…Hey, how come its always the villains how get to creepily laugh when their schemes come together, and never the hero. Its always: “All goes to plan – at long last the world will bow before my will, HAHAAA!” and never: “At long last my, plans have come to fruition: Gerrymanding in Kentucky will be reduced 7%-15% by the introduction of a bipartisan independent redistricting commission. WMAHAHAHA!!”
I mean, there’s no evil laughter, but you KINDA get heroic (or antiheroic) gloating in “Leverage” whenever the heroic thieves destroy a rich bad guy and return his money to his victims?
I’ve been calling it out in comments for awhile now. Glad to see it called out in comics.
Besides, if they’re respectful of everyone, and they play their cards right, poly’s not off the table, which is most obligate (type 2) bisexuals’ best route (which judging by their actions they probably are).
Side note for those not up to speed on bisexuality and it’s unique traits…
Bisexuality is a spectrum, under which pansexual, omnisexual, and many other traits exist, but pure Bisexuality itself should, as no surprise, come in two different types:
Facultative (type 1) bisexuality
and
Obligate (type 2) bisexuality
Facultative (type 1) bisexuals crave to have a partner that is one of two genders. (i.e, a Gay/ceterosexual Type 1 Facultative bisexual man may be attracted to Men and non-binaries). Their relationship cravings are satisfied if they get someone that falls in that range.
A Obligate (type 2) bisexual, however, crave to have a partner of each gender they’re attracted to. (i.e. a nonbinary person that’s attracted to men and women [but not other non-binaries], and when with a man still craves to be with a woman as well and vice-versa.)
The fact that these two craved each other while already in close relationships puts them both as likely Obligate (Type 2) bisexuals (if we assume they’re not just poly pansexuals). The two key difference between poly pansexuals and Type 2 Bisexuals, is Type 2 Bisexuals don’t want *every* gender in their relationship, and many may want a “near monogamy” polyfidelity relationship (also known as a triad). This can make things very complicated for an obligate bisexual in a society that expects people to either be monogamous or swingers.
Lilith Rose
Although only about 80% accurate since poly bisexuals exist, a good memory trick is:
Type 1 bisexuals want 1 partner.
Type 2 bisexuals want 2 partners.
Jerach
I was rooting for poly before but given the way they’ve behaved what with procrastinating telling their partners while doing stuff with each other I don’t know if they’re really able to handle poly currently.
Nymphie
I’ve never heard of these types before, it was a fascinating read, thank you!
marcus erronius
This is very interesting, but I was unable to find any information about it by searching using the terms you provided. Do you have any links to sources for this? Searching facultative and obligate bisexuality got nothing but a reference to your own comment, and same with type 1 and type 2 bisexuality.
“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing.” – Stormlight Archive
Erica
Oh I like that
Jon
Oh damn that’s good
Ymbrael
Sanderson was definitely cooking with that one.
Olav
I haven’t read Sanderson’s books yet. I need to. I liked his writing on the last three WoT books. To whatever extent I was correctly guessing which parts he wrote based on RJ’s notes and which were RJ’s words, at least.
APW
Oh yes you do. He’s a great storyteller. But not too many different series at once, unless you like repeating character patterns (this is especially true for the earlier ones).
Yeah, I’m a big proponent of the notion that, if your biggest problem with someone is that they’re being hypocritical, you probably don’t actually have that much of a problem with them.
In this specific case, yeah, Sarah was acting like an asshole. So was Joyce. That was bad. But she’s not fucking wrong, and attacking her points because she’s being hypocritical is kinda just admitting that she’s right in what she’s saying and they don’t want to admit it.
Bittersweet
Yeah, going after someone for hypocrisy always feels weird. Like a smoker telling their kid not to smoke. Them smoking doesn’t suddenly making smoking good for you, and who else would know better how awful smoking is for someone than a smoker who can’t kick the habit?????
Like, there is a massive gulf between “good for thee and not for me” and this type of hypocrisy and people treat them like the same thing. It’s not even a fine line.
Big Z
Really the only time going after someone for hypocrisy makes utilitarian sense is in the twin case of “they WANT you to do a virtuous thing that benefits them, while they continue to NOT do that thing in a way that harms you and benefits them.”
RoyanRannedos
Take this down, Smee!
Smee: Take this down, Smee!
*chugs rum*
Aye aye, sir!
(Well said!)
