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Boys Pizza Retreat
Posted on January 26, 2017 by David M Willis

352 thoughts on “Boys Pizza Retreat”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Is he offering the pw to Jacob, or Raidah? XD

    also, is that a “how dare you have fun without me” tone or what

    1. Stu

      Definitely to Raidah – he’s not trying to bang her, but I’m sure he wants women to know what standards he’s got.

      1. butts

        It is established that he doesn’t put friends’ girlfriends on his to-do list, at least while they’re dating.

        I mean, he didn’t with Danny, and I’m pretty sure he’d respect Jacob’s territory even more. Danny is… well, he’s Danny.

        1. BBCC

          He may have aready had Raidah on it, in which case I doubt he’d delete the file – remove it from the list, sure, but he’d have one ready if they broke up.

        2. Spencer

          He put Dorothy on the list literally seconds after they broke up.

        3. butts

          Yeah. After.

        4. thejeff

          OTOH, Danny’s his long-time school buddy, while Jacob’s a recent fairly casual acquaintance.

    2. Just Me

      It sounds to me like Raidah is very possessive of Jacob. She hasn’t crossed the line to being overbearing about it, but she might be getting close.

      1. Jed!

        Maybe I’m naive, but I didn’t get that impression. She just asks if they had fun, the “chicks” line is more just an inquiry, and she doesn’t really say anything after Jacob defends talking to Joyce. Her only real gripe is with Sarah, and that has less to do with Jacob than it does to do with her dislike of Sarah.

        1. segnosaur

          I guess it depends on how you interpret the very first panel… Given the scale of the picture its hard to determine her exact expression, but it could be interpreted as more annoyed/upset.

        2. Just Me

          Maybe it’s the body language. The way she greets them with her hands on her hips.
          That can be a rather aggressive posture.

        3. Dragon_Nataku

          This, and the fact that she was waiting for them in the lobby. A normal girlfriend would be off doing her own thing and would have told him prior “OK cool, text/call me when you’re done” instead of camping out in the lobby waiting for them to come back.

        4. Melorian

          Which is exactly what could have happened. Jacob and Joe didn’t teleport back to the dorms, and we aren’t shown what they did on the way there. It’s entirely possible they called ahead and decided to meet up there.

          Honestly, disregarding past events regarding Sarah (where I feel like we still don’t know half the story, by the way), she didn’t do anything wrong or unlikeable here. Quite the contrary, in fact. Not many girlfriends would have just shrugged off her boyfriend describing another girl as “great” and “compelling”, instead being more freaked out by Joe’s “do list”. This also kinda counters the whole “possessive” thing for me, which the first panel admittedly could be interpreted as, if it was looked at without context.

        5. dn3s

          I read her annoyance at the “chicks” line as more of a “you’re seriously calling them chicks?” type thing than a posessive thing. but I also am the worst at decoding any sort of social subtleties IRL.

        6. a snow ʍousɐ

          I think she was just curious whom the boys bumped into.

        7. a snow ʍousɐ

          (regardless of gender, although she might be teasingly acting jealous, with or without some level of actual jealousy behind it)

        8. jhennaside

          I’m with you there – I mean, the next interaction may show differently, but she seemed level-headed enough so far.

      2. DudeMyDadOwnsADealership

        If there’s not at least an inkling of control issues, it’s not Raidah.

    3. Nono

      The smirk on her face seems like a ‘ooh, how was your little boys’ tea party? Did you compare sausage sizes?’ teasing tone.

      1. Leorale

        That’s how I read it too, that she was amused about their bro-date, and possibly even found it charming. She knew about it in advance, too, which tells me that she’s not so overbearing that they’d have to hide their friendship or something.

        1. Jason

          In fact, not only did she come across as amused and joking about their manly pizza date (look, I’m calling it that okay), but she doesn’t react AT ALL to Jacob referring to Joyce as “compelling”. That’s not a word generally used to describe people you view platonically, but she doesn’t react to that. There’s no sign she’s remotely jealous.
          I’m honestly surprised people are reading her as being so possessive. Is it because almost everything we’ve seen about her is coloured by Sarah’s point of view?

        2. Sam

          It might be coming from how she purposely painted the Sarah altercation in the worst light possible previously despite that being something they resolved? Could have come off to people as her being possessive rather than it just being purposefully spiteful because it was specifically Sarah.

  2. Doctor_Who

    I think that revelation made Raidah’s butt shudder.

    1. Jay Eff

      She is the keeper of the Shudder-Butt.

      1. butts

        BLASPHEMY

        1. Emperor Norton II

          What’s blasphemous about that? Surely you don’t think that you should be the only keeper of all types of butts? It’s important to share the joy of buttness, you know.

    2. Barf Ninjason

      There we go, got my next Nord name for Skyrim, Raida Shudder-Butt

  3. Mr. Mendo

    Say what you will about Joe, he *is* polite!

    1. DaveM

      Yeah Jacob, a word? Telling your current girlfriend that you had a long conversation with another great girl can be problematic. Just saying.

      1. butts

        …Only if your girlfriend is unreasonably possessive.

        1. Killian

          Yeah, if Raidah has a problem with Jacob and Joyce debating how to interpret their shared religious text, that’s cause for some Kill Bill sirens to go off.

        2. Makkabee

          “Only if your girlfriend is unreasonably possessive.”

          I’d much rather have her be reasonably objective.

      2. Carms

        It being problematic that your dude had a long convo with another great girl is hugely problematic.
        Srsly if your SO has an issue with you engaging in conversation with other humans, you address that immediately, and if steps aren’t taken to resolve that hang up POST HASTE, you get the hell outta there.

    2. TheAnonymousGuy

      I don’t know what’s more surprising

      Joe letting people see his “do list” willingly or that he’s into granny sex?
      (just, always got the impression he was one ‘those’ types of guys)

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        He is trying to one-up Mike. “I did your Grandma. For a buffalo-head nickel.”

        1. Dellaran

          Dumbing of Age — your #1 source for insights into the fascinating world of numismatic sexology.

        2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          As long as Willis stays away from the real sicko stuff like philately.

        3. tyersome

          Damn, I thought philately had been stamped out by now?

        4. TheAnonymousGuy

          Nah, they had to divert resources to a more important situation, rehabilitating people who thought birdemic was a good movie.

        5. skyscraper_sandwiches

          10/10, would read this pun again.

        6. Arian

          Like.

      2. Joe Covenant

        Depends on the ‘Granny’.
        Which, I suppose, depends on the rate of teenage pregnancies.
        ‘Granny’ might only be in her very early 30’s…

        Nah… NO 18/19 yr old is gonna want *that*! 😉

        1. dralou

          What is “those” and “that” ? I’m not sure I’m following correctly here. Are you referring to “actual grannies looking like we think grannnies supposedly look, and the younger people who find them bangable ” ? Or Something else ?

          Also, some grandmas really really don’t show their age, being in their 50’s and hot enough that I envy their body while being 20 years younger.

      3. Shay Guy

        “But if you will not take this Counsel [to marry], and persist in thinking a Commerce with the Sex inevitable, then I repeat my former Advice, that in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones.”

        -Benjamin Franklin, 1745

    3. Emperor Norton II

      Yeah, the “No, Mister Bond, I expect you to die” style of polite.

  4. Hopeful Sarcastic

    Mike gains access to the Do List feed and just puts every single male he could think of on it. It is beautiful.

    1. Larkle

      Hmm. We haven’t seen too much Joe and Mike interaction aside from the Mike as punching chaperone with Joyce bit. I feel like they could have a hilarious dynamic though.

    2. butting

      Or he just puts himself on there. Makes it look less like a hack and more like an accidental admission.

      1. Trolldrool

        What if he discovers he’s already on the list?

        1. Dark

          He’ll probably shrug and just wait his turn. Joe is probably legendary in the sack, after all.

  5. Emperor Daniel

    Oh Joe no.

    1. Doctor_Who

      That could be GI Joe’s new tagline, considering the current state of the franchise.

      1. brionl

        Do list is half the battle!

  6. Time Sage

    Something about Raidah makes me want to punch her in the face. Hmmm

    1. Leorale

      But she’s not a kidnapper at all!
      Also I like that she’s not remotely threatened that Jacob described another girl as ‘great’ and ‘compelling’. I am tired of jealous girlfriend tropes and it’s nice that she doesn’t fall into that.

      1. UltraKyrie

        After how well Jacob and Joyce hit it off, I definitely saw that as a bit of a concern. Drama avoided mayhaps?

        1. Leorale

          for now!

    2. Emperor Norton II

      I hope it’s not the last panel, because that at least is one where I don’t want to punch her in the face.

    3. Cholma

      Maybe she’s a secret Nazi, and your Spidey-sense is picking up on it?

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        Is that anything like a secret-Santa?

    4. Plasma Mongoose

      PING!

  7. Nono

    Y’know, punching jerks IS a pretty appropriate topic.

    Omniscient Willis strikes again.

    1. Doctor_Who

      He is unknowingly controlling reality so that it makes his comics timely, despite them being written months in advance.

      Whole reason Trump won? So that the Robin storyline would have more of a kick.

      Willis is basically Haruhi Suzumiya.

      1. MatthewTheLucky

        DAMN YOU WILLIIIIIIIISSSSS!

      2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        I wonder if this means Jeph is Sasaki…

      3. Plasma Mongoose

        So Trump won because of Willis? He better prey nobody finds out or the next March will be featuring a Willis-effigy, made from real Willises.

        1. Solenoid

          I could have sworn Trump won because of the Chicago Cubs’ dark ritual to ensure their own victory.

  8. AnvilPro

    Jacob is way too trusting, like, he’s totally right that Joyce is great but he doesn’t have any of the facts like Joe does. Or has Sarah really told him enough stories that he knows her?

    1. Nono

      What facts DOES Joe know? He knows she’s a Christian, maybe too much of a sappy romantic, doesn’t cuss, and that she’d punch Joe. That’s about it?

      1. Reltzik

        Also, she’s worried that her parents are going to divorce. And probably a bunch of other stuff from their textings.

        1. Mr.Morningstar

          I doubt Joe would tell him that bit specifically, thats a little personal.

      2. Jason

        Well, he doesn’t really have much in the way of actual information as far as we know- but he was assaulted by her, and by someone on her behalf, for the idea that he thinks about sex. Like, that’s it. She thinks assault of someone who thinks about sex is okay.
        I mean, she doesn’t, but that’s something he’s “learned” about her. And I don’t think she’s ever shown remorse to him, or an understanding that that’s not okay.

        We don’t know what he’s seen or understood through their texts though, which could radically alter the context of his words. Personally I’m not ruling out that there’s a protective “big brother” feeling going on which he is seriously burying and denying; nor the fact that the reason he’s so discomforted by Joyce is the idea of her challenging him using sex because he’s afraid of emotional connection (which has been very strongly hinted at.)

      3. Kamino Neko

        I think ‘she’d punch Joe’ is the important fact in this case.

    2. Fart Captor

      I doubt Sarah has told anyone that Joyce was trying to “fix” Ethan’s gayness. She immediately recognized how bad that was and how other people would react to it. I highly doubt Jacob or Joe has any idea.

      Joe’s negative opinion about Joyce is based solely on his own interactions with her. Admittedly, paying someone to beat you up and then joining in would be a totally understandable reason to dislike her, but that isn’t what he’s complaining about here.

      And I don’t really see “not assuming the worst about someone you barely know” as being “too trusting”.

  9. Spencer

    I’ve decided to interpret Raidah’s statement in the first panel as negatively as possible in order to paint her as an obnoxious, shrill harpy and justify my Joyce/Jacob ship.

    1. Doctor_Who

      Hands-on-hips makes anything sound a bit accusatory.

      Love the Gravatar, btw.

      1. Spencer

        Tailgate is Tailgreat.

        1. Kingmonster

          Too bad he died, though. He is Tailgreat.

        2. MnstrPoppa

          *was

        3. Spencer

          Cyclonus magically stabbed him. He’s fine now.

        4. DJScrub

          Confirmed.

    2. Reltzik

      It all comes down to panel 1. Everything after that, she has perfectly good reasons for being shrill, snide, angry, or scowly. But if she’s all of that in panel 1, it’s a sign that she’s controlly about Jacob’s time.

      1. Spencer

        Counterpoint: Joe is in the vicinity and that would put anyone on edge.

        1. Reltzik

          Except she doesn’t know Joe well enough to not be surprised that he has a “do” list.

        2. Spencer

          We know literally nothing about Joe and Raidah’s interactions. We don’t even know whether they’ve previously met.

        3. BagFaceMan

          Then why should she be on edge?

        4. Jhon

          There is only one result for raidah+joe: Today’s

        5. Spencer

          And they could have met off-screen. Maybe Jacob introduced them at some point.

    3. Jason

      Looks to me like she’s smiling/smirking in panel one. I don’t see her as harpy-like at all, I’m afraid to say!
      However, there are plenty of reasons that a relationship might not work. I’m on board with Joyce/Jacob, they seem like they could be very healthy together. Personally I’d like to see more of Raidah as well though, and see their relationship come to a healthy, mutual and friendly end if that’s where things are going.

  10. Architex

    She-who-must-not-be-named

    1. Stephen Bierce

      She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed? *plays the theme to the Rumpole of the Bailey TV series*

      1. Ntrovert

        YESSSSSSS…

    2. nobilis

      So Joyce is a Deatheater?

  11. Dana

    Wat!? The feed isn’t public!?

    1. Dara

      somehow i’m actually genuinely charmed that there is a feed (and he shares the password around)

      1. thejeff

        Charmed. Disgusted. One of the two. I forget.

      2. BBCC

        Apparently one can also subscribe to it. Blech.

        1. thejeff

          At least it’s password protected? From the previous mention of his RSS feed, I’d assumed it was public.

          That’s not really much help, is it?

  12. Doopyboop

    Fuck you Raidah. My comment yesterday already had me fired up about her but hnnngh…look at her face there “ugh, really? Sarah?”. Sarah can go to any pizza place she wants to, Raidah. Thought you hated that she was antisocial, now hearing her sit with your boyfriend and his friend has you all pissy. Granted, Sarah does wanna steal Jacob from her but Raidah doesn’t know that.

    Also, good ob Joe for defending Sarah and good on JACOB for defending Joyce! He sees her as admirable! That’s so sweet!

