and I don’t want to hear anyone complaining that she took the Bulmeria news in stride but had a big “what” moment over Becky, but we know that down there will be a comment thread ripping Joyce and Dorothy apart for… 1. being gay. 2. “cheating” 3. “hurting their boyfriends” 4. existing. 5. IDK insert some other thing here, they have done a lot, still not ok with the one who flagrantly used “whore” (whores get paid baby) ~<3
[Insert rant about white obliviousness here, I’m tired and nearly lost my mind from being bedridden on top of the giant dumpster fire that’s been 2025]
after further diagnostics they prescribed me Cefalexin and an anti-inflammatory ointment, been on them for 2 days now, while it still hurts like hell at least the redness seems to have gone down, progress?
In any case after I'm done healin imma treat myself to a big, big, BIG mug of Irish Coffee (-_-)
Laura
Sending you all my hopes!
?⚕️?
Clif
And tell them I said to double the whiskey. For medicinal purposes.
Is Joyce particularly aware of it?
She doesn’t seem averse to giving a shit…
I think Becky is highly likely to be much more on her mind.
Isn’t the obliviousness Joyce obliviousness rather than white obliviousness?
No person, not you or any other, cares about every happening thing they ought to care about to the degree that it should be cared about. A self abrogation exceeding by many times the entirety of one’s identity would be required.
The Erymanthian
Do you mean self abnegation? Google dislikes “self abrogation” and refuses to reveal its secrets to me
Clif
Hey, AI buddy, give me a definition for self abrogation.
Self abrogation can be defined as a willful and often systematic undoing, canceling, or relinquishing of one’s own claims, rights, responsibilities, or defining traits, such that the self treats its own standing or authority as null and void.
Core meaning
In this sense, self marks the subject as both agent and object: the person is the one who performs the abrogation and also the thing being abrogated.
Abrogation here echoes its legal sense—“to repeal or annul”—but redirected inward, so the person symbolically “repeals” elements of their own identity, commitments, or entitlements.
Difference from self-abnegation
Self-abnegation usually means denying or subordinating one’s interests or desires for the sake of others or a higher ideal, while still presuming a stable self that is being denied.
Self abrogation, by contrast, implies a more radical move: instead of merely denying desires, the person invalidates their own status as a claimant or authority, as if canceling the very basis on which they could assert or protect themselves.
between technicians having to correct its mistakes post hoc every time people hurt themselves with pretend knowledge on the news to maintain it’s veneer of reliability, environmental caveats, etc
the very IDEA of AI as anything close to a viable source of helpful information is just plain BATSHIT STUPID
it’s like if the world’s most experienced librarian suddenly decided that their experience SORTING BOOKS somehow automatically makes them a reputable authority on absolutely EVERYTHING
but really, to actually get the most out of a LIBRARY, all you really need is basic fucking information literacy and DIRECTIONS TO THE RIGHT SHELF D:
it aint need no fucking rocket science, it aint need no insane amounts of electricity, it aint need no catastrophic environmental damage, it aint need no bourgeois bastards to milk for massive amounts of money
All you have to do to get Google to help you with self-abrogation is to search for it with quotes (“self-abrogation”). S’not common parlance, but it’s not hard to find.
You could also just look up abrogation and then think about what it might add to the word to prefix it with “self”.
Both much better and more useful options than trusting “AI”.
Li
By “both much better and more useful”, what I mean is:
— you’ve now learned a technique for finding search results in the future! It’s sad that we seem to have lost the knowledge of putting quotes around a search term to get an exact result, but it works on almost ANY search engine.
— by looking at the types of results you get for a proper search of the term, you’re gaining additional context! For example: are the results for the term reputable-looking? Do they seem to be purely legal? (I found a page about the use of the term in Buddhist doctrine, so I did a search for abrogation Buddhism, and got a bunch of results talking about its religious sense.)
— looking up abrogation, meanwhile, gives you another important skill: taking unfamiliar terms apart and considering them. Sometimes it’s not quite as simple as combining two parts of a compound word, sometimes there are strong contextual associations with the compound word that change its meaning slightly from what one might expect. But…
— these last two are good critical thinking exercises, which is a REALLY important muscle to keep flexing. Our world is rife with misinformation. This is the worst time to be outsourcing our critical thinking to “AI”.
— and that’s not even touching the fact that some of these chatbots are programmed maliciously. Like, I hope no one here is going to trust Grok, Musk’s bot, but just because you don’t know as much about the guy who runs OpenAI doesn’t mean you should assume it’s that much more trustworthy.
