Oh, I assumed this was basically a raptor attack, but she got tangled in the shirt, seeing how she doesn’t have claws to actually rip into Joe’s flesh. I mean, maybe it still is. Lets see if she goes for the jugular in the next one.
If she were performing a realistic raptor attack, she would be jumping on his back, holding on by her feet claws(?), flapping her arms for balance and using her mouth to eat away/do extra harm.
It’s called RPR (Raptor Prey Restrain) and that’s how modern birds of prey hunt. That’s inferred on dromeosaurs (dinosaur raptors) because of their relatively closeness and their anatomy being consistent with the behavior.
I was going to suggest that both of you set aside money in your wills for the shovel Becky will buy to bury you with, but then I remembered she’s not poor anymore.
I mean the idea that just that a girl would consider having sex with you as actually ruining herself is pretty insulting. No offense to Liz…actually no a little offense to Liz. Sex is a two way street and Joe deserved a little more respect than that. Both partners have to be considerate.
The Wellerman
Yeah, but I don’t think Liz meant that sex with Joe in particular would ruin her forever, as much as she meant sex with anyone that she didn’t love.
Proxiehunter
Anyone she didn’t love and wasn’t heterosexually, monogamously married to in the correct form of Christian ceremony.
You can take the Christian out of the girl, but no a lot of the time you really can’t. Those shitty ideas embedded into you as a child just stay there.
The Wellerman
Seems a little pessimistic, don’t you think?
Brainwashing has been and still is being undone with all kinds of people, from all kinds of groups.
Kavonde
Sure, but it takes a long while to work through all of it. And these kids are just starting.
The Wellerman
Now, if only there were a way to work through it that doesn’t seem like, you know, work.
What if it were made fun somehow?
june gloom
Believe me, I hung on to a lot of weird ideas long after I became an atheist, they just became recontextualized. It wasn’t until I became a very close friend with a pagan who was willing to talk to me about it that I began to re-examine the nature of some of my beliefs.
Rose by Any Other Name
Woo!
Pagan visibility! Respect!
Wooooo!
**runs off going “Wo” some more**
Tim
What she meant is inconsequential to Joe’s feelings.
The Wellerman
Yeah, that’s true.
Wonder how he’ll come to realize that he’s not destined to be some kind of abominable sex monster.
StClair
Wonder if.
Imogen
Yeah, but it’s still a harsh thing to say *to Joe*.
Like, yes, she was in a scary spot, and I have empathy for her. But I also have empathy for Joe. And that situation was more on Liz than on him, even though yes, he could have read the signals.
alongcameaspider
I dont even think she was saying it to Joe so much as herself and Joe was just within earshot
Of course that’s effectively the same as if she had said it to Joe so I guess I’m just splitting hairs
Turns out even horndogs have feelings.
It’d be like if I requested a favor from my friend and then halfway through I said “actually y’know what, nevermind. I don’t want you to fuck it up.”
Like you’re always welcome to change your mind but there is a less dickish way to put that.
Sirksome
To me it read like she didn’t consider Joe as someone worthy of love. Like sleeping with him would taint her because she didn’t think for even a second he was someone she could fall in love with. He was just a guy who wanted sex. At least I wouldn’t be surprised if Joe took it like that. It kind of feels like he was really used in that situation. More so even than when he banged Malaya.
Spencer
It wasn’t about Joe, it was about her own sexual hangups. She wanted to have sex with him to assert herself from her upbringing and peers at her campus, except sex is still this big scary thing to her. She wants to have sex, the act of sex has meaning to her, but she’s still inundated in what she was told to think about sexual purity.
Svata
it’s surprising how little that matters when you get rejected by someone saying that being with you would have “ruined [them] forever”. That’s some serious pain.
The Wellerman
Yeah, Liz probably didn’t mean him in particular, but that’s still how he took it, isn’t it?
If only there were a way for him to clear up that misunderstanding!
thejeff
Yeah, she certainly didn’t mean it that way. There was nothing specific about it being Joe that meant she’d be ruined, it was that she was doing it at all. (In her mind, of course.)
