192

Owe
Posted on April 21, 2024 by David M Willis
The Dumbing of Age Book 13 Kickstarter is still going, somehow.  When will it end???? (in 17 days) anyway go pledge for a book and some magnets we unlock HALLOWEEN BECKY at $45k (that's in $2K)

192 thoughts on “Owe”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    IT’S A SECRET TO EVERYBODY.

    1. Ana Chronistic

      also, what VIDEO is better than a live performance

      (then it turns out Dotty can’t ever get in the mood again bc she remembers Joyce’s threat to watch and is constantly looking over her shoulder)

      1. Nono

        Videos can be good if you need to rewind to certain parts.

        Live can be good if they take active requests.

      2. Schpoonman

        There’s a bit in The Stormlight Archive where a character comes to the conclusion that the next time they have a sexual partner, their spren, their empowering partner spirit, will probably be present.

        There’s a described mental image of a tiny glowing person sitting on the headboard, shouting advice.

        1. Kaiyalai

          Oh lord, which book was that in again?

        2. LeafletErin

          That was in Oathbringer. Book 3. Specifically it was Kaladina and Syl having that conversation.

        3. Schpoonman

          Cackling thinking about it again. Sanderson is a genius.

        4. Throwatron

          Huh. I thought that was just something that came complimentary, when I stayed at Holiday Inn!

        5. JR

          Oh, you mean Sprennifer. She only works the suites, if you get a double room it’s BYOEPS.

        6. Schpoonman

          Aw, you got Sprennifer? I keep getting Sprenethor, I hate him. He leaves cherry tomatoes everywhere, it pisses off the cleaning staff.

        7. AbacusWizard

          [insert Ratatouille fanfic here]

        8. Schpoonman

          What’s the weakpoint of a mech?

          Its pilot.

        9. Azhrei Vep

          Hey, at least Syl was willing (nay, eager) to allow it. Others were not such libertines.

          Nnnnno mating!

          (I kid, he had to have that responsibility pushed on him in the first place)

        10. Schpoonman

          Pattern is my favorite little geometry man.

        11. Schpoonman

          Also, I’m only slightly annoyed that we never really got an exploration of what Shallan did with Pattern after she and Adolin married. Between that and the possibility of Sanderson canonizing “cobra chicken” for Rosharan geese, I need the next book.

        12. Amy

          Someone on reddit also asked if, since living shardblades can become anything the user wants, including a fork, would it be possible to have a sharddildo. Sanderson’s response was just “Sigh.”

        13. Schpoonman

          …I’m holding out for Kaladin and Syl to become a romantic item and the last thing I need is that mental image.

          Goddammit.

        14. Mr D

          Off topic but can I say just how hilarious it is to see you and Ana’s Gravatars one next to the other?

        15. Schpoonman

          I’d be lying if I said it didn’t tickle me a little.

      3. Decidedly Orthogonal

        It’s admittedly not as good as live, but a video chat with a real partner when we’re not together is a gabjillionty times better than a video with no interaction.

      4. Azhrei Vep

        In my experience? All of them.

      5. Weatherheight

        Playing the part of Poloneus tonight is Joyce.
        She immediately regrets it.

    2. Yet_One_More_Idiot

      Joyce: I have a crush on you…
      Dotty: Yeah no Joyce, that’s not a secret.
      Joyce: What?
      Dotty: Oh, nothing…what did you say?
      Joyce: I TOO SAID NOTHING ALSO LET US NEVER TALK OF THIS NOTHING AGAIN *faceplants into a shrub*

  2. IntangibleMatter

    (P5) Joyce… you and me both. Two people who both definitely have not thought about or are currently awaiting results from an autism assessment. Those are entirely unrelated.

    1. Rose by Any Other Name

      **fist bump**

  3. Sirksome

    I’m not hearing a solid no to the voyeurism plan, just a deflection.

    1. Van Jealous

      Joyce will look into that. 🙂

      1. Proxiehunter

        That’s what Dorothy’s afraid of.

        1. Doctor_Who

          She’ll need to document the event from multiple angles for further study. Roz can lend her some equipment.

        2. spriteless aunty

          Booster’s the photography major.

        3. Dante

          Being into it too?

  4. Nono

    I wonder how much money these guys get from their folks, since I don’t think any of them outside of Becky and Lucy are working.

    1. Thag Simmons

      Probably a decent allowance? Dorothy has supportive parents and Joyce still has a good relationship with hers

      1. Sirksome

        So what are our guesses on the final drink bill? I’ll accept ranges within 20$, My personal guess is between 180-200$ Drinks are expensive but it really depends to me on how much that whiskey flight was.

        1. Doctor_Who

          Could be, but I’ll wager they didn’t drink much beyond those first cocktails and the flight.