I mean, as NGPZ alluded to, these algorithms regularly encourage self-harm, tell people to put glue in pizza, and worse. Plus, it can’t even tell you how may r’s there are in a word.
Clif
All I know is that the things I’m not actively thinking about don’t really exist and can’t be all that important or I’d be thinking about them.
Jammy
Not a single character in this comic (or 80% of this comments thread) knows what “abrogation” means. Climb off that high horse and then we’ll talk.
I think a running issue for Joyce is that she is **VERY** laser-focused. I don’t really know if she’s demonstrated an ability to focus on anything grand-scale for any length of time versus what’s immediately pressing for her.
I kind of think a lot of it is a byproduct of how much hypocrisy she had to swallow when she was in more fundie circles, and something she’s having to deconstruct in her own brain.
You’re hating on a 19 year old freshman in college for taking more notice of something directly affecting her best friend over something happening a world a way she can’t change. I’m sorry but that’s asinine. By your logic, none of us should focus on anything but the absolute worst things going on in the world. Joyce is allowed to care about Becky, and she’s allowed to do something about it.
GholaHalleck
Acting like Becky is still her bestie after the teargas wedding is a stretch.
Though she IS the only one either of the girl’s has given a rat’s ass about (other then themselves) since the tear gas… so maybe they can just thruple up.
Needfuldoer
At this point they’re still friends out of inertia. They’re besties because they’ve always been besties and why would that change?
Clif
She cared about Becky when she gave her a place to stay and did without so they could both eat on her meal plan. She cared about Becky when she punched out Toe Dad. Nothing in the story has changed those feelings. How you feel about one person doesn’t change the way you feel about another.
Needfuldoer
There’s been an overarching theme of them growing apart. The last time they fought, they never really talked it out, only kicked the can down the road and ignored the issues between them.
BrakenFern
That’s a normal phase for most long term friendships to go through? No one stays the same. They both have a boatload of unpacked and largely unexamined trauma. Both of their home families have changed dramatically. Becky’s lost just about everything. They haven’t shown up well for each other, but they both do care about each other. If they can work through it or not is still an open ended question.
Mitzi B.
See, that’s the problem with writing a genocide into the comic’s timeline – now every character has to be evaluated, on some level, along the axis of “do they give a shit about this genocide that their school is involved in?” Most of them don’t!
Clif
It kind of makes a difference whether the school is actively participating in genocide or whether it has a fund that makes investments towards growth in value to help educate students and incidentally pay their salaries of staff into the future, and some part of this investment is into a high tech company that has a diverse range of products that effects everyday lives, and some part of this companies range of powerful advanced products are in the defense and weapons sector and among their customers are a nation that some people are claiming are using those weapons to defend themselves and others are claiming they are using them to commit genocide. And, oh yeah, the leaders of that technology company are generous doners to the school.
For any large company you could invest in, you could probably find something that company is doing that is going to be objectional. All of this concerns me a lot less than the US’s continuing practice of grossly overreacting to largely peaceful student protests, occasionally with tragic results. This has persisted from the 60’s to the present and there is no excuse for it. It’s not something happening in a foreign country that we have no direct control over; it’s something happening here that is our direct responsibility.
Of course our plate is kind of full at the moment of stuff our government is doing that we’re responsible for.
Clif
*company’s
Wizard
You make a good point. Having a trust that owns shares in a company that’s been singled out is not the same thing as actively supporting their alleged bad actions. I say “alleged” because we haven’t heard many real details. It’s more that characters we’re supposed to like support one side while people we’re supposed to consider bad or at least ignorant support another. Having seen just how messy things get in the real world, I can’t really get behind this kind of designated villainy.
Back to the original issue, anybody who has a 401k probably owns some tiny chunk of one or more disfavored companies. How concerned someone should be depends at least in part on how actively the company is involved. Are they actively supporting one side, or just fulfilling their contracts with the US or other governments that are the ones supplying the “wrong” side?
Latching on to a trendy cause may make people feel good, but actually doing good often requires a little research and actual work.
shepsquared
Yeah, it’s not like she went to a protest about said genocide and wound up on the front page of an article about said protest. It’s completely irrelevant to Joyce and what she’s done, even though her response to someone criticising her about her actions at the protest was to say that she was ‘heroically gay’, which is a weird thing to claim when you don’t care about the protest.
zee
Okay well
1. She didn’t attend the protest, she went to find Jocelyn to warn her about their dad, Joss was at the protest so she went there. If she were at a chuck e cheese she would’ve went there instead. Dotty was the only one who actually tried protesting, tho in a weird self centered “this is absolutely not about the protest” kinda way
2. Saying you’re “heroically gay” has nothing to do with a protest against genocide. It’d make sense if the protest were related to queer rights but it’s completely irrelevant to this one. It was a weird thing to claim in general.
