148

Surprisingly
Posted on January 13, 2020 by David M Willis

148 thoughts on “Surprisingly”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    constant righteous indignation is tiring tho

    1. auroki

      Even after maxing the skill tree it still drains MP like a bongo

      1. Lumino

        For context, how much MP does a bongo drain?

        1. King Daniel

          Depends on how long you’re playing it for.

        2. vlademir1

          One MP per beat. Obviously tempo varies widely with context.

        3. Reltzik

          It drains so much that in just a few seconds you’ll be running on MP.

        4. Stanistani

          Badumtish

        5. FacelessDeviant

          That depends. Are we talking about an african or european bongo?

        6. Deanatay

          Well, I don’t know th- WAAAAAAUGH…!

        7. Supersonic92

          Pretty sure bongos actually use LP.

  2. Doctor_Who

    If you look at panel 1 without context, you can imagine that Joyce is screaming a battle cry while power slamming Joe to the floor.

    In which case, the party got really wild indeed.

    1. King Daniel

      wait until someone ‘shops an actual battle cry speech bubble into that panel

      1. Screwball

        That I wanna see! If I could get on a PC…

    2. AbacusWizard

      Well, maybe she is.

    3. Kyrros

      FUS-DO-RA!

    4. Freezer

      Wrong body position for a power slam. Maybe a back body drop. Or, given Joyce’s arm position, an elbow drop.

  3. Miffed Mab

    : (

  4. Joe Moose

    Nothing is more surprising, and worrying, than a break at routine.

  5. BBCC

    Morning after what, Joe? You fell asleep on the floor, fully clothed with at least Walky and Dorothy in the room.

    Either nothing happened, or Joe’s kinkier than I thought.

    1. LeslieBean4shizzle

      Either he’s expecting her to freak out just from sleeping with her head on his chest…
      Or makeouts may have happened?

      Can’t really tell yet. Need more info.

      1. Clif

        Meh. It’s no likelier at this point than makeouts with Danny would have been the previous time.

      2. Leorale

        Definitely not getting that makeouts happened. They passed out, is all. Early!Joyce would’ve absolutely freaked out about sleep-snuggling with a non-related dude, and Joe knows it.

        (Plus, if they’d smooched, that would be a huge plot point for Joyce, so, Joyce-smooches should not happen off-screen.)

        1. DarkoNeko

          But I wonder what they talked about last night~

    2. Delicious Taffy

      Can’t help noticing you didn’t include Joyce in the kink assessment. Does this mean you already share the assumption that she’s the kinkiest character?

      1. BBCC

        I’m not 100% sure Joyce knows what kinks are in order to articulate she has them. Otherwise, yeah, I can see it.

        1. vlademir1

          Yeah, that. Once she fully escapes the fundie worldview indoctrination she’s undergone and learned how to express any she may have, Joyce is stereotypically among the most likely to be in the running for kinkiest even if her specific kinks may end up being fairly pedestrian and tame in some regards.

      2. Freezer

        At this point, I think Joyce has trouble grasping multiple sex positions.

    3. DailyBrad

      I am unsure. Part of me thinks it’s just him recognizing “I fell asleep on a boy” might set her off, given the past, or maybe they kissed or something the night prior, and he’s expecting fallout from that. Those are the two extremes in this situation.

      1. joyfulldreams

        See, I’m at least 75% certain makeouts happened. Or something akin to it.

        1. Joe asked “are WE going to do a morning after freakout”? If it we’re just him playing on Joyce’s neurosis, he would have said “you”. And Joe is very much not a dude who would have any real reason to freak out over a girl just falling asleep on him. The only thing to freak out over would be that he DIDNT get laid, but considering this is JOYCE and not a random girl, that wouldn’t actually be his first thought.

        2. Joe specifically phrases it as a “morning after freakout”. The morning after WHAT? SOMETHING must have happened before they fell asleep to freak out over. Generally people don’t refer to the act of falling asleep, even in an awkward position, like that. Also this is Joe, so this is clearly a blatant reference to SOMETHING sex-adjacent.