Olav
I think that there is a difference in pointing out someone’s hypocrisy with the intent of making sure that they realize their inconsistency, and trying to wield that person’s hypocrisy as a weapon because of one’s own weaknesses, or the weakness of one’s position in an argument.
bridgebrain
I think largely the problem is when someone is ongoingly hypocritical. You were against something, then had an experience which made you involved with that something? Learning experience, technically hypocrisy. Having had that experience, but still being against the thing for others? Harmful hypocrisy
Wraithy2773
Aye, that can be valid. I just see it much more often when the people screaming “hypocrisy” are doing it in a “you’re also doing something that, when looked at it in a very particular and maybe not accurate way, is kinda similar to this thing I’m doing, therefore you should shut up and let me do whatever I want” manner.
Hey, I wouldn’t call that hypocrisy because here we have Sarah admitting that she was wrong before. Okay, not specifically about that incident, but I think if she was queried on it, she’d say so, too.
Hypocrisy is if you use a double standard, where she’d say that what’s wrong for others is still right for her. Not if she says that what’s wrong for other was also wrong for her.
Freemage
Yup. Hypocrisy is a state of being at a given point in time.
When I was a teenager, I once got into a car with a friend who’d been drinking. Nothing dramatic, though we did get a minor bit of wheel damage by hitting a curb in a parking lot.
It’s not hypocrisy for my 50-something old ass to state, “Drinking and driving is stupid and wrong.”
Is she? Whatever else you want to say, Joyce and Dorothy clearly want to be in a relationship with each other. And here Sarah is like “Joe is good for you! That’s who you’re meant to be with!”
Sarah is right in that they’re going about it the wrong way, but she never can just resist the urge to try and make things the way she wants them to be, can she?
I dunno, I feel like this chat section thinks Sarah is the avatar of wisdom, but I see an interfering busybody who has caused more damage with her attempts to fix things than she’s mitigated, mostly because her definition of “fix” wasn’t the way the people involved actually wanted things to be “fixed”. I was hoping she was getting over that with Tony, guess not.
Nadamás
She did not at all say “that’s who yiu are meant to be with” her mentioning Joe being good for Joyce is to emphasize how much he doesn’t deserve to be cheated on and how wrong she was about him.
Mr D phone posting
Maybe it is because I’m ESL, but I can read that lines as both “Joes is who you should be with” *or* Joes is good *because* of you”.
eh, whatever
No, “for” can only mean “because” at the beginning of a clause, and then it’s archaic. (“For he’s a jolly good fellow”… nobody has talked like that in 150 years or more.)
Stiney
“Joe is good for you” is the same construction as “I did it for you,” and basically means the same as “Joe is good because of you.” I think the intention is that Sarah is saying “you and Joe are good together,” but the other reading is possible and without being able to hear the tone and the natural emphasis Sarah would be using in this spoken conversation, it’s a little hard to be 100% sure about which she’s saying.
But Sarah’s point is absolutely that Joe doesn’t deserve to be cheated on.
Thag Simmons
Is that what Sarah is saying? Because saying you shouldn’t be cheating on someone is not the same as saying that they’re the person you’re meant to be with.
eskimolos
I mean, it’s both ways, isn’t it? Sarah is saying Joyce shouldn’t be cheating on Joe not just because A: cheating is wrong and B: Joe has baggage about cheating from his parents and C: Joe has improved because of his love for Joyce after being an actual terrible person, but -also- because Joe is actually a good fit for Joyce. It’s okay to say that, it’s true, Joe has been an excellent boyfriend to Joyce and they worked well together, I said in another comment that they could legitimately be an endgame ship, and even still could be, except that I don’t see Joyce managing the growth required for that within the time frames of Willis’s lifespan, certainly not during the course of her time at college.
I don’t disagree with Sarah and I think it is both in character and realistic to expect, but I do agree with the comment that this whole point of view is coming from a trend in Sarah that she gets to decide what are and are not good relationships for other people based on how she feels about the people involved. What we will see is if Sarah does still support and retain her friendship with Joyce despite this, and I think that will depend a lot on how Joyce reacts and what level of responsibility she takes for this.
someone
While you write the next twenty five paragraphs overanalizing the panel where Sarah says “Joe is good for you” into meaning “Joe is who you should be with”, take a break and go back to overanalizing the previous panel where Sarah says “you’re doing this without having broken off your existing relationships” so you can write the next twenty five paragraphs about how obviously Sarah’s hang up is not that they’re doing it in an unfaithful cheating way, but that they’re doing it at all.
