Fifteen
Posted on September 10, 2025 by David M Willis

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Tags: becky, dorothy, joyce

685 thoughts on “Fifteen”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    increased incidence of clandestine lesbianism after leaving a door unlocked

    1. Doctor_Who

      That’s selection bias.

      We can’t know the comparative amount of clandestine lesbianism that goes on but never gets observed because they DON’T leave the door unlocked.

      1. Effie

        Schrodinger’s Lesbians: until they are observed, nobody knows if they are lesbians or not

        (except in this case everyone knew except them)

        1. Steamweed

          Lesenberg Uncertainty Principle: You cannot simultaneously know the current sexuality and imminent sexual behavior of any given queer.

        2. Lathari

          If roommates don’t realize they are actually a couple, are they a couple?

      2. Ana Chronistic

        I said X increased as a result of Y, I never said X only occurs from Y

    2. Yet_One_More_Idiot

      Book 16: If I had to do it all over again, I’d definitely have locked the door!

    3. mindbleach

      Which seems related to the INT debuff for sapphics in denial.

      This doesn’t happen with dudes. Ethan’s mom had to knock.

    4. Leadsynth

      Headcanon: Becky actually climbed in the window, Sal-style

  2. Dot

    Whoops!

    1. Pocky

      womp womp

    2. Twinsword

      NIAGARA FALLS! SLOWLY I TURN, STEP BY STEP, INCH BY INCH… ??

      1. DaveM

        I need an “upvote” button for this comment so badly. 🙂

        1. Clif

          There can be only three.

      2. keithcurtis

        Perfect.

      3. brionl

        They’ll be going to the Susquehanna Hat Company next.
        For new lesbian hats.

    3. Comic.phile

      I accidentally clicked “report comment” (I’m on mobile and was scrolling), and want to apologize

      Apologies.

    4. Elf grrl

      As a Sicko Paladin, the line delivery from Joyce in panel 2 is just amazingly awful timing. Not only did Becky witness her childhood bff KISSING another girl, but she just heard her childhood bff ADMIT that they could’ve (preferably) been making out with Dotty for the past six months.

      Perfect start to the drama. SO excited for the next couple strips.

  3. NGPZ

    It finally comes full circle, huh? (:0)

    Happy Dummi-versary, DAMN YOU WILLIS!!!

    (smh)

    *plays “O Fortuna” on hacked muzak*

    1. True Survivor

      Indeed. Congratulations, Mr. Willis, on a decade and a half of Dumbing of Age. I think we all appreciate and admire your dedication to drawing delightful drama and scintillating storytelling. I can’t imagine it’s been easy, but it certainly has been appreciated. I know this webcomic has at least made my life a little brighter.

    2. Amós Batista

      Happy 15th Dumbing of Age anniversary

    3. Yet_One_More_Idiot

      Becky walked in and saw them doing it right in her faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace

      Her faaaaaaaaaaaaaaace

      …sorry, trying to make that still be relevant and failing xD

  4. The 25th

    Yeah, I’m sad that they don’t run comics in the paper on Sunday too, Becky.

    1. Clif

      Yeah, at first I thought this might be an instantaneous reaction, kind of a shock take, but no. She already has the paper.

      Damn You Willis!!! and good job.

  5. QueenofSodor

    whuh-oh

    1. ReFlex76

      Wow, what’s that gravitar from?

      1. Elf grrl

        Its from the time Joyce and Dorothy went out drinking. It was the drunk selfie Joyce posted on her socials. Here’s the strip; https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/03-trystin-in-the-wind/sabbatical/

  6. Yumi

    Ayyy, callback! Maybe not the time for Joyce to be saying that callback aloud, but whatevs

    1. tbf

      Also callbacks to the start of years one and eleven in the first panel.

    2. Yumi

      Just in case this past strip doesn’t spring instantly to your mind: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/definitely/

      1. Sirksome

        I wonder what Kaitlin’s up to these days? You think she’s still smooching girls? Still selling em out when they get caught? What an icon.

        1. Li

          She was a Patreon Bonus strip vote. Not smooching girls, last we checked in on her; repressing, repressing, repressing.

        2. Thag Simmons

          Uh, angling to go on the same school trip to greece in the same group as a girl she thinks is cute.

    3. Vanessa

      It doesn’t matter, Becky has the newspaper.

      1. Yumi

        I’m not really sure how that’s relevant to my comment, but yes, locking the door wouldn’t have prevented Becky from knowing. The callback is mostly working as a callback.

        1. Nymph

          Witchcraft.

      2. Wizard

        Seeing a picture is a little different from seeing it happening right in front of you.

  7. Staszu13

    Dun dun DUN

  8. jeffepp

    What? No crack of thunder and lightning?

    1. Embe13

      very very frightening

      1. Decidedly Orthogonal

        me

        1. Dara

          Galileo!

        2. Reaver

          GALILEO FIGAROOOO

        3. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          MAGNIFICOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

        4. Aquila

          But I’m just a poor boy,

        5. IntangibleMatter

          Nobody loves me

        6. and painted shark women

          hEE’s JuST a PoOR bOY
          FrOm A pOOr FaMiLY

        7. butting

          SPARE HIM HIS LIFE FROM THIS MONSTROSITY

        8. FlyingFish

          (I think you mean “poor girl.”)

        9. Sajuuk-Khar

          Easy come, easy go
          Will you let her go?

          (BISMILLAH! NO! WE WILL NOT LET YOU GO)

        10. Big Z

          *Weird Al voice* NO NO NO NO
          NO-NO-NO-NO-NO! *slide whistle*

    2. Brooke

      LET HIM GOOOOO

      1. Sajuuk-Khar

        BISMILLAH! NO!

        WE WILL NOT LET YOU GO

  9. ZombieKyrik

    Uh-oh

    That is the face of a very hurt Becky, and I’m sure this is going to be painful for everyone involved; yes?

    1. Thag Simmons

      I’m just glad it looks like we’re actually getting some fucking drama after all this buildup. Was very worried she’d actually just be completely chill with everything.

      1. Freemage

        I’m both pleased an irked. Like you, I’ve been waiting for a drama payoff. But honestly, Becky was the one potential drama source I was hoping would say, “Nah, I figured it out weeks ago, I’m’a gonna go bang a dinosaur chick.”

        1. Thag Simmons

          I think that would have been cool if someone else could carry the drama torch and if there hadn’t been quite so much build-up about Becky’s reaction. As it stands I think she needs a strong reaction.

        2. RocketRelm

          I actually feel the opposite. With Joe and Walky, they’d have serious reason to be hurt, and I’d have felt bad. (The drama with Joe is juicy fun even so and still not over, but.) But with Becky? That’s an “I’m about to make Bad Choices” face, and I’m so here for it.

        3. FlyingFish

          I would like to note that a triad with Joe is already under serious consideration, so why not add Becky (and Dina!) to the mix?

        4. thejeff

          Because Joyce isn’t interested?

        5. VicMortimer

          Joyce WASN’T interested. Doesn’t mean she hasn’t changed her mind now that she has realized she’s actually bi.

        6. Cimorene

          I think Joyce has Becky firmly in the “family” portion of her brain and a lot of the time when people grew up together it’s a lot more difficult to see them as romantic or sexual options. I’ve had a lot of unrequited love both ways due to that. Becky is going to be more hurt by them being sneaky and not upfront plus spiral about sexuality being fluid and I hope not very biphobic.

          A gal I went to high school with came out super gay like Becky to the point where she was biphobic. She had super religious parents, but her youth pastor dad was a lot more supportive than her mom. We caught up after first semester of college at a house party and she was dating a guy, “Y’know how I said those awful things about bi people? …well. About that. Also if you have controlling parents be a lesbian or gay for a little bit, then go back to hetero dating. My mom is leaving condoms around the house and trying to trick us into alone time now.”

          She’s happily married to a lady now so.

        7. Bobin

          Considering the foreshadowing that Becky is still clearly in love with Joyce and just chose to repress it for the sake of their relationship and growing as a person, I would’ve been pretty disappointed if she just suddenly gave no fucks

        8. Cimorene

          And love isn’t a finite or exclusive thing. Becky can love Dina fully, but still carry a torch for Joyce.

        9. Envy

          I have a feeling a big part of her hurt is gonna come from her feeling like they were intentionally hiding this from her. Most relationships don’t go from, “Oh, I think I might have feelings for my friend?” to publicly making out within a day, so Becky is almost definitely gonna think they’ve had a secret thing for awhile.

        10. Ray Radlein

          OTOH, overhearing “I could have been kissing you for six months” certainly clears up any such belief.

        11. twiz

          This is what I’m hoping for, really. She’s got Dina now, and Dina is awesome.

    2. Minivet

      Further informed by the newspaper in her hand, what I get from that face is she was extremely hurt seeing it in the news, and now that is being at least doubled by seeing it in person, even knowing it was coming.

  10. mindbleach

    Woo, callback!

    1. True Survivor

      Ah, its a reference to when Becky was relaying the story of how she got caught snogging her first girl at her old college. I knew it was a callback to something, I just couldn’t place it till now. I like the parallels and how Joyce and Becky’s similar word choice help reflect how they grew up together.

      1. drs

        Also the first panel is a callback to the very first panel of DoA.

        1. RoyanRannedos

          Does Joyce realize she still needs her femurs to live?

  11. Dot

    Alright I have a feeling that this comment section is gonna get testy so here’s a safe zone:

    Ever since it came up the other day I haven’t been able to get the idea of a dnd arc out of my head. Who would the group be, and who would play what? Discuss!

    1. Yumi

      I’m not for sure on who the group would be, but some of my initial thoughts: Danny plays a bard (obvious answer), Jennifer plays a barbarian, Ruth plays a wizard, I’m not sure what class Booster would play, but I imagine their character as a Fey.

      1. Yumi

        Lucy plays a cleric; AG plays a paladin and Amber plays a rogue.

        1. Freemage

          See, I would’ve put AG as a Barbarian, and maybe made Jennifer the old Cavalier class (or whatever the closest approximation to it in 5E is). Dina’s a monk with a focus on stealth. Becky plays a Wild Magic Sorcerer. Roz insists on playing a 3.x character from the Book of Erotic Fantasy.

        2. Envy

          I feel like a Paladin is more structured and morality based than a Barbarian, so it feels more AG to me.

        3. Yumi

          Becky joins a group not made up of the usual cast*, and when they’re teaching her how to play, someone goes, “You can give your character a tragic backstory, like [unwittingly describes Becky’s life in fantasy terms].”

          (*or maybe this is Danny speaking)

        4. Bryy

          Lucy would be the most rules lawyer to ever rules lawyer.

        5. butting

          Raidah, tho

      2. Amber

        Booster also plays a bard and they’re WAY better at it than Danny.

        1. Yumi

          Oh, or Booster DMs.

        2. Dot

          Booster as DM works, it was probably between them or Danny.

        3. Sirksome

          Booster definitely DMs. Monitoring everyone’s reactions to their story iwould be way more fun for them than playing.

        4. Thag Simmons

          Booster would rather be playing Vampire the Masquerade, I think.

        5. Freemage

          Right gameline, but I think Booster would rather play Wraith: the Oblivion, on the fact that it’s possible to play the game while only observing, never actually doing anything…. Also, as a Shadowguide, you get to deliberately push another player into making bad choices.

        6. Thag Simmons

          The extent of my knowledge of White Wolf games is VTM: Bloodlines and what vague osmosis about the tabletop version, Werewolf and Hunter.

          That definitely sounds right though. I was couodn’t pick out a Vamp clan I felt was definitive for them, I think there’s a couple viable ones there.

        7. Jon

          For some reason, Booster gives me Ventrue vibes. Can’t really nail down why, but…

      3. Thag Simmons

        Ruth is absolutely a Barbarian, let’s be real.

        1. John Campbell

          Ruth’s a Monk. Drunken Master archetype.

        2. Thag Simmons

          Nah, Hockey Hooligan is a Barbarian subclass. Two handed weapon proficiency, good at intimidating, she even comes from the cold north

        3. Thag Simmons

          Also, Blue warpaint

        4. John Campbell

          I’m remembering her throwing Billie and Blaine. She’s not just a berserker; she’s got skills.

        5. John Campbell

          Also, her powers don’t work as well without booze.

        6. Yumi

          I like to imagine Ruth as as specifically not a Barbarian but still going, “I rage.”
          DM: “Uh, you can’t–”
          Ruth: “I RAGE.“

      4. Freezer

        Sal: Chaotic Neutral Rouge. She’s gonna play a character that lets her f*ck around and do whatever.

      5. Nymphie

        Jennifer would go for whatever fits a jedi the most and insist on that she gets a lightsabre

        Dina is straight up a dinosaur with all stats put on disguise. She refuses to tell Becky if she knows about the bear meme or not

    2. Loki

      Well, in this scenario, is it everyone’s first character? Because those tend to be somewhat bad.

      I feel like Becky would play one of those “steals from everyone to the detriment of story and party” rogues, for example. Although I can also see her as a warlock for some reason.

      1. Dot

        I have to imagine we’re working with mixed experience levels here.

        1. Grimeyville

          I do appreciate that the near consensus is Dina as a dexterity heavy character with animal (dinosaur) companion.

        2. Bobin

          Dina would definitely have a talk with the dm beforehand and somehow be a talking dinosaur

          Danny would be a Paladin who gave up and decided to duel-class as a bard

          Dorothy would be a cleric who’d get keep insisting on being in front of the party and getting downed constantly

          Mike would somehow transend death to be the murder hobo Rogue who takes all the party’s money/loot and persuades them into believing that he’s broke

        3. Freemage

          … And then does everyone’s characters’ moms. For a copper piece.

        4. Jon

          Dina would be a dragonborn rogue; she can already move silently, and dragonborn is as close to “dinosaur in human form” as the rules get.

          AG/Amber would be a dual-class Oath of Glory paladin/sorcerer (the Oath is from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything).

    3. Doctor_Who

      Dotty would be the DM.

      Sal would be a Rogue with an edgy backstory.

      Sarah would be a paladin armed with a club.

      Dina would be a druid who can’t pick an animal companion because all of the dinosaurs in the Monster Manual have inaccuracies she needs to correct.

      Lucy would be a wizard with ten pages of backstory and play the game flawlessly (but roll terribly)

      Jennifer would refuse to play because it’s too dorky but stand around insulting everyone in ways that reveal she knows a suspicious amount about the rules and lore.

      Joyce would suffer from severe choice paralysis as her being raised to think D&D is both satanic and actually magic hasn’t been fully purged from her psyche, her inclination to play a cleric because she likes to heal would clash with her newfound atheism, and the sheer amount of options would intimidate her. Luckily Dorothy already has a fighter based on Julia Gray rolled up to hand her.

      1. Grimeyville

        Jennifer: You nerds are just lucky the Fist of Emirikol didn’t make it to 5e.

        Everyone just stares at her in confusion—she scoffs and rolls her eyes.

    4. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Dina is the Rogue, of course.
      Becky is the Cleric.
      Dorothy is the Wizard.
      Roz is the Atheist Paladin crusading for tolerance.
      Jennifer is the Sorceror who thinks she is in control.
      Jacob is the tank.
      Joe is the generic human Fighter.
      Amazi-Girl is the DPR glass cannon.
      Walky is the Bard because he couldn’t decide.
      Asma is the Only Sane Person running the Item Shop.
      The one who doesn’t wear shoes is the Druid.

    5. Grimeyville

      Ethan or Jason trade campaigns on being DM. Both in terms of competency and focus. Ethan is the more storytelling, house rules go sort of DM, while Jason has a strict eye on what play like an audit.

      I can’t say everyone for certain who else is playing but Walky absolutely plays a cleric who forgets to heal. Constantly.

      Dina mix-maxes as a Gloomstalker Ranger with levels in Assassin.

      Amber plays a bard who gets overtly attached to NPCs so she can have fanfics to write later. It gets to a point that both Ethan and Jason create decoy NPCs to hold her interest so she doesn’t try to save certain coded NPCs in the campaign fated to die.

    6. Effie

      I’m thinking Becky as loose-cannon Barbarian. Dorothy is Wizard, and now I’m really wanting to see her in the classic Mickey Mouse wizard hat and robe. Joyce is Cleric, because despite losing her religion, she just wants to heal people. Somehow I can’t imagine Walky joining a DnD game at all. Dina plays a Ranger, but can’t decide which dinosaur is her animal companion. Amber basically tries to create Amazi-Girl as her character, so, like, high-acrobatics Rogue?

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        Yes, Joyce is Piffany from “Nodwick”!

    7. Embe13

      Dina is a ranger,
      sal a Rogue,
      amazigirl fighter
      asher a warlock,
      jacob a paladin
      fuck face – vampire terrask
      joyce – barbarian
      dorothy – wizard
      becky – cleric
      mike – your mom
      walky – fighter/rogue/sorcerer/cleric cause he is too chill to stick to one class
      carla – alchemist
      ethan – necromancer
      asma – guild receptionist/master rogue

    8. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Ethan as a Changeling, because that’s as close as you can get to a Transformer?

      1. Embe13

        they added a powered armour artificer in 5e, but nah hes a goth now necromancy all the way

      2. Thag Simmons

        Nah, Warforged Druid who is blatantly Dinobot.

    9. Embe13

      cant believe i missed danny the bard!