        3. Joyce got her first kiss yesterday. She’s also gone into something of a nihilistic spiral, especially regarding the things her religion has been holding her back from, and there was that whole thing where Becky brought up hanky-panky. Joyce’s sexual repression was super under scrutiny yesterday, and it would absolutely not surprise me if she got alone with Joe, told him about everything that happened, and then they made out but for all the wrong reasons.

        Because Joyce wants to kiss boys without feeling bad about hurting people’s feelings and that is literally Joe’s whole thing. as well as Joe probably being maybe the only person at this point who won’t condescend at her about…the WHOLE situation. But instead of talking about feelings he’d probably just rather. Offer to do emotionless, sad makeouts.

        1. Diner Kinetic

          (meanwhile from a Joe perspective, Joe admitting attraction to Joyce is a similar level of “giving up” to Joyce abandoning her fundie-instilled prudishness. Like, not in the grand scheme of things, but maybe in the Joyce scheme of things)

        2. PB

          Whiiiiiiiich is exactly how I did NOT want this ship. Combined with still not knowing where Mike is, this is at least 3 DYWs.

        3. Geneseepaws

          I’ve recalculated, and it’s at least three DYWs, but maybe as high as 5.36393332, plus or minus .332 DYWs. I don’t want that ship, well, until the end. And even less JoyceXWalky.

        4. PB

          Nice to know I was correct on the general scale. :3

        5. DailyBrad

          I mean, she has kissed Ethan and Becky, though I can see where those wouldn’t count, exactly. I guess Jacob could be considered her first kiss.

        6. King Daniel

          She was even freaking out in the bathroom about how Ethan was her first kiss, and how she’d imagined it would have been so much different.

        7. Norah

          I think the “we” is sarcastic, not literal.

    4. PB

      Yeah. i’m pretty sure nothing happened; worst-case scenario they made out and it didn’t go too far.

    5. Ophidiophile

      Joe knows not to underestimate the power of embarassment.

  6. Claire

    Did they….???!

    1. Delicious Taffy

      We can only hope.

    2. Plasma Mongoose

      Unless there is a lack of pants and undies, I would say, no hanky panky.

    3. Mollyscribbles

      Look, Joyce was pretty sheltered before coming to university. Falling asleep on top of a dude you’re not related to is still a big thing by her old standard.

    4. Doom Shepherd

      They’re on the living room floor, so if anything happened it happened in front of everybody else who was there.

      Doesn’t seem likely to me at this point in their development. Maybe in grad school.

      1. Freezer

        Or their Walkyverse counterparts found them, mindwiped the lot of them, and left them as they were (except mostly dressed).

  7. JA

    Here I thought Joyce had grown a 5 o’clock shadow.

  8. auroki

    This was surprisingly cute given recent events

  9. Stephen Bierce

    *almost played ZZ Top’s “Woke Up With Wood” in response to the alt text, but thought better of it*

    1. Needfuldoer

      How about Sleeping Bag instead?

  10. William Leonard Reese Jr.

    Joe:….. Wait do I count as the “giving up”? That’s honestly really insulting on both of our parts for a few reasons.

    Joyce: I mean yeah but not what I meant. More that I am having a religious crisis at the moment and am…. done. I am just done. I give up.

  11. Katherine

    Danny: not even in this strip and somehow managing to Dan things up.

    1. Sunny

      Ooh, panel 2! I get it now.

      1. Lingo

        Took me a moment to get it. I was trying to think of an instance in which Walky fell asleep on Joe.

        1. Poofdepoof

          Me too. I was holding out hope for a link but that makes more sense.

  12. John

    I thought Joe was the bony one. He’s even got the T-shirt.

    1. Marsh Maryrose

      Dina also has a bony t-shirt, FWIW.

    2. Deanatay

      Joe is the burly poindexter.