    1. Nono

      Eh, Raidah is free to dislike Sarah, it’s whether or not she’ll ‘forbid’ Jacob from seeing her is what might be an issue.

      1. Doopyboop

        She’s free to dislike Sarah, she just dislikes her for a bullshit reason and it literally pains me. Aaagh… though you are right, the real issue is how she’d treat Jacob for daring to converse with Sarah.

        1. Reltzik

          Got her best friend yanked out of college… okay, that’s arguably a bit BS. Arguably.

          The recent A&B? Definitely good cause to be angry.

        2. Doopyboop

          A single punch to the face that came about after a year of harassment that Sarah apologized and admitted was wrong of her. Like it is a good cause to be angry but the way Raidah does it and embellishes the wrong Sarah does while ignoring how she’s treated her and continuing to treat Sarah like the plague bothers me. If she could have admitted she was wrong to constantly harass Sarah over the past year, I’d shrug it off but since that hasn’t happened yet…

        3. Mr.Morningstar

          Plus she automatically assumed that Dina was and I quote “mentally challenged” (wether or not she canonnically is mentally disabled has yet to be confirmed tho its safe to assume she is) simply for hanging out with sarah is a little suspect and makes me dislike her (to be fair tho she did tell her friend who called dina retarded out on saying that shit but even so it was still pretty shitty of her)

        4. thejeff

          In fairness, and it was still pretty bad, it wasn’t just because she was hanging out with Sarah. Dina did her usual (at the time) completely socially inappropriate/oblivious dinosaur comment schtick. Raidah’s first reaction was that she was in middle school – which Dina can apparently pass for, since others have made that mistake, both from appearance and behavior. When informed she was actually their age, that’s when she jumped to “mentally challenged”. Honestly not a bad guess and maybe not even wrong.
          Of course, she then goes directly to talking down to her prompting one of my favorite early Dina/Sarah bits – “Her tone of voice and her posture denotes condescension, correct?” “So you understand fine.”

          It was one of her other hangers on who dropped the “Who else would willingly hang out with Sarah?” line, which Raidah shot down, just like she shot down her other friends “retarded” comment. Raidah needs to lose those two. She’s not great, but they’re worse.

        5. Fart Captor

          It’s certainly understandable that she’d have a lot of negative feelings from that incident, and even that she would pin them to Sarah, and have trouble breaking that association.

          That can happen even with someone you don’t initially blame for the shitty thing that happened.

        6. Cerberus

          Got her best friend yanked to what is very likely an abusive parent and she’s in contact with said best friend who says she’s in a worse place now.

        7. Cerberus

          Like, I think Sarah made the best call she could with the information she had and the knowledge base she was working with, but yeah, I can definitely understand why Raidah is in full-on rage mode about it. Just like I can understand why Billie is pissed off at Carla.

        8. Nono

          There has been nothing to suggest that Dana’s dad is abusive.

        9. Doopyboop

          Carla also outed Billie and Ruth while Sarah didn’t seem to reveal Dana’s drug use to anybody but her own father who, as Nono said, we don’t have any evidence for being abusive.

        10. Cerberus

          Actually we do. No positive comments about dad after funeral, desperate to get back from home, dad immediately yanked her out of school for marijuana (think critically, what non-abusive dad does that and especially doesn’t just have her take a semester and come back the next year), Raidah has mentioned that Dana says she’s in a worse place now than the previous year where she was crying every night.

          Like, it hasn’t been stated officially, but there’s enough red flags that I’d at least be adding her name to my secret coded post-it note I keep of all the students of mine I strongly suspect are being abused at home.

        11. Doopyboop

          I’m still not entirely convinced. At the very least if that were true, Raidah should inform Sarah like Billie did to Carla regarding Ruth’s grandfather. When Sarah called Dana’s dad, it might have been just as much “your daughter isn’t handling the death of her mother well” that had him pull her out just as much as the marijuana use. He could potentially be overbearing for keeping her out a whole year under the idea that she’s “not ready yet” though, but otherwise I can only guess. I’ll just have to keep that on my own post-it note and keep it in mind. If it turns out you’re right, I’ll be a good sport and go “Yeah, Cerberus was right on this one, sorry Sarah! You dun goofed.”.

        12. Nono

          That’s still a bit of a stretch. Dana was grieving, why would she make small talk about dad? We don’t even know how long it was after the funeral before she went back to school, so no indication that she was ‘rushing’ to get back. Dana’s dad sounds like a concerned parent who pulled his grieving 17/18-year old daughter out of school after hearing concerns from her roomate that she was becoming increasingly dependent on weed after her mother’s death.

          And remember that Raidah doesn’t know Dana was crying nightly – she put up a front. Dana’s own perceptions are still coloured – she might still resent Sarah for ratting her out, or still be mad at her dad for pulling her from her friends, so I’m not sure she’s the best objective judge of ‘yeah my life is totally worse now’.

          Possible we might get more evidence, but for now I think this might just be projection.

        13. nobilis

          I’m not entirely convinced, either. Dana’s dad lost his wife, he possibly had some sort of breakdown and wasn’t able to handle the next crisis well.I’ll wait for more evidence.

        14. Tadpole7

          I’m not entirely sold on that. One while my self and siblings get along pretty well with our parents during the early college years I remember a lot of friction as everyone adjusted to how our relationship with them had changed.

          Grief and depression can often have you being very negative on the very people trying to help you. It hurts to care. Also I’m one of those people who will not tell my friends, family if things are spiraling out of control. It’s amazingly easy to deflect especially from a distance. It’s often my family’s biggest concern about me.

          My parents would have done this to any of us in a similar situation if they were paying for the college. There’s some history my folks have had with relatives abusing substances and a history of depression in the family. That would have caused some very drastic actions on their part. There is a history on both sides of sending in the troops to intervene. A large part is we’re very bad at communication and generally by the time we hear someone is in trouble, their in a lot of trouble.

          Also have you seen the stats on College completion rates? The drop out rate is staggering and once someone has stopped/taken a break etc. it becomes harder to get back on the college route. There’s a good chance this was straining the family finance to put her through school.

          Dana was suffering from depression, there’s a chance she still is. Even if she’s doing better, she might still be in that stage of having a very hard time doing more than the basic routines.

          Dana was in a downward spiral that was starting to drag Sarah down with her. Dana had allowed a lot of her actually state to show in front of Sarah. There’s a good chance Sarah does have an idea of what the family situation was. Plus I don’t think it was the weed, it was the fact she was self medicating on a destructive level.

          So I can’t quite buy into she’s in an abusive situation. It’s definitely possible but I find it just as likely that she’s just been derailed. It might take her another year to get back on her feet either emotionally or financially, or both.
          She might never come back because life happens and college slips away.

        15. nightsbridge

          In response to everyone else . . . If the circumstances then didn’t convince you, the fact that she still seems to hate Sarah for it should.

        16. Tadpole7

          to nightsbridge

          Her hating Sarah is perfectly reasonable even if Sarah made the perfect call.
          A betrayal of trust did happen even if it was the right call IMO. Its not unusual to end up on someone’s least favorite list for doing something that will help them or saves their life. Sometimes people acknowledge it was the best that their friend could do for them in that moment and a friendship is regained. Other times their is no reconciliation ever.

          Sometimes you stay mad at a person because it’s easier to be mad then to acknowledge the damage you did while you were in that shitty head space.
          It’s easy to lie to yourself, “I was handling it”, “It would’ve passed” , “It wasn’t that bad”.

          It can also be very upsetting to know you couldn’t deal with it. That you “failed”. Someone saw you at your most vulnerable and messed up. Culturally there’s a message that this makes you a failure, you couldn’t hack it. It makes it very hard to reach out to the person who exposed that part of you to others.

        17. Tan

          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/06-strange-beerfellows/absolve/

          The main thing we have to go on about Dana’s situation is what Raidah tells Sarah about what Dana tells Raidah. That’s telephone game levels of unreliability given the respective motivations to hide or stretch the truth.

          It’s also worth noting Raidah doesn’t even say that Dana’s situation is ‘worse’, just ‘not better’, which is perfectly in keeping with Dana’s previous narrative that things were fine.

          I’m not dismissing the possibility that Dana’s dad is abusive, but I really feel like if that was it and Raidah knew about it, it would’ve come out in explicit terms by now. Especially in the linked strip, I don’t see a reason for Raidah not to press further if she knows or even is pretty sure Dana’s dad is abusive. It is proof that Sarah is wrong and should apologize.

          I’ll call it 50-50 on whether Dana’s dad is abusive, but 10% or less that Raidah actually knows that. And if she doesn’t know, then it isn’t actually a justification for the way she’s treated Sarah.

          (sidenote, in response to college possibly straining family financials: doubtful. Dana’s dad runs a lawfirm, with an implication that it’s big and/or successful enough to be hiring recent college graduates. That suggests a certain level of well-to-do.)

        18. Jason

          Honestly, if I had a child who had just lost a parent and I was given evidence that they weren’t coping with that, I would absolutely pull them out of university, bring them home, enroll them in counselling and try to help them build a healthy life and give them as much time to heal. Grief can take a LONG time to be processed, and if that meant they didn’t go back to uni the next September, that’s the price of their mental and emotional well-being.
          I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that point was one I wanted to say isn’t inherently a terrible thing. I agree that Dana saying she’s in a “worse place” is concerning, but that too could mean a number of things, such as her not having her friends and being surrounded by memories. I don’t want to assume anything since we have no way of getting more information unless her story is explored further in the comic.

        19. JepMZ

          i see Dana as a gigantic liar. Yeah. She’s severely depressed, but that shouldn’t excuse her of her two faced nature with her room mate. She’s lying to her friends by pretending she’s okay but she doesn’t give Sarah the same courtesy. And what’s worse is that Raidah is enabling Danah’s lies, which is understandable I guess. Since Raidah knows her longer. I can’t give any merit to anything Dana says to Raidah.

        20. Mav

          Do we know her parent(s) is abusive, though? And if Dana is in a worse place, whatever that means because it’s pretty vague according to Raidah, wouldn’t that be Raidah admitting that there was something wrong with her in the first place?

          I agree that I can also understand why Billie felt terrible about Ruth, but the best thing was for Ruth to get treatment, not getting worse just so Billie could feel better about herself.

          It just rubs me the wrong way that Raidah treats Sarah like shit over it, when there are obvious factors that were out of Sarah’s control: it’s not her fault Dana’s situation happened to her, that Dana was using on a “dry” campus with harsh punishments to cope, it wasn’t getting better, and it was impacting Sarah’s (and Dana’s, honestly) ability to succeed at school.

          Arguably, if Dana had stayed, she may not have been as lucky as Ruth if no one cared to say something about her issues, since she also refused treatment and insisted everything was fine. If she told the school, there was a good chance they would have sent her home anyway. And if she left, the inequalities regarding mental healthcare are not Sarah’s doing nor does she have control over that. Sarah only even knew because she lived with her. Raidah didn’t, and yet she assumes that everything would have been fine if Sarah had just kept her mouth shut and while she did…nothing.

          I mean, she had a whole year to get down to the bottom of it. And all things said and done, it’s easier for her to hate Sarah because she probably never liked her that much anyway. But we’ve seen a few times in the strip, good is not always nice and people who are nice to you don’t always know what’s best (see: Billie and Ruth)

        21. Emperor Norton II

          “Do we know her parent(s) is abusive, though? And if Dana is in a worse place, whatever that means because it’s pretty vague according to Raidah, wouldn’t that be Raidah admitting that there was something wrong with her in the first place?”

          As nightsbridge points out above: If that was the case, would Raida really still hate Sarah if this was the case? Finding out that there was something wrong with Dana in herself would mean some straight-out denial of reality in the face of it.

          Not that that is impossible (we humans are damn good at that kind of thing), but I do not think Raidah would be quite like that… Then again, still haven’t seen enough of her to really tell, so could definitely be wrong on this one.

        22. Mav

          It could be if it means that Raidah projects her own anger and guilt over insisting they do nothing onto Sarah, given that she says Dana was her best friend and Sarah ended up knowing more about Dana while she didn’t want to look into it.

          I also think that there is a possibility that since Sarah was the one who brought it up, that made Raidah less likely to believe it – which could amplify the point above, if it were to mean that Raidah disliking Sarah got in the way of her being there for her friend. Which although neither Sarah nor Raidah are responsible for Dana’s health, there’s that element of being too petty to see whats in front you.

        23. CJ

          I also don’t think we have no evidence of Dana’s father being abusive. What we see (taking with a grain of salt because it is Sarah perspective) she was stoned often when she started school (practically the first thing she did was asks Sarah how she felt about getting stoned), and after her mother died,she was constantly stoned, and telling everyone she was fine while obviously for roommate she was in a downward spiral gaining momentum.
          It seems to have been going on for some time, as Sarah’s grades went noticibly down.
          And Sarah’s there on a scholarship which depends on her grades. Which she would have lost if the situation continued. Which is the point Raidah never ever considered in her hate for Sarah. Sarah wasn’t willing to throw her life away for enabling her roommate to be stoned out of her mind.
          That Sarah feared Dana would die is a point Raidah also ignores (and Dana probably tells her this was a ridiculous notion, but hey, which druggie doesn’t? )
          I can understand that Raidah wished for a solution that had Dana stay in college, but really, it’s a 6-year old reaction to say “everything would have been fine if Sarah just kept her moth shut, so I may hate her for changing the situation”.
          Has she never learned that people with a serious drug problem often shade the truth or lie outright?

        24. Mav

          Agreed. Raidah is oversimplifying things, it would not have been that simple at all. And as I said above I have a theory she’s still mad and is using that as an excuse not to see things from Sarah’s perspective and not to objectively see Dana’s situation. It makes total sense that Dana would not have been that honest about her interactions with Sarah too.

        25. Ansel

          I don’t think it’s a bullshit reason. I’m 100% on Sarah’s side (even if her reasons weren’t completely noble, getting help is what you should do in that situation), but Sarah herself admits that Dana put on a front for her friends, so I imagine Raidah reads it more like ‘Sarah reported Dana and called her parents for smoking weed during a stressful (though improving) time. Also Sarah thought weed was going to kill Dana lol,’ than ‘Sarah shouldn’t make mental health calls Dana would be fine without help,’ (although that does seem to be what Billie thinks?). Also Raidah got punched, and as far as Jacob knows, Sarah just up and assaulted Raidah.