Joyce did not care about the bulmeria protest and iirc, hasn’t really said shit about what the protest was actually for, just stuff surrounding it. I don’t think she’s a bad person for that, but let’s not kid ourselves here. She’s not some heroic ally to [heretofore unnamed genocided group], idk if she could even point to bulmeria on a map. The protest was incidental to her actual goals and actions
thejeff
“Heroically gay” was a weird thing to say at all, but saying it was only tangentially related to the protest. She said it in response to Raidah telling her the photo would make her unemployable. IOW, to Raidah using homophobia against her.
She also seems to have realized it was weird and walked it back, talking about stolen valor and how real gays are heroic figures fighting oppression like Becky.
Clif
Wouldn’t it be even weirder to claim to be “heroically straight?”
I might not mind being heroically straight, either as an equal opportunity thing, or maybe as a treat.
But, you know, without any requirement to be uncomfortably heroic.
apocryphascribe
You’re responding to a Doylist critique like it’s Watsonian. This is not actually about Joyce in universe, but about external writing decisions made by the author introducing a volatile element into the story that retroactively renders the entire cast suspect. As Mitzi puts it, now that we know a genocide is taking place in universe, every character now has a “do they know or care about it?” sign above their heads that was not there before, and would not be there if not for its inclusion.
Clif
Regardless of the mechanism behind the story, the story is the story. There are no signs above the characters heads unless you insist they be there.
Word balloons maybe, but no signs.
Yotomoe
Almost like maybe we shouldn’t have had a genocide in this story.
Adept
You can have a genocide in your story, but the story should then probably be about that, or if it’s a backdrop, it should reveal major things about your characters.
Yotomoe
Right. If it’s just window dressing it just feels pointless at best and tone deaf at worst.
Wizard
Please consider yourself upvoted.
Wizard
People, neurotypical or not, can only care about so many things at once. It does a lot more good in the world to pick one or a few issues that you can actually do something about, however small, than to “raise awareness” about anything and everything. Often this lets people feel good, but absolves them of the need to actually do anything. It can also result in support, financial and otherwise, flowing to popular causes that are already well-funded while equally deserving but less publicized causes scramble for resources.
100%. Joyce is nothing if not completely and deliberately ignorant of anything she isn’t focusing her undivided attention on, and making her the “white person who doesn’t actually give a shit about politics that don’t directly affect her” of this couple to contrast against Dorothy’s “white person who gives a shit but is really bad at it” is, despite being incredibly frustrating to read, an interesting decision that has me wondering where it’s going to go.
I actually have way more hope she’s going to be eating humble pie on this attitude sooner as opposed to the cheating thing, which is likely going nowhere soon, if at all.
Everybody wants to be “heroically gay” until the rubber bullets start flying.
(Only semi-related but if anybody is looking for a shred of hope about the merits of organized resistance, the new documentary WTO/99 is really fascinating)
Ok… seriously.
Where the heck did you get that flaw from???
What line? What panel???
OMG! *eyeroll*
Dot
Where’s Big Z with his pushbroom
Big Z
Honestly, I barely even see Acher4’s posts because they’re never worth engaging with — they seem to exist solely to try to ineffectually troll the Doyce-haters.
The sort of manic 2008 deviantART Gir-posting vibe is at least a little novel.
zee
It certainly is….something
Acher4
Lol, “trolling”.
Weird that’s its trolling, just because some of us have finally started talking against and pointing out how for the last six months+ these “amazing” moral-superiors have been constanly bongoing of things that exist only in their fantasy lands.
Bulmeria protest is not a bad story point. On the contrary.
A kiss is not murder/cheating.
Jocelyne didn’t want to be outed to her father yet.
Joe knows they are not a couple anymore.
Joyce and Dorothy did nothing wrong.
A character flaw shared by basically everyone commenting here. Why waste time and energy on a webcomic comment forum when there’s an actual genocide going on? This shouldn’t even be nearly as important to any of us as Becky is to Joyce and apparently that should pale in comparison to genocide.
Mitzi B.
That goes into the question of “what can people actually do about the genocide” both in real life and in the strip. In real life, I assume most people in the comments are doing what they can. In the strip, I have to assume a lot of them don’t care.
This is what I’ve been wondering about. The structure of this strip seems like it HAS to be intentional. So if more Asma & Raidah representation is really all Willis added, people were way overboard with how much they accused Willis of not being aware that DoJo were being clueless at the protest.