          They’re obvious lightweights and were getting tipsy after their first, and the fact that they aren’t on the ground right now suggests they either stopped after that or paced themselves really well.

        2. Thag Simmons

          Probably something short of a hundred, two cocktails and a whiskey flight isn’t cheap but if that’s all they ordered it shouldn’t break a hundred unless they were getting real fancy with it.

        3. Throwatron

          The whiskey flight was almost definitely very expensive, depending on how good the whiskeys actually were, and how fancy a bar that was. Like, it could have been under $50…but it probably wasn’t.

        4. Thag Simmons

          The Hooch Place does not sound very fancy to me

        5. Dante

          Depending of when in the week it was, and what time on the evening, they might’ve caught some discounts too. It was some years ago, granted, but I got once shitfaced on four whiskey doubles in a happy hour for what used to be 10USD.

          … It was a Tuesday at 5pm, and also, I was a different person. But the point stands.

        6. Tan

          It’s Monday evening, time unclear but sometime after dark (which considering it’s late January, could be anytime after 5pm)

        7. Dante

          Bars and clubs usually have cheaper prices on days like these to keep attracting a crowd! Also…… College town, right? I don’t think that was expensive whiskey dbfvd

          God knows the uni neighborhood of my city has some dirt cheap watering holes.

        8. Azhrei Vep

          Jesus Christ, is $200 really a reasonable price for some frickin’ drinks?

          God, it’s a good thing I can’t stand alcohol, I couldn’t afford it anyway.

        9. J.Gawain

          yea, but that’s bar prices. There is a reason most 30+ people I know who drink stock up to make on their own cocktails. Still not what I would call cheap if you’re getting drunk regularly, but much much less expensive than bars charge.

      2. Decidedly Orthogonal

        With her *dad*. Nobody has a good relationship with Carol.

    2. Chubsius

      Kids do still have summer jobs and a little money. At least I hope so, ‘cause I did. I feel like Dorothy would already have a savings account and an IRA.

      1. Opus the Poet

        I can see a savings account by 6 (my grandson has one and he’s 11) but I can’t see anyone under 21 having an IRA.

  5. ValdVin

    She didn’t like Tristan? I mean, she doesn’t like what he’s turned in to, but before that…

    1. jeffepp

      She liked the idea of liking him. But she didn’t really like the him that was him.

      1. Mollyscribbles

        Yep — the desire to be desired.

        1. Jamie

          Nah, the desire to desire. Cool girls had crushes on guys, so she needed to have a crush on someone. She wasn’t looking to be crushed on.

        2. Dante

          Which is a very CompHet thing. Just saying.

          I did this as a baby queer, even

        3. Obi Kemnebi

          *laugh-cries in aro/ace childhood*

    2. HueSatLight

      She liked him, her reflex is to deny it.

      1. Mark

        This.

        1. ValdVin

          Okay, that makes sense.

    3. anonymsly

      Puppycrush, about which she is ashamed originally because Good Pure Girls Only Attach To Their Eventual Husband and now because Tristan is terrible.

    4. someone

      Another girl told her that he liked him, and so she built up a whole fantasy about him and how they would inevitably end up married. But she never actually knew him. Most of the time she didn’t even work up the nerve to talk to him, she just preferred to hide someplace and watch him like some creepy stalker.

      There was never anything real about it, she was just lost in a faerie tale that in her childish inexperience she had built from the stories she was told and her naïve expectations. Eventually this was all shattered simply by growing up and getter better at understanding the world.

      But she did spend a lot of time thinking she liked him, and only recently realized that actually she didn’t.

      1. Bash

        Yes, this

      2. thejeff

        But she did crush on him and she would have denied to anyone all along, as we’ve seen, so it’s not entirely clear whether that “No I didn’t” is a real reevaluation or just another reflexive denial.

  6. Schpoonman

    Panel 1 is a big reason I don’t go to bars anymore. It’s just not worth the money.

    1. Thag Simmons

      Make your own booze instead. It’s cheap and it’s exciting!

      1. Dday

        Making your own beer could be fun, or maybe even mead. Making your own liquor could be unbelievably dangerous.

        1. Thag Simmons

          It’s legally probibited and highly explosive, what could possibly go wrong?

        2. butting

          I can’t see anything.

          Uh, that could go wrong. I can’t see anything that could go wrong. Also, after drinking from that still I can’t see anything at all any more. I think the other guys are okay, but they haven’t said anything. And they don’t move when I prod them.