And honestly, I don’t think that part really bothered Joe. I don’t think it was the rejection, but that he’s seeing this as another way that girls can be hurt by his approach to sexuality, even when he’s following his own rules. And of course that she’s his Joyce substitute just makes it worse.
Matthew E Davis
It would reinforce his self-conception that he cannot have a real connection with a woman because he would be doomed to abandon her, I suspect. Without knowing it Liz basically told Joe his worst fears about himself are true.
thejeff
More I think that he can hurt women without abandoning them. Which was what Joyce pointed out to him over the list, but now he sees himself as having come close to hurting Liz as well.
Imogen
Lets stress, though, that Joe did not hurt Liz. This was Liz’s mistake to make. What’s hurting Joe seems to be that he thinks it would be on some level his fault, that he’s inherently destructive to women.
(The issues of “Joe had a hunch she was being reckless”, “Joe didn’t actually want to have sex but didn’t have the words to express that”, and “Liz was kind of using Joe as an object and not considering his feelings in this because she’s still new to being an ethical slut” are also important. It’s a messy situation. But you never blame your partner for you not understanding your own limits.)
thejeff
But you likely blame yourself.
The harm was minimized because Liz pulled back in time, but he’s likely thinking about what if she hadn’t and still thought she was ruined afterwards. (And: Have any of the other girls felt that way afterwards without me knowing? Is that how it would be with Joyce?)
On the abstract moral level of blame, he did nothing wrong, but on an emotional level for anyone with a degree of empathy knowing that sleeping with you “ruined” them is going to mess you up.
And this ties back to Joe’s basic conflict – his whole thing is his flawed attempt to avoid hurting women like his father did. Now he sees another way his plan to avoid that by keeping sex casual might have failed.
Dana
All these earnest takes and all I can do is resist making the dick joke you set up.
Rose by Any Other Name
Jeez, yeah. That’s about the most dickish way to put that.
Yes, but “No” is really, REALLY bad, you see. I’d actually prefer it if they called me a stinky, smelly pile of garbage and kicked me in the nuts – I could at least interpret that as them playing hard-to-get.
Joe tried to fuck his way out of having feelings for Joyce by diving back into the situation he thinks is the only thing he’s good at: casual sex with a stranger.
Then Liz (who is Not-Joyce) freaks out and starts festering in her own sexual guilt complex, except Joe’s hearing her say “I almost ruined myself forever” and processing it as a condemnation of himself, that he not only cannot be emotionally available to other people and Joyce in particular, he can’t even try to turn back to who he used to be without being told sex with him is a permanent mistake.
Geez when you put it like that is sounds like that whole interaction was really fucked up for everyone. The moral of this story? Don’t have sex or try to have sex ever!
The way I read it; Joe is very careful about consent. He knew, or realized, when she said what she said, that doing it with Liz would’ve been taking advantage of her. And he was blinded by this fact by his want to get Joyce out of his head.
Also, when danny gets sexiled he comments that it hasn’t been a thing for a long time, so I’m betting this joyce-thing has been something Joe’s been struggling with for a while. And now it almost lead to this… he’s probably a mess!
Joe’s whole brand was tied up in no-strings-attached sex because that way no one got hurt and he wasn’t a monster like his father. Now he’s realizing sex without an emotional connection can cause regret. His world-view is shattered.
Joe’s obviously not in best form right now. It’s one thing to do it at all, but it’s just unsportsmanlike to hit a man in Joe’s condition in the face with a brick joke.
As someone with S.A.D., I know the feeling. And I’ll say, it’s not a good one.
Dana
Please accept an appropriate expression of support as social situations have the added element of a pandemic setting. Hasn’t done my various diagnoses a bit of good. I hope you’re doing well.
Miri
Mine usually takes the form of wanting to hibernate but impostor syndrome and intrusive voices sometimes also crop up to try to sabotage me…
Dina likely would only perform eye contact for people also capable of seeing it. The point of performing it is that it is a reciprocal thing. If the blind person is capable of reciprocating and has enough vision to, she would. If they are fully blind or wearing sunglasses then one of you can’t see the eyes of the other so you cannot reciprocate or guarantee established eye contact which would render it a pointless endeavor.
