(Mine slightly less so to react positively to the comment.)
Flipz
Eh, I can see that character saying something like that with a sort of snide self-superiority, sort of a “of course YOU would say that” sort of thing, so it still fits.
iforgetwhatiputhere
And your gravatar happens to be a perfect fit for the first letter of your nickname, WHAT ARE THE ODDS
I’m honestly not sure. Joe’s not exactly a friend, but they’re not enemies I think. They’re just two people with VERY different approaches to life. I think Joyce trusts Joe to a certain extent since he’s made it very clear that he’s no longer interested in her at all.
Pretty sure that they have a kind of similar relationship as in It’s Walky. They challenge each other with their polar opposite views on life, but there’s a bit in each that the other secretly admires or envies and their constant clashing is a sign that they care for each other, as opposed to ignoring or being apathetic to one another.
I kind of agree though I think that or they would be great friends cuz it seems like that to me. Though we don’t know what will happen to drive them apart or push them together. Though its certainly interesting they have gotten that way.
Mature? He just doesn’t have the body hangups other people have or the sex hangups. From what I understand he doesn’t mistreat or lie to the women he sleeps with… it’s always consensual…
To be able to do that with as many people as he’s been with and not have a riot on his hands takes some very serious ability to not piss people off.
He might be more mature than a lot of people at that college.
Liliet
He harasses women and doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Not all that devoted to consent, even if he makes sure to pressure them into saying ‘yes’ and not just immediately into sex.
He also can’t express his feelings or even admit to having them, and is constantly disrespectful to Leslie, and is really bad about making inappropriate jokes and comments.
His biggest issue – as I see it – is that he’s really bad at picking up on when he should back off, or just stay out of something. He keeps trying or keeps pushing longer than he should, and in class he doesn’t seem to consider that maybe now isn’t a good time for a joke when one of your classmates is on the verge of tears.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have at least some of those issues when I was his age. Especially when it came to recognizing when is a really bad time for sexual humor, but Joe still needs to grow out of these things. I’m optimistic that we’re seeing the beginning of that growth, but he’s not there yet, and I have high standards for the quality of gentleman who’d be good enough for Joyce. :I
I do, however, like them as friends. I could see it being good for both of them.
Emperor Norton II
Word of god should probably be updated to include “in his own mind”.
Makkabee
He does take no for an answer. He made a pass at Sara and when she expressed her disinterest (okay, her disgust), he immediately backed off. I’d have to dig through the archives to find his exact wording, but I think he said “message recieved.”
thejeff
Sarah was pretty damn emphatic about it and backed up by Joyce, who’d had him beaten not long before.
We’ve never actually seen him deal with a less extreme rejection, which is a shame, because it would clear up a lot of things about Joe. Either make it clear that he is a problem or that his ideas of consent really are sufficient despite his aggressive flirting. We really haven’t seen his “Game” at all – except for the date with Joyce, that bit with Sarah and a few random comments. We’ve never actually seen a successful seduction by Joe, just the aftermath, with Roz & Penny. Though he’s apparently been having a lot of sex off camera, we don’t know how he’s getting it. Or for that matter what the women think about it afterwards.
The date with Joyce hinted at some problems: the attempt to bribe Mike to go away, constantly working to turn the conversation back to sex, etc. Completely overshadowed by how horrible Joyce was with the punching and all, but valuable as a bit of insight into how Joe works.
And then the very next day, it took even more angry shouting from Sarah before he quit. He did completely accept Sarah’s rejection, and even apologized for his behavior, but he still has plenty of room to improve there.
Yeah, a “caring about consent” that forces people to angrily confront the person harassing them in order to get them to stop is not an actual “caring about consent”, because it forces the one being harassed to do something that is socially regarded as a sign of bad manners and temperament in order to get the person to leave them alone.
He also has a habit of acting dismissively to any girl he pushes to angrily telling him off when he’s pushing against a social boundary. Specifically, I’m meaning here that when he is screamed at, he immediately acts like “whoa whoa whoa, where is this coming from and acting like the person is crazy for not thinking he’d take a simple no, even though when he’s learned of a boundary, he’s often stepped right over it, even when a person told him to stop it.
Sometimes to the level of screaming at the back of a fleeing person to tell her friends he didn’t touch her, because his reputation as someone who is technically not a rapist matters more than his actual actions not making women feel that uncomfortable where the only way to get him to stop is to scream in his face.