          Of course, that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t talk to Sarah or anything, let alone that Raidah would be right for forbidding it. Or that she’s right for how rude she is to Sarah (I mean, first time we see her is ‘I hope you choke.’) She’s very wrong, and her attitude still isn’t justified (even if her idea of what happened was true) but she does have reasons to think that way (and, especially if she didn’t know Jacob and Sarah were hanging out for a while, to expect Jacob to back her).

        26. Nono

          Agreed, I’m not a huge Raidah fan (her early interactions with Dina did not paint a pretty picture), but from her perspective her dislike of Sarah is understandable, though from our armchair point of view misinformed.

        27. Doopyboop

          Good point, even though I still dislike Raidah I can admit that Raidah has a different lens for the situation.

        28. Mav

          Yeah. Raidah is mean and is pretty petty towards Sarah. I can only imagine the picture of Sarah Raidah painted for Jacob, and now he’s finding out that Sarah is not this horrible monster of a human being. Raidah, like a lot of people that age, is bad at seeing perspectives of other people that aren’t her friends. Also, she seems to not know how to really pay attention and see more than just what she wants to see or is more convenient for her to see.

        29. BBCC

          Jacob probably knew Sarah before Raidah.

        30. Mav

          They only superficially knew each other, while Raidah started dating Jacob before he and Sarah tried to get to know each other.

        31. thejeff

          I think it was in-between her first attempt, with the Joyce ancedotes, and the party. That’s the first time we see him with Raidah and when Roz hit on him earlier, he commented on wanting a relationship not casual sex, rather than saying he was already seeing someone.

          He could of course have met Raidah earlier, but not gone on a date until later.

        32. Jason

          I don’t think it’s a bullshit reason either. Raidah didn’t see how bad Dana was, nor did she understand the impact it was having on Sarah’s grades and the possibility of HER getting kicked out of college.
          Sarah needed her own space to be a place she could actually live properly, AND it seems like Dana wasn’t processing her grief.

          But what Raidah saw is that Dana was grieving and that Sarah was pissed off with her being sad over losing her mother and got her pulled out of college. She didn’t see the impact it was having on Sarah’s work, nor that Dana wasn’t coping herself. She doesn’t see it as a justifiable decision that she disagrees with- she saw it as Sarah betraying Dana when she was vulnerable and grieving.
          She absolutely has a good reason to resent Sarah, based on the information she has. That said, I don’t approve of the bullying- but being concerned about people spending time with her, given what she saw as a betrayal of trust? Yeah, that seems okay. Basically saying “look, she’s bad news, I don’t think it’s a good idea to spend time with her” is fine in my opinion, and even if you disagree, surely we can agree that it’s justified given her perception of events.

    2. Leorale

      Ehh, could also be read more charitably, as ‘ugh, you had to deal with Sarah, that must’ve been unpleasant for you, she’s really unpleasant.’ She didn’t know yet that Jacob doesn’t mind Sarah or need commiseration.

      1. Doopyboop

        True. Sarah is notoriously hard to interact with even though she’s been making steps lately.

  13. Keulan

    I didn’t know Sarah was Voldemort.

    1. Hopeful Sarcastic

      Sarah’s the true dark lord, Roz was only pretending to be the dark lord for her master.

    2. Jess

      themoreyouknow.jpg

    3. Plasma Mongoose

      *wonders if Little Jacob is a horcrux*

  14. Bagge

    I like Raidah. She has higher standards than putting up with Joe’s bullshit.

    Compelling argument there, Joe. “She’s not on my liiiiiiist, how dare you talk to someone not on my liiiiiiiist.”

    Heh, between Joyce and Amazi-girl, Jacob has a thing for heroes.

    1. butts

      I… want to like Raidah. But that bit with Dina in the mall. That shit’s not okay, yo.

      1. Spencer

        My barometer for forgiveness is based on my favourite character having stabbed another character I really like in the hand after they had taken someone hostage and threatened to murder them with a knife.

        Frankly, Raidah’s ableism towards Dina is not uncommon.

        1. Nono

          Not many people would ask if someone right in front of them is twelve and then talk to them condescendingly.

        2. Spencer

          Because speaking condescendingly to someone is such a rare occurrence. Obviously.

          see I just did it right there

        3. Nono

          That’s like saying Raidah belittling is Dina is no big deal because ‘eh, she’ll be facing plenty of it anyhow’.

          Whether or not it’s uncommon doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be judged harshly when it happens.

        4. Spencer

          I’m saying that it happens, not that it’s okay.

          Walky is a casually homophobic dick. Danny thinks being mixed race is code for extra hotness. Roz treats the queer women in her dorm as a hivemind to be corralled. Becky told Billie that bisexuality doesn’t exist. Carla dismissed Dorothy as a political shill. Joyce is Joyce.

          People do shitty things because people, regardless of their best intentions, absorb society’s detritus, and one of those is the infantilizing of neurodivergent folks.

        5. Fart Captor

          Yeah, Raidah wasn’t all that much worse than when everybody told Becky “ew no, don’t put moves on Dina!”

          I could forgive her if she cuts that shit out, but I think I’d very much enjoy some sort of rivalry between Raidah and Dina

        6. Socks in Sandals

          That comment has to be worth a few points. Have some points.

        7. Jason

          Absolutely. I was going to make that point- albeit with fewer examples.
          The way Raidah spoke to Dina was totally not okay, but doing something bad doesn’t make a person bad. We are all flawed, and we all do things which are “bad”, or negative, or harmful, or informed by unaddressed prejudice, etc. The fact that the characters are like that too, nobody perfect, nobody without screw ups, is a testament to the writing.

          My closest friends are… a little bit racist. And a little bit, I don’t know if “transphobic” is the right word, because they’re fine with binary trans people, but it gets fuzzy outside of the binary. (It probably is the right word.) They’re not so great with people with mental illness. But at their core they are wonderful, caring people, who would go to the ends of the earth for the people they love and do amazing work with the animals they rescue. They have their flaws which I’m not blind to, but that doesn’t stop me from loving them and thinking they’re fantastic people that I’m lucky to have in my life.

        8. Rectilinear Propagation

          But you said it was common in response to someone saying it’s not OK, so it sounded like you were defending it. Even this comment sounds like your defending it as no worse than what other characters have done.

          I don’t think that’s what you’re trying to do but wanted to point out how your words don’t necessarily line up with your intent. (This is something I also have trouble with.)

        9. Rectilinear Propagation

          Once again I should have kept scrolling before replying.

        10. Spencer

          Don’t worry about it. In hindsight I should have been more clear about what I was trying to say rather than come off as saying that common awfulness should be excused.

        11. ischemgeek

          Mrr. That it’s not uncommon doesn’t mean it shouldn’t affect your assessment of a character (or a person, for that matter) or that it should be brushed off.

          I notice this double standard in the comments where typically-good-on-social-justice people are willing to excuse characters shitting on Dina for being neurodivergent and autistic in a way they also excuse people for shitting on Amber for her mental illness but don’t excuse folks for other forms of bigotry. Arguments raged over Becky’s treatment of Billie for days – and it’s still brought up as an unequivocally crappy thing Becky did but she has since redeemed herself by learning about bisexuality and having an open mind on the subject. People treat Dina shitty for her neurodivergence, and it’s just, “Yep, that’s a thing that happens.”

          It’s also a thing that happens that bisexuals get told that bisexuality doesn’t exist – but that doesn’t mean Becky got, or should have gotten, a pass on it.

          My point is: that ableism is a socially acceptable bigotry to have does not mean that it’s something to be excused or brushed off. And as an autistic person, I really wish people would quit handwaving it as a character flaw. “Yeah she’s a bit ableist, but that’s not uncommon.”

          You’re right, it’s not. And that’s exactly the problem.

        12. Spencer

          Correct, and I should hope my comments haven’t come off as an endorsement of normalizing shitty behaviour, and I am sorry that they have.

          My point wasn’t that “everyone’s shitty about something ergo it’s okay”, but I was trying to acknowledge that that awfulness doesn’t exist in a vacuum. That we learn and regurgitate it, and it isn’t until we have it challenged that we can grow from it. I think Dorothy and Sarah are good people, but they still acted like Becky was hitting on a toddler, and that’s awful, and they deserve to be held to that awfulness.

          Case in point, people feel okay shitting Amber’s mental illness because one time they read an article about The Cycle Of Abuse on buzzfeed, therefore they feel completely entitled to judging every single action she takes under that and happily expressing that she deserves to be abandoned until she ears her Not Shit certification.

          I know I’ve expressed bigoted and harmful views before. I like to think I’m allowed to learn from that, but that doesn’t change that I’m contributing, or that someone isn’t allowed to look at that and decide I’m not worth their time.

      2. Disloyal Subject

        I have a hard time holding that against her too much; she gets some points for having the standards to berate her flunkies for saying something fucked up not just in public but at all. I enjoy Dina having taken her condescension personally, but it seemed like she literally didn’t know any better and was just trying to be considerate and helpful.
        I don’t like her one little bit, but I have to give credit where credit is due.

    2. Cerberus

      I really like Raidah in this comic for just being one of the first to just shut Joe down like he’s garbage. No getting up in his face, no punching him, just calling him out on his sexist bullshit and making no secret of how creepy and bullshit his game really is. Like he’s a limpet attached to her man.

      1. Leorale

        I like to imagine that this is a very common reaction to Joe. Nobody in his classes ever seems to laugh at his jokes, for example.
        Otoh, apparently sometimes women sleep with him, so there’s no accounting for taste.

        1. Cerberus

          Well, I mean, the slipshines reveal they do so by shutting him up first. His supposed game is what women overlook to sleep with him, not the reason they get with him in the first place (which is pretty true of most PUA scumbags. If they get laid, it’s almost universally despite all their posturing and creepiness).

        2. Leorale

          Hah, nice. I haven’t read the slipshines, which btw my autocorrect wants to write as epiphanies.

        3. Cerberus

          That is glorious!

        4. thejeff

          I’ve got to assume his game works to some extent – just not more than once on the same target. It’s actually less creepy if he’s so blatant and bad at it that he never actually succeeds except with women like Roz & Penny who are pretty much just using him.

        5. Knayt

          That does make a lot of sense – I don’t read the slipshines, but Joe getting laid on the regular is the sort of thing much more easily explained by Joe being hot than anything on the personality side.

        6. thejeff

          It could also be explained by him hitting on lots of girls at parties and pushing past resistance with some help from alcohol lowering inhibitions. Being physically hot certainly helps though.

  15. Ethereal

    Only ‘practically’ excised…

    1. Thor

      I came here to post exactly that.

    2. Barf Ninjason

      Well, she’s on do-bation

    3. Jason

      I wonder if any woman who fits Joe’s standards of attractiveness is ever fully excised…
      I really want to see character development from him, because eurgh.

  16. Fart Captor

    Okay, I feel very certain that were I even the tiniest bit into dudes, I would be really into Jacob by this point.

    His only flaw seems to be already having a girlfriend so he can’t date Joyce :/

    1. UltraKyrie

      A+ dude

    2. Jason

      I have to admit, I’ve never understood why people think he’s physically attracted, as someone who isn’t really into dudes on a purely physical level.
      But as someone who’s romantically into “whoever works for me on a personal level”, hell yes. A real life Jacob would have me disappointed at his (presumed) heterosexuality and monogamy.

  17. UltraKyrie

    Hopefully Jacob can induce some goddamned character development in Joe after this.

  18. Rukduk

    So, translating Jacob speak in panel 4 to Joe speak: “The hell’s wrong with you Joe.”
    Also, way too much information Joe! None of us wanted to know that about your list!!!

  19. Derek

    my interpretation of this is that Radiah doesn’t like Jacob hanging out with Joe and forming a Good Ole Boys club where they rate women on sexiness
    I mean, this is a fair interpretation of Joe, but by now I would hope she would have more trust in Jacob, especially since they had conversations about sex in relation to their faiths so she knows he takes it seriously

    1. Shiro

      The thing is, at least speaking for myself, it’s nearly impossible to completely trust that a guy WON’T engage in that bullshit, even if I know him to be good in every possible respect. It’s a matter of getting burned too many times.

      1. Ansel

        As a guy who also dated guys (then got marrieeed), I haven’t really run into that? I’m not doubting your experience, but I dunno if it’s enough to conclude Raidah wouldn’t trust Jacob (especially it being Jacob. if she was dating someone else, there might be more room for discomfort)

      2. Barf Ninjason

        There’s no way not to toot my own horn saying this, so, weeahhhhhhhhhhhhh and all, but I at least refuse to do that shit. It helps that I no longer really associate with anyone who’s like that, but if it comes up I won’t participate. I also won’t lecture men on objectifying women, though, cuz I figure they know they shouldn’t plus…I dunno, it ain’t in my nature to tell people what to do or not to do. So anyway, honka honka honka, there really are at least some men who will not meet and rate ladies on their sexual attractiveness.

        1. Shiro

          That’s good. That doesn’t mean I’m ever going to have that shadow of a doubt, even for guys for whom it would be grossly out of character. Doesn’t mean I’m going to seriously accuse. Just means I’m going to need to verify, “Yeah, but you didn’t join in, did you?”

        2. Barf Ninjason

          That’s pretty reasonable

      3. Jason

        As a transman, I transitioned at twenty, so I missed the teenaged boy years. And as an adult man, I’ve never experienced that. The closest I’ve come is comments like, “did you see her, she was lovely” (I can see my closest male friend saying that word for word), or my husband and I pointing out women who’s style we like (“holy shit blue hair look look blue hair” is not a thing that is strange for me to say!) Very occasionally I’ll verbalise admiration of something about a woman that wasn’t a choice- but I feel that it’s not objectifying. (Last time I actually remember doing it was a waitress with stunning eyes. My husband’s reaction was that he wanted to hug her because she was tiny.)
        Personally, I think we have the best version of “ogling”!

        1. Jason

          And at this point I’m not adding anything to the conversation but it just occurred to me that I should have added that the reason I don’t experience men “rating” women or similar nauseating experiences is partly because of the men I choose to spend time with, and when I have less choice my attitude would shut that down. Obviously in a group my attitude would make little difference, but in small groups it matters.
          Also the career I am training in is predominantly filled with women, so male students are a minority.

