I mean, to be fair, much like Joyce he kinda had his worldview shattered, in some ways, by direct evidence to the contrary of the views and opinions he’s held for as long as he can remember. That sort of thing tends to spur sudden and dramatic growth, even in real people, even if it’s the sort of thing that’s more common in fiction. You pretty much either double down on the delusion, or you immediately start working on bettering yourself.
BorkBorkBork
That’s kind of a theme for many of us who go to college and get out from under that umbrella.
I always wondered if it was the same for people who stayed in their hometown, or if that specifically comes from being exposed to new cultures.
ian livs
I went to college in my hometown, and even lived at home still. It still happened to me too, though probably to a lesser extent than it would’ve if I’d gone out of state or something. I even went to a Christian college, but it was a different denomination that’s less… culty than my family’s, so if was still a culture shock.
RoyanRannedos
Leaving Mormonism taught me how strong that umbrella can be, especially if your conditioning makes the first step away from orthodoxy feel like an inevitable spiral into mortal destruction and an afterlife isolated with your regrets. It can become an OCD-level anxiety.
College changed my tolerance level. Getting my family through the recession changed my politics away from arch-conservativism. Seeing how official Mormon homophobia affected friends of mine made me realize I never wanted to be the asshole they required me to be.
In spite of all this, admitting my doubts to my wife and uprooting the first strands of Mormonism that wove through both of our lives felt like stepping off the cliff and going towards oblivion. It took time and actual experience before I could accept that I wasn’t too weak to be Mormon, but that Mormonism was too limiting for a happy, healthy life.
Dorothy’s cliff isn’t religious in nature, but she’s spent her whole life reinforcing her perfectionism. Her natural talents made it possible in the vacuum of childhood, but now she’s facing a lack of control in ways that are so much bigger than academic.
Yumi
Thanks for sharing your story. When I was in college, a close friend of mine (knew her since middle school, we were at the same college) became Mormon. I do not have a favorable view of the religion, but I wanted to be supportive. We were still close for a while– she converted our freshman year, and we roomed together sophomore year– and she seemed pretty much the same, but there some things I questioned.
She went on a mission (she was just placed in the Atlanta area) after junior year, and I did have further issue with that– missionary work is not something I agree with. I didn’t say this to her, but I did pull back a bit. I didn’t immediately reach out for an address to write her at, for example. I did eventually, but we really drifted apart after that. And at some point, she just stopped responding to my messages altogether (which were about wishing her well– she got married! she had a baby!– and asking if she was safe when something was happening in the area she lived in). Sometimes I just sum it up as “we went to college, she became Mormon, and I got queerer.”
Sometimes, especially when I hear stories about people’s experiences of it, I wonder if I should have been more vocally opposed to Mormonism when she was first getting interested. But I don’t know that would have actually helped anything.
Honestly, I think he’s only really changed a little bit. I think he’s become more aware of other people AS people, that they have their own experiences, feelings, and points of view, and maybe he’s gotten a little bit more courage than he previously had, but is otherwise the same person he’s always been. However, that little bit of change makes a HUGE difference, in the way he interacts with otehr people, and the way he sees things.
Lien
I’d say that like most people, he had both aspects in him all the time.
He just chose to let the caring one out, and is discovering that it can also be the real him.
Psychie
I feel like the impact of the result of the change is more important than how big the internal shift actually was. Like, yeah, he’s just getting his head out of his own butt and seeing women as people now and as such is applying aspects of his personality that he always had but they just didn’t get to see, but the end result *is* a fairly drastic shift in behavior and observable personality.
Yeah, like… I get that Dorothy is struggling a lot and that this breakdown was a long time coming, but Joe fundamentally has nothing to do with the things she’s miserable over (except maybe Joyce but we’re not there yet). Taking it all out on him is not the most super. Again, I cannot stress enough, I am not blaming her for being here at the moment, just that Joe has for once not earned the ire coming his way. He’s being really cool about it, considering.
I wouldn’t say “not once”, she is, in a lot of ways, cashing some old cheques here, a lot of resentment built up over knowing the person he *used* to be.
Him handling it the way he is will be a lot more proof for her that he’s not that person anymore though. The old Joe would have gotten very defensive in this situation, now he’s just letting her get it all out.