And the Sarah example is not a good one of him respecting boundaries, because in his “apology” to her, he’s still trying to hit on her, talking about harnessing her angry energy and how “any guy” would try and do the same.
Basically acting like his bad behavior was universal, diminishing said bad behavior, and trying to use social capital to try and get the person telling him off to look socially crazy and overreacting and his actions of red flag behavior to be overlooked.
BBCC
That wasn’t the day before – closer to two weeks, but the point stands she had absolutely told Joe to fuck off before. What DID happen the day before was him see her threaten his dad with testicular torsion because he wouldn’t back off.
modulusshift
He flirts somewhat aggressively, and doesn’t give a shit about how *other* people feel when he’s pursuing their friends. In his mind, the only valid source of discouragement is the woman in question. But he takes that pretty dang seriously.
Really? I have exactly the opposite reaction. These two have negative chemistry – I never want to see them interact. The weekend texting seemed like an unexplained OOC moment, but now they’re back to their usual “These two people are toxic and awful together” default, and I continue to want them to have nothing to do with each other.
I think they are acting like friends?… Like Joe’s actually doing what she told him to and not just telling her to fuck off, they are bickering friendly-ways. Nor would Joyce just message a stranger like that?…
chris73
Yeah theres certainly a connection, as ypu say she wouldn’t message a stranger like that but hose last panels, to me, suggest they’re not at friendship level yet, not far off though
Abomination
People can be friends and still be toxic and awful together. I think these two bring out the worst in each other, and I don’t really care if they’re friends – I just want them to stop interacting.
Deanatay
Sometimes, a friend is someone you can BE toxic with, and still be friends at the end of the day. Joyce wouldn’t argue so passionately with Joe if she didn’t care about him.
Not at all. Look at his first answer. Not a complaint about being nagged, not an affirmation of his own right to do what he wants, not a quick dismissal or a lack of response, but a jab at her language. And then, after the second message, he actually did was she asked even if he was crabby about it.
Try to come up with any other character in this story who, upon requesting Joe to stop ogling a woman was not ignored, quipped or laughed at but actually heeded.
467 thoughts on “Gaze”
Ana Chronistic
dang, Joe’s good at one-fingered typing w/o looking
factorsofx
He has lots of experience with using one finger
Zatar
Perfect Gravatar to make that comment.
(Mine slightly less so to react positively to the comment.)
Flipz
Eh, I can see that character saying something like that with a sort of snide self-superiority, sort of a “of course YOU would say that” sort of thing, so it still fits.
iforgetwhatiputhere
And your gravatar happens to be a perfect fit for the first letter of your nickname, WHAT ARE THE ODDS
Pablo360
Your gravatar’s facial expression is good for the exact level of snark in your comment.
If I recall correctly mine is completely abstract and thus breaks the chain.
Ana Chronistic
CHAIN BREAKER
Ghostforge
A man in Chicago broke the chain and was absorbed by a cat!
TheAnonymousGuy
Sooooo, are they friends, frienemies, someone she trust doe to a similar situation? what is it between these two all of a suddn,
Jordan
I’m honestly not sure. Joe’s not exactly a friend, but they’re not enemies I think. They’re just two people with VERY different approaches to life. I think Joyce trusts Joe to a certain extent since he’s made it very clear that he’s no longer interested in her at all.
Pylgrim
Pretty sure that they have a kind of similar relationship as in It’s Walky. They challenge each other with their polar opposite views on life, but there’s a bit in each that the other secretly admires or envies and their constant clashing is a sign that they care for each other, as opposed to ignoring or being apathetic to one another.
Deanatay
Friends, huh? When I look at them, I think of a Japanese term, rhymes with ‘thunder day’.
Pope William T Wodium
If it’s the term I’m thinking of, you might come closer to the mark if you try rhyming it with “soon the day.”
DarkoNeko
Dotty where are you looking, while talking about Joe’s fingers~
ety
Panel 6, second from the end, probably.
ety
ah, sadly, I think I completely missed the point of that…
AnvilPro
It took a few years(read: weeks) but I think Joe and Joyce would actually make a cute couple
mister gray
I kind of agree though I think that or they would be great friends cuz it seems like that to me. Though we don’t know what will happen to drive them apart or push them together. Though its certainly interesting they have gotten that way.
TheAnonymousGuy
i’d be lying if i didn’t agree with you.
DarkoNeko
I think Joyce would be adamant to wait until marriage. Likely wouldn’t set well with someone who have the libido of Joe
DarkoNeko
3but love trumps all !” yeah, whatev.