        3. FlamestAndLight

          oh you’re missing another big part of why it’s dangerous! So there’s a kind of alcohol that isn’t ethanol, called methanol. It’s super toxic! It destroys your lower amounts and straight up kills you not much past that from my understanding. Interestingly it’s less lethal to small animals than it is to large ones (like humans). But yeah Methanol is bad and you gotta know what you’re doing in order to distil alcohol safely

        4. someone

          Fun fact, methanol poisoning is the one case where a medical treatment is absorbing more alcohol. This is because what makes methanol really toxic is how the body metabolizes it into formaldehyde and then into formic acid, which cause a lot of horrible problems. So the idea is to saturate your alcohol-breaking enzymes with plain old ethanol to limit the amount of methanol that you metabolize, and the rest of it goes directly to the kidney to be pissed out without further processing.

        5. Mark

          Context: formic acid is what ants use to poison their enemies in battle. Hence the name.

        6. mneme

          Wait wait how do you manage to make methanol when trying to make hard alcohol?

          I mean, making safe wine, bear, or mead is -easy-. sugar source, flavor, more sugar, yeast, water, put into carboy, make sure pressure valve is properly installed so it doesn’t explode, wait. People do it all the time, generally nobody dies. Easiest way to mess it up, other than accidentally growing bacteria instead, is to over-pressurize it and then it explodes, but there’s good documentation on NOT doing that (and if fermentation continues in the bottle and then -it- explodes it will probably be a funny story, not deadly).

          Turning it into hard alcohol is hard and dangerous, yes, because you need to build a still that uses heat to volatilize the alcohol and then some kind of funny chemistry/physics set to catch the alcohol vapor and let it condense (along with some reserve flavor) into another container (or, you could, you know, use a MUCH safer approach by repeatedly freezing your booze and scooping off the sludge, but you won’t get really impressive proofs that way; just enough).

          There’s a LOT that can go wrong in this process, and you might die. But how do you somehow manage to mess it up enough to get another kind of alcohol instead? Does the wrong amount of heat break down the ethanol into methanol instead?

        7. eh, whatever

          No. Methanol is a perfectly natural byproduct of alcoholic fermentation. If you set the conditions a bit wrong, you get more of it than usual and die.

        8. Needfuldoer

          Or at the very least, go blind.

        9. M.Blind

          Methanol is produced as a byproduct of natural fermentation in extremely small amounts, not enough to notice (except maybe in the hangovers). The whole point of distillation is to increase the % of all alcohols, and that’ll include the methanol. Where it gets dangerous is that methanol boils first (at a lower temperature than ethanol) so you can distill it out in quantity before you get to the ‘good’ stuff. Get too eager about enjoying the very first fruits of your distillation efforts and you can poison yourself with methanol. These ‘heads’ are usually discarded, along with the ‘tails’, when running a sti… oh hello officer. oh this? It’s… um an experimental hot water heater. Not what it looks like [*nervous laughter*] [*runs*]

        10. lyzyrdwyzyrd

          Distillation does not create methanol.
          The methanol is created by fermentation.
          This is always true. But the methanol isn’t in a high enough amount to be a problem in responsible quantities.

          The ethanol, and methanol are both concentrated by heat distillation.
          It’s the dose that makes the poison, and concentration increases the dosage per drink.
          Choosing the tails and heads properly reduces/eliminates methanol.

          Freeze distillation, aka jacking is actually less safe than heat distillation because you can’t pick the heads and tails and the process actually prefers methanol concentration. Also, it’s fractional freezing, so the methnol percentage can actually be increased. Seriously folks, do not do it. Even if you don’t get it to toxic levels it will not taste as good and will be more likely to cause a bad hangover, or stomach issues. The only way that jacking is safer than distillation is the explosion risk — which is also significantly less than people think it you buy a proper still instead of jerry rigging one. You might say that’s illegal — technically it isn’t. It is illegal to distill alcohol (in the US), while distilling water is perfectly legal (in the US) and it’s theoretically possibly to do it on the same equipment. I definitely never met someone at a fundraiser for a brewery who made his own moonshine, and I definitely didn’t drink it.

          The danger of methanol is vastly overstated. For one, methanol isn’t actually toxic. The toxin is created when your body breaks down methanol into formate. So that means if you can just get the methanol OUT before your body tries to break it down you will be OK. It turns out there is a way to do this — consume ethanol. Your body breaks down ethanol in preference to methanol. So if you drink ethanol in high enough quantities your body will put the ethanol ‘ahead in line’ to break down and you just pee out the methanol. It is extremely easy to do this as both compounds are in alcoholic beverages in the right proportion that you won’t get methanol poisoning through consumption of commercial alcohol unless something is going horribly wrong with their quality control or something goes weird in your body, or you intentionally drink methanol which people do.

          Second reason — back in Prohibition days disreputable creators of alcohol would adulterate it with methanol because methanol production was legal. It wasn’t about the alcohol being produced by illegal, and thus improper distillation it was literally poisoned hooch. That cultural memory has been transplanted onto moonshine/home distillation.