    10. True Survivor

      I don’t know who the group would be, but I know Mary wouldn’t join (even if she doesn’t think the whole thing is devil worship, I doubt she would want to spend an evening with the rest of the cast).
      This is a great shame as Mary would make a fantastic Paladin. Think about, she’s already a self-righteous zealot who uses her dogmatic adherence to an impossible code to justify and channel her anger and sadistic release of deep seated insecurities while creating delightfully dramatic friction with everybody she’s forced to live beside. She’s perfect.

      1. DaveM

        Mary would be “That Paladin” in the party. Possibly “That Rules lawyering Paladin in the party”. To be avoided.

        1. Michelle J Caboose

          The paladin that the rest of the party has to trick into leaving the room anytime they want to do anything, because they all know she’d ruin it for them.

    11. Dare

      Lucy would be DM.

      She already had a stack of board games ready for the room party the other day. I’m sure she runs a game somewhere.

      I don’t know if any of the others of the main cast would be playing. Danny and Booster, maybe. Dorothy wouldn’t have the time. Ruth, Sal and Joe wouldn’t care. Walky wouldn’t have the attention span. Dina would object to the unreality. Jennifer would secretly want to but never actually do it.

      1. Yumi

        Jennifer would walk by a bunch while the others were playing, then finally say she’s joining “just so [she] can beat up nerds.” Someone tries to point out how this doesn’t make sense, and Lucy aggressively shushes them.

    12. Yue Ryong

      I’m thinking Amber DMs. She’s the one with the writing chops to go full railroad DM and try and force the game into a set plot that the players are *definitely* not paying enough attention to (including much boy/boy-smooching of varying levels of toxicity).

      Given it’s her game, Ethan & therefore Asher getting roped in feels likely. Asher feels like he’d vibe Ranger – roguey, but not *too* roguey. Ethan wouldn’t be able to commit to any one thing, so would be foisted with a healerbot role of some kind (possibly bribed with getting to be a Cleric of Primus).

      Walky would join, then consistently forget to show and would *technically* have called Barbarian, but once he’s gone Billiefer would take it and none-too-subtly turn the character into a Sith.

      Dina has Druid suggested, but gets grumpy about the amount of magic; digs up a nonmagical homebrew from the furthest depths of the internet that lets her have a whole squad of raptors.

      Becky has no idea what works or doesn’t, but really vibes with Paladin, so ends up consistently the strongest character in the game.

      Joyce plays Sorcerer for about a week before getting into a moral quandary about the amount of goblins they’re killing & pulling out. Dorothy had been playing Wizard, but pulls out with Joyce for extra smoochie times.

      Danny hears about it too late to join, they’re all full up. He gets grumpy, runs a game of his own that just collapses into smoochy time with Sal as Joe contemplates why he expected this to go any other way.

      Ruth doesn’t join. She checks in every so often to make sure that they’re not leaving the common room a mess.

    13. zee

      Dotty would minmax the fuck out of her character. I don’t think she’d want to do physical combat rp so not human fighter, and she’d probably get high off of putting together her spell list is elven wizard or something. She would also try to be dm and get gently pushed aside by someone who’s done it before and knows it would give her an aneurysm

    14. Michelle J Caboose

      Joe would claim to be too cool for DnD, but would play anyway, saying it’s only because Joyce is playing. He’d play a paladin, intending to milk it for the LOLs, but after a few weeks of sessions would wind up getting really into it and making a rich, detailed backstory for his paladin.

      And would still be claiming he did it ironically.

  12. Cholma

    “That’s funny; Becky’s never read the paper before!”

  13. Cameron Stone

    Finally I’ve been waiting for something interesting to happen. I WANT BLOOD! (Perhaps even buckets of it)

  14. Sirksome

    Don’t trust unlocked doors.

    1. Tan

      I know it’s a running bit, but this is the frickin truth.

  15. Gin

    I remember that line

  16. JA

    WELP, TIME TO BUY STOCKS IN POPCORN.

    1. Embe13

      dont for the the mineral oil cigars and beer

  17. Nono

    Tomorrow: cutaway to Riley eating cereal

    1. shadowcell

      three weeks of walky eating all those chicken nuggets

      1. Dara

        one strip per nugget

        take that, cerebus

        1. Embe13

          no to truly fuck that aardvark one panel a bite

        2. Taffy

          Why you wanna fuck a aardvark for?

        3. Embe13

          dpn;t want to have sex, just issue giant fuckyou to the aarvark andhes creator

      2. Doctor_Who

        Followed by five of him on the toilet.

  18. Dara

    FATALITY

    becky has so many emotions right now but honestly hon why are you waiting to ambush joyce in joyce’s room with nobody else there and and and

    1. Li

      don’t forget IN THE DARK

    2. SunflowerBanjo

      Honest answer? I think because she saw it in the paper and is hurt that Joyce didn’t tell her first (she doesn’t have context for it being a spur-of-the-moment thing), and hurt that Joyce didn’t Choose Her, and sad that this affirms to her that Joyce has replaced her with Dorothy in every way PLUS the ways she (Becky) always wanted but never had, and conflicted because she feels all of these things while also in a happy and committed relationship, AND on top of all of that is now faced with her “very straight” best friend AND longtime one-sided crush suddenly exhibiting very clear attraction to girls while the current sorry arc is hinting at Becky’s own sexuality potentially shifting AWAY from being into girls only (or maybe that was all just a setup to give us some broader context for Joyce’s sexuality developing in this arc, but it’s been very Becky-centric so…). So she wants to confront Joyce and somehow express all of this, but she’s feeling very moody about it all, so waiting in her (Joyce’s) room in the dark is the logical Thing to Do.

    3. Envy

      I mean, there’s a very real chance she just stopped by Joyce’s room on the way back from church to see what was up, noticed the giant stack of newspapers by the door, got curious, and now she’s been standing in here processing her emotions/freaking out for the past few minutes.

      1. Needfuldoer

        I think this is the most plausible explanation.

    4. thejeff

      Ah, I was trying to figure out what had happened and how the unlocked door fit in. I didn’t even think that Becky was already there. Which is, as you say, a bit weird.

  19. ZombieKyrik

    Happy Birthday Dumbing of Age!

    Joy for the old years, and cheers for the years still to come.

    1. Dara

      yeah, happy 15th! ^_^

  20. Peng

    One of my fave comic pages ever I’m serious

  21. AeromechanicalAce

    Fire In the Hole! Everyone duck and cover, this one’s gonna be noisy.

  22. Dot

    I’m torn because I’m glad that Becky isn’t gonna be taking it like a champ like some people have suggested, but this just comes back to my complaint about all the drama in this affair coming from outside the relationships involved.

    1. Sirksome

      I’m still torn. This will be compelling to read, but Becks should be so past this and it feels a little toxic.

      1. PrognosticHannya

        I’m pretty sure that Becky isn’t in love with Joyce anymore, it’s more that Joyce being gay (but not for her) is going to make her feel SERIOUSLY inadequate and put a huge strain on their friendship. A “what does she have that I don’t” sort of thing.

        1. Erica

          Absolutely. Is it rational? Not very. But it’s a very real and relatable reaction

        2. Bogeywoman

          That’s my feeling. Regardless of whether she has lingering romantic feelings, that sense of being not-enough for someone can still be immensely painful.

        3. ESM

          Also the idea that Joyce is gay now but wasn’t before. Every time Becky’s been exposed to the idea of fluid sexuality she’s gotten upset.

        4. deliverything

          Two examples:
          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/04-for-me-it-was-tuesday/fluididentities/
          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/02-the-one-where-jocelyne-returns/droppin/

        5. John Campbell

          Someone just needs to point her at the Bi Joyce Supercut.

          (… and now I’m picturing her as one of these dudes who keeps insisting that Joyce being into girls came out of nowhere and there was absolutely no evidence for it.)

          No, it’s okay, Becky, Joyce has been bi the whole time. Those weren’t false positives your gaydar was picking up when you were growing up together. She’s just not into you. Sorry.

        6. Needfuldoer

          “She’ll hold you tonight, but I won’t
          What’s she got that I don’t?
          The one thing I thought I’d never lose
          She’s got you”

      2. Cimorene

        It’s more the sneaking around and lying that will hurt more than the relationship. And the evolution of sexuality that is in opposition to hers.

        1. thejeff

          But there’s barely been any sneaking around or lying. Just one encounter with a panicking Dorothy.

      3. sisterofdarkoneko

        Of COURSE she’s not past this.This is the tasty shit we were promised. If it had actually been 7 years or whatever since Becky blew up her life for Joyce that would be one thing. It’s been like four months. Of course Becky is both absolutely in love with Dina AND will be extremely wounded by Joyce going from adamantly straight to MAKING OUT WITH HER ROOMMATE THAT SHE HAS A MOSTLY JOKING BUT STILL KINDA ANTAGONISTIC RELATIONSHIP WITH.

        And it makes sense this is the relationship that real drama is coming from, because it’s, you know, one of Joyce’s oldest relationships, to say nothing of the very first relationship shown in the comic. This is so deeply fundamental to both characters and the comic itself in the way a romantic relationship that’s cute but like a month old just isn’t. And that’s before we get into all the ways in which Joyce’s most important relationships are with women.

        1. Dot

          I mean, neither Wally’s relationship to Dorothy nor Joyce’s connection to Joe are that young. You can emphasize the importance of Joyce and Becky’s relationship without minimizing those.

        2. GreyICE

          Walky and Dorothy being back together was literally 4 days. I guess Joe was two weeks?

        3. perpetual summer

          Hey, if only the time spent in romantic relationships counts, then Dorothy abd Joyce have been together for… A day? And as such should matter even less. Of course that’s an extremely silly way to look at things! Especially considering this is a story being told over 15 years now (congrats Willis!). All of these relationships have build-up and history that makes people care about them and make them have weight/meaning (both in AND out of universe).

        4. deliverything

          Here, evidence I’d been meaning to look up that proves that Joyce+Joe didn’t come out of nowhere:
          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/bloc-2/
          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/help-2/

          Way back when she revisited her family and wanted to discuss her worries with someone uninvolved, it was Joe she chose. And that was back when he was widely viewed as a horndog…
          Maybe it started with her choosing him due to his parents being divorced, so he was familiar with family drama, but that alone wouldn’t be enough reason for her to continue texting him specifically.

        5. Needfuldoer

          That’s what I’m most disappointed about. Joe+Joyce was a simmer that’s been building up to a rolling boil for a real-world decade, but it was torpedoed in a month for… this. That’s why I find “oh well yeah but it’s college and college relationships don’t last forever so why are you even invested in it” as insultingly dismissive. (Especially when those save voices expect us to join them in cooing over Jorothy, all surrounding story be damned.)

        6. deliverything

          Of course, DoJo didn’t come out of nowhere either. There’s been a lot of foreshadowing, of varying levels of obviousness. It doesn’t seem logical to me to ignore the build-up for either one while emphasising the other.

          This’s one reason I’m hoping they do attempt the poly option… but another reason is that Joyce is likely to be no less incompetent at having two partners as at having one, and there’s potential for drama that’s rarely encountered in most fiction.

          Oh, and I’d be happy with Walky being involved too, largely for extra complications.

        7. Heavensrun

          Hell, I’d argue that, *as* the Joe+Joyce simmer has been building, the Dotty+Joyce simmer was *also* building, and I’ve been viewing that as a collision course for *awhile*, I just thought Dotty was more likely to get wrecked by it because I didn’t think Joyce would get here this quickly.

        8. Queezle

          Dot talked about their ‘connection’ not how long they were officially dating.
          Which are two very different things.

        9. Dot

          And they dated for months prior with lingering feelings remaining afterwards.

      4. Thag Simmons

        If Becky is just jealous, yeah, that’d be a little sad. Hope she’s got a more complex reaction than that.

      5. Ludaire

        Did Becky ever stop being possessive of Joyce, in particular against Dorothy? I figured some kind of negative response was inevitable even if I hoped it would go fine, since even as Becky has grown, that specific quirk hasn’t really gone away.

        1. JepMZ

          She did say it is a bit

        2. Dot

          She said it was a bit when Dorothy was in a very low and vulnerable spot. She cares about Dorothy, and when push comes to shove she’ll have her back.

          But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some very real truth to her jealousy.

      6. Jed!

        To be fair, Becky also had an unresolved issue with gender or sexuality being flexible (amazingly, that was half a real-life year ago). So this might be less about her feelings for Joyce, and more about how this contradicts her world view and makes her feel insecure.

        I’d be sad for Dina if this was actually just about her feelings for Joyce.

        1. ESM

          If sexuality is flexible that implies that Becky could have just stopped being gay, which would have saved her a huge amount of grief. I think Becky’s afraid she’ll wake up one day and realize the whole lesbian thing was just a phase or something and that her dad died for nothing.

          Which is not logical for a bunch of reasons, obviously, but it makes a kind of emotional sense to her, I think.

        2. Jon

          There’s also a fear that Dina might wake up one day and no longer be gay, which for Becky might be even more devastating.

      7. SignSeeker

        Becky’s love for Joyce was foundational. That shit gets intense. I fell profoundly in love with my straight best friend when I was sixteen, and didn’t manage to get over him until I was fucking 20. The process of getting over him involved a lot of rumination on the fact that he could never, ever love me back, that there was nothing to be done about it because that was just the reality of our lives, and I gotta tell ya, if I’d discovered afterwards that he was totes down for dudes the whole time, just not down for me, I think it would have absolutely shredded something real fucking important in my brain, even after I’d moved on and found love elsewhere. Your first love, even unrequited… It lives under your skin. Y’know?

      8. Myra V

        … oh no… This comment just put a couple things in perspective for me – Becky is already in an unsteady place thanks to the discussion about the fluidity of sexuality, to the point where she starting having some suicidal ideation regarding the idea… and now she finds out that her best friend actually is attracted to girls, but not to HER. I could be way off base on my read of the situation, and all she needs is a heartfelt conversation with either Joe (someone else who has feelings for Joyce that ended up not working out, and who handled the breakup maturely) or Liz (Becky’s current mom-figure) – but I worry that this will end up with Ruth having to get involved in a role that is FAR too personal for her (which is to say, having to talk Becky out of attempting suicide after all of this).

        1. deliverything

          I think you meant Leslie, not Liz (who is Sarah’s younger sister).
          Also, I don’t think she so much had suicidal ideation as was afraid that she might — https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/04-for-me-it-was-tuesday/fluididentities/ — but… well, can’t rule it out. Becky’s got a long habit of hiding and even burying her emotions, after all.

        2. deliverything

          Dug through to try to find it and came across https://www.dumbingofage.com/2024/comic/book-14/04-for-me-it-was-tuesday/toohonest/ — while that aspect hasn’t been addressed while she was sober, that could well just more emotion-hiding.

          Compare https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/02-the-one-where-jocelyne-returns/rock-solid/ where she’s flippant about the subject… but in, perhaps, a deliberately exaggerated way.

    2. Annaphylaxis

      Yeah, I agree. It feels really weird and honestly a little gross for this emotional energy to be coming from Becky – becky with the girlfriend and relationship she’s secure and delighted with – instead of any of the people who were cheated on and have a right to feel betrayed. IDK dude, it just rings false and kinda gross to me in a weird way.

      1. Dot

        I’m fine with this reaction from Becky, I think it makes perfect sense and is completely understandable.

        But, with the boys largely taking it on the chin, any condemnation from outside the relationships comes off as histrionic.

        1. Sirksome

          I guess it’s in character for her. One thing we know about Becky is how incredibly insecure she is about sexuality and perceived attractiveness to other women. She would take Joyce choosing Dorothy over her very personally.

        2. zee

          I dont think they’re taking it on the chin, I think they’re repressing their emotions. Walky especially, that’s like his whole thing. Its just a delayed reaction

      2. Minivet

        Emotions are frequently not logical. Contradictions make some of the best stories.

      3. thejeff

        Becky having feelings about this is definitely reasonable. But those feelings are going to be more about Joyce being bi and not into her (and potentially also tying to her fears of changing sexuality, even though that’s not really happening), than about the cheating/betrayal. I’m a little surprised this seems like it might be actual drama, though it could still be defused.

        Even if these are the much sought consequences, I’d still rather the cheating itself had gotten more reaction.

    3. Kyulen

      I was definitely hoping to see more drama from Joe and Walky, and unfortunately so far the only person who’s called Joyce and Dorothy out for their shitty behavior has been Sarah, and they seem to have mostly ignored what she said. I’d like to hope Becky isn’t pleased with their behavior, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s fine with it too somehow.

      1. IntangibleMatter

        I feel like we’re 100% getting a lot more of a look into how Joe (and Walky to a lesser degree) is taking it once we’ve gotten the Becky thing started.

        I think he just wanted to not hurt her because he genuinely cares, but we haven’t actually gotten to see how he feels about it outside of when he talked to Joyce.

      2. Reflex76

        Joe’s literally ok with this, as said repeatedly, and has been made clear in the comic.

        1. Needfuldoer

          It would be more interesting if he wasn’t as okay with it as he wants Joyce to think he is, because he’s that desperate to not lose her. Maybe he can confide that in one of his unlikely new gym buddies, Rachel or Sarah.

        2. thejeff

          I suspect he’s not really as okay with it as he thinks he is, but that’s not something he’s likely to talk about until things progress farther.

          Unless Sarah maybe drags it out of him while being annoyed at Joyce on his behalf.