    2. Emperor Norton II

      Your interpretation is probably helped by the fact that Jacob talks in glowing terms about Joyce, and Raidah’s more upset with Joe showing his “All women are there to be sexually objectified by me” side. Again.

    3. Cerberus

      That was my read too. Just a “oh honey, really, more hanging out with the sexist who can’t go five seconds without denigrating women”.

      And well, that’s a reasonable concern to have. A friend wrapped up in toxic masculinity can be really toxic to how a person treats their partner and I’ve witnessed some horror stories over the years of “sweet guys” who went full asshole after being ribbed by “the mates” over some perceived failure to keep “his woman in line”.

      Worst case is my ex getting hit and raped by one of her exes because he’d been out with the boys and they had “given him some pointers” on “how to get back his dignity” because they hadn’t had sex in a while and he happened to mention it.

      1. Chris Phoenix

        Yeah, toxic masculinity does seem to be unfortunately contagious.

        This reminds me of A Gate To Women’s Country – have you read it? It explores a variety of gender and societal issues, and that’s one of them. It’s one of my two favorite of Tepper’s books. (The other is Raising the Stones.)

        I think Jacob would fit into the city quite well, BTW. Joe? In the garrison, no question. Danny? Probably city. Ryan? Garrison. Walky? …I’m not sure.

    4. Fart Captor

      I’m no sure that’s the case. It seems like she’s only now forming a solid opinion of Joe, which suggests that she must not have interacted with him much or at all until now.

    5. thejeff

      Well, it might not be so much not trusting Jacob as “Why are you hanging around with this creep?”

      And frankly, they haven’t been together that long and we don’t really know much about their dynamic – whether or not they should have built up enough trust.

  20. Shiro

    Same, Raidah. Uuuugh.

    Also, judging by panel 4, Jacob and I have similar taste in women.

  21. Badgermole

    How, HOW, is this the same Joe who was texting Joyce with a fair measure of sympathy and compassion throughout the trip back to La Porte? Genuinely confused by this turnaround. In my experience distance and not having to keep up a social face does create an interpersonal intimacy that physical presence might hinder, but after you’ve had that how can anyone go back to judging the other person so harshly?

    1. Spencer

      Jacob approaches Joyce differently because she’s not on his To-Do list. She gave him a specific problem to solve based on his past experience with his parents divorce, and he obliged.

      She’s still the fundie girl who punched him in the face. Nothing about that has changed.

    2. Cerberus

      I’m suspecting this is his toxic masculinity performance. He’s with a cool dude and so feels he must present his case for being a “manly dude” too. And part of that is shitting on Joyce.

      Whereas over the phone, he can be a little more vulnerable because no one’s watching.

      Doesn’t make what he’s doing right and definitely doesn’t make him safe.

      1. RacingTurtle

        This is how I read it as well. I’ve noticed that “manly dude” personas put on by boys and men who have toxic masculinity problems are sometimes even resistant to the disapproval of cool dudes, even though said personas have to be performed in front of cool dudes. They act like the cool dude’s disapproval is some kind of test, rather than honest feedback. Maybe because doing otherwise feels like backing down, and backing down isn’t manly? I’m not sure. I find it totally mindbending.

    3. Rukduk

      See that was the Jekyll to regular Joe’s Hyde briefly asserting control before once again being consumed by the Id.

    4. Jason

      I don’t think it’s that he’s judging Joyce, but that he feels he has to present a certain way. My read on Joe is that he’s obsessively keeping people at arm’s length, terrified of genuine emotional connection, and that he reacts in ways to push people away by being… Well, this.
      I could be wrong, but that’s the impression I get from him.

  22. Bluewind

    I love Jacob’s take on Joyce. Everybody else sees her as super Christian first and foremost (at least until they get to know her better), while Jacob sees everything else about her first with religion just a piece of that and even sees her in an attractive way. She’s not a little sister or a nieve child; she’s a woman with strong views who supports her friends, stands up for what she believes in, and punched out a kidnapper. He also sees her religion not as cloying, but passion. It’s like when two gamers meet by chance and have fun bonding over loving games but not the same ones in the same way. At the very least, I think they should be friends.

    I wonder how Joe feels about all this?

  23. bejouled

    Is… is Joe jealous?

    He claims to never ever want Joyce but secretly texts her all the time, and gets all up in Jacob’s grill just for having a conversation with her. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

    1. ValdVin

      I thought perhaps that too.

      Or maybe there are just little bits (hinted in his texting with Joyce) he’s keeping a bit walled off. Here and there we got that his parents are divorced, therewas a lot of yelling, and he doesn’t talk hardly about it.

      The fake protest re Joyce might be a front to maintain and that “grannies are on my list” part of it, but he may be entering a friendship with Joyce. Uncharted territory for him?

    2. Bagge

      He sure is!

      Also, he COMPLETELY blew it with Joyce, like 0 on a scale 1 to 10, would never touch again. That hurts the self esteem of self appointed ladies man Joe. The only possible explanation that allows him to get out with parts of his ego intact is that Joyce was the faulty one, not him (“bongos be crazy” and all that).

      But if Jacob suddenly manages a good, flirty conversation with her without face punches, with lots of good chemistry and ending with a starry eyed Joyce twirling her hair and being coy about a second date…

      …maybe Joyce wasn’t broken at all. Maybe Joe was. Maybe his Pick Up artistry is bullshit. NOPE, CAN’T HAVE THAT. JOYCE WAS WRONG AND JACOB IS WRONG FOR HAVING A GOOD TIME WITH HER.

      (Which, incidentally, is completely hypocritical for anyone who cares about Joe’s ridiculous Bro-code, because here he is dragging Jacob down rather than supporting him. You, sir, is a Bad Wingman.)

    3. RacingTurtle

      I didn’t think of this possibility. It makes sense, though. For one thing, Joe is kind of a pull-your-pigtails-because-I-like-you type of boy. It’s pretty gross in an 18 year old, though! (Which is why it should be discouraged in 8 year olds as well, but I digress…)

      He hides it a little better than Walky, though only because “like-like” and “want to have sex with” are not a circle on Joe’s personal Venn diagram. Walky acted like girls have cooties. Joe acts like feelings have cooties.

      1. DonDueed

        I tend to act like cooties have feelings.

        1. thejeff

          I tend to act like cooties have girls.

          I don’t even know what that means.

        2. Yumi

          No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative.

        3. a snow ʍousɐ

          Cooties with daughters!

    4. a snow ʍousɐ

      “The lady protests too much, methinks” actually means “someone doesn’t know when to shut her trap” in contemporary English.

  24. Pablo360

    A lot of people seem to think that Jacob’s rapport with Joyce is problematic and could drive a wedge between himself and Raidah. It’s not. Guys are allowed to be friends with girls without that being unfaithfulness.

    Now, his rapport with Sarah is another story, and I foresee much conflict on that front. And now both Joe and Joyce have an investment in Jacob — holy hell that’s a lot of J’s.

    1. Jason

      I think it’s partly people wanting there to be more between Joyce and Jacob, because Joyce was definitely giving the impression that she was, uh, finding him appealing. And he definitely seems to be giving her a good opportunity for them to get to know each other- which, yes, could easily be platonic, but with Joyce appearing to be starting to like him and them appearing to have good chemistry…
      Well, people are filling in blanks. I don’t think anyone’s assumption is that a straight male having friendship with a girl is a problem. (Although some people seem to think Raidah feels that it is, which I don’t see at all.)

  25. nothri

    Well…some worlds he probably doesn’t exist. Do those count?

  26. Leorale

    I also enjoy just how hard today’s strip fails the reverse Bechdel test.

    1. Spencer

      I wish David Willis would stop objectifying men and depriving them of their agency. When do they ever talk about anything other than women?

      1. Nono

        Naw, Walky totally talked to Joe about McNuggets that one time, it’s cool.

  27. Cerberus

    Comic Reactions:

    Panel 1: Oh, Raidah, you are endearing yourself to me quite a bit here. Cause, yeah, Joe needs to get called out on his casual sexism cause it’s frickin’ relentless. And I love that she’s just “nope, not gonna let that slide, lemme lampshade the fuck out of that language choice” right out of the gate.

    Like, fuck, that’s not easy to do, especially not to a friend of a romantic partner because it leaves you an opening to be dismissed as a “ball-buster” by said asshole later to your partner. But Raidah has the confidence not to care and not to put up with that shit.

    Panel 2: Oh Jacob, obscuring the name doesn’t do anything if the person you’re obfuscating for understands who you mean immediately. But points for trying.

    And I’m fascinated by Raidah’s face here. Like it’s easy to go with a “ugh Sarah” interpretation, but there’s something in the curve of those eyebrows that is leaning me towards a “oh honey, you had to put up with Sarah” vibe out of her look.

    Not significantly better, but I dunno, I get much more pity out of her face than anger or disgust.

    Also… oi. So, there’s this type of guy who Joe has exemplified many a time in the Gender Studies class who cannot abide being the third wheel of a conversation, especially if it involves a woman and so will insert himself into whatever other people are talking about and hijack it to him and his bullshit. So if you’re talking ornithology, he butts in to talk about the Orioles game last night. If you’re talking gender identity, he butts in to give his thoughts about feminists.

    And we see that here. Raidah and Jacob are clearly entering into a more one-on-one conversation and one surrounding a touchy subject, so here comes Captain Caveman to burst in about his dislike of Joyce.

    Panel 3: And Jacob stands up for himself and calls Joe out. Which is somewhat huge considering so far we’ve seen him strive to see the best in literally everyone he interacts with. Like I don’t think I’ve seen him do those upset eyebrows once before this comic since Sarah literally antagonized him in order to get him to stop trying to befriend her: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/effort-2/

    Like he’s done concerned eyebrows, he’s done concerned and empathetic eyebrows a lot, but not, dude, what the hell. I’m thinking Joe might be starting to step on some of Jacob’s lines a little. Not enough for Jacob to stop hanging but definitely enough that he’s burned through a little bit of Jacob’s good will.

    1. Pablo360

      Just wanted to drop in to say that when I saw you had posted this comment my immediate reaction was “oh yay, Cerebus reactions!” You are incredible and you’re doing a great job — always know that you’re appreciated.

      I don’t know if you needed to hear that, but I’m pretty sure we all do, from time to time, and I felt I would be remiss not to bring this up.

    2. Chris Phoenix

      “obscuring the name doesn’t do anything if the person you’re obfuscating for understands who you mean immediately.”

      Sometimes a person’s name can be a trigger. I know someone for whom another person’s name is a trigger, and they’ve asked me to refer to the bad person as “Voldemort” instead of ever saying the real name. Something like that could be happening here.

      Or it could be Jacob’s way of saying “There’s no easy way I can avoid telling you who was there, but I know that you may not want to talk about her, so I’ll say ‘you know who’ to indicate that I won’t bring her up again unless you do.”

      Either way, I’d rate Jacob way higher than “points for trying.”

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        Niagara Falls!

      2. DonDueed

        But then, wouldn’t “Voldemort” become just as much of a trigger?

        1. Fart Captor

          I doubt triggers are sufficiently rational for that to be a common issue.

        2. Liliet

          No, because ‘Voldemort’ would only ever be used to refer to them in a completely safe context with a person who understands you and believes you and is on your side.

          (Well, hopefully Jacob doesn’t completely 100% believe Raidah about Sarah, but he cares enough to know that mentioning Sarah would upset Raidah and prioritizes that over immediate convenience of just referring to her by her name, and that’s what counts)

      3. Cerberus

        Fair point.

    3. chris73

      I get you don’t like Joe (and fair enough) but this:

      “And we see that here. Raidah and Jacob are clearly entering into a more one-on-one conversation and one surrounding a touchy subject, so here comes Captain Caveman to burst in about his dislike of Joyce.”

      Is otp, in the first panel we see Raidah speak to both of them so, at this point, its a three way conversation

      Joe mentions chicks, Raidah says chicks, Jacob says Joyce and Sarah, Raidah says Sarah ugh and Joe defends Sarah and disses Joyce.

      He’s still part of the initial conversation, this isn’t him jumping in. Theres plenty to dislike about Joe but this feels like stretching

  28. Synnerman

    Yep, still don’t like Raidah.

  29. DarkoNeko

    “how remiss” ?

  30. Cerberus

    Panel 3 continued: Oh holy fuck, no, the to-do list. The first bit of what the fuck that got me disliking Joe’s character and viewing him as fundamentally unsafe.

    And holy fuck is there a lot to unpack in this. Like, there’s the minor ageism in him being like “oh, I deigned to objectify grannies” in service to putting down one of the few persons in comic we’ve actually seen him go on a date with (and there’s that whole, he continues to harp on and punish women who say no/reject him).

    There’s the immediate dismissal even though he knows that Joyce is great because he’s been in secret communication with her all weekend and so knows that she has really needed some friends to help her with her emotional and religious crisis and so a frank conversation about God with someone sympathetic was exactly what she needed.

    But most infuriatingly to me has to be the way he assumes that if someone is not on his “to-do” list, then they cease to be important or even worthy as a person to him anymore.

    And that’s especially vile, because that’s not just an internal thing. Jacob is straight-up defending Joyce and Joe doesn’t mention an actual reason for him to dislike her (she punched me in our first date, we constantly argue, I dislike how she doesn’t respect your boundaries). Instead he mentions her near absence on the “to-do” list as if that should be the only evidence Jacob needs.

    He genuinely believes “I don’t want to bang her as much as ‘old’ people” is not only a compelling argument to never converse with them, but the most compelling argument. And he believes that his penis feelings trumps everyone else’s priorities and interests.

    And fuck if I haven’t run into a million fuckwads like that who have to make everything and anything about their precious penis feels and act like things like being trans or one’s sexuality is actually a secret attack on their penis feels instead of something people are.

    Panel 4: So, really don’t always want to be harping on Joe, but… he knows this. Joyce has been texting him all weekend about her crisis of faith caused by this whole affair. So he not only knows this incident happened, but that she’s been lost and scared and out of sorts with her faith and very in need of some sympathetic religion right about now.

    And yet, he’s still being a douchebag about it, even when Jacob let slide the side-eyeing and commentary he was making.

    Also, Jacob defending Joyce is beautiful here. Cause it’s not even surrounding her role as victim or survivor who needs gentle treatment, but highlighting her act of heroism and how that makes her compelling because of that.