As someone who feels similarly to Dina about eye contact (but I force myself to do it a lot), I can confirm I would not make eye contact with a blind or vision impaired person, but I would be sure to turn my face directly to them while talking since that is the equivalent. I wear tinted glasses and it makes eye contact a lot easier for me.
258 thoughts on “Look”
Ana Chronistic
I feel like Dina’s trying to
mountclimb Joe because he’s thereThunderNight
any mountain in a molehill
King Daniel
She’s defeeted him
K^2
Oh, I assumed this was basically a raptor attack, but she got tangled in the shirt, seeing how she doesn’t have claws to actually rip into Joe’s flesh. I mean, maybe it still is. Lets see if she goes for the jugular in the next one.
AGV
If she were performing a realistic raptor attack, she would be jumping on his back, holding on by her feet claws(?), flapping her arms for balance and using her mouth to eat away/do extra harm.
It’s called RPR (Raptor Prey Restrain) and that’s how modern birds of prey hunt. That’s inferred on dromeosaurs (dinosaur raptors) because of their relatively closeness and their anatomy being consistent with the behavior.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Naw. Dina’s just checking out his haunted look. We’re finally getting our hallowe’en special!
Josh Spicer
Always keepin promises, that Dina.
Stephen Bierce
*plays “The Look Of Love” on the hacked Muzak*
Decidedly Orthogonal
Hmmm… I’d’ve gone with: I’m a “Monster Mash”.
Thag Simmons
I’m glad he’s taking this well.
Yotomoe
I want to have intense uninterrupted eye contact with Dina.
The Wellerman
Me too bro!
Rabid Rabbit
I was going to suggest that both of you set aside money in your wills for the shovel Becky will buy to bury you with, but then I remembered she’s not poor anymore.
Opus the Poet
No, she’s just not destitute anymore. She’s still poor, and in the current political climate she’s going to be poor probably forever.
Keulen
I don’t, but then I’d rather not have intense uninterrupted eye contact with anyone. I’ve never been good at eye contact.
Sirksome
“Performative” is the key word there. You’re adding to much substance to this Dina.
Kyrik Michalowski
So Liz suddenly backing out of sex is really getting to him? Or is what she said that is getting to him?
Leorale
Definitely the latter. He doesn’t want to make Joyce feel ruined. Guess he can never have a real connection!
Yotomoe
Probably a bit of column A and a bit of column B.
There’s this saying I’ve heard a few times.
“Just go for it, the worst thing she can say is no”
“Ew.”
Sirksome
I mean the idea that just that a girl would consider having sex with you as actually ruining herself is pretty insulting. No offense to Liz…actually no a little offense to Liz. Sex is a two way street and Joe deserved a little more respect than that. Both partners have to be considerate.
The Wellerman
Yeah, but I don’t think Liz meant that sex with Joe in particular would ruin her forever, as much as she meant sex with anyone that she didn’t love.
Proxiehunter
Anyone she didn’t love and wasn’t heterosexually, monogamously married to in the correct form of Christian ceremony.
You can take the Christian out of the girl, but no a lot of the time you really can’t. Those shitty ideas embedded into you as a child just stay there.
The Wellerman
Seems a little pessimistic, don’t you think?
Brainwashing has been and still is being undone with all kinds of people, from all kinds of groups.
Kavonde
Sure, but it takes a long while to work through all of it. And these kids are just starting.
The Wellerman
Now, if only there were a way to work through it that doesn’t seem like, you know, work.
What if it were made fun somehow?
june gloom
Believe me, I hung on to a lot of weird ideas long after I became an atheist, they just became recontextualized. It wasn’t until I became a very close friend with a pagan who was willing to talk to me about it that I began to re-examine the nature of some of my beliefs.
Rose by Any Other Name
Woo!
Pagan visibility! Respect!
Wooooo!
**runs off going “Wo” some more**
Tim
What she meant is inconsequential to Joe’s feelings.