  13. Delicious Taffy

    Joyce is pulling a Vegeta, right now. One of his best decisions was giving up, and it made him more powerful than ever. She’s taking a really good path, and I support it.

    1. Sunny

      “I wanna be a super-Saiyan! I wanna I wanna I wanna!”

      1. Kat

        “Oh…that’s how you do it….”

    2. PB

      ☝️?

      ✊?

    3. thejeff

      I disagree. Very strongly.

      It might be a necessary step for her to get somewhere healthy in the end, but it’s not a good place for her now. She’s already made bad decisions that hurt her and her friends (Jacob) and she’s likely to make more.

      “Giving up” in this context is not healthy for her.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        Vegeta did a lot of pointlessly destructive, unhealthy stuff when he left to become a Super Saiyan. Maybe Joyce is doing it a little different, but hopefully the end result is just as good for her.

        1. thejeff

          Yeah, I think it’s likely a good thing in the long run, but that’s different than where she is now being good, or even this being a good way to get there.

        2. Schpoonman

          Vegeta also took a LOT more character development before he was even a good person. I would say his initial transformation was in fact a very bad thing for him.

      2. Freezer

        Frankly, I’m still pondering much of the Jacob/Joyce thing is Jacob. Yeah, she lied to his brother. A lie he could’ve shut down in a second (and a lie that wouldn’t have flown for a second if he actually told his brother his girlfriend’s name).

        He broke up with said girlfriend and shut down any chance at a relationship because of that lie. The lie he played along with.

        DoA!Jacob’s kind of an ass, is what I’m saying. And he damn sure isn’t worth going through a Crisis of Faith over.

        1. thejeff

          But the Crisis of Faith is the reason she did that with Jacob in the first place. The crush may have played into it beforehand, of course.

          She talked about it afterwards to Dorothy. How she’d envied her strawman image of atheist’s consequenceless debauchery, but when she tried it (in a small way) it turned out people still have feelings and you still care about them.

  14. Hoboturtle

    “Oh Dorothy. You have such a manly chest.” – Joyce, apparently

    1. King Daniel

      “such fine stubble”

    2. Bicycle Bill

      I was thinking something along that same line.  The topography of Joe’s chest is nothing at all like that of Dorothy’s…. and Joyce should certainly be able to discern the difference.

  15. rachel

    Ok………. I want this to happen now? What even..

  16. Deadjolras

    Joe in the last panel: “Well, maybe don’t.”

  17. Piotr W

    Okay… these two *are* going to end up together, don’t they?

    1. Agemegos

      Yep. It’s the inevitable way for them to travel from pole to pole in their character arcs.

      Not yet, though. Not until the end.

      1. MutantSentry

        They get together right after graduation… which at this pace will be three weeks after the heat death of the universe

  18. Suet

    Hello, indifference.

    Then again, all of us wonder why Joyce did not sleep with Dorothy, either.

  19. DailyBrad

    Joe seems concerned in the final panel, admittedly with fair cause.

  20. Hazel

    I really like the face expressions in this strip. Very much “just woke up at a sleep over” accurate.
    I discovered Willis’ comics around 2007 and it has been great to see how his art and writing has evolved. Looking forward to many more years of “Damn you Willis”.

  21. RacingTurtle

    aw

  22. DarkoNeko

    ok, I didn’t see that one coming.

    (yeah, yeah. “That’s what Joe said”, I know)

  23. Rikunda

    Someone needs therapy. Might be me.

  24. abysswatcher1993

    Joyce’s depression is so big that she isn’t repeating a stereotypical trope. She needs to get professional help.

  25. Beef

    hehe. bonier

    1. Dara

      i for one would welcome our bonier dorothy here

      c’mon joyce you know you love her

  26. Beef

    I see what you’re doing Willis, trying to see how many comics you can post before we stop asking WHAT HAPPENED TO MIKE 🙁

    1. Needfuldoer

      We’ll probably find out in March. All the character models for this chapter are assuming fighting game character select screen poses in their PJs. I’m taking this as a hint that there will be a big fight with the evil dads after everyone else spends the day figuring out what happened overnight.