        11. Dante

          I love learning in general, and this speaks to several of my Special Interests. Sincerely: Thank you for this super cool comment!!!

        12. paleotectonics

          There are plenty of legal and safe kits with instructions and controls at the big box stores if you want to try. You don’t need a 55usg barrel, 200 hour long fire, a bushel of corn, rye, whatever your poison, and a safe spot in the middle of 40 acres.

      2. HueSatLight

        “oops drank too much yeast” wasn’t exciting in the right way.

      3. Schpoonman

        I still drink, just at home where a 750ml bottle is $25 and I get as many shots as I can pour.

    2. Coatl

      Money is very complicated these days

    3. Makkabee

      If I’m at a con (vention or ference) I’ll sometimes go to the hotel bar and get a drink, then switch to water for the rest of my time there — but even that only if I’m socializing with people who want to go there. Or if I’m going to a bar that has live entertainment I’m going primarily because of the show, and will generally do the same thing.

      I don’t remember the last time I drank on my own.

  7. NGPZ

    re: alt-text, not if you fix em up yourself out of 7-11 malt liquor and grape juice!

    last time I checked, at bars standard mark-up is like 400%

  8. jeffepp

    This seems to be turning out to have a real lack of either making out or shenanigans. I am disappointed.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      Hey, the night is still young.

    2. Jamie

      Maybe she’ll get Dorothy to commentate on Joe’s video.

    3. Mturtle7

      Look, they already snuck into a bar to drink illegally and yelled Extremely Not Gay (TM) things about their sex lives to everyone in earshot. That counts as “shenanigans” to me!

  9. Rando

    I know off topic, but I haven’t read this comic in a while. I wanted to know has anything meaningful happened to Danny?

  10. Amara

    Sure she could watch joe’s video. But there’s no Dorothy in that video. And Joyce will not be examine any of the deeper reasons why she wants to see Dorothy having sex, and Dorothy will pretend to not notice any of it, and the unspoken sexual tension will only continue to grow.

    1. clif

      The most secret lies are the ones you tell yourself.

  11. TGS

    What if Joyce is telling the truth in that last panel? What if Tristan wasnt who she had strange confusing feelings for, but is instead just who she chose to focus on for church reasons? Or am I just looking for things?

    1. Dara

      I don’t think you are. I think you’re close or right.

    2. Dante

      Dorothy is asking (some) of the right questions. Pity she doesn’t actually want the answers.

      She also deflected Joyce’s questions like a champ, but hey! At least they had fun and nobody ended in jail?

    3. Dante

      Sorry, that got double posted TwT

    4. CianM1301

      Considering that she had her initial view of him crushed as a child because he didn’t care what God thinks, and then again when she discovered the massive bullet she dodged by not trying harder to get with him, to say she realised she never loved him wouldn’t be inaccurate.

    5. thejeff

      I think you’re just looking for things. There’s a lot of evidence she was crushing on Tristan. She obviously also crushes on boys now in college.

  12. HueSatLight

    Jason’s math book successfully lost! ?

    1. Taellosse

      Ooh, nice catch!

    2. HueSatLight

      and they might be too if they don’t turn 180 degrees and head back to campus.

      1. CianM1301

        I think the bar they went to was on the opposite side of the bar they were originally going to go in to, so they’re going in the right direction.

    3. Needfuldoer

      That just means they’ll have to make a return trip to retrieve it!

  13. Dday

    Cocktails *are* expensive, but decent whisky is wayyyy worse than that, sadly
    ;~;

    1. Coatl

      To be honest, it is already difficult to find something practical and cheap.

    2. Amós Batista

      The years old are the price multiplier, there’s no other explanation…

  14. Pocky

    that’s disgusting!

    Where?

  15. poofdepoof

    Hehehe, not listing the prices here is a fun way of future proofing the strip. (Though of course, the sliding timeline would allow it)

    1. Thag Simmons

      Yeah, this should still hold up once the United States enters it’s warlord era and the dollar is abolished in favour of a bottlecap-based currency

  16. Taellosse

    “I am dating Joe because he looks like sexy Jesus.
    “What? No he doesn’t who said that.“

  17. DailyBrad

    Am I remembering wrong, or did Joyce attempt to do it?

    1. DashWallkick

      She did, I don’t have it on hand but she looked up Joe and Roz but was too embarrassed to keep going iirc.

  18. EAG46

    Sitting on the washing machine isn’t going to be enough. The Kinsey Institute is at Indiana U and I’m pretty sure someone there can answer questions. Or at least give Joyce the right literature with the answers. Might help Dorothy too.

  19. John John

    I don’t know, but maybe joyce likes dororthy but she doesn’t really know that?

  20. Taffy

    There’s just something about this scene that keeps putting a very specific image in my head. An image of Dorothy wearing the True Blue Attire from Final Fantasy XIV, with the Rainmaker cane in one hand and the other hand on her hip. I don’t know why, but it’s powerful and can’t be stopped.