The Wellerman
Yeah, that’s true.
Wonder how he’ll come to realize that he’s not destined to be some kind of abominable sex monster.
StClair
Wonder if.
Imogen
Yeah, but it’s still a harsh thing to say *to Joe*.
Like, yes, she was in a scary spot, and I have empathy for her. But I also have empathy for Joe. And that situation was more on Liz than on him, even though yes, he could have read the signals.
alongcameaspider
I dont even think she was saying it to Joe so much as herself and Joe was just within earshot
Of course that’s effectively the same as if she had said it to Joe so I guess I’m just splitting hairs
Yotomoe
Turns out even horndogs have feelings.
It’d be like if I requested a favor from my friend and then halfway through I said “actually y’know what, nevermind. I don’t want you to fuck it up.”
Like you’re always welcome to change your mind but there is a less dickish way to put that.
Sirksome
To me it read like she didn’t consider Joe as someone worthy of love. Like sleeping with him would taint her because she didn’t think for even a second he was someone she could fall in love with. He was just a guy who wanted sex. At least I wouldn’t be surprised if Joe took it like that. It kind of feels like he was really used in that situation. More so even than when he banged Malaya.
Spencer
It wasn’t about Joe, it was about her own sexual hangups. She wanted to have sex with him to assert herself from her upbringing and peers at her campus, except sex is still this big scary thing to her. She wants to have sex, the act of sex has meaning to her, but she’s still inundated in what she was told to think about sexual purity.
Svata
it’s surprising how little that matters when you get rejected by someone saying that being with you would have “ruined [them] forever”. That’s some serious pain.
The Wellerman
Yeah, Liz probably didn’t mean him in particular, but that’s still how he took it, isn’t it?
If only there were a way for him to clear up that misunderstanding!
thejeff
Yeah, she certainly didn’t mean it that way. There was nothing specific about it being Joe that meant she’d be ruined, it was that she was doing it at all. (In her mind, of course.)
And honestly, I don’t think that part really bothered Joe. I don’t think it was the rejection, but that he’s seeing this as another way that girls can be hurt by his approach to sexuality, even when he’s following his own rules. And of course that she’s his Joyce substitute just makes it worse.
Matthew E Davis
It would reinforce his self-conception that he cannot have a real connection with a woman because he would be doomed to abandon her, I suspect. Without knowing it Liz basically told Joe his worst fears about himself are true.
thejeff
More I think that he can hurt women without abandoning them. Which was what Joyce pointed out to him over the list, but now he sees himself as having come close to hurting Liz as well.
Imogen
Lets stress, though, that Joe did not hurt Liz. This was Liz’s mistake to make. What’s hurting Joe seems to be that he thinks it would be on some level his fault, that he’s inherently destructive to women.
(The issues of “Joe had a hunch she was being reckless”, “Joe didn’t actually want to have sex but didn’t have the words to express that”, and “Liz was kind of using Joe as an object and not considering his feelings in this because she’s still new to being an ethical slut” are also important. It’s a messy situation. But you never blame your partner for you not understanding your own limits.)
thejeff
But you likely blame yourself.
The harm was minimized because Liz pulled back in time, but he’s likely thinking about what if she hadn’t and still thought she was ruined afterwards. (And: Have any of the other girls felt that way afterwards without me knowing? Is that how it would be with Joyce?)
On the abstract moral level of blame, he did nothing wrong, but on an emotional level for anyone with a degree of empathy knowing that sleeping with you “ruined” them is going to mess you up.
And this ties back to Joe’s basic conflict – his whole thing is his flawed attempt to avoid hurting women like his father did. Now he sees another way his plan to avoid that by keeping sex casual might have failed.
Dana
All these earnest takes and all I can do is resist making the dick joke you set up.
Rose by Any Other Name
Jeez, yeah. That’s about the most dickish way to put that.
Needfuldoer
I’m just going to yoink that succinct version of the blizzard of doubts that goes through my mind after I think “just ask her out”…
Deanatay
Yes, but “No” is really, REALLY bad, you see. I’d actually prefer it if they called me a stinky, smelly pile of garbage and kicked me in the nuts – I could at least interpret that as them playing hard-to-get.
