467

Safely
Posted on July 28, 2025 by David M Willis

467 thoughts on “Safely”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    737) Heat death of the universe

    1. True Survivor

      This is a great comment. It made my night.

      1. Wilde

        If you’re not ending your daily to-do list with the heat death of the universe, are you really living?

        1. Clif

          I’m with Dorothy on this one. There are some things best postponed until after the heat death of the universe.

        2. eh, whatever

          …and if the expansion of the universe keeps accelerating, the heat death can never happen.

        3. Steamweed

          So clearly item 736 is “Fully solve all Physics” so that we know for certain if the universe ends in heat death, or big bounce, or big rip, or whatever. Then we’re clear to items 737 onward.

        4. Wizard

          Pretty sure it would. “Heat death” is a slightly misleading term. It doesn’t mean the universe gets hot, it means that the entire universe is the same (extremely low) temperature. With no differences there would no longer be any changes or reactions.

        5. Casi

          yup, just an ever expanding cloud of cold iron dust

        6. GreyICE

          Escape makes me God.

    2. Deanatay

      637) Change the fundamental nature of humanity to eliminate homicidal tendencies.
      119) Redraw international borders to eliminate the inequities of colonialism.
      278) Tell my parents.

      1. Sarah Lea

        I’m not quite sure why people feel Dorothy would be hesitant to tell her parents about her interest in Joyce?

        I understand maybe feeling like she’s “letting them down” for not going to Yale or becoming president.

        But Dorothy’s parents have been basically universally supportive…I’m not sure why anyone (including Dorothy) would expect her parents to respond to “I have a girlfriend now!” any less positively than Dina’s parents did.

        I’m genuinely curious (and certainly coming from a place of privilege here, I admit): Is there some hint in the strips so far (or maybe a bonus strip?) that would support a reading that Dorothy would be particularly anxious about this aspect? Particularly “nearly as anxious as she is about telling Becky” levels of anxious?

        1. Proxiehunter

          The fact that they’ve been universally supportive doesn’t mean a lack of anxiety about telling them things. Especially when that thing is “You know those goals of mine that you’ve been universally supportive of my whole life and probably made sacrifices to help me reach? I decided to throw all of them away for a girl I met a few months ago.”

          Now, they’ll probably support that. But do you think it feels like that to Dorothy or do you think it feels like she failed them? Do you think there’s actually zero chance that they might get upset about her throwing all her goals away so suddenly?

        2. Sarah Lea

          I agree with your point that some anxiety is understandable (although, still her parents have been universally “We support her in absolutely anything she wants to do, we have no specific expectations for her.” This is by no means a case of her trying to live out her parents’ dreams: they’ve explicitly said they believe in her, but support her no matter what she chooses to do).

          I guess I’m just not seeing/understanding the more anxious about “telling my universally supportive parents that I’m changing my career goal because I fell in love with a girl” than “telling my roommate who’s been deeply in love with the girl I just kissed, who I have to live with for the rest of the semester, who has been through all kinds of trauma including kidnapping and having her dad murdered and her mom dead, and who’s been ‘competing’ with me for the affection of said girl to the point of carrying a ‘bit’ about being archnemeses.”

          It’s not the existence of anxiety I’m not getting…it’s the anticipated *intensity* of anxiety.

    3. Amós Batista

      I’ll praise Dorothy, because she will keep herself motivated until, I don’t know, end of times.

    4. pope suburban

      There was a Penny and Aggie bit about that back in the day. Matter of fact, I think it was after Sara told Penny that she and Aggie should just kiss already, which, I’d I’m recalling correctly, is hilarious in this context.

  2. Marvelman

    Shouldn’t it be Joyce who tells Becky?

    1. Liara

      Dotty wrote down what both of them have to do, not just her

      1. Bobin

        Yeah I don’t think Dorothy telling Joe would go down well somehow

        1. Adam Black

          He’s already confronted Dorothy. He opened the door.

    2. CandidCanid

      I mean, Dotty’s her roommate, so it depends. And Dotty might have to contend with being called something other than Dotty from now on depending on how the news strikes Becky.

      But don’t worry, guys! These two fools will have plenty of things to overthink throughout this process.

      How much money do we wanna bet the choice is taken from both of them because Becky 1.) finds out via other channels, or 2.) already sussed them out a while ago and isn’t surprised? ?

      1. Svankensen

        Hmm, IDK, in this environment her gaydar must be overwhelmed.

      2. Lumino

        My prediction is they’ll never get to Becky. The talks with Joe and Walky will go FAR worse than either of them are expecting, Joe especially because I feel like Joyce would make some off handed “threesome” comment to try and lighten the blow, not realizing how extremely painful that would be to Joe in the moment.

        Then they’ll be dealing with the fallout from that and put off talking to Becky (who probably wouldn’t be bothered much at all) annoying her in the fact that Joyce and Dotty don’t feel safe talking to her.

        Drama all around.

        1. Throwatron

          actually you might be onto something

      3. Steamweed

        My two dollars is on ‘Becky already knowing’.

    3. HueSatLight

      They should call each other “babe” and kiss in front of her all casual like, and pretend not to know why she’s reacting however she reacts.

      1. John Campbell

        So, slightly less gay than their usual behaviour?

  3. Heatth

    For 3 brief panels I thought Dorothy was back to her “self-control through strict organization” self.

    1. Aviator

      She made a list with 738 entries in like, an hour? I dunno if it’s “Self control” through strict organization, or “Ultimate Procrastination” through strict organization, or something else entirely through strict organization, but the strict organization is definitely there!

      1. Dot

        Sublimation of romantic-sexual urges through meticulous organization.

        1. jeffepp

          Oh, wait till you get to number 69 on the list.

        2. Steamweed

          Nice.

      2. CandidCanid

        I’m gonna be real, it’s 738 entries unorganized in a catastrophically long list. 738 items is extremely unwieldy and difficult to navigate.

        Book 1 Dorothy would’ve had them split into annotated sections tabbed with bookmarks complete with a table of contents at the beginning, and a handy flowchart/roadmap for showing her work as to why they’re in the order they’re in. This is just an extremely long bare-bones list, which is very tepid compared to her old habits…

        1. RocketRelm

          She kind of seems like she’s manic writing (partly to avoid the Becky issue), which also explains why a lot of the entries only make somewhat of sense and descend quickly into absurd scale left field goals. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find there aren’t actually 738 items in that thing, that she just stopped bothering with accuracy of numbers. It looks like Joyce only flipped up 2 of the pages. Even if we presume both sides written on and it’s actually 4 pages and it only seeming two is an artistic simplicity and that there’s two items on a line in super small text, that’s *still* not enough room for 738 items on a 44 line standard size paper.

        2. HueSatLight

          I think it’s “big number for joke”, and to make it plausible there’d need to be some empty stretches. Like 100-200 is a category, and it’s only filled up to like 124.

      3. Heatth

        That is why I said “for 3 brief panels”. The 4th and 5th panels showed how wrong I was.

      4. Veronica

        That’s 12 tasks a minute!

      5. Decidedly Orthogonal

        “For 3 brief panels”. Not, “for the panel where Dorothy reveals she’s utterly cracked and desperate for any avoidance of responsibility.”

  4. BobbyG

    8-737) Make out a little

  5. Cholma

    738?! I’m surprised it’s so high on the list.

  6. Isalis

    I know she’s organised but Dorothy had that list finished FAST.

    1. Steamweed

      Parts of it probably were already in a list. Dorothy makes pre-lists just in case she needs to make lists.

      1. Proxiehunter

        She has a list of pre-lists that she needs to make before she can make a new list.

  7. Crow

    Yeah, now she’s just an anarchist organizer trying to overthrow capitalism! That’s so much easier!

    1. Kyulen

      Becoming president and working to maintain the terrible status quo under capitalism is probably easier than trying to overthrow it, yes.

      1. Thag Simmons

        Yeah, there’s a lot of ways to fail to become President and still end up in a comfortable position as a beltway ghoul of some sort.

    2. Adam Black

      I think that word would have been Patriarchy.

    3. Decidedly Orthogonal

      > “she’s just an anarchist organizer”

      She’s a what?

      1. Wack'd

        anarchy doesn’t mean no organization, it means no hierarchy

        1. Proxiehunter

          Or as I’ve seen stated “Anarchy doesn’t mean no rules, it means no rulers.

          Although in practice I’m pretty sure once you get rid of the rulers you also wind up getting rid of some of the more damaging rules as well.

        2. thejeff

          In practice, I’m pretty sure that if you try to implement it on any scale you wind up with rulers again. Even if it’s just the people who step up to try to organize.

      2. Trut

        I think I understand your confusion. Political anarchists aren’t “YAHOO NO RULES BANG BANG BOOM”, they believe in the elimination of power hierarchies, replacing them with a diversity of consensus-driven, people-oriented modes of self-governance. Hope that helps!

    4. Proxiehunter

      It might not be easier, but at least it’s better.

  8. Dot

    “Ok now that we’ve exposited all the lingering questions the audience might be wondering about, we can get down to brass tacks!”

    1. Dot

      Not a criticism really. Just tickled by how expedient that first panel is.

    2. Florence

      We’ve got a story to tell dammit!

    3. Mturtle7

      I don’t know how anyone can bear to read a story where the timeline isn’t meticulously tracked and organized in order to be fully self-consistent, and both the safety and moral integrity of every character isn’t explicitly addressed!

      1. Mturtle7

        Unless you’re, like, neurotypical or something. But in that case, what are you doing reading this comic?!

  9. Rose by Any other Name

    I’m looking forward to reading the comic where Dorothy accomplishes 4 and 5.
    Sounds like it’ll be a fun ride.

    1. Mollyscribbles

      We need the escapism.

    2. Steamweed

      Sudden time skip to Dorothy finishing item 785.

  10. NGPZ

    oh thank fuck AG and Jocelyne are safe T-T

    1. DJTsurugi

      notice how no one else is talking about that? the priorities in here… ~<3

      1. Lokitsu

        There’s not much else to say besides thank goodness.

        1. Strain Of Thought

          ~♫”That’s why I just called to say… *thank goodness*.”♫~

    2. HueSatLight

      For now. AG assaulted some cops. That’s a non-property crime they care about.

      1. Proxiehunter

        Yeah, but I don’t think any students other than Mary and maybe Incelerator (he’s a huge asshole, but as a supervillain it might hurt his pride to have the cops do his dirty work for him) are going to help them locate suspects. Fuck, the school might have an “I’m Sparticus” moment.

  11. Dot

    “Why are items 20, 52, 127, 334, and 602 all ‘fail to resist our passions and engage in perverse sexual lust in a storage closet?”

    “I just anticipated that would happen and penciled it in for convenience.”

    1. Dot

      Replace engage with indulge. I’m tired, it’s late.

      1. Throwatron

        its a good bit though, you were right to make it

      2. deliverything

        Maybe they’d be travelling to the nearest storage closet at warp speed?

        Start wreck? It’s already started.

  12. NGPZ

    wait… im having a PREMONITION —

    Dorothy and Joyce gonna apologize to Asma for being bad at protesting

    Asma is gonna be like “WHATEVER”

    to the comments, it’ll be TRADGETY 9-9 (-_-)

    1. Throwatron

      I mean it is definitely right to criticize them for that. It’s immature on several levels. It’s totally a case of young white liberals actively making the movement about their own personal feelings and needs. Asma is also not the arbiter of all brown people, and they don’t need her approval for this in any way; it’s all about them assuaging their own latent guilt at not being helpful/performing allyship correctly.

      Asma would be totally right to have that response for all those reasons, and it sucks that these kids are so unaware of what I just said, and it’s lame that she’s have to entertain that just to be polite and professional. ‘Cause they’ll totally spring this on her while she’s on the clock; that’s the only place they know where to find her, because they literally don’t know her outside of her job.

      1. not someone else

        I don’t think we have a lot of kids reading the comic.

        1. jflb96

          I don’t think ‘these kids’ is meant to mean the readers

        2. eh, whatever

          “these kids” are obviously Joyce & Dorothy.

        3. reddslym

          I think theyre talking about Becky and Joyce

    2. Wack'd

      “apologizing to assuage your consciences is just making this about you again”
      “asma i’m sorry–”
      “and now we’re caught in a loop, great”

      1. Steamweed

        Asma wakes up the next day. Dorothy is there apologizing. No matter what Asma does, she cannot escape. She is stuck in an Edge of Groundhog Day loop.

      2. Sarah

        If you’ve become aware (after the fact) that you were doing something wrong…what is the appropriate step to take? I’ve been taught the first thing to do is apologize – not to “assuage my conscience,” but because the right thing to do is to acknowledge my wrongdoing – if at all possible – to the people/person I’ve wronged. That’s usually followed-up by asking what I can do to try to make it right, or make up for it, or otherwise make restitution.

        So far, Asma is the one who’s told them they were wrong. (And also, maybe Raidah? But less “You’re doing this wrong,” and “So, did you enjoy doing it wrong?”)

        To be clear, Asma owes them NOTHING. Not forgiveness, not a path to restitution, etc.

        But…don’t they owe Asma as least OFFERING to make restitution to her?

        If not to Asma, then whom?

        Are they required to thoroughly research all protest protocol (because I’m sure there’s some singular consensus of exactly the “right way” to protest), thoroughly research each individual protest in advance, then attend every protest, fully informed and 110% invested, for the rest of their lives?

        Do people get to have an opportunity for redemption, like Joe believes?

        Or is it “You messed up once in the past, so you’re soiled and forever ruined, and redemption is a myth,” like Rachel believes?

        A friend texted me, inviting me to a local No Kings protest that day, which I hadn’t heard about (I live in the next county, but I’m in the middle of nowhere in a very red area of a very blue state). Unfortunately, I didn’t see the text until just after the protest ended. I had absolutely wanted to go, and I found a site where I could sign up to get notifications in advance of future protests organized in my area.

        But I’m increasingly getting the impression from this commentariat that my white cis-het butt should’ve just stayed home anyway unless I’d had the time to thoroughly research protest etiquette first unless I wanted to be an irredeemable monster for the next few years.

        1. perpetual summer

          You’re being sort of complicated about this. If you plan to go to a protest, you inform yourself about that protest – sometimes the people organizing put out info. Otherwise you could ask friends who’ve went before or plan to go. That aside, imo there is some stuff that’s probably good to ask yourself beforehand, like: how involved do you want to be (are you going to a march or a sit-in)? how long maximum do you want to stay? stuff like that.

          But you really don’t need to give a shit about some strangers in a webcomic comments section. Just go to a local protest. I promise you they don’t care about the webcomic comments either.

      3. NGPZ

        ahahahahahaha RIGHT???

        regardless of whether or not it accomplishes accomplishes anything in any given context, the common whitebred intuition is that committing to what is perceived to be Standard Procedure for apologizing to assuage conscience FEELS as tho it’s the most noble thing to do

        especially if like Joyce, you’ve spent nearly your entire life made to fear viable recourse, because those are “”anti-Christian”” and “”socialism”” and therefore bad 9-9

  13. Wraithy2773

    Lets just be happy that her top 3 are correct. 😀

  14. Bwsab

    I agree with telling Joe first. His reaction could be anywhere from seriously hurt to encouraging Joyce to go for what she wants to pointing out that Joyce doesn’t have to be monogamous and suggesting the polycule we all desperately want. And even if he’s angry, I don’t think he’d spread the info as far as Walky. (Also, his sister might know, so she might tell him if they don’t tell him fast.) …but Walky? Walky’s going to be HURT. And I feel like Becky might notice a devastated Walky before a hurt Joe.

    1. Dot

      Becky notices a lot.

    2. Lumino

      I feel like Joe will be hurt more, but he probably won’t show it outwardly. This is going to do a LOT of damage to his path to being a better person.

      1. Bysmerian

        I’m not sure. I think being the one left like this–the one who gets left for greener pastures, while his dad is usually the one doing the leaving–is possibly going to have some interesting effects on him, though.

        It’ll hurt, but I don’t think he’ll backslide from this.

    3. Jay

      I just want it continously known im not apart of the ‘we’

      1. Jay

        Not cause im against poly, poly is cool.

        But because I don’t think this is a healthy way to start a polycule

        1. Queezle

          Yes, it would be bad poly representation. I am already not super happy with the bi person cheats on their partner thing. Not because I think it was done in bad taste here, it is just such a common trope.

        2. deliverything

          Danny agrees with you, I think:
          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/03-me-and-who-you-say-i-was-yesterday/comfortingbodycontact/

        3. HueSatLight

          Danny’s kind of extreme about it, it doesn’t make them morally bankrupt. But that interaction felt kind of like, “remember, here’s an established bi character who would never cheat. Dorothy’s not cheating because she’s bi.”

        4. Proxiehunter

          I don’t think most proponents of a polycule expect it to be off to a healthy start, we expect it to be interesting and dramatic to read about. Not every relationship in fiction has to be or even should be healthy.

          Also, just because a relationship doesn’t have a healthy start doesn’t mean those involved can’t put in the work to get it to a healthy place.