On the other hand, the edit to the kiss strip that lampshades the issue suggests the opposite (IMO that was totally unnecessary; I blamed that moment on the characters not the author and didn’t find it out of character at all. I think Dorothy realizing after she saw what Daisy did was perfectly reasonable if not above-average level of wokeness for 18 year old white girls from small town Indiana.)
Just curious: has there been a time – in ANY of our lifetime – that there has NOT been a genocide happening somewhere in the world? I was a pretty globally oblivious kid (grew up in an even more restrictive, fundie background than Joyce), and only vaguely remember hearing names of countries I couldn’t find on a map having “troubles.”
But for the most part, well past my twenties, if I heard “genocide,” I could only picture something Holocaust related… And certainly had no clue how I could ever possibly do anything about it, even though I hated the concept that this could be happening again somewhere.
There’s some time or intervention needed to learn how to rewrite the fundie code/script/programming that “global affairs” are beyond our control or influence. “The hearts of kings are in the hands of the Lord” and all that.
…was everyone else with any integrity, ethics, morals spending every weekend changing the world? I’m genuinely trying to figure out what the appropriate place on the spectrum is, since I have trouble sometimes understanding what makes a middle ground acceptable rather than tending toward one extremely or another (AuDHD here… Not exactly known for doing anything by half measures)
It could be psychosocial numbing, the brain has a defense against feelings of helplessness.
Proximity to a tragedy will also affect reaction to it. Genocide in another country isn’t as shocking as a single murder happening next door, for many people.
Also, as a support worker to adults with autism, most of my clients will not car at all about the war but will be devastated by a tv show being removed from Netflix. I wouldn’t consider them flawed.
Ok well this isn’t the maniacal cackling containment thread
Queezle
Do we need one of those? I would like to cackle manically sometimes… but my inhibitions do not let me.
I do like that something has rattled Joyce out of her “I am with Dorothy, and we had sex and nothing else matters” mind set.
One other point is that I personally kind of hoped that Jennifer would be more firmly in Walky’s corner, I just feel like someone should be. But maybe it was a vain hope that Jennifer would be that person. (And I do not mean that I wanted her to yell at them or anything like that)
Unrelated: typing with a cat on your shoulder who thinks your hair is a cat toy is not that easy.
Needfuldoer
Yeah, I wasn’t expecting Jennifer of all people to be bemused here.
Throwatron
Jennifer needs notable proximity to other cool people to maintain her veneer of social importance. That’s it. She cares about Walky in an underlying way, but she can’t be seen caring about Walky, because he’s a loser and a dork. Now, she also can’t be seen with Dotty and Joyce, because they have dork-coded themselves. Jennifer cannot engage sincerely on any level with anything, because proximity to uncoolness threatens her standing in the social hierarchy, and that’s the only thing propping up her black hole of an ego.
Adept
Did you study psychology at the uni Throwatron? I really enjoy your takes.
I’m cautiously optimistic that the plot will start moving with these two soon after this strip
Still think we should check in on some other characters, when was the last time we saw Danny? he had opinions on cheating that could make for some good drama
Based on a post Willis made on social media, showing a bit of a comic that is supposed to come out next October, the situation won’t be dealt with by even then, as Walky still glares are Joyce when they pass in the hall. (If could be for an entirely different reason, they have been messing with eachother for a long time). The social consequences will probably still be going on for another year of the comic unless Walky was pissed at her for another reason.
We saw danny in a bonus strip recently if I remember correctly.
DailyBrad
Yup, with Joe, though it’s not really getting into his thoughts on the situation directly, just him checking in on Joe.
eh, whatever
He might be glaring at her for a completely unrelated reason.
430 thoughts on “Adorkable”
Patrick
that’s the best WHAT since Raidah’s
EpochFlame
amen to that
DJTsurugi
and I don’t want to hear anyone complaining that she took the Bulmeria news in stride but had a big “what” moment over Becky, but we know that down there will be a comment thread ripping Joyce and Dorothy apart for… 1. being gay. 2. “cheating” 3. “hurting their boyfriends” 4. existing. 5. IDK insert some other thing here, they have done a lot, still not ok with the one who flagrantly used “whore” (whores get paid baby) ~<3
Clif
Hey, now DJT, I’m looking forward to reading today’s hate thread as I scroll down.
DJTsurugi
lol you do you, I just find it exhausting. ~<3
Heavensrun
I wouldn’t use DJT to refer to anybody besides orange Hitler, but that might be my trauma showing.
Deanatay
We need someone to collect all the big WHATs in this comic and do a thing with them.
