be the word I think. She’s fully integrated into the friend group.

    2. Proxiehunter

      If it doesn’t work out with . . . Tony? . . . I think his name’s Tony. Anyway, if it doesn’t work out with her current guy she might take more than just his side.

      I’m just saying, she recognizes that he’s actually changed. She likes the new Joe at least in a friendly way. And big old mountain of a man has always been her type until Tony.

      1. Dot

        I think one directly rehashed relationship from Roomies! is enough tbh

        (Two if you count Billie/Ruth)

        1. Sajuuk-Khar

          The crappy repeat relationships from Roomies!/IW! + J&W/Shortpacked are always the ones that had happy or neutral endings.

          Like, Danny and Sal is great because that was a ship that got screwed. Billie and Ruth is great because Ruth died.

          By contrast, Joyce X Walky would be dog shit, and Joe X Rachel would make me fucking barf, I’d literally stop reading immediately.

          Sarah X Joe was a neutral ending ship so it’d be…like…C-. I don’t hate it but I’m not crazy for it. Rather she stuck with Tony.

  88. AC

    Willis king of slow burn……..(prayer hands emoji) these pages are hitting like heroin

  89. I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

    I am just going to be straight up i think we’re taking the whole relationship paladins / sickos thing too far

    1. Leishycat

      Yes. I shall continue to sit slightly to one side of the middle. Let it cook and we’ll see where it lands.

      Yes I know I mixed my metaphors. I’m a rock star, I’m allowed.

    2. I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

      like i understand, shipping brings out a lot of strong emotions and i don’t wanna come off like i dont get it, but it’s a gag! a goof! we don’t need to be throwing those labels around like actual pejoratives ?

      1. Taffy

        The worst it’s gotten is a small handful of people saying things like “sickos stay winning” and “haha silly uptight paladins”. It’s not especially dramatic or venomous.

        1. I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

          fair! I wouldn’t say there’s nuclear levels of toxic mudslinging happening, but i have seen some threads treating “relationship paladin” and “sicko” like real, hardline identities with definable ideologies instead of shorthand for “yay i love the joyce+dorothy cheating drama/boo i hate the joyce+dorothy cheating drama”, and IMO i do think it’s made everyone a little more defensive than we need to be.

        2. Taffy

          Sounds like somethin’ a paladin would say, stranger. ? You wanna tell us what that sword and shield are for? And why your cloak seems to be conspicuously covering up something that looks an awful lot like Charlemagne’s heraldry?

        3. I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

          Please! I can prove my sicko-ness ! I have the discord fanart to prove it! Don’t slay me!

        4. I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

          (also lol nice)

        5. Li

          You both made me laugh, ty for that.

      2. Nadamás

        Yeaha nd taking too seriously is also part of he gag. You gotta commit to the bit.

    3. Sapph-o

      It’s truly giving “puriteens” and “proshitters” fandom wars… can we keep that on twitter/tumblr/tiktok/wherever fandoms forum these days and talk like normal people? Jesuuus.

      1. Nymph

        This IS a fandom forum, sorry to tell you.

        1. Taffy

          Seriously, is there a better place to directly discuss the webcomic we’re all (allegedly) fans of, than the website it’s posted directly on?

      2. zee

        Tumblr is mostly jaded 25+ year olds rn I’d rather that bs don’t come back

      3. Proxiehunter

        Doesn’t everyone just fucking love how a vocally pro-censorship movement sprung up among modern teens and everyone just dismissed it and opposition to at as stupid fandom shit? I mean, when they weren’t insisting that the opposition were perverts or worse.

        1. Scolopendra

          ^^^^^^^ Genuinely quite concerning. The kids aren’t alright.

        2. Li

          Yep. When folks act like there a.) both sides were equally bad, and b.) it wasn’t genuinely reflective of real problems and wasn’t, like, blatantly a result of the continuing de-emphasis on the importance of critical thinking and media analysis, the “gawwwwd why do professors assign Huckleberry Finn to kids, there’s so much racism in that book!” and the “themes are for book reports” attitudes that Gen Z has been / is getting steeped in…….