Charles Phipps
I’d argue that’s driving her insane because it’s just more proof that she no longer has any constants in her life. If Joe has made such change to his persona then Dorothy has no real grasp on people at all.
Erik
*Plays “Javert’s Suicide” on hacked Muzak*
Not suggesting she’ll try that, but it feels like the same sort of total worldview collapse moment
Lena
When you’ve known someone for a long time it can be hard to see who they are instead of who they used to be.
Joe out of the blue decided Dorothy was into Joyce and decided to walk in and start pushing her about it and is now mocking her about it. This is completely a situation he started, so he totally deserves whatever come his way.
Granted, if Joyce wasn’t such a self-centered piece of garbage, she might have noticed one of her best friends is having a nervous breakdown and maybe mentioned it to Joe.
zee
Huh?
Yumi
It’s interesting getting a peek at what this comic is like in other universes.
elebenty
Or how it translated in other skulls….
Whirlakitty
What? Everyone is being like “Joe handled this so well” and “Joe doesn’t deserve to get yelled at”. Joe literally walked in on someone who doesn’t like him and started this whole thing, and he’s being really awful to Dorothy about it.
purblebirb
Willis has been hinting at Dorothy being into Joyce for a WHILE now tho
You’re the kind of person who calls Goku a wife abuser huh.
Throwatron
holy crap that grav is too powerful
Leaflet Erin
One could argue that Joe, who despite his sex pest past, is adept at picking up on signs of attraction and emotional states, has noticed Dorothy’s spiral and knows her well enough to know that’s she’s doing what she always does and masks. As such, he has decided to gently but firmly, and a little bluntly, Push Dorothy on this cause it’s just gonna get worse if she doesn’t address it.
S.R.
I’m not sure this is out of the blue, actually. Given, yanno, everything.
And teenagers (especially autistic teenagers) are allowed to not be very good at assessing the world and the mental states of other people yet. Since, remember, these are college students. They’re still learning how to function.
(also they live in a comic, so some exaggeration is to be expected.)
Oh yeah. Honestly, props to Dorothy for really actually feeling this shit and expressing it instead of continuing to bottle and ignore and try to act the right way, but Joe is facilitating it with a lot of care and understanding, more than most people his age, and a lot more than many adults ever get.
Like, he’s taking no shit, but also not adding to the shitpile. He’s really demonstrating what it means to hold space. Not easy to do if someone you care about is splitting, melting down, or otherwise spinning out.
I feel like Joe getting busted for his black book, and deciding to own up to it, plus some other more minor things, jump started his maturity. Nothing like getting called on your bullshit to make you wonder if you can go on without it.
Prince Mech
Joyce directly confronting him about her “zero” rating was a big one. I say confronting, but she really just…. genuinely asked him what she meant to him. Being treated like a *person* was rare for Joe then and it definitely did a lot.
Even if in the short term he tried to hide from it by immediately jumping into Malaya’s bedsheets.
Carla's #2 Fan
Plus the “Sorry you’re angry” text. That’s probably always going to stick with me, and I don’t have the best memory. For months now (in universe), Joyce has given Joe the space to be imperfectly human. It’s helped with him seeing himself as lovable and complex. Also him falling for her while she was being messy with Jacob. That’s got to have had some impact on him learning to be okay with himself.
All this to say, I absolutely agree, here have more moments of JoJoyce growth. 😀
And I don’t know, but this feels like the emphasis is the wrong way around something. If Joe wasn’t treated like a person, it’s because he did everything he could to discourage it. He didn’t treat women like people
Strain of Thought
I feel like people don’t appreciate enough that Joe was always different than the stereotypical slutty dude who just wants to bang chicks. It’s been pretty well established that his refusal to try and have serious relationships was a reactionary response to witnessing his father’s constant infidelity, having internalized a belief that he would be just like his father, seemingly hypnotizing women with his good looks and charm and then always losing self control and hurting those women terribly. In a backwards, roundabout way, Joe’s entire man slut persona was him desperately attempting to remain ethical and honest towards women despite believing himself *inherently, genetically* incapable of doing so. And when Joe immediately fessed up about the “do list” when it was revealed and didn’t try to argue in his defense or get mad at people for being mad at him, and instead decided to openly mea culpa and attempt reparations in donuts, a part of that was that he was genuinely horrified that he had hurt so many people so badly, and that he genuinely wanted to be liked by all those women he kept at emotional arm’s length. In a twisted way, Joe has spent his entire adolescence fixated on how to behave as morally as possible, so this shift in philosophy and outward behavior comes to him a lot more naturally than it would come to someone who was carelessly promiscuous in pursuit of as much sex as possible.
