*eye-twitch* Damn New Coke references. New Coke focus tested great, they just neglected to account for removing the old product. And Coke Classic came back in like six months.
Actually, they did focus test it.
If I remember correctly (like that is going to happen) they only tested New Coke with a few drops on the tongue, not a full glass.
Moral: Science means doing more than one type of test.
so we now get “real” Coke when the Kosher-for-Passover version (no corn syrup allowed) hits grocery shelves, or we can spring a buck for a 12 oz bottle produced in Mexico, where real cane sugar costs less than the corn syrup crud used in American Coca-Cola
I’m waiting for the Organic Coca-Cola to appear (I just now made that up) since food mfrs figured out that a few pennies spent on organic cane sugar and seasonings lets them turn a Kosher-for-Passover product into an Organic product, ready to sell the year round, and with a higher price, too.
^ I believe that’s actually a thing called “Coca-Cola Life” but I could be mistaken. It has a green label. We’ve been getting it in Canada for awhile, but I remember seeing it before that in the UK imports sections of some grocery stores.
It’s like root beer. It sassafras (what used to be it’s main incredient) is illegal in the US, so you have to import it from elsewhere (often under its old name sasparilla) if you want the real taste. And it is soooo worth it. Especially if it’s German.
^ That green label stuff – bought it by accident. Took one swig and wondered what they hell it was I was drinking? This from someone who likes Brio and is not Italian. It took a couple of months and some experimentation to find something it could mix with and not taste god-awful.
Classic coke was using corn sweetener a long time before New Coke. It has to do with trade protectionism on sugar that artificially drive up the cost of sugar in the U.S.
Which is why Coke in many foreign countries still use sugar.
Real sugar variants of colas in the U.S. are starting to emerge as premium brands.
It was in late 1984 that the announcements of an impending changeover was made by both Pepsi and Coke, but yes, bottlers had been gradually introducing corn syrup for a few years, based on the sugar prices caused by the tariffs that allowed the US to defeat the Godless Commies of Cuba – oh wait, they didn’t :-p
The original Danny recipe called for cane sugar. The whole New Danny / Danny Classic™ thing is just a coverup for their switch to cheaper HFCS. (It also gives the brand a shot in the arm.)
New Danny™ has 2 whole stevia leaves per serving, and is about 20 servings. Since anything 5 or less calories/freak-outs is rounded to 0, he’s basically water/lacks panic
Clearly aspartame. There is currently a limited backlash that has been spreading from an email hoax (cf Snopes here). There have been some legit questions about the safety of aspartame over the years, just as there were regarding saccharin, but those have long since been well and truly put to bed at this point. Even cyclamate has essentially shown itself safe despite remaining banned in the US.
True, artificial sweeteners have shown themselves to be generally safe (and definitely there are no reasons to freak out about them causing cancer). However, there are still questions about their role in obesity and insulin regulation and about their effects on gut microbiota. The situation seems to be more complicated than we know yet. Sorry, this is one of my research areas.
(see ‘Low-Dose Aspartame Consumption Differentially Affects Gut Microbiota-Host Metabolic Interactions in the Diet-Induced Obese Rat’ in Plos One for more)
Best approach seems to be avoiding the kinds of things they put artificial sweeteners in, at least in quantity.
Save the overly sweet things for occasional treats, not regular diet.
@Kristen I specifically chose not to mention all that, because it often gets quickly into discussion on biological pathways that goes over most peoples heads (mine included at the upper end). Sort of like the really in depth discussions of why fruit juices are little to no better than soda and those of the effects of glyphosate on gut bacteria. I’ll quit there before I melt my own brain.
@Kryss LaBryn That I can definitely agree with.
@thejeff That. Hell, generally just avoiding anything heavily processed (refined sugars or their alternatives, grain starch derivatives, etc) when it can be avoided does wonders in my own experience.
well a lot of school before college friends are only friends with you because you are there. once you get mobility you start to get ones more based on enjoyment and once you can move to different locals thats even more so the case. at least i think so.
I mean, I’ve met a LOT of great people during college, but with changing courses, those were more or less acquaintances and not friendships (though there were a few I was closer with, and one whom I also worked together with on irregular basis whom I also consider a friend). We mostly basically talked because of group work, we needed to, or just for exchange.
BUT: My dearest friends I’ve known from two different schools, three dating back to the years 2000-2002 (three sisters), and the other two I got friends with around ten years ago in a different school (same class) – it also helped that we learned for our finals together as a group and we all started studying the same subjects with slight variations (which is a long thing of the past). And we established, while still sharing courses, to meet up once every week for cooking, eating, talking and watching stuff. We had small breaks in between – but we’re very consistent in meeting up and we’re very close, although we also have veeery different personalities. What keeps us together is that we’re very considerate of each other and are basically our own little additional family.