        3. Sirksome

          I think fallout from Joe and Walky respectively will be a slower burn and not the intense reaction like Becky’s expression here. Joe feels a little desperate and there’s big potential with him and Joyce throwing mixed signals and getting messy. Walky feels a little more final, he already coping and the way it ended will likely permanently change his relationship with Dorothy in a negative way. Walky’s smugness and snark might not be so attractive to Dorothy when he points it at her and continues to aim at her now girlfriend.

          Them reacting fairly cool to the breakup doesn’t mean they’ll stay the same kind of friends.

        4. Grimeyville

          It would be interesting if Joyce no longer even registers to Walky. That his smugness and snark becomes specifically reserved for Dorothy and Joyce, expecting banter gets nothing. Rivalry’s over, you won cataclysmically.

        5. Jeff K!

          “You won, and she chose you, and she loved you and she’s gone… It’s over, isn’t it, why can’t I move on?”??

        6. thejeff

          To be honest, after Joyce’s taunting of him and Dorothy’s complete lack of reaction to it, I’d rather he just cut them off completely.

          Of course, he’d need to find some other friends.

        7. Sirksome

          They still share a math class (except Dorothy I think?) regardless they’ll be walking together every morning almost as if a cruel god created a scenario where people with drama have to keep interacting.

    4. zee

      I don’t even care at this point bud, i will take literally any conflict here

  23. Nathan Goldwag

    MY POOR STUPID BABIES

  24. EpochFlame

    isn’t that the age-old becky quote from getting caught? full circle

    1. RassilonTDavros

      Yep!

  25. Joe Moose

    I have the worst possible timing to view this so late in the night.

    {Also to those who corrected me between daffy and donald several strips ago, thanks! No idea why I said donald.}

  26. Slartibeast Button, BIA

    Like I said the other day, people keep not learning DoA’s Most Important Lesson!

  27. ReFlex76

    Good news: Dorothy doesn’t have to worry about telling Becky anymore.

  28. ReFlex76

    Joyce: “So much for fucking the fundie out of me.”
    Becky: “WHAT?!”

    1. Dot

      I’m in hysterics at the idea of them literally having sex to put off telling Becky, which was originally presented as something they had to do before being physical at all with each other

      1. Needfuldoer

        Isn’t that what was just about to happen?

    2. Yotomoe

      Becky: And here I wanted to fuck the Fundie INTO you.

      1. deliverything

        Maybe she could join in and they could compete in their attempts to relocate the fundie. A new phase for the Becky vs Dorothy rivalry.

  29. Theozilla

    I wonder if in the (presumably) heated drama of this upcoming conversation, Joyce is going to accidentally let drop that she still hasn’t technically broken-up with Joe yet?

    1. Icalasari

      I REALLY hope that results in Joyce saying, “Oops, I forgot about that” or some variant

      Just because Joyce derping out due to everything happening all at once would be the cherry on top of the Soap Opera Sundae

  30. Taffy

    There. Becky has appeared and made a face. Everyone is happy now.

    1. Enigmatic Jack

      Yup. That’s the emotion everyone is feeling

      1. Taffy

        Well, heaps of people have been losing their minds over “When’s Becky gonna get here? Becky Becky Becky!”, so I can only imagine the Becky addicts are satisfied now that they’ve had their hit. Nobody’s unhappy about this.

        1. Reaver

          Just a lil something to take the edge off *Holds Becky’s finger between two fingers*

        2. Needfuldoer

          And when Becky isn’t on-screen, someone should ask “where is Becky?”

        3. Username Taken

          One hit never satisfies an addict, it just sharpens the hunger.

          MORE BECKY

    2. nadamás

      This is a internet comment section, nobody is ever happy here.

      1. Taffy

        I said you’re all fucking happy, now fall the fuck in line.?

        1. Elsewise

          I’m pretty happy, but that’s because I have a big bowl of ice cream and I’m about to go to bed. And it’s my birthday.

        2. Taffy

          What kind of ice cream is it?

        3. Rowan

          Hap rthday!

        4. Needfuldoer

          Nice phone!

        5. Li

          Ahhh the callback.

    3. zee

      Genuinely tho. Things are finally fucking happening

  31. The Rev

    While obviously there’s no accounting for the emotional portion, logically Becky should realize that everyone’s queer awakening is on a different timeline, and no matter how much you want them to, nobody is obligated to be in love with you.

    Plus you got Dina, gurl. You win the jackpot.

    1. Dot

      Nobody is obligated to be in love with you, but when you are in love for your best friend for years, get heartwrenchingly rejected in an incredibly vulnerable moment because she just doesn’t like girls that way, only for her to later discover that she DOES like girls, just not you, and specifically the girl you have a semi-joking bit about being jealous of for stealing her which masks the very real complex you’ve developed about her stealing your best friend… well. It’s going to hit you no matter how wonderful your girlfriend is.

      1. Doopyboop

        Add in that the girl Becky kissed at her college clearly didn’t ‘choose’ Becky in the end (for completely understandable reasons but on Becky’s end you kiss a girl and when it all goes to shit you’re just left to deal with the consequences, that sucks) plus losing her mother PLUS her father choosing his religious ideas over her and I feel like you’ve got a good cocktail for Becky having issues feeling that anybody could love her. Even Dina, as much as she loves her, her reaction to Dina’s lowered sexual attraction was internalizing it as “maybe she just doesn’t love me”. She’s very understandably insecure about feeling loved by others so this confirmation that Joyce can love girls, just not her, is… ouchies.

        1. RocketRelm

          Even if none of the characters present are likely able to intelligently articulate it this way to stifle the drama, it probably at least partly has to do with the fact that Joyce might have Becky bucketed into the “sibling” bracket. Which as a girl with many siblings, is a strong association for her, and may make any potential attraction null.

        2. Doopyboop

          I think she just honestly has no attraction to Becky. Which is fine, because even as a bisexual, Joyce can have her own tastes in both men and women. She only really gave Becky the sister label after Becky came out to her, which could be her own way of trying to render Becky’s attraction null, but otherwise I don’t think she necessarily grew up regarding Becky as a sister.

          Course, I’m an only child. I have friends I regard as being LIKE family but that also doesn’t mean they’re truly family to me. I had crushes on some friends that I’d later regard as being more like family to me.

        3. deliverything

          Possibly relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect (which seems to apply to Walky and Jennifer, at least). Apparently, if you’re raised with someone before six years old, your brain notes them down in the “not for nookie” column (although it’s probable that there’s individual variation, as there is in just about everything in human development). Someone you got to know after that, however family-like you consider them, can still be a potential romantic option.

          By the way, here’s when Jennifer and Walky first met: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/buttbuttbus/

      2. The Rev

        Yeah that’s what I meant by not factoring in the emotional portion.

    2. Summer

      Given her recent struggles with the idea of sexuality being fluid and something one can reevaluate over time and her knowing early, she may not really have that understanding of everyone’s queer awakening being on a different timeline.

      I don’t think she’s going to be upset about Joyce not loving her the way she loves Dorothy and the way Becky clearly loved Joyce, because I do think she’s gotten past the rejection, but rather that this is perhaps even more of a fundamental change to Joyce in her mind than Joyce becoming an atheist is. For Joyce to go from adamantly straight to literally on the front page of the newspaper making out with another woman is just such a sharp contrast that to Becky will probably feel out of nowhere.

      At least with Joyce leaving religion behind, they have the shared experiences of the trauma around toedad coming to try and force Becky out of school and into a conversion camp and recognize that for Joyce it made faith feel impossible and for Becky it didn’t and they accept their different responses to that. I do think Becky will take a hardline “born this way” kind of approach to queerness that, while it’s been useful for us as we have fought for our rights within the political possibilities of American society, is ultimately very reductive and potentially harmful.

      Ultimately, I think this is going to feed more on Becky’s development from her already ongoing arc on this subject at first, before we get any of the resolution to the relationship stuff people are clamoring for too, which might make this go over really weirdly for those who want Jorothy to face consequences while the story focuses for a bit on Becky’s coming to terms that someone can actually realize they’re not straight later on and one’s understanding of their sexuality can actually shift. I don’t think they’re necessarily going to get what they want from Becky’s wrath, unless she pulls out a “cheating on Joe/Walky” move and it pivots to Joyce bringing up that she broke up with Walky for Dorothy and also Joe’s cool with it and lead us to the conversation about the potential Joe/Joyce/Dorothy hinge relationship, which could get messy in some fun ways.

    3. SarahTerra

      That reminds me, we still have opportunity for the unmasked vigilante Dina-Girl to be out there never getting seen by anyone and with no one parsing her name

      1. Needfuldoer

        So if Amazi-Girl is Batman, then Dina is Nightcrawler?

        1. SarahTerra

          Huh, Bamfing works really well! And Kurt does look fine as hell in a suit.

    4. Bryy

      Becky’s entire recent arc has been about her refusal to acknowledge sexual fluidity (and to be fair, the idea of change).

  32. IntangibleMatter

    Ah, and how it will all come crumbling down…

    People who’ve been complaining about Joyce and Dorothy not facing any consequences? Congrats, things are about to change fast

    1. Jon

      I kept saying, just give it a minute, and now…

      1. Proxiehunter

        And now they’re complaining about them being the wrong consequences from the wrong people.

        1. Tequila Mockingbird

          You can please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but never all the people all the time. Though really, not quite sure about that second verse in the jingle.

        2. Jon

          Hey, I’m along for the ride – been enjoying it for fifteen years now, and I don’t see any cause to believe Willis will either disappoint me or cause me to stop shaking my fist and shouting “Damn you, Willis!”

        3. Ludaire

          It sometimes feels like some people won’t be satisfied until Joyce and Dorothy have suffered enough that they’re left crying with their hands raised to the heavens in repentance like those old comics from Shortpacked.

        4. Big Z

          Heck with that, I want to see them melt like the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Only with their total destruction will I be satisfied.

          Or, and hear me out, there could be some middle ground between “getting mildly told off by Sarah, which they were ignoring by the next strip, and no one else reacting negatively at them so far” and whatever the heck you think is going on in the comment thread.

        5. thejeff

          Of course we are. Or some are. Mostly the people wanting “consequences” were the “relationship paladins” and they wanted consequences for the cheating specifically. Not just “Well this whole arc needs to lead into something”.
          Some of the sickos were complaining about the lack of/postponement of drama and they’re likely to be happy with this.
          We’ll see how upset Becky is and exactly what she’s upset about, but I suspect it’s unlikely to be focused on the cheating side, but rather on Joyce being bi, but not interested in her or maybe more subtly on Becky’s fears of changing orientation. If she’s actually mad at Joyce (or Dorothy) about that rather than just hurt, that’s also her being in the wrong, not actually linked to anything Joyce did wrong.

          But all this rhetoric, especially about how we won’t be satisfied until Joyce and Dorothy have suffered horrendously, is just a complete misunderstanding of what most in these comments are saying. And it’s getting really frustrating.

        6. Big Z

          Frustrating is the word. Especially for the combination of “these two have only been in relationships for a week, so it’s okay! (ignore all the rest of their interactions in the comic, only formal relationships count)”, “Dorothy and Joyce have been foreshadowed/gay for each other since day one, so really their relationship matters more (don’t you dare ignore all their prior interactions, they’re super important)”, and “any desire for anyone to have a negative reaction to this is either a wild overreaction and you want them to literally burn in hell, homophobia, or probably both”.

        7. Yotomoe

          +10

    2. Needfuldoer

      Yes… Ha ha ha… YES!

    3. Big Z

      I’ll believe it when I see it, honestly.

  33. TrueVCU

    [airraidsiren.mp3]

    1. Dara

      surprised we don’t have this already so here y’go

      1. eskimolos

        Yes! This!

  34. BorkBorkBork

    Looks like someone inaugural pooped the bed.

    1. JessWitt

      +1 for working that reference in nicely.

  35. Dedlok

    Welcome to your 15th anniversary, Dumbing of Age! Hope you survive the experience!

    1. Jon

      I recognize that reference!

      1. Michelle J Caboose

        I *recognize* it, but I don’t remember what’s it’s from. :/

        1. Jon

          The cover of Uncanny X-Men #139.

          “Welcome to the X-Men, Kitty Pride! Hope you survive the experience!”

  36. ThatDerpGuy

    Jeez, happy 15 years to Dumbing of Age

  37. Amber

    woooooooooooooof I felt my heart sink in this one

  38. Amós Batista

    Remember: Non-violent communication.

    1. Taffy

      There’s no such thing. All communication is violence.

      1. Erica

        And all violence is communication

  39. TrueVCU

    I dunno what’s making Becky madder: Joyce falling for Dorothy and not telling her, or Joyce falling for Dorothy and putting her in the position of NOT supporting an instance of lesbianism

    1. HueSatLight

      or for stealing her joke

  40. Kyulen

    I wonder when Becky saw the newspaper, and how long she’s been waiting there for Joyce.

    1. YourCousinJay

      I believe Joyce and Dot slept in today so I assume Becky saw the news on her way back from Church and then B-Lined it for Joyce’s room to confront her about it

    2. ReFlex76

      Kinda creepy, actually.

  41. Liara

    Ohmygahd Becky you have absolutely nothing to complain about! Joyce isn’t into you, that happens, it’s life. Just because she now figured out she’s queer gives you zero ownership of her sexuality. The only people with any right to be mad about this development are their (ex-) bfs, both of which took it surprisingly well

    1. Dara

      She’s actually just mad and hurt that they found a way to be more loudly out than she has and didn’t even include her and Dina.

      1. SarahTerra

        I swear to dog if Dina is also somehow in that photo and just no one noticed but Becky

        1. Bittersweet

          Dina would’ve been an asset, she could’ve used her teleporting people to get people to safety lol. Just walk in undetected, grab their hand, poof somewhere else. Foolproof.

        2. Bittersweet

          Power*

        3. Da Boy

          Could get Charlie involved too, teleporting to random locations that can’t be tracked.

        4. Dara

          or in this room right now

        5. IntangibleMatter

          She could be in this very room! She could be you! She could be me! She could even be-

        6. Proxiehunter

          BLAM What? It was obvious! Watch, she’ll turn red any second now!

      2. Michelle J Caboose

        I’m sure she’s also angry about them “sneaking around”, because (as someone further up in the comments noted) she has no way of knowing how long they’ve been hooking up. Becky would expect Joyce to tell her personally, and not find out about it by reading the newspaper.

    2. StClair

      I’m sure that her entirely logical and not at all emotional reaction will take all of that into account.

      1. Bittersweet

        Why not everyone else’s reactions have been entirely logical up to this point

    3. 3oranges

      You know, it’s kind of funny that Dorothy never shows up in any of these analysis. Dorothy who repeatedly assured Becky she wasn’t trying to replace her as Joyce’s best friend. No reason anyone might be upset there, since of course hurt is only defined by what you have a right to feel.

      1. SarahTerra

        Yeah… all the shouldn’ts and ought-nots and be-rationals are really meaningless. Even Dorothy and Joyce seem to recognize that.

        1. Ludaire

          Uh… Those really, really should not be considered meaningless, since they’re pretty important in regulating and processing your emotions in a healthy way. I get wanting to validate and feel our emotions, but that’s a far cry from completely throwing out rational thought for helping you sort out how best to act on and process said emotions.

          We don’t yet know what Becky is specifically feeling yet, but it’s very possible that Joyce not owing her romantic love sure as hell matters for healthily processing what she’s feeling.

        2. SarahTerra

          The point is that you can’t argue down someone’s pain. Mostly you can only give them something to ponder after the initial shock.

          This is infinitely true for outside observers. We cannot talk to Becky, let alone admonish her. “Well she shoulda” doesn’t really mean anything here. Clearly none of us are talking about an actual situation with actual feelings, and “processing” implies time anyway.

      2. Taffy

        Dorothy’s such a contentious character, I can’t keep track of who’s accused her of what from day to day.

        1. Reaver

          Dorothy did 9/11

        2. Taffy

          Becky, tomorrow: “I know people who died in that shit!”

        3. ESM

          Thanks to the magic of floating timelines, not only was no one in this comic born yet when 9/11 happened, none of them are old enough to remember the *Obama* administration which ended 9 years ago when they were all 10 or so. To 19 year olds in 2025, there is only Trump.

        4. StClair

          so… Hell. They live in Hell.

        5. IntangibleMatter

          I am a 19 year old in 2025, and even I as a Canadian remember the end of the Obama administration.

          Admittedly I was also an exceptionally politically engaged child and was also paying attention to the election we had in Canada the previous year.

        6. thejeff

          Just because she wasn’t born yet, doesn’t mean she didn’t do 9/11

        7. Astariel

          I’m pretty sure most people can remember things that happened when they were 10.

        8. Taffy

          It’s an odd framing, for sure. Hell, I was once told “You don’t remember Pokémon Fever”, even though I was in kindergarten when it started, and was one of the kids who was hit with it. For some reason, some people seem to believe humans don’t start forming memories until they reach high school.

        9. zee

          Tbf as far as I’m concerned anything before 15 is shaky and anything before 12 is basically a suggestion

    4. YourCousinJay

      “took is surprisingly well”

      One is clearly still having a crisis of self-worth because they so desperately don’t want to turn into their own father while the other is currently eating his own weight in Chicken Nuggets to avoid actually confronting how he feels.

      1. deliverything

        Walky outright admitted it’s his coping mechanism.

      2. Liara

        One who clearly just comforted their (maybe ex-)partner and suggested polyamory, and one who essentially said he already saw it coming

  42. John Campbell

    Locking the door wouldn’t have helped. She already saw you in the newspaper.