Kelibath
I agree, mostly, but I think we’re too quick to jump onto this two-dimensional picture of “stereotypical slutty dude” to begin with. A lot of the young men I’ve known to act like this did it in similar ways and for similar reasons, due to insecurity over their place in the world, the expectations of patriarchy on their shoulders or from their fathers and older brothers, etc. Then you have those who are wilfully abusive or more than happy to just exploit advantages to their own ends and the like. Still dangerous and careless at best, actively malicious at worst – but also still more three-dimensional than they’re generally painted.
god I love how cute this is SO MUCH. Like. I am not even insisting that this become poly but if this were the way all mono people handled romantic tangles,,,,
I think he’s concerned about her, and his goal is to help her.
Bleuryder
This. I think he’s legit concerned for his girlfriend’s best friend. Or his friend for that matter. She hasn’t been okay for a while, and I think that he’s legit out to help her, while at the same time finding out if she’s into Joyce.
Joe has gone through some things that have made him grow up pretty fast, so I think he’s the right person to handle this particular situation, though I have been wrong before.
Needfuldoer
Girlfriend’s best friend and best friend’s ex-girlfriend! That and he’s known her for years.
“Whose best whatnow?”
– Becky, probably.
Bleuryder
That’s right! I forgot that they DO know each other through Danny! So he could be legit out trying to help her while at the same time getting to the bottom of what exactly is up with her and Joyce.
most likely that, yeah, but it could also be that her current therapist might just not be a good fit. iirc the biggest piece of advice that we’ve seen Dorothy’s therapist give in-text was “it’s best to reconstrue upsets tragedies as victories in personal growth”, which imo might not be the best thing to imprint on a tightly-wound, self punishing, type a student who was recently kidnapped and visibly saw a man die violently in front of her.
and while we don’t know if this was the result of Dorothy misconstruing something much more nuanced on the therapist’s end, if there’s something that i’ve had to learn the hard way last year, it’s that no therapy is much better than bad/ineffective therapy.
I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams
*upsetting tragedies
Kelibath
Good catch.
anonymsly
IIRC Dorothy did openly admit that she hides things (or lies?) to her therapist just in case there’s an exposé later. She’s in therapy but has been self-sabotaging it the whole time.
I feel like this is a good time to remind people that Dorothy was a really evil villain in the Walkyverse, and her villainy was motivated by disappointment with how her life turned out and looking back in regret at what she might have had and lost.
Get the seemingly dumb hunk with a history of mildly edgy comments who can bro it up voted in, possibly on a Republican ticket. The first day, his political advisors try to distract, manipulate, and control him, like they did with Trump. But OH NO! To their dismay they quickly realise the not-so-dumb hunk is actually a SECRET SLEEPER AGENT OF WOKENESS!!! His first executive order is that all Mardi Gras parades MUST hand out beads on basis of gender identity! And that is when we wokies shall rule ? ‘Tis a flawless, airtight political plan!
Woke is just shorthand for treating other people like human beings. That’s something MAGA just can’t do.
PedanticJerkass
Another thing that MAGAts just can’t do is grok what it actually means to be woke.
It’s kind of funny, though, because “based and redpilled” is basically their own warped, misshapen, assbackwards version of being “woke,” even if they don’t realize it.
Azrael
Sure they can. Woke means anything they hate.
Black people? Jews? Woke. Gay? Trans? Woke. The Hurricane turbocharged six cylinder engine that replaced the Hemi in the Dodge trucks? That engine is WOKE! Garfield comics? WOKE! Cody Rhodes winning the WWE title? Woke!
Woke is the new “Communism!”, all the narcissistic goose stepping of the red scare and McCarthyism, double the stupidity.
Embe13
this ^ Thank you
Regret
In any other context I would agree with you, but making a voluntary act like handing out beads mandatory like Marianne says sounds like treating people like things, and that is where all evil starts.