A WHATrospective, if you will.
Okay, I’ve done my part, I created the pun, now someone else get to work!
Clif
I’ll supervise!
In kind of a hands-off way.
Dot
Hater containment thread, kvetch here, mostly perfunctory because I mostly don’t hate this one ⬇️
Dot
So is it an intentional character flaw that Joyce clearly does not give a shit about the genocide in Bulmeria or what
NGPZ
[Insert rant about white obliviousness here, I’m tired and nearly lost my mind from being bedridden on top of the giant dumpster fire that’s been 2025]
Laura
Take good care of you, NGPZ.
??
NGPZ
That, I shall, thank you. T~T <3
after further diagnostics they prescribed me Cefalexin and an anti-inflammatory ointment, been on them for 2 days now, while it still hurts like hell at least the redness seems to have gone down, progress?
In any case after I'm done healin imma treat myself to a big, big, BIG mug of Irish Coffee (-_-)
Laura
Sending you all my hopes!
?⚕️?
Clif
And tell them I said to double the whiskey. For medicinal purposes.
Thing 2
Is Joyce particularly aware of it?
She doesn’t seem averse to giving a shit…
I think Becky is highly likely to be much more on her mind.
Isn’t the obliviousness Joyce obliviousness rather than white obliviousness?
Freezer
The difference is all in their reaction to having said obliviousness pointed out:
White Obliviousness: Hyper defensiveness, extreme lack of self awareness as they whitesplain why you’re wrong.
Joyce Obliviousness: Guilt ridden horror followed by embarrassing overcompensation.
not someone else
Why not both?
Frelance
No person, not you or any other, cares about every happening thing they ought to care about to the degree that it should be cared about. A self abrogation exceeding by many times the entirety of one’s identity would be required.
The Erymanthian
Do you mean self abnegation? Google dislikes “self abrogation” and refuses to reveal its secrets to me
Clif
Hey, AI buddy, give me a definition for self abrogation.
Self abrogation can be defined as a willful and often systematic undoing, canceling, or relinquishing of one’s own claims, rights, responsibilities, or defining traits, such that the self treats its own standing or authority as null and void.
Core meaning
In this sense, self marks the subject as both agent and object: the person is the one who performs the abrogation and also the thing being abrogated.
Abrogation here echoes its legal sense—“to repeal or annul”—but redirected inward, so the person symbolically “repeals” elements of their own identity, commitments, or entitlements.
Difference from self-abnegation
Self-abnegation usually means denying or subordinating one’s interests or desires for the sake of others or a higher ideal, while still presuming a stable self that is being denied.
Self abrogation, by contrast, implies a more radical move: instead of merely denying desires, the person invalidates their own status as a claimant or authority, as if canceling the very basis on which they could assert or protect themselves.
NGPZ
like, re: AI
between technicians having to correct its mistakes post hoc every time people hurt themselves with pretend knowledge on the news to maintain it’s veneer of reliability, environmental caveats, etc
the very IDEA of AI as anything close to a viable source of helpful information is just plain BATSHIT STUPID
it’s like if the world’s most experienced librarian suddenly decided that their experience SORTING BOOKS somehow automatically makes them a reputable authority on absolutely EVERYTHING
but really, to actually get the most out of a LIBRARY, all you really need is basic fucking information literacy and DIRECTIONS TO THE RIGHT SHELF D:
it aint need no fucking rocket science, it aint need no insane amounts of electricity, it aint need no catastrophic environmental damage, it aint need no bourgeois bastards to milk for massive amounts of money
anger rising, rant ending
elebenty
So… like Congress.
Li
All you have to do to get Google to help you with self-abrogation is to search for it with quotes (“self-abrogation”). S’not common parlance, but it’s not hard to find.
You could also just look up abrogation and then think about what it might add to the word to prefix it with “self”.
Both much better and more useful options than trusting “AI”.
Li
By “both much better and more useful”, what I mean is:
— you’ve now learned a technique for finding search results in the future! It’s sad that we seem to have lost the knowledge of putting quotes around a search term to get an exact result, but it works on almost ANY search engine.
— by looking at the types of results you get for a proper search of the term, you’re gaining additional context! For example: are the results for the term reputable-looking? Do they seem to be purely legal? (I found a page about the use of the term in Buddhist doctrine, so I did a search for abrogation Buddhism, and got a bunch of results talking about its religious sense.)
— looking up abrogation, meanwhile, gives you another important skill: taking unfamiliar terms apart and considering them. Sometimes it’s not quite as simple as combining two parts of a compound word, sometimes there are strong contextual associations with the compound word that change its meaning slightly from what one might expect. But…
— these last two are good critical thinking exercises, which is a REALLY important muscle to keep flexing. Our world is rife with misinformation. This is the worst time to be outsourcing our critical thinking to “AI”.