GreyICE
In all ways. I still can’t believe that she hasn’t realized that getting someone kicked out of college for doing drugs and then thinking you made their life better is quite a lot fucked up.
Man, back when I thought Sarah was as self-centered as Raidah but just less of a jerk, I was like “cool, nice to see someone admit that they’re primarily here for number one. But Sarah rationalizing what she did as “helping them out” really made her considerably worse than Raidah.
Needfuldoer
Dana was putting on a brave face for the rest of Raidah’s friend group, but was falling apart and self-medicating with copious amounts of pot around Sarah. Sarah called Dana’s father because of the pot and because she needed real help working though her grief.
GreyICE
Ah. And was there a reason that Dana wasn’t seeking help from her father?
I’ve seen parents “help” their kids, especially their girl kids, in quite a few ways. I’m sure getting her kicked out of college was for the best though! Nothing bad happened, no one got beaten, thrown out on the street, sent to a Christian reform camp, anything like that.
Hey, maybe Sarah should have told Toedad where Becky was, then he could have helped Becky too. Parents are always great at helping their kids!
Rogue 7
Dana wasn’t “kicked out”, her dad withdrew her. It’s an important distinction. The university would welcome her back if/when she’s ready.
Just because some parents are shitty doesn’t mean we should regard any contact with them as evidence of hostility. You need some actual evidence for that.
Sarah’s a misanthropic killjoy whose favorite thing is being negative. She’s also right way more often than she’s wrong.
Bysmerian
It’s possible that Dana’s dad was the wrong person to reach out to. The majority of parents we’ve seen in these strips have been somewhere between “flawed” and “godawful”.
Sarah, for her part, seems to have been at her wits’ end. Dana was not only doing a shit job at coping with a very serious tragedy, she was effectively covering it up around everyone b who could have helped her in a less escalatory fashion and also effectively dragging Sarah down with her.
Calling Dana’s dad was the nuclear option but at least in her own telling it’s understandable why she would feel she was out of options
Big Z
As someone whose roommate dropped a dime on me that resulted in me taking medical leave from college for a semester, sometimes you make that call because otherwise you’re going to end up with a dead roommate because he was ignoring suggestions to get therapy and engaging in self-destructive behavior due to clinical depression.
So yeah, I’ve seen parents “help” their kids after a roommate call, too, and it saved my damn life.
Kammon
As I understand it, it was less ‘Roommate is doing drugs’ and more ‘Roommate is killing herself through drug addiction’.
Perhaps someday we’ll get flashbacks to explain it more clearly.
Thag Simmons
Sarah does not seem to have handled the Dana situation in an ideal manner, but a roommate who is super depressed and self-destructive is also not the sort of problem I would expect her to know an ideal manner to solve.
Archieve
I feel Sarah handled it the best way she could. She tried to rally the rest of Dana’s friends first to get her professional help, they dismissed her and basically told her she was on her own. Attempts at talking with Dana on her own didn’t help. Seeking out a parent so Dana would be withdrawn without having anything on her record or getting Sarah in trouble by association was the least awful of option of a bad situation. Just leaving it as is was not a realistic option for Sarah.
thejeff
Yeah, it’s really hard to see what else she could have reasonably done.
Nymph
You’re right. Sarah should have blown up her entire future, burned her scholarship and chance at a career she wanted, and not bothered to get her self-destructive and potentially suicidal roommate any help while she was abusing drugs. Not “using” but “abusing” because she was so constantly high that it was affecting her roommate.
It was a trolley problem, and Sarah is not wrong for choosing herself and her future alongside the chance that Dana could actually get the help she VERY CLEARLY needed.
Archieve
I get the impression that some people and other characters think Sarah owed Dana secrecy for socializing with her but for the minimal effort that required Sarah already repaid her generosity back more then enough. It was a similar scenario with Jennifer being mad a Carla for getting Ruth help “how dare she not stand by and keep our self destructive secretes? we were nice to her!”
thejeff
I also think Sarah being Sarah exaggerates her concern for her own grades and future, while minimizing her concern for Dana. Not that both weren’t real, but you’d expect most people to paint themselves as more altruistic, but Sarah needs her misanthropic image.
