Dorothy is absolutely the kind of person who logs absolutely everything, and Joyce wants to wear Dorothy’s skin.
Icalasari
Dammit now I kinda want that as an April Fools/Halloween strip
Joyce (Wearing Dorothy): “Now Dorothy and I are together FOREVER”
Joe: “…So does that mean we still have a chance?”
Steamweed
Huh. Hadn’t thought of _that_ kind of threesome before.
(okay, i’m into it.)
RassilonTDavros
I’m just imagining, like, Dorothy’s face surgically attached to Joyce’s torso, like that one terrible DC event (don’t recall the name) where somebody turned people into robot spider zombie things with big, easily-damaged weak spots.
Azhrei Vep
Ah, good ol’ Futures End.
That specific bit of stupidity was Black Canary’s face (Just her face) grafted onto Frankenstein’s chest. Which somehow is able to use her super screaming power.
Because of course super-scream powers are located entirely in the face meat, not the lungs or throat. That’d be silly.
Bogeywoman
They are definitely the kind of couple that would go as each other for Halloween
I’m both horrified and horrifically intrigued by the question of just how fucking bad her mental state is about to get. Just how much lower the universe is going to push her, how the hell she’s going to pick up all the shattered pieces of her life, and what she’s going to build out of what’s left over.
Like, up until Joyrothy happened– hell, up until Becky’s “God is fake“– I had thought that Beckasaur was unsinkable. The one constant. Now that it’s over… I mean, all bets are off. About the only certainly I have left is that Willis ain’t gonna kill either of them.
TerribleTransit
A bit early to call it over. It’s definitely on the rocks, and this blow-up could well sink them, but there’s still a chance Becky can salvage things. If Dina will accept an apology, anyway.
The universe ain’t doing shit to her in this instance. This is all on her. She built up an idea in her own mind that she can’t cope with being untrue, and if she really believed that Joyce was gonna return her feelings, she wouldn’t have fooled around with her roommate and got kicked out of the christian school in the first place. If her idea of her and Joyce were true, then she cheated and never felt a moment of guilt. Becky is selfish and deluded, aka a Christian. And Dina is nobody’s consolation prize!
Li
This is certainly one of the takes of all time. “If she really believed that Joyce was gonna return her feelings, she wouldn’t have fooled around with her roommate and got kicked out of the christian school” is so egregiously slut-shamey, and if you’re going to claim that it’s how you think Becky would feel about the situation — it absolutely isn’t, she would not characterize her and Kaitlin mutually discovering their deeply, painfully repressed sexuality together as “fooling around”, and the assertion that kissing someone other than Joyce is somehow proof that Becky’s feelings for Joyce are shallow or whatever absolutely came from your own head, friend, and not this comic or any of its characters.
the scary thing is if Willis is sadistic enough to go “like mother like daughter”
eh, whatever
No deaths of main characters.
(The Damnable had overlooked that Mike had become a main character; it turns out he wasn’t supposed to.)
TerribleTransit
Willis didn’t overlook shit. They intentionally, knowingly broke that rule, and acknowledged as much
Mari
Mike would have wanted it that way.
Clif
I can’t argue with that. But he would have wanted you to feel bad about it.
Clif
For example, if you had ever said something like “Mike is a force of nature and can’t be destroyed,” he would want you to consider the possibility that if you hadn’t said that, Mike might still be around.
Or if say, someone had said, back when two characters broke up, “Willis wants us to hate him,” and you had responded, “Nah, if Willis wanted us to hate him then he would have broken up Dina and Becky,” then the chances you would have influenced what Willis subsequently did are miniscule. But Mike would have wanted to remind you of what you said at every opportunity.
Mike was like that.
profnekko
true… But there’s no reason she has to succeed… merely try
The things cis women do with electric toothbrushes, hairbrush handles, and washers/dryers are funny yo.
Girls can like sex.
3oranges
Nobody ever said women can’t like sex. Getting off in a public location is still a little less common though?
Reltzik
If it isn’t done in a common space, is it really common?
Nymph
People with vaginas do like sex, but usually the dryers getting humped are in private homes.
Usually.
That said, it’s a comic and the scene used what was available to give them that kind of moment. It’s weird to me how many people are still hung up on it being in public. Like no one’s ever fucked in hidden away public areas with a risk of being busted.
Like they aren’t also complaining about Dorothy and Joyce being too vanilla. Which I do agree with.
Dot
It being in public isn’t the issue for me, at least, I’m fully in favor of public shenanigans (and yes, doing it more often would make these two more interesting to me lol).
Nymph
Totally! I was more mentioning the “in public” thing as a response to 3oranges point as well tbh.