CJ
Please, don’t use those two words in the same sentence. *shudder*
Ozzi
To use the victorious trump card. I find that love trumps all.
JustCheetoDust
Make America sexy again
Deanatay
I’m horrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.
Thursday Violist
Yes! They are so totes the Cutest ever!
I love them both.
Fart Captor
I don’t know. He’d need to mature considerably before I’d consider him an acceptable source of smooches for Joyce
Arawn
Mature? He just doesn’t have the body hangups other people have or the sex hangups. From what I understand he doesn’t mistreat or lie to the women he sleeps with… it’s always consensual…
To be able to do that with as many people as he’s been with and not have a riot on his hands takes some very serious ability to not piss people off.
He might be more mature than a lot of people at that college.
Liliet
He harasses women and doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Not all that devoted to consent, even if he makes sure to pressure them into saying ‘yes’ and not just immediately into sex.
chris73
Word of God states pretty big on consent http://www.dumbingofage.com/cast/attachment/2014castjoe/
Fart Captor
He also can’t express his feelings or even admit to having them, and is constantly disrespectful to Leslie, and is really bad about making inappropriate jokes and comments.
His biggest issue – as I see it – is that he’s really bad at picking up on when he should back off, or just stay out of something. He keeps trying or keeps pushing longer than he should, and in class he doesn’t seem to consider that maybe now isn’t a good time for a joke when one of your classmates is on the verge of tears.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have at least some of those issues when I was his age. Especially when it came to recognizing when is a really bad time for sexual humor, but Joe still needs to grow out of these things. I’m optimistic that we’re seeing the beginning of that growth, but he’s not there yet, and I have high standards for the quality of gentleman who’d be good enough for Joyce.
:II do, however, like them as friends. I could see it being good for both of them.
Emperor Norton II
Word of god should probably be updated to include “in his own mind”.
Makkabee
He does take no for an answer. He made a pass at Sara and when she expressed her disinterest (okay, her disgust), he immediately backed off. I’d have to dig through the archives to find his exact wording, but I think he said “message recieved.”
thejeff
Sarah was pretty damn emphatic about it and backed up by Joyce, who’d had him beaten not long before.
We’ve never actually seen him deal with a less extreme rejection, which is a shame, because it would clear up a lot of things about Joe. Either make it clear that he is a problem or that his ideas of consent really are sufficient despite his aggressive flirting. We really haven’t seen his “Game” at all – except for the date with Joyce, that bit with Sarah and a few random comments. We’ve never actually seen a successful seduction by Joe, just the aftermath, with Roz & Penny. Though he’s apparently been having a lot of sex off camera, we don’t know how he’s getting it. Or for that matter what the women think about it afterwards.
The date with Joyce hinted at some problems: the attempt to bribe Mike to go away, constantly working to turn the conversation back to sex, etc. Completely overshadowed by how horrible Joyce was with the punching and all, but valuable as a bit of insight into how Joe works.
Fart Captor
It was not immediate. Sarah had literally told him to fuck off the day before the conversation you’re talking about:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/children/
And then the very next day, it took even more angry shouting from Sarah before he quit. He did completely accept Sarah’s rejection, and even apologized for his behavior, but he still has plenty of room to improve there.
Cerberus
Yeah, a “caring about consent” that forces people to angrily confront the person harassing them in order to get them to stop is not an actual “caring about consent”, because it forces the one being harassed to do something that is socially regarded as a sign of bad manners and temperament in order to get the person to leave them alone.
And we see Joe openly exploit that all the time, ignoring clear body language that the person he is targeting is uncomfortable with his attention (even ignoring when they openly warn their friends about him in front of him):
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/sitnext/
He also has a habit of acting dismissively to any girl he pushes to angrily telling him off when he’s pushing against a social boundary. Specifically, I’m meaning here that when he is screamed at, he immediately acts like “whoa whoa whoa, where is this coming from and acting like the person is crazy for not thinking he’d take a simple no, even though when he’s learned of a boundary, he’s often stepped right over it, even when a person told him to stop it.
Sometimes to the level of screaming at the back of a fleeing person to tell her friends he didn’t touch her, because his reputation as someone who is technically not a rapist matters more than his actual actions not making women feel that uncomfortable where the only way to get him to stop is to scream in his face.
And the Sarah example is not a good one of him respecting boundaries, because in his “apology” to her, he’s still trying to hit on her, talking about harnessing her angry energy and how “any guy” would try and do the same.