  21. DashWallkick

    Dorothy skating around exposing her perfectly controlled sense of self starting to crumble by diverting the question back to Joyce, who does not keep secrets well, not being more vulnerable with her. Dotty gonna Dotty.

    1. Dante

      Yeah, I’m here like “OH, SHE’S GOOD.” She almost slipped into being vulnerable, but since Joyce didn’t catch on immediately…

      1. DashWallkick

        Dorothy got enough out of her for now. We’ll see if this goes worse once they’re both sober and Joyce can actually ask for real what the problem is.

  22. Dante

    Dorothy is asking (some) of the right questions. Pity she doesn’t actually want the answers.

    She also deflected Joyce’s questions like a champ, but hey! At least they had fun and nobody ended in jail?

  23. Blibdoolpoolp

    I wonder what the odds are of Joyce cheating on Joe? I can’t exactly expect it of her or Dorothy but I also can’t write a smooch out of the equation considering alcohol is in the equation and these two are…well…

    1. Woop de doop

      I was gonna say no way, she’d too moral, but then I remembered she tried to break up Jacob and Raidah. She fake dated Jacob and lied to his brother. Soooo…who knows?

    2. Needfuldoer

      You mean now that Dorothy shut her down?

    3. Big Z

      Okay, I understand how that might have been on the map at the START of the night, but after everything that’s happened you still think anything non-platonic is in the reasonable possibility space?

      They’re not even that drunk (based on what they’ve had in-panel)–they’re the kind of drunk that goes away after an hour and some nachos.

  24. Arcee

    Aw they didn’t have an ill-advised drunk gay hookup? Boriiiing

    1. Taffy

      An ill-advised sober gay hookup would be more fun.

      1. Big Z

        Frankly I’m holding out for the ill-advised attempt to lose her virginity to Joe and him continuing to demonstrate character growth.

      2. Arcee

        Not for me 🙁

  25. Max

    The cheapest solution: Don’t drink. I tried it when I was young. It tasted terrible. I said “how can anybody like this?” My brother said, “It’s an acquired taste.” He was a teenager and already quite an accomplished drinker.
    So it’s bad for you. And it tastes terrible. And you feel horrible the next day. So why do it in the first place?

    1. Taffy

      “It tastes terrible” isn’t a universal constant, let’s not be silly. Some of us actually like the taste, from the first sip. The only variety I’ve had that I didn’t like was bourbon, even drinking straight liquor without anything mixed in. Feeling horrible the next day also isn’t universal, especially if you’re not dumb enough to forget to hydrate. I won’t argue with “it’s bad for you” though, because it certainly is, especially if you’re not moderate with your intake. As for “why do it in the first place”, the simple answer is that it can be fun in the right setting, regardless of all the “what about this?????” people like to bandy about. A little wobble, a little hum in the brain, it’s nice on occasion.

      1. Big Z

        This ^.

        I thought I didn’t like alcohol when I had a couple tastes at my first few frat parties. Then I went to one of my dorm friend’s birthday parties and they had GOOD drinks instead of the cheapest possible beer and rotgut whiskey, and I understood why you might have some for reasons other than being impaired as fast as possible.

      2. zee

        Also EAT. Always eat while you drink, not just like chips or something, eat carbs and fat. Bread, pasta, rice, a whole thing of fries, greasy meat. If you drink on an empty stomach it will fuck you up. One of the two times i felt sick the next day after drinking was because all there was to eat at the party was chips and bean dip. An American party, of course.

        1. Taffy

          Eating is also important, yeah. Basically there’s a point where if you’re having a bad time from drinking, it’s your own damn fault for being silly with your body.

    2. Bash

      It can be fun to be drunk. That’s the main reason I would say. Some people might enjoy the taste as well. An acquired taste might actually taste good once you’re used to it.

      1. eh, whatever

        The thing here is that not everyone acquires tastes.

        1. HueSatLight

          It doesn’t always require “acquiring”. Apparently there’s a biological difference in if and how much ethanol tastes astringent or bitter.

        2. David DeLaney

          now i need another t-shirt
          “i’m not bitter
          but the alcohol is”

      2. Max

        It might be fun for the drinker, but as a non-drinker it gets pretty depressing. Watching your friends all start out the night at the same level, and then watch them sink lower and lower the more they drink. I had a large friend who apparently was in a taxi for 45 minutes because he was passed out and his petite Chinese girlfriend couldn’t get him out.