          (I’m not saying there haven’t been some bad actors on the anti-censorship side, of course there have been, one of the groups that certainly thinks it’s anti-censorship is the GamerGate ™ and General Anti-SJW ™ crowd…….. but that isn’t even a case of a broken clock being right twice a day because most of those people genuinely do not understand what censorship is, and are in fact very pro-censorship if it means removing queer characters from video games lol.)

        3. Leishycat

          You are correct

        4. Li

          Thank you. ?

        5. Taffy

          What could possibly go wrong with a society where the youth are increasingly encouraged not to think about or talk about things that might be slightly difficult or unpleasant, or separate fiction and reality, and they’re also encouraged to think of themselves and everything they do as a Brand™ that needs to be maintained for the convenience and whims of advertising conglomerates?

        6. Li

          sob

        7. Nymph

          Oh, no thank you. I didn’t order any existential dread today.

  90. Scruffy looking nerfherder

    Am I the only one in the camp that thinks Becky will take Joyce liking a girl in stride? I expect her to be a little pressed, but I think she’s gonna surprise us in that most of her outrage will stem from her genuinely liking Joe as a friend now and being upset at him getting cast aside like that.

    1. Dot

      She’ll be upset for Joe’s sake, for sure, but I think she will also be a little hurt that her best friend she was in love with for years was able to be gay with her “rival” but not her.

    2. Big Z

      I honestly am not sure anymore — I used to find Becky irritating and tetchy, and now I’m not sure because she’s also showing a lot more sensitivity these days (especially with regard to Dorothy).

      Becky from fall semester? She’d be pissed.
      Becky now? Not sure.

      1. Li

        Word of Willis: Becky being so obnoxious about Dorothy early in the semester was foreshadowing that she had reason to be concerned.

        BOY did that one not work as intended on the vast majority of commenters.

    3. Alongcameaspider

      I think she’ll react poorly at first but bounce back relatively quickly

      1. Dot

        I do think the cheating is going to be a bigger sticking point for her.

    4. Sajuuk-Khar

      Becky is going to be very angry because:

      -this is morally wrong
      -Joe is her friend and he is being treated badly
      -she thinks Dorothy and Joyce are a bad couple that stinks and bores her
      -this is an enormous threat to her bedrock assumptions about sex, relationships, sexuality that she’s already been shown is really really uncomfortable about and Joyce is once again blowing up with a bomb

      But the “oh so you were gay but just NOT FOR ME???” idea is silly. Nah. She’s got a little of it subconsciously feeding the rest, maybe? If I’m generous? But she doesn’t want Joyce, not anymore. She wouldn’t know what to do if she had her. That ship has gone into the West and met the fucking Valar, it’s toast.

      1. AnonGrouch

        All this but I think people are misreading some of Becky’s reaction from that previous drama. I think Becky’s reaction was a lot less ‘you didn’t want ME?’ and a lot more ‘i thought i wasn’t alone in liking girls given the way I’ve seen you act…’ Loneliness and feeling othered were definitely the bigger reactions I was reading in that particular moment. Also a loss of control and feeling powerless. I feel like all those feelings will be an underlying part of her reaction regardless of who’s reading of it is correct.

      2. Sajuuk-Khar

        (Just as an aside, I do not think, for anyone confused by me suddenly seeming to say this is wrong in weird defiance of my previous stance, that Joyce and Dorothy are a bad and boring ship, that this is a moral apocalypse, etc.

        I am saying *Becky* will think that and will voice the first three parts quite loudly. I want to be clear about this. Character opinion, not my opinion.)

    5. Thag Simmons

      I would be more than a little frustrated if Becky was fine and happy with this.

  91. berky

    Boy, Joe sure has come a long way on his emotional journey to better himself and open up to those around him huh?

  92. Laura

    I dunno…

    …I feel like I should just cut people ridiculous amounts of slack…

    …I’ve been in a committed monogamous relationship for nearly half my life, now, (and I am not young by any stretch of the imagination) … and I *STILL* am just barely figuring out how to live up to being a truly dependable partner.