    I don’t think stealing all the newspapers would have helped, either, because I’m pretty sure Dina already knew. Willis doesn’t usually depict characters (except Amber) in their phones for no reason, so I suspect Dina was monitoring the media around the police riot for information about Amazi-Girl’s situation. Which means she would’ve seen the picture.

    1. StClair

      Yup.

    2. Mewzard

      Actually, I think locking the door would have helped…given we see the stack of newspapers in there, meaning Dorothy stored them in Joyce’s unlocked room.

      That might be the only reason Becky found out this early.

      1. StClair

        oh, that would be a special kind of irony.
        but I think, per above, Dina already knew.

    3. ESM

      It makes her expression in panel 3 much funnier, yeah.

    4. thejeff

      Well, it would have meant she wouldn’t have been waiting in the dark room to see them kiss when they thought they were alone.

  43. Shiro

    Oh no the callback… 🙁

  44. Icalasari

    Becky looks mad

    I assume Dina will soon be upset

    Oh no

    1. StClair

      Per John Campbell’s link above, Dina may already be upset.

      1. SarahTerra

        Oh god, if you manage to make DINA upset, you done fucked up.

    2. Erica

      Dina is already upset. Remember? As soon as we saw her Facebook to Dorothy I said “she knows”

      1. Icalasari

        I mean at Becky, should have been clearer, sorry

  45. Insanenoodlyguy

    Die Joyce’s boner, die!

  46. poofdepoof

    The relief that one source of dramatic tension is over. Hi Becky!

  47. Jacey

    Happy birthday, DoA but also……….. Hi Becks, what’s up

  48. Bwsab

    And here’s Becky, here for the 15th! Man, Becky and Joyce, just like the very first comic. …except, Dorothy’s here for some reason. lol

    1. Bwsab

      OH MY GOD. The newspapers Dorothy stole are right next to Joyce’s door in the first panel!! Did Becky see the newspaper, and come to Joyce’s room to confront her as soon as she came back? OR did Joyce and Dorothy hide the newspapers in Joyce’s room, and then Becky checked in on Joyce ’cause they’re friends, and then Becky saw the newpapers THAT JOYCE AND DOROTHY PUT THERE!?!? So, if Joyce and Dorothy hadn’t tried so hard to hide things, then they might have been able to tell Becky on their own terms, plus Becky wouldn’t have seen the evidence OF THEM HIDING THINGS!?!?

      1. perpetual summer

        Oh I hadn’t noticed that but it honestly make so much sense. I mean she could still have known before from seeing it online too, but I like that second version of events + the evidence of them hiding things remains either way

      2. The Blueprint System

        Actually, I’m surprised I’m not seeing anyone discussing this: Becky does not appear to be in the dorm doorway in her panel. That looks more like outside in front of the entrance with all the big windows. The structure of the comic is certainly set up to imply that it’s Becky at the door but I think that might be a fake out.

        1. Taffy

          That’s just Joyce’s window. She’s inside the room, not standing in the doorway

        2. deliverything

          Also, look at how Dorothy and Joyce are positioned as they enter the room: Dorothy to the left, Joyce to the right. Then note panel 3… unless they, for some reason, swapped places between panels, they’re looking farther into the room, not out.

          In other words, Becky was already in there and they didn’t notice before they started kissing.

  49. StClair

    And here – we – go.

    (69 comments when I clicked on this.)

    1. a/snow/mous/e

      Nice

  50. NinjaNick

    Here comes the hurricane.

  51. Lilliam

    Oh I get it! It’s a throwback. A heartbreaking throwback..

  52. Sajuuk-Khar

    I REJECT MY HUMANITY, DOTTY

    1. DJTsurugi

      lol please post that as a reply on the blue sky. ~<3

  53. RassilonTDavros

    Damn, not only a callback to Strip One, but also an ironic echo of Becky’s (re-)introduction. Happy Fifteen!

    For us, I mean. These lovable shipdits are in for a world of despair

    1. deliverything

      Just have to say: “shipdits” seems like a wonderful word for people being shipped but who are doing everything wrong (especially if they’re shipped because they’re doing everything wrong).

  54. ADLegend21

    and here are the consequences and red background panel.

  55. Doopyboop

    Something else to keep in mind with Becky and Joyce is that… I don’t think they truly resolved their fight about Joyce being atheist. They both seemed to agree to put it in the past, they had a mac and cheese night and pushed through it to be friends again, but the issues there (Joyce lying to Becky, Joyce mocking Christians behind her back) aren’t things they really settled. And I think that’s going to factor into these next few strips with these two.

    1. Mr.Morningstar

      I’m personally hoping she’s more upset about the cheating and adultery rather than the whole “I’m still pining for you despite having one of the most healthy and stable relationships.”

      I know it’s prolly not going to that but I can dream

      1. Hroethvitnir

        Adultery: having sex with someone you’re not married to. College relationships counted in weeks: not marriage.

        I’m not fucking performing absolution with acknowledgements of obvious facts like hurting people is bad because some corner of the internet has convinced an alarming amount of young people to lose all sense of proportion and be incapable of recognising that “x isn’t great but isn’t the same as y and doesn’t make them an evil person” isn’t saying x is good. I can’t believe how many times I’ve had to effectly defend cheating (not a thing I like! For fuck’s sake!) against people that think flirting with someone else is literal abuse of their partner.

        1. Dot

          I feel like this is splitting hairs. Obviously the technical definition of adultery involves cheating on a spouse but it’s clearly being used interchangeably with infidelity here.

        2. Jon

          And “grand theft auto” could be used interchangeably with “swiping someone’s Matchbox cars”, but it would be plainly ridiculous, wouldn’t it?

        3. Mr.Morningstar

          I used the term adultery because that would be more in line with the whole religious vs atheist thing that may come from this.

          Infedelity, cheating, whatever, you know what I mean.

        4. Jon

          Armed robbery, borrowing a couple of bucks, you know what I mean.

          “Adultery” is a word with a specific definition, and it’s completely unrelated to religion (or college dating).

        5. Doopyboop

          Listen, I get Morningstar’s point here. There’s literally a commandment in the bible that states ‘don’t commit adultery’. Morningstar is not saying that Joyce committed adultery, but that that may be how Becky will see it. You don’t have to be so rude with the hyperbole.

        6. Proxiehunter

          Odd to call something explicitly mentioned by name in the ten commandments “entirely unrelated to religion”.

        7. Proxiehunter

          And a lot of Christians (especially those from fundamentalist sects, even ones not quite as culty as the one Joyce and Becky are from) have explicitly used the word adultery to describe any sex outside of marriage even if neither partner is currently married to someone else. Sometimes with the excuse that if you have per-marital sex you’re cheating on your future spouse.

        8. Proxiehunter

          Of course, considering that Becky is having sex with Dina I doubt she’s concerned with that definition of adultery.

        9. Proxiehunter

          Damn spell check. *pre-marital

          Okay spellcheck, why the hell are you telling me that’s wrong? I searched online to make sure I got the spelling correct.

        10. Mr.Morningstar

          Anyway I said what I said.

      2. thejeff

        That would bother me more I think. Having Becky more bothered by the cheating than either of the people cheated on seems like weird framing to me.

      3. Astariel

        That would be pretty hypocritical considering she endorsed Joyce pursuing Jacob.

        1. Doopyboop

          I wouldn’t say she endorsed Joyce pursing Jacob, Sarah endorsed it and in fact enabled it. Becky just acknowledged that Joyce was clearly interested in Jacob. Plus, I don’t think Becky was privy to exactly what was going on with Jacob and Joyce. It’s not against the law to have a crush on someone who is taken, however intentionally trying to break a couple up because you want one of them is obviously iffy. I don’t think Becky knew it went that far.

    2. ESM

      That’s actually really funny. Becky’s totally over Joyce but she’s upset because she’s a Paladin

      1. YourCousinJay

        I mean she’s still mutual friends with Joe and Walky. Probably isn’t great hearing your best friend so directly hurt two of your other friends

        1. thejeff

          But hard to sustain once she finds out that Joe’s open to a poly thing and that Walky seems more upset about being dumped than the cheating.

      2. Mr.Morningstar

        look im tired of a lot of becky’s nonsense. I like her as a character but theres so many things that just bother me, that im hoping her reasons for being upset are not just that she still actually wants to be with joyce that way.

        Because she’s happy with dina, she didnt really react poorly to joe, despite it being a bit more understandable being annoyed about being with him given his history

        And tbh it’ll be another thing of “this thing you did that had nothing to do with me hurt me” and im tired of it.

        Willis has thrown several curveballs already Joe actually being open to polyamory, Walky just kinda whatevering the situation that im actually hoping for another curveball, one where its not about how she is hurt over this, but how they shouldnt have done this, this way.

    3. YourCousinJay

      Ye… Joyce luckily grew out of that phase but Becky kinda just had to rough it out while she was in it without Joyce ever really properly apologizing for her behavior during it.

      1. Astariel

        Joyce had nothing to apologize for.

        1. YourCousinJay

          She off handedly called Becky an idiot for her believes and then effectively told her it’s her own fault if she was offended by that statement before deflecting the conversation entirely by first saying she’s not doing anything different than Dina which is a false equivelant because even if they don’t see the to eye on the concept of religion they’re entirely respectful to each other’s worldview. Then tried to deflect again by turning it all around on Becky telling her she should just also ditch Christianity because of the very recent trauma that was caused to her.

          Joyce absolutely should have apologized to Becky

        2. Dot

          She mocked Becky’s religious beliefs and then doubled down when confronted about it.

        3. drs

          She mocked her old beliefs in what should have been a safe place, which Becky overheard because Becky stalked her down.

        4. YourCousinJay

          “Stalked her down”

          Literally just,visited her friend in her room. Like in the most plain and normal way possible.

          Also call it what you want, Joyce was actively mocking her friend simply in the way she went around mocking her old beliefs, essentially painting christians as idiots just for believing in a god at all.

        5. Dot

          Becky did go to the room for fairly possessive reasons, and Joyce is within her rights to vent, including in mocking ways, but Becky is also allowed to take offense at Joyce characterizing Christians as stupid morons for believing in G-d. She did herself no favors in that situation by digging in her heels, doubling down, and refusing to acknowledge why Becky was upset.

          Also, genuinely good foreshadowing from around that time:

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/usurper/

        6. I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

          Also to note is that all of this happened the DAY after Becky celebrated her dead mom’s birthday, in which she offered Joyce the chance to rip the band-aid off and tell her what’s troubling her when she noticed that Joyce was feeling kinda hesitant about the heaven talk. Fully sympathetic to the fact that Joyce put herself in a bad position, one that will always lead to some hurt feelings, but I do think the lying and distrust has always mattered more to Becky than the whole “You aren’t Christian anymore” thing.

        7. drs

          “just,visited her friend in her room. ”

          That’s Joe’s room. Back when Joyce and Joe weren’t open friends.

        8. YourCousinJay

          Right, my mistake. Still I stand by everything else.

          Joyce apologized essentially just for being overheard but when Becky asked her plainly if Joyce thought she was an idiot she just deflected the question, weaponizes Becky’s own trauma against her to question why she’s still a christian, then deflects when Becky has a very naturally emotional response to Joyce throwing such a question at her, only to then fully blow up at Becky.

          Then she goes inside she basically brushes the entire thing off as if Becky was just being unreasonable. Like there’s a good reason why literally every one of their friends who saw it happen was judging Joyce, she was being a massive asshole towards Becky

          Hell the first time after that the fist thing she does after seeing her is try to get a dig in

        9. zee

          Joyce was just generally being a fucking asshole to her friend around a really sensitive time for her that whole arc

        10. thejeff

          You know what would be good for the comments section on a calm peaceful day like today? Let’s relitigate the last big Joyce/Becky fight.

          Seriously though, I wonder if Becky will bring it up, in a “what else are you hiding from me” kind of way? This’ll be the second big change in Joyce that she had to stumble across by accident rather than have her best friend(?) talk to her about.

  56. Marianne

    Congrats Dumbing of Age, you’re now legally old enough to drink (in the Central African Republic)! ?

    1. YourCousinJay

      Also topically, old enough to legally get a job delivering the morning news for a minimum-youth-wage. (in the Netherlands)

  57. Boop

    Got a strange sense of empathy towards Becky for hanging out in a room with the lights off

  58. DJTsurugi

    rereading the archives and seeing the “DoA is this many years old” on all the September 10ths I’ve been waiting for this day, happy birthday DoA! ~<3

  59. Yotomoe

    UMMM….
    THREESOME?

    1. NGPZ

      this is the correct answer :)

    2. John Campbell

      DINA: What?

      1. Peng

        Joe and walky: *Joe and walky have been escorted from the premises by daisy*

      2. Yotomoe

        I bet Dina would give Becky a hall pass in this situation.

        Well actually maybe not cuz Becky clearly has deeper emotional feelings for Joyce than “Girl hot”

        1. John Campbell

          I think Dina would be fine with it as long as she could watch and take notes. Maybe interview everyone about their reactions afterwards.

          Remember, the only different between science and screwing around is writing it down! Dina will do all the science to them.

        2. NGPZ

          she’ll be there taking notes, recording video, and later getting some Australian to narrate her new dinosaur documentary

        3. QueenofSodor

          dina endorses becky and dorothy fucking specifically bc she wants to see which of them comes out on top, literally

          (it’ll be becky)

        4. Sajuuk-Khar

          it’s a hard fought battle of the idiot subs, but Becky’s capacity for spite and rage eventually tops Dorothy’s blobby blorbo bubble butt. u_u

  60. AbacusWizard

    oh no

    1. True Survivor

      OH YEAH!

      1. Bobin

        VEGETA YES!!

      2. Spacie

        Yes ha ha ha yes.

  61. AbacusWizard

    (also happy dumbiversary and thanks for all the comics)

  62. Friday

    We’ve been disaster edging for weeks and its finally time to go.

  63. Suet

    “I’m sorry yer you, Dotty.
    Chicks are so rad an’ you’ll never even know.“

    ♪Fifteen, there’s still time for you, time to buy and time to lose ♫

  64. Yotomoe

    Also if I may be a bit inappropriate. Panel 4 has got me rethinking my proportions picture re: Becky. Maybe her and Joyce have identical figures actually.

    1. RocketRelm

      It might also be her shoving the newspaper against her chest, shoving some excess volume the other way.

    2. zee

      Becky been stacked dude. Girl got curves

  65. Bryy

    Welp. Time for Becky to overreact in the same way she said Joyce overreacted.

  66. Yotomoe

    Becky: Really? DOROTHY? I mean Jennifer I’d get. She’s a smoke show. And I totally thought you and Liz had a thing going. I even shipped you with Carla for a while. But DOROTHY? My Lesbian betting pool is totally up in flames now, because of you, Dorothy. I owe the Lesbian betting pool SO MUCH MONEY NOW.

    1. Florence

      The comic transitions to an oceans 11 format where the gang has to steal enough money to pay Becky’s debt

      1. and painted shark women

        Underrated reply <3

    2. deliverything

      Relevant strip: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/blbfghlpf/

  67. Freezer

    Welp, that is not the face of “I’m actually okay with this.”

  68. Rabid Rabbit

    Just saying, I called the callback.

  69. Brasca1

    Perhaps this 15 year story has many details that can be forgotten, but why would Becky be upset over this? She has a girlfriend. She has a lover. If she has some jealous reaction to this it’ll hurt Dina because if Becky was secretly pining over her all along then Dina was just a substitute.

    1. Karla Jean

      Becky still pining over Joyce was hardly secret.

    2. Bryy

      Exactly. Becky has literally no legitimate reason to be upset here.

      I get incredibly sad thinking how badly this fictional character is refusing to deal with her trauma.

      1. Doopyboop

        Trauma is difficult to deal with and to give Becky some grace here, it’s not like she’s really had the space to deal with her trauma. Keep in mind, she’s still within the first year of her mother’s death and honestly, when I compare her to how I was in my first year, I feel like I gotta give Becky flowers for actually, you know, doing things, having a social life, and having a girlfriend. My first year after my mom’s death was spent in a depressed haze of “go to work, come home from work, go to work, come home from work”. That’s not even getting into everything else Becky’s had to go through.

      2. Taffy

        Who the fuck cares if her being upset is “legitimate”? What a completely worthless metric to judge emotions by.

        1. Bryy

          How is it worthless? Becky has no reason to be mad at them. At all.

          It’s completely unreasonable for her to be upset at Joyce and Dorothy having feelings for each other. It’s completely unreasonable for her to be upset that other people are changing.

          Does that mean I’m discounting that Becky *is* upset? No. I’m not discounting that Becky is in a great deal of pain, and has been for some time. As I said, it makes me incredibly sad.

          But it is in no way the fault of these two. I hope that this upcoming arc allows her to finally deal with her trauma in a healthy way. With that in mind, I’m very much interested in her reasoning.

        2. Taffy

          Reason this, reason that, it’s not even the same genre.

        3. Bryy

          If you take so much offense at other people’s comments, why do you even bother reading the comments and/or replying?

        4. Taffy

          Now you’re grasping at straws.

        5. Bryy

          Taffy I’m just trying to have a conversation and you’re responding to me with nonsense. I’m sorry that I seemingly upset you so much. Really. But it’s just a webcomic.

        6. Taffy

          You’re the only one upset here, chill.