— and that’s not even touching the fact that some of these chatbots are programmed maliciously. Like, I hope no one here is going to trust Grok, Musk’s bot, but just because you don’t know as much about the guy who runs OpenAI doesn’t mean you should assume it’s that much more trustworthy.
I mean, as NGPZ alluded to, these algorithms regularly encourage self-harm, tell people to put glue in pizza, and worse. Plus, it can’t even tell you how may r’s there are in a word.
Clif
All I know is that the things I’m not actively thinking about don’t really exist and can’t be all that important or I’d be thinking about them.
Jammy
Not a single character in this comic (or 80% of this comments thread) knows what “abrogation” means. Climb off that high horse and then we’ll talk.
DailyBrad
I think a running issue for Joyce is that she is **VERY** laser-focused. I don’t really know if she’s demonstrated an ability to focus on anything grand-scale for any length of time versus what’s immediately pressing for her.
I kind of think a lot of it is a byproduct of how much hypocrisy she had to swallow when she was in more fundie circles, and something she’s having to deconstruct in her own brain.
Olofa
If she’s AuDHD, hyperfocus is an aspect of that.
ClaudeLemieux
You’re hating on a 19 year old freshman in college for taking more notice of something directly affecting her best friend over something happening a world a way she can’t change. I’m sorry but that’s asinine. By your logic, none of us should focus on anything but the absolute worst things going on in the world. Joyce is allowed to care about Becky, and she’s allowed to do something about it.
GholaHalleck
Acting like Becky is still her bestie after the teargas wedding is a stretch.
Though she IS the only one either of the girl’s has given a rat’s ass about (other then themselves) since the tear gas… so maybe they can just thruple up.
Needfuldoer
At this point they’re still friends out of inertia. They’re besties because they’ve always been besties and why would that change?
Clif
She cared about Becky when she gave her a place to stay and did without so they could both eat on her meal plan. She cared about Becky when she punched out Toe Dad. Nothing in the story has changed those feelings. How you feel about one person doesn’t change the way you feel about another.
Needfuldoer
There’s been an overarching theme of them growing apart. The last time they fought, they never really talked it out, only kicked the can down the road and ignored the issues between them.
BrakenFern
That’s a normal phase for most long term friendships to go through? No one stays the same. They both have a boatload of unpacked and largely unexamined trauma. Both of their home families have changed dramatically. Becky’s lost just about everything. They haven’t shown up well for each other, but they both do care about each other. If they can work through it or not is still an open ended question.
Mitzi B.
See, that’s the problem with writing a genocide into the comic’s timeline – now every character has to be evaluated, on some level, along the axis of “do they give a shit about this genocide that their school is involved in?” Most of them don’t!
Clif
It kind of makes a difference whether the school is actively participating in genocide or whether it has a fund that makes investments towards growth in value to help educate students and incidentally pay their salaries of staff into the future, and some part of this investment is into a high tech company that has a diverse range of products that effects everyday lives, and some part of this companies range of powerful advanced products are in the defense and weapons sector and among their customers are a nation that some people are claiming are using those weapons to defend themselves and others are claiming they are using them to commit genocide. And, oh yeah, the leaders of that technology company are generous doners to the school.
For any large company you could invest in, you could probably find something that company is doing that is going to be objectional. All of this concerns me a lot less than the US’s continuing practice of grossly overreacting to largely peaceful student protests, occasionally with tragic results. This has persisted from the 60’s to the present and there is no excuse for it. It’s not something happening in a foreign country that we have no direct control over; it’s something happening here that is our direct responsibility.
Of course our plate is kind of full at the moment of stuff our government is doing that we’re responsible for.
Clif
*company’s
Wizard
You make a good point. Having a trust that owns shares in a company that’s been singled out is not the same thing as actively supporting their alleged bad actions. I say “alleged” because we haven’t heard many real details. It’s more that characters we’re supposed to like support one side while people we’re supposed to consider bad or at least ignorant support another. Having seen just how messy things get in the real world, I can’t really get behind this kind of designated villainy.
Back to the original issue, anybody who has a 401k probably owns some tiny chunk of one or more disfavored companies. How concerned someone should be depends at least in part on how actively the company is involved. Are they actively supporting one side, or just fulfilling their contracts with the US or other governments that are the ones supplying the “wrong” side?