        1. zee

          I mean there’s a difference between getting kinda drunk for fun and drinking yourself into a black out and potential alcohol poisoning. That difference is a lot of drinks, knowing and respecting your own limits and having a healthy mindset going into it

    3. CianM1301

      I’m not a heavy drinker, so I’m doing my best to not play devil’s advocate for drinking, but maybe it had to do with they type of alcohol you tried? Just because you dislike the taste of one form of alcohol, doesn’t mean you’ll dislike alcohol in all its forms. There’s beer, wine, alcoholic cider, spirits, cocktails, the list goes on. Me personally, I can’t stand beer, but I’ll drink alcoholic cider since I like the taste of it. If you are going to drink, make it something you actually want to drink. And that’s a big “if”, btw, since even if you do find something you enjoy drinking, the only person who can decide if you want to drink is you.

    4. Bittersweet

      I mean, cocktails taste fantastic if they’re made with vodka imo. Unfortunately, outside of Sonic, restaurants don’t make weird or fancy drink concoctions that don’t involve alcohol—which is frustrating imo because I would order off a virgin drink menu any day rather than sodas on the days where I want something other than water. Our culture is way too built around drinking, there’s no reason to have a stocked bar and not have a dedicated mocktail menu, it costs you nothing.

      1. Max

        I agree with that. It’s very annoying to go to a club or bar with friends and they say “We have Coke. And Sprite. And water.”

        1. HueSatLight

          If they have grenadine and maraschino cherries for cocktails, they have grenadine and cherries for a Roy Rogers.

      2. zee

        Wait wdym y’all don’t have mocktails at restaurants?????

    5. Da Boy

      Because it’s fun while it lasts. Some of my fondest memories are of going to a bar with friends, we’d drink a few beers, play some billiard and then walk home in the cool air of the night. It was a lovely experience.

    6. Needfuldoer

      I have zero interest in being inebriated, but I drink NA beer just for something different. That stuff might actually be less bad for you than non-diet soda since it doesn’t contain a ton of empty calories in the form of sugar and ethanol.

      So far everything I’ve liked has been on the malty side. “Hoppy” brews taste like grass clipping tea, and IPAs are way too bitter.

    7. Schpoonman

      I dislike the flavor of most alcohols, and once I made it into my 30s hangovers got bad enough I rarely drink now, but I’m fully capable of making a cocktail I enjoy, getting a cider or alcoholic soda, or just popping shots with a chaser.

      The goal is the inebriation. I saw a thing recently that talked about making the stuff you need to do (exercise, work) not suck forever, and that’s how I approach alcohol.

    8. Amós Batista

      I agree with you. Don’t drink.
      But it’s sooo easy to talk, to get near unknown people when you’re drunk.

    9. zee

      I like the flavor of sweetness and fermentation ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ I’ll eat the dough when I’m making sweet bread. So the bitterness of alcohol with something sweet mixed in is delicious. Acquired taste means your brain needs a while to realize bitter ≠ poison (though in this case it technically is but it’s not that bad). There are also liqueurs like frangelicos which just tastes like sweet hazelnut, coconut tequila that just tastes like coconut flavored syrup. And of course cocktails that completely mask the flavor of alcohol all together.

      Beer tastes bad. Most straight booze tastes bad (at first at least). Alcohol can be very delicious, so that’s not necessarily deterrent for people. Personally I never drank crazy, not in public at least. I’d get blasted in my kitchen at night during the pandemic and now I can’t smell white rum without gagging. It took me a long time to enjoy drinking at all. I’m on medication now so I can only drink occasionally and only a glass or two of something light. I legit only drink for the flavor now, if I could take away the effects and just leave the flavor I’d do it in a heartbeat and down like 5 rum and Cokes or whole glasses of frangelicos.

    10. yak

      It’s a fantastic social lubricant in small to moderate doses. Only better one I’ve found is kava, and that’s not as easily available and tastes even worse.

      It also starts tasting better the more you drink, because you start to associate the taste with the feeling of getting drunk. Likewise when you get too drunk, alcohol tastes like vomit for a while.

  26. Taffy

    Boooo, slut-shaming, booooo ????

  27. Regina phalange

    Ew, please don’t refer to women as objects. “Slut” would honestly be better than “bicycle”—at least it’s not also horribly dehumanizing.

    1. Taffy

      Hurhurhur get it, cuz everyone gets a ride!!!1!!1!1!!! Isn’t that just so fucking funny????

      Like come on, egon. You can be better than that, nobody’s stopping you.

  28. Bash

    I’m genuinely curious: why did you describe Roz that way?

    1. Taffy

      It’s especially weird because I don’t think we’ve ever seen or been told about her fucking anyone except Joe. Not that it would justify the language, of course. She hit on Jacob one time and has a generally free attitude about casual sex though, so I guess she’s Marred Forever™ with Incurable Slutskank Disease.