My take on it is that pronouns are like names and titles. If Dr. Robert Smith asks you to call him Dr. Smith because he is proud of his title, then the polite thing to do is to use that title. You can choose not to use the title, but you would risk offending Dr. Smith with all the consequences that entails. Pronouns are exactly the same thing: You can choose to be an asshole about it, but don’t be surprised if that leads to the people you insulted not liking you. Alternatively you can just not interact with people who insist on being called Doctor or insist on anything else you don’t want to call them. Nobody is going to force you to be friends. And there are plenty of ways to sidestep using a title you don’t want to use on the rare occasions where you do have to interact.
I just don’t see how living in a woke society can be an issue for a non-woke non-asshole.
Regret
Aaaand I just realized that this sounds like I am reducing wokeness to just gender issues, which wasn’t my point, I just got stuck on something I’m thinking about.
The underlying principle of wokeness is being aware of the systemic nature of societal problems. In this case living in a woke society as a non-woke non-asshole you would be surrounded with people who disagree with you about where problems come from. OK, so disagree with people. You’re allowed to disagree. You can even have discussions about it! What you can’t do is use violence to resolve your disagreement. But since you’re a non-asshole in addition to being non-woke you would already agree that you don’t bring violence into a discussion, so that shouldn’t be a problem for you.
Regret
And now I have said woke too much and it is starting to annoy me.
Clif
It’s okay. Time to smell the flowers.
thejeff
But it’s not just about using violence. Nor is it just about using pronouns, even if we’re just talking about trans people.
It’s about less extreme pressures, like company policies or about teaching acceptance in schools. If you’re interacting with your hypothetical Dr. Smith as part of your job, the consequences of not addressing him as the social protocol requires go beyond just not being friends. This is rare, because trans people are rare and rarer still because the pressure is more often put on them to conform and accept and discrimination keeps them from having the social clout to enforce consequences.
Refusing to use the right pronouns is far more akin to the social use of slurs for marginalized groups than something as innocuous as not wanting to always use a title like “Doctor” for someone who’s proud of it. It’s a way of signalling your own bigotry and power over them as part of the dominant majority and allowing to go socially unchecked is a serious threat to the marginalized group.
Also even the trans part of wokeness goes so far beyond pronouns – trans people face widespread discrimination. Coming out often risks losing both jobs and family support. In the US, they’ve just been banned from serving in the military.
Regret
You make some good points. I am trying to put down a way of looking at woke that achieves two things at once: Be accepted by the average normal guy as common sense while also creating a set of social rules that make trans people safer (and everyone else of course, but we should focus on the weakest group when trying to make the world better)
Jeremiah
Have you consider that maybe you are not qualified to try to do that?
thejeff
The way to make trans people safer is to get the average normal guy to be less transphobic not for people to tiptoe around his prejudices.
Remember the gay marriage fights? Proposing civil unions or other half measures didn’t make the opposition okay with it. They fought those too and took any ground offered as a win.
Strain of Thought
The problem with wokeness is that you don’t actually have to be woke to repeat the observations woke people have made without understanding them or having the same motivations in looking at the world honestly and wanting to tell what you see. My experience is that most people who get accused of being “woke” aren’t really aware of the world at all, they’re just parroting stuff that they know has become popular among other people of the same political alignment. And then it becomes a game of telephone, as the message gets more and more distorted with each telling by people who never saw the elephant for themselves.
thejeff
I guess.
But even that faux wokeness is better than the opposite.
542 thoughts on “Suggestion”
Porto
Props to Joe for handling this so well.
Prince Mech
The amount he’s changed as a person in such a short time (I think it’s been… Less than six months in universe??) is genuinely very admirable.
Lingo
It’s still friggin’ January. Less than 3 weeks into the spring semester and we’re already at … this point.
Psychie
I mean, to be fair, much like Joyce he kinda had his worldview shattered, in some ways, by direct evidence to the contrary of the views and opinions he’s held for as long as he can remember. That sort of thing tends to spur sudden and dramatic growth, even in real people, even if it’s the sort of thing that’s more common in fiction. You pretty much either double down on the delusion, or you immediately start working on bettering yourself.
BorkBorkBork
That’s kind of a theme for many of us who go to college and get out from under that umbrella.
I always wondered if it was the same for people who stayed in their hometown, or if that specifically comes from being exposed to new cultures.
ian livs
I went to college in my hometown, and even lived at home still. It still happened to me too, though probably to a lesser extent than it would’ve if I’d gone out of state or something. I even went to a Christian college, but it was a different denomination that’s less… culty than my family’s, so if was still a culture shock.