But YES agreed it would make them more interesting.
Tan
I would put forward that most people do something at some point in their life that could be described in a way that “most people don’t do X specifically”.
All of that is aside that Dorothy is not asserting anything about laundry being “normal”, she is asserting that it was not her and Joyce having sex with one another. It was way gayer than that
Tan
(this reply missed slightly where it was supposed to go)
StClair
yeah, asserting that all of her nerdy and/or gay stuff is in fact perfectly normal (and straight) is Jennifer’s thing.
When I was in college another student literally got busted doing this.
It is, in fact, something people from weird fundamentalist backgrounds do.
Dot
So I am of course perfectly aware that people use dryers to get off, but most people do not drag their best friends that they’re sublimating romantic feelings for to one to masturbate for the first time with the explicit purpose of sabotaging their courtship with a potential paramour they are jealous of.
Lys
Yeah, but people don’t beat up college criminals in hero costume, or Akira slide to class on their motorcycle. Most people aren’t as cool as Amber, Sal, or Dorothy.
Li
I mean, not to defend Dorothy in that sequence, but I think what she was actually consciously trying to do was bad enough without any exaggeration.
She didn’t think Joe was courting Joyce, she thought Joe was just trying to get into Joyce’s pants — and she similarly didn’t think Joyce could possibly be interested in someone like that, so she decided to teach Joyce to masturbate with the expectation that a more clearheaded Joyce would realize she didn’t really want to be with Joe.
And also because Roz accused her of being slut-shamey with her earlier, more normally expressed concerns, and Dorothy wanted to prove Roz wrong. She very expressly mutters under her breath that this is an “innovative, sex-positive solution that is not just perpetuating the status quo… Roz.” (https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/02-turning-saints-into-the-sea/relieve/)
There was, of course, also jealousy happening, but I think if she’d actually believed Joe had sincere romantic aspirations for Joyce and wasn’t still thinking of him as the sex pest she’d known him to be for like 5 years, she would have also known that trying to herd Joyce away from him was a Weird thing to do, and it would’ve stayed bitter confusing jealousy, like what we saw later from her in the gym.
Li
“she would have also known that trying to herd Joyce away from him was a Weird thing to do”
To stress: I am not saying that teaching a friend to masturbate isn’t kind of weird in itself, though I’m sure it’s happened at least once platonically.
What I mean is that if Dorothy had actually thought of what she was doing as “sabotaging [a romantic] courtship”, the cognitive dissonance (“wait, WHY am I doing this?”) would have been too much for her to get past.
Dot
I get that it wasn’t conscious on Dorothy’s part, I just don’t think that materially matters.
Li
Okay, me misreading what you meant by “with the explicit purpose of”, then.
Dot
Hm, yeah, can see why that would be confusing, my bad. I’d say it was THE explicit purpose, but it was not explicit to HER.
It is but the others… Well, it amazes me how quickly the community here is willing to brush cheating aside because lesbians…
Josh
It’s pretty shockingly fast. About half of them get off on it upsetting people though.
dinerkinetic
yeah, it’s kind of wild– nobody pretended billie/ruth was healthy or smart, dorothy and joyce can be cute to some folks without them pretending the girls can/have done no wrong
Li
“Nobody pretended Billie/Ruth was healthy or smart”
Well, no, I don’t think people pretended to think that. I think people genuinely did think that they eventually reached a point of healthiness, though, and I think one of the people who thought that was Willis. Reread “This Was Halloween”.
Folks keep forgetting that Billie and Ruth had both stopped drinking, that Ruth was on antidepressants and Billie was in therapy, BEFORE they broke up. In that storyline, Billie is talking about introducing Ruth to her parents. Ruth sabotages everything because she’s too afraid that someday, depression might win again, and if it wins, it might cause her to drag Billie down with her. She broke up with Billie in an effort to save her life.
Clif
Also, Billie and Ruth were pretty unhealthy to start with. Ruth knew she was depressed to the point of eventually being suicidal. Their twisted relationship was actually very good for them. It was the Mary inspired withdrawal from the relationship which set things off. Without Jenifer and Carla, Ruth would likely be dead and with her alcoholism, Jenifer would have been a ticking time bomb. So, yeah, in their own way they were healthy for each other.
thejeff
The amusing thing to me about reactions to the Ruth/Jennifer relationship is commenters seem pretty equally divided on who was abusive in the relationship. Lots of people think it was bad and someone was abusing someone, but which way it goes flips from person to person and which aspect of the story arc they were focusing on.