Freemage
Dana wasn’t just ‘doing drugs’. She was spiraling hard in a fashion quite likely to lead to self-harm, and was also disrupting Sarah’s life and threatening her academic standing. And even then, Sarah didn’t immediately try to get Dana kicked out, or even try to contact Dana’s father. She FIRST turned to Dana’s ostensible friend circle, and specifically the head of that circle, Raidah–who promptly blew off Sarah’s concerns, because Raidah’s a borderline sociopath. At that point, Sarah didn’t have any other good options available to her, and so she chose the one that seemed the least bad–contact someone who, by all rights, SHOULD have Dana’s best interests at heart, and the means to act on that impulse.
T
serious question: how much actual time have you spent around drug addicts?
because you have to realize that it’s actually very typical for addicts not to seek help on their own and that that’s the entire reason the concept of the intervention exists. the absence of “safe” people in one’s life isn’t the reason that drug addicts don’t ask for help. they don’t ask for help because drug addiction is a safe and comfortable and familiar place within which one can hide from their feelings and live in denial that they have a problem, and seeking help means you actually have to leave that place, and feel all the bad shit you’ve been trying not to feel, and also stop doing drugs. it isn’t appealing.
friends can also be part of that safe, familiar space, so long as they’re the kind of friends who are cool and fun to hang out with, and don’t ask questions, and don’t express concern, and don’t say things like “you have a problem”, and don’t try to get the drug addict any help. there’s a reason drug addicts tend to like to do things like invite people over and have parties. it’s not atypical for drug addicts to find themselves suddenly having to cut an awful lot of people out of their lives once they decide they don’t want to do drugs anymore.
i know people who’ve destroyed friendships, went through brutal breakups, ended up estranged from family members etc as the result of trying to get someone help for an addiction when they didn’t want that help. yeah that’s all a lot more extreme probably than dana’s thing here but seriously talk to addicts about addiction. they often keep people that they know won’t enable their denial at arm’s length, on purpose. that’s real life, that’s how it works.
Fahed
ah this is a really good point re: Sarah deciding what is and isn’t good for others, but I think that if we’re judging people by that metric Dorothy is the worst by a huge margin. I honestly think Dorothy is Going Through Some Things (including the aforementioned) that make her unfit for a relationship at the moment, and this is one of the many reasons Joyce should stay with Joe rather than going down in flames with Dorothy
profnekko
do they? Dorothy is currently in mental breakdown mode. She’s being self destructive on her life and ambitions and has lost most of her direction in life. Her shacking up with Walky again was based mostly off impulsive behavior and her relationship with Joyce could very well be that herself trying to “break the rules” so to say. Dorothy is simply not in a healthy mental state right now and she seems to be acting more like Billie than anything else, and her keeping Joyce in this relationship could serve to blow up in her face even more than she thinks because she would damage her friendship with Sarah, Joe, Walky, Becky, and I think even Danny would be a bit upset that her actions hurt Joe as well.
TulipKitten
What Danny knows of it, he already doesn’t like. He rightfully called Dorothy out for being a cheating scumbag. And Danny would probably feel bad because he misjudged Joe there. He didn’t think Joe would be the one cheated on, he would have assumed the opposite.
profnekko
Danny has actually got more level headed over time yes. But my point really does stand that if this relationship happens Dorothy would basically be burning every bridge she’s made and turn her into what Ruth was at her lowest point.
GreyICE
Danny’s callout was way better in all possible ways.
eh, whatever
You’re misquoting in a misleading way. You’re overinterpreting what Sarah is saying, and then you misrepresent your interpretation as her actual words. Don’t do that.
883 thoughts on “Hushes and mumbles”
Heatth
YES…
HA HA HA…
YES!
True Survivor
*Hideous ecstatic cackling*
…Hey, how come its always the villains how get to creepily laugh when their schemes come together, and never the hero. Its always: “All goes to plan – at long last the world will bow before my will, HAHAAA!” and never: “At long last my, plans have come to fruition: Gerrymanding in Kentucky will be reduced 7%-15% by the introduction of a bipartisan independent redistricting commission. WMAHAHAHA!!”
sun tzu
I mean, there’s no evil laughter, but you KINDA get heroic (or antiheroic) gloating in “Leverage” whenever the heroic thieves destroy a rich bad guy and return his money to his victims?
Drew Hargrave
There was some evil laughter. Mostly Parker.
Chaucer59
I wondered who would be the first to point that out. Chill out, Joyce. You’re giving bisexuals a bad name.