RoyanRannedos
Leaving Mormonism taught me how strong that umbrella can be, especially if your conditioning makes the first step away from orthodoxy feel like an inevitable spiral into mortal destruction and an afterlife isolated with your regrets. It can become an OCD-level anxiety.
College changed my tolerance level. Getting my family through the recession changed my politics away from arch-conservativism. Seeing how official Mormon homophobia affected friends of mine made me realize I never wanted to be the asshole they required me to be.
In spite of all this, admitting my doubts to my wife and uprooting the first strands of Mormonism that wove through both of our lives felt like stepping off the cliff and going towards oblivion. It took time and actual experience before I could accept that I wasn’t too weak to be Mormon, but that Mormonism was too limiting for a happy, healthy life.
Dorothy’s cliff isn’t religious in nature, but she’s spent her whole life reinforcing her perfectionism. Her natural talents made it possible in the vacuum of childhood, but now she’s facing a lack of control in ways that are so much bigger than academic.
Yumi
Thanks for sharing your story. When I was in college, a close friend of mine (knew her since middle school, we were at the same college) became Mormon. I do not have a favorable view of the religion, but I wanted to be supportive. We were still close for a while– she converted our freshman year, and we roomed together sophomore year– and she seemed pretty much the same, but there some things I questioned.
She went on a mission (she was just placed in the Atlanta area) after junior year, and I did have further issue with that– missionary work is not something I agree with. I didn’t say this to her, but I did pull back a bit. I didn’t immediately reach out for an address to write her at, for example. I did eventually, but we really drifted apart after that. And at some point, she just stopped responding to my messages altogether (which were about wishing her well– she got married! she had a baby!– and asking if she was safe when something was happening in the area she lived in). Sometimes I just sum it up as “we went to college, she became Mormon, and I got queerer.”
Sometimes, especially when I hear stories about people’s experiences of it, I wonder if I should have been more vocally opposed to Mormonism when she was first getting interested. But I don’t know that would have actually helped anything.
Alaric
Honestly, I think he’s only really changed a little bit. I think he’s become more aware of other people AS people, that they have their own experiences, feelings, and points of view, and maybe he’s gotten a little bit more courage than he previously had, but is otherwise the same person he’s always been. However, that little bit of change makes a HUGE difference, in the way he interacts with otehr people, and the way he sees things.
Lien
I’d say that like most people, he had both aspects in him all the time.
He just chose to let the caring one out, and is discovering that it can also be the real him.
Psychie
I feel like the impact of the result of the change is more important than how big the internal shift actually was. Like, yeah, he’s just getting his head out of his own butt and seeing women as people now and as such is applying aspects of his personality that he always had but they just didn’t get to see, but the end result *is* a fairly drastic shift in behavior and observable personality.
pope suburban
Yeah, like… I get that Dorothy is struggling a lot and that this breakdown was a long time coming, but Joe fundamentally has nothing to do with the things she’s miserable over (except maybe Joyce but we’re not there yet). Taking it all out on him is not the most super. Again, I cannot stress enough, I am not blaming her for being here at the moment, just that Joe has for once not earned the ire coming his way. He’s being really cool about it, considering.
Prince Mech
I wouldn’t say “not once”, she is, in a lot of ways, cashing some old cheques here, a lot of resentment built up over knowing the person he *used* to be.
Him handling it the way he is will be a lot more proof for her that he’s not that person anymore though. The old Joe would have gotten very defensive in this situation, now he’s just letting her get it all out.
Charles Phipps
I’d argue that’s driving her insane because it’s just more proof that she no longer has any constants in her life. If Joe has made such change to his persona then Dorothy has no real grasp on people at all.
Erik
*Plays “Javert’s Suicide” on hacked Muzak*
Not suggesting she’ll try that, but it feels like the same sort of total worldview collapse moment
Lena
When you’ve known someone for a long time it can be hard to see who they are instead of who they used to be.
Whirlakitty
Joe out of the blue decided Dorothy was into Joyce and decided to walk in and start pushing her about it and is now mocking her about it. This is completely a situation he started, so he totally deserves whatever come his way.