That’s because people need there to be a one-sided nature to the abuse, so they can assign blame. The concept of a mutually toxic relationship is a bit much for a lot of folks. (Personally, I figure their relationship was mutually toxic, but they actually brought it to a better place, then Ruth imploded it.)
TheMormegil
I think it’s genuinely weird how people are upset about them cheating when they broke up with their previous boyfriends within 48 hours. The only thing that’s even questionable is Joyce giving a blowjob to Joe after kissing Dorothy, and that’s cheating on Dorothy who didn’t seem to care.
I’m not saying they did good or anything. But it very much feels to me like if people were arguing for 30 years of jail time over stealing some candy. So kinda uno-reverse: it’s weird how this community is ready to jump up in arms over minor things when it’s lesbians doing them.
Donovan
1. They aren’t lesbians.
2. ’30 years of jailtime’ most people who aren’t just drop-in weirdos want something more on the lines of, like. More than one person saying ‘hey that wasn’t cool.’ Feels dull.
448 thoughts on “Grew up scared”
NGPZ
remember y’all, healthy hearts start young! <3
and just cuz ya indoors that ain't mean ya can't exercise! ;)
Pocky
Good old private exercise.
ResRam
Best. Exercize. Of all.
Such good cardio. And endorphines.
Jon
The Fitbit-measuring contest is really cute. These dorks.
Doopyboop
I did wonder about the watches… question answered
NGPZ
I’m pretty sure those are fitbits, yee
never got the appeal myself, but it’s great to see this kinda commitment to an active lifestyle, especially this way
Rosicrucian
Dorothy is absolutely the kind of person who logs absolutely everything, and Joyce wants to wear Dorothy’s skin.
Icalasari
Dammit now I kinda want that as an April Fools/Halloween strip
Joyce (Wearing Dorothy): “Now Dorothy and I are together FOREVER”
Joe: “…So does that mean we still have a chance?”
Steamweed
Huh. Hadn’t thought of _that_ kind of threesome before.
(okay, i’m into it.)
RassilonTDavros
I’m just imagining, like, Dorothy’s face surgically attached to Joyce’s torso, like that one terrible DC event (don’t recall the name) where somebody turned people into robot spider zombie things with big, easily-damaged weak spots.
Azhrei Vep
Ah, good ol’ Futures End.
That specific bit of stupidity was Black Canary’s face (Just her face) grafted onto Frankenstein’s chest. Which somehow is able to use her super screaming power.
Because of course super-scream powers are located entirely in the face meat, not the lungs or throat. That’d be silly.
Bogeywoman
They are definitely the kind of couple that would go as each other for Halloween
NGPZ
hell yeah, they be so cute together, it’s scary XD ;p
*plays “Bustin” by Neil Cicierega on hacked muzak*
Yet_One_More_Idiot
Dangit, now i know what I should’ve asked Willis for for my commission outta this year’s Kickstarter! Locked in for next year! ^^
Rose by Any other Name
From the song “Feelin’ Kinda Naughty”
“I wanna kill you and wear your skin like a dress
But then also have you see me in the dress
And be like “Omg, you look so cute in my skin!”
Lena
I was really into Fitbit in the early days, but now just carrying around my phone does the same thing.
Doctor_Who
Gotta track those calorie expenditures. They both did a good enough job that they’ve earned a pudding cup.
AntithesisConundrum
Hot dang, I need to pick up a FitBit.
Thing 2
There was a UK comedy sketch, I think, about fitbits, fatbits, fartbits and fuckbits…
Nono
Turns out Becky just walked into the room only to hear Joyce call Dorothy her best friend.
Her heart shatters EVEN MORE. Nuclear winter settles in. Soggies may rule.
RassilonTDavros
I’m both horrified and horrifically intrigued by the question of just how fucking bad her mental state is about to get. Just how much lower the universe is going to push her, how the hell she’s going to pick up all the shattered pieces of her life, and what she’s going to build out of what’s left over.
RassilonTDavros
Like, up until Joyrothy happened– hell, up until Becky’s “God is fake“– I had thought that Beckasaur was unsinkable. The one constant. Now that it’s over… I mean, all bets are off. About the only certainly I have left is that Willis ain’t gonna kill either of them.
TerribleTransit
A bit early to call it over. It’s definitely on the rocks, and this blow-up could well sink them, but there’s still a chance Becky can salvage things. If Dina will accept an apology, anyway.
Dafydd
“Now that it’s over…”
Don’t you mean “extinct”? 😛
Getes
The universe ain’t doing shit to her in this instance. This is all on her. She built up an idea in her own mind that she can’t cope with being untrue, and if she really believed that Joyce was gonna return her feelings, she wouldn’t have fooled around with her roommate and got kicked out of the christian school in the first place. If her idea of her and Joyce were true, then she cheated and never felt a moment of guilt. Becky is selfish and deluded, aka a Christian. And Dina is nobody’s consolation prize!