    2. Keulen

      As if we’re gonna stop asking until he finally reveals what happened to Mike. Pretty sure at least one person has brought it up for every strip so far.

      1. Needfuldoer

        He’s going to string us along with that hanging plot thread for as long as possible, all the while reading the comments feed with tented hands and an evil smirk.

        1. Geneseepaws

          Willis, with tented fingers:
          AAAHHHaaa,…ummmmm…ohhhh!…. umhmmm.
          Oh! Umhmmm,… muwahahahahahahahahahahahHahahH!!
          Cough, cough, ack, thbhbhbhb.
          MMmmmmmm…..

  27. PB

    Oh, I see, Joe. When you’re self-destructive it’s fine, but when Joyce is …

    Yeah. No; that IS worse. Carry on.

  28. theKOT

    So what is going to follow is: Joyce “Jacob doesn’t want me cuz I lied”
    Joe “Everyone lied in that situation, if he can’t see past that to how great you are he doesn’t deserve you.”
    Then Joyce feels somewhat better and moves on to a relationship where she isn’t trying to steal someone away and Joe discovers how great it can be to help people feel better about themselves.

    1. BenRG

      Estimated RL duration of described arc: Five years.

    2. thejeff

      Given that Joe was already on her case about messing with Jacob and Raidah and that it touches very close to his personal trigger, I doubt he’d be that sympathetic.

      1. Jago

        Well, he might be more mad at the man in the situation. His Dad was the cheater after all.

        1. Beef

          Yeah but it’s not uncommon for kids to blame their dad’s mistress in a situation like that too

    3. Freezer

      Well, I could’ve saved my post and said “THIS.”

  29. ScarvesandCelery

    It took me a while to realise Joe meant Danny when he said “surprisingly, not the first time I’ve heard that waking up”

    1. Tan

      That makes sense. I was wondering. Thank you.

      1. Mr.Morningstar

        Does that mean Danny was cuddling Joe in his sleep thinking he was his girlfriend at one point

  30. Bagge

    I assume the first time Joe heard it, it was Danny who said it.

    1. Keulen

      That’s my assumption too.

  31. BenRG

    Oh Joyce! You’ve done it now! Joe won’t dare leave you alone today after hearing that!

    1. Bagge

      He can join Sarah and Becky and Dorothy and…. basically half the cast in the freaking-out-about-Joyce-loosing-her-idealism-oh-no-I-know-it-was-obnoxious-but-this-is-scary-shit-club.

      1. Terry

        Actually, as someone who has, in the past, used women’s crises of faith as an easy path into their pants, he probably has the most insight of anyone in the main cast into how Joyce is feeling. He knows the right things to say to get desired reactions out of this type of situation, so he probably will be able to genuinely help her through this since he has 1- been trying to turn over a new leaf and 2- has been getting closer to Joyce throughout the comic to the point of being someone she calls in a crisis.

    2. Deanatay

      Joyce Performs A Sleeping-With-A-Guy-And-Not-Freaking-Out-Afterwards: A Dumbing of Age Hanky-Panquique

  32. Zellgato

    Morning after what..?
    passing out on the floor?
    I mean even for joyce that freak out would be odd at this point, after the last few months.

    though i could see her angry at him for being him there (considering his generalized attitude at times though she’s been phone chatting just fine so would still be a bit odd)

  33. Tenzhi

    Confirmation that the floor is indeed perfectly chaste?

  34. miri

    I love how she’s still using him as a pillow.