    I dunno. Trauma changes people. Cultural influences change people. Peers change people. Chemicals change people. Neurodevelopment changes people.

    Not everybody was born with that innate sense of empathy or perspective-shifting that lets them do the “right” thing, all the time, or even know what the “right” thing is. And that includes sometimes hurting the people you care about. Sometimes knowingly, sometimes unthinkingly, sometimes obliviously.

    I kind of feel like, “love covers a multitude of sins”, as the old Bible verse goes… as a flawed human being, I dunno — yes, from the outside, WE can see the probable consequences of their actions on other people. From inside a situation, though — people do the strangest things in the service of their own desires.

    Dunno if this makes any sense. I just find myself unable to condemn them.

    Sometimes — you just do things that have long-term consequences. And you deal with it. And you just live with it. For the rest of your life. Carrying regret around with you just becomes one more set of barnacles, that accretes to the hull of the ship, through the years of its wandering voyage.

    1. Yumi

      I’m with you, Laura. I don’t agree with cheating, but it doesn’t ruin characters or people for me, and I wouldn’t feel right condemning them.

      A close friend of mine cheated on her boyfriend when we were in college, and I could understand how she felt and still love her and support her emotionally. I did that while *also* being like, “okay, but you do have to talk to your boyfriend about this. I can help you practice telling him if you’d like.”

      1. zee

        Where I land is it’s fiction so I don’t see a reason to care, morally. If I can forgive fictional murder for characters I like I’m not gonna flinch at some infidelity unless I feel like it. Irl I’ve never had friends who cheated and frankly idk how id handle it. I’ve been cheated on and didn’t really care but ik that shit can drive people to hospitalization levels of depression depending, so ?‍♀️. I’ve also been the AP I guess in a much messier situation than this one when I was even younger than they are, so idk if that makes me more or less qualified to judge? Idk if I could be friends with someone who could hurt their partner profoundly, and if I were in their lil college friend group I’d probably be pissed at them and like, drift off on my own or something. This kinda thing has the potential to shatter a group

        1. Yumi

          Yeah, there’s a lot in that “depending.” To me, I was only friends with my friend and not her boyfriend, so that part was easier to navigate. I have had friends in queer-platonic relationships who didn’t cheat (not even sure what that would look like) but did end up being really shitty to ther other person in ways that totally destroyed the relationship. Being friend with multiple parties, it was more difficult to navigate emotionally, but I still remained friends with everyone*, checking in with the friend who was hurt about what felt comfortable to them. (*For a time; other friend continued dropping everyone who had been in their life, and eventually I gave up on trying to reach out.)

          Anyway, also agree that it’s fiction, judge it (or not) how you like without that having to be the same as real life. It can also go in the other way where I might fucking hate a fictional character who’s only crime is being kinda annoying, and it’d be an overreaction in real life, but whatever, it’s about fiction.

        2. Li

          Off your last paragraph:

          Man, though, is it a vital life skill to both learn to accept that sometimes, people are going to annoy us, and it won’t be because they’ve done anything wrong — and our feelings of annoyance won’t be some massive character flaw to feel guilty about.

          Absolutely we need to find ways to tolerate annoying people in many parts of our lives — annoying coworkers, annoying clients, annoying in-laws… — you can’t block people IRL because you find them annoying…

          But also feelings aren’t totally within our control, and being annoyed by someone else isn’t any more an actual crime than being annoying. It’s okay to just rub someone the wrong way, and vice versa, and we don’t need to, say, invent a whole lotta post-hoc rationalizations to explain why that harmlessly annoying person we’re tired of seeing on our social media feed is actually super problematic and no one should be reblogging their posts anymore.

          (Disclaimer: harmlessly annoying is not secretly a synonym for, like, TERFs.)

        3. Yumi

          That’s pretty much what I’m saying, yeah. I can be annoyed by someone without committing to fucking hating them. Sometimes I just might leave the room when they come in and start talking to people.

        4. Li

          Yeah!!

          Just for clarity, I didn’t think I was disagreeing with you. ? Just reminded. Especially for folks like, oh, me when I’m not properly medicated, who feel every small rejection or possible rejection like a knife.