Proxiehunter
Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame
Y9u give bisexuals a bad name
MK15
*Golf clap*
Lilith Rose
I’ve been calling it out in comments for awhile now. Glad to see it called out in comics.
Besides, if they’re respectful of everyone, and they play their cards right, poly’s not off the table, which is most obligate (type 2) bisexuals’ best route (which judging by their actions they probably are).
Side note for those not up to speed on bisexuality and it’s unique traits…
Bisexuality is a spectrum, under which pansexual, omnisexual, and many other traits exist, but pure Bisexuality itself should, as no surprise, come in two different types:
Facultative (type 1) bisexuality
and
Obligate (type 2) bisexuality
Facultative (type 1) bisexuals crave to have a partner that is one of two genders. (i.e, a Gay/ceterosexual Type 1 Facultative bisexual man may be attracted to Men and non-binaries). Their relationship cravings are satisfied if they get someone that falls in that range.
A Obligate (type 2) bisexual, however, crave to have a partner of each gender they’re attracted to. (i.e. a nonbinary person that’s attracted to men and women [but not other non-binaries], and when with a man still craves to be with a woman as well and vice-versa.)
The fact that these two craved each other while already in close relationships puts them both as likely Obligate (Type 2) bisexuals (if we assume they’re not just poly pansexuals). The two key difference between poly pansexuals and Type 2 Bisexuals, is Type 2 Bisexuals don’t want *every* gender in their relationship, and many may want a “near monogamy” polyfidelity relationship (also known as a triad). This can make things very complicated for an obligate bisexual in a society that expects people to either be monogamous or swingers.
Lilith Rose
Although only about 80% accurate since poly bisexuals exist, a good memory trick is:
Type 1 bisexuals want 1 partner.
Type 2 bisexuals want 2 partners.
Jerach
I was rooting for poly before but given the way they’ve behaved what with procrastinating telling their partners while doing stuff with each other I don’t know if they’re really able to handle poly currently.
Nymphie
I’ve never heard of these types before, it was a fascinating read, thank you!
marcus erronius
This is very interesting, but I was unable to find any information about it by searching using the terms you provided. Do you have any links to sources for this? Searching facultative and obligate bisexuality got nothing but a reference to your own comment, and same with type 1 and type 2 bisexuality.
Li
nods!!
This is one of many things I wanted, happening exactly as I both wanted and was confident it would happen.
Pocky
sickos eating good today!
Furie
Sicko? Sicko.
Badger
YEEEESSS!
Annaphylaxis
hey, remember when Sarah tried to use Joyce to break up a relationship to get revenge on a rival
Erica
Remember that whole thread with Rachel and Joe about people being able to change?
Doctor_Who
“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing.” – Stormlight Archive
Erica
Oh I like that
Jon
Oh damn that’s good
Ymbrael
Sanderson was definitely cooking with that one.
Olav
I haven’t read Sanderson’s books yet. I need to. I liked his writing on the last three WoT books. To whatever extent I was correctly guessing which parts he wrote based on RJ’s notes and which were RJ’s words, at least.
APW
Oh yes you do. He’s a great storyteller. But not too many different series at once, unless you like repeating character patterns (this is especially true for the earlier ones).
Badger
( chef’s kiss)
Eversist
Remember how people can be hypocrites if you dig into all past actions but… still be right
Wraithy2773
Yeah, I’m a big proponent of the notion that, if your biggest problem with someone is that they’re being hypocritical, you probably don’t actually have that much of a problem with them.
In this specific case, yeah, Sarah was acting like an asshole. So was Joyce. That was bad. But she’s not fucking wrong, and attacking her points because she’s being hypocritical is kinda just admitting that she’s right in what she’s saying and they don’t want to admit it.
Bittersweet
Yeah, going after someone for hypocrisy always feels weird. Like a smoker telling their kid not to smoke. Them smoking doesn’t suddenly making smoking good for you, and who else would know better how awful smoking is for someone than a smoker who can’t kick the habit?????
Like, there is a massive gulf between “good for thee and not for me” and this type of hypocrisy and people treat them like the same thing. It’s not even a fine line.
Big Z
Really the only time going after someone for hypocrisy makes utilitarian sense is in the twin case of “they WANT you to do a virtuous thing that benefits them, while they continue to NOT do that thing in a way that harms you and benefits them.”
RoyanRannedos
Take this down, Smee!
Smee: Take this down, Smee!
*chugs rum*
Aye aye, sir!