Latching on to a trendy cause may make people feel good, but actually doing good often requires a little research and actual work.
shepsquared
Yeah, it’s not like she went to a protest about said genocide and wound up on the front page of an article about said protest. It’s completely irrelevant to Joyce and what she’s done, even though her response to someone criticising her about her actions at the protest was to say that she was ‘heroically gay’, which is a weird thing to claim when you don’t care about the protest.
zee
Okay well
1. She didn’t attend the protest, she went to find Jocelyn to warn her about their dad, Joss was at the protest so she went there. If she were at a chuck e cheese she would’ve went there instead. Dotty was the only one who actually tried protesting, tho in a weird self centered “this is absolutely not about the protest” kinda way
2. Saying you’re “heroically gay” has nothing to do with a protest against genocide. It’d make sense if the protest were related to queer rights but it’s completely irrelevant to this one. It was a weird thing to claim in general.
Joyce did not care about the bulmeria protest and iirc, hasn’t really said shit about what the protest was actually for, just stuff surrounding it. I don’t think she’s a bad person for that, but let’s not kid ourselves here. She’s not some heroic ally to [heretofore unnamed genocided group], idk if she could even point to bulmeria on a map. The protest was incidental to her actual goals and actions
thejeff
“Heroically gay” was a weird thing to say at all, but saying it was only tangentially related to the protest. She said it in response to Raidah telling her the photo would make her unemployable. IOW, to Raidah using homophobia against her.
She also seems to have realized it was weird and walked it back, talking about stolen valor and how real gays are heroic figures fighting oppression like Becky.
Clif
Wouldn’t it be even weirder to claim to be “heroically straight?”
I might not mind being heroically straight, either as an equal opportunity thing, or maybe as a treat.
But, you know, without any requirement to be uncomfortably heroic.
apocryphascribe
You’re responding to a Doylist critique like it’s Watsonian. This is not actually about Joyce in universe, but about external writing decisions made by the author introducing a volatile element into the story that retroactively renders the entire cast suspect. As Mitzi puts it, now that we know a genocide is taking place in universe, every character now has a “do they know or care about it?” sign above their heads that was not there before, and would not be there if not for its inclusion.
Clif
Regardless of the mechanism behind the story, the story is the story. There are no signs above the characters heads unless you insist they be there.
Word balloons maybe, but no signs.
Yotomoe
Almost like maybe we shouldn’t have had a genocide in this story.
Adept
You can have a genocide in your story, but the story should then probably be about that, or if it’s a backdrop, it should reveal major things about your characters.
Yotomoe
Right. If it’s just window dressing it just feels pointless at best and tone deaf at worst.
Wizard
Please consider yourself upvoted.
Wizard
People, neurotypical or not, can only care about so many things at once. It does a lot more good in the world to pick one or a few issues that you can actually do something about, however small, than to “raise awareness” about anything and everything. Often this lets people feel good, but absolves them of the need to actually do anything. It can also result in support, financial and otherwise, flowing to popular causes that are already well-funded while equally deserving but less publicized causes scramble for resources.
apocryphascribe
100%. Joyce is nothing if not completely and deliberately ignorant of anything she isn’t focusing her undivided attention on, and making her the “white person who doesn’t actually give a shit about politics that don’t directly affect her” of this couple to contrast against Dorothy’s “white person who gives a shit but is really bad at it” is, despite being incredibly frustrating to read, an interesting decision that has me wondering where it’s going to go.
I actually have way more hope she’s going to be eating humble pie on this attitude sooner as opposed to the cheating thing, which is likely going nowhere soon, if at all.
Fail Earnhardt
Everybody wants to be “heroically gay” until the rubber bullets start flying.
(Only semi-related but if anybody is looking for a shred of hope about the merits of organized resistance, the new documentary WTO/99 is really fascinating)
Acher4
Ok… seriously.
Where the heck did you get that flaw from???
What line? What panel???
OMG! *eyeroll*
Dot
Where’s Big Z with his pushbroom
Big Z
Honestly, I barely even see Acher4’s posts because they’re never worth engaging with — they seem to exist solely to try to ineffectually troll the Doyce-haters.
Taffy
The sort of manic 2008 deviantART Gir-posting vibe is at least a little novel.
zee
It certainly is….something
Acher4
Lol, “trolling”.
Weird that’s its trolling, just because some of us have finally started talking against and pointing out how for the last six months+ these “amazing” moral-superiors have been constanly bongoing of things that exist only in their fantasy lands.
Bulmeria protest is not a bad story point. On the contrary.
A kiss is not murder/cheating.
Jocelyne didn’t want to be outed to her father yet.
Joe knows they are not a couple anymore.