    4. MisterJinKC

      “We” do not all collectively want them to become a polycule. A rather sizable amount of people want Joyce and Dorothy to face consequences for their actions, not be rewarded for them. They’re cheaters and don’t deserve to get out of this with a happy ending. Honestly, they deserve to lose most if not all of their friends and br ostracized over what they’ve done and are planning to continue doing.

      1. Thag Simmons

        I hate to take the centrist position but I’m going to say that there’s a lot of space between “they should pivot the cheating into a polycule with no consequences” and “they should suffer complete social ostracization”

        1. Bright

          I feel like both extremes of this spectrum are in different flavors of fix-it fanfiction territory.

        2. deliverything

          This is Dumbing of Age! We don’t fix things around here, except maybe by breaking more things in the process!

        3. Strain Of Thought

          Every time I come back to this comic after a long hiatus, it’s just a matter of weeks before I feel the only solution to this social circle is scorched Earth. I know I shouldn’t read it, it’s so incredibly bad for my mental health. I keep coming back for the daily updates and the impeccable comedic timing.

        4. Nadamás

          That seems pretty melodramatic

        5. Proxiehunter

          Sounds like reading the comic is a form of self harm for you and you should be talking to a professional about that so they can help you stop doing that and not just spilling that information to the comments section.

        6. not someone else

          I feel like this is less “centrist” and more “somewhere on the map where the narrative matters at all”.

        7. Julie

          Nah, fuck cheaters. Why would anyone want to be friends with cheaters?

        8. Thag Simmons

          Infidelity is bad, but it is a fairly mundane sort of bad and does not represent a moral event horizon from which there is no return.

          Especially this, which is like the “villain who isn’t allowed to actually kill anybody because they’re obviously getting set up for a redemption arc” of cheating.

        9. Nymph

          Human beings make mistakes. If you can’t handle your friends making honest mistakes and genuinely trying to do better, then you’re going to end up burning through friends pretty quick.

          It’s not like they are hiding it or lying to their partners. They’re actively going to tell them about the mistake they made in kissing before they broke up.

        10. MisterJinKC

          I could accept it as a mistake if they kissed once and were like “this is wrong, we can’t do this again because it will hurt the people we care about.” But they aren’t doing that. They’re trying to figure out how to get away with it without consequences. Especially Becky. But neither of them have even talked about how Walky or Joe is going to take it. Just “We should inform them” like they’re changing the restaurant their dinner plans are at. Walky I could sort of understand since it’s newer and he’s extremely chill about most things (still wrong, but I could understand). But both of them know how much Joe hates cheating, how his dads constant infedility affected him, his terror that he would hurt Joyce that way, and how much he cares for her. And despite that. Neither of them has spared a second to consider how it will affect him. Only how it will affect Becky, who obviously had a lifelong crush on Joyce, but is in an extremely happy and healthy relationship with Dina. It’s disgusting.

        11. Dot

          Dorothy has expressed concern about how Walky is going to take things. But Joe is the elephant in the room.

        12. Nymph

          “They’re trying to figure out how to get away with it without consequences.”

          No, they are trying to figure out how to tell the people who are going to be most hurt by this information FIRST. That’s kind of the opposite of getting away with it.

          I get that you want these two women to feel horrible crushing depression for what they did. I get that it upsets you they’re not terrified of hurting the men they’re dating. I think you’re being ridiculous calling this disgusting, but you’re entitled to your opinions.

          As I am to mine. So, again:

          “Human beings make mistakes. If you can’t handle your friends making honest mistakes and genuinely trying to do better, then you’re going to end up burning through friends pretty quick.

          It’s not like they are hiding it or lying to their partners. They’re actively going to tell them about the mistake they made in kissing before they broke up.”

          Nothing you said makes me feel any different about that. They’ve blown up two brand new relationships with a few kisses, it’s not ideal but it’s not disgusting either. It’s just a stupid fuck up.

        13. Bysmerian

          I think I’m in agreement with you. This isn’t 100% cool, but there’s a lot going on and what happened was more or less impulsive and they’re still floating on that high a bit. Also, Dorothy especially is trying to handle this with something resembling responsible with what’s already been done: “Okay, we’re doing this, what do we need to do now before we proceed in any meaningful sense?”

          I do feel like Joyce is being more impulsive and less thoughtful about this, but she’s always been a passionate person which sometimes gets her caught up in the moment, so being less caught up in the need for honest disclosure–not disregarding it but just not having it at the top of her mind–is about par for the course for her. So, I’d like her to be better but it’s not wholly out of character.

        14. Proxiehunter

          You see, most people would be saying that not informing Walky and Joe would be the bad thing to do. Even if they never did it again keeping the fact that they had a secret would be regarded as at least as emotionally damaging as having done it in the first place. Maybe even more so if it happened once and never again. Informing them is the right thing to do and I don’t understand why you seem to be upset about that.

      2. HueSatLight

        you speak only for yourself. Do you think there’s a “sizable amount of people” who have also been banned for misogyny before?

      3. Leorale

        They should be totally ostracized because they smooched somebody other than their new college boyfriends, fully clothed, and the very same day they decided to tell their boyfriends about said makeouts — presumably like before the sun should set?

        Like yeah, they should feel embarrassed, as this was against the terms of at least one of their relationships (Joyce/Joe. Dorothy and Wally are so on-again off-again that they haven’t necessarily established that they’re going steady.) All these extracurricular makeouts will hurt their boyfriends’ feelings, the boyfriends may well feel betrayed. And they’ll feel the fool, because it’s well known that these gal-pals have been in love for ages. But it’s not, like, sex-outside-your-monogamous-life-commitment cheating.

        1. Big Z

          Frankly, it really seems like the degree of “ostracism” should be much more focused on “how badly are Joe/Walky taking it” — the offense in the friend circle isn’t so much “you are a cheater!” but “dude you two just did some level of foreseeable emotional damage to two of the people in the friend circle”.

      4. Alongcameaspider

        “Planning to continue doing” I dont know what you’re reading but it looks like theyre planning to pause the cheating until such a time where its no longer cheating (either their boyfriends break up with them or give them the go ahead)

      5. Gwen

        Slightly horrifying thing to say, even about fictional characters. I hope you don’t carry this kind of belief into real life.

      6. Dot

        Alright I don’t think they should get off scot-free but can we cool it about making them into scarlet women

      7. Annaphylaxis

        hahahaha WOW.

        Just, WOW.

        There’s a lot of anger towards women in these comments, folks! A lot of misplaced anger!

      8. VicMortimer

        The only consequence they should face is a happy polycule.

        Humans are NOT naturally monogamous, monogamy is a social control mechanism imposed by religious nutjobs.

        Any “friend” who tries to ostracize them deserves to be ostracized.

        1. HueSatLight

          The world does not move the the beat of just one drum, what might be right for you may not be right for some.

        2. thejeff

          There’s essentially no reason to think that. If monogamy is a “social control mechanism imposed by religious nutjobs”, it’s one that’s found in one form or another in basically every religion and every society – though often found alongside limited polygamy – elite males having multiple wives if they can support them.
          Which is roughly the pattern expected from social animals with our degree of sexual dimorphism.

    5. VicMortimer

      Walky is more likely to be open to the polycule we all want.

      1. Proxiehunter

        As I’ve pointed out multiple times, the only one of the four to actually propose polyamory to someone he was dating. Yes, he did so as a joke. Walky is known for framing things he’s serious about as jokes.

    6. reddslym

      Im just kinda assuming there are photos of the kiss and everyone knows already lmao

  15. RASSILONTDAVROS

    Anyone else wanna start making up a whole bunch of those entries, in no particular order, for funsies?

    1. True Survivor

      46) Duel Sal for having besmirched her brother’s honor.

      1. RASSILONTDAVROS

        10) Dismantle the prison system

        1. sisterofdarkoneko

          420) Might as well

        2. RASSILONTDAVROS

          24) Overthrow capitalism

        3. Leorale

          421) froyo

        4. Steamweed

          69) Nice

      2. ValdVin

        45) Prepare appropriate burial or cremation for aftermath of dueling with Sal as she’s not gonna be satisfied by just pinning you and putting one of those little scars on your cheek.

        1. Strain Of Thought

          Heyyy fellow tailsteak fan I am also a tailsteak fan we definitely exist!

        2. ValdVin

          Huzzah! I’m nibbling my way into Forward, and keeping up with Roll to Save.

    2. I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams

      548) Get around to giving Walky that IOU skull

    3. Proxiehunter

      69) No, wait, we have other things to do before we’re allowed to do that.

      1. Strain Of Thought

        469) Schedule a future calendar date to try it out and look up instructions for doing it properly before then.

    4. Alongcameaspider

      666) end the stranglehold Christianity has on global politics

    5. Wack'd

      i feel like everything after six has gotta be organizing a new society out of the ashes of the old, right? that’s gonna take so much work!

    6. ValdVin

      24) Ask Willis what he’d change knowing now what he didn’t nine months ago.

    7. Mturtle7

      676) Team up with Alternate Universe Dorothy to fight IRL Head Alien and Monkey Master

  16. True Survivor

    I am honestly saddened that Dorothy no longer wishes to pursue her dream to be the president.

    1. Taffy

      #8: *belch*

      1. True Survivor

        Huh? Did I offend you somehow?

        1. Jeff K!

          I think Taffy’s reply is in the wrong place – the comment above yours is “let’s make up more items on the list”

        2. Taffy

          Wait yeah, how the fuck

        3. Taffy

          Reference to Simpson.

          Who the hell burps to signal they’ve been offended?

        4. True Survivor

          I don’t know. I thought you might be expressing displeasure with my opinion or something. I am not always familiar with internet lingo and can assume the worst. Sorry.

        5. Taffy

          Ain’t no skin off my ass, cowpoke. In the future, if something I say doesn’t make much sense in context, try assuming it’s a Simpson.

    2. Dot

      I think it’s good that she’s had to reckon with the actual implications of that dream and found them unappealing

      1. Throwatron

        Yeah, it’s unironically good for her. Her obsession with the presidency was both very immature, and very unhealthy for her on a regular basis. She needs to have realistic aspirations, that don’t cause her constant stress because of how unattainable they are.

    3. HueSatLight

      It was the dream of a naive child, and the plan of a naive child. She has a better chance of promoting justice, or effecting policy, or whatever her unstated goals were by moving past it.
      She even has a better chance of becoming president.

    4. Kyulen

      I’m not. In fact I’m glad she gave up on that dream. US presidents have a long history of doing very terrible things. If numbers 4, 5, and 6 on her list are any indication, Dorothy seems to be developing much better dreams for the future.

      1. ValdVin

        To borrow from The Wiz, “you can get out of the game”. There’s gonna be a president. Who that person is matters and damn we learned that this year.

        1. thejeff

          Apparently we have to learn that again and again.

          We didn’t learn in from Trump’s first term? I learned it way back in 2000 with Bush. I can’t even imagine how different the world would be if Gore had won then.

  17. darkoneko

    do you really not want to, tho ?

  18. peng

    theyre good kids

  19. C.T Phipps

    Dorothy is great but she can be President when she figures out a policy she’d like to implement.

    Until then, Becky is the one I’d love to elect and I wish she had continued politics with Desanto.

    1. yak

      when you can’t vote on policy, vote on pure charisma.

    2. Veronica

      You know, on reflection, it’s really weird that Dorothy had a dream to be president but never joined the Student Democrates or the Student Union or anything like that.

      That’s traditionally where you start learning negotiation skills and how to organise and such.

      1. hkerstyn

        Maybe she deferred that until she got into Yale. Although it could’ve helped her get into yale.

      2. Wack'd

        dorothy is (was?) in a political and civic engagement club!

      3. ValdVin

        She is (or was) in that club as Wack’d noted.

        That’s why Raidah slagging on Dorothy and Dorothy’s not being given anything to say back by Willis has always struck me as false.

    3. Li

      She had a seven-step plan to end poverty, apparently! That’s the only specific policy comment I’ve seen that I remember.

  20. Mel

    Difficult talks are what the press secretary is for! Maybe they can get Becky to do tha- wait

  21. IntangibleMatter

    Dorothy very carefully made it so that every hypercomposite number on the list involves overthrowing something

    1. RASSILONTDAVROS

      Do 1 and 2 count as hypercomposite? They technically both have more divisors than any smaller integer.

      I suppose telling Joe and Walky could perhaps be interpreted as overthrowing monogamy…

      1. yak

        Depends on how you want to define it. A number n could be called hypercomposite if the number of its divisors _besides itself_ is strictly greater than all previous natural numbers. 1 can only be vacuously hypercomposite, which motivates this alternative definition, but it seems conventional to treat 1 and 2 as the first hypercomposite numbers.

        1. yak

          Well I guess 1 is still vacuously hypercomposite with this alternative definition. So, yeah, unless you explicitly exclude the number 1, it’s always hypercomposite.

        2. hkerstyn

          Yeah generally one excludes 1 when considering divisors. 1 neither is nor has divisors in a meaningful way.

        3. Yak

          1 having divisors is meaningful in some situations. For instance if you extend the integers with a complex number, the set of divisors of 1 is the group of units for the extension.

          Interestingly, 1 is vacuously hypercomosite regardless of how many divisors it has. If you specifically exclude 1 from having divisors, then 2 is vacuously hypercomposite.

  22. Amós Batista

    Glad to know that To End Exports Taxes, To Defund Police, To Release Episten’s Files and To Refund Weather System will be before Y
    To Tell Becky.

  23. darkoneko

    So you’re just out of your room and that awkwardness with Becky… is Becky spying on you two right now ? 😀

    1. Throwatron

      oh almost certainly lol

  24. Dante

    So basically the only thing stopping her from going full Marxist was repressing her bisexuality? Literally nothing to lose but her chains here

    1. Kyulen

      I’ve been hoping Dorothy was heading in that political direction since she realized that her dream of becoming president was not as good as she previously thought.

    2. Dot

      Maybe keep some chains around in case it turns out she and Joyce are into that.

  25. Kyulen

    Somehow I get the feeling Dorothy and Joyce are gonna have to tell Becky before they do numbers 4, 5, and 6. Though I do hope they get to working towards those things as well eventually.

  26. Derek

    the sad part about the author imploding this comic for the sake of his favourite pet ship (per his own words) is that those of us who don’t care about them as a couple are just left bored. Joyce is an interesting protagonist because how she deals with coming to terms with the fact that she was brought up in a death cult, coming to terms with her possible autism and basically trying to be a good person in a complicated world.
    And then we get hit with “she also likes women now, romantically and sexually” that comes out of nowhere with no build up. I feel like the author’s original plan of having this revelation happen five years from now would have been a lot better.

    It hasn’t been a full year, it has not even been six months since Joyce allowed herself to admit she views men as sexual beings she might want to bang. She most likely grew up being taught that being gay/queer is worse than having sex before marriage, so her being so fine and happy with this new development just feels out of step with what we know about her as a person.

    1. not someone else

      Wait, you’re not even mad about the cheating? You’re actually under the impression the comic is imploding because Joyce kissed another girl?

      Have you been to the internet?

      1. Clif

        A year’s buffer doesn’t sound very imploded to me.

    2. Nadamás

      Almost like her character had some kind if development of something ?

    3. Jeff K!

      I’ve been through almost the exact path Joyce is going through – and in fact, Joyce breaking through her fundamentalist upbringing back in It’s Walky helped me figure things out as that series was coming out.

      This is pretty accurate. Everyone’s going to be different, but the big turning points generally are “removing deity from your assumptions of existence” and “what rules does that mean that I don’t have to follow” and “what does morality mean to me now”

      Joyce has been down each of those roads already.

      Also, if you thought her liking women came out of nowhere, I think you might have missed it lot of the foreshadowing.

      The strip where Joyce stares mesmerized at Jennifer’s breasts and and mumbles that she could curl up in them and be happy and safe forever was published around ten years ago.

      1. Wack'd

        also. like. everything about her relationship with sal

    4. theburningbentley

      She already did go through all that long before now, though. With Becky. AND Ethan. She already fully dissected that belief and reached a conclusion that being gay wasn’t a big deal at all to her and didn’t matter.

    5. Hroethvitnir

      lol People going from 0 to 100 is the opposite of unusual. It’s often a hell of a lot more self-destructive than jumping straight into a queer relationship with someone who you’ve been (you thought platonically) in love with for months.

      If you’re not into the ship you should possibly just come back in 6 months, because being salty in the comments of a comic that has been packed with anticipation of exactly this happening for.ever isn’t likely to get you a lot of satisfaction.

      … also, an author being inspired by their own characters is really a different dynamic to an audience’s “ship”, anyway. Such a weird attitude.

    6. Corey C.

      I know this may take years, but with the way the Walkyverse characters personalities and pairings are slowly bleeding into this strip I can’t help but think of the last “Joyce and Walky” strip where Walky tells Joyce that, even in a separate universe, they’ll always be together.