My close friends are all from school. I was at uni for four years and only made 1 actual friend there (and a bunch of acquaintances) but I haven’t spoken to them in a long time. I still regularly chat and meet up with my old friends who live five hours away from me .
I think I was just lucky that my school has these people in it.
Just like me. Couldn’t imagine how my life’d have developed without my friends from school (it’d have probably stayed very bleak, or I’d have developed into a very pessimistic person).
Interesting! And awesome – I wish we had something of an RPG group at college, I’d have definitely joined it. But as it went, we only had film- or pub-meet-ups, and you never got to talk with anyone about more than university-related stuff.
The ‘Danny Scale’ for me can’t really operate upon a line, perhaps within a triangle, since which type of Danny that Joe is acting as, and to which extent, seems to be shifting.
I like this system. Are the three points of Danny the three basic interpretations of Danny’s character from the comments section: Noble, Awful, Good Egg.
My cats were like this, in that one calms down as soon as the other starts complaining. (She’s like, “Cool, my pal is taking care of things, I’m gonna nap.”) It’s a good deal.
(My point is, this is another way their old friendship worked for Joe. He could outsource any anxiety or emotion, because he hates experiencing anxiety or emotion himself but knew Danny would pick up the slack. New Danny won’t be so useful for that — good job, New Danny.)
so what im getting from the last few days is that joe is having much the same problem billie did in the beginning, in that he still has the mentality of high school joe and not fully processing that college is different so your behavior will have to change.
The big problem is Joe created a persona for college and up until now it was pretty much working for him. But now he’s been exposed and his persona’s not safe anymore and he’s vulnerable and doesn’t know what to do.
Walky went through something similar it’s just instead of being a douche bro he was being super immature.
Well, judging by the bit about when the list was “password protected”, Joe created a persona for junior high and up until now it was pretty much working for him.
Sadly, in real life, the mostly likely way to go from here is full on MRA, blame the women for everything. This being a comic and Joe being intended as a sympathetic character, he’s likely going to learn the correct lesson and grow out of it – at least a little bit.
*tents fingers* I am noticing a new spine in Danny…he’s no longer going to hold Joe’s hand on these types of situations. Now the question is, is it because he realized it’s not healthy for Joe, or not healthy for himself, or both?
I also wonder if a little itty bit of it is spite, consciously or not. Danny has had an absolutely bonkers start to his college career that Joe barely knows anything about because he adamantly refuses to care about anything unrelated to his playboy persona. He repeatedly didn’t want to help when Danny really needed a friend, and Danny got the hint and stopped trying. And now Joe’s freaking out and wants Danny’s help and Danny’s just seems a little more ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ than I expected, despite everything
Oh, Danny definitely deserves a little spite for how Joe’s treated him so far this semester. I’m just wondering if that’s motivating him at all and if it is, how much he consciously realizes it
honestly once you get on the self-respect/having boundaries/having a spine train it’s hard to get off! it’s like…wow….i can tell people no! it’s a miracle!
on the other hand like – you get to enforce having boundaries, which…hopefully…helps them have their own boundaries. and you do it just by minding your own shit i guess?? which is cool. either people learn or they don’t and after that it is out of your hands
Face it, Joe, this isn’t Danny’s problem. It’s yours. And you’re going to have to face up to it.
(rape tw for the rest of the comment)
Much like the dude who messaged me on Okcupid earlier. I helpfully reminded him that last time, when I took issue with the way he addressed me and told him where he could shove it, he threatened sexual violence against me. Unable to face up to his past actions, he doubled down with the misogyny while in the same breath telling me how well he treats women. It was a wild ride, let me tell you.
May Joe handle his comeuppance and redemption better.
Thank you ♥ Yeah…I found some solace in the fact that he is the person sabotaging his own attempts at finding a relationship, and his blatant douchebaggery means no woman has to deal with him long-term.
“Handling things better” would suggest this kind of misogynistic assholes is barely mistaken. But as Danny says in today’s strip, they kinda mean it. They need to learn to assume responsibility for this shit, you can’t have redemption without admitting you did wrong.
Truuuuth. I’m holding out hope that Joe will eventually learn he is not the poor maligned innocent in this, and change and develop for the better. And hey, small internet! 😀 Glad to run into you here!
Why does he think he got hacked anyway? So he supposedly gave people access to this list for some reason right? What was he expecting was going to happen?
For some reason, a non-insignificant number of people would consider a freely given password being widely disseminated in a way that it wasn’t meant to be “hacking”
Because that’s how the media in general describes it. If someone gets a hold of something and it was in a computer then it was “hacked”.
It seems like any news source that isn’t specifically dedicated to technology gets this wrong. It’s probably on purpose too: the general public has an idea of what hacking is so it’s easier to just say ‘hacking’ any time it involves a computer.
Social engineering is the most common (and most effective) way to hack. Much easier in most cases to get someone to tell you their password (for some plausible reason) than to actually crack it.