    It’s a really nice touch.

    I really think Raidah and Jacob are working right now and are making each other happy, but if that does fall apart, Jacob would be a really good fit for her. Even if just for a short-term relationship.

    1. UltraKyrie

      Joe really did a swell job of encapsulating his personality in just 1 panel

    2. Pablo360

      I only just now realized that Joyce is “practically” excised from his to-do list.

      As in, she’s still on it.

      What the literal fuck, Joe?

      1. Cerberus

        Yup. We can also assume Sarah is on there as well as he’s not raising a similar objection to Sarah not being on the list.

        Joe is just… “amazing” at consent.

        1. Emperor Norton II

          We don’t even need to assume. We -know- she’s still on that list. Because he’s said so himself. At the worst possible moments.

    3. AKP

      Yeah, I… Keep seeing Joe interact with Joyce in a positive way, and I know he can be better than he’s being, and I keep wanting to see him improve, and he keeps… not.

      It’s especially frustrating because you know that at least part of it is pure theater (like I’m sure he loves sex and he definitely walks the creeper talk, but as you’ve stated, we know he’s been decent with Joyce through the phone, we know he can be decent with people when he doesn’t feel like he’s supposed to be doing otherwise) and if it’s even part theater why doesn’t he stop when he gets backlash you pretend to do stuff so you can feel safe socially right? But no. He’s way too wrapped up in coming off as a dudebro creeper asshole. And it’s very. Very frustrating.

  31. Miffed Mab

    I can get behind Joyce/Jacob as a ship, seems like it would be nice and healthy.

  32. Cerberus

    Panel 5: Oh, Raidah, I still think you were casually ableist against Dina and your bullying of Sarah was very much not good, but damn if you aren’t earning some serious brownie points with me with this.

    Cause fuck yes! Yes, that is the correct reaction to this shit. Not to find it charming, not to politely pretend you didn’t hear it, but to call it out and emphasize how unclean and unsafe that makes you feel. Like, that shudder and statement, that’s the shit I would do, fuck, I probably have done something like that at some point. And it’s frickin’ beautiful.

    Also, ugh, I really want Joe to not be a character I am constantly going “Bob damnit Joe” to every five seconds. I really do. Like, I liked, hell I still like the dynamic Joe and Joyce have over text and I feel it is bringing better qualities out of him at least in those spaces, but this shit?

    This shit is why I keep finding it almost impossible to like Joe.

    Like, let’s just break this down.

    A) He has a fucking “to do” list that he keeps bringing up in mixed company. And least we forget, that “to do” list has helpful rankings of all the women he’s ever met, no matter how tangentially. So, if you spoke to him once at a coffee shop or walked by him once on the street? Awesome, your name and a “hotness rating” are on a freely traded site the creeper keeps trying to give access to.

    B) It has a fucking feed and he’s offering it to people. Again, this shit is online and accessible. Like it’d be bad enough if he just had a bang journal with this shit, but the cavalier way he keeps trying to sign up all the people in his life to look at a long list of women being dehumanized based on how they sad or happy they make his boner feel is just beyond the pale.

    Like, it’s just such a dire lack of understanding about privacy and what information people want out there on themselves, especially with regards to shit like this. Like, holy fuck, there’s no reason for anyone but him to have access to the information, but instead he gives it to everyone in his life and expects them to not only follow it but follow his numerical scale and actually treat people better or worse based on their inclusion or not on the list.

    Like, holy fuck, I don’t even have words.

    C) Okay, yeah, I harp on consent a lot. It’s super important to me. Consent activism was something I was into before I was assaulted, before I knew that most of the people in my life had been raped at least once, and before I knew I belonged to three groups that tend to be heavily targeted for corrective rape.

    So yeah, I have a bugaboo about it. But Jesus fuck is Joe dangerously bad at consent. And he keeps making the same damn mistakes over and over, which is ignoring all manner of strong body language tells for him to fuck off and interpreting it instead as a call for greater intimacy.

    Like, Raidah is literally shuddering in disgust while walking away from him and loudly proclaiming that she wants to live in a world where she didn’t have to know he had a “to-do” list while literally making an exaggerated “I’m nearly vomiting at the thought” action.

    She could not send signals any clearer without pulling a Sarah and literally screaming in his face.

    And yet, here’s dipshit, yet again, conveniently ignoring all these signals to instead try and push a thing he knows she has no interest in, interpret it as a request to be let in on the thing she is disgusted by and either send her a real invite to it (which is super fucking creepy), or making a show out of fake sending her an invite (which is disrespectful and creepy in the “makes jokes about non-consent” way).

    I mean, what the ever-loving fuck, Joe.

    And this is why folks like Joe in the real world are a walking mass of red flags. Because little micro-aggressions and acts of sexism like this don’t tend to be one-offs. The guy who “enjoys making you uncomfortable” and tries way too hard to get you to “read his blog” and constantly blabs PUA talking points tends to be the guy who gets thrown out of a community because of “boundary stuff” or gets picked up for stalking or makes internet infamy trying to pick up teenagers working at Starbucks.

    And it’s why I feel he needs to become a hell of a lot better before I’d feel safe shipping him with damn near anyone.

    1. Emperor Norton II

      Another smaller detail about this:

      She hears Jacob talk about Joyce in glowing terms. And she does not care about that at all.

      Now, when you’re in a new relationship, even when you’re aware of it not being a good thing, I for one find it hard to not feel somewhat “posessive”. Yeah, I know it’s irrational. It’s dumb. The only thing I can do is to be aware of it and fight it.

      Raidah does not show any sign of even having to fight that. She has no problem whatsoever with Jacob liking Joyce.

      Or at least if she does have any problems, she’s got her priorities straight, and she knows that Joe’s behaviour is a far bigger problem. A real problem, that needs to be dealt with.

      But I don’t think it’s even that, because she’s not even catching herself saying anything and starting over. She’s completely focused on Joe being goddamn Joe.

      1. Cerberus

        That’s a really good catch.

    2. Wack'd

      For the record–and this is, you know, a really tiny nitpick all things considered–but judging by the one Patreon comic where we see the to-do list, names aren’t involved. Just vague and horribly objectifying descriptions.

      I imagine that’s one of Joe’s “letter of the law” attempts to keep himself from crossing any lines, but since anyone he could feasably sign up for the list would probably also be an IU student and thus recognize most of these people on sight, it’s not really an effective measure and probably isn’t supposed to be.

    3. BBCC

      I still maintain my theory that Ryan (or other rapey scum like that) could be picking ‘marks’ from Joe’s list.

      Because yeah, it’s creepy as fuck.

      1. JBento

        While a “do” list is creepy as fuck and in “just no” territory, Joe’s list sounds like it’s too encompassing for anyone to pick ‘marks’ from it. I mean, by the sound of it, the students registry would give you only a few more names and more information on them.

        1. BBCC

          Yeah, but info from the student registry isn’t specifically a list of hot girls and what is hot about them.

    4. Spencer

      I keep wanting to come back to my view of Joe as a lovable sex bro who’s serious about him and his partner having a good time and knows when to lay off but, yeah, he’s just kinda constantly creepy.

      It’s funny that his It’s Walky! incarnation was so ahead of the ballgame. He was shameless, but he was honest about his intentions.

      1. thejeff

        His IW! incarnation was worse. Or at least the early Roomies version was. Chasing girls. Climbing into their rooms. It was all much less serious and Willis still had all his hang-ups, so that kind of muted things.

        By the end of IW and in SP Joe had gotten much better. He was also much older and more mature, which helps.

        1. Spencer

          I mean, yes, but it was meant to be “wacky” in Roomies, and by It’s Walky! he had grown a lot.

          Whether that sits well with you or changes things at all, well, that’s a different story.

          I’m wondering if this Joe is an attempt to play the worst aspects of Roomies!Joe straight.

        2. thejeff

          I hope so. One of the things that bothered me about Joe in the later years of the Walkyverse is that though he’d grown a lot, there was never any real acknowledgement of the problems with the less mature version. It read more as “He had his fun, sowed his wild oats and now he’s matured and ready for an actual relationship.”

  33. Ashley

    On the one hand, Joe is very much about consent and careful not to harass someone who has said she isn’t interested in his advances. He also doesn’t seem to shame women for wanting/liking sex.

    On the other, a “do” list.

    1. Fart Captor

      He’s very much about not forcing himself on women. He could stand to think about consent a lot more in all things leading up to that though

      1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

        Joe seems very concerned with meeting the letter of the consent rules while ignoring the spirit. Minimaxing munchkin.

        1. Cerberus

          And letter of the law types are absolutely terrible on consent because they are much more concerned about falling just shy of legal proceedings than they do actually internalizing and practicing good consent in their daily life.

          And that’s at best.

        2. Dara

          Agreed on all of that, but honestly… as much as I would hate Joe in real life, I kind of don’t here? People talk about cartoon characters being cartoon characters, and for me, he’s such an over-the-top buffoon most of the time that he is totally one of those to me.

          (It only gets jarring ever when he briefly stops being one, like in his text conversations with Joyce when she was with the parents. That in my head is, like, a completely different character, even though obviously not.)

          and keep in mind this is coming from someone who doesn’t always apply this to actual cartoon characters like Pepe le Pew, who is utterly terrible and horrifying to me, and not for the reasons intended

          so

          yeah.

          i thought i might be going somewhere with this, but clearly not. XD

        3. Noheart6265

          I kind of feel the same about Mike. I mean, yeah, he’d be an unbearable asshole in reality, but within the context of the strip his douchebaggery is often so over the top and unrealistic that I can’t help but feel amused by him.

        4. Spencer

          I don’t feel that way about Mike, at least not anymore.

          He serially harasses speciific women by holding their sexual histories over their head, he emotionally browbeat an abuse survivor into believing that wanting a partner meant she was looking for a victim, and now he’s planning on seducing and humiliating Ethan for no reason other than shits and giggles.

        5. Zach

          No, worse.

          It’s ‘for their own good’.

        6. RacingTurtle

          Sometimes I feel that way, too. Neither Joe at the end of “Sex” nor Daisy at the end of “Horses” creeped me out even the tiniest bit, because they read 100% as cartoon punchlines to me. Actually, now that I think about it, Daisy never creeps me out, even in the strip where she accidentally turns a re-enactment of Ruth’s sexual harassment of Billie into actual sexual harassment.

          Joe and Mike and Robin and probably others do sometimes get to me as real-ish people, though (in the DoA universe, anyway). Which I’d guess is part of why I can’t seem to stop commenting on this strip tonight. Oh, well.

          Free Penelope the Cat!

        7. MnstrPoppa

          Ok. I’ll take the Cat, so long as she’s free.

        8. Joe Covenant

          So glad to see someone else discussing Joe for what he is… OT comic relief… an overblown stereotype of the hormonal male horndawg.
          Written, and played, for the yuks. (In both senses!)

        9. Cerberus

          Nah, I can understand viewing it that way.

          And I think I haven’t been able to get into that similar headspace like I was with Robin, Mike, and Joe in SP! is because they aren’t enough of a cartoon character.

          Like the realism of the universe is one part of it. After all, Joe isn’t really a cartoon character with literal closets of costumed women in it and Mike doesn’t have the ability to mess with the fabric of reality like he did there.

          But another part of it is, at least for me, that the type of asshole Joe and Mike are now isn’t foreign enough to see as a cartoon, because I see toxic assholes of their molds all the time. Boys too wrapped up in toxic masculinity to see their consent practices are fingernail deep. Angry edgelords who mess with people in abusive ways because it’s the closet thing they get to fun. Those are rife and common.

          And so it becomes harder, at least for me, to get into the whole mindset of just treating them like comedy relief, because they’re just too familiar of a daily nuisance.

          Though it might not also help that the type of asshole Joe and Mike are are the types of assholes that tend to have their real actions largely ignored in society. Like, people are always willing to make excuses or argue that people should just “ignore” folks like Joe or Mike no matter how much they are harassing you, so I’m less likely to give their fictional counterparts slack because there’s already too much slack given to behaviors like this in society.

          But yeah, everyone’s allowed their own perspective on things. This is kinda mostly just my thing.

        10. BBCC

          It also doesn’t help that they aren’t the same kind of cartoon characters. Like you said, they’re not forces of nature. They’re not even over the top. This universe is more realistic – even the cartoonier elements like Sydney Yus and Galasso or dramatic conventions like Becky being fine after the car tipped over or Sal’s motorcycle not crashing after she caught AG, aren’t outright impossible, just extremely (EXTREMELY) unlikely. Things have happened, and so I can accept them as extremely unlikely good luck. But it also makes real life conventions apply to Mike and Joe as much as anyone. And they do not come out looking good.

    2. Emperor Norton II

      In this very strip:

      Raidah: “I do -not- want to hear about someone’s ‘do’ list”
      Joe: “Here, let me give you the password to my online feed!”

      Tell me again how he is being careful about consent and not harassing anyone who’s shown they’re not interested in his Joe-ness.

      Heck, last time he talked with Sarah:

      Sarah’s talk and entire body language ( (Crossed arms as if freezing, deliberately looking away from -everyone- while talking): “I do not want to be here! Please don’t make me do this!”

      Joe’s response: “I just have to tell you that you looking deeply uncomfortable is a big turn-on for me! It really is. Oh yeah, and I’ll then make my token ‘I’ve accepted you rejecting me’ line to make it seem like I’m respecting your no.”

      1. BenRG

        It’s not so much not taking ‘no’ for an answer but rather a literal inability on his part to understand why anyone would say ‘no’. It isn’t as if he’s asking for commitment or anything except a roll in the hay! To Joe, it is a win-win scenario for both parties and has done everything he can (in his mind) to make it a customer-friendly process.

    3. Trolldrool

      On one hand, we know he’s big on consent because Willis has said so in the Cast section. On the other hand is his every appearance in the comic, none of which suggest he has a clear understanding of where the line of consent is drawn.

  34. Nicolumbia

    I hope we get to see more of Raidah, she doesn’t seem so bad when she’s talking to people she doesn’t hate. And she doesn’t put up with Joe’s shit so good on her.

    I wonder how she and Joyce would feel about each other.* Joyce does try to see the best in people, but they would both be biased due to Joyce being Sarah’s friend and wanting to be on Sarah’s side.