      Dorothy’s personality seems to be slowly shifting into her Walkyverse counterpart, though instead of being obsessively in love with Walky and trying to break them up ON THEIR WEDDING DAY she has thrown herself at Joyce while DATING Walky. And to my knowledge Walky has still shown no romantic interest in Joyce and Joyce seems almost GLEEFUL that she’s going to cause Walky and Dorothy to break up. I really wonder how the heck Walky’s statement could ever come true given that Walky and Joyce are the only couple that haven’t even teased their old relationship (like Rachel and Joe or Danny and Sal, who are once again a couple.)

      1. Nadamás

        Pretty Willis has no reason to hold uo what another version of the character lmore that a decade ago.

        1. Thag Simmons

          I think Dumbing of Age would have already been in the pipe at that point, so they might have been writing already knowing that Walky was wrong.

        2. Li

          I feel like they’ve literally addressed this and said it was very funny to them that Walkyverse Walky felt that way.

      2. Dot

        Walky didn’t say that. He said he hoped they’d never find out.

    7. Li

      You are just fundamentally incorrect about… a lot of stuff, but especially about how Joyce used to view being gay.

      https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/06-strange-beerfellows/sin/

      Hint: that last panel is a joke, Joyce did not hate being gay even back then.

      But she definitely thought premarital sex was worse than lying.

    8. Proxiehunter

      No build up except the prior fifteen years of strips.

    9. Adam Black

      You had me until you said “out of nowhere”
      It’s been set up for ages. But the buildup was very slow and interferes with a major plot point better set up for a greater emotional payoff.

      https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/classdismissed/

      1. Dot

        I think if these things were intended to be legitimate, serious buildup for this romantic relationship, fewer of them should have been jokes. It really bothers me when people hold them up as this great foreshadowing, because I love sapphic stories. I love slowburn, I love slowly coming to terms with feelings and yearning, and all of it. I’m a lesbian. I love when sapphic relationships are written well and developed carefully, and I still, still, still cannot see Joyce and Dorothy as that. The vibe I get, from everyone constantly holding up this running gag as obvious romantic foreshadowing, is that the author made a bunch of queerbaiting jokes earlier on in the comic, realized what bad form it was, and subsequently overcorrected. If this was how things were going to go, I would have preferred it be treated as a serious possibility earlier than this year.

        1. Thag Simmons

          There’s definitely some non-comedic foreshadowing, but it’s mostly either stuff that could be interpreted platonically or as mere jealousy on Becky’s part.

          I think there’s two things that make this feel rushed:

          1. In a lot of ways Joyce and Dorothy are modeled on close platonic character dynamics that fans interpret as queer, almost literally “what if Ann and Leslie actually kissed?”. I think it’s cool to go there, but I do think those ships get popular because they’re big fish for a small pond, there’s generally slim pickings in terms of queer stuff in the rest of the work, which is not the case here.

          2. It literally is. This was originally meant to still be a few years out and the characters got away from the writer.

        2. Dot

          Yeah I keep having that in mind. Annoying! Rein in your characters when they start to get out of control or you end up with things like the slowburn sapphic romance you’ve been planning being a rushed, sloppy, undercooked mess.

        3. Bittersweet

          Yeah, I feel that. And it’s really the protest storyline’s fault too lol. Whenever my characters start going off the handle to the detriment of the story, there’s usually one specific problem character or setting and the easiest solution is to physically pick them up and put them somewhere else. If the protest had taken place off campus and only Joyce or only Dorothy had been involved, it would’ve gone down perfectly fine. If it had taken place on campus and just been about LGBTQ rights instead (and followed the original plan of them having a moment, going “oh fuck oh no” and then trying to go back to their boyfriends while working through things and then eventually those relationships ending some point down the line) then it would’ve been perfectly fine. Still would’ve gotten the initial implosion of comments, but less egregious. I would’ve liked one or two more storylines before getting to the kiss personally, I would’ve rather the protest have been entirely separate.

          I just really dislike the execution. And it’s gonna bleed for a while, the story’s gonna feel woobly until we’re a good ways past this arc. Which is fine, that happens in all comics every now and then, it just feels very frustrating right now given the pacing of DOA which is simultaneously glacial and breakneck.

        4. Yumi

          I’m personally glad it didn’t take another five years. Don’t like the protest backdrop for it, and I think that’s where Willis could have reined in the characters, but so much had built up by then that I think I would have been absolutely sick of it if it had continued building for another five years.

          Or maybe it would have made me a fan of the ship– nothing against it, just not personally excited by it– but I doubt it.

        5. Dot

          At minimum we should have had another year or two to wind down the Joe/Joyce arc, which now feels abortive.

        6. Li

          I’m not saying you’re going to like it, but I do think it’s too early to say it feels abortive when we aren’t actually at the end of anything yet.

        7. Rogue 7

          I think Willis retroactively declared the jokes as foreshadowing specifically because he thought if he didn’t it’d be queerbaiting.

          Honestly, in the abstract I don’t have much problem with that (aside from a quibble over the definition of “queerbaiting”)- authors and stories change as one writes them, and realizing that jokes you wrote in the past actually should have been taken seriously is cool.

          But the escalation from the realization of feelings to makeouts has been exceedingly rushed. To use a metaphor, the foundation has been laid, but the rest of the house sure went up fast.

        8. Yumi

          Willis had Joyce and Dorothy happening in mind since before the timeskip. So jokes early on might not have been meant as foreshadowing, but anything at least since the timeskip seems intentional toward their relationship.

        9. Yumi

          I do think a lot of these jokes, especially in the past several years, were foreshadowing. I don’t think they were “great” foreshadowing, just foreshadowing in terms of how this comic does it.

          Dorothy’s buildup to this was a lot more interesting for me, as someone who also love yearning and all that. But I do think some of the romantic foreshadowing on Joyce’s part was obvious.

        10. Megan

          you’re so much fun

    10. hkerstyn

      Joyce being bisexual in general has not been built up, but the Joyce / Dorothy couple has been built up forever.

      1. Proxiehunter

        Joyce “Warm and safe forever” Brown being bisexual has been built up for ages.

    11. Adeptus

      I’m with Derek. As a slow burn development this would have been fine. The speedrun version breaks my immersion and leaves me bored.

      1. Proxiehunter

        Was 15 years not a slow enough burn?

    12. Nymph

      I’m sorry you’re bored. Sometimes stories just aren’t catering to our personal preferences for storytelling, character arcs, or plot points. I hope you find a story that caters more to what you’re interested in.

  27. Cimorene

    4,5, and 6 remind me of my friends inviting me to a pagan bonfire and we all wrote out goals on bay leaves. I misunderstood because I wrote down, “Tear down capitalism.” Then we tossed them into the fire and it was then explained these were individual goals for the next month we hoped to accomplish and I panicked.

    1. Kyulen

      It’s a good goal, but definitely not something a single person can accomplish in a month.

      1. Nymph

        Not with that attitude.

    2. yak

      shoulda added another bay leaf to the fire that says “…in minecraft”

      1. Cimorene

        Same friend that organized the get together has to add “In Minecraft” to a lot of our conversations as it is haha

    3. SillyGoose

      Well we’ll still count it as a win if you do it by next year, we’re not monsters.

  28. yak

    I love how the first panel is basically like “ok Protest Arc is all wrapped up time for DRAMA”

  29. superglucose

    Becky already knows. And is ecstatic.

    Joe also already knows. And is devastated.

    Walky also also already knows, and is mildly sad.

    1. yak

      Walky already knows and for it’s just another thing to heap onto his pile of self-loathing.

      1. Leorale

        This tracks.

    2. HueSatLight

      Early on in DoA, Willis said they made personality tweaks coming over from the walkyverse. Like Walky isn’t filled with rage in the dumbiverse. I hope that’s another convention that gets loosened up. Nowhere near the extreme of Walky flying into a violent rampage and caving in the face of the nearest person.
      Dorothy kind of uses him (sometimes with the pretense of being considerate) and he should be upset about it. I doubt he’d express it in the way he should, but if there’s going to be less therapy talk, when is Walky going to get pissed off?

      1. Bittersweet

        I want Walky to go on his explosive anger arc, I want him to punch Incelerator, I want Nightguy to become a shockingly okay antihero, I want him to get in trouble and for Linda to come back and be a villain. Angry Walky just sounds like such a good time, and even the most patient person would crash out on Dorothy after this if they were in his shoes. Real life Walky would be in great danger of becoming an incel from this (warning signs: privileged upbringing, zero actual friends, golden child, self-loathing), but I don’t want that. I’m clarifying that very much because some people say “I want him to crash out on Dorothy” and they mean it abusively, I just want a justified Reason You Suck Speech [even though I don’t think she sucks, I think she’s just due.]

        Gimme angry Walky, angry Walky just sounds like a lot more fun to read than more mopey Walky.

    3. Heavensrun

      I expect Becky to have complicated feelings but mostly be happy for her friends. I expect Joe to be heartbroken.

      I expect Walky to be *relieved*.

    4. Thag Simmons

      I would be very surprised if Becky was ecstatic. Despite the image she presents, she isn’t automatically going to be rooting for a couple just because it’s lesbian

      1. Dot

        Becky has very strong religious reasons not to be wild about infidelity as well

        1. Big Z

          Yup — she’s made it abundantly clear that as far as she’s concerned you can still be a 100% no-issues-or-caveats Christian while also being a lesbian.

        2. Astariel

          She was perfectly fine with infidelity when Joyce was trying to break up Jacob & Raidah. She even helped facilitate it. I don’t see her suddenly developing religious scruples now, especially since there are plenty of other potential reasons for her to be unhappy with it.

  30. theburningbentley

    Calling it now, officially:
    Dorothy was about to say “before we can allow ourselves to date”
    Joyce assumes it was “Before we can allow ourselves to have some of that ‘normal friend sex’ that Jennifer was talking about”

    This is kind of a joke, but has anyone considered yet in the Great Sicko Paladin War if Joyce might be one of those people that think that its not cheating if its with another girl? I’m not saying thats the case, but i am curious. That wouldn’t have felt widely out of character for her in the past

    1. yak

      The idea has been floated, but it’s hard to believe she would be *that* naive after a semester of gender studies, and she seems aware that this is going to disrupt her relationship with Joe.

      It’s still weird though. This entire arc has seen a very contemplative Dorothy and a very uncontemplative Joyce. I can’t help but think Willis will give us another legendary bait-and-switch.

    2. pjeseb

      There was already a comic where Joyce yelled at Grace for cheating on Mandy with Sierra https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/unraveling/

      So my guess is “No.”

      1. Li

        Genuine counterpoint: except she was mistaken there, and they told her that wasn’t cheating, because Mandy is cool with it, and sometimes Sierra also makes out with Mandy.

        So yes, she did at one point think two girls kissing was cheating, but it turned out they were in a poly situation.

        (This is devil’s advocate, I don’t think Joyce doesn’t think kissing would be cheating, and Willis has said it’s cheating for Joyce and Dorothy, but. That comic IS technically an example of Joyce getting mixed messages, rather than an example of her having clear definitions of cheating.)

    3. HueSatLight

      It would be out of her character now because Dorothy said they couldn’t kiss because of Walky and Joe. Not saying the story’s not going to go that way, but Joyce taking Jennifer at face value requires her forgetting Jennifer is in denial about being bi and believing she is more right than Dorothy. And then not saying anything to reassure Dorothy this entire time.

      1. Adam Black

        Except Joyce could simply be following Jennifer, in also in denial she’s bi.
        There’s been no big gay revelation here ( except in Dorothy) . She’s like a week behind here, just be open about her feelings without thinking any of through. So AntiJoyce.

        Jennifer has really given her a ‘no labels’ path to follow.

        1. HueSatLight

          i just said I wasn’t buying that.

      2. Adam Black

        Bi denial/ no labels kissing girl friends ALL the way

        https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/04-hompk/classdismissed/

    4. Cimorene

      I have been thinking that is exactly how Joyce has been reading this entire interaction and it will wind up devastating Dorothy.

      1. Holly

        I can see this, but I am inclined not to go with it since there was a handy link to some behind the scenes Patreon comments from Willis a couple of strips ago, where he said it was intentionally wedding-like at the protest, with Joyce’s words representing vows.

        That seems too intentional from Joyce for her to suddenly turn around and not mean it.

    5. Thag Simmons

      I think Joyce might be willfully clinging to Jennifer’s notion that it doesn’t count if it’s with your best friend, not because she really in her heart of hearts believes it, but because otherwise she’d have to choose.

      I think at this point Joyce wants to eat her cake and have it too.

      1. Dot

        I think this is my read too. It squares for me how gung-ho Joyce is being, which otherwise doesn’t feel in-character.

      2. HueSatLight

        It’s not unlikely that’s the intent, it’s not resonating with me personally though. Like there’s missing reactions to some of the things Dorothy’s saying.

        1. HueSatLight

          Filing it slightly above “Joyce has already talked to Joe about potential polyamory and he is nominally willing” and “extended Jennifer Dream Sequence“.

  31. StClair

    “But, as you well know, appearances can be deceiving, which brings me back to the reason why we’re here. We’re not here because we’re free. We’re here because we’re not free.”

  32. yak

    Joe:

    Joyce: (mid-atlantic accent) Come now, Joe, you’re being hysterical! Why not have a cigarette to calm your nerves, eh?

    1. yak

      the got damn parser ate Joe’s line.

      Joe: {sobbing, blubbering, etc.}

      1. Wilde

        I dunno, there’s something hilarious about her saying that to him while he just stares at her blankly

        1. Leorale

          I chuckled

  33. Qube

    I have trouble believing that dan quayle was given any difficult tasks, save as some form of occasional punishment

    1. Clif

      They put him in charge of the people in charge of NASA. He’s giving a press conference and it turns out he believes there are canals on Mars.

    2. Proxiehunter

      They asked him to spell potato once. He found that pretty hard.

      1. PedanticJerkass

        Looking back from the present, I kind of miss the days when relatively trivial things like misspelling “potato” or letting out a slightly awkward yell were all that were needed to completely torpedo a political career forever.

    3. C.T Phipps

      Dan Quayle notably convinced Mike Pence to not engage in treason and help the January 6th coup.

      So, I no longer am interested in badmouthing the guy.

  34. Corey C.

    I think Joyce would rather become Robespierre, complete with her new government turning on her and beheading her, than facing Becky and telling her all her suspicions were right and she’s madly in love with Dorothy, who singlehandedly stole her from both Becky AND Joe.

  35. Wilde

    Okay listen seriously though

    Am I the only one who also sometimes writes lists the way Dorothy does? The kind that slowly (or rapidly) spiral away from all possible achievability and racticality?

    Okay damn, gotta go work on my next list

    Summon Anxiety, Form of: Perfectionism!

    1. eh, whatever

      You’re one of very few people who actually write them down.

      1. Wilde

        Eh to be real, mine don’t go nearly as far as Dorothy’s. Although… sometimes I do add stuff like that onto a list that’s gotten out of control, as a way of making fun of myself and entertaining my spouse if they find the list lying around.

        #15, “try to take over the world”

    2. Andy

      I keep a list on my phone.

    3. HueSatLight

      combination grocery / task list.
      so like:
      milk
      cabbage
      blood

  36. Mr.Morningstar

    And her being autistic was… a surprise

  37. sun tzu

    I’m sorry, Dorothy, I really am, but if you want to topple the military-industrial complex and give power to the people, you WILL need to be President. Or AT LEAST congresswoman.
    For all of Jocelyne’s advice advice about being an “irritant”, and for all your growing awareness of the system’s corruption, politics still gets more shit done than activism. If Biden hadn’t won the 2020 election, there’d be Russian troops in Kiev right now and covid’s death toll would have been even worse. If Obama hadn’t won the 2008 elections, millions of Americans wouldn’t have had healthcare coverage, and the USA probably wouldn’t have had gay marriage. Protesting, meanwhile… has kind of turned into a social gathering for the left, but its actual accomplishments are few and far between. It CANNOT replace leftist politicians – not today, not tomorrow.
    It’s unfair to put the weight of the world on your shoulders, Dorothy. But if you want to solve the world’s problems, you’re gonna need to, I dunno, make Roz your political consultant or something.

    1. Veronica

      Finally, a person in these comments that realises that being president gives you more power to effect change than joining a local protest group!

      (Assuming you aren’t looking at a hostile congress and your policy plans aren’t massively derailed by an unexpected pandemic or some such)

      1. sun tzu

        Hell, even with the most hostile Congress since 1861, Obama still got a lot of important shit done.
        But it doesn’t get celebrated, because shitting on Democrats is a bipartisan passtime. Conservatives shit on Democrats because they’re “the enemy”, liberals shit on Democrats to prove their ideological purity.

        1. thejeff

          Even Biden, with an evenly split Senate (relying on a couple who were driven out of the party for their obstruction), got far more legislation through than we had any right to expect.

        2. Thag Simmons

          He also funded and legitimized a genocide, which kind of fundamentally stains any domestic policy wins he might have had.

        3. Li

          That’s every president we’ve ever had. Do you feel the same way about all of them?

          Genuine question. Because if you do, then fine.