    “So… Do you want to get off me?”
    “Eh. Comfy.”
    “So… Do you want to get off with me?”
    “…”
    “Joyce?”
    “Thinking about it.”
    “..!”
    “Do you have your toothbrush with you? Because making out with morning breath sounds gross”

  35. Dracke

    Both of them have hit lows…
    And have shown improvement thanks to the other…and by rejecting that they hit the lows they are right now
    I don’t ship them, at all…
    But I think each others friendships is what they need to grow as people.
    Flawed and sincere people with no sense of superiority ( Like Danny Or Dorothy…than less so, but he compensates with more judgmentality)

  36. BenRG

    “Oh, I thought you were Dorothy.” — Joyce, dear? You really need to relate this incident to Dorothy. No matter what she says, I think that it is important that you are honest with each other in this way.

  37. Lone Duck

    Dialogue aside, just the wake-up is uncharacteristic. I mean, Joyce wasn’t looming over someone, cheerfully saying how beautiful this day is (that Jesus made). I do like Joe and Joyce’s interactions. They bring out each others honesty.

    1. BenRG

      Not necessarily ‘honesty’ as much as ‘ease’. Neither of them feel a need to be an artificial persona with each other. That’s true friendship and the only other person we see Joyce really express this with is Dorothy.

    2. Sam

      Not so much honesty as different sides of themselves. In different relationships, different sides of yourself come out as is natural. Joe’s the person that gets to see the more melancholic moments of Joyce because she doesn’t mind letting him take some of the burden, she doesn’t mind letting Dorothy carry some of it either. The joyful side she shows to others is still real but the melancholic side right now is also real. With some people it is easier to be straightforward because you don’t give yourself the same expectatons with everyone.

      1. thejeff

        I don’t think this is so much showing different sides as her being in the midst of a crisis right now. I can’t remember her showing much joy since the thing with Jacob.

        1. Sam

          This is definitely part of a real crisis but she was also still genuinely happy to have Sarah at the party for several minutes before sliding back into her crisis and self-doubts. Joyce is definitely one of those people that can get distracted by a different emotion temporarily and come back to sadness later when less people are watching as this crisis has been slowly building and boiling in the background.

  38. LovelyMonsters

    I really like Joyce and Joe’s relationship. I don’t quite want to call it a friendship, but I love the way they seem to see through to the core of each other: longing for a real connection with someone and not nearly as certain about who they themselves are as they front being. Not as certain they *like* themselves as they front being. Neither one lets the other forget it, but it’s not abusive like Mike is (was?) toward his proteges and not as obnoxious as Walky.

    I’d love to see more of them together. They need to mine each other for self-actualisation epiphanies. And maybe, if they’re lucky, they’ll come out of it with a real friendship.

  39. ValdVin

    Just thinking back to when she took that nap with Ethan, same fully-clothedness.

  40. Josh Spicer

    Ten bucks says Joe realizes that Joyce giving up is such a big moment and talks to her about it.

    Nobody spoil it for me.

    1. Clif

      Would taking your 10 bucks count as spoiling it?

  41. Shane

    I could possibly see some reasoning like ‘I tried boy kisses with Jacob, they were fun and I wasn’t immediately dragged down bodily to Hell nor engulfed in sulfurous flames. Joe was concerned when I hurt my foot and obviously not shy or inexperienced or unwilling, so maybe good to explore more with’

    1. thejeff

      I’m not actually sure Joe would be willing. He’d be concerned about him inevitably hurting her.

      1. Shadotterdan

        Joe always gave me ethical slut vibes. If Joyce was looking to explore sex I would argue that he would be a valuable resource.Sure he’d worry, but that would be part of why he would make the best study partner when she is in a better stage of mind.

        1. thejeff

          Joe’s problem is that he doesn’t trust himself. He thinks he’ll betray and hurt any woman he gets close to, like his dad did. He tried to cope with this by just having casual sex with no emotional connection, but Joyce made him see that even that was hurting people.

          He might actually be good for her, but he can’t see it and there’s already too much of an emotional connection for him to pretend she’d be just another casual sexual conquest.

          They’ve both got growing to do before they’re ready.

  42. hof1991

    It’s been a challenging 24 hours since Joyce decided to skip church. The whole dream destroyed with Jacob. Becky as an adult with a job, apartment and serious girl friend. And Joyce just….adrift.