    *I know they’ve sorta met but I don’t think they really knew who the other was at that point? And they’re bound to meet again now that Joyce is part of the… what is this, a love parallelogram? Lust-friendship-and-rivalry trapezoid? Wait no, rivalry rhombus. Yeah, I’m going with the alliterative option.

    1. Nicolumbia

      Oh wait no, relationship rhombus is probably better, it’s more widely applicable

      1. RacingTurtle

        I really like “relationship rhombus”. Nice!

      2. Jhon

        Colored string and pushpins?

  35. RacingTurtle

    Dang. Joe, I was biased in your favor due to how long I’ve “known” you as a character. But you’ve rather lost me. Straws, camels, etc. Blech.

    Raidah’s butt-shudder is a pretty good reaction to Joe’s assholery, here.

  36. Optimus Pride

    “He was a tender, caring lover who made me feel like a goddess and gave me 2 dozen orgasms. 10/10, would bang again” – review by IAMTOTALLYAWOMANANDNOTASOCKPUPPET

    1. ValdVin

      Also “These are not lies. I like him very much.“, in the manner of Dina.

      1. Killjoy

        “It was much better than Cats. I’m going to see it again and again.”

  37. BenRG

    I had to think for a minute or so to work out what Raidah’s problem is. I’m thinking that it’s two-fold:

    1) She doesn’t like Jacob spending time in the general vicinity of Sarah; as they are pretty much arch-enemies, this is hardly surprising;

    2) She doesn’t like Jacob spending time with Joe; given his generally-juvenile mindset about women in general, this is also hardly surprising.

    That said… I don’t know; she has a lot of passive-aggressively given advice for Jacob about who he hangs out with and how he spends his time. The smirk she has when she greets him just doesn’t feel quite right, somehow.

    1. Schpoonman

      Neither Sarah nor Raidah are perfect, but the vast majority we’ve seen of Raidah has been through Sarah’s lens. Seeing her more in her element without an immediately biased narrative is showing us a much more pleasant side of her. By the same token, Jacob has been okay with continuing to hang out with Sarah because she’s clearly not the inhuman monster Raidah likes to portray her as. Notably, it looks as though Jacob hasn’t heard of Sarah much from Raidah at all. He was plently friendly to her in class before Joyce’s party, but he’s also aware of Raidah enough that he doesn’t freely offer up any information on her to Raidah. Jacob’s pretty fucking cool.

  38. James

    I can just imagine Joe humming along to this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkfdN-z2vcQ

  39. BenRG

    I can’t help pity Joe right now because of his inability to pigeon-hole Joyce. He likes interacting with her, that much is clear (he’d have blocked her on the SMS system otherwise) but he isn’t sexually attracted to her. That puts her so outside is comfort zone and understanding that she must seem like an alien from space sometimes!

    1. Killjoy

      It’s good for Joe to learn to be friends with a woman and see them as fully people, rather than dividing them into “wouldn’t”, “would”, and “did”.

      Joe’s not dangerous the way Ryan is, I get the impression that he wants it all good and for both (all) involved to enjoy it, and the idea of force wouldn’t be on his “fun” list. But his act comes across as creepy as hell and not so respectful.

      To paraphrase Greg Universe, “Ugh, Joe… women are people.”

  40. Jerad McIntyre

    Does anyone have a fully comprehensive timeline-spanning “Joe’s do list”?

    1. BenRG

      Fortunately, Willis has declined to give us too many details.

    2. Trolldrool

      I think it can be summarized as follows: Has she punched him? If yes, then she is no longer on the list.

      Has she threatened to punch him in response to his advances? If yes, then she is no longer on the list.

      So rather than ask who is on the list, it would be easier to ask who isn’t.

      1. thejeff

        I’m not sure those exceptions apply.
        Joyce is only “practically excised”. He keeps making suggestive comments towards Sarah.

        1. BenRG

          You can’t help but wonder just what is so uniquely terrifying about Joyce that she occupies the otherwise essentially-vacant ‘friendzoned girls’ category in Joe’s mind.

        2. Killjoy

          She smacked the crap out of him because he wouldn’t take a hint? Plus, those crazy supernatural irises that go from . to O

        3. Chris73

          At a guess (and putting myself into Joes shoes) I’d say the face punching is a good reason as that happened only 3-4 weeks ago?

          But probably because Joyce has managed to be both vulnerable with Joe and managed to get Joe to open up and be helpful so this is probably making Joe consider feelings he hasn’t considered before

          Its quite possible that Joyce could be Joes first time* and you never forget your first time and you always treat them differently

          *First time meaning he’s actively considering a girls feelings from their pov and not just seeing them as a sexual object

          *I may also be projecting my own teenage thoughts onto this…maybe

  41. TsunamiJane

    Whoah Joe, that’s some fancy vocabulary

  42. LWS

    But does he charge a nickel like Mike does?

  43. Miri

    I’m not saying that Joe isn’t problematic – he is – but I suspect he’s the sort of guy who, if he went with a girl to a party and she got drunk, wold take her back to her dorm and hand her over to her roommate to look after. Or if her roommie was e.g. still at the party would take her to Dorothy and try to brush it off with comments like ‘do you have coffee in here or is that too hardcore for you? No seriously do you need me to get some so you can look after her? I owe you one’ Coz even though he doesn’t successfully walk the line between admiring women and objectifying them – I do think he likes women; and sees sex as something fun people do together, and not masturbating into a toy that just happens to be a person when it comes down to legal definitions.

    Yeah, he’s always trying to get his groove thang on – but he doesn’t belittle women or break them down to try to make them fall for him. He’s not a PUA jerk (just an immature man-boy and doesn’t understand why women would say no, so checks again, and again, and doesn’t get why he then gets kneed hard and why all her friends glare at him).

    He’s the ‘locker room talker’ (‘she was so an 8, she’s going on my do list, did you SEE her [bodily attribute]? Could even be a 9 or 9.5 if her game’s as good as her talk’) that the Ryan’s point to when they say ‘hey, everybody does it, boys will be boys eh?’ But he is also open and honest that what he wants is sexy fun times, no strings attached, repeat experiences welcome, tell your friends – BRING your friends!

    Think back to his date with Joyce. He asked her out on a date, for a start. Alcohol was not involved. OK, he tried to ditch their chaperone. Yes, that was so he could make his moves without being punched. And yes, he had wandering eyes. He was not 18 year old Fundamental Christian marriage material. But he didn’t assault Joyce or even defend himself physically. He listened to her, respected her physical space and bodily autonomy – couldn’t understand where she was coming from and tried to dismiss her as a crazy bongo (no autocorrect, not butch…).

    Now consider Ryan. He tried repeatedly to isolate her, drug her, then use physical force on her (so she bottled him before passing out, and Sarah smacked him with a bat) to override her ability to consent or remember what he did to her. Consensual sex was never a consideration for him.

    I’ve had friends who were like Joe (but less sulky – they saw rejection as part of the law of averages… as my general response to them being shot down was to mock them – incidentally my response when they weren’t – this is something that we did discuss… at some point in ripping it out of my friends, I generally do stop and check that I am not actually being offensive/insensitive) in real life. I just mocked their approaches to relationships; they acknowledged that what they were doing was basically shallow hedonism but were open and honest about it, and genuinely couldn’t imagine being with somebody who took their schtick seriously enough to get hurt, and we’d mainly talk about other things. They never felt like unsafe people to be around. (And some of my friends got with them; they did this knowing full well what they were like. They never felt unsafe or coerced into doing things they weren’t happy about. They generally stayed friends after deciding to stop doing the squishy together.)

    So kinda feeling the need to defend Joe. He’s bought into the idea that a manly man sows his wild oats. He’s insensitive and not always great at reading situations or people. He’s shallow and immature. He is also almost definitely at that university because Danny was following Dorothy there, and Danny is his best mate, and he could see the writing on the wall there even though Danny wouldn’t, and he figured a just-ditched Danny in a new place would need him…

    1. thejeff

      You’re right. He’s not Ryan. He probably wouldn’t actually rape a drunk-to-the-point-of-incapacitation girl – OTOH “Alcohol really does help with the threesomes”, so using booze to lower inhibitions and get consent that wouldn’t otherwise exist isn’t a problem for him.

      Joyce’s date is the only time we’ve really seen him in action and it’s not as pretty as you suggest – though he didn’t actually try to rape her (in public and with a violent chaperone). He did try to secretly isolate her from her chaperone – bribing Mike to disappear partway when he couldn’t be easily replaced rather than negotiating for a less violent one or a safer double date or something. Or just bailing, which is probably what I would have done in that circumstance. He spend much of the date working the conversation back around to sex – trying to get around her resistance, despite it being extreme.

      He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t respect. You may be right that he doesn’t think of women like sex toys, but he also thinks if they’re not interested he can fix them with his penis. It’s the “She’s just saying no, but once I start she’ll love it.” strain of rapey logic.

      He does the same with Sarah. Every conversation involves telling her how much she turns him on, it just now comes with a disclaimer about how he respects her lack of consent.

      You might be closer to right than I am. He could really be better than he seems from what we’ve seen. We haven’t seen much of his game in action. We haven’t seen him at a party. We haven’t seen him dealing with more tentative/polite rejections than Sarah’s or Joyce’s. We haven’t even seen him succeed, except with women who very likely took the initiative themselves and even there we only saw the aftermath.

      1. Tadpole7

        Are you talking about the date in which Joe was physically abused by both Mike and Joyce? The one where there was very clear abuser and it wasn’t Joe.

        Please don’t use that one as an example, if I had been Joe’s friend Joyce and Mike (in Joyce’s, employ) would be on my permanent shit list. I’d ask if he wanted to report them.

        If Joe flat out avoided her or expressed hostility for the rest of their encounters I would not blame him at all.

        Joe thinks he knows what consent is, and has shown repeatedly that he doesn’t really get it. He should be called out on it and does need to get a better working definition of it. He’s not Ryan at all but he’s not someone I would trust.

        1. thejeff

          Yes. I usually include a big disclaimer about Joyce’s behavior (and Mike’s). I absolutely agree Joyce was awful there and far more in the wrong than Joe. He’d be perfectly justified in reporting her or just staying away/being hostile.

          I only use it as an example because, despite Joyce’s behavior, it’s one of our very few looks at how Joe behaves on a date/when dealing with someone resisting his game. You can learn things about Joe from it, despite Joyce’s behavior being far worse.

        2. Cerberus

          What thejeff said. What we see of his actions shows someone who’s willing to do lots of dirty tricks to get around boundaries and remove options to say no and an unwillingness to see noes as fully real and definitely a complete lack of willingness to acknowledge and recognize non-verbal signs of disinterest or distress.

          Yes, Joyce beat him up and that’s wrong and hell, her actions throughout the date had a shit-ton of awful problematic stuff in it, but the way he tried to bribe the chaperone to leave a)even though he knew it was a prerequisite for her consenting to a date and b)at a point where Joyce would be unable to secure a replacement is a red flag so red it’s waved by protesting socialists.

        3. Chris73

          Yeah he tried to get rid of the chaperone but I’d suggest that, in terms of dating, its an unusual thing to have.

          I don’t know if anyone else has been on a date and a chaperone was present but its not something that I’ve ever experienced and I’m pretty sure its probably something Joes isn’t used to either

          So you have an 18-19 year old guy going on a date faced with an extremely unusual situation, and he tried to bribe Mike to leave, I don’t blame him for that, I’d imagine it would be quite uncomfortable to be in that situation, to feel like you’re on trial, that everything you say or do is being scrutinised

          I can just imagine that if he’d have said something like “either ditch the chaperone or the dates over” or “I don’t want to deal with this” and he left he’d get criticism over that as well

        4. BBCC

          If he’s not comfortable dating with a chaperone, then yeah, I’d say he should leave. It’d be an unjust critique to be mad at him for leaving, imo.

        5. Chris73

          If Joe had left then the comments would something like “Joe didn’t get his way so hes leaving”, “Joe can’t handle the possibility of not joeing Joyce so hes leaving” or something similar

        6. BBCC

          Probably, but like I said, I think criticizing on that ground would be unjustified. It’s a good thing Joe wouldn’t stay when sex is off the table, he only WANTS casual sex.

        7. Cerberus

          There might have been critiques from people about Joe going “fuck this” and walking out at the chaperone, but they wouldn’t have come from me. It’s perfectly fine to have a boundary even if it seems “odd” and it’s perfectly okay to look at someone’s boundary and go, yeah, no, that doesn’t work for me, so let us part ways here. And if he had done so, I’d defend that like crazy.

          But he didn’t and what he did goes beyond him just being weirded out by the chaperone and fucking up in the moment. In those comics, he takes Mike aside to bribe him to “get lost” on the way. So, basically trying to work around a boundary requested and doing so in such a way that it was a) deliberate, b) would be impossible to replace, and c) disrespectful of the boundary set (and that last one’s a safety thing. Like if the first thing you do on a date is try and end-run around a silly boundary, you’re likely not safe on more important boundaries).

          And he wasn’t done after the first part. He tried after to separate them, claiming that Mike wasn’t with him, making sure that Mike was put in a separate booth, and so on. Again, it’d be perfectly fine for him to say “fuck this boundary, I’m out”. Or even to work his best within it and go “nope this isn’t working, sorry” or even to just be a dick about it.

          But instead he felt so entitled to Joyce on his terms not hers that his first actions is to end-run around her boundaries because in his mind, her boundaries don’t matter, only his needs and what he assumes she “needs” from him (being “fixed” with his penis).

          And let us not forget that he was only going after Joyce in the first place because she was sheltered. Her inexperience with men was part of the selling point for him.

        8. chris73

          As I stated below there are degrees of boundary breaking. To judge all boundaries the same is absurd, is Joes trying to remove the chaperone as bad as Ruth breaking into Billies room or Beckys conversation with Ethan?

          So yeah I don’t blame Joe for his actions, its damn weird to have a chaperone, especially a peer you might have classes with. Hell who knows what rumours or lies Mike could have spread?

          “And let us not forget that he was only going after Joyce in the first place because she was sheltered. Her inexperience with men was part of the selling point for him.”

          That’s what I mean about your biases coming through, the reason he went for Joyce is because he was trying to help Danny pick up some hot chicks to help him get over Dorothy and Joyce and Sarah happened to be the two women who turned the corner first and he considered Joyce the more attractive of the two.