Granted, if Joyce wasn’t such a self-centered piece of garbage, she might have noticed one of her best friends is having a nervous breakdown and maybe mentioned it to Joe.
zee
Huh?
Yumi
It’s interesting getting a peek at what this comic is like in other universes.
elebenty
Or how it translated in other skulls….
Whirlakitty
What? Everyone is being like “Joe handled this so well” and “Joe doesn’t deserve to get yelled at”. Joe literally walked in on someone who doesn’t like him and started this whole thing, and he’s being really awful to Dorothy about it.
purblebirb
Willis has been hinting at Dorothy being into Joyce for a WHILE now tho
Kyle
I think you need to re-read some things.
Taffy
You’re the kind of person who calls Goku a wife abuser huh.
Throwatron
holy crap that grav is too powerful
Leaflet Erin
One could argue that Joe, who despite his sex pest past, is adept at picking up on signs of attraction and emotional states, has noticed Dorothy’s spiral and knows her well enough to know that’s she’s doing what she always does and masks. As such, he has decided to gently but firmly, and a little bluntly, Push Dorothy on this cause it’s just gonna get worse if she doesn’t address it.
S.R.
I’m not sure this is out of the blue, actually. Given, yanno, everything.
And teenagers (especially autistic teenagers) are allowed to not be very good at assessing the world and the mental states of other people yet. Since, remember, these are college students. They’re still learning how to function.
(also they live in a comic, so some exaggeration is to be expected.)
Yarrr
I like that she’s having it ‘at’ Joe. He can handle it, as we’ve seen, and has enough history to give her some useful perspective.
v.gay.person
Oh yeah. Honestly, props to Dorothy for really actually feeling this shit and expressing it instead of continuing to bottle and ignore and try to act the right way, but Joe is facilitating it with a lot of care and understanding, more than most people his age, and a lot more than many adults ever get.
Like, he’s taking no shit, but also not adding to the shitpile. He’s really demonstrating what it means to hold space. Not easy to do if someone you care about is splitting, melting down, or otherwise spinning out.
Hacksaw
I feel like Joe getting busted for his black book, and deciding to own up to it, plus some other more minor things, jump started his maturity. Nothing like getting called on your bullshit to make you wonder if you can go on without it.
Prince Mech
Joyce directly confronting him about her “zero” rating was a big one. I say confronting, but she really just…. genuinely asked him what she meant to him. Being treated like a *person* was rare for Joe then and it definitely did a lot.
Even if in the short term he tried to hide from it by immediately jumping into Malaya’s bedsheets.
Carla's #2 Fan
Plus the “Sorry you’re angry” text. That’s probably always going to stick with me, and I don’t have the best memory. For months now (in universe), Joyce has given Joe the space to be imperfectly human. It’s helped with him seeing himself as lovable and complex. Also him falling for her while she was being messy with Jacob. That’s got to have had some impact on him learning to be okay with himself.
All this to say, I absolutely agree, here have more moments of JoJoyce growth. 😀
thejeff
Not just that, but Joyce telling him about Ryan.
And I don’t know, but this feels like the emphasis is the wrong way around something. If Joe wasn’t treated like a person, it’s because he did everything he could to discourage it. He didn’t treat women like people
Strain of Thought
I feel like people don’t appreciate enough that Joe was always different than the stereotypical slutty dude who just wants to bang chicks. It’s been pretty well established that his refusal to try and have serious relationships was a reactionary response to witnessing his father’s constant infidelity, having internalized a belief that he would be just like his father, seemingly hypnotizing women with his good looks and charm and then always losing self control and hurting those women terribly. In a backwards, roundabout way, Joe’s entire man slut persona was him desperately attempting to remain ethical and honest towards women despite believing himself *inherently, genetically* incapable of doing so. And when Joe immediately fessed up about the “do list” when it was revealed and didn’t try to argue in his defense or get mad at people for being mad at him, and instead decided to openly mea culpa and attempt reparations in donuts, a part of that was that he was genuinely horrified that he had hurt so many people so badly, and that he genuinely wanted to be liked by all those women he kept at emotional arm’s length. In a twisted way, Joe has spent his entire adolescence fixated on how to behave as morally as possible, so this shift in philosophy and outward behavior comes to him a lot more naturally than it would come to someone who was carelessly promiscuous in pursuit of as much sex as possible.