      Nevermind the fact that, going solely by known “body count”, Amber has Done Stuff with Walky, Danny, and Ethan, which puts her at 300% of Roz’s alleged bicycle-ness. Dorothy’s had sex with Danny and Walky. Sierra’s done it with Mandy and Grace. Billie’s banged Ruth and Asher. Malaya’s fucked Joe and Marcie. Sal’s done it with Jason and at least one other person (her first time involved Apples To Apples, which rules). As mentioned, Danny’s had sex with Dorothy and Amber, and if we count Amazi-Girl separately (same body, but…?) that’s 3 people. Mike fucked Eric, Ethan, and several of your moms.

      So really, what’s so “bicycle” about Roz? Danny’s a bigger slut than her, if we’re going off what we actually know, and nobody’s shaming him.

      1. Bash

        I think it is more about her sex-positive attitude and the power she gets from her sexuality. Framing her body as a tool that men can use strips away that agency and implies that she has a moral obligation to avoid casual sex. In many of the other instances you mentioned, there were other feelings involved. Sex and pleasure did not take center stage quite so much.

        I was hoping that having OP explain might help them examine their own biases a little, but I don’t know if they will actually respond.

      2. Mark

        Surely you’ve been here long enough to realize that what we actually know carries zero weight in the comments.

  29. M!a

    Despite my (frequent) reservations, this was the sweetest and most refreshing story arc I can recall so far.

    1. Amós Batista

      Yeah, I’m adoring this storyline so much.

      1. David DeLaney

        which i think nobody would’ve predicted beforehand based on its elevator pitch

  30. Jon

    *Slut-shames a character who has made it her entire personality to fight the culture of slut-shaming women*
    *Says absolutely nothing about Joe, who has likely had the most sex partners out of everyone in the cast*

    Yeah, no double standard here at all.

    1. CianM1301

      Was just about to say that. Out of the two of them, Joe would probably be considered the town bicycle, considering he literally made a list of all the people he slept with on campus.

      1. Bash

        People don’t consider men’s bodies a tool that women use. We might say that Joe is a slut or a horndog, but it’s unlikely that someone would say “the town bicycle” unless they were deliberately inverting the stereotype.

  31. Jon

    “So when do I get Joyce secrets”

    Dorothy, Joyce just admitted to voyeuristic fantasies involving you. Chaste ones, technically, but still. Don’t be picky with receiving secrets!

  32. BBCC

    Everyone else already covered the misogyny, so I’m just gonna point out Joyce has already watched Roz and Joe’s video.

  33. BBCC

    What a turn of events!

  34. Bittersweet

    Having lived in a party town in Texas always throws my sense of price for a loop lol. Two vodka crans and a whiskey flight should only cost like $36–and that’s if the whiskey flight was fairly expensive. Cocktails are usually only like $4-$6 where I used to party (heck, $8 for a vodka cran is going off of Albany prices, they’re $5 here), so when people are like “yeah this cocktail was $20” is very jarring because I’d have to go to an upscale lounge to pay those prices per drink lol. I’ve gone out partying, downed 12 drinks and paid about $70 for the whole night (I do this maybe once or twice a year).

    Like, I guess that’s still a lot to a college student though. I remember stressing about making $500 last a semester.

    1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      Without any special knowledge of drink pricing, this might relate to high cost of living areas versus lower cost of living areas. When I moved from Middle Georgia to Long Island, it was a bit of a shock. Where rents are high, everything has to cost more to pay for the rent on the bar and the somewhat higher pay so the employees can pay higher rents, etc.

    2. Big Z

      I’m glad you tagged that last paragraph on, because I was thinking “Shit, yeah, but $30 was an entire week’s fun and snacks budget for me back when that’s what drinks cost.”

  35. Amós Batista

    …strip club? For girls?

    1. David DeLaney

      the first rule of strip club for girls is
      don’t let any guys know about it
      cuz they’ll turn it into some sort of competition with betting

  36. DarkoNeko

    well “haven’t told anyone” and “no one knows” are different concepts 😀

  37. Tenkiforecast

    My thought as to Joyce’s response:
    “Well part of it’s the sense the I could be caught! That’s part of the appeal, like how the church states all of your ancestors watch you do naughty things.”

  38. Yeet

    She told Joe that before while they were texting
    “Fine his name was Tristan”

  39. Slartibeast Button, BIA

    Joyce wants to WxD from behind the curtains? Did she never watch Hamlet?

  40. paleotectonics

    I’ll repeat. Tristan youth-pastored her, maybe not all the way to digital or genital penetration (although that would be rare, those fuckers are evil), and she’s feeling guilt that she should not have because those fuckers are evil.

    1. Daibhid C

      I don’t see any guilt. I also don’t see any indication that her past with Tristan is something she’s traumatised by, rather than her main view of him until she checked the facebooks being “That guy I had a crush on who shocked me by not caring what’s in the Bible.” And now being “That guy who won’t shut up about what’s in the Bible just like all the other religious assholes I know.”