(Well said!)
Olav
I think that there is a difference in pointing out someone’s hypocrisy with the intent of making sure that they realize their inconsistency, and trying to wield that person’s hypocrisy as a weapon because of one’s own weaknesses, or the weakness of one’s position in an argument.
bridgebrain
I think largely the problem is when someone is ongoingly hypocritical. You were against something, then had an experience which made you involved with that something? Learning experience, technically hypocrisy. Having had that experience, but still being against the thing for others? Harmful hypocrisy
Wraithy2773
Aye, that can be valid. I just see it much more often when the people screaming “hypocrisy” are doing it in a “you’re also doing something that, when looked at it in a very particular and maybe not accurate way, is kinda similar to this thing I’m doing, therefore you should shut up and let me do whatever I want” manner.
someone
Hey, I wouldn’t call that hypocrisy because here we have Sarah admitting that she was wrong before. Okay, not specifically about that incident, but I think if she was queried on it, she’d say so, too.
Hypocrisy is if you use a double standard, where she’d say that what’s wrong for others is still right for her. Not if she says that what’s wrong for other was also wrong for her.
Freemage
Yup. Hypocrisy is a state of being at a given point in time.
When I was a teenager, I once got into a car with a friend who’d been drinking. Nothing dramatic, though we did get a minor bit of wheel damage by hitting a curb in a parking lot.
It’s not hypocrisy for my 50-something old ass to state, “Drinking and driving is stupid and wrong.”
Alongcameaspider
Remember how she realized what she was doing there was wrong and tried to get Joyce to stop trying to break them up?
Taffy
Remember when you used to shit your pants multiple times a day and scream about it?
Tequila Mockingbird
Okay, but I kind of love this as a clap back. Permission to file away for future use? XD
Mr D phone posting
This is a really good one, bravo.
clif
If you’re talking about yesterday, I have plausible deniability.
clif
That was a reply to Taffy but it’s kind of hard to tell.
I have plausible deniability about many things.
tim Rowledge
I can supply implausible deniability for all the rest
Jon
It’s been weeks. How long are you going to keep throwing that in my face?
Erik
If people are throwing shit in your face you should probably report that to someone.
Azhrei Vep
What do you think the screaming was about?
Kyulen
And yet that doesn’t change the fact that Sarah is right in this situation.
GreyICE
Is she? Whatever else you want to say, Joyce and Dorothy clearly want to be in a relationship with each other. And here Sarah is like “Joe is good for you! That’s who you’re meant to be with!”
Sarah is right in that they’re going about it the wrong way, but she never can just resist the urge to try and make things the way she wants them to be, can she?
I dunno, I feel like this chat section thinks Sarah is the avatar of wisdom, but I see an interfering busybody who has caused more damage with her attempts to fix things than she’s mitigated, mostly because her definition of “fix” wasn’t the way the people involved actually wanted things to be “fixed”. I was hoping she was getting over that with Tony, guess not.
Nadamás
She did not at all say “that’s who yiu are meant to be with” her mentioning Joe being good for Joyce is to emphasize how much he doesn’t deserve to be cheated on and how wrong she was about him.
Mr D phone posting
Maybe it is because I’m ESL, but I can read that lines as both “Joes is who you should be with” *or* Joes is good *because* of you”.
eh, whatever
No, “for” can only mean “because” at the beginning of a clause, and then it’s archaic. (“For he’s a jolly good fellow”… nobody has talked like that in 150 years or more.)
Stiney
“Joe is good for you” is the same construction as “I did it for you,” and basically means the same as “Joe is good because of you.” I think the intention is that Sarah is saying “you and Joe are good together,” but the other reading is possible and without being able to hear the tone and the natural emphasis Sarah would be using in this spoken conversation, it’s a little hard to be 100% sure about which she’s saying.
But Sarah’s point is absolutely that Joe doesn’t deserve to be cheated on.
Thag Simmons
Is that what Sarah is saying? Because saying you shouldn’t be cheating on someone is not the same as saying that they’re the person you’re meant to be with.
eskimolos
I mean, it’s both ways, isn’t it? Sarah is saying Joyce shouldn’t be cheating on Joe not just because A: cheating is wrong and B: Joe has baggage about cheating from his parents and C: Joe has improved because of his love for Joyce after being an actual terrible person, but -also- because Joe is actually a good fit for Joyce. It’s okay to say that, it’s true, Joe has been an excellent boyfriend to Joyce and they worked well together, I said in another comment that they could legitimately be an endgame ship, and even still could be, except that I don’t see Joyce managing the growth required for that within the time frames of Willis’s lifespan, certainly not during the course of her time at college.