        4. Thag Simmons

          Pretty much

        5. Veronica

          The got absolutely *buckets* of money approved for renewable and green economy infrastructure…which was then immediately cancelled by the Republicans who were directly benefit ing from it.

          The right person as president gets a lot of important (but boring) stuff done

        6. HueSatLight

          “ideological purity” and treating “conservative” and “liberal” like they’re polar opposite teams. got any more canards?

    2. Thag Simmons

      When the American Military Industrial Complex is truly toppled, it will absolutely not be the President that does it

      Like that’s not a thing the President can do. You do not get to be President if that is a thing you want to do.

      1. thejeff

        It’s also not a thing random activists do. It’s a far less achievable goal than “become President”. It’s hardly even defined – are we just weakening it’s influence? Or completely ending arms manufacture in the US? Might as well just write down “world peace”.

        1. Veronica

          I think if you want to shut down the American Military Complex your actual goal would need to be “end every armed conflict occurring in every country ever” so there’s no more buyers

        2. thejeff

          Not just every current armed conflict, but resolve every potential grievance or national dispute (or even simple ambition) that could lead to one that people might feel the need to be prepared for. “world peace”

    3. thejeff

      So much this.
      Sure, if you’re goals are things like “end capitalism” or “world peace” or even “topple the military/industrial complex” and you’ll see anything less as betrayal, then any attempt to work within the system is doomed to failure. But working outside the system is basically futile as well.

      In reality, who runs the government actually matters. Politics can accomplish things. Maybe only incrementally, but that still matters. Activism can help push that, but that only works as long as the activist goals don’t get too far ahead of what’s politically possible.

      1. HueSatLight

        whoever hacks the muzak, how about some Mississippi Goddam

    4. Holly

      I agree for the most part – protesting has many uses too though, not least for raising the awareness of enough people to issues, to make them then vote in enough quantity for someone who will take the desired action on those issues.

      1. thejeff

        It can backfire though, when either the protestors are left with no one to vote for or when one party is tied to an unpopular protest slogan.
        Like some years back, “defund the police” was weaponized against Democrats because of left-wing activists, despite basically no national Dems signing on to the idea.

  38. Burahn

    The more I see of this ship, the less I like its dynamic. The smile on Joyce’s face as she reads arguably the two most important things to do first, telling Joe and Walky to effect a breakup. Only everything after gets her concerned? We’re not here for smooth sailing, that’s fine, but this sure doesn’t feel like Joyce.

    1. RocketRelm

      The first two are the things she knows about, the rest of Dorothy rambling in ways that feel like she’s rambling about incredible violence for *pages* that’s cramming a lot of leftism arbitrarily into Dorothy’s character. Which mostly works when taken less like literal goals and more like “she’s just rambling about anything and everything in an endless list so she can avoid telling Becky indefinitely”.

    2. Adam Black

      Yes, that is the joke.
      That is the situation of the situation comedy. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-15/04-the-only-exception/catch-2/

    3. Hat

      It feels bad because, despite it being number 1 and 2, it’s pretty apparant that neither girl seems to really give a damn about Walky and Joe.

      Meanwhile the Becky thing… we all see where this is going, right? Becky is going to be surprised, and disapproving of the cheating, but is going to go “I’m in love with Dina now, remember?”

      I think the other reason it leaves a bad taste in some of our mouths is that Joyce feels weirdly passive in all of this.

      1. Holly

        I think you’re all right here, that they are not quite understanding the seriousness of their actions to Joe and Walky – but that appears like it might be the whole set up for the drama and the lessons they have to learn.

        It’s an important part of maturing to realise that the people you most value might be the people who least value or respect you, and the people you are most casually dismissive of might have been the people who have been treating you with the most healthy love and respect.

        It usually shows in young adults this age chasing ‘cool’ friends and abandoning old or ‘boring’ friends – Becky’s fear, and part of her jealousy of Dorothy comes into play here. But that’s not where they are making the mistake exactly – they’ve realised that and thought of her feelings. They don’t think of Becky as less and are probably afraid she won’t understand that. They’ve not figured out how to tell her yet, but they have not dismissed her at all.

        The key reason they are making the mistake of being more dismissive of their boyfriends’ reactions comapred to Becky’s, is likely because Becky stated her insecurities up front and out loud right from the point she dropped Joyce off the first time, and has never hidden her feelings on the matter.

        Neither Joe nor Walky have communicated their insecurities with their partners in depth, so they are both incredibly oblivious to the depth of hurt they can cause them – and not experienced enough to realise. They are all set up now to be about to learn this the hard way.

        Sometimes people expect you to know or guess how they might feel when something happens, especially if you are in a partnership with them. In reality, the assumptions being you make might be wildly different, especially if big feelings have never been communicated. We won’t be able to tell if that is what is happening here until we see the conversations with the boyfriends, but it is possible.

        Sorry if that reads a bit scattered! Wasn’t sure which point in the thread to click reply either.

  39. Acher4

    Dorothy knows what has to happen indeed.

    A bit skewed though with Becky. 😛

  40. BBCC

    Oh yeah, sure, no more difficult conversations! Nobody but Presidents has those!

    And that’s a mighty presidential list, Dorothy.

  41. Torgamous

    This comic could not have been timed better, with the actual president delaying a very important revelation by desperately searching for Something, God, Anything Else to focus on instead.

    1. PedanticJerkass

      He seems to think he’s going to find whatever it is he’s looking for on a golf course.

  42. Odo

    It’s a funny bit, but practically Becky isn’t any sort of problem here. She doesn’t have any claim over Joyce’s relationships.

    It might leave Becky feeling hurt, but pain is kinda just a part of life. If Becky is hurting in this instance it is because she needs to grow, and boy oh boy is Joyce not the right person to help with that growth.

    I guess the main question is whether Becky will handle it well enough, or whether it will impact her relationship with Dina.

    1. Dot

      She’s been weirdly cavalier this whole time, but I would hope that would stop once Joe is actually in front of her.

      1. HueSatLight

        cavalier. that’s the word.

    2. thejeff

      I don’t think it matters whether Becky has “any claim over Joyce’s relationships” or not. Or even what that means really.

      She’s their friend. Joyce’s long time best friend. Joyce especially doesn’t want to hurt her and is worried that this will. Whether Becky would be justified in being hurt doesn’t really matter.

      1. Florence

        That’s the juice of it

        It would be unfair for Joyce and Dorothy not to be together because of Becky’s feelings but that doesn’t mean Becky won’t feel hurt from her complicated feelings

        It’s the part I love about this arc, a perfect kind of tragedy

  43. Bluesnake463

    I feel like I am a little confused about what their long-term goal is. They are acting like they want to continue doing this, so are they planning on breaking up with their boyfriends or trying to get into open relationships? Joyce just seems very down for this, and I feel like, as much as she does love Dorothy, she would not be very calm about breaking Joe’s heart.

    1. thejeff

      There are definitely reasons we haven’t gotten any real introspection from Joyce here. There’s a twist coming, I think, though I don’t have any real idea what it’s going to be.

      1. Big Z

        Your lips to Willis’ ears!

  44. SarahTerra

    Joyce is just all in on the smooching Dorothy thing, huh? Absolutely zero anxiety or confusion about her “new” bi-ness. I’d attribute it to being caught up in the whirlwind, but she’s very matter-of-fact.

    Reckon we’ll have to see how she is after she’s had a night’s sleep.

    1. Heavensrun

      She already smashed through her moment of truth. There’s nothing to have anxiety or confusion about.

      1. Dot

        She has no religious reasons anymore to be hung up on being bi but I still wish we were getting more of her perspective about this. This is a major life development and she’s getting ready to leave her boyfriend over this! Why aren’t we getting more of her thoughts?

        1. Adeptus

          Nothing has weight, nothing matters. All of this rings false to me. Suddenly all we get is cheap gags. I used to love the character moments, revelations and build-up. Now nothing seems to matter.

        2. pope suburban

          That’s what’s getting to me. They’re both so weirdly casual about it. We get one panel of funny faces for an “oh no” gag and then they keep on truckin’. Like, Dorothy had a full-on spiral about the ethics of Yale and Presidential ambitions, her whole push to replace Ruth as RA was involved and focused on providing for people’s needs, and she’s been Mom Friend for Joyce for ages. And Joyce is always focused on doing what’s right (not what her church says is right) and protecting the people around her. What we’ve been seeing here just doesn’t match up to anything we’ve seen from them. Even as they’ve developed as characters, those moral cores have been there. Dorothy chose not to want to be President out of care. Joyce chose to support Becky, to the point of punching Toedad, out of care. And now that feels like it’s gone and it’s pretty disorienting.

        3. Heavensrun

          Dude, what is gone? The last two posts were *literally about their concern for Becky’s feelings.”

        4. Needfuldoer

          Because Joyce’s characterization is bending into a pretzel to make Jorothy happen.

        5. Big Z

          I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s been having this feeling.

          And it’s not “Nooo, Joyce can’t be bi!”, it’s “this is not the way I would imagine Joyce approaching an ultimately moral conundrum even as recently as a few months of real time ago”.

        6. Needfuldoer

          Right? She went from “freaking out about touching Joe’s fully clothed dong” to “make out with Dorothy amid a protest being violently dispersed” almost literally overnight.

          She didn’t hesitate to step into Jacob and Raidah’s relationship, but that was because she wanted him. The realization that she just damaged her own relationship with Joe, perhaps irreversibly, doesn’t seem to have fully sunken in yet.

        7. Josh

          I really needed to read this thread of comments. Felt like I was taking crazy pills and nobody was addressing how completely off all of this is. Feels like an agenda is being pushed but it feels too sudden for it to be that. Like how can this be the same Joyce who had the emotional intelligence to reassure Joe that he wasn’t a mistake, just last week? And yet triangle smiles for reading out loud the intent to tell him you cheated on him.

        8. Taffy

          What agenda? Which one in specific?

        9. perpetual summer

          yeah Josh could you tell us more about this agenda

        10. Proxiehunter

          Check your dog whistle. When you say “agenda” like that every one can hear what your agenda is.

        11. Big Z

          I mean, as far as I can tell the only “agenda” being pushed, per Word of Willis, is that this story beat happened earlier than originally planned so some of it kinda feels rushed to some folks.

        12. Josh

          Willis’ agenda, for anyone wondering. His personal bias. It’s really not anything deeper than that. It’s poor wording on my part.

        13. thejeff

          Yeah, Dorothy has openly agonized more about realizing she was bi. It’s weird if Joyce just accepts it without even a flicker of doubt.

          I think we’ve stayed away from Joyce’s perspective for a reason and there’s another shoe to drop. No idea what though.

        14. eh, whatever

          Joyce has been listening to Jennifer.

        15. HueSatLight

          That makes it ring even hollower.

        16. Heavensrun

          Oh, we’re at the “Listen to fan theories and get mad about things that aren’t in the comic” aspect of this thing already, huh?

        17. Needfuldoer

          Even if there are no romantic feelings involved, Joyce taking Jennifer’s “best friends can screw around a little” advice means she sees Dorothy as her best friend now. Even that would be devastating for Becky.

  45. Rogue 7

    Why is it that telling Joe and Walky is so much less stressful than telling Becky? Neither Dorothy nor Joyce is dating Becky.

    1. Dot

      They’re building Becky’s reaction up to be worse than it’s likely to be, and vastly underestimating how bad things are likely to go with Walky and Joe.

      1. Rogue 7

        I damn well hope so.

        But recent events have made me feel like Willis prioritizes rmantic homosexual relationships above others to a degree I don’t like.

        I’m thinking of the tumbr post where he cites Parks & Rec, Scrubs, and Community- how JoyceXDorothy is him declaring “See, these pairings should be romantic!” and calling back to how Leslie being straight is called a “tower of lies” as apparently his thoughts.

        I have no problem with folks who want to ship couples like that. I do have a problem with being unwilling to cede ground to those of us who value strong platonic friendships.

        And similarly, I think the lack of concern for the boyfriends here is telling. Dorothy is worried about telling her roommate because her roommate was in love with Joyce. Well Dorothy and Walky declared themselves such before, and Joe only hasn’t said it because he and Joyce have been dating for like a week.

        Even if the story goes such that the boys have a worse reaction than our two erstwhile protagonists are thinking, the focus on the idea that Becky is the one to worry about leads me to the conclusion that it’s her relationship with Joyce and Dorothy that matters more.

        1. eh, whatever

          I have no problem with folks who want to ship couples like that. I do have a problem with being unwilling to cede ground to those of us who value strong platonic friendships.

          Does there have to be something for everyone in this particular comic?

        2. Rogue 7

          No. But as a reader and a member of a comment section, I’m entitled to voice my opinion about the kind of relationship I’d prefer, just as all of the folks who have been vocally calling for Joyce and Dorothy to get together for years prior to this arc have been.

        3. Nadamás

          And people are entitled to tell you that you dound like a weirdo

        4. Li

          So, as a fellow lover of strong platonic friendships, I assume you were sad when it turned out Joe had romantic feelings for Joyce? A strong platonic friendship between a man and a woman is so rare.

        5. Dot

          I actually was, haha. It took a long, long time for me to come around on them as a couple – just in time for it all to fall apart.

        6. Li

          You’re also not the one who complained that people who ship Leslie and Ann are “unwilling to cede ground” to people who like platonic friendships, like this is a war front and Willis’s shipping preferences were an attack heh.

        7. Li

          Like, I’ll be honest: I just think MOST of us are inconsistent, I think that’s human!

          I am definitely much more bothered by “men and women can’t be friends, sex always gets in the way”, both because that’s a still MUCH more dominant cultural narrative that gets less — not none! but less — scrutiny. Even though it echoes through many actual, canon plot lines. Even though you can definitely see how the same logic impacts a lot of real-life straight men, who spend their lives believing that male-female friendships are impossible: sometimes to the point of getting angry with the women in their lives who actually want to be their friends, because all friendliness from a woman MUST be romantic interest, and women who say otherwise are liars.

          By contrast, when I hear people talk about the negative impact that queer shipping culture has — it’s always either “annoying” that shippers “won’t let them” enjoy a canonical platonic relationship, or else it’s…….. contorting themselves to blame shippers for structural queerphobia.

          “I’m afraid to be too affectionate with my platonic friends, because someone will call me gay!” … and somehow the problem is that shippers have “caused” same-gender affection to be more readily read as romantic, and not that society punishes the people it thinks are gay?

          So yeah: I am a bit of a hypocrite. I love strong platonic friendships, and I almost never mind when they turn into a queer romance. Someday, I will presumably have actually reached my personal saturation point where it no longer feels like a special treat to get a canonical queer romance, and therefore I’m more inclined to be sad about lost friendships? But I’m nowhere near that point.

        8. Rogue 7

          Maybe replying in this chain won’t get my comment eaten.

          First of all- I acknowledge that you want me to re-evaluate my biases and think about whether or not I’m holding these relationships to some sort of higher standard because it’s a WLW relationship as opposed to a traditional heterosexual one. It’s a fair question to ask.

          But believe me when I say that I *have* thought about it and come to the conclusion that no, that’s not the reason.

          What it comes down to is similar to why I oftentimes object to “structural inequality” being held up as the sole definition of “racism”- I’m generally of the opinion that a work or an individual’s specific circumstances and history mean more than overall societal trends.

          Mainstream TV like Parks & Rec, Scrubs, and Community are all way more steeped in the structural queerphobia than Dumbing of Age. Since its inception this comic has done a good job of making queer narratives an essential part of its story. It’s one reason that I do like this comic, for all my grumping about this arc and this particular choice. But *because* it has that context, *because* the author has taken great pains to make sure that non-straight relationships are just as viable as straight ones, I’m not as on board with these arguments. They’re absolutely true- but they’re less true *specifically for this webcomic*.

          But also: I liked Joe & Joyce so much because of how much growth both characters had to do to get to a point where they were both capable of having a healthy relationship.

          For an example of a het relationship in this strip that would make me go “Oh, Honey, no”, look no further than Jennifer & Walky.

        9. Nadamás

          Societal trends often dictates what someone history and circumstances are tho. You can’t really separate one from the other.

        10. Li

          Honestly, what Nadamás said.

          I would have REALLY agonized over actually accusing Willis of queerbaiting with Joyce and Dorothy, because I try to reserve that word and words like it for very different situations. I don’t think you can really queerbait when your comic is full of textually queer characters. I don’t think “queerbaiting is when my ship doesn’t happen.” I’ve specifically called other commenters out for saying otherwise!

          But nor does this comic adding a third significant queer romance to its main roster (Dina/Becky and Ethan/Asher being the other two currently getting significant screen time) so completely reverse societal trends that platonic friendships between two people of the same gender have become an endangered species.

          Even within the comic, what about Joyce’s many other friendships? What about Sarah and Becky and Jennifer and Sal? Or are you genuinely worried that some people’s facetious comments about those friendships someday also becoming romantic might be onto something?

          Becky also has a nice friendship with Lucy I’d love to see more of. Despite Marcie’s old crush, her friendship with Sal is still going strong. I hope Alice gets integrated into the main friend group and we get to see her bounce off more of the girls! I’ve enjoyed seeing Ruth and Jennifer and Becky all reach out to Dorothy, however much her denial made it hard for any of them to help her.