Joyce and Dorothy did nothing wrong.
thejeff
A character flaw shared by basically everyone commenting here. Why waste time and energy on a webcomic comment forum when there’s an actual genocide going on? This shouldn’t even be nearly as important to any of us as Becky is to Joyce and apparently that should pale in comparison to genocide.
Mitzi B.
That goes into the question of “what can people actually do about the genocide” both in real life and in the strip. In real life, I assume most people in the comments are doing what they can. In the strip, I have to assume a lot of them don’t care.
Lee
This is what I’ve been wondering about. The structure of this strip seems like it HAS to be intentional. So if more Asma & Raidah representation is really all Willis added, people were way overboard with how much they accused Willis of not being aware that DoJo were being clueless at the protest.
On the other hand, the edit to the kiss strip that lampshades the issue suggests the opposite (IMO that was totally unnecessary; I blamed that moment on the characters not the author and didn’t find it out of character at all. I think Dorothy realizing after she saw what Daisy did was perfectly reasonable if not above-average level of wokeness for 18 year old white girls from small town Indiana.)
Sarah Lea
Just curious: has there been a time – in ANY of our lifetime – that there has NOT been a genocide happening somewhere in the world? I was a pretty globally oblivious kid (grew up in an even more restrictive, fundie background than Joyce), and only vaguely remember hearing names of countries I couldn’t find on a map having “troubles.”
But for the most part, well past my twenties, if I heard “genocide,” I could only picture something Holocaust related… And certainly had no clue how I could ever possibly do anything about it, even though I hated the concept that this could be happening again somewhere.
There’s some time or intervention needed to learn how to rewrite the fundie code/script/programming that “global affairs” are beyond our control or influence. “The hearts of kings are in the hands of the Lord” and all that.
…was everyone else with any integrity, ethics, morals spending every weekend changing the world? I’m genuinely trying to figure out what the appropriate place on the spectrum is, since I have trouble sometimes understanding what makes a middle ground acceptable rather than tending toward one extremely or another (AuDHD here… Not exactly known for doing anything by half measures)
Iain
It could be psychosocial numbing, the brain has a defense against feelings of helplessness.
Proximity to a tragedy will also affect reaction to it. Genocide in another country isn’t as shocking as a single murder happening next door, for many people.
Also, as a support worker to adults with autism, most of my clients will not car at all about the war but will be devastated by a tv show being removed from Netflix. I wouldn’t consider them flawed.
Elf grrl
No hate, just maniacal cackling.
Dot
Ok well this isn’t the maniacal cackling containment thread
Queezle
Do we need one of those? I would like to cackle manically sometimes… but my inhibitions do not let me.
I do like that something has rattled Joyce out of her “I am with Dorothy, and we had sex and nothing else matters” mind set.
One other point is that I personally kind of hoped that Jennifer would be more firmly in Walky’s corner, I just feel like someone should be. But maybe it was a vain hope that Jennifer would be that person. (And I do not mean that I wanted her to yell at them or anything like that)
Unrelated: typing with a cat on your shoulder who thinks your hair is a cat toy is not that easy.
Needfuldoer
Yeah, I wasn’t expecting Jennifer of all people to be bemused here.
Throwatron
Jennifer needs notable proximity to other cool people to maintain her veneer of social importance. That’s it. She cares about Walky in an underlying way, but she can’t be seen caring about Walky, because he’s a loser and a dork. Now, she also can’t be seen with Dotty and Joyce, because they have dork-coded themselves. Jennifer cannot engage sincerely on any level with anything, because proximity to uncoolness threatens her standing in the social hierarchy, and that’s the only thing propping up her black hole of an ego.
Adept
Did you study psychology at the uni Throwatron? I really enjoy your takes.
Alongcameaspider
I’m cautiously optimistic that the plot will start moving with these two soon after this strip
Still think we should check in on some other characters, when was the last time we saw Danny? he had opinions on cheating that could make for some good drama
Switchchris
Based on a post Willis made on social media, showing a bit of a comic that is supposed to come out next October, the situation won’t be dealt with by even then, as Walky still glares are Joyce when they pass in the hall. (If could be for an entirely different reason, they have been messing with eachother for a long time). The social consequences will probably still be going on for another year of the comic unless Walky was pissed at her for another reason.
We saw danny in a bonus strip recently if I remember correctly.
DailyBrad
Yup, with Joe, though it’s not really getting into his thoughts on the situation directly, just him checking in on Joe.
eh, whatever
He might be glaring at her for a completely unrelated reason.
Jay
Im optimistic BECKYs plot will start moving
Nono