Kelibath
I agree, mostly, but I think we’re too quick to jump onto this two-dimensional picture of “stereotypical slutty dude” to begin with. A lot of the young men I’ve known to act like this did it in similar ways and for similar reasons, due to insecurity over their place in the world, the expectations of patriarchy on their shoulders or from their fathers and older brothers, etc. Then you have those who are wilfully abusive or more than happy to just exploit advantages to their own ends and the like. Still dangerous and careless at best, actively malicious at worst – but also still more three-dimensional than they’re generally painted.
Bryy
Dorothy is getting all of this out, and that’s good, but she’s continuing to act like she’s above reality itself.
Needfuldoer
She’s very clearly tearing into the version of Joe that exists in her head.
Liliet
god I love how cute this is SO MUCH. Like. I am not even insisting that this become poly but if this were the way all mono people handled romantic tangles,,,,
Thag Simmons
Gotta respect Joe’s patience at least.
Clif
Oddly patient. I’m wondering if he started this with something in mind. Waiting for the shoe to drop.
Lysbeth
I think he’s concerned about her, and his goal is to help her.
Bleuryder
This. I think he’s legit concerned for his girlfriend’s best friend. Or his friend for that matter. She hasn’t been okay for a while, and I think that he’s legit out to help her, while at the same time finding out if she’s into Joyce.
Joe has gone through some things that have made him grow up pretty fast, so I think he’s the right person to handle this particular situation, though I have been wrong before.
Needfuldoer
Girlfriend’s best friend and best friend’s ex-girlfriend! That and he’s known her for years.
“Whose best whatnow?”
– Becky, probably.
Bleuryder
That’s right! I forgot that they DO know each other through Danny! So he could be legit out trying to help her while at the same time getting to the bottom of what exactly is up with her and Joyce.
Sirksome
Yes. The Keener crashout is developing nicely.
anon
i wonder if she’s seen that counselor/therapist since the las time it was brought up
Proto
Gonna go out on a limb and say “no”
I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams
most likely that, yeah, but it could also be that her current therapist might just not be a good fit. iirc the biggest piece of advice that we’ve seen Dorothy’s therapist give in-text was “it’s best to reconstrue upsets tragedies as victories in personal growth”, which imo might not be the best thing to imprint on a tightly-wound, self punishing, type a student who was recently kidnapped and visibly saw a man die violently in front of her.
and while we don’t know if this was the result of Dorothy misconstruing something much more nuanced on the therapist’s end, if there’s something that i’ve had to learn the hard way last year, it’s that no therapy is much better than bad/ineffective therapy.
I Know Why the Mowed Lawn Screams
*upsetting tragedies
Kelibath
Good catch.
anonymsly
IIRC Dorothy did openly admit that she hides things (or lies?) to her therapist just in case there’s an exposé later. She’s in therapy but has been self-sabotaging it the whole time.
Strain of Thought
I feel like this is a good time to remind people that Dorothy was a really evil villain in the Walkyverse, and her villainy was motivated by disappointment with how her life turned out and looking back in regret at what she might have had and lost.
Doctor_Who
Joe, now would NOT be a good time to announce your presidential campaign.
Dana
::rolling on the floor laughing my fucking ass off::
FlamestAndLight
did . . . did you just fully spell out ROFLMAO? that . . . that’s incredible I haven’t seen that in years
Masumi
ROFLMFAO, even.
Lysbeth
::so hard I get carpet burns::
No reason to let it go to waste.
zee
Hell this is the first time I’ve actually genuinely seen someone use ROFL, that things an artifact
Thag Simmons
Sad to say he’d probably get farther at it than Dorothy if he tried.
Marianne
Get the seemingly dumb hunk with a history of mildly edgy comments who can bro it up voted in, possibly on a Republican ticket. The first day, his political advisors try to distract, manipulate, and control him, like they did with Trump. But OH NO! To their dismay they quickly realise the not-so-dumb hunk is actually a SECRET SLEEPER AGENT OF WOKENESS!!! His first executive order is that all Mardi Gras parades MUST hand out beads on basis of gender identity! And that is when we wokies shall rule ? ‘Tis a flawless, airtight political plan!
Opus the Poet
Woke is just shorthand for treating other people like human beings. That’s something MAGA just can’t do.