        7. Mr.Morningstar

          If someone that you had no romantic interest in you is upsetbyou are dating someone else and you have made absolutely clear you have no interest in them and they have a partner now, are you seriously saying you’d just be fine with them being upset with you? You wouldn’t find it unfair to you or your friendship?

        8. Taffy

          No, I’m not seriously saying that, because I never said it at all. What the hell kind of question is that?

        9. Mr.Morningstar

          Its a kind of question related to the initial comment and its intent.
          And because you’re acting very wierd over a comment thats honestly not even that hot of a take.

        10. Taffy

          Nah. It’s not a road worth traveling tonight. Better to find a hotel, get some dinner, and call her in the morning.

        11. Mr.Morningstar

          Okay, I dunno what you’re saying so I’m just gonna leave this conversation now.

        12. Ludaire

          Do you not use any kind of rational thought or reason to process your emotions?

        13. Taffy

          Could you reorganize the question in a way that makes sense?

        14. Yotomoe

          Glass Houses.

        15. Taffy

          ????

        16. Jon

          I do, but I’m weird. Most people don’t.

        17. Jon

          Emotions are frequently unreasonable. Very few people process them in a rational fashion. (Frankly, if they did, the US wouldn’t be in the mess it is now.)

        18. Big Z

          Careful caveat: There are a lot of people who THINK they are processing and acting in a rational fashion when they are acting in a completely emotion-driven way. (mostly, due to white men getting to define “anger” and “disgust/distaste” as “not emotions”)

          Gotta teach people to be honest about their emotions and how to process them, at minimum, before you can get the improvements you want.

        19. Ludaire

          “Legitimate” might not be the best word, but it’s 100% important for people to be able to recognize the difference between:

          1. Anger where they should step back, calm down a bit, process things, and perhaps adjust their expectations, as they aren’t actually being wronged.
          2. Anger where they should be demanding better behavior of those around them because they’re being treated poorly.

          If Becky is mad that Joyce and Dorothy are together at all, it’s squarely in camp #1 for the reasons others have expressed. If she’s mad that they’ve kept it a secret from her, then it’s debatable but closer to #2 (though the fact that it’s been less than 24 hours since they first kissed means an explanation will clear it up rather quickly).

        20. Taffy

          You may have a point, when it’s phrased that way. I bristle a bit when any emotional response, even a fictional one, gets hit with the “This behavior is highly illogical” stick or any of its cousins.

        21. deliverything

          Maybe some of the commenters are vulcans?

        22. Taffy

          Dirty space elves ?

        23. Jon

          A Vulcan would find any attempt to discount emotion in Human thought processes to be highly illogical. One does not ignore a data source simply because one does not share its belief system.

        24. Erica

          Taffy I fully agree with you. So many comments saying “Becky has no right to be upset!” as if feelings must be logical and care about whether you have a “right” to feel them

        25. Yotomoe

          She can be upset regardless of her right to be upset. Just like you can speak in spite of your right to remain silent.

        26. thejeff

          People can be upset about things they have no right to be upset about, because as you say feelings aren’t logical, but at some point, depending on what exactly they’re upset about, it’s not your problem anymore.

          Like, if she’s upset about Joyce being bi because it plays into her fears about her sexuality maybe changing, she’s just going to have to get over it. Joyce can’t be expected to not be bi. Or even if it’s about Joyce not loving her the way she wanted, even though she’s bi. That’s just the way it works sometimes.

          As distinct from when people get upset about something you did wrong that you can actually control: like cheating.

    3. Ludaire

      My hope is that she’s mostly upset with the perceived secrecy. My worry is that she’s still hyper possessive of Joyce and thus, feels jealousy, betrayal, and so on, as she still deep down feels she has some degree of “right” to Joyce’s love.

      The former is relatively easily cleared up. The latter might not be a big deal to process if it’s a secondary, lingering thing. However, if it’s the whole reason she’s hear, then we might actually get to see Becky’s toxic possessiveness of Joyce (which has pretty much been quietly tolerated or even laughed at by people in and out of the comic) finally get the response it deserves.

    4. HueSatLight

      That’s not how emotions work for a lot of people.

    5. YourCousinJay

      Because 3 months ago Joyce was still the girl she thought she’d be with after pining for her for 10+ years, her first genuine love (hey just like Joe), her dumbest mistake after running away from home to be with her only to find out Joyce was very straight.

      Then mix all those raw emotions with how much Becky values her Lesbian identity only to to now learn that sexuality can be flexible to some extend only to then learn her very straight friend is now definitely atleast Bisexual which comes with the double whammy of confirming that specific anxiety and also re-opening an old wound because now there’s a possibility that Joyce turning her down might not have been about incompatible sexualities at all but instead that Joyce simply didn’t love her as a person specifically.

      Also like, emotions are very rarely rationally, we’re not perfect computers of If/Then statements. Even when you’re with someone new you might still emotionally feel some attachments to your previous love, it’s a pretty natural reaction to still do.

    6. zee

      How dare the traumatized 18 year old have an irrational emotional reaction? Its only okay when like, this specific pair does that

  70. RocketRelm

    I absolutely should have commented yesterday regarding “Becky is absolutely going to walk in on their sexy makeout session” despite it being too late for anybody to have read or cared about it. That said, I was expecting Becky to walk in after the slipshine.

    1. deliverything

      Sorry to say, she didn’t actually walk in on their makeout session. She was already there and they were initially too focused on each other to notice.

      1. RocketRelm

        That’s true, but I also envisioned a full fuck session before that confrontation. The slipshine would have been a LOT weirder with Becky sitting in the corner making various expressions and watching silently, waiting for somebody to acknowledge her presence.

    2. drs

      You fool! The sloppy makeout session walked in on her!

  71. perpetual summer

    I still don’t think this is going to be about Dorothy & Joyce as much as Becky’s own issues. I’m mostly just glad something exciting (? we shall see) is happening now

    1. perpetual summer

      Also I guess they really did just wander over to Joyce’s room to make out. Huh! I guess Dorothy being anxious about that in her own room really was just about Becky catching them, then?
      Anyways I hope the whack pacing is over for now having hit the big conversation both were worried about all day but who knows? Maybe after this they’ll take off again and walk around until they run into [insert relevant character]. Preferably I’d love to see someone else doing just about anything.

    2. Arianod

      I’m wondering whether this will lead to a God Is Dead moment for Becky. I mean, making her fall in love with her childhood friend and then make said childhood friend gay but not for her? Making her go through the pain of rejection and rebuilding her life* and finding someone else and *then* parade Joyce happily making out with *another* girl in front of her? That can’t be the work of a good, just and merciful God; that’s the kind of thing David Willis would do.

      *and getting fucking kidnapped by her dad, and…

      1. perpetual summer

        No, I don’t think so. That’s a pretty big development that would IMO fall flat because it hasn’t even slightly been hinted at. And Willis loves hinting! Whereas Becky’s anxiety about sexuality not necessarily being set in stone has been the subject of multiple strips and directly applies here. Also the core of her possessiveness of Joyce isn’t just her old crush – her friendship with Joyce is one of the few things in her life that are like, constant and also a connection to her past, which, while not always good, and often traumatic, is still a big part of her.

      2. YourCousinJay

        I doubt it cuz Willis routinely get’s annoyed that people ignore Becky in conversations about how it’s a shame Joyce couldn’t hold onto her religion despite the hardships because that’s Becky’s entire story

        1. YourCousinJay

          (atleast i could swear they posted something along these lines on tumblr or twitter but now i suddenly can’t find it…)

        2. deliverything

          Becky does do a good Job of holding onto her faith. Job 1:22, maybe.

        3. zee

          That made me giggle ngl

      3. zee

        Yeah absolutely not. The strength of Becky’s faith is such a core facet of her character. If going through her mom’s suicide, getting kidnapped at gunpoint by her own father and being violently orphaned in the space of two years (both instances she bore witness to) couldn’t break her faith, her old crush liking another girl isn’t gonna fuckin do it. Willis isn’t start of season 2 Joyce. Becky isn’t just waiting around for something to make her realize “oh I’m silly, there is no god”. Becky exists to represent those who can find comfort in their faith IN SPITE OF the traumatic circumstances in which it was taught to them. Frankly, and I’m speaking as an atheist since childhood, Becky is a representation of true faith. That’s why she didn’t reject the science Dina taught her or doubt god when she finally realized she was gay. Because her belief isn’t fragile, it’s flexible, the only part that matters is that God is loving. Joyce not liking her back for reasons other than being straight isn’t going to break that image for her.

        She is going to be sad, and it’s going to hurt, but frankly Becky losing her faith over this would be a betrayal of the character and straight up shitty writing. We already got “fundie losing faith over harsh realities” through Joyce, doing it again with Beck is redundant.

  72. darkoneko

    oh GOSHDANGIT JOYCE

  73. Derek

    Joyce, you could not have been kissing her six months ago because it was literally impossible. both because the author had not conceived this ship yet and because you as a character had immense hang ups about homosexuality, sex and your own agency as a human being in service of the church.

    1. Taffy

      That’s not how time works, you fucking arsonist.

      1. Derek

        what am I burning with my comment?

        1. Taffy

          Rubber.

      2. Username Taken

        That’s not how setting fires works, you fucking biologist.

  74. Shogo

    I really don’t know why this storyline has been up its own ass about caring more about Becky’s reaction to things than it did the people that were actually cheated on, but if Becky isn’t going to take them to task over that then she needs to get way the hell over herself.

    Joyce isn’t obligated to be with her, Becky’s already in a relationship with Dina, and who Joyce is with isn’t any of Becky’s damn business. If Becky has some pathetic tantrum about how it should have been her instead of Dorothy, than she can eat all the shit.

    I may not like how Joyce and Dorothy got to this point, but if anything is going to make me defend any factor of their relationship it’ll be Becky if she tries to pull some “entitled to have you” nonsense.

    1. Bittersweet

      Same boat here, I get where Becky’s coming from and why, but I’m absolutely in camp “piss right the fuck off if any part of your ensuing argument is you being entitled to a relationship with a bisexual Joyce.” At least Joe was already in a relationship with her, Becky and Joyce have barely been friends since the Liz thing.

      1. Erica

        Barely been friends? What?

        1. Taffy

          Well, they haven’t fucked even one time since then, have they? What’s up with that?

        2. Erica

          Shit your right. Not even one good ol best friend orgasm

        3. Bittersweet

          They had their massive falling out because of Joyce calling Christians stupid or something, I can’t remember but it was her genuinely kind of being a dick with an open door. It was sort of resolved, but they’ve haven’t shared a whole lot of screen time or plot lines since then and the broader issues of them growing apart are a thing that has happened on a few issues and play a bit into Becky’s insecurities. The Liz thing was like… last week in universe.

        4. Erica

          I hardly think that you can say that people are “barely friends anymore” after only 2 weeks of not hanging out one-on-one. If that’s the case man, I’m barely friends with anybody

        5. Astariel

          They had a good run of strips after that arguement where Becky told Joyce she and Dina had sex and Joyce told Becky she was possibly autistic. Then Becky told Joyce she and Dina were sort-of-engaged, and Joyce activated all the dogs in a 5 mile radius. They were lying in bed together and seemed very close.

        6. drs

          “being a dick with an open door”

          In Joe’s room, where no one at the time would have thought to look for Joyce (except that Liz was leaving an online trail for stalkers.) Joyce took Liz off to a safe space for them to vent about religion together, but Becky hunted them down anyway.

  75. BarerMender

    My only question is why are Joyce and Dorothy standing so far apart to kiss? Why aren’t they crushed together with thighs jammed up each other’s crotches?

    1. Anna Grant

      Finally, someone is asking the real questions

    2. Doopyboop

      They’ve got magnets in their mouths and crotches but the crotch magnets repel while the mouth magnets attract.

      1. Taffy

        That’s kinda shitty and opens up way more problems than it could ever solve. And people call this design “intelligent”?

    3. Erica

      Leave room for the holy ghost

    4. HueSatLight

      leaving room for Jesus

      1. deliverything

        I don’t know what Jesus is doing down there, but just hope it’s consensual.

  76. BMBLB

    And there it is. The fuse has been lit for the Becky blow-up. I’m just gonna say it… Told you so.

  77. David Welbourn

    Finally ripped that bandage off. Check for bleeding, and put another bandage on, if necessary? We may need emotional bandages for all three of these ladies before this scene is over.

  78. William

    “Look here come the consequence consequence consequence
    Consequences of my actions chasing me right now
    I don’t want no consequence consequence consequence
    I don’t want no consequences chasing me right now…”

    1. nadamás

      If you it enough times it stops being a word.

      1. William

        It’s a song actually

  79. Erica

    Just chiming in from the Joe fan club again: What a bummer that if she could do it all again, she’d just erase the time she spent with Joe. That her relationship with Joe is wasted time. I know she’s caught up in the excitement and I shouldn’t take it too literally but poor Joe. It really feels like he’s NOTHING to her

    1. Morhek

      As a fellow JoJo appreciator, that’s not what she’s saying. She knows Joe is fine with it and doesn’t consider it cheating. All she’s saying she’d change is more kissing Dorothy being involved.

      1. Erica

        Is she? We’re still not sure how she feels about Joe’s suggestion of poly and if she had been kissing Dorothy six months ago would she have started dating Joe? I doubt it. Maybe, but Joe really feels like second choice here. I mean, she was ready to dump him to be with Dorothy

    2. John Campbell

      Joe six months ago wasn’t a great dating prospect. On the other hand, Joyce glommed onto Dorothy almost immediately, and hasn’t let her go since.

      1. John Campbell

        Anyways, I don’t think Joyce is postulating a whole Harry Turtledove alternate universe scenario here. She just wants to make out with Dorothy more.

    3. Freezer

      Yep. Strong “Willow never loved Oz because she was A LESBIAN the whole time” vibes.

      1. Erica

        Dude I’m rewatching Buffy right now and she is SO into Oz both emotionally and physically. Total bi erasure. Though at least in Willow’s case you can justify it with being so traumatized that your werewolf boyfriend cheated on you as soon as he met another sexy werewolf that you just give up on men, what Joyce’s excuse?

    4. ReFlex76

      She’s directing this at Dorothy, this is sweet talk to make the sexy times better.

  80. Axel

    oh that’s a painful throwback line

  81. Scruffy looking nerfherder

    I’m ambivalent.

    I don’t want this to be a woe is me why didn’t you pick me kind of vibe because she isn’t owed somebody to be into her, but at the same time if it’s another, “You’ve made me find new found respect in Joe and now you’re just tossing himself like garbage.” it better mean something more than the last one.

    1. AK

      If I had to guess we start with the second one, Joyce has to talk about Joe being okay with it which is a curveball for Dorothy, and then we get to the naked jealousy and hurt because there’s nothing reasonable to hide it under anymore.

      1. Jon

        That would make for an entertaining pair of simultaneous conversations.

    2. Needfuldoer

      I’m expecting more of a “why her and not me?”. Becky used “Joyce isn’t even into girls anyway” to soothe herself after Joyce rejected her romantic advances. If that isn’t true, then she’ll have to face the reality that Joyce doesn’t love her the way she loves Joyce.

  82. Christron5000

    HERE WE GO! YES! HA HA YES!

  83. Da Boy

    Oh you can hear her heart drop to the floor and shatter into a million pieces.

    1. Taffy

      That’s what she gets for replacing it with a hollow glass replica.

      1. Yotomoe

        Once had a love and it was a Gas. Soon turned out had a heart of Glass
        Seemed like the real thing only to find. Mucho Mistrust Love’s gone behind.

        1. Erica

          Are those they lyrics?! All these years I never knew she was saying “mucho mistrust”

  84. AK

    The second time Joyce has had this experience about Becky.

    1. Taffy

      Just to be a contrarian for once, I’m gonna say this is Becky’s fault for not respecting closed doors.

      1. ZombieKyrik

        To be fair, she was in the room before them, and clearly wasn’t hiding. She is in someone else’s room, but Joyce, and Dorothy not realizing Becky is right in front of them should be called out too.

        1. John Campbell

          Why should they be expecting Becky to be lurking in the dark in Joyce’s room?

        2. ZombieKyrik

          Not that they should have expected her to be there, but rather that they didn’t take time to look directly ahead of them at Becky. Honestly I don’t know how they didn’t notice her the moment they opened the door.

        3. John Campbell

          Because… she’s lurking in the dark, when they just came in from a lighted hallway, and they had no reason to expect her to be there? And they’re looking at each other instead of around the room because they’re focused on the prospect of fucking the chastity out of Joyce? Given that they seem to have noticed her while kissing with their eyes closed, I think their observational skills are actually pretty impressive.

  85. Joe Angel

    Oh thank God it can finally be stupid prizes time

    1. Taffy

      Becky’s a cop with a gun giving deliberately contradictory orders to an inebriated pedestrian? I’ve only ever seen that phrase used in that context.

      1. Seralyna

        “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” is a pretty common coloquial joking term, that I’ve heard countless times without ever learning the origin of

        1. zee

          Fafo is the more fun version (i almost exclusively hear stupid games on reddit). And now its finding out time.

  86. Rimwalker55

    Nice tie-in to the beginning
    https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/home/
    and the punch line is probably and suddenly deja vu too.

  87. The Lurker

    Congratulations Willis!

    1. Taffy

      Congratulations!

      1. Proxiehunter

        Congradulations!