          And despite my aforementioned sadness about Joyce and Joe, I’ve really been enjoying his burgeoning friendships with Dina and now Sarah, and I expect them to play a role in the fallout from what’s going on right now. I’d also like to see more of Jacob and Dorothy, though again, expecting some fallout!

          So… yeah. Even if you blot out the rest of the world, and only consider DoA all by itself, IS platonic female friendship actually in danger? Or have we, maybe, actually only had ONE platonic friendship turn into a romantic relationship this whole time?

          (Jennifer and Alice’s friendship was entirely in past-tense and introduced immediately as a former Relationship, so it doesn’t count, and neither Dina/Becky nor Ruth/Jennifer were actually friends before they kissed. Marcie/Sal and Becky/Joyce both ended with rejection. So…)

        11. Nadamás

          Man if the queerphobia in this comment wasn’t intentional then i must congratulate you on being the most oblivious weirdo ever. Sometimes is good to check how things you say sounds, at least once!

        12. Nadamás

          https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3luzq2niy5c2f

          I couldn’t not link.willis response to this it is perfect

        13. Li

          Ffffff. And here I was so caught by the pull-quote and its military language that I entirely missed that part of the main post. Good grief, Rogue 7.

        14. Nadamás

          They seem to have some issues.

        15. Rogue 7

          Li, back a few days ago, when we were discussing racism, did you see the comment I made where I cited two incidents, one where I felt I was unjustly accused and the other where an accusation of insensitivity would have been spot on? That’s the sort of self-reflection I try to do every single goddamn day when it comes to being an ally. On the racism front, the sexism front, everything. I am constantly doing my best to evaluate if my language is problematic.

          I acknowledge that I’m never going to be perfect in this regard. There is *always* the potential that I have made a mistake.

          But I don’t think I have here, and I don’t think I have anything to apologize for.

          First and foremost, because…well, look at what Willis said there. “That’s right, I fuckin’ do, and y’all can suck it”. I don’t actually think he’s joking here. I think he’s entirely serious.

          In the context of creative decisions he makes, fair dinkum. This is his story.

          Nadamas has accused me directly and Willis indirectly, of being queerphobic if I dislike this- it’s hard to interpret “Suck it” any other way.

          Here is my position:
          1.) The “alignment” of a relationship has zero inherent bearing on its value. Queer, straight, romantic, platonic, mono, poly, whatever. What matters is how the people in said relationship treat one another.

          2.) Society discriminates against anyone who does not conform to a M/F relationship with specific gender roles. In order to achieve a more just and equal society, it is good for people to be exposed to media that feature “nontraditional” relationships (here used as a catch-all for any sort of GSM relationship) both so that folks who are not familiar with them can be exposed to something new and so that those folks who identify as such can see themselves represented in media.

          3.) Being some flavor of non-straight is not inherently superior to being straight. Nor, obviously, is being straight better than anything else.

          4.) While acknowledging that point 2 means that seeing more GSM in media is a good thing on a society-wide level, the same does not apply to individual stories. For example: I just caught up on the SpyXFamily manga. Anime and manga in general very much need better representation of GSM folks. That doesn’t mean I think derailing Loyd and Yor’s relationship in favor of hooking them both up with same-sex couples would be a good idea.

          5.) Following from 4, a story being “more gay” as Willis has repeatedly promised to make Dumbing of Age, does not make it inherently better.

          6.) Writing characters as “more gay” purely for the sake of representation or to piss off homophobes, while noble, often leads to poor writing. It disregards established characterization and story logic.

          7.) It is very much possible to write queer characters poorly.
          7a) Ignoring established characterization for the sake of making things more gay is oftentimes a way this poor writing happens.
          7b) Willis did not make Dorothy & Joyce bi for each other for the sake of making things “more gay”- it was very much something that came naturally out of their characters.

          8) This storyline has devalued Joe & Joyce’s relationship.
          8a) I don’t really give a shit about Walky.
          8b) It has done so not by having Joyce cheat on Joe but by not giving that cheating the narrative heft it deserves. As evidence, I submit today’s strip, where the primary problem facing our protagonists is not how to tell Joe that the woman he’s become a better person for is about to break his heart, but how to tell Becky, who was in love with Joyce several months ago. This is a fixable problem- there’s still plenty of space in the narrative for consequences to happen. But I’ll be honest, the way that we haven’t had a chance to see what Joyce is thinking doesn’t give me confidence. Because the consequences I want to see are for Joyce to *feel bad* that she’s cheating on Joe, and there’s been plenty of time for that as well as for the narrative to point out how much she’s going to hurt Joe.
          8c) This plot arc interrupting Joe and Joyce’s narrative rather than being set later on in the story is also poor writing. Sadly that is *not* a fixable problem.
          8d) One of the reasons I use “devaluing” to talk about this is because I feel that this arc has rendered Joe & Joyce’s relationship pointless in terms of Joyce’s arc. Previously, I thought that if Joe & Joyce didn’t make it to the end of the series, Joyce would come out of it having learned something about herself and her character. She would have grown, at least somewhat, in her ability to relate to people and to manage her twin needs of emotional connection and horny. But now, all of that has been rendered irrelevant by her arc being interrupted by Dorothy X Joyce.

          9) None of this makes me queerphobic. I can’t convince anyone otherwise, because I’m just a person behind a computer screen. I also acknowledge that ultimately it’s not up to me to determine if my words are harmful- “intent is not magic” is very much true. But I’ve done my level best to present my argument. I’ve said what I have to say and tried to make genuine arguments. If what I’ve said isn’t enough to convince you that what I feel is rooted in what I believe equality is rather than queerphobia, so be it.

        16. Nadamás

          Jesus Christ my man, yiu could just said that you didn’t mean it that way and be done with it, now youbare just making it weirder with this long ass bullet point shit

        17. Rogue 7

          Like you would have accepted that.

          There are plenty of people commenting who *are* dealing with (mostly unconscious) biases against GSM folks. I want to acknowledge that. So my exhaustive post was the only way I could think of to get across that I think Willis is continuing to put queer relationships on a pedestal, that I think this is to the story’s detriment, and that, for the reasons I provided, this does not make me queerphobic.

        18. Nadamás

          K

        19. Proxiehunter

          Take that shovel you’re using here and start digging up.

        20. Li

          First and foremost, because…well, look at what Willis said there. “That’s right, I fuckin’ do, and y’all can suck it”. I don’t actually think he’s joking here. I think he’s entirely serious.

          In the context of creative decisions he makes, fair dinkum. This is his story.

          Nadamas has accused me directly and Willis indirectly, of being queerphobic if I dislike this- it’s hard to interpret “Suck it” any other way.

          I agree that Willis wasn’t joking. But I think they do find the idea behind your comment, that “prioritiz[ing] homosexual relationships” is a problem, funny, and not really worth responding to in a substantive way.

          Also, perhaps crucially: there’s a difference between “being queerphobic” and “making a queerphobic argument.” See also: unconscious biases. If you don’t think there’s anything unconsciously queerphobic in treating a platonic friendship becoming a romantic queer relationship as an attack on platonic friendships, or drawing an equivalency between homophobia and, idk, heterophobia… well. You’re certainly entitled to that opinion.

          3.) Being some flavor of non-straight is not inherently superior to being straight. Nor, obviously, is being straight better than anything else.

          Here’s another false equivalency. True in a vacuum! But ignoring the power dynamic, where queerphobic societies very much treat straight relationships as inherently superior, and random queer people joking that being queer is better than being cis and straight is… not coming from that same level of power. These two things are not “equally wrong”, and you positioning them as if they were is… well, it’s silly. And it’s done by queerphobes all the time. It’s an argument that makes you sound queerphobic.

          4.) While acknowledging that point 2 means that seeing more GSM in media is a good thing on a society-wide level, the same does not apply to individual stories. For example: I just caught up on the SpyXFamily manga. Anime and manga in general very much need better representation of GSM folks. That doesn’t mean I think derailing Loyd and Yor’s relationship in favor of hooking them both up with same-sex couples would be a good idea.

          Is this something you’re worried is going to happen in SpyXFamily? Is it something you’re generally worried about happening at all, ever, outside of web comics and other fully indie productions?

          (Also, why do you think it would be worse if they broke up and both entered queer relationships? What are you assuming would be lost there? Why do you think it would be a bad idea?)

          6.) Writing characters as “more gay” purely for the sake of representation or to piss off homophobes, while noble, often leads to poor writing. It disregards established characterization and story logic.

          Do you have any examples?

          7.) It is very much possible to write queer characters poorly.
          7a) Ignoring established characterization for the sake of making things more gay is oftentimes a way this poor writing happens.
          7b) Willis did not make Dorothy & Joyce bi for each other for the sake of making things “more gay”- it was very much something that came naturally out of their characters.

          …Is this a typo? Or do you not, actually, think Joyce and Dorothy’s bisexuality is an example of this thing you’re complaining about? Are there any examples of it at all, then?

          8) This storyline has devalued Joe & Joyce’s relationship.
          8b) It has done so not by having Joyce cheat on Joe but by not giving that cheating the narrative heft it deserves. As evidence, I submit today’s strip, where the primary problem facing our protagonists is not how to tell Joe that the woman he’s become a better person for is about to break his heart, but how to tell Becky, who was in love with Joyce several months ago. This is a fixable problem- there’s still plenty of space in the narrative for consequences to happen. But I’ll be honest, the way that we haven’t had a chance to see what Joyce is thinking doesn’t give me confidence. Because the consequences I want to see are for Joyce to *feel bad* that she’s cheating on Joe, and there’s been plenty of time for that as well as for the narrative to point out how much she’s going to hurt Joe.

          This is the kind of thing folks are talking about when they complain that some readers have kind of… made up a guy to get mad at, only in this case the guy they’ve made up to get mad at is the way they’re very sure this storyline is going to be play out, when it’s not finished yet, and it’s much, much, much too soon to say any of this with such confidence. You’ve even admitted as much in 8b.

          8c) This plot arc interrupting Joe and Joyce’s narrative rather than being set later on in the story is also poor writing. Sadly that is *not* a fixable problem.

          Agree to disagree that aborting a narrative to do something else with it instead is automatically bad writing. I’m, again, unwilling to entertain notions that any of this is “bad writing” because of stuff that hasn’t yet happened yet, and which might not happen, or might happen in a way you personally find more narratively satisfying than expected.

          8d) One of the reasons I use “devaluing” to talk about this is because I feel that this arc has rendered Joe & Joyce’s relationship pointless in terms of Joyce’s arc. Previously, I thought that if Joe & Joyce didn’t make it to the end of the series, Joyce would come out of it having learned something about herself and her character. She would have grown, at least somewhat, in her ability to relate to people and to manage her twin needs of emotional connection and horny. But now, all of that has been rendered irrelevant by her arc being interrupted by Dorothy X Joyce.

          Oooooooor…………… maybe Joyce is very much still going to have learned something about herself and her character, including the exact things you’re talking about, and it’s too soon to say she isn’t going to learn them because of Joe, but also sort of odd to assert that she needs to learn these things because of Joe, or that she hasn’t, for example, been learning them because of Joe and Dorothy literally this entire time.

          9) None of this makes me queerphobic. I can’t convince anyone otherwise, because I’m just a person behind a computer screen. I also acknowledge that ultimately it’s not up to me to determine if my words are harmful- “intent is not magic” is very much true. But I’ve done my level best to present my argument. I’ve said what I have to say and tried to make genuine arguments. If what I’ve said isn’t enough to convince you that what I feel is rooted in what I believe equality is rather than queerphobia, so be it.

          Again: I’m not calling you queerphobic. I think some of the arguments you’re making are queerphobic.

          I think even just conceptualizing it as “queer relationship versus heterosexual relationship with non-standard gender norms”, talking about the former as a loss that comes at the expense at the latter, has underlying queerphobic assumptions.

          Like, part of the value you’re placing on Joe/Joyce is the presentation of nonstandard, healthy male and female gender roles, right? …Why do you think it is that you’re assuming those same gender roles are less valuable if Joe or Joyce aren’t heterosexual anymore? Is it because you think a bi man is less relatable for straight male readers?

          Do you not think that idea is worth challenging?

        21. Nadamás

          Honestly Li i salute yiu for having the mental bandwidth to response so well to this nonsense. I honestly just checked out it became too exhausting

        22. Rogue 7

          But as I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t hold with the notion that society being queerphobic is relevant here. Individual circumstances overwrite societal biases.


          No, it’s not really something I’m worried about. It’s an example. A means to illustrate my point. As to why I think it would be worse? Well, because the two have a really cute, funny, and meaningful relationship. Loid is falling in love and finally allowing himself to heal from trauma inflicted on him by war, while Yor is learning how to have her own desires instead of only living for others. Their relationship has huge secrets and is built on a foundation of lies, but it’s also the first one either of them have had where they can both be genuine with each other. Breaking them up would lose that.

          All I can do is speculate with the information I have at hand. My experience as a reader, someone who’s read through this strip multiple times while bored at work, and while I’m certainly prepared to admit I might be wrong, I’ll be honest- I don’t think I am with how this story is going.

          The reason I say that she needs to learn these things because of Joe is not because I think they’re things you can only learn in straight relationships, but because otherwise *what was the point of pairing them together?* Joyce liked that Paramore song because of Joe on June 13th. Since then, the only thing you’d have to rewrite about this comic in order to make Joyce single would be a few lines of dialogue. The story has been far more concerned with how *Becky* is going to react than Joe. I’m sorry. But I don’t see their relationship suddenly having the narrative weight you’re ascribing to it when it hasn’t held that weight for more than a month of strips now.

          I generally hold to the notion that advancing queerphobic arguments unfortunately makes one queerphobic. Same with most ‘-isms’, to be honest. If you’re advancing racist arguments, that makes you a racist. Particularly here on the internet, where all we are is the arguments we present. So I don’t differentiate as much.

          But the reason I’m saying that Joyce & Dorothy’s relationship is coming at the expense of Joe & Joyce is…because Joe and Joyce are going to break up. I’ll make a vow right now: if Joe, Joyce, and Dorothy become a polycule I will forevermore post under the name “Wrong 7”. I don’t see it happening. Joyce is going to be with Dorothy going forward, and not with Joe. It’s not necessarily adversarial, but it *is* a binary choice. That’s why it’s a “versus”. Because this story is not going to have both at the same time. And the author’s chosen the queer relationship over the straight one.

        23. Rogue 7

          Fuck me I butchered that, trying again

        24. Nadamás

          Plesse don’t

        25. Amós Batista

          A quote inside a quote. Haha damn it

        26. Rogue 7

          Here’s another false equivalency. True in a vacuum! But ignoring the power dynamic, where queerphobic societies very much treat straight relationships as inherently superior, and random queer people joking that being queer is better than being cis and straight is… not coming from that same level of power. These two things are not “equally wrong”, and you positioning them as if they were is… well, it’s silly. And it’s done by queerphobes all the time. It’s an argument that makes you sound queerphobic.

          But as I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t hold with the notion that society being queerphobic is relevant here. Individual circumstances overwrite societal biases.

          Is this something you’re worried is going to happen in SpyXFamily? Is it something you’re generally worried about happening at all, ever, outside of web comics and other fully indie productions?

          (Also, why do you think it would be worse if they broke up and both entered queer relationships? What are you assuming would be lost there? Why do you think it would be a bad idea?)

          No, it’s not really something I’m worried about. It’s an example. A means to illustrate my point. As to why I think it would be worse? Well, because the two have a really cute, funny, and meaningful relationship. Loid is falling in love and finally allowing himself to heal from trauma inflicted on him by war, while Yor is learning how to have her own desires instead of only living for others. Their relationship has huge secrets and is built on a foundation of lies, but it’s also the first one either of them have had where they can both be genuine with each other. Breaking them up would lose that.

          Do you have any examples?

          Fanfiction, mostly. You get characters who are so different from how they were written in the source material that they’re functionally original characters with the names slapped onto them. You get that with a ton of straight fanfiction, too, don’t get me wrong.

          …Is this a typo? Or do you not, actually, think Joyce and Dorothy’s bisexuality is an example of this thing you’re complaining about? Are there any examples of it at all, then?

          No, it’s not an example of what I’m complaining about. Their bisexuality has been written into the story for 5 years or more. The lack of care they’ve shown their partners, the sudden jump from Joyce literally sleeping with Joe last night to making out with Dorothy 12 hours later, that’s all new. But you go back and look at what I’ve commented, I’ve consistently said that Willis laid the groundwork for these two.

          Explicitly, in today’s strip along with the one on July 24th, what I’m complaining about is the notion that telling Becky is going to be so much more difficult than telling Joe. *That’s* where I have a problem with devaluing a heterosexual relationship. Because the hurt that Joyce is going to cause Becky is being treated as harder to deal with than the hurt that Joyce is going to cause Joe.