PedanticJerkass
Another thing that MAGAts just can’t do is grok what it actually means to be woke.
It’s kind of funny, though, because “based and redpilled” is basically their own warped, misshapen, assbackwards version of being “woke,” even if they don’t realize it.
Azrael
Sure they can. Woke means anything they hate.
Black people? Jews? Woke. Gay? Trans? Woke. The Hurricane turbocharged six cylinder engine that replaced the Hemi in the Dodge trucks? That engine is WOKE! Garfield comics? WOKE! Cody Rhodes winning the WWE title? Woke!
Woke is the new “Communism!”, all the narcissistic goose stepping of the red scare and McCarthyism, double the stupidity.
Embe13
this ^ Thank you
Regret
In any other context I would agree with you, but making a voluntary act like handing out beads mandatory like Marianne says sounds like treating people like things, and that is where all evil starts.
My take on it is that pronouns are like names and titles. If Dr. Robert Smith asks you to call him Dr. Smith because he is proud of his title, then the polite thing to do is to use that title. You can choose not to use the title, but you would risk offending Dr. Smith with all the consequences that entails. Pronouns are exactly the same thing: You can choose to be an asshole about it, but don’t be surprised if that leads to the people you insulted not liking you. Alternatively you can just not interact with people who insist on being called Doctor or insist on anything else you don’t want to call them. Nobody is going to force you to be friends. And there are plenty of ways to sidestep using a title you don’t want to use on the rare occasions where you do have to interact.
I just don’t see how living in a woke society can be an issue for a non-woke non-asshole.
Regret
Aaaand I just realized that this sounds like I am reducing wokeness to just gender issues, which wasn’t my point, I just got stuck on something I’m thinking about.
The underlying principle of wokeness is being aware of the systemic nature of societal problems. In this case living in a woke society as a non-woke non-asshole you would be surrounded with people who disagree with you about where problems come from. OK, so disagree with people. You’re allowed to disagree. You can even have discussions about it! What you can’t do is use violence to resolve your disagreement. But since you’re a non-asshole in addition to being non-woke you would already agree that you don’t bring violence into a discussion, so that shouldn’t be a problem for you.
Regret
And now I have said woke too much and it is starting to annoy me.
Clif
It’s okay. Time to smell the flowers.
thejeff
But it’s not just about using violence. Nor is it just about using pronouns, even if we’re just talking about trans people.
It’s about less extreme pressures, like company policies or about teaching acceptance in schools. If you’re interacting with your hypothetical Dr. Smith as part of your job, the consequences of not addressing him as the social protocol requires go beyond just not being friends. This is rare, because trans people are rare and rarer still because the pressure is more often put on them to conform and accept and discrimination keeps them from having the social clout to enforce consequences.
Refusing to use the right pronouns is far more akin to the social use of slurs for marginalized groups than something as innocuous as not wanting to always use a title like “Doctor” for someone who’s proud of it. It’s a way of signalling your own bigotry and power over them as part of the dominant majority and allowing to go socially unchecked is a serious threat to the marginalized group.
Also even the trans part of wokeness goes so far beyond pronouns – trans people face widespread discrimination. Coming out often risks losing both jobs and family support. In the US, they’ve just been banned from serving in the military.
Regret
You make some good points. I am trying to put down a way of looking at woke that achieves two things at once: Be accepted by the average normal guy as common sense while also creating a set of social rules that make trans people safer (and everyone else of course, but we should focus on the weakest group when trying to make the world better)
Jeremiah
Have you consider that maybe you are not qualified to try to do that?
thejeff
The way to make trans people safer is to get the average normal guy to be less transphobic not for people to tiptoe around his prejudices.
Remember the gay marriage fights? Proposing civil unions or other half measures didn’t make the opposition okay with it. They fought those too and took any ground offered as a win.
Strain of Thought
The problem with wokeness is that you don’t actually have to be woke to repeat the observations woke people have made without understanding them or having the same motivations in looking at the world honestly and wanting to tell what you see. My experience is that most people who get accused of being “woke” aren’t really aware of the world at all, they’re just parroting stuff that they know has become popular among other people of the same political alignment. And then it becomes a game of telephone, as the message gets more and more distorted with each telling by people who never saw the elephant for themselves.
thejeff
I guess.
But even that faux wokeness is better than the opposite.