In Joe’s case, all the “social engineering” that was really required seems to be to stand still in his presence for a few minutes.
Because he can’t imagine that the women he’s been giving the password out to could possibly have a problem with it.
Not even when they are clearly stating that they find the whole thing repulsive.
Yes, he really is that dense and self-absorbed.
And as someone mentioned the other day, whenever he shared his password, it’s mainly on a one-at-a-time basis; so that any negative reaction he gets from it can be dismissed with “Ehh, she’s just a percussion instrument, probably on her period or something.” And since the power balance is in his favour, the women disgusted by it knows better than trying to push it; because they know that that kind of person might well take that pushing back as an “invite” to assault them. So they keep quiet, and he keeps feeling safe to continue doing what he does.
So whoever changed this power dynamic by making the list public (my money’s on Raidah): Well done!
I can’t really see Danny doing that sort of thing. Joe may not have been supportive when Danny had problems, but Danny is probably more likely to just turn his unhappiness inwards, and he’s not the type to go around to try to ‘fix’ people without being asked.
This is making me think… in Roomies!, it was always implied that Joe was constantly sexually harassing the girls’ floor, but it mostly happened off-camera. I guess that what we’re seeing now is the DoA corollary to this: http://www.itswalky.com/comic/overcome-with-irrational-lust/
Panel 1: What’s really interesting here is how much Joe was kinda exploiting Danny beforehand. Like, he’s mad that Danny isn’t freaking out and running around trying to fix everything. Like, every time he did that, Joe mocked him relentlessly, but no when he’s no longer doing it he’s pissed.
And yeah, of course that was something Danny used to do. Danny used to define himself solely in terms of his usefulness to others, so running around trying to “fix” the problems of those in his life was an easy default mode to get stuck in, especially with folks like Joe who frequently stumbled into fuck ups that were bigger deals than he was pretending they were.
And I love that Danny isn’t feeling that pressure here. And that’s something he’s learned that was super healthy from his relationship with Amber and that’s there’s some things you can’t really fix. Like that you just need to step back and offer support, cause running around trying to make everything better doesn’t help.
And that’s something that he learned with Amber not as a consequence of Amber. She had stuff going on that was big and when he tried to fix it by meddling, he ended up serving as a hostage with her abusive dad. With stuff like that he learned when to intervene and when to just be a shoulder to cry on.
And for Joe… well, he’s been using Danny. Him looking down at Danny allowed him to ride out crises while patting himself on the back at being the masculine calm one, propping up the toxic masculinity he’s enmeshed in. As long as Danny freaked out and felt emotions strongly, he could grin and use that to feel better about himself.
And that is another way that getting stuck into this system starts to fuck with you. Viewing everything in utilitarian terms of marks and wingmen and so on, you stop seeing them as people but more as the roles they can provide.
And the worst part of all of this is he was deliberately looking down on Danny to prop himself up, while Danny was going out of his way to try and keep the friendship alive and do right by his friend. And Joe has shown no respect or honor to that. And now that Danny is growing and not freaking out, he’s been trying every action he can to try and force Danny to “change back” so he can continue using him as a surrogate for the “feels”.
And that above all is what makes him a toxic friend. He doesn’t support Danny’s growth, even though that’s all he’s been demanding for for years. And he’s trying to sabotage it, to the point where he’s getting mad and angry at Danny for not making him feel better about his own massive fuck up.
And it makes it hard to feel sympathy for him in this moment, because that is so callously fucked up and especially fucked up to a poor kid like Danny whose self-esteem has been relentlessly destroyed by his parents and really was just trying to do the best by Joe.
Panel 2: And I love Danny here that he’s not falling for Joe’s desperate bullying. There’s nothing to fix here and it’s not at all on him. Joe can collapse right now and that’s not on him and something he fully brought on himself.
And Joe is trying to reassert the dynamic by force. “Flail”. Be wacky. Create a space where I can feel better about my fuck up by looking down on you freaking out about it trying to fix it. He’s downright yelling at him to play that not-equal role in his life and save him from the consequences of his own actions.
And Danny finally has the self-esteem to resist that. And that’s a beautiful proof of growth and makes me so happy for him.
Panel 3: And yeah, I love this, because it also cuts through the bullshit. Any “fixing” of this would involve actively lying and taking the flak for him and Danny’s done with that. He thinks Joe has done wrong and he’s not going to lie to people who have a right to be upset with him to try and save him face an allow him to continue down the shitty poisonous path he’s been going down.
Joe meant to be a creep. Meant to demean women. Meant to harass them. He just thought his gender would make him immune to facing any real consequences for that and that’s fucked.
Again, I’m proud of Danny for sticking to his guns.
And those two panels are why I do not agree with people saying that Danny was running from himself when he decided to start playing the ukulele. I was and am of the opinion