  43. Rabisch

    Joyce has grow up so much. But she’s so sad. I kinda hope she and Joe start to speak about this feeling. Their conversations are always good.

    1. PB

      “You said you were done with conversations about feelings.”

      “Yeah, well… I think I got one more in me.”

      1. Twirls

        oh my heart

      2. Rabisch

        Good

  44. JessWitt

    Joyce is broken.

    1. Clif

      Wel, she may think she is. But I think just below the surface she is still Joyce, with all that implies both good and bad.

  45. ziggy78eog

    Giving up, or realizing that it is not worth the energy you put into it, and moving on? There is a distinct difference, between the two.

    1. thejeff

      In Joyce’s case, judging by her statements earlier in the party, “giving up”.

  46. BoppyMcBoppyFace

    Would anyone post a link to Joyce’s kiss? I’m a filthy casual of this comic and I can’t remember what happened with Joyce punching her K-Card.

    1. ValdVin

      Here, and the strip after: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/rushed/

      1. BoppyMcBoppyFace

        Aha! That’s what it was. Ok, yeah, definitely not quite the way she would have liked it to turn out, but it looked like it was pretty toe-curling for her while it lasted.
        Now I want to know the circumstances around this not being the first time Joe has had a girl wake up on him, thinking he was Dorothy!

        1. Kannen

          I think he’s probably talking about Danny.

  47. PB

    Can’t help but notice fewer mentions on this page so:

    MIKE WHERE’S MIKE IS MIKE OKAY

    There. Just bolstering the numbers.

    1. Shane

      We’ve mostly all realized that all life is quickly snuffed out by an uncaring void, and our mistake was caring about some second string bit character maybe not even important enough to be protected by the No Main Character Deaths rule. A mistake we quickly and automatically corrected into apathy when it became clear that life of worrying about who is canoodling who goes on, functioning easily whether or not he’s alive or dead. Same as ourselves when we’re gone, but we keep showing up for the mild comic distraction to help pass the time before our own inevitable death into meaninglessness.

      1. King Daniel

        eat arby’s

      2. Bicycle Bill

        RE: Main characters vs supporting characters

        If you go to the top of the page and click the word/link “Cast” you will be taken to a page with thumbnails of 21 characters in this webcomic — characters such as Joyce, Walky, Billy, Dina, Becky, Amber, and yes, even Mike and Joe.  Missing are people such as Galasso, Faz, Alan, Azma, Ryan, Ross, Blaine, and even Joyce’s parents and various siblings.

        I would say that, based on this, these 21 are the “main characters” and are covered under Willis’s “NO MAIN CHARACTER DEATH” rule.  The rest had better watch their backs.

        1. Felian

          So we can actually still hope that Blaine and Ross die a horrible death.

          i’m a peaceful person and all, but i have zero tolerance for domestic abuse. If perpetrators are not gonna stop their abusive behaviour and it can’t be guaranteed by inside or outside factors, the world is a safer place without them.

  48. Jade

    hey, is mike dead? just wonderin’

    1. Shane

      It doesn’t matter, did the lesbians ‘lick each other’s envelopes’.

  49. Koms

    Haha bonier… boner ??‍♀️

  50. Lucretiel

    Maybe Joe is was less buff than he looks, it’s just all large, wide bones in there

    1. miri

      So I went from there to “girls dig big bones” to “Joe + paleontology students?” to “wow, I can’t imagine Dina + Joe… Assuming she has her Walkyverse sexuality it does include guys even though she and Becky are SUPERCUTE and AMAZING-AWESOME together – but she and Joe..? I just can’t see it!

  51. MutantSentry

    …

    …

    …

    …

    That’s fine, take your time

    …

    …

    …

  52. DarkoNeko

    Just admit you feel confortable there, not moving an’ all.

  53. ensiform

    Now this same conversation tomorrow but with Walky and the pizza box.

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