I don’t disagree with Sarah and I think it is both in character and realistic to expect, but I do agree with the comment that this whole point of view is coming from a trend in Sarah that she gets to decide what are and are not good relationships for other people based on how she feels about the people involved. What we will see is if Sarah does still support and retain her friendship with Joyce despite this, and I think that will depend a lot on how Joyce reacts and what level of responsibility she takes for this.
someone
While you write the next twenty five paragraphs overanalizing the panel where Sarah says “Joe is good for you” into meaning “Joe is who you should be with”, take a break and go back to overanalizing the previous panel where Sarah says “you’re doing this without having broken off your existing relationships” so you can write the next twenty five paragraphs about how obviously Sarah’s hang up is not that they’re doing it in an unfaithful cheating way, but that they’re doing it at all.
GreyICE
In all ways. I still can’t believe that she hasn’t realized that getting someone kicked out of college for doing drugs and then thinking you made their life better is quite a lot fucked up.
Man, back when I thought Sarah was as self-centered as Raidah but just less of a jerk, I was like “cool, nice to see someone admit that they’re primarily here for number one. But Sarah rationalizing what she did as “helping them out” really made her considerably worse than Raidah.
Needfuldoer
Dana was putting on a brave face for the rest of Raidah’s friend group, but was falling apart and self-medicating with copious amounts of pot around Sarah. Sarah called Dana’s father because of the pot and because she needed real help working though her grief.
GreyICE
Ah. And was there a reason that Dana wasn’t seeking help from her father?
I’ve seen parents “help” their kids, especially their girl kids, in quite a few ways. I’m sure getting her kicked out of college was for the best though! Nothing bad happened, no one got beaten, thrown out on the street, sent to a Christian reform camp, anything like that.
Hey, maybe Sarah should have told Toedad where Becky was, then he could have helped Becky too. Parents are always great at helping their kids!
Rogue 7
Dana wasn’t “kicked out”, her dad withdrew her. It’s an important distinction. The university would welcome her back if/when she’s ready.
Just because some parents are shitty doesn’t mean we should regard any contact with them as evidence of hostility. You need some actual evidence for that.
Sarah’s a misanthropic killjoy whose favorite thing is being negative. She’s also right way more often than she’s wrong.
Bysmerian
It’s possible that Dana’s dad was the wrong person to reach out to. The majority of parents we’ve seen in these strips have been somewhere between “flawed” and “godawful”.
Sarah, for her part, seems to have been at her wits’ end. Dana was not only doing a shit job at coping with a very serious tragedy, she was effectively covering it up around everyone b who could have helped her in a less escalatory fashion and also effectively dragging Sarah down with her.
Calling Dana’s dad was the nuclear option but at least in her own telling it’s understandable why she would feel she was out of options
Big Z
As someone whose roommate dropped a dime on me that resulted in me taking medical leave from college for a semester, sometimes you make that call because otherwise you’re going to end up with a dead roommate because he was ignoring suggestions to get therapy and engaging in self-destructive behavior due to clinical depression.
So yeah, I’ve seen parents “help” their kids after a roommate call, too, and it saved my damn life.
Kammon
As I understand it, it was less ‘Roommate is doing drugs’ and more ‘Roommate is killing herself through drug addiction’.
Perhaps someday we’ll get flashbacks to explain it more clearly.
Thag Simmons
Sarah does not seem to have handled the Dana situation in an ideal manner, but a roommate who is super depressed and self-destructive is also not the sort of problem I would expect her to know an ideal manner to solve.
Archieve
I feel Sarah handled it the best way she could. She tried to rally the rest of Dana’s friends first to get her professional help, they dismissed her and basically told her she was on her own. Attempts at talking with Dana on her own didn’t help. Seeking out a parent so Dana would be withdrawn without having anything on her record or getting Sarah in trouble by association was the least awful of option of a bad situation. Just leaving it as is was not a realistic option for Sarah.
thejeff
Yeah, it’s really hard to see what else she could have reasonably done.
Nymph
You’re right. Sarah should have blown up her entire future, burned her scholarship and chance at a career she wanted, and not bothered to get her self-destructive and potentially suicidal roommate any help while she was abusing drugs. Not “using” but “abusing” because she was so constantly high that it was affecting her roommate.