Agemegos
I think the speculation that Joyce would feel the same as Liz is getting to him.
misanthropope
feels like kind of a stretch either way.it aint like he didnt read the label
Thag Simmons
Knowing something might happen is the same as being able to handle it if it does.
Spencer
Joe tried to fuck his way out of having feelings for Joyce by diving back into the situation he thinks is the only thing he’s good at: casual sex with a stranger.
Then Liz (who is Not-Joyce) freaks out and starts festering in her own sexual guilt complex, except Joe’s hearing her say “I almost ruined myself forever” and processing it as a condemnation of himself, that he not only cannot be emotionally available to other people and Joyce in particular, he can’t even try to turn back to who he used to be without being told sex with him is a permanent mistake.
Sirksome
Geez when you put it like that is sounds like that whole interaction was really fucked up for everyone. The moral of this story? Don’t have sex or try to have sex ever!
Yotomoe
Sex is bad. Nothing good has ever come from having sex. And trust me, lots of things have come from having sex.
Thag Simmons
Sexual reproduction was a mistake.
Diana Nock
Mitosis or gtfo
Wizard
Or, to be a little less cynical, maybe rushing into sex isn’t necessarily the best way to get past your hangups about sex.
Spencer
“Ruined forever” is a thing you say about your favourite toy companies when Optimus Primal comes with guns instead of swords, not your genitals.
Clif
If Optimus Primal comes after your genitals, does it really matter if it’s with swords or guns?
Kim
The way I read it; Joe is very careful about consent. He knew, or realized, when she said what she said, that doing it with Liz would’ve been taking advantage of her. And he was blinded by this fact by his want to get Joyce out of his head.
Also, when danny gets sexiled he comments that it hasn’t been a thing for a long time, so I’m betting this joyce-thing has been something Joe’s been struggling with for a while. And now it almost lead to this… he’s probably a mess!
Alex
Joe’s whole brand was tied up in no-strings-attached sex because that way no one got hurt and he wasn’t a monster like his father. Now he’s realizing sex without an emotional connection can cause regret. His world-view is shattered.
Carla's #2 Fan
Oh hover text, he wouldn’t be the only one, whoops
Tan
He was looking forward to it.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/lunchlunch/
Carla's #2 Fan
I’m glad you didn’t forget, thank you <3
Reltzik
Joe’s obviously not in best form right now. It’s one thing to do it at all, but it’s just unsportsmanlike to hit a man in Joe’s condition in the face with a brick joke.
Clif
Less of a brick joke and more of a Chekov’s performative eye contact.
Nono
Would Dina give performative eye contact with someone who was blind? Or had to wear sunglasses?
Regalli
I suspect that removes the pressure somewhat. It’s performative because other people expect it of you, after all.
The Wellerman
As someone with S.A.D., I know the feeling. And I’ll say, it’s not a good one.
Dana
Please accept an appropriate expression of support as social situations have the added element of a pandemic setting. Hasn’t done my various diagnoses a bit of good. I hope you’re doing well.
Miri
Mine usually takes the form of wanting to hibernate but impostor syndrome and intrusive voices sometimes also crop up to try to sabotage me…
Sam
Dina likely would only perform eye contact for people also capable of seeing it. The point of performing it is that it is a reciprocal thing. If the blind person is capable of reciprocating and has enough vision to, she would. If they are fully blind or wearing sunglasses then one of you can’t see the eyes of the other so you cannot reciprocate or guarantee established eye contact which would render it a pointless endeavor.
Chrissy
As someone who feels similarly to Dina about eye contact (but I force myself to do it a lot), I can confirm I would not make eye contact with a blind or vision impaired person, but I would be sure to turn my face directly to them while talking since that is the equivalent. I wear tinted glasses and it makes eye contact a lot easier for me.
TheKelliestKelly
When the promise was made
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/lunchlunch/
Lumino
The hero we need.
Dara