          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/best-2/
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/destiny/
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/follow/

        9. Cerberus

          Chris-

          Indeed they are. To me, at least, actively working around a stated barrier and attempting to remove it by deception rather than frank communication is a major red flag for me, because it betrays a worldview that sees boundaries as barriers to getting what you want rather than what a person needs to feel safe.

          This to me is the most critical difference. Becky didn’t talk to Ethan to get around a boundary towards sleeping with Joyce. Ruth… well, Ruth’s abuse is actually something I’ve called out as something that will always color the relationship and mar its origins no matter how it develops, so there’s me there.

          As for my statement of why Joe went after Joyce?

          Panel 4, with context from Panel 3:
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/corrupt/

          And again, I’m not saying chaperones aren’t weird. I grew up in Fundie land, I got to see them in the wild, they were often creepy and patriarchal as fuck.

          I’m saying that that weird thing was Joyce’s requirements for going out on this date and instead of going “no, that’s weird, I’m not doing that, see ya,” Joe instead tried to subtly remove the chaperone in such a way that Joyce wouldn’t be able to get a replacement.

          That was deceptive and him trying to negate a stated important boundary. The fact that it’s stupid doesn’t matter, because it was important to Joyce and her requirement for the date proceeding.

          It’s not the same, but I’ve got some weird boundaries due to trauma. And that also serves as a warning to me. If people ignore those boundaries or act as if they are negotiable for me I know they aren’t safe.

          Joyce shouldn’t have her boundaries ignored or “maneuvered” around even if they are “weird”.

        10. thejeff

          Perhaps he’d still get criticism – though as I said above, I probably would have just left, especially since punching was mentioned, IIRC.

          Trying to get the chaperone to disappear after the date has already started is uncool as hell. As bad as springing the chaperone on him unexpectedly was, that’s worse.

        11. Chris73

          I actually think its equally bad, Joyce brought in a chaperone because it made her feel safer (and fair enough) but Joyce gave no thought as to how Joe would take it because in her mind theres a certain way men should act and if you don’t act that way then violence is justified

          Joyce really should have asked Joe if it was ok if Mike was there

        12. thejeff

          She should have. Preferably before the date, so he could back out gracefully or suggest an alternative – double date or group date or something acceptable to both. It’s all seriously screwed up behavior on Joyce’s part. And then there’s Mike… Ugh.

          But, punching aside, Joe’s approach to the situation is creepy as hell. Joyce has established she’s not comfortable on a date alone with him. She needs the chaperone along. He then attempts to bribe the chaperone into leaving after they’re on the date, so that she will be in the exact situation she’s already made it clear she’s not okay with. Unexpectedly and without giving her the chance to back out or otherwise avoid the situation.
          Joyce is violating modern social expectations. It would be perfectly reasonable for Joe to walk away or try to negotiate something else. He doesn’t. She sets a boundary – a weird one admittedly – and he immediately tries to secretly break it. That’s creepy as hell. How could you ever trust someone who did that.

        13. chris73

          Because some boundary breaking isn’t as bad as others, for example Robin breaking into Leslies house is far worse (in my opinion) than Joyces numerous issues with boundaries

          Its not a case of you break a boundary you therefore can’t be trusted

        14. Cerberus

          They’re not exactly equal. Joe targeted Joyce because she was sheltered. And part of that being sheltered means having her have expectations and boundaries that might seem novel and weird to someone not from her subculture.

          Joyce should have let him know ahead of time, but didn’t know that, because she assumed that everyone on dates has chaperones because that is how she was raised. When she presented it, she thought that was a normal part of dating.

          Is that a screw-up? Yeah. But it’s a reasonable one for her to make given her lack of experience dating and there’s plenty of time for him to raise an objection or say “whoa, we need to talk this out, cause clearly we have very different ideas of what a date is”.

          His response to that? Isn’t a fuck-up based on ignorance. It’s a deliberate intentional act to end-run around a boundary. Repeatedly. He tries to bribe Mike to ditch them. He tries to pretend he isn’t part of the date once that boundary is in motion and he’s accepted it. In short, his violation is worse because it’s not a fuckup. It’s his response to the woman putting a boundary he doesn’t like up.

          And that’s terrifying.

          Even more terrifying because his whole deal here is targeting someone naive because he believes she’ll be easier to trick into sex and that she’ll be a hotter lay because of the repression, but his response to her having ignorances about secular dating and other baggage from repression is to try and navigate around what boundaries she set and then try and steer everything towards his desired end.

          But will agree, Robin’s also on a pretty bad level what with breaking into a home to end-run around set boundaries.

        15. Tadpole7

          I agree it had all the signs of Joe going to behave badly (agree about the chaperone.) but, and this could be me, Joyce’s action often seems pushed into the background when ever this date comes up.

          Let me note I do believe Joyce figured out this was wrong. I like her and the way she changes once she gets the message that this is not cool. Joe has consent issues that he hasn’t been willing to retread or at least think about. He’s a creep.

          What bothers me is how long the hitting lasted, that no one intervened even though some of this happened in public. Joe did not fight back. He was amazingly passive about all this.

          I think it bugs me because, abuse of a male partner is something often dismissed. It’s rarer I believe but when it happens very few men will admit it.
          There’s a message if your a “man” abuse isn’t something that happens to you and if does your not a real “man”. There’s a moment when Joe says it hurts, and Joyce’s response shows both her first awareness that something is wrong with her hitting Joe and the toxic message that allowed it to be okay. (Please note Mike gave no shit and was very aware of the violence he was committing.)

          I think because of Joe’s own very real consent issues and creepiness that the wrongness of what was going on often gets lost. Especially when this date gets dragged to the fore as an example of how Joe is a bad actor. (He is).

          There were no good actors in that date. It hit some flags that I couldn’t overlook for everyone involved.

          An aside, the hitting part reminds me of the trope of the angry woman slapping the offending man before storming off. It’s very stupid, many men will hit back and they will hit much harder. Don’t do it unless your willing to go the distance, and I still recommend to not do it.

          I mention it because I’ve been the guy in that trope, a much smaller woman hit me with a full power slap. It was a stupid fight, we mended fences ( the fact she actually hit me scared the crap out of her,not because of me but the fact she had lost control) and it never happened again. But it hurt and scared me in that if it had continued I wasn’t sure if I’d have put her in the hospital . Or if I’d have just taken it and then walked away. P.S. twenty years in the past.
          .
          So I guess I identify a little to strongly with Joe (never thought I say that) to feel comfortable with using that date as an example of why Joe is so bad. He is but he was very much the victim at the end of that date.

        16. thejeff

          I do agree with most of this. Joyce was definitely far worse than him on that date – and that’s been brought up in comic a few times since.

          I also suspect on a meta-level that it was partly the comic not yet having found its later tone. That was early on and that sequence (Mike especially) seemed very much in the over the top Shortpacked style. Mike as comedic violent force of nature, but with no real consequences.

          I still think it’s worth using to examine Joe’s game. If only because we’ve seen so little of it, we need to look at what we do have. Give me an new seduction attempt by Joe, preferably on someone who doesn’t jump immediately to threats/violence or consent and I’ll happily drop analysis of this one.

        17. Tadpole7

          Valid point

        18. chris73

          Yeah fair call

        19. Greenygal

          Yeah, I have difficulty judging Joyce as harshly as her actions on the date warrant precisely because to me the whole episode feels like a Shortpacked holdover of Wacky Cartoon Violence, and out of step with both Joyce’s characterization and the tone of the comic in general. Perversely, because Joe is less out of character it’s easier for me to hold the bribing-the-chaperone thing against him–but I should remember that if I’m writing the whole thing off as early installment weirdness I need to extend that to all parties.

        20. Cerberus

          Oh, don’t let my critiques of Joe cloud the issue. I think a lot of Joyce’s actions on that date were downright vile. Assaulting her date, failing to do anything to reign in the violent sociopath she dragged along, not recognizing his stated desire to punch people as a red flag, the disrespect about his religion and family situation.

          Like, Joyce was a monster on that date. But Joe’s actions there are worth noting, especially in the context of “how respectful is Joe of consent”, especially since we don’t get many glances of Joe in hunt mode/date mode and so we can only judge based on those.

          Joyce’s date was the longest date of his we’ve seen in terms of comic length and his actions there paint an awful picture. Does that mean he deserved to be repeatedly assaulted? Fuck no. Joyce was abusive on that date and her apologizes afterwards were lackluster and not nearly good enough.

          And frankly I’d be a lot less cross about Joe here if he just said “I’m surprised you got along so well with Joyce. Last time we talked face to face about religion, she punched me repeatedly” or something along those lines.

        21. chris73

          That is a good point

        22. Jason

          Yeah, Joe is big on consent. He’s pretty damned sure on that point.
          Unfortunately, he doesn’t actually know what consent is. He seems to think consent is a lack of a no, rather than an active, enthused and clear-headed yes.

          On the flip side, an interaction with Danny had opened up potential gaps in what he thinks constitutes consent. He asked Danny about things that would have meant Danny was taking advantage of Billie- including alcohol. And yet he has referred to alcohol as “facilitating threesomes” (unless things were agreed upon beforehand and the alcohol helped it go smoothly, which is possible but doesn’t quite like what he was saying.) So either we have misinterpreted something he was saying, his own ideas of consent actually have gaps, OR certain things are a front.

          Personally I think the latter. His talk is abhorrent, but I think it IS just talk. That doesn’t make it okay, but I am guessing that what he actually believes and feels is very different to the front he puts on, and that front is to protect him from being hurt by allowing anyone too close.

          Maybe I’m wrong. I never presume to know for sure what’s coming unless it really is spelled out.

        23. Schpoonman

          The way I saw the “alcohol helps make threesomes happen” conversation was that there were two girls who individually wanted to sleep with Joe, and the three were feeling horny/kinky enough to go for it after they had some booze.

          This is also a very generous interpretation that casts Joe in the best light possible, and I’m aware of that. While it wouldn’t be 100% out of Joe’s character, I still don’t see him as the kind of person to buy drink after drink after drink just to get someone to sleep with him. So far, both his “on-screen” partners, Roz and Penny, have happened without alcohol, and Joe is also prideful enough I can see “needing” alcohol to bed someone would be a sticking point for him, and I feel like at least Danny would have heard about it, with appropriate fallout because holy shit Joe raped a girl. That, or he would have given up before that point.

          Again, this is a charitable interpretation and in no way validates Joe being an asshole, but I do hope Joe grows up a little bit and learns that he needs to give the lone of consent a much bigger berth because he’s got a lot of shit to work on.

        24. Jason

          I don’t know if anyone will see this now it’s on an old (as in not today’s) comic, but that doesn’t paint Joe in a good light at all. Basically, that’s “they were okay with this sexual activity, but after drinking enough they were willing to do this sexual activity as well”. Which is still skeezy as all hell. I’m not sure what words I would use to describe that but it shows- at best- a very unclear understanding of consent.

          Literally the only ways I can see that that’s acceptable is firstly, if it never happened and Joe was just bullshitting- but failing that, if all parties consented to a threesome prior to alcohol, but that the alcohol made the other participants more relaxed and enthusiastic about all parts of it than they seemed prior. Which I think some people would still find to be a bit questionable but others would feel fine with.

  44. Vulcanodon

    Sarah clobbered a rapist with a baseball bat. She may not be perfect, but in what version of Earth is THAT not compelling?

    1. JBento

      Well, she DID stop at one hit.

      1. thejeff

        No she didn’t.
        “Stay down and I won’t hit you again.”
        “Whoops, I lied”
        And then it looks like she stomps on him as well.

        1. JBento

          So, er, Sarah’s still uninterested in dating, right? Damn it!

        2. Killjoy

          And no matter what else happens, I’ll always like Sarah for that moment.

  45. Vulcanodon

    And by the way, Joe, you were just told your ‘do’ list was disgusting, and your reaction is to offer access to it? Wait, you put it online? What the hell is wrong with you?

    1. Cerberus

      Online with an rss feed so people can easily stay in the loop with updates:
      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/prediction/

      Though at least this comic he’s implying it’s password protected, which is… something. But less comforting when we see him offering the password to nearly every single person that he meets.

  46. IllogicalBobcat

    I keep forgetting Sarah’s NARC-backstory exists.

  47. MnstrPoppa

    I think y’all are being really hard on Joe. Sure, he has an imperfect notion of consent and has an immature concept of relationships; he also represents a sex positive, non-possessive, genuinely kind person. He is also *eighteen years old*, fairly self assured, and actually supportive of other people.

    Also, *this applies to two characters here*, getting hit in the face is crappy, it doesn’t just feel not nice, it’s an assault on your person, an act that is damaging, intentionally so, not just physically, but emotionally. Joyce may not have personally punched Joe, but she abetted and approved of it. Raidah (autocorrected to radish at first, lol) may have given Sarah crap, but I think it’s fair to say that Sarah knows how to go through proper channels to deal with problems. (Just occurred to me, Sarah’s the poster child for poor conflict resolution) Both of these characters have a real, legitimate, and understandable complaint about a member of their social peer group, and still (mostly) tolerate each other. I wish a tenth of the people I was around in college, at this age, were as well developed and mature as these kids.

    tl;dr: Joe is immature and hypersexualized, but not a predator, give a kid a chance to grow. Raidah is mostly ok with her boyfriend hanging out with a girl who punched her, in the face, that’s remarkably chill, and makes me think there’s more to her than we’ve seen.

    p.s. I’m not done thinking Jacob has a real big flaw hanging around that we haven’t seen yet. This whole sequence has me thinking Willis is reading the comments while chuckling derisively, all the while petting a large, fluffy, white cat, which never leaves his lap.

    1. IllogicalBobcat

      I mean, my best friend was Joe for a minute in college. Every girl he brought home seemed pretty happy about it, though, so I’m not seeing the evil a lot of people here perceive. Then he stopped doing that and got married and had kids and is a faithful and loving husband and father. And actually, his Joe-influence played a big role in making me not-Danny.

      1. Killjoy

        And when a girl said “no” or “no thank you” or “not interested” or “you’re not my type” or whatever… did your friend take that as a challenge? Did he think he needed to “fix” them? Was he so “sex positive” that he viewed people with different priorities about sex as “broken” or “needing to be awakened”?

        Note that this isn’t even a male-only problem. Roz has some of the same “if you don’t want it, you’re repressed or oppressed or just don’t know any better” attitude.