Basically acting like his bad behavior was universal, diminishing said bad behavior, and trying to use social capital to try and get the person telling him off to look socially crazy and overreacting and his actions of red flag behavior to be overlooked.
BBCC
That wasn’t the day before – closer to two weeks, but the point stands she had absolutely told Joe to fuck off before. What DID happen the day before was him see her threaten his dad with testicular torsion because he wouldn’t back off.
modulusshift
He flirts somewhat aggressively, and doesn’t give a shit about how *other* people feel when he’s pursuing their friends. In his mind, the only valid source of discouragement is the woman in question. But he takes that pretty dang seriously.
Abomination
Really? I have exactly the opposite reaction. These two have negative chemistry – I never want to see them interact. The weekend texting seemed like an unexplained OOC moment, but now they’re back to their usual “These two people are toxic and awful together” default, and I continue to want them to have nothing to do with each other.
Liliet
I think they are acting like friends?… Like Joe’s actually doing what she told him to and not just telling her to fuck off, they are bickering friendly-ways. Nor would Joyce just message a stranger like that?…
chris73
Yeah theres certainly a connection, as ypu say she wouldn’t message a stranger like that but hose last panels, to me, suggest they’re not at friendship level yet, not far off though
Abomination
People can be friends and still be toxic and awful together. I think these two bring out the worst in each other, and I don’t really care if they’re friends – I just want them to stop interacting.
Deanatay
Sometimes, a friend is someone you can BE toxic with, and still be friends at the end of the day. Joyce wouldn’t argue so passionately with Joe if she didn’t care about him.
Pylgrim
Not at all. Look at his first answer. Not a complaint about being nagged, not an affirmation of his own right to do what he wants, not a quick dismissal or a lack of response, but a jab at her language. And then, after the second message, he actually did was she asked even if he was crabby about it.
Try to come up with any other character in this story who, upon requesting Joe to stop ogling a woman was not ignored, quipped or laughed at but actually heeded.
Spencer
I’ve seen enough anime to know where this is going.
Anime is an acceptable substitute for human interaction right?
inqntrol
Ahh, more or less.
Haven
God, I hope so
Emperor Norton
Hope, like a car in a destruction derby, exists only to be crushed.
fogel
Life is like a brick on the strawberry tarte of our dreams [+/-]. Boulet
Clif
Joyce/Joe is like a shipwreck in the middle of the desert.
Gigafreak
A shipwreck is still a ship, right?
ety
it’s just a flesh wound! we can patch that right up.
JustCheetoDust
like a car in a destruction derby
Or the Spanish announcers table in a wrestling match.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
The great upside is that you can be sure you aren’t hurting other people, which is pretty much inevitable otherwise.
(See any comment thread here.)
Spencer
i cant believe youd say something so hurtful to me
TachyonCode
The outcome of this discussion was entirely predictable and hilarious.
Just sayin’.
Lipke the Articulate
“I have finally insulted EVERY SINGLE DEMOGRAPHIC.”
“No you haven’t! You forgot about THE WEEABOOS!”
“Anime is cartoons.”
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-“
Commodore Jeep-Eep
Anime was a mistake.
Spencer
It’s nothing but trash.
Clif
It’s the most innovative thing ever to come along and gives you entry into a vast unlimited universe of experience and all you whiney entitled ….
Oh, wait. You said Anime.
Nevermind.
Vid game joke. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Reltzik
If a large enough subset of society thinks it is, then it becomes socially acceptable, at least in terms of acceptance by a large portion of society.
The question is how you can make the Otaku fan base large enough.
I recommend having a plump, obnoxious Otaku billionaire run for the Republican nomination in 4 years. What could possibly go wrong?
Spencer
American/Russia tension reaches critical levels as Obama declares Putin’s waifu to be shit.
Lailah
Gods almighty, I would rather shoot myself than deal with a dominant, or even strong, anime fanbase, either in Merika or Japan.
Nono
‘Apple is clearly better than whatever backwater phone you have, you heathen!’
Tacos
“Bounce your eyes”? I’ve never heard that expression before.
Cattleprod
From the context, you should probably be thankful for that. I know I am.
timemonkey
She’s used it before.
Reltzik
Honestly, if you’re trying to make Joe avert his gaze in this context?
DON’T USE THE WORD “BOUNCE”.
Chris Phoenix
Where is the LIKE BUTTON???
Reltzik
Also, don’t mention “like buttons”.
Dr. T
I swear that she has used that phrase before. Hell, I think she used it with Joe.
Gwen