          The knife isn’t real! Not every perceived rejection is even personal, and even when it is, it’ll be okay…! (Chanting at my own RSD.)

  93. HueSatLight

    This is only book 5 of what’s presumably a 10 book volume II. Before the end,
    Joyce is going to cheat on Dorothy and Becky is going to cheat on Dina. First Girl Wins and Sickos™ win x3 (or more).

  94. Tarkara

    Oh my god just go tell them

  95. Orange Lantern

    If this doesn’t work out, I’ll fall into a depression. It’s too adorable to not work out.

    But, yeah, sort that shit out with the guys you’re in theory with. They deserve at least that.
    Regardless if you added new people to your love portfolio or your feelings just switched, both things happen, you always need to keep the people in your life in the loop and somehow work out how they fit in or not. Either way, they need to know.

  96. pollybee

    lemme balance out this comment section by saying that i think cheating is awesome and i’m glad that they’re doing it

    1. Sajuuk-Khar

      I wish they would do it more! And also maybe while they’re at it they can rob a bank!!

      1. J

        how DARE you.

        it should be at least FOUR banks.

        1. Laura

          Be gay, do crimes!

    2. Taffy

      It should be mandated by law that all gals who like gals have to commit infidelity at their boyfriends, punishable by a night behind bars or a $20 fine, punishment non-repeatable.

    3. Nadamás

      It should be legally mandatory even

    4. Rodrigo

      I hope Walky and Joe join a foursome at slipshinre. I would pay for it.

  97. Pseudowolf

    I have to say, this would work on me, too. Someone who can hit me with sharp wordplay like that on a dime? Damn.

  98. zee

    This cute shit is nice n all but I’m kinda itching to skip past it to the drama. I’m still super lukewarm on this ship so I’m just fiending for the fallout

    1. Yumi

      Agreed, this isn’t the part that I’m truly Sicko for.

    2. Li

      The shipper in me is definitely enjoying this, but it’s absolutely a… “either this is more marshmallow on your sundae OR it’s awful and boring” situation, depending on what else you’re also feeling.

      That said: yes, the sicko in me is absolutely banging both fists on the table in anticipation of The Mess ™.

      1. zee

        Not awful, but a little boring. Like eating a marshmallow sundae but you have covid

        1. Li

          Heh, I was referring to the opinion being expressed elsewhere that this is The Most Boring and Worst and Most Drawn Out Storyline Ever. I didn’t mean to reduce it to a binary! Just like, one person’s fan service is another person’s “ugh please stop”. And then of course there’s “this is fine but I’m a little impatient for the next phase”.

  99. JWK

    I really want to see how this works out. (I know we all do.) I’m hoping for more than I deserve, I guess. I’d like all parties to stay together. The girls get each other, the boys get the girls at the same time (at least Joe, don’t care if Walky suffers or not. Walky needs to be brought down a peg or twenty.)

    1. Dot

      ????

      1. Dot

        the fuck did walky do to you

        1. Jernacious

          No, I agree. i also hate Walky. There are a lot of characters showing bad behaviour, but Walky’s obliviousness irritates me.

        2. Bobin

          I don’t know that Walky is oblivious so much as he’s apathetic to most things and maybe doesn’t value himself much.

  100. Makkabee

    Okay, gotta admit that wordplay was pretty smexy.

  101. Reltzik

    Alt-text: This isn’t rewarding dorky wordplay, it’s rewarding theocracy wordplay.

    … yes, that is too what this is, Willis named it “Theocracy” something over 13 years ago.

  102. Steve

    Look, if every strip from here on out is them two kissing, I won’t complain.

  103. Adam Black

    Stop trying to get in Slipshine again Dorothy,
    It’s not called Chuming of Age

  104. Getes

    More like a Lesbatorium, amirite?

    1. Amós Batista

      This word is perfect and I’ll use it all the time

  105. Tessea

    Joyce has leveled up! Joyce has learned PUN.
    Joyce uses PUN on Dorothy. It’s super effective!

  106. Taellosse

    AAAHHHHH!!!!! These two are too adorable, I can’t take it!

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