It was a trolley problem, and Sarah is not wrong for choosing herself and her future alongside the chance that Dana could actually get the help she VERY CLEARLY needed.
Archieve
I get the impression that some people and other characters think Sarah owed Dana secrecy for socializing with her but for the minimal effort that required Sarah already repaid her generosity back more then enough. It was a similar scenario with Jennifer being mad a Carla for getting Ruth help “how dare she not stand by and keep our self destructive secretes? we were nice to her!”
thejeff
I also think Sarah being Sarah exaggerates her concern for her own grades and future, while minimizing her concern for Dana. Not that both weren’t real, but you’d expect most people to paint themselves as more altruistic, but Sarah needs her misanthropic image.
Freemage
Dana wasn’t just ‘doing drugs’. She was spiraling hard in a fashion quite likely to lead to self-harm, and was also disrupting Sarah’s life and threatening her academic standing. And even then, Sarah didn’t immediately try to get Dana kicked out, or even try to contact Dana’s father. She FIRST turned to Dana’s ostensible friend circle, and specifically the head of that circle, Raidah–who promptly blew off Sarah’s concerns, because Raidah’s a borderline sociopath. At that point, Sarah didn’t have any other good options available to her, and so she chose the one that seemed the least bad–contact someone who, by all rights, SHOULD have Dana’s best interests at heart, and the means to act on that impulse.
T
serious question: how much actual time have you spent around drug addicts?
because you have to realize that it’s actually very typical for addicts not to seek help on their own and that that’s the entire reason the concept of the intervention exists. the absence of “safe” people in one’s life isn’t the reason that drug addicts don’t ask for help. they don’t ask for help because drug addiction is a safe and comfortable and familiar place within which one can hide from their feelings and live in denial that they have a problem, and seeking help means you actually have to leave that place, and feel all the bad shit you’ve been trying not to feel, and also stop doing drugs. it isn’t appealing.
friends can also be part of that safe, familiar space, so long as they’re the kind of friends who are cool and fun to hang out with, and don’t ask questions, and don’t express concern, and don’t say things like “you have a problem”, and don’t try to get the drug addict any help. there’s a reason drug addicts tend to like to do things like invite people over and have parties. it’s not atypical for drug addicts to find themselves suddenly having to cut an awful lot of people out of their lives once they decide they don’t want to do drugs anymore.
i know people who’ve destroyed friendships, went through brutal breakups, ended up estranged from family members etc as the result of trying to get someone help for an addiction when they didn’t want that help. yeah that’s all a lot more extreme probably than dana’s thing here but seriously talk to addicts about addiction. they often keep people that they know won’t enable their denial at arm’s length, on purpose. that’s real life, that’s how it works.
Fahed
ah this is a really good point re: Sarah deciding what is and isn’t good for others, but I think that if we’re judging people by that metric Dorothy is the worst by a huge margin. I honestly think Dorothy is Going Through Some Things (including the aforementioned) that make her unfit for a relationship at the moment, and this is one of the many reasons Joyce should stay with Joe rather than going down in flames with Dorothy
profnekko
do they? Dorothy is currently in mental breakdown mode. She’s being self destructive on her life and ambitions and has lost most of her direction in life. Her shacking up with Walky again was based mostly off impulsive behavior and her relationship with Joyce could very well be that herself trying to “break the rules” so to say. Dorothy is simply not in a healthy mental state right now and she seems to be acting more like Billie than anything else, and her keeping Joyce in this relationship could serve to blow up in her face even more than she thinks because she would damage her friendship with Sarah, Joe, Walky, Becky, and I think even Danny would be a bit upset that her actions hurt Joe as well.
TulipKitten
What Danny knows of it, he already doesn’t like. He rightfully called Dorothy out for being a cheating scumbag. And Danny would probably feel bad because he misjudged Joe there. He didn’t think Joe would be the one cheated on, he would have assumed the opposite.
profnekko
Danny has actually got more level headed over time yes. But my point really does stand that if this relationship happens Dorothy would basically be burning every bridge she’s made and turn her into what Ruth was at her lowest point.
GreyICE
Danny’s callout was way better in all possible ways.
eh, whatever
You’re misquoting in a misleading way. You’re overinterpreting what Sarah is saying, and then you misrepresent your interpretation as her actual words. Don’t do that.