          This is the kind of thing folks are talking about when they complain that some readers have kind of… made up a guy to get mad at, only in this case the guy they’ve made up to get mad at is the way they’re very sure this storyline is going to be play out, when it’s not finished yet, and it’s much, much, much too soon to say any of this with such confidence. You’ve even admitted as much in 8b.

          All I can do is speculate with the information I have at hand. My experience as a reader, someone who’s read through this strip multiple times while bored at work, and while I’m certainly prepared to admit I might be wrong, I’ll be honest- I don’t think I am with how this story is going.

          Oooooooor…………… maybe Joyce is very much still going to have learned something about herself and her character, including the exact things you’re talking about, and it’s too soon to say she isn’t going to learn them because of Joe, but also sort of odd to assert that she needs to learn these things because of Joe, or that she hasn’t, for example, been learning them because of Joe and Dorothy literally this entire time.

          The reason I say that she needs to learn these things because of Joe is not because I think they’re things you can only learn in straight relationships, but because otherwise *what was the point of pairing them together?* Joyce liked that Paramore song because of Joe on June 13th. Since then, the only thing you’d have to rewrite about this comic in order to make Joyce single would be a few lines of dialogue. The story has been far more concerned with how *Becky* is going to react than Joe. I’m sorry. But I don’t see their relationship suddenly having the narrative weight you’re ascribing to it when it hasn’t held that weight for more than a month of strips now.

          Again: I’m not calling you queerphobic. I think some of the arguments you’re making are queerphobic.

          I think even just conceptualizing it as “queer relationship versus heterosexual relationship with non-standard gender norms”, talking about the former as a loss that comes at the expense at the latter, has underlying queerphobic assumptions.

          Like, part of the value you’re placing on Joe/Joyce is the presentation of nonstandard, healthy male and female gender roles, right? …Why do you think it is that you’re assuming those same gender roles are less valuable if Joe or Joyce aren’t heterosexual anymore? Is it because you think a bi man is less relatable for straight male readers?

          Do you not think that idea is worth challenging?

          I generally hold to the notion that advancing queerphobic arguments unfortunately makes one queerphobic. Same with most ‘-isms’, to be honest. If you’re advancing racist arguments, that makes you a racist. Particularly here on the internet, where all we are is the arguments we present. So I don’t differentiate as much.

          But the reason I’m saying that Joyce & Dorothy’s relationship is coming at the expense of Joe & Joyce is…because Joe and Joyce are going to break up. I’ll make a vow right now: if Joe, Joyce, and Dorothy become a polycule I will forevermore post under the name “Wrong 7”. I don’t see it happening. Joyce is going to be with Dorothy going forward, and not with Joe. It’s not necessarily adversarial, but it *is* a binary choice. That’s why it’s a “versus”. Because this story is not going to have both at the same time. And the author’s chosen the queer relationship over the straight one.

        27. Li

          No, it’s not really something I’m worried about. It’s an example. A means to illustrate my point.

          But it’s not an example of actual, real-world devaluation of heterosexual relationships, so. Most of what it illustrates is that the thing you’re concerned about isn’t a real problem?

          As to why I think it would be worse? Well, because the two have a really cute, funny, and meaningful relationship. Loid is falling in love and finally allowing himself to heal from trauma inflicted on him by war, while Yor is learning how to have her own desires instead of only living for others. Their relationship has huge secrets and is built on a foundation of lies, but it’s also the first one either of them have had where they can both be genuine with each other. Breaking them up would lose that.

          Also, why would breaking them up lose any of that? Are you assuming they couldn’t remain important to each other if they stopped being a couple? Why?

          Then I asked you if you had ANY examples of this actually happening, and you said:

          Fanfiction, mostly. […] You get that with a ton of straight fanfiction, too, don’t get me wrong.

          And I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how you typed these two sentences and didn’t immediately… see why you’re kind of making up a problem that doesn’t really exist.

          The reason I say that she needs to learn these things because of Joe is not because I think they’re things you can only learn in straight relationships, but because otherwise *what was the point of pairing them together?*

          The point was all of the character development for both of them that’s already happened, which just… isn’t going to be erased by the end of a romantic relationship, even if that’s what’s about to happen.

          The story has been far more concerned with how *Becky* is going to react than Joe.

          You said some variation of this a couple of times, and… for two strips, sure! Almost certainly setting up that Becky will be fine, and Joe will be the one who’s upset.

          I really think you are jumping to some conclusions here.

          I generally hold to the notion that advancing queerphobic arguments unfortunately makes one queerphobic.

          Okay, but that’s your choice. You are making the choice to take a neutral observation as a personal attack on your character.

          It still wasn’t, and isn’t, and you’re still advancing queerphobic arguments here.

          Joyce is going to be with Dorothy going forward, and not with Joe. It’s not necessarily adversarial, but it *is* a binary choice. That’s why it’s a “versus”.

          I think you misunderstood my point on this part.

          What I asked is why do you frame queer romantic relationships as coming at the expense of getting to see non-traditional gender norms, or important relationships between men and women? Why do you view a queer relationship as a loss, instead of just a different kind of win?

          Why do you keep talking like Joe is about to get Thanos snapped out of existence? Like all the impact he and Joyce have had on each other is going to disappear if they stop dating?

          I dunno. Between this and your SpyXFamily answer, I think you might not actually value platonic relationships as much as you think.

      2. Needfuldoer

        I think they’re underestimating how bad Becky’s reaction will be.

        https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/hindsight/

        1. TPRJones

          But that was before Becky had Dina in her life. I fully expect Becky to be thrilled by the news.

        2. Dot

          Dina is not a band-aid. Why would Becky not have complicated feelings in this situation? Even putting aside whatever feelings she might still have for Joyce, Becky is currently going through a crisis about the mutability of sexuality and has significant religious motivation to be uncomfortable with infidelity. She doesn’t just blindly support any gay couple she sees, either.

    2. Gwen

      Maybe because Becky has gone through a ton of trauma regarding both her sexuality and so they don’t want to put her through more? When she initially fled conversion therapy she fled to Joyce in the belief that she was also gay and that they had that shared connection, and was rejected. Now she’ll have to redefine that whole experience again on top of everything else she’s been put through.

      I don’t think it’s minimising Joe or Walky to be cautious about reopening that wound.

      1. Rogue 7

        It is when Becky’s been in a relationship with Dina for months *and* when it’s ignoring hiw much of a wound this is for Joe and Walky.

        To continue your “injuries” analogy, in a triage situation an old wound reopening is usually a lot less of a priority than freshly made injuries.

    3. Buli-Buli

      My theory is that they are focusing on how bad Becky’s reaction will be because while she has an understandable reason to be upset, Becky doesn’t really have a grievance.

      So, it is “safe” to imagine the drama with Becky because it will ultimately go nowhere if it happens at all.

      Thinking about Walky or Joe though, means thinking about how they have actually done something wrong.
      So they acknowledge they need to tell their boyfriends, but then they change the topic to “But what about Becky?!? Gasp!”.

      1. Dot

        Yeah focusing on Becky does also let them keep playing in this space where they don’t have to think too hard about how they have violated the trust of people they care deeply about and now have to hurt them further by telling them about it.

      2. Rogue 7

        I think the narrative needs to do a better job of selling this, to be honest.

        Because right now the text is that telling the boys will be no big deal and that the big, painful thing that our protagonists don’t want to do is telling Becky.

    4. Andy

      They can break up with their boyfriends and just not see them much again.

      There’s no way for Joyce to drop Becky from her life. And Dorothy is Becky’s roommate.

  46. Slartibeast Button, BIA

    How can any of us truly be free while we still have personal possessions?

  47. Florence

    My current read of Joyce is she has nothing to ground herself morally the way she used to and is moving with the chaos

    “Dorothy wants to kiss and has feelings for me? I kind of have feelings too so let’s go for it!”

    This is just a guess cause it’s hard to say but it’s like how Christian’s are confused by why non-Christians don’t murder without the fear of god or the reward of heaven

    Joyce no longer has all that stuff and is struggling(or not) with infidelity

    1. Big Z

      Frankly, I think that’s SLIGHTLY unfair to Joyce, but only in that I think we’re kinda watching Joyce try to develop a morality from first principles in real time at this point.

      1. Florence

        You’re probably right, I’m just struggling with where she’s at. It’s definitely loose

    2. thejeff

      Joyce kind of went through that in the Jacob arc though. “People still have feelings and you still care about those feelings.”

      Might tie more into the rom-com “It’s True Love and it’s meant to be” thing she also talked about in that arc.

      1. Florence

        I’m uncertain ?

        But I forget that second part you mention, perhaps that’s meant to be more relevant

        Gosh I really wish we could get more of what Joyce is feeling. I have such a strong sense of everyone else but she’s a mystery to me right now

      2. Josh

        It’s almost like this entire plot line is a regression for her character.

  48. Florence

    I haven’t done Becky analysis in a while but my read is she’s holding onto an idea of the past and her life that keeps slipping away as she tries to make sense of it with the fact her past can’t gel with what’s essential to her being(being gay)

    And now she’s facing the idea that sexualities change? I’m surprised she took Jocelyne being trans so well

    She’s now lost Joyce spiritually and when she find out about this with Dorothy and Joyce she’s got her feelings over Joyce being gay but not for her and also maybe feeling validated that Joyce shouldn’t be an atheist

    She might feel more affirmed in Joyce needing to not change

  49. Fireprincesslily

    Sure are a few too many “Why isn’t Joyce being super homophobic about all this?” Comments… Like be so for real right now

    1. thejeff

      Did they get deleted? Because I don’t see any.

      Some that it’s a bit weird that Joyce is having a bi awakening without internal drama at all

      1. Yeet

        I think the internal drama will catch up to her, things are moving a bit quickly

      2. BorkBorkBork

        Honestly, Joyce’s journey of becoming an athiest probably burned away a lot of personal hangups she had about same-sex attraction, and the rest of her journey has been about accepting and celebrating others and normalizing a lot that she was sheltered for. Joyce has also long had these feelings of attraction, just never acknowledged that they were what they were.

        When it was clear to her that her sister trusted Becky and Dina with her secret more than her, and she snapped at Dina, then genuinely apologized and praised her for those same things… I wonder if that was kind of the last straw. Because with that moment, I didn’t just see acceptance; I saw envy. There was an understanding that Becky and Dina had an advantage that she didn’t have.

        And if someone is envious of another person, it tells me that the final barrier – the “but I don’t *want* to be labeled like this” barrier – is breaking.

      3. Li

        @thejeff: it’s been a running thread for weeks…? Lots of people asserting that Joyce must have been taught to hate gay people, and furthermore that she must have been specifically convinced that queer women specifically would be eternally damned.

        It doesn’t seem to matter to these folks that, even at the height of her ignorance and queerphobia, Joyce was surprised to be asked how God feels about gay people at all (by Mike), and then said that she thinks of it as a more minor sin, no worse than lying.

        After Becky came out to her, she then did a deep dive on what, if anything, the Bible had to say about women specifically, and went to her friend with multiple loopholes about the (bad) translations of the words that are typically trotted out by homophobes to condemn their victims.

        So. Given all of this, it IS kind of weird how many people keep specifically saying that Joyce “should” be struggling more, specifically because of spiritual beliefs she never had in the subject.

        Also, like, never mind that Joyce actually already had an extended anxiety spiral over whether or not she was lusting after women early on, before concluding with an extremely-familiar-to-queer-women “oh, phew, the feelings I was having for girls are very different for the feelings I have for boys, that must mean only the boy-feelings are attraction” denial. For folks who took her at her word back then, that obviously doesn’t count, and she should go through it again.

        I do think we’re being kept out of Joyce’s head for a reason, but “the girl who’s spent months aggressively marinating herself in ‘this is okay, Becky’s love for Dina is pure and good, I need to also cheer on Jennifer and Ruth, and oh! Look how happy Sierra is, with not only one but two girlfriends! That’s also pure and good and true!!!” …doesn’t, actually, need to have another freak-out specifically over liking girls herself for it to make sense and ring true.

        1. Dot

          I’m not saying that we need to have a full coming out narrative for Joyce here – it’d be redundant given what Dorothy is going through – but for goodness’ sakes, can we please have *something* in the text? Can we have *some* sense of what’s going through Joyce’s head?

        2. Li

          Again, I think we’re being kept out of her head for a reason. Mostly! I was EXTREMELY sure of it until Willis made that blsky post about being surprised that anyone needed convincing of Joyce’s queerness.

          But while I do want to check in with her — ESPECIALLY in terms of what she’s thinking about Joe! — I also obviously feel the need to push back gently on both the idea that Joyce MUST have been raised to be Very Homophobic (because I genuinely don’t think the text has ever agreed with that*) AND the idea I keep seeing that all Willis did for fifteen years was have Walky joke about Joyce being into Dorothy.

          Because first of all, yeah, I am right there with Willis on being annoyed that Parks & Recreation went so hard for so long on “joking” about Leslie being in love with Ann, and then finally had her say “we’re both tragically heterosexual” in its final season. And I think MICHAEL SCHUR probably has some regrets there too, given how The Good Place eventually had Eleanor embrace being bi, rather than rehashing the “I’m just a straight girl who says very gay things about my beautiful lady friend” thing for another four seasons. Sometimes, a thing can be simultaneously a joke and legitimate subtext.

          But second of all, there ARE more bread crumbs for Joyce’s bisexuality. It’s not all just “Walky thinks lesbians are funny”.

          And I’m a little bit tired of seeing folks conflate “I’m not enjoying the way this was built up” with “there was no build-up, this makes no sense, Willis is just forcing an agenda” (search for agenda today! someone used that word), and I’m also tired of veiled queerphobia getting supportive replies from folks who are clearly missing the queerphobia and just latching onto “thank goodness! someone else agrees with me that this storyline sucks”.

          Because there’s BEEN some of that, and it’s getting overlooked and swept under the rug, as long as the commenter doesn’t explicitly say “it’s gross that Joyce is bi now”.

        3. Dot

          Agree to disagree on the efficacy of the buildup of Joyce’s sexuality (I’m of the position that enough of the breadcrumbs were positioned as jokes that I can hardly fault someone for remembering ALL of them as jokes). Definitely agree there has been some really noxious homophobia masquerading as narrative critique, and as a gay woman myself it’s really distressing to see. I wish that got more pushback from other critics of this storyline.

          My take re was Joyce raised to be homophobic is that my read is the Browns and their congregation are not, as a whole, the fire and brimstone type, there’s not going to be sermons about the queers burning in hell. But certainly warnings against sexual immorality would have been in the conversation. It would have been an ambiently homophobic environment, and I think that was pretty accurately rendered when Becky and Joyce went to church in La Porte. Obviously Joyce never fully picked up on that, and whatever ambient homophobia she was marinated in as a child she’s by now firmly rejected. Not sure why people would expect it to be relevant here.

        4. Li

          Thank you for saying so! Genuinely.

          I know we (you and I) disagree on some parts of this arc! And I am, for the record, also trying to push back on the idea that EVERYONE who’s upset right now is “just” homophobic, which is just as insulting as pretending no one has been homophobic at all. There are absolutely queer readers on both sides of ye olde paladin / sicko divide here!

          Also uh sorry for /gestures below/ my million paragraph attempt at breaking down what I see as Joyce’s journey from fundie who thought homosexuality was a sin to not actually needing to freak out upon coming to terms with being bi. It’s…… probably interesting, but only future historians with infinite patience will ever know for sure!

        5. Sarah

          As someone who grew up in a similar background as Joyce (that would’ve thought Joyce’s church was “too liberal” for having guitars – orchestral music in church only – and NO dancing, whatsoever), I can attest that the homophobia was mostly ambient. If openly addressed at all, it was a lot of 1) Hate the sin, love the sinner (and similar to Joyce, homosexuality was a sin alongside lying, gossiping, envying); 2) “Oh, but the children!” pearl clutching about same sex representation in public schools; and 3) Bible college rules that I now realize were explicitly to prevent the kind of thing Becky got involved in – no one was allowed on anyone else’s bed with them, same or different gender.

          Despite – and in the midst of – growing up in all that, when my best friend online confessed her feelings for me, my response was much like Joyce’s: I don’t feel the same way, but I still love you as a friend, and I’m here for you.

          I didn’t personally have any “bi-coming out” realization at the time, so I can’t speak to what that would’ve been like for me way back then, “Pre-Willis-Comments-&-&Commentariat,” but even examining myself now, I feel like it’d be more, “Huh…how do I understand myself, my view of life, etc. now that this piece – or my understand of it – is changing?” and way less “But I believed this was SIN!!!! I must be terrible!!!”

        6. Li

          Internet gesture of sympathy and support!

          Also: yeah, like. Especially given that Joyce HAS gone through so much work to unpack and process her lingering anxieties around sex (generally), I think her not freaking out about being bi makes sense.

        7. Li

          My asterisk:

          When Joyce first appeared in the strip, she was decidedly NOT virulently homophobic. She was a “love the sinner” type, and not even in the usually hypocritical way! She identified with and empathized with Ethan from pretty much the very beginning, because she also saw HERSELF as a terrible sinner, and she believed in everything happening for a reason. She thought it was probably part of God’s plan that she and Ethan date each other, not so that she could convert him to heterosexuality, but so they could BOTH help each other abstain from the sin of lust.