        See also, Max in LeftoverSoup for some of the same “sex positive” attitude that ends up being kinda presumptive and insulting to people who don’t share her personal tastes or leanings.

        1. Cerberus

          I do like that Roz does at least view asexuality as a valid orientation. That’s pretty rare among that sort of worldview:

          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/hungry/

          Though slight points off for calling it a “choice”.

    2. Cerberus

      Because I’ve been cornered repeatedly by Joes who have been “sex positive” and “hypersexual” and “just interested in a good time” and had exactly his views with regards to what best would “fix” an asexual like me.

      That’s why I dislike him.

      1. BBCC

        Yeah, Joe’s are a lot less ‘harmless 18 year old boy’ and more ‘get the fuck away from me, you fucking creeper’ when you’ve dealt with boys who don’t listen to the word no. I’ve been trying to get rid of them since I was in grade 8.

    3. Trolldrool

      I’m not sure I can recall anyone who’s defended Joyce punching Joe on their date, especially since she didn’t punch him for his sexual advances or to get him away from her due to an invasion of her personal space, but because his eyes wandered to another woman walking past them. And as a heterosexual person (though I imagine it applies to anyone with a sexual attraction) that’s something I can empathize with. The eyes move on their own accord, regardless of whether I want them to or not. The only thing I do have control over is my eyelids or my neck or my spine or any other part of my body that somehow enable me to avert my gaze.

      So for the reason Joyce assaulted him, she was in the wrong. Joe has a legitimate reason to be angry about that. That however is irrelevant when it comes to judging his character, whether in a positive or negative light. The issue is that Joe is more than just a sexually liberated person who wants everyone to know how wonderful sex is. He is also a representation of men whose masculinity is dependent on their sexual prowess and how toxic that mentality is to those around them and themselves. His sense of self worth is dependent on having lots of sexual partners. It doesn’t matter if he communicates exceptionally well with his sexual partners and is extremely respectful while they’re having sex because he still sees them as tools to help him meet what he imagines is required of him to be a ‘real man’, though in his mind he’s only sharing the wonders of sex.

      1. Chris73

        “I’m not sure I can recall anyone who’s defended Joyce punching Joe on their date”

        Yeah there were

        http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/bliss/

    4. stegosaurus

      Joe strikes me (especially since we’ve seen what his father is like) as a guy who’s had toxic masculinity shoved down his throat his entire life. He has somehow managed to internalize some important lessons, like “don’t shame women for liking/being interested in sex” and “here are some essential elements of consent”, but I’m not sure where he got all that–sex ed, maybe? In any event, I think that his pride in himself for holding these ideals is genuine and that rather than gleefully proclaiming his adherence to the letter of the law, he honestly thinks that he is progressive. Unfortunately, he also thinks that those basic, limited ideals are as far as he needs to go. Thus, despite the good qualities you’ve mentioned, he still perpetuates many of the harmful behaviors that he’s learned from his dad, other men in his life, a lot of movies, etc.

      If I thought that this was all there was to Joe, that this was his character arc’s endgame…well, I wouldn’t hate him, but I also wouldn’t have much interest in a character like that. But I don’t feel that way. I think that, depending on how long the comic runs, we could see Joe change considerably. I think there are already signs that his college experiences are showing him that there are a lot of things wrong with the way he was raised to be–but he’s afraid to admit it or to change because that’s all he’s ever known. When he starts shoving his do list in people’s faces, aggressively redirecting a conversation into sex talk, chastising other guys for not being enough of a “stud”…yes, I see that he is harassing people and being disrespectful, but I also see insecurity and fear. It’s like his masculinity is in imminent danger at any moment that he isn’t shouting, “Hey, I’m Joe, the walking, talking boner! I do it with chicks every chance I get and I’m totally good at it!” I think that he judges himself, and feels that other people are constantly judging him, on some imaginary scale of manliness, and he’s terrified that he won’t measure up.

      But to me, things like Joe’s weekend-long text conversation with Joyce show that there’s more going on under the surface. He can be very kind and even sensitive, and can treat women like people instead of sex objects, as long as no one else is watching–because all of that clashes with the definition of masculinity with which he was raised. Joe’s harping on Joyce’s attitude about sex is a deflection; his anger toward her is a manifestation of the fear that Joyce has seen another side of him and might expect him to, like, have feelings and stuff in front of people.

      Similarly, Joe has shown (in his brief talk with Danny about sexuality, for example) that he is aware there’s more than one perfectly valid way for other men to be. Eventually, I believe that we’ll see him start to accept that there could be a better way for him. I’m not sure what it would take to get him moving more quickly and overtly in that direction, but I have high hopes for Joe, especially if he keeps spending time (willingly or not) with Jacob and Joyce. My hope is that over time, we’ll see him learn how bad his current behavior is and how much richer his life and relationships could be–and then do something about it.

      All of this is not meant to excuse or justify Joe’s behavior in any way, or to say that anyone should feel sorry for him or real people like him. This is just my perspective on the character.

      1. Vulcanodon

        Now that you mention it, wonder what happened to him as a child if he didn’t seem masculine enough to his dad.

      2. Cerberus

        I would agree with a lot of this.

        And that’s kinda the tragedy of Joe in a lot of ways. He’s drowning in toxic messages of what it means to be a man and a dad with definite ideas of what one is supposed to be as a man and what one is supposed to do to women.

        And I agree that there’s some good signs that he might crawl his way out of that pit as so many other young men have had to do.

  48. Toes14

    Oh Jacob, Why can’t you see that Raidah is such a bongo?

  49. JohnInCA

    “Joyce assaulted me for not living up to her standards” isn’t that hard to explain, Joe.

  50. Lise

    Yikes. What is Raidah wearing? Blue-collared white polo, printed leggings, AND Uggs? Maybe if she had a hoodie on or something. Still, the fashion in DoA is a huuuuge improvement from IW!.

  51. JBento

    So, I hear another Nazi got punched in the face today. Was this what Trump meant when he said he was going to make America great again? Because if it was, he wasn’t lying as much as I thought.

    1. BBCC

      And apparently Richard Spencer was punched in the face a second time.

      If this is his legacy, I will be very happy with it.

      1. Killjoy

        Yeah a world in which a Nazi troglodyte gets face-punched every day can’t be 100% bad.

        1. Killjoy

          (No sarcasm, btw… I meant that.)

        2. Cerberus

          Definitely! It’s really been one of the things that’s been sustaining me.

        3. Killjoy

          Some prominent ethicists are actually saying it’s wrong to face-punch Nazis. To that I say, “NONSENSE!”

          First, if face-punching Nazis is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

          Second, if you don’t face-punch Nazis right away and get out ahead of the problem, bad things happen.

          Third, face-punching isn’t all that violent when it comes to how to deal with Nazis.

          For those who don’t understand, go ask your grandfathers.

        4. JBento

          I tell those people to open a history book and find out what happens when he let Nazis go around WITHOUT punching them in the face, and what it takes to stop them once they get going.

          Hint: the event running from 1939 to 1945 wasn’t called the Second Great Debate.

        5. JBento

          when WE let, WE. Curse the lack of the edit funtion!

        6. thejeff

          I can introduce an expert witness on the topic: Hitler himself.

          Only one thing could have stopped our movement – if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.

        7. Daniel Rodriguez

          My granddma picked up a rifle and shot at Nazis during their warm up in Spain.

          Her only regret is that she didn’t shoot or punch or stab enough of the fuckers, and she made damn sure to tell me to not repeat her mistake, and she damn sure punched nazis and nationalists and legitimate fascists even before the shooting began during the protests with CNT FAI and AIT

        8. Killjoy

          Grandmas count too, definitely.

        9. thejeff

          We called that “prematurely anti-fascist”. One of my favorite weaselly phrases.

        10. JBento

          I can hear her now: “Damn hipsters! I was shooting Nazis before it was cool!”

        11. Cerberus

          Every person I’ve seen do that has either had shit on their feed that hint they are nazis or at least nazi-sympathizers or are otherwise… let’s say not likely to be in the first forty groups targeted by nazis like Richard Spencer.

          So I take those objections with a handful of salt…

          Salt I’d like to throw in the eyes of a nazi.

      2. JBento

        Nazis: so bad, you can’t punch them just once.

        1. Spencer

          A face so nice you’d punch it twice.

  52. Fayecere

    Joe is the one who sounds jealous. . . .

  53. Killjoy

    Consider this — despite their conversations, Joe still evaluates Joyce on the “do” scale.

    Jacob – “Joyce is great.”
    Joe – “Hell no, she’s practically excised from my ‘do list’.”

    That’s pretty much Joe saying “I wouldn’t do her, so she can’t be great.”

    1. Tom T.

      I see it a little differently. He’s coming around to seeing her according to different criteria, but his vocabulary isn’t up to expressing those new feelings. He’s like one of the ants in Once And Future King whose language is so limited that everything is either Done or Not Done.

  54. Arioch

    Okay. I am not a Raidah fan, though I like how she calls Joe on his shit. Here’s the thing about her and Sarah – Sarah tried to tell them how bad it was and they blew her off, they didn’t want to fucking see it. At the end of the day, all Raidah’s rage at Sarah doesn’t amount to shit because she never lifted a finger and if Dana was really her best friend, she damn well should have. She should have looked into it.
    Regarding the possibility that Dana’s dad is abusive…. We don’t really see any evidence one way or the other. Her being stoned so often in the beginning? From what I remember of some of the kids I grew up with, that could as easily be a sign of wealthy parents as abusive ones. Wanting to come back to school right away? We don’t really know how much time passed, but she may have wished to be with friends and away from memories. Not talking about her dad? Do many people do that? I know plenty of people even from close families who wouldn’t feel the need to do so, especially at college. Raidah says she’s in a worse place. And, Raidah is above reproach in all things, I suppose?
    I think Raidah is being a petty, mean spirited, childish bongo when it comes to Sarah. I’m not saying she doesn’t believe her own bullshit. But, I wonder if there is a part of her that recognizes that maybe Sarah was right about Dana all along and that is why she exaggerates all the bad parts of what Sarah did and makes no mention of the entire year of her own behavior. That’s why I think part of her knows that Sarah is right – I’ve known my share of Raidahs, Sarahs, and Danas, – the Raidahs who believe they are right brag about that torturous bullshit because they think they are dealing out justice not just being petty bongoes, they try to sway people to their way of thinking.

  55. Exilon1

    You know what Joe you should also have guys on that list, you know, like, no stone left unturned. Just for kicks. Could be Danny. Ethan. Jacob. All three of them.

    1. Commodore Jeep-Eep

      I suspect both him and Joyce are going to end up bi – I pity the gay dating scene that has to start taking on Joe tho.

      1. chris73

        What is it about Joe that makes you think that?

      2. Zach

        Dude, the gay comunity NEEDS a super-slut pushing condoms and affirmative consent.

    2. Zach

      Danny mught be weird, but then what other man could he find himself being demi for?

      Mike wouldn’t mind being his sub, I’m sure. S&M doesn’t need to include sex.

      Ethan would just be Joe declaring himself board and horny, and Ethan going along with it.

  56. showler

    Joe having the list is bad enough, but the fact that he has a Patreon account linked to it is just weird.

    His stretch goals involve actual stretching.

    1. BBCC

      I think it’s supposed to just be an RSS feed but still. Yeuch.

  57. BBCC

    Panel One: Yay, Raidah! <3 I like Raidah. She can be an asshole and a bully, but I get the impression she's generally a good person and she means well.

    She doesn't seem confrontational here to me at all, or like she was waiting for them. At least, not all day. Jacob probably did text to meet her when they got back. And I like her talking about the 'boys pizza retreat'. Seems like something I'd say to my boyfriend and our male friends when they get back.

    And ….yeah, torn here. On one hand – chicks, Joe? Really? I admit, I use that word myself, but cripes if so many guys don't sound condescending as fuck when they do. The emphasis makes me picture that sulky 'girls crashed our treehouse even though it says no girls allowed on it' voice.

    On the other hand, yes, thank you for finally noting they did that – Again, Joyce, rude.

    Panel Two: Yeah, Sarah and Joe get along when they're in the same room, despite Sarah's distaste for him. Him and Joyce though – that's more complicated. Joe only really barely expresses emotions when they're texting, but he's a complete dick whenever they talk in real life, so it's hard to gauge this.

    And Raidah…..oh Raidah. She takes her hate on for Sarah waaaaaaaaaay over any justifiable line, but here she just looks like she's looking at a nasty scar or something. That's a 'aw, honey, that must've hurt' face.

    Also, DAMN, Sarah's on Voldemort level I see. I know sometimes a person's name can be a trigger, but that doesn't seem to be the case for Raidah, so I can only assume this is Jacob trying to keep the peace.

    Panel Three: Good on Jacob for standing up to Joe! It's nice to see him get blowback from someone he respects (so, not a girl or Danny) on his stupid hangups on feelings and non-sexy talk.

    Also – Joe is a dehumanizing objectifying fuckwad. That is all. Also, disrespectful if that granny line is about Penny. She's not much older than you, for crying out loud, Joe! And, yeah…'practically'. I.e. she's still on the damn list despite screaming at Joe she wants nothing to do with him. Goody. Tell me more how Joe respects a no once you chuck it in his face.

    I don't care if he's only 18 – that's old enough to know better. He's a man, not a little boy. He lives in the information age. All he'd need to do is google 'consent' and he'll see he's fucked up.

    Panel Four: And thank you, Jacob, for A) Rejecting his bullshit 'argument', B) Continuing to defend Joyce and C) Pointing out how FRIGGING BADASS that was. Good on Joyce!

    And this makes me wonder how much of what happened is public knowledge. We know Becky's name got out (since Billie expected Ruth to know it), and we know Joyce's probably did (since Leslie knew what happened to exclude Joyce from a lesson for it, and Roz and Joe both know about it).

    Panel Five: THANK YOU Raidah. That was so gross. And on one hand – thank god, it's password protected. On the other, apparently he offers it to everyone and it has a frigging subscription service for its RSS feed. Eeeeeeugh.

    I'd be shuddering too.

    And yeah, go figure, Raidah said she's not interested in hearing anything at all about it, Joe jokes about giving her the password. Great. I know he's teasing, but that's a lousy way to respond to someone pointing out your list's existence is disgusting.

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