Li
This is certainly one of the takes of all time. “If she really believed that Joyce was gonna return her feelings, she wouldn’t have fooled around with her roommate and got kicked out of the christian school” is so egregiously slut-shamey, and if you’re going to claim that it’s how you think Becky would feel about the situation — it absolutely isn’t, she would not characterize her and Kaitlin mutually discovering their deeply, painfully repressed sexuality together as “fooling around”, and the assertion that kissing someone other than Joyce is somehow proof that Becky’s feelings for Joyce are shallow or whatever absolutely came from your own head, friend, and not this comic or any of its characters.
profnekko
the scary thing is if Willis is sadistic enough to go “like mother like daughter”
eh, whatever
No deaths of main characters.
(The Damnable had overlooked that Mike had become a main character; it turns out he wasn’t supposed to.)
TerribleTransit
Willis didn’t overlook shit. They intentionally, knowingly broke that rule, and acknowledged as much
Mari
Mike would have wanted it that way.
Clif
I can’t argue with that. But he would have wanted you to feel bad about it.
Clif
For example, if you had ever said something like “Mike is a force of nature and can’t be destroyed,” he would want you to consider the possibility that if you hadn’t said that, Mike might still be around.
Or if say, someone had said, back when two characters broke up, “Willis wants us to hate him,” and you had responded, “Nah, if Willis wanted us to hate him then he would have broken up Dina and Becky,” then the chances you would have influenced what Willis subsequently did are miniscule. But Mike would have wanted to remind you of what you said at every opportunity.
Mike was like that.
profnekko
true… But there’s no reason she has to succeed… merely try
Wizard
I know it might kill some drama, but I’d really like to think that they learned enough from Becky’s example to lock the damn door.
Astariel
They did. Both doors.
deliverything
Reference: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2025/comic/book-16/01-not-so-smooth-criminals/reallydoingthis/
JA
I think even I’d nope out of the comments for a day or two if that was indeed the case.
Rosicrucian
Dorothy really wants to think humping a washing machine is normal and safe.
Astariel
Please, Dorothy would never! It was a dryer.
Dot
Does she still think that was, like, a normal thing people do
Rosicrucian
She absolutely Googled it and her sources were impeccable and she is not at all sublimating a boodle of neurodivergence about it.
Getes
It is. You’re the weird one.
GreyICE
The things cis women do with electric toothbrushes, hairbrush handles, and washers/dryers are funny yo.
Girls can like sex.
3oranges
Nobody ever said women can’t like sex. Getting off in a public location is still a little less common though?
Reltzik
If it isn’t done in a common space, is it really common?
Nymph
People with vaginas do like sex, but usually the dryers getting humped are in private homes.
Usually.
That said, it’s a comic and the scene used what was available to give them that kind of moment. It’s weird to me how many people are still hung up on it being in public. Like no one’s ever fucked in hidden away public areas with a risk of being busted.
Like they aren’t also complaining about Dorothy and Joyce being too vanilla. Which I do agree with.
Dot
It being in public isn’t the issue for me, at least, I’m fully in favor of public shenanigans (and yes, doing it more often would make these two more interesting to me lol).
Nymph
Totally! I was more mentioning the “in public” thing as a response to 3oranges point as well tbh.
But YES agreed it would make them more interesting.
Tan
I would put forward that most people do something at some point in their life that could be described in a way that “most people don’t do X specifically”.
All of that is aside that Dorothy is not asserting anything about laundry being “normal”, she is asserting that it was not her and Joyce having sex with one another.
It was way gayer than thatTan
(this reply missed slightly where it was supposed to go)
StClair
yeah, asserting that all of her nerdy and/or gay stuff is in fact perfectly normal (and straight) is Jennifer’s thing.
Dara
When I was in college another student literally got busted doing this.
It is, in fact, something people from weird fundamentalist backgrounds do.
Dot
So I am of course perfectly aware that people use dryers to get off, but most people do not drag their best friends that they’re sublimating romantic feelings for to one to masturbate for the first time with the explicit purpose of sabotaging their courtship with a potential paramour they are jealous of.
Lys
Yeah, but people don’t beat up college criminals in hero costume, or Akira slide to class on their motorcycle. Most people aren’t as cool as Amber, Sal, or Dorothy.
Li
I mean, not to defend Dorothy in that sequence, but I think what she was actually consciously trying to do was bad enough without any exaggeration.