      But I don’t see a lot of things, so you could be right.

    2. TerribleTransit

      You are aware that Tristan was a peer, not her youth pastor? Not that it prevents someone from doing morally reprehensible things, but it’s very clearly a different dynamic than the one you’re suggesting.

    3. thejeff

      Our first mention of him, iirc, was her looking forward to seeing him when she was back home with Becky, forgetting he’d be away at college too.

      There’s never been any sign of hurt or guilt or trauma when she thinks about him, beyond that of admitting she crushed on boys.

    4. C.T. Phipps

      Yeah, this isn’t previously unknown sexual trauma.

    5. Taffy

      The fuck are you talking about?

  41. staszu13

    No Joyce, that was two lies, about liking Tristan and about the Joe tape.

  42. Needfuldoer

    Can we take a moment and reiterate how good Joyce looks in that outfit? Dang.

    1. Dante

      Yeah, she should def wear Anti-Joyce’s threads more frequently. Sal will approve immensely of this raiding of her closet the second she spots it.

  43. Suet

    Secret Joyce Secrets? As opposed to…?

    Careful, if you deny one more time…

    1. David DeLaney

      … then you’ll get the Peter treatment!

      –Dave, come on, it was RIGHT THERE

  44. nightshade

    how drunk actually are they ?

    1. NGPZ

      Initially, both of them had cran-grape cocktails, which according to this recipe is 2-ounces grape vodka per serving.

      They then finished off with a Whiskey Flight, which is 6 cups each containing at the most 15 ml of whisky.

      The cran-grape cocktail for each of them accounts for 60 ml vodka * 35% alcohol by volume / 17.7 ml ethanol per standard drink
      = 1.19 standard drinks per person

      Assuming the whiskey shots are divided equally among both of them, that’s

      50% alcohol by volume * 15 ml per shot * 3 shots a person / 17.7 ml
      = 1.27 standard drinks per person

      So a reasonable ball park estimate is that they’ve both had somewhere between 2-3 standard drinks each,

      Depending on their weight, well, according to this chart it’s pretty safe to assume that both of them are legally intoxicated at this point ?

    2. NGPZ

      Initially, both of them had cran-grape cocktails, which about is 2-ounces grape vodka per serving.

      They then finished off with a Whiskey Flight, which is 6 shot cups each containing at the most 15 ml of whisky.

      The cran-grape cocktail for each of them accounts for 60 ml vodka * 35% alcohol by volume / 17.7 ml ethanol per standard drink
      = 1.19 standard drinks per person

      Assuming the whiskey shots are divided equally among both of them, that’s

      50% alcohol by volume * 15 ml per shot * 3 shots a person / 17.7 ml
      = 1.27 standard drinks per person

      So a reasonable ball park estimate is that they’ve both had somewhere between 2-3 standard drinks each,

      Depending on their weight, well, according to this chart it’s pretty safe to assume that both of them are legally intoxicated at this point ?

      1. HueSatLight

        If a shot is 15 mL, then you have offended your bartender.

        1. thejeff

          Aren’t flights usually small shots, not full sized ones?

        2. NGPZ

          That they are!

          (my gramma was a bartender, can confirm)

        3. HueSatLight

          Those are a lot more than a finger.

    3. Dante

      I feel like they both have an interesting amount of tolerance for different reasons.

      So drunk, but not as much as most newbies in two cocktails and half a whiskey flight each

      1. Needfuldoer

        This isn’t Dorothy’s first rodeo.

        Joyce had a high tolerance in the old continuity (which might have carried over), and someone with her build would be more likely to have a higher tolerance than someone with Dorothy’s.

    4. Needfuldoer

      Peak was a couple strips ago, where they were slurring their words. At this point they’re probably “just” buzzed. Not good to drive, but they don’t appear to be staggering.

  45. HueSatLight

    Joyce already told Sarah she’d liked Tristan, so that’s not a secret she’s never told anybody. Sorry, Dorothy.

  46. Amelie Wikström

    In grades 3-12 i liked my classmate Maryam. What do you mean that’s a mediocre secret? Oh, cause you’ve never met this random person and my feelings I used to have for her don’t mean a whole lot to you?

    Yeah okay it is funny cause Joyce is still mega embarrassed by her crush and feels the need to blatantly lie about it. That denial I’m sure is pure muscle reflex coming from a much deeper place than remembering how she has recently learned Tristan grew up to suck.

    Now excuse me cause I need to lie down in an ice bath until I stop remembering playing white supremacist rock music in front of Maryam the Iranian-Swedish pianist and having absolutely no idea how much the band sucked both as human beings and as musicians.

  47. Packy Anderson

    I knew the outline of the next magnet was a Becky!

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