      2. and painted shark women

        …wait taffy did you change your grav to Rei just for this comment
        if so, I respect the h’susle

    2. AK

      Wow, between that on someone pointing out earlier that the punchline was also a call back to Becky’s coming out, the strip is really well set up to suggest the idea of Joyce replacing Becky with Dorothy. She’s reprising conversations she and Becky have had, but now Becky is either not present or an antagonistic outsider in them.

      1. AK

        … This was really supposed to be a reply to Rimwalker55 one up. Whoops.

        1. Rimwalker55

          Turns out that the first couple of Move In Day strips are full of foreshadowing.
          (Congratulations, Mr. W!)
          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/forget/
          Becky is saying don’t let college change you, the hovertext says “Certainly nobody in the background” with Dorothy in centered in the background.

        2. Taffy

          Huh. I wonder when that got added.

      2. Taffy

        Becky and Dorothy even look the same, if you squint hard enough.

  88. Arianod

    Props to Willis for making it happen in the Most Dramatic Way possible. Congratulations!

    1. Taffy

      Most??? Becky isn’t even in a spinny chair! She could at least be holding a cat, instead of dead media.

      1. Arianod

        Not *that* definifition of “dramatic”.

  89. Acher4

    Happy Birthday!!! <3

    And what a year it has been indeed! 😀

    Love the update. Everything's perfect….and 100% DoA. :O

  90. anon

    oof deep cut

  91. Bobbi

    Everyone’s going back and forth about Dorothy, Joyce, and Becky, but I opened the archive (was looking to re-read a bit) and saw the storyline title at the end of book 16.

    So I am more worried about Dina, who I hate the idea of anything bad happening too, having a RARR! mood ?

    1. Taffy

      I would love an entire chapter dedicated to Dina being furious and going the fuck off on someone.

  92. AlexanderHammil

    Westermarck effect’s a rude bongo, Becky, I’m sorry.

  93. yak

    So you must start all over again
    All over again
    (Don’tcha know it is wrong?) Play it, Billy, play
    (Don’tcha know it is wrong?) Play it, Billy, play
    You will find
    It is the right ’em boyo

  94. GUIGUI

    Probably more upset she tried to hide it from her than anything else.

    1. Astariel

      It’s been less than a day. How soon were they obliged to tell her?

      1. Jon

        Far as I can tell, they were supposed to ask Becky’s permission before that very first kiss, even though that was the first moment either of them realized they were in love. At least, that’s the impression many of these comments give (especially the one up above where someone called Joyce and Dorothy’s new relationship “adultery”).

      2. zee

        And she’s supposed to know that how exactly?

      3. thejeff

        How soon were they supposed to tell here?
        Practically speaking, before she found out by herself. With a possible excuse if there really wasn’t any chance before then.

        Not because there are any specific rules or timelines, but because that’s how you prevent your friends from getting hurt.

        1. Proxiehunter

          Practically speaking telling her before she found out by herself is why they went to her room a couple strips ago. She wasn’t there.

  95. Maddie B

    …I wonder how long she’s been waiting there, with that stack of newspapers (and sadness on the stack).

  96. CianM1301

    Welp, we’re in full red alert mode, folks. Prepare for the meltdown.
    Also, the coincidence that both the very first strip and the 15th anniversary strip both had Joyce and Becky in Joyce’s dorm room is not unnoticed.

    1. Jeff K!

      Yep! And every anniversary of the first Roomies! strip places Joe, Danny and Sal in Danny and Joe’s room.

  97. Florence

    YES!!!!!! ITS HAPPENING!!!!

    1. Florence

      To be slightly analytical, I’d say Becky is feeling both fear of change in regards to sexuality but also hurt that Joyce has feelings for a girl just not her

      Is that unreasonable? Yes, that’s why it’s such good drama

      It’s ger possessiveness of Joyce faced with a situation she theoretically thinks is the best but never wanted

      This is knife twisting storytelling that I long for

      1. Florence

        Also, Dina and Becky are gonna be stronger with this happening now

        Relationships get healthier and happier when you face problems rather than ignore them, especially cause Dina has been shown to feel lesser in this relationship, it’s good to face these challenges

        1. Li

          Yeah, we are overdue for the chekov’s gun that was “I know [I’m just a rebound]” between her and Sarah.

  98. OnyxIdol

    Happy birthday Dumbing Of Age and Willis

  99. Juanoku

    It’s always worst case scenario with these people isn’t it

  100. Nevermaker

    Yeahhhhhh, that is NOT the face of a woman taking this news gracefully

  101. DumbingOfAlice

    WAIT! I’d definitely have locked the door is obvs a callback

    BUT THE FIRST PANEL IS ALSO A CALLBACK?!?!? to the very first panel of DoA

    lil “oh how the times have changed” moment

    <3

    p.s doom is upon us all, may Becky be merciful and only smite us a teensy bit ?

  102. Charlotte

    I mean this is how it had to go!
    But of course Becky is holding the paper. She already knew.

    Be cool, Becky. Sometimes your childhood friend likes you only as a friend. (Only as in exclusively, not as in lesser.)

  103. SDGlyph

    Oh, those are some GOOD callbacks.

    1. SDGlyph

      “Locked the door” obviously goes to Becky’s outing and all the issues that followed, but the first panel pulls double duty in both marking the 15th anniversary and also showing how completely Dorothy has replaced Becky for Joyce (and, from Becky’s perspective, got the “good ending” she’d wanted).

  104. Martin Smith

    Oh wow, that 2010 to 2025 comparison art is startling.

  105. Mindset

    Congrats, Willis, for the fifteen years, and also for the 15-year development in your art skills! Those 2010 and 2025 Joyces are an amazing comparison.

  106. Rogue 7

    Well, that explains the wonky pacing over the past few days. Willis had to rejigger things so that DoJo show up at Joyce’s room exactly today and they added those extra strips in post so they needed to tinker.

    1. Li

      I really don’t think they made that many changes to this part. They’ve added as many as four strips (featuring Asma and Raidah), and we already know they cut an extra strip of Joyce and Dorothy snuggling to make room.

      So that’s three additional strips to be displaced, and I don’t think that would make THAT much difference.

      1. Rogue 7

        Li, neighbor, you literally mentioned yesterday that you were confused about why they went to Dorothy’s room only to immediately head for Joyce’s.

        Well now we know why: because on September 10th this specific comic needed to go up. And with the 4 strips added, 4 needed to be cut. I think it’s likely that a more expanded narrative got merged into a single strip in order to make room.

        1. David M Willis

          I moved an unrelated scene to later. Nothing’s been consolidated.

          Wild speculation is what happens when I provide some information, I guess.

        2. Rogue 7

          Fair dinkum

  107. Myra V

    And… there it is. Becky obviously feels hurt by seeing Joyce and Dorothy together – but it took a LOT to get Joyce to the point where she was ready to even recognize the feelings that she had for Dorothy – and even if she realized she was bi earlier, there’s no guarantee that she would ever have seen Becky as anything more than a really good friend. Even in an ideal world where neither of them went through the religious indoctrination that they grew up in, their relationship may have still ended up with Joyce wanting to be friends and Becky pining after her. That’s just how attraction works – no matter how attractive Becky is in general, if Joyce isn’t attracted to her, Joyce isn’t attracted to her.

    Doesn’t mean that Becky is wrong to feel hurt in the moment, though. Hopefully she and Joyce are able to talk things out – but I have a feeling she’s going to need to talk to some of the others in order to work things out…

    1. YourCousinJay

      “there’s no guarantee that she would ever have seen Becky as anything more than a really good friend”

      I think if anything that hurts more, to not be rejected over simple incompatibility, but plainly for the person you are.

      1. drs

        “but plainly for the person you are”

        Or because you’ve been too intimate from too young an age and are basically ‘siblings’.

        EGS had a similar problem: Sarah liked Elliot, but registers as ‘sister’ to Elliot (and Ellen).

        1. YourCousinJay

          I more just mean it opens up the option, not that it’s the actual reason Joyce turned her down

  108. Colineo

    I DON’T WANT TO SEE BECKY CRY

  109. Sharizard

    Can’t help but feel that if Joyce and Dorothy hadn’t snatched up all those papers then Becky may have still been clueless a little while longer…

    Geez, fifteen years… I remain the ‘Ultimate Walkyverse’ page back in Shortpacked, when this was but a gleam in Willis’s deranged eye. I think the comments got switched to Discus and were lost, but i’m sure i had an old comment there saying something about how much i would love this to be turned into an actual series.

    …i was 26 when that happened… and now here we are.

    Oh oh, there needs to be some kind of joke about reading the newspaper while having an inaugural poop.

  110. Colineo

    Oh God the damage
    dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/definitely/

    1. Colineo

      December 16, 2014

    2. Felian

      oh my goth what a good catch!!
      that’s BRUTAL

  111. Xccj

    Yeah, in Joyce’s defense, who hangs out in someone else’s room with the lights off like that? It’s like Becky was hoping to catch them off guard.

    Locking the door helps, but also maybe glance around the room to make sure you’re alone first. 😛

    1. Felian

      keeping the lights turned off is something i (and probably others) do when really sad. maybe becky’s been there since before it got dark and felt unable to ever move again, turning on the light is a change and Becky is not ready for more changes…

      1. RocketRelm

        (murder cave)

      2. thejeff

        Going in the room, leaving the lights and closing the door behind definitely feels like something.
        It’s not unreasonable for her to be looking for Joyce, try the door and look in when she finds it open. Even to then notice the pile of papers by the door and see the photo. But then to close the door and go to the far side by the window?

        She’s either really in some kind of fugue state or like Xccj said, trying to catch them off guard.

  112. Animedingo

    Frankly they deserve to have all of this blow up in their face

  113. Needfuldoer

    Like a locked door would’ve stopped Becky.

  114. better time

    oh wow, could that finally be consequences for there action? Color me shocked.

  115. Chasey

    Uh-oh, it really was the paper that Becky saw first; surprising, since these two numpties couldn’t keep their paws off each other for one whole day to focus on finding Becky anyway. Welp. Consequences time!

  116. Stephen Nedland

    Becky needs Emotional Support Puppies, stat!

  117. Opinion

    So any guesses on if tomorrow will be
    A) cut away to a different story line for a couple weeks
    Or
    B) panel 4 being a fake out and Becky actually being fine

    1. Zaxares

      It’s open to interpretation of course, but that does not look like a “I’m happy for you” expression on Becky’s face, so assuming we don’t do a DYW plot swap tomorrow, I’m expecting the confrontation to be explosive, to put it lightly.

      1. Jon

        “Becky? Are you all right?”

        “I’m fine – just stubbed my toe in the dark. Toldja girls are rad!”

    2. Myra V

      Erm… Given some of the context of what’s going on in recent strips with Becky saying she has more in common with mom than she thought… I expect that we’re going to be seeing some very dark themes for the next bit of Becky’s storyline. Enough that I have a feeling that Ruth is going to be returning to some all too familiar territory for her…

  118. Matrix

    Ouch

  119. ValdVin

    Has it been six months in-universe? And if so, it’s really passed Valentine’s Day without anyone saying anything?

    1. Dwampre Scorrigank

      I suppose she’s counting a couple days of august and half of january as a month each… I disagree with that rounding scheme but I can understand it happening in the heat of the moment

  120. Dwampre Scorrigank

    1. Dwampre Scorrigank

      https://i.ibb.co/nsDSym67/Becky-s-reaction-to-seeing-Joyce-kissing-Dorothy.jpg is what that was meant to be, apparently I failed to htm all the ls.

  121. Andrusi

    [Merrily We Roll Along (1935 song) plays]

  122. Rogue 7

    The more I think on it, the more I come to the conclusion that having DoJo start with them cheating on their boyfriends was the decision that’s ruined this arc and pairing for me.

    Because with the way the two of them were dreading it, and now Becky finding out coming on a significant date in the comic’s history, it’s pretty clear that we as readers are supposed to care about Becky’s reaction a great deal.

    That’s fine on its own. Becky is an incredibly important person in DoJo’s lives, she’s had worries about the fluidity of identity and sexuality, previous conflict with Joyce to build on, and, oh yeah, a huge unrequited crush on Joyce that she thought was hopeless because Joyce wasn’t into women. It absolutely makes sense that her reaction would be an important part of the comic.

    But making it more important than the reactions of the people who were in romantic relationships with DoJo at the time? That, I think, is where things stick in my craw.

    If this arc had started off with both Dorothy and Joyce single, it would still be playing out like 90% the same. But it wouldn’t have the huge missing step of “why should we care more about Becky’s reaction than the boys being cheated on?”

    1. Myra V

      I get what you’re saying there, but these are relationships that are only a few days or weeks old in-universe, and one of them being an on-again-off-again relationship at that (Walky/Dorothy – which really was rather toxic all around for them). I’m not sure it makes sense that DOROTHY is so afraid of Becky’s reaction (well, other than her rather consistent perfectionist tendencies), but Joyce and Becky have been friends for years at this point in the story, and Joyce knows how Becky feels about her, so it makes sense that she’d at least unconsciously be thinking, “Hey, maybe Becky WOULDN’T take this news well…” So… yeah, Becky’s reaction was always going to be more impactful than Joe’s and Walky’s reactions were going to be.

      We’ll see how things play out, but I have a feeling that this is going to be much more impactful than anyone thinks at this point unless the characters handle this extremely well (and, given the cast of characters and their age in-universe… Yeah, this is probably going to end up being a mess…).

      1. Astariel

        I think it makes sense that Dorothy would be afraid of Becky’s reaction considering that she has to live with her.

      2. Yotomoe

        Joyce and Joe’s relationship is not only as old as them becoming an official couple. They too have known each other for 6 months. Cheating on someone is not merely a betrayal of the romantic relationship from the date it started but a betrayal of the entire relationship from the moment you met.

        1. Jon

          The moment they met, Joe tried hitting on her, then gave her a bad score on the Do List because of her religion. Let’s not pretend they started off well.

        2. Yotomoe

          Irrelevant to the point I’m making.

        3. zee

          Also not what happened? He gave her a bad score because she paid a guy to punch him in the face before also just doing it herself. Which she apologized for

    2. Big Z

      And so many discussing of this IMMEDIATELY focus on the specific “relationship(romantic)” relationship length, and in fact also defines D/W as uncharitably as possible if that history is mentioned at all, rather than looking at the context of those relationships (most notably, Joe and Joyce being close and her going to him as a confidant for months now).

      1. Dot

        The focus on the specific number of days a relationship has been ongoing is incredibly obnoxious to me, as if we aren’t dealing with comic book time here.

        The underplaying of the importance of D/W as a relationship is also definitely annoying, as if it wasn’t once one of the pillars of the strip, one of the first pairings ever given significant narrative focus. People now act like it never mattered at all.

        1. Big Z

          Yep, not to mention how much of Joe and Joyce’s growth arcs were MUTUAL, ultimately — that’s a huge part of the story for me, especially recently, and I’m trying to be objective about them being both my OTP and frankly the two characters I identified with most until Joyce’s shenanigans started being less cheeky and fun (and aimed at Raidah) and started being more tragic (and affecting Joe).

    3. Felian

      The question for me is: do these particular boys suffer more than Becky?
      I’m not saying its olympics, but i’d not say that just because Joe and Walky were CHEATED ON (capitalized because society tends to call this the most awful thing that can happen) and Becky wasn’t, that Becky is in any way less hurt.
      I want to see each of their pain and how they slowly get better. So far we’ve only seen Joe be like “what if you don’t have to stop dating me?“ bargaining (and one panel of sad eyes), Walky eating his feelings, and Becky having the strongest reaction of betrayal. Yes, i’d definitely like to see more.

      With Walky, it sat wrong with me how Joyce gloated at him about stealing his girl, as if he wasn’t a person with feelings… he seems kind of unconcerned but do we really know? We don’t know how Joe and Walky feel offstage. I hope we get to see more of it!
      Because all of them are in-depth characters i wanna see more of!

      1. Big Z

        I mean, “cheated on” is just another word for “lied to” and/or “deliberately broke your trust”, and isn’t that kinda fundamentally the worst thing that can happen to a friendship/relationship of any kind?

      2. thejeff

        The problem with apply that “do they suffer more” metric is twofold: First it seems like the reaction to the cheating has been minimized: Joe even saying he nudged Dorothy into it. Walky is more obviously upset, but that seems more directly tied to being dumped than to the cheating. Cheating isn’t the “most awful thing that can happen”, but it’s the thing that’s actually wrong here.

        Becky may suffer more, but if that suffering is just due to Joyce turning out to be bi, but not into her, that’s her problem. There’s nothing Joyce could or should do to change that, while cheating could have been avoided.

        If we’re just thinking in terms of suffering, consider how Carol will suffer knowing that her daughter is condemned to hell for being a lesbian. Should we treat that as the most important thing?

      3. Rogue 7

        And I’m saying that we wouldn’t be having this conversation if the cheating hadn’t happened.

        Joe and Walky, it seems to me, are relegated to background importance all through this arc.

        If they weren’t, you know, *actively involved in romantic relationships with Dorothy & Joyce when they kissed*, that’d be the most normal thing in the world. Focusing on the fallout of the newspaper, seeing how cute Joyce and Dorothy are, basically everything that has happened in the comic over the past few months? It wouldn’t much be reasonable to have a problem with it. Even this whole debacle with Becky wouldn’t be at all a problem. Obviously DoJo being concerned how Joyce’s best friend for decades who was in love with her would take the news being more important than an old ex (Walky) or some dude nursing a crush on Joyce (Joe) would make sense.