          The idea was very much: if you date me, you won’t be single and Free to Mingle, so it’ll be a little easier for you to abstain from acting on your homosexuality, and you won’t want to have sex with me, so I’ll be similarly safe and have an easier time resisting my own sinful urges.

          Joyce has always equated these two, where acting on homosexual urges is no worse than acting on any other type of lust outside of marriage! And she’s always placed just being gay on a lower, less serious tier of sin. So it is very odd that some people seem to expect her to be more upset over the idea of being bi than she was over the idea of losing her virginity outside of marriage.

          (It genuinely does not matter whether readers think “a Christian fundamentalist should view homosexuality as worse than other types of premarital lust”, because Willis isn’t telling a story of “a Christian fundamentalist”, they’re telling Joyce’s story, which has a lot in common with their own, and you can see from their comics that they had a similar trajectory: they decided Billie and Ruth should have had a fling back in the Walkyverse, LONG before they’d fully dismantled a lot of their other beliefs! Sometimes, folks just take things at different speeds and in different ways.)

          And, when it comes to DoA Joyce, we’ve seen her thought process on both things evolve and change. We saw her IMMEDIATELY turn her back on everything she thought she knew to embrace Becky and reassure her that there was nothing wrong with her. We saw her then guiltily dig into scripture for reassurance that God was okay with it, which then hurt Becky, who saw it as a rejection instead, as well as the type of loophole-seeking that a lot of Christians frown upon.

          We also saw her feelings on the evils of premarital sex shift. She started out genuinely afraid for Dorothy’s soul, and we also saw her freak out a few times about not just atheists as a concept but also different sects of Christianity. Each time, we saw her come around to the idea that actually, what she’d been taught growing up was wrong:

          Catholics, Mormons, atheists — they can all be good people. And, perhaps more importantly, Christians who went to Joyce’s exact same church and theoretically believed all the exact same things — could be terrible people. Hank’s assertion that atheists like Dorothy can never be truly dependably good because they have no moral foundation kept running afoul of not just Becky’s dad, but their entire church. Her own mother.

          (A lot of folks decry the “evil league of dads” bit, but if you didn’t notice how Blaine manipulated Joyce’s church and Becky’s dad into helping him — well, then I think you missed a significant part of the point of that whole series of storylines, and why it was important for Joyce’s character development that such a blatantly bad actor still won the support of all the people who supposedly had such perfect moral foundations.)

          And, crucially, each time Joyce has come around, it’s been a little faster. I think her reaction to Booster’s pronouns is pretty emblematic of the exact kind of progress she’s made, too: she was confused, but her literal gut reaction by that point in the series was, “I have to remember that I’m often wrong about things.”

          In the lead-up to both her first time with Joe and realizing her feelings for Dorothy weren’t just platonic, Joyce has picked up even more speed, working through her hangups around sex piece by piece.

          First, there was the need for birth control, which sent her into a bit of a spiral around the possibility of a total stranger thinking she’s sexually active (and which resulted in her and Dorothy talking through potentially pretending to be a couple, because huh, it turned out Joyce was for whatever reason less anxious about being thought of as sexually active with a woman than about being sexually active with a man).

          This ended with her face-down in bed, arguing with herself about whether or not it really mattered if the pharmacist thinks she’s a “hussy”, even wondering why it would have bothered her before she became an atheist, and the spiral made Becky feel guilty, so Becky confessed to her own premarital sexual activity with Dina…

          …and Joyce switched gears instantly. “You two love each other,” she said. “It’s good and pure. It’s meant to be.”

          Not like Joyce herself, who was “just a gross weirdo”, by which she meant being horny (generally) instead of being intensely attracted to a person she also loves.

          (It might or might not be significant here that Joe had already confessed his feelings, and that at no point did Joyce try to reframe herself out of being a gross weirdo because she was attracted to him specifically.)

          I’m sure it also helped that Becky then told Joyce that she and Dina were also basically engaged, but Joyce was already happy for her! Already fully disavowing any idea that premarital sex between two women was bad at all, as long as they love each other.

          (I’m sure it’s also partly just different because Becky isn’t Joyce, and Joyce is trying to be less judgmental of other people — but she specifically put it in terms of being good and pure and meant to be, because Becky and Dina love each other.)

          Then, of course, the laundry room scene, which I’m not going to tell anyone they have to like, but which I do think, textually, by now, we can all agree was supposed to be read as Joyce feeling safe with Dorothy in sexual scenarios, and which resulted in Joyce’s first intentional orgasm, and which did not result in any kind of specific queerphobic backlash.

          Joyce had SO MANY hang ups around masturbation! Possibly even more hangups than she had around sex, because again, sex can be something you do with a person you love, but masturbation is just self-gratification. And we saw Joyce backslide a LITTLE, we saw her shamefaced denials to Sarah and then to the rest of her friend group… but by the time she talked about it to Joe, she was no longer putting it in terms of being a singularly dirty or gross person. She worried it might be infidelity!

          (Possibly because she wasn’t always thinking of him when she did it.)

          But she didn’t put it in terms of sin or hell. And her comfort level with it kept growing, to the point where now she’s apparently someone who does it in the communal showers.

          And Dorothy helped get her to that point, in Joyce’s mind. Because she feels safe with Dorothy in sexual situations.

          Which is something that has been true for years, going back to that first double “date”, where Joyce kissed Ethan for the first time and then, in the privacy of the girls’ room, admitted to Dorothy that despite her fear for Dorothy’s soul, she was also horribly, terribly, painfully envious (and maybe jealous). She confessed her lustful feelings and her shame and her fear to a much greater extent than she had with Ethan, and then later, she asked Dorothy in a hushed tone what sex was like.

          #Dranks bringing that back and also bringing it to a more explicitly queer head with Joyce asking specifically what it feels like to have a penis inside you and then confessing to being interested in watching Dorothy and Walky have sex? Oh, but don’t worry, she’ll block out Walky with one hand so that she’s only watching Dorothy? Was a callback and an evolution, spotlighting Joyce’s further evolved comfort level with talking and thinking about sex, but definitely not inventing an interest in Dorothy’s sex life from whole cloth.

          Then, of course, there was the list of not-quite-sex things that Joyce wanted to make with Dorothy, not with Joe, even though Dorothy actively tried to point out to her that it would make more sense to go through a list like this with her actual partner.

          And all of this culminated in Joyce finally saying, out loud with her mouth, that it would be so much easier, if only she could have sex with Dorothy instead of Joe.

          Some commenters think it’s weird and comes out of nowhere. I find the evolution honestly pretty easy to trace. Once she’d gotten over the shame of masturbation, given Joe a handjob, gotten the equivalent from Joe, and recategorized the laundry room as having already had sex with Dorothy once……?

          What is there, exactly, left for her to be so afraid of?

        8. Li

          Welp. RIP anyone who tries to read all of that, god, I didn’t even bold anything.

        9. Astariel

          I think your analysis is terrific, and I really enjoyed it. You’re spot on, in my opinion.

        10. Li

          Heh, thank you!

        11. BorkBorkBork

          Fantastic read. I agree with just about all of it. Only thing I really disagree with was Blaine manipulating the church. Blaine simply came there and gave them what they wanted; Hank was one of the few who saw something wrong with it.

          But yes – every single time she adapts, it happens faster, and smoother. I shouldn’t be surprised that Joyce so easily makes the step there, because it’s not a leap for her; this is just one more step in her long journey to discovering who she is apart from where she was raised.

        12. Li

          Thank you!

          Re: Blaine, he did specifically claim to Becky’s dad to be Christian, and I think we can safely assume he made a similar claim to Joyce’s former church. It’s not so much that he did a ton of work to manipulate them, as that… he was such an obviously horrible person, and what Becky’s dad had done was so obviously awful, but all the people Joyce had been taught to think of as having a Strong Moral Foundation sided with them both anyway.

          As we’ve seen, Hank is a bit more like Joyce herself — a bit more open to the idea that people can be good, even if they’re very different from him in their beliefs, and much more open to the idea that just because someone claims to share your beliefs doesn’t mean they’re always going to do the right thing.

          Like, it’s not “poor Joyce’s church”, no! I don’t think Blaine even put that much effort into his pretense of being a good Christian. It’s more that, whether someone’s a good person or not doesn’t actually have a very strong correlation with being Christian, which is what keeps being demonstrated to Joyce — both in terms of her non-Christian friends being good, and in terms of the Christians around her being — not evil, Lucy and Becky and Hank and Sierra and Agatha all seem to be good people! But more of a mixed bag.

          It turned out that everyone is still just a person, regardless of what spiritual beliefs they do or don’t have.

          And that was, imho, a major part of Joyce’s coming to terms with the idea that sexuality is ALSO neither inherently good nor inherently bad — it’s just something we feel, and a set of activities we might or might not want to do with… well, as Joyce keeps circling back to, people we love.

        13. Li

          Ugh I clearly left something merely implied that I meant to say outright, but here’s the TL;DR:

          Joyce has always made exceptions of various kinds for love. Love makes premarital hanky-panky fine, because love makes it pure and good.

          And she thinks she loves Dorothy.

          Once she’s dismantled her shame around all the various mechanics of sex, of course she doesn’t think there’s anything sinful about having sex with Dorothy.

          Of course the only real issue, and the only thing we really need a deep dive into, is Joyce’s thought processes around Joe, and how or why she thinks she isn’t about to hurt him in a big way.

        14. BorkBorkBork

          Honestly, Joyce just really doesn’t like Joe anywhere near as much as Joe likes Joyce. He started by confessing his feelings for her; she refused to share her feelings with him. She’s spent most of the time setting the tone and pace of their interaction, and has at different times bossed Joe around and told him that he absolutely would do this or that. Joyce likes Joe, but more than that, she likes to be liked. And Joe was to her more of a guide, helping her explore everything she hadn’t so far.

          No doubt if she’s even thought of him, really, she’s told herself some lie like “He would never be happy with just me; this way he can be free to meet other people.” It doesn’t bother her because she has the “guide” that she’d really prefer, Dorothy.

          You know who I’m really concerned about? Not Becky. DINA. There was a time when Dina was no more than a replacement Joyce to Becky, but they’ve since grown and developed into an extremely close, intimate relationship in its own right. I honestly see Becky being more shocked that Joyce isn’t straight than being hurt that Joyce wasn’t interested. But Dina – any hesitation, any tears, any hurt feelings, are going to feel like stabbing pain. None of us ever want to feel like second choice.

        15. Li

          Yeah…. I’m not completely sure of where Joyce is with Joe, how she feels about him, but the more I look at my cork board, the more I wonder if it’s really as simple as “she just doesn’t love him”.

          Not, she’s a lesbian. Obviously she IS quite attracted to men. But love is different, and with the way being confident that two people are in love seems to remove a lot of her worries that lust is Bad and Wrong… well, it DOES seem to me like when she defined sex as any time someone you love helps you achieve orgasm, maybe she was really just thinking about Becky and Dina as people who love each other — and Dorothy as someone she, Joyce, loved — and not so much whether or not Joe is also someone she loves, or whether the two times they’ve “helped one another achieve orgasm” were also having sex.

          I don’t know!

          My other supposition is that Joyce DOES think she loves both Dorothy and Joe, and her faith in the purity and goodness of love is making her think that, THEREFORE, everything is going to work out here and Joe is going to be happy.

          And… my other-other supposition is that maybe Joe is going to be one of those people in Joyce’s life where she only realizes she loved him when it’s too late.

        16. Proxiehunter

          “I could curl up in there and be warm and safe forever.” isn’t a bread crumb, it’s a whole fucking loaf.

        17. Li

          Yeah.

          Also, every single one of the strips Willis used in their own little mini mega post of Dorothy and Joyce hinting? If you go back to look at their comments, there’s a LOOOOOOT of…

          “Huh, this is a little bit gay. ?”

          followed by dozens of people saying, “It’s just a joke,” and “Don’t forget, that one time Joyce realized that growing up with Becky having a giant crush on her might have colored her perceptions of what a Normal Platonic Female Friendship looks like,” and “Don’t forget, that one time Dorothy called herself maybe a Kinsey 0”

          and then a few more comments specifically laughing about how great it is when Willis ship-baits the dummies who think Joyce and Dorothy might be into each other.

        18. Li

          Like. Today’s comment section is not the same comment section from 15 years ago. Many people have come and gone. And no one is responsible for anything but what they themselves have said.

          So I am absolutely NOT saying everyone who’s upset right now bears any responsibility for the last 10+ years I spent being told constantly, over and over and over again, that I was not only a fool who was imagining things — not only that the comic’s creator was laughing at me for taking their jokes too seriously — but that I deserved to be mocked for thinking these two maybe had something between them… usually because there’s one really obnoxious fan in the Patreon comment section?

          Well. Taking that into consideration, I do honestly think I’ve been dealing really well with the sudden avalanche of “where did this come from, there was no build up at all, no one could have seen this coming, obviously Willis is just a bad writer and/or hates straight people”, actually!

          I am trying to call out folks I see going over the line, or making absurd claims like “ALL the negativity is homophobia,” but. Do I understand why some of the folks on “my” side might be struggling to be gracious winners?

          Yeah.

        19. Dot

          For what it’s worth I’ve come to recognize you as one of the most eminently reasonable people in this comment section and I always appreciate seeing your posts – even when they are as long as War and Peace :p

        20. Li

          Pffff. Thank you, Dot. I will return the compliment! There are a lot of folks around here where I’m like, MOSTLY we agree on the comic and/or find ourselves on the same side of arguments that happen in the comment section?

          And then there are folks where whether or not we’re on the same “side” changes regularly, but they always make interesting points and they’re edifying to talk to regardless.

          I know we also all get heated sometimes!! We’re human. This comic brings up a LOT of heavy topics, even if the actual treatment in the strip itself is just glancing, and one of the things that I think makes participating here usually worthwhile is… less that everyone’s generally kinder than other comment sections (although that will always be true unless the rest of the internet changes rapidly for the better!), but more that I’m always seeing people learn. I’m often learning myself!

          I was one of the people wincing when the protest started coming into focus, because I kind of figured it was going to wind up being a bit of a footnote in Dorothy’s self-actualization arc, and I fretted that making it a veiled Gaza reference was going to Go So Badly—

          —and for a while I felt like I was COMPLETELY RIGHT and Willis should have done almost anything else!

          But now we’re gonna get more Asma. We might even get more Nash, and more Raidah not JUST being a Mean Girl. Those are unalloyed goods.

          Folks who didn’t want Joyce and Dorothy to cheat are unlikely to get what they want in the same way, and I’m sure SOME of the worst takes — well, you can see Willis doubling and tripling down on increasing the Gay Agenda on BlueSky, haha.

          But I bet some of the feedback, the specifics of what people did and didn’t like — and the loud segment of us who want More Poly in the strip — well. Even if we’re not heading towards that right now (and I’ll concede it seems unlikely!), who’s to say Willis won’t still be inspired? Bi Arc for Walky. More Sierra screen time. Something.

          TL;DR: I think this comment section is pretty great, really, even when it’s being very contentious, and I think DoA is a much better comic for Willis’s keeping it open and paying attention to feedback.

        21. thejeff

          Apparently I’m completely oblivious too this. Still:
          1) I think she pretty clearly was raised with a ton of homophobia. Not sure how that’s even in question. Like, her church and her mom supported the guy who threatened her with a gun while trying to kidnap his daughter to keep her from being a lesbian.
          2) Sure, she ditched almost all of that very quickly (probably unrealistically quickly). She’s not “super homophobic” anymore and I don’t think anyone’s been saying she should be.
          3) I’m surprised she seems to be accepting that she’s bi herself without hesitation or struggle. That’s not “super homophobic”. That’s a common struggle that lots of bi people go through when they figure it out.
          4) And while there’ve been plenty of hints that she was bi, I don’t think there have been any that she was consciously aware of or even starting to consider it.

      4. Proxiehunter

        Doesn’t Joyce’s internal drama tend to sneak up on her in nightmares? She hasn’t slept since the kiss that I’m aware of.

  50. thejeff

    Can this strip, with Dorothy checking for reports on the protest, put to rest the “The kiss went viral and everyone already knows about it” thing?
    It was a possibility and it’s still possible it’ll show up and cause trouble later, through a school paper photo or something, but it’s pretty clearly not already everywhere.

    1. Dot

      This strip is a very definitive fork in the “it’s already viral” turkey. As if every character we’ve seen not mentioning the kiss was not already definitive enough.

      1. BorkBorkBork

        Preposterous. Becky is CLEARLY in denial and shock. Or has struck her head and is currently suffering from short-term memory loss. Or believes she is on a game show and will win millions of dollars if she pretends to be unaware. Or has signed some sort of non-disclosure agreement with the university. Or has been hypnotized by a magician. There’s literally millions of explanations for what’s happened so far; no reason to jump to conclusions.