She didn’t think Joe was courting Joyce, she thought Joe was just trying to get into Joyce’s pants — and she similarly didn’t think Joyce could possibly be interested in someone like that, so she decided to teach Joyce to masturbate with the expectation that a more clearheaded Joyce would realize she didn’t really want to be with Joe.
And also because Roz accused her of being slut-shamey with her earlier, more normally expressed concerns, and Dorothy wanted to prove Roz wrong. She very expressly mutters under her breath that this is an “innovative, sex-positive solution that is not just perpetuating the status quo… Roz.” (https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/02-turning-saints-into-the-sea/relieve/)
There was, of course, also jealousy happening, but I think if she’d actually believed Joe had sincere romantic aspirations for Joyce and wasn’t still thinking of him as the sex pest she’d known him to be for like 5 years, she would have also known that trying to herd Joyce away from him was a Weird thing to do, and it would’ve stayed bitter confusing jealousy, like what we saw later from her in the gym.
Li
“she would have also known that trying to herd Joyce away from him was a Weird thing to do”
To stress: I am not saying that teaching a friend to masturbate isn’t kind of weird in itself, though I’m sure it’s happened at least once platonically.
What I mean is that if Dorothy had actually thought of what she was doing as “sabotaging [a romantic] courtship”, the cognitive dissonance (“wait, WHY am I doing this?”) would have been too much for her to get past.
Dot
I get that it wasn’t conscious on Dorothy’s part, I just don’t think that materially matters.
Li
Okay, me misreading what you meant by “with the explicit purpose of”, then.
Dot
Hm, yeah, can see why that would be confusing, my bad. I’d say it was THE explicit purpose, but it was not explicit to HER.
Li
No worries ? I rescind my comment.
Drainiest Drain
Aww
Mr. Random
This would be genuinely cute if they weren’t screwing up the relationships of like four different people too.
nadamás
Skill issue
Stormtide Leviathan
Skill issue
Getes
Becky’s bullshit is her own and not anyone else’s fault.
Shaith86
It is but the others… Well, it amazes me how quickly the community here is willing to brush cheating aside because lesbians…
Josh
It’s pretty shockingly fast. About half of them get off on it upsetting people though.
dinerkinetic
yeah, it’s kind of wild– nobody pretended billie/ruth was healthy or smart, dorothy and joyce can be cute to some folks without them pretending the girls can/have done no wrong
Li
“Nobody pretended Billie/Ruth was healthy or smart”
Well, no, I don’t think people pretended to think that. I think people genuinely did think that they eventually reached a point of healthiness, though, and I think one of the people who thought that was Willis. Reread “This Was Halloween”.
Folks keep forgetting that Billie and Ruth had both stopped drinking, that Ruth was on antidepressants and Billie was in therapy, BEFORE they broke up. In that storyline, Billie is talking about introducing Ruth to her parents. Ruth sabotages everything because she’s too afraid that someday, depression might win again, and if it wins, it might cause her to drag Billie down with her. She broke up with Billie in an effort to save her life.
Clif
Also, Billie and Ruth were pretty unhealthy to start with. Ruth knew she was depressed to the point of eventually being suicidal. Their twisted relationship was actually very good for them. It was the Mary inspired withdrawal from the relationship which set things off. Without Jenifer and Carla, Ruth would likely be dead and with her alcoholism, Jenifer would have been a ticking time bomb. So, yeah, in their own way they were healthy for each other.
thejeff
The amusing thing to me about reactions to the Ruth/Jennifer relationship is commenters seem pretty equally divided on who was abusive in the relationship. Lots of people think it was bad and someone was abusing someone, but which way it goes flips from person to person and which aspect of the story arc they were focusing on.
Freemage
That’s because people need there to be a one-sided nature to the abuse, so they can assign blame. The concept of a mutually toxic relationship is a bit much for a lot of folks. (Personally, I figure their relationship was mutually toxic, but they actually brought it to a better place, then Ruth imploded it.)
TheMormegil
I think it’s genuinely weird how people are upset about them cheating when they broke up with their previous boyfriends within 48 hours. The only thing that’s even questionable is Joyce giving a blowjob to Joe after kissing Dorothy, and that’s cheating on Dorothy who didn’t seem to care.
I’m not saying they did good or anything. But it very much feels to me like if people were arguing for 30 years of jail time over stealing some candy. So kinda uno-reverse: it’s weird how this community is ready to jump up in arms over minor things when it’s lesbians doing them.
Donovan
1. They aren’t lesbians.
2. ’30 years of jailtime’ most people who aren’t just drop-in weirdos want something more on the lines of, like. More than one person saying ‘hey that wasn’t cool.’ Feels dull.