        But when you introduce that Walky and Joe both had “boyfriend” status? It elevates how important their responses to DoJo are. Because they were cheated on- something most people consider reasonable to feel some sort of way about- and because Dorothy and Joyce were both clearly shown to care about Walky and Joe respectively, and should thus care about hurting them.

      4. Yotomoe

        I would agree except they have been building up Becky’s traction FAR more than Joe and Walky. As if I should be more invested ion her reaction than the other two.

    4. Li

      I still don’t think either Joe or Walky is done reacting to this.

      I’m not saying they’re ever going to react enough; I can’t know that, for multiple reasons!

      But I just don’t think we can yet say more right now than “Becky is having a bigger VISIBLY emotional reaction”.

      Joe chose not to have a bigger visible reaction. He chose to instead focus on how he knew Dorothy felt that way and suspected it was mutual. He chose to instead focus on how really, looked at from a certain angle, he instigated this, and after all, he doesn’t want to break up with Joyce.

      Whether this is an honest reflection of his priorities… well, we’ll see. I’ve already gone on at length in two separate comments on two different days about why I don’t think Joe does actually have a fear of being cheated on himself and why I don’t think suggesting polyamory is supposed to be something his mother ever did. But that’s not the same thing as thinking Joe’s totally happy about any of this, or that he isn’t suggesting poly from a bad emotional space.

      (“I’m not a jealous person” and “I don’t think I’m allowed to be jealous” are two VERY different statements. Joe didn’t even say he wanted to overcome jealousy, he straight up said he doesn’t think he’s allowed to feel that way. Bad vibes!!)

      Meanwhile, Walky. Walky has allowed himself to be emotionally vulnerable with Dorothy a few times, and I don’t think he’s been rewarded for them! He admitted he was failing calculus, and she did promise to help him, but then she found out her own grades were dropping and he immediately told her not to worry about him and lied that he had someone else to tutor him.

      Later, he told her he loved her in a bit of a desperate bid to salvage the relationship, and she asked if they could “pause”.

      And then of course he went to her to talk about his anxieties with Lucy, and, well……..

      Walky doesn’t do a lot of emotional vulnerability at the best of times. I am inclined to think that after all of ^^^ these experiences, he wouldn’t have been willingly vulnerable with her this time even if Joyce hadn’t interrupted to do a Looney Tunes bit, and on some level I think he might even have appreciated her interruption, both because it ripped off the bandaid that Dorothy was struggling with, and because it meant he didn’t have to have an emotional reaction of any kind where Dorothy could see it.

      Like Joe, I don’t think Walky was surprised, exactly: he’d been making fun of what he thought were Joyce’s obvious feelings for Dorothy for months, and more recently Dorothy had said one or two things to him that suggested they might be mutual, and more than that, I genuinely think he regarded being “with” her again as less of a relationship than a favor he was doing to a really depressed friend. He hasn’t seemed happy to be with her again really except for the moment right after they had sex again for the first time, when she told him she’d missed “this face”, and he told her he’d missed her and then looked away awkwardly.

      But I also think his self-worth was at an all-time low when he agreed to take her back, and I do not think any of this had helped.

      I just… don’t think either of them reacting immediately with anger was ever in the cards. (20/20 hindsight, not saying it was always obvious.) And I’m not sure I want Jennifer to get him to anger when she talks to him — but I absolutely do want her to hug him. I want him to break down about this and have it bring catharsis instead of turning into another moment of emotional vulnerability that he regrets.

      1. Li

        Oh also I want JENNIFER TO BE HIS FRIEND AGAIN, because the fact that he kept going to Dorothy to talk about Lucy sucked for both of them. Ultimately more for him, of course, but Walky desperately needs more friends. Closer friends.

        Booster is also a possibility and I hope we get to see them talk to him too, and maybe see them let their walls down a bit to talk to Walky like a person instead of a psychoanalysis exercise.

      2. Rogue 7

        Sadly, this isn’t a problem that’s fixable by having Joe & Walky react later. It’s not really a fixable problem at all- this arc is always going to have the problem that Becky’s reaction to DoJo was given more importance than the boys’ and the dissonance that creates.

        1. Li

          I mean. You are certainly allowed to feel that way?

          But I definitely think “fixable by having them react later” implies that a.) it was a mistake, rather than a deliberate choice, and b.) that there is some version of the comic where the reactions we’ve seen so far were all that the boys were ever going to do? I don’t think either thing is true.

          I think this is a thing about the arc that you aren’t enjoying, and that’s completely fair and valid. But I don’t think it is universally true that placing Becky’s emotional reveal earlier or having Dorothy and Joyce sometimes seem more worried about it is the same thing as it having more narrative weight, or being more important, or Willis expecting it to come across as more important?

          Man I could have cut my entire reply down to “I still think it’s too early to say these things”, heh, because that’s what it really boils down to for me, much as I enjoyed digressing into Wally’s head for a moment.

          I think once this and possibly the next storyline is over, we’ll have a better idea of what the boys’ reactions were and also how important each reaction is actually supposed to be.

          Which doesn’t mean you’re, like, wrong to be worried about how it’ll shape out. Just that I personally don’t think we have the whole shape yet.

          It’s like the little chaos illustrations sprinkled throughout The Lost World, showing first a small fraction of the finished piece and slowly zooming out, commenting at each stage about how chaotic or orderly it looks, before finally revealing a very complex but orderly image.

        2. Rogue 7

          Basically, what I’m saying is that I think we’d have a much, *much* stronger story arc, with fewer complaints from folks like me (some justified, some not) if there had been a day inserted between JoJo’s Bizzare Dateventure* and the protest climax where Joyce and Dorothy break up with their boyfriends.

          That wouldn’t be a panacea for everything- I’d still be grumpy that Joyce and Joe’s plot didn’t get enough time to fully bake, and honestly I wish that this had been planned far enough ahead that Dorothy and Walky just…didn’t get back together in the first place.

          But it would mean that placing the boys in the narrative backseat is no longer a flaw.

          *Their date was anything but Bizzare, I’m just in the middle of watching Battle Tendency with my girlfriend and wanted to make a reference.

        3. Li

          Again, totally valid feelings to have.

          I think that given that Willis explicitly wanted to do a cheating storyline, though, that part is kind of nonnegotiable, and I think the fact that it’s starting from cheating was always going to be a big problem for a lot of readers re: this ship.

        4. Li

          (This is partly in reference to your comment about Walky and Dorothy, partly in response to your very first comment where you note that it starting this way soured you on the ship.

          Personally I think giving Joe and Joyce more time to “bake” would make everything about that part worse, but maybe the fan base would be less split on the issue?

          And you know I’m still hoping they try poly and that eventually they’re a happy functional triad.)

        5. Rogue 7

          The JoJo arc being interrupted, regardless of how things turn out, is never going to be something I’m going to like. But that’s not really worth relitigating. We all know where folks stand.

        6. Yotomoe

          It’s not a great cheating story if the person most affected wasn’t even dating the cheaters. You can call it a slow burn but that’s not the appeal of a cheating story. You either focus on the secrecy and sneaking around or you focus on the big reveal and the status quo shakeup. Basically everyone has hit them with a finger wag and a “well I saw this coming oh well”. I already don’t like that this is a cheating arc but as presented this has also been a pretty low stakes cheating arc. I don’t get the impression Dorothy nor Joyce care about Joe and Walkys feelings. Neither breakup was given the time or energy they deserved and all this running around has done any dramatic tension a disservice. And you can argue “Oh. They had business to do and they’ll circle back.” But this is a work or fiction. They have as much time as the narrative wants them to have. And it’s decided they will not have it.

        7. Li

          Right, but I don’t think Becky is the most affected person.

          I think I understand why it feels that way (see my giant-ass comment below to AK), but I don’t agree that it is objectively true.

          I also don’t happen to think this arc has pacing issues (it’s another thing I think is just impossible to judge when it’s coming at one strip per day), but I do think what’s happening right now is pretty slow-paced, and I think that is making stuff that folks aren’t enjoying feel much worse.

          So, heh, that’s kind of the entirety of my reply. If I agreed with yall about these things (Becky being the only one who’s hurt/the only one who’s reaction is getting focus, the pacing being bad, Joyce and Dorothy being a boring couple, all the tension fizzling)… then I would fully agree with all of the negative assessments of the arc.

          But I totally disagree about Joyce/Dorothy being boring, and the rest I’m still reserving judgment on, so.

          Again tho: you all have my sympathy. In like a year I guess I will find out if I agree with you about these things.

          (Conservative estimate, heh, but it will be like 3 months before the next storyline is over, and that’s about the earliest I can imagine rendering judgment on this arc’s pacing and various dangling threads.)

        8. Donovan

          You know I’m just gonna say it. I kinda feel like willis is just too…I don’t know what the word i’m looking for us, uncomfortable? Uninterested? … To write a cheating arc (or at least, of the type that most of us bored/disappointed expected of a purported ‘cheating story).

          I’ve felt like this for a while, kept it to myself because I giving things the benefit of doubt. Idk that’s just where I’m at right now. I’m bored with DoJo and I kind of don’t care about Becky’s opinion on it, because it doesn’t feel hard to guess at.

          C’est la vie. I wonder what Alice is doing.

        9. Nymph

          I think that’s fair, Donovan. Willis only decided to write a cheating arc because their wife pointed out they never actually did. That in a comic about messy college people getting together and breaking up it never actually got that messy. It’s very likely that they’re not totally comfy writing it, or kind of just tagged it onto the next relationship that happened because they wanted to write a cheating story now. Sometimes the first run through something doesn’t work out how you’d like, esp if you don’t like or aren’t aware of the tropes surrounding it.

          I wish there had been more angst about it all, but I’m not writing off the possibility of angst to come.

        10. thejeff

          That’s kind of my feeling too. I’d phrase it as them not being willing to commit hard enough to the cheating side of the story. They ticked the box in about the mildest way possible and then soft-pedaled everyone’s reactions to minimize it even farther.

        11. Donovan

          @Nymph + thejeff: Thanks for seeing where I’m coming from and meeting me on my level. I don’t even mean that in like, a mean way towards willis. I’m just… kinda left here feeling like ‘man. If they weren’t gonna commit AND/OR were this uncomfortable I wish they’d never made themself write it at all’

        12. Proxiehunter

          The story isn’t over yet. We don’t know what Joyce’s answer to Joe is going to be and how he’ll react if the answer is no.

        13. Li

          Heck, I myself said a couple of weeks ago now something to the effect of “uh-oh, have we (collective we) forgotten Willis is sometimes very vanilla and that their first cheating arc might be a lot less juicy than we’ve been predicting”

          so yeah, agreed that that is a very real possibility.

          (No shade intended!)

        14. Dot

          The story isn’t over, but it’s very clear that we are at the emotional climax of this particular arc, and the fact that it belongs to Becky and not Joe or Walky is disappointing to me. You can talk all you like about what might or might happen weeks or months or years down the line, but that doesn’t change what I’ve seen thus far, and what I’ve seen thus far indicates that this storyline is unlikely to resolve in a way I’ll find satisfying.

        15. Li

          @Dot: If that’s to me, I mean, I’m hopeful that things’ll turn around for a lot of the folks who are currently unhappy with the storyline, but not expectant.

          That we’re at the emotional climax of the arc is one of those things I wouldn’t say is yet clear, for example, and I swear I’m not just being a contrarian? I’m looking at the dropdown and noting that we’re 39 strips into this storyline, which would put us at not even quite the halfway point, judging by the last few storylines (which have clocked in at 86-94 strips).

        16. AK

          If I’m reading right, I think Rogue might be trying to say that the bulk of the anticipatory concern of the narrative feels like it has been pointed at Becky instead of the boys. And I think I agree with them that this feels like an issue specifically with a sequencing of this in which it’s lead by cheating, because while I think it’s super reasonable for Walky and especially Joe not to react to this super strongly up front, I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to have had the girls anticipate, and I do think it’s kind of fair to say that the narrative framing has not felt terribly concerned about it either. It really does kind of feel to me like the narrative framing has consistently de-emphasized that one in terms of what gets followed and time and concern, especially re: Walky.

          I know Rogue and I have frequently not agreed on what we want to see and I have broadly considered the cheating violations smaller and reacted to the boys reactions (especially Joe’s) much more positively than they have, but I do think I have to agree with them on this one. It does not feel tonally like the story is as worried about their actual boyfriends as I would expect it to be given that it has lead with cheating, and that has been a fairly off-putting dissonance to me.

          This isn’t really a critique about how it’s going to shape out. In general I trust it will shape out fairly well even if I don’t like some of the outcomes? It is a critique about the level of narrative emphasis anticipatory energy and its diffusion have had being weirdly distributed given the inciting incident for this relationship sailing.

        17. Rogue 7

          AK, you absolutely nailed it.

          Joe’s reaction isn’t what I wanted (I still don’t care about Walky, no offense to the lad), mainly because it’s not how I think someone with his history and his mindset would be likely to respond to being cheated on. I was a big fan of Joe & Joyce’s arc and I’m never going to like that it got interrupted by DoJo. But I’ve said my piece on that, and there’s absolutely no point in relitigating that.

          Thanks for recognizing that this is something separate.

        18. Li

          I understand feeling that way, and I sympathize, but I really don’t know that I can agree with it?

          I think the focus has ping-ponged a fair bit. SOMETIMES the girls have been worried about Becky, sometimes they’ve been worried about telling their respective boys.

          What I think is making it FEEL like Becky is getting a lot more focus than the boys is a combination of factors:

          1. Joyce and Dorothy have been worried about Joe and Walky separately, but about Becky simultaneously, which would give her what feels like 2x focus even if the number of strips showing concern were roughly even.

          2. This comment section has been worried about Joe (and to a significantly lesser extent, Walky) for MONTHS. Some of us, myself included, have actually been worried about him since before #dranks. Worried that what happened with Liz was haunting him, worried that Joyce was moving too fast and not listening enough to him, worried about how Dorothy and Sarah were treating him… and then, of course, Joyce started being flirty with Dorothy on the day of her and Joe’s big date, and the worrying reached a bit of a fever pitch that it has yet to really recover from.

          3. Meanwhile, the comment section is split on Becky: some of us have expressed concern that her heart was going to break here, but plenty of us have instead expressed exasperation: “surely she’s over her lifelong crush by now” sort of an energy.

          So, what I’m saying is:

          First, it would genuinely be difficult for Willis to match our energy when it comes to concern about Joe’s feelings.

          Second, plenty of us feel like the amount of concern Becky’s feelings SHOULD be getting right now is approaching zero.

          Third, although I don’t think Becky has gotten more strips of concern than Joe (it’s possible she’s ahead of Wally by like 1, maybe 2), she does keep getting FOCUSED concern from both girls at once. An entire strip all about her, for example, feels like more than a strip that’s split between Joe and Walky.

          (It also doesn’t help that Becky got the first mention by name post-kiss, I’m pretty sure, or that we “resolved” the tension with the boys and then circled back to her. Even though there were a bunch of strips focused entirely on Joe and Joyce, if the strip ended today, it would still feel like Becky had gotten more attention. Because she’s currently the bookend: the framing device.)

          (Which is why I keep saying it’s too soon: I don’t think she’s going to end up actually being the start and end of this, I think that’s just how it looks right now.)

        19. Li

          TL;DR: I don’t think Becky has gotten more focus than Joe, and I think she’s only barely gotten more focus than Walky, but I do think she’s arguably gotten disproportionate focus.

          (Arguably. I could definitely make a case for why her reaction is super important to both Joyce and Dorothy, and I don’t think it’s supposed to be more important, but I do find it super easy to understand why it feels otherwise.)

        20. Rogue 7

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/catch-2/ is my counterargument.

          While Dorothy obviously shows concern for Walky and how he’ll be affected, she also *explicitly* says she’s more worried about Becky than him. Joyce mentions Joe, but that concern is *also* buried under their immediate concern about Becky.

          As is https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/safely/, in which the humor comes from the fact that telling the boys is easy, while telling Becky is harder than overthrowing capitalism.

        21. AK

          Yeah I do think disproportionate is the issue.

          I don’t actually think the comments section’s energy about any of this stuff should be something Willis is trying to match, I don’t think our opinions should matter *that* much to the story he’s trying to tell. I tend to be fairly aware of serial vs archival reading. I do think the idea Becky shouldn’t matter at all is kind of insane. She’s extremely important to both of them, and this is and has been demonstrably a pain point for her since she re-entered the scene. Dorothy lives with her and has been actively managing that pain point.

          But “our boys” feel like less of a site of anxiety than Becky. Character anxiety. Narrative anxiety. Pacing and timing anxiety. The anxiety around Becky has been very emotionally heightened, the anxiety around the boys has been much more procedural and disruptable. And that’s just… a weird choice for a “we have discovered we love each other so we gotta break up with our people” plotline, let alone one that involves cheating.

        22. Li

          @Rogue 7: honestly, rereading those strips…

          “This is going to destroy Walky. Again. I… don’t know if I can do that. […] But [he’s] not actually who I worry about betraying the most.”

          “…Maybe we should just fake both our deaths. She’d take that easier.”

          (Bold mine.)

          …what jumps out at me first (well, after the part where Dorothy says she thinks this is going to destroy Walky, which is more dramatically than I remembered her talking about this) is that neither of them are technically positioning Becky’s feelings as more important,

          so much as scarier.