  51. Steamweed

    Oh c’mon Dorothy you should be able to put Tell Becky in the 500s. I think you’re just procrastinatin’.

    1. ValdVin

      If she weren’t such a procrastinator the list would have 3000 items by now.

  52. Sashya

    funniest thing I hope Willis does is give this moment the 700+ repeating panels of Joyce reading through the entire list out loud in the eventual Book release

  53. Kristen

    I feel like the context that Joe and Joyce have been dating for like a week (and flirting towards dating for what, a couple of weeks before that?) and that Dorothy and Walky are on again of again partners with relatively low long term commitment intentions is missing from some analysis I’ve seen on here. Obviously their feelings still matter but… idk if someone I had been dating for a few weeks came to me and was like sorry I kissed someone else last night and I have feelings for them not you I’d be upset but not think they’d committed a great moral crime that would destroy my life.

    1. Josh

      You don’t think Joyce is acting out of character at all? After what happened with Ethan and Jacob, her bending backwards to make sure all of her friends are taken care of, that it’s not really weird for her to just completely backslide on her empathy? This isn’t even about relationship status in my personal opinion. Joyce x Dorothy can sail I really don’t have a dog in this race. I just can’t stand seeing a character I loved grow over the years as a reader just have no empathy for the people she is about to hurt. The lack of any hesitation or anxiety is mind blowing. I sincerely hope it is intentional writing and that the other boot is coming down to eventually.

      And for anyone wondering why anyone thinks Joyce and Joe are super serious, I just don’t think that this Joyce from the past couple of weeks of strips is the same one who showed so much compassion for telling Joe he is not a mistake of a person: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/03-joementum/tarp/

      1. Big Z

        That strip is almost prophetic, ain’t it.

        “I’m just an idiot who doesn’t know what she’s doing.”? Yeah, Joyce, I think I can cosign that at this point.

    2. miri

      Yeah if I were in Joe’s position I’d definitely be hurt but like. Well, see ya, it’s been a fun week. Onto new and better things.

      1. Big Z

        Mmm, would you REALLY have that reaction if you’d been building a friendship with someone for 4-6 months (they started before the timeskip!), they knew your biggest relationship insecurity, started dating you in your first relationship where you overcame that insecurity to actually date someone, and then stomped on it a week afterwards?

        I would for sure consider never even speaking to them again.

        Hell, I’d consider never speaking to them again on your behalf if I was your friend and witnessed that.

        1. miri

          Yes, because it has happened to me, with people that I had known for years. And it did hurt, and I did not speak to that individual again for some time. With time and distance, I now look back on that period of my life as a bunch of young, messy queer people being young and messy. Extremely far from being life-ruining.

          With the benefit of age and experience, if I were again in Joe’s position, I would in fact go ‘easy come easy go’.

        2. Big Z

          Sure, with the benefit of age and experience, we’d all agree that early college was messy as hell.

          In the moment, at age “dumb freshman”? I don’t think most people would be very forgiving.

        3. miri

          Probably not! I just also don’t think it’s going to ruin his life and walk back all of his character development like many other commenters do. Being cheated on in a week-long relationship with a girl you’ve known for a couple of months sucks badly, but it’s not the end of the world.

          If he crashes out badly and decides to never speak to Joyce or Dorothy again, that is his prerogative. But ultimately I strongly believe he’s going to be fine.

        4. Big Z

          I suspect he’s going to be fine AND be as standoffish/avoidant of Joyce as is plausible for a ensemble-cast webcomic. I also suspect he’ll eventually get past it faster than an actual human probably would, given comic time.

    3. Dot

      I must again make the point that Joyce and Joe have been dating for two real-world years. This strip exists in comic book time. The actual amount of time having passed in-universe is not relevant. The emotional investment of the characters, and the emotional stakes at play, are reflective of the real-world time that has passed, not the in-universe time.

      1. Dot

        Like, Dorothy told Walky she loved him less than a month after they’d met, but that month was four years of real world time. We aren’t working with realistic timescales here.

        1. Yeet

          I think one month is really that unrealistic for someone that age to bust out the L-word
          whether or not it’s smart or necessarily accurate or whatever is a different question

        2. Yeet

          *is NOT really that unrealistic, fuck my stupid fingers

        3. Dot

          They’d KNOWN each other for a month. They’d been dating for maybe a couple weeks.

        4. Yeet

          I was aware when I wrote my comment

        5. Bittersweet

          Yeah, I met my husband when I was 19. We were friends for a few months, but I dropped the L-bomb on him after only a week of dating. We’ve been together ten years now, married for five. It doesn’t matter when someone decides they love someone, only that they mean it genuinely and are willing to continue doing so imo

        6. Heatth

          That is a really weird example to bring when arguing “in-universe timescale is not relevant” considering part of the whole conflict is how Dorothy said that too soon.

      2. HueSatLight

        Even without the plot/medium induced wonky time stuff, Joe and Joyce have been fairly close friends for months. What they’re probably going to be going through, they would have been who they talked to about it most openly.

      3. Nymph

        But it does matter ~in world~. People expecting Joyce and Dorothy to act like it’s been years when for them it hasn’t been is probably a path to disappointment.

        It’s different if you’re talking about how YOU feel rather than how the CHARACTERS feel, but I’m not seeing a lot of differentiation on that. If we as readers feel this is a let down because there was no completion of the Joe/Joyce arc and this doesn’t feel momentous enough for what it is, that’s fine. If Joyce and Dorothy feel like they’re ending a relationship of a week or two, that’s also fine.

      4. Proxiehunter

        The amount of time that passed in universe is entirely relevant to how the characters react to things unless you expect to act like they’ve been in college for fifteen years now.

    4. BaltimoreBoyInPhilly

      (1) I agree with your overall premise. Anecdotally, I dated someone where we’d been flirting for months, but our actual together-as-a-couple status lasted less than 2 days – the next day that person was dating someone else (eventually those two got married). The breakup hurt a LOT, but I never thought that person had committed some horribly immoral act. It was mostly me questioning how the %!@$ I had let myself get so emotionally tied up with that person before getting into an actual defined relationship.

      (2) That said … I don’t know if there’s enough information in your example fact pattern for me to properly consider the moral calculus here. Length of a relationship is clearly a factor, but only in so far as it implies that both parties are aligned as to the status quo of that relationship. This is one of the reasons why folks need to tell their significant others as soon as they realize something is not right with the current relationship.

    5. Big Z

      Frankly, if we are taking that into consideration (and many of us are), then we also have to take into consideration that Joe and Joyce have been building a friendship since before the semester break (so, months of in-comic time) and she is WELL aware that she’s just stomped her foot directly into his biggest relationship insecurity when she is the first person he’s allowed himself to have a dating relationship with (prior to that, he avoided dating for fear of the same cheating that fucked up his parents).

      1. Proxiehunter

        People keep saying this. Last I checked Joe’s biggest relationship insecurity was that he was convinced he would inevitably cheat because he suffers from ye old fear of becoming his asshole father.

        I can’t go into more detail without triggering my PTSD but I’ve got to tell you a romantic partner treating me the way my father treated my mother would be relationship ending but it would be nowhere near as traumatic as finding myself repeating his behaviors.

        Joe’s going to be fine. This is going to suck for him for a while, but he’ll be fine.

  54. Andy

    There should be a chain of comments on all the foreshadowing for this relationship. It would be huge. Probably a dozen situations.people are now shocked that it finally clicked for both of them. If it was love at first sight, first sight was back at the start of the school year.

  55. Dot

    You know, most of the focus has been on how low telling Becky is on the list but…. This is a list of things Joyce and Dorothy have to do before they’re “allowed” to be together, it’s over 700 items long, and includes things like dismantling the American imperial state. Dorothy really feels like the dog that caught the car, doesn’t she?

    1. Big Z

      “Feels like the dog who caught the car” has been a fundamental aspect of Dorothy’s personality the entire run of the strip — she has ALWAYS struck me as someone who has no idea what to do with success, only with striving.

      1. Florence

        She begged the universe for just one of her wants and unfortunately the universe finally gave it to her

    2. Heavensrun

      I mean, the *point* of that gag is that it’s actually only a list of *three things*, but one of those three things is something she is *mortally terrified of.*

      1. Dot

        One can read more than one thing into it!

        1. Heavensrun

          Except I’m fairly sure that you’re reading something that just isn’t there.

  56. berky

    I think what’s irking me is the lighthearted almost jokey tone while waiting on Joe/Becky/Walky. Maybe that’s part of the storytelling, but it feels a little tonally disconent.

    1. Dot

      Yeah, why are we treading water with these jokes? It’s time to face the music.

      1. BorkBorkBork

        It’s a comic strip. If something doesn’t *need* to be serious, then by the time you get to the right hand side, there has to be something amusing.

        And have you ever known Willis to just immediately jump to the next plot point, instead of slowly meandering there while mentioning that you can sign up for Patreon and see tomorrow’s strip today?

      2. Nadamás

        It’s called having some patience

        1. Taffy

          Hey, we don’t use the P-word around here. That’s a foul swear.

    2. Amós Batista

      Maybe the coin still didn’t fall.
      (I don’t know, can somebody bring here a similar anecdote? I’m very lazy today)

      1. Mr D

        “Thirty years hence, I am presented with a dilemma – let’s call it a two-sided coin.”
        “But suppose you throw a coin enough times…
        …suppose one day, it lands on its edge.”

    3. Li

      Tonally dissonant! Just FYI. ?

      1. berky

        K

      2. Andrews

        Toadily disco tent

  57. Big Z

    The longer this goes on, the more I’m really expecting the resolution for Joyce to be something along the lines of “Joyce has an idea in her head that True Love is always worth going for, and doing so will Always Work Out in the End, and she’s fixated on Dorothy as that Love. And she’s about to get hit with the Falling Consequences Piano both now (when her friends and boyfriend take it MUCH harder than she expected) and later (if, as statistically likely, she and Dorothy end up breaking up).”

    1. Josh

      I mean, if we’re talking statistically, relationships that start via cheating and lies tend to be short lived.

      Personally speaking, I think it’d be a tad funny to see the “stick it to the straights” type of commenter suddenly have their new toy taken away. I’m just gonna admit up front I know this is a mean thought. But y’know. A lot of meanness going around.

      1. Dot

        This feels like a truism without any real data to support it.

        Also really weird thing to say about gay people.

        1. Bittersweet

          Data shows that people who have cheated once are 2-3 times more likely to cheat again, so there is definitely truth there.

          The rest of their comment is very… yikes though.

        2. Li

          No, that’s not what the study I linked showed!

          It showed that someone who cheats in their first-ever relationship is 2-3 times more likely to cheat in their second relationship than someone who didn’t cheat in their first relationship.

          Take a moment and actually think about that, and how that’s different from what you said. Also keep in mind that the study was only of a few hundred people, and didn’t make any attempt to control for factors like “why the cheating happened in the first relationship”, or why the group that didn’t cheat, didn’t cheat.

          All the study actually proved is “someone who’s decided it’s okay to cheat once, for whatever reason, is more likely to cheat a second time than someone who didn’t”.

          It has all the same basic methodological problems as studies that claim living together before marriage increases risk of divorce, when they made no effort to control for whether or not the people who lived together before marriage were also people for whom marriage was a less serious commitment, or whether the people who stayed married were even really success stories! Some of those people might be infinitely less happy than the people who got divorced, and yet they’re being used to “prove” that pre-marital cohabitation is a divorce risk.

        3. Proxiehunter

          Reminds me of a sociology class I took before I flunked out of college. We watched a video that gave the statistic that 50% of women would experience domestic violence. The video itself stressed that didn’t mean that 50% of men committed domestic violence.

          After the video finished the teacher asked if we thought it was correct that 50% of men committed domestic violence. I was one of only two people in the class to point out that’s not what the video said and outline how the figures added up to 50% of women experiencing domestic violence without 50% of men being responsible for it.

          Still not sure if he was testing that the class had paid attention to that part or if he had grossly misinterpreted it.

          Short list for people who might not have already worked it out: Lesbians and bisexual women can also commit domestic violence against their female partners. A man who commits domestic violence against one partner is likely to do so with others, very few people are in only one relationship their whole life. Fathers, grandfathers, uncles, and other male relatives are capable of domestic violence against female relatives.

          Which leaves some men responsible for domestic violence against multiple women, as well as some domestic violence against women being perpetrated by other women.

          The moral of the story is when the statistics seem to support something look closer and make sure you aren’t misreading them.

          Also look closer and make sure the study isn’t full of shit but I don’t have a personal anecdote relating to that one.

        4. Li

          The study I linked also specifically said in its overview that it had been conducted because there were no other studies even attempting to look at cheating in an unbiased way. LOTS of studies claiming to prove that someone who cheats once is a bad partner forever, but they’ll do things like conflate “premarital partner” with “nonmarital partner”, for example, so that a divorcee’s post-divorce relationships are counted as a risk factor for a marriage that’s already over.

          What’s the expression? “Lies, damned lies, and statistics”? The plural of anecdote is not data, and a poorly understood or maliciously framed study is worse for someone’s understanding of the world than no study at all.

        5. Big Z

          There was a similar study I saw years ago where digging through the testing backlog discovered that some astonishingly high percentage of sexual assault was committed by a small cohort of serial predators.

          In general, it seems like in general most bad actions have more victims than perpetrators because it turns out that many people repeat behaviors that work for them until something convinces them not to.

        6. Josh

          Ehhh it’s about as Yikes as an intrusive thought can be. It’s either a blip on the radar or something you can torture yourself with endlessly.

        7. Proxiehunter

          Is the data in the room with us? Can we read it?

  58. HueSatLight

    When Becky finds out, she’s not going to be Mad At anyone, followed by Complex feelings, so she already knows and is unbothered by it.

  59. Rogue 7

    Testing- the last two comments I’ve made have been eaten.

    1. Proxiehunter

      Don’t feel bad, I’m sure this comment is tasty too. It’s just everyone is too full to eat more comments.

  60. BorkBorkBork

    Hmm…

    So, “First Lady” or “First Gentleman” is used to describe the spouse of a head of state, and “Second Lady” and “Second Gentleman” are used to describe the Vice President and their spouse.

    So in the even that we had a female President, who had a female Vice President, and the two of them were married, would the VP be the first lady, or the second?

    1. Jdorr

      Vice president would be first lady, president would be second lady

      1. Embe13

        agreed

  61. Jdorr

    Love how “tell the boyfriends” is easy but “tell the childhood friend/ roommate” is so difficult.

    1. Proxiehunter

      Well, I don’t think Becky is going to be as upset as they and people in the comments think but as much as Joe is wild for Joyce he hasn’t been nursing a crush on her since he was six or however old Becky was when she realized it. I can definitely see why they’re finding Becky harder to tell.

      1. Jdorr

        Oh yeah, 100% to all of that

  62. thumb

    To be fair, Dotty’s constant weakness hasn’t been to figure out what needs to be done, but how to prioritize. You can put yourself (and also telling Becky) a bit higher up on the list.

  63. Jernacious

    I feel like Willis is pushing an agenda here. And it’s probably the one Dorothy just made.

    1. RocketRelm

      Yeah, I feel like the whole arc is done in part as a pivot of Dorothy not only so that she can do this now, but act as a mouthpiece for extreme left ideas later. There’s a bunch of things that don’t quite fit with her preestablished character, but it hammers her into the narrative shape she needs to be to serve that role going forwards.

      1. RocketRelm

        And no, none of the things that don’t quite fit are the lesbian parts. Dorothy and Joyce have always been at least a little gay for each other.

      2. Dot

        yawn

        1. Taffy

          Nice bait, but I got my yawn reflex suppressed years ago, using discredited Soviet conditioning tactics. I can’t look at a clear glass of water without feeling the urge to vomit anymore, but it’s a small price to pay.

        2. Dot

          So is today a bad day to ask you to watch my pet glass of water or

      3. Taffy

        Can you provide an example of these extreme left ideas?

    2. Jernacious

      Lmao, I make one dumb joke and all the people are coming out of the woodworks.

      1. Nadamás

        Whooosh at it’s most hilarious.

    3. Amós Batista

      that’s why DoA’s pace is so slow.

  64. Leishycat

    I’m not going to stop worrying about Amazi-Girl until I see her again

  65. Nadamás

    https://bsky.app/profile/damnyouwillis.bsky.social/post/3lv2iorxees2l

    I love Willis giving these kind of comments the serious consideration they deserve.

  66. Embe13

    just came to comment here about the Fay bomb being dropped in QC. and how eager i am for their reactions!

  67. 0kami

    I wish Mike were still around. If there’s anyone who would uncomfortably further necessary growth developments, it would be him.

    1. Dot

      This whole situation would be like Christmas for Mike

      1. Big Z

        In that vein, I’m kinda dreading Booster’s reaction to it all.

    2. Drainiest Drain

      Can you imagine the crazy shit he’d have put Dorothy through to get her to come to terms with her bisexuality? making ? <<<- this face the whole time?

      1. Dot

        He would clock her the second she snapped at Billie for trying to help Joyce back at the start of the semester.

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