          Which I don’t think was Willis’s intent! But then, I also don’t think they actually meant to make Becky’s feelings more important, either.

          My guess? Is that we’ve got another “didn’t think they needed to sell readers on Joyce being queer” scenario. Or like how they’ve said they had Becky ramp up her jealousy over Dorothy and Joyce’s friendship in an attempt to remind readers that she had those feelings, and to foreshadow that something was going to come of all of it.

          Or, in other words, simultaneously over- and underestimating the comments, heh. We are a community that obsessively rereads, so we specifically didn’t really need to be reminded of Becky’s jealousy.

          I bet they thought a reminder here, too, would be pertinent, and that meanwhile, as with Joyce’s queerness, we didn’t need to be “sold” on Joyce and Dorothy’s concern for Joe and Wally’s feelings.

          If so, uh, relatable. I’ve had that problem with stories I’ve written.

          Doesn’t make complaints about it illegitimate, but the more I think about it the likelier it seems. Because…….. I really don’t think the intended reading here can possibly be “they just don’t care about either boy”.

          I think Dorothy and Joyce can BOTH be remarkably insensitive, but it never comes from a place of not caring.

        23. thejeff

          Part of it I think is that little of this feels like a response to cheating. The focus is on “well, if we’re going to be together, we’ll have to break up with the boys (Or maybe not, right Joyce?) and us getting together is going to mess with Becky. Oh and maybe the parents will find out Joyce is queer, that’ll be bad – if they ever remember that problem).”

          But all of that would play out basically the same if they’d just decided they wanted to get together.

        24. Dot

          This is the big issue with how Walky was handled, I think. If Dorothy had decided that her heart was Joyce’s and they wanted to get together, absent any cheating, things would have played out exactly the same. That walky was cheated on barely feels like a factor in how the story has played out thus far.

        25. Yotomoe

          This. Walky and Joe are treated so unimportant not just by the narrative but the actual characters in the narrative that it’s left a bad taste in my mouth. I truly don’t care about how Becky feels about this anymore. And I don’t really care about DoJo going forward. After that comic where Joyce laughs at Walky after cheating on him with his girlfriend I am done with her. At this point I don’t even want her and Joe to get back together or polycule it up cuz she’s shown herself to be cruel and thoughtless. I have lost so much respect for these characters and the narrative this arc.

  123. hatman

    The question to me isn’t “Does Becky have a right to be angry?” Because to me that doesn’t matter: People get angry about things all the time. We just do not know what she’s angry about right now. Could be the relationship, could be kissing at the protest, could be unresolved feelings over Joyce not being a lesbian “for her”, could be Becky vs. Joyce current religious views round 2 and having to confront that considering Joyce cheating, could be her being angry at Dorothy because it feels like a betrayal of their dynamic, could be something completely unrelated.

    We Just Don’t Know (unless you’re on Patreon, where you probably know more than I do).

    1. Felian

      I have a hunch that what Becky will ultimately voice as a reason for upset is that Joyce is betraying their friendship by not telling her. Becky has not only lost Joyce as a romantic interest, but their friendship is just not as close as it used to be. Becky puts a lot of emphasis on being best friends, she has to hold on to that because Love-of-my-life is not an option. And now this best friend keeps secrets from her.

    2. Odo

      People are angry for all sorts of reasons, but I think whether someone is justified in blaming someone else for their anger is still relevant.

      Emotions don’t just exist in a vacuum, and how we interpret them and process them is just as important as the emotion itself.

      Becky could be feeling angry and be thinking “Joyce betrayed me!” or she could be thinking “I have some suppressed jealousy I need to work through”.

      The former interpretation might lead Becky to try to confront Joyce. The latter might lead Becky to talk to someone else, write in a journal, go on a long walk, etc…

      Emotions such as anger tell us “Something is wrong” but they don’t tell us exactly how to respond.

    3. Yotomoe

      I mean sure people get mad about all sorts of shit but I don’t just have to accept their anger.
      There’s a word for people who are mad at people for not dating them and dating someone else. We call those “nice guys”

      1. Dot

        This is honestly not a cool way to talk about a lesbian going through complicated emotions about the girl she was in love with since childhood turning out to be gay but specifically not for her. It is not a 1:1 equivalence.

        1. Yotomoe

          It’s not a 1-1 equivalence but there’s plenty of guys who spent their whole lives being attracted to a childhood friend who never returned their feelings and went on to date other guys. I’ve been that guy. But I wouldn’t dare feel betrayed or angry that they didn’t love me back.
          Being gay adds a layer but it doesn’t change the flavor. That hurt is your own. At least she has the love of a woman to help her through it. Not all of us are that lucky.

  124. ADD

    George Lucas, struggling as he’s being dragged away, just out of frame: “IT’S LIKE POETRY! THEY RHYME!”

  125. Steamweed

    Aaaaand here we go.

  126. Andy

    The piece that isn’t being discussed enough is Becky has lost everyone. Joyce is all that was left of her past life. It was Joyce who saved her. Went to her old house. Hank and Joss are her only family. She’s afraid of losing all of that. Not being Joyce’s bestie any longer.

  127. DashWallkick

    The newspaper under the arm is so brutal because not only did she already know, she came to confront them about it and they proved it was true right in front of her without thinking.

    1. thejeff

      Or she came to see Joyce and found the paper in the pile in the room.

      1. DashWallkick

        Oooh that’s super likely too.

  128. coeurdechoeur

    To quote Liz Lemon:

    “No! It okay. Don’t be cry.”

  129. Buforana

    Becky sitting silently in the darkness of Joyce’s room, waiting, damnable evidence of her friend/crush’s apparent “sin” clutched in her hand… this looks like the beginning of a villain arc or something, haha! Would’ve been awkward if Dina had come looking for her first, tho.

  130. mindbleach

    Eyepatch goes on which side, for the Punished Becky arc?

  131. Blume

    I should stop reading the comments… I want to be invested in this comic, but now I’m wondering if I’m supposed to be?? Or if I should just take it all at face value and go along for the ride. Both don’t seem like bad options. But like, at this point, I think I should just stop caring about the interpersonal relationships as much. What’s a year for me is like, barely a month for them. So, idk.

    1. deliverything

      I emotionally disconnected from Dorothy and Joyce early in the cheating arc. Made it easier to deal with, but also might be the reason it’s been so hard for me to be interested in the recent storyline?

    2. YourCousinJay

      I think the entire point here is that it’s a very messy breakup via cheating which can create a ton of conflict

      personally I find it interesting but the comments can be a lot sometimes

  132. Whirlakitty

    Over a decade ago, Willis said something along the line so of “don’t cry Becky! I’ll make Joyce gay if you don’t cry!” Well, Becky hadn’t cried in a while…

    1. deliverything

      Here’s the strip in question (it’s in the hovertext): https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/hindsight/

  133. twiz

    Maybe this is all just a set-up for Dina to scare them and Becky to fly a “WELCOME TO BEING GAY” banner… please?

  134. Wilde

    Willis, happy fifteenth comicversary! Your style has really evolved. I’ve said it before, but clearly your storytelling is excellent, since I don’t think people could have such strong feelings about the comic if they didn’t already find your work super compelling! You’ve got 30+ year olds here every day in every thread starting wars over socially awkward teen queers, that’s a testament to your powers of characterization like nothing else.

  135. Garry

    Is it finally “consequences for my actions” time? *Pulls out popcorn*

    1. Odo

      I doubt it considering Becky is no more qualified to give “consequences” than Sarah.

      Joyce didn’t cheat on Becky and does not owe Becky a romantic relationship. The most we might get is “I am disappointed in you for cheating”.

      The worst would be Becky being weird and jealous in a way that threatens Becky/Dina’s relationship.

      1. Garry

        *sadly puts popcorn away*

      2. YourCousinJay

        I mean… being ostracized by your friends for the way you acted towards others IE Joe & Walky could absolutely be consiquences

  136. Searcher

    It’s Walky! (‘s first arc) ran for 5 years.

    Shortpacked! ran for 10 years.

    At 15 years, this is obviously the last strip of Dumbing of Age.

    So, what do we think the next reboot is going to be? Star Trek far future? The cast in Germany 1943? I heard some talk about a D&D arc?

    1. Drakkin the Alien

      Uh, the entire cast in a Hitlerjugend Schule class of 1943 enviroment could actually be quite dark and grim… but.. Maybe a b/w graphic novel or two? Please take note Mr. Willis!!

    2. Proxiehunter

      Next reboot should be Julia Grey.

  137. beth

    Oh my Cheese this is the perfect anniversary page.

  138. Viktoria

    Huh. Becky is the one party I fully expected NOT to care. Walky and Joe I was fully expecting to flip, she seemed happy enough with Dina I was expecting all the concern around her to be a fakeout. This is interesting.

    1. Myra V

      Yeah, she’s in a great relationship with Dina, but… recent conversations in Gender Studies have thrown her off balance, and I think there’s still an emotional weak spot for Joyce as her platonic best friend. Having it dropped on her that Joyce isn’t quite as straight as she’d claimed to be – even if that revelation only came to Joyce herself within the last 24 hours – will feel like a betrayal to Becky (even though it really isn’t one objectively speaking). In the emotional state that she’s been in recently… Well, let’s just say that I think I understand WHY Becky was the last of the main crew that we’re seeing the reaction from.

  139. Astariel

    I’m sorry that Becky is upset, and her feelings are understandable, but I really hope that Joyce & Dorothy don’t end up beating themselves up in guilt over she’s taking it. They haven’t done anything wrong to Becky. (No, failing to report major life upheavals to your friends within 24 hours is not wronging them.)

    1. Erica

      Completely agree. I totally understand Becky feeling hurt but as mad as I am at Joyce, the only person she actually did wrong is Joe. They didn’t do anything wrong by not informing Becky of their relationship immediately before kissing

      1. YourCousinJay

        She also cherished the idea of breaking the news to Walky of Dot cheating on him and then went ahead and broke said news for Dot before laughing in his face about it.

        Like I think she did Walky pretty wrong there..

    2. Dot

      Dorothy is not one lately to pass up an opportunity to beat herself up over something.

    3. John Campbell

      She just wants Joyce to wrong her until she has a good scapegoat.

    4. Vaishino

      There’s plenty of rocks in place for this ship to crash dramatically against, and Becky’s just one of them.

  140. Rosicrucian

    Just flat-out, Becky’s feelings right now could be entirely just that her best friend didn’t go to her first. Both Dorothy and Joyce have been sweating Becky’s reaction so much that their chronic avoidance of addressing someone they claim to care about has created a legitimate grievance. Even just treating Becky like she’s made of glass is inconsiderate.

  141. Yotomoe

    I truly truly think how Becky feels about this should not be as big of a deal as its being treated.

    1. Grayfinity

      She’ll raise a stink, for sure. But if she’s truly over Joyce and only for Dina, then yeah it won’t be a big deal.

    2. YourCousinJay

      It might have been made such a big deal since Walky and Joe are both so emotionally stunted, with Joe constantly Self-Censoring and restraining his actions because he’s so afraid of who he could be while Walky refuses to acknowledge his feelings entirely. So they need a big emotional bomb to shout at these two in their stead

  142. Vulcanodon

    The giddy happiness of young love, hitting a wall at 100 mph

    Hurting the ones you love. And I’m sure Joyce can expound on the difference between ‘eros’ and ‘phileos’

  143. Ian Clark

    Huh, out of the three characters we expected might react this way, the only one who did was the one who doesn’t really have a right to. Well, and Sara, who wasn’t one of those three, but was doing on behalf of one of the three, and did have a right to.

    Unless it turns out that Becky’s also upset about how they’re going about things, and not the fact that Joyce is interested in a woman who isn’t her.

    1. Taffy

      Fuck this concept of emotional rights. It has no place in the world.

      1. deliverything

        Come to that… quite a few people in the comment section have been angry at Joyce and Dorothy over their behaviour, yet I haven’t seen any of the people claiming Becky has no right to be angry calling out any commenters for the same thing, despite us having significantly less “emotional right” to do so.

  144. kepod

    https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/cheating/

    This old strip seems pretty wild to consider in light of the recent conversations about cheating and claims about Joyce/Dorothy coming out of the blue.

  145. Florence

    The great part about this twist is how much Joyce represents to Becky various ways to hold onto the past but can’t because Joyce wont stop changing

    She won’t go to church, she doesn’t believe in god, and now she’s gay but not for me?

    And Becky’s crush on Joyce being a specific kind of messed up, cause she had a crush on a girl from her childhood she wanted to marry in a very Christian way. Joyce was her way to be gay without anything changing.

    In a sense Becky’s heart is stuck between a real person (Dina) and an idea

    And while she’s really moved on from so much of these toxic ideas, Becky hasn’t properly let go of her idea of Joyce. Perhaps she might still find a way to rationalise it, but I think this is it, the point of no return

    (Also this is the best Becky’s hair has looked in the entire comic)

    1. eskimolos

      I completely agree

  146. zee

    CHARLIE KIRK GOT FUCKING SHOT ON 9/11 EVE??????

    1. zee

      Unrelated, sorry, just damn. That’s crazy

    2. Taffy

      Who?

      1. zee

        Fascist pundit that south park spent a whole episode making fun of like a month ago. Look at Willis’s bluesky widget for a very ironic quote from him regarding gun violence

      2. NGPZ

        a conservative internet pundit who’s basically a fascist

        and thankfully now he’s DEAD

        *plays “Lucifer’s Dance” on hacked muzak*

        1. deliverything

          Oh, should’ve checked for new comments before replying. That said… is it possible to be a conservative internet pundit and not a fascist these days?

        2. zee

          Not if they want any traction. Lite conservatism just don’t do it anymore

      3. deliverything

        I think that’s the Turning Point USA guy with the small face?

    3. Da Boy

      Some sources claim he is dead… this is crazy

      1. YourCousinJay

        Some sources is the President of the United States so I think it’s safe to say he pass away

        1. Da Boy

          I wrote that when like half the sources were just saying he got shot and was in critical condition. with these kinds of news the fresh reporting is often unreliable.

        2. Proxiehunter

          Okay, I’m like 99.99% sure he’s dead but do you have a reliable source? If Trump said the sun rose in the East today I’d need to double check.

    4. I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

      not me thinking it was Charlie Sheen that got shot all day until right now. anyways his death was officially called a few minutes ago, fuckin’ CRAZY

      1. NGPZ

        his life has finally been extinguished, W̸̡̺̱͌̋̾̒̅̑͠Į̶̻̺̱̮̲̰͖̌̐Ĺ̶̡̯̝̎͋̃̏Ļ̴̗̠̠̖́̽̂̄̄͘͝ ̵̗̕͠Ḑ̸̩̝͕͕͗͋̊̉̑̒Ḙ̶̡̧͎͖̜͊̍͒̅V̶̮͍̯̘̺̚͜Ǫ̴͔̤͇̔̀̉̆̚Ư̶̡̡͙̖͇͖̲̑͛̓͠R̷͉̭̞̐ ̷̡̖̠̲̙̥̹͛̃̀̅͝H̸̬̦̳͔̍̌̈́̉̋͝͠Ḯ̷̹͉̭̥͚͂S̴̲̻͚̈́̽ ̴͎̥̣͐S̵̻̦̥̥̾͠Ǫ̴̛̙͚̱̦̩̎́̈͌̈́̕͜͝Ų̵̨͚͖̅́̃͜Ļ̵̛͙̗̋̇̓

        *plays “Cometh The Hour” from Bleach on hacked muzak*

  147. Jernacious

    “This is where my crush kissed her girlfriend, Raphael”

    “Cowabummer.”

    1. Wendy

      Well I laughed out loud in the middle of work, thanks.

  148. Skychrono

    Happy anniversary! I’ve been reading since the early 2000s. To the next 20 years!

    re: the comic… good, I’ve been waiting to get to the fallout. Not that I want a cave in, but I’m in the group that feels like cheating requires a price, and it’s been YEARS (weeks?) since the kiss, so… let’s see what happens.

  149. Wendy

    I’d be the first to note that Becky has no right to get on either Joyce’s or Dorothy’s cases over this.

    I will also note it’s perfectly valid for her to ALSO feel very hurt, given her own past(?) feelings for Joyce.

  150. fishfacedterror

    thank you becky

  151. eskimolos

    I’m just gonna point out that the nature of outdoor attire seen in preview panels suggests we may be in for another Timeskip pretty soon.

    1. I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

      Lowkey fingers crossed that on the off chances a time skip does happen, we get a halloween style chapter about “Spring Break” <— Family Drama Lover

  152. Micki

    Wow, that’s a hell of a callback. Happy fifteen years, Willis. In 2010, I was also a freshman in college. Now I have gray hairs and a mortgage! Crazy how time flies.

  153. Caro

    WHAT A FUCKING CALLBACK

  154. Claire

    Happy 15th anniversary doa!!! Been a daily ready for about 10 years and it just keeps getting better.

  155. Furie

    Great callback.

  156. r

    Happy half my life, DOA! Been reading since I was in college myself. Here’s to another 15~

  157. Deanatay

    Isn’t that just how it is! You ALWAYS find your Becky in the very last place you look for it!

    Sometimes even after you stop looking!

    And start making out…

  158. Corey C.

    And there’s the record scratch sound effect.

  159. Bagge

    Let’s be fair – in her heart Becky knew this is how it would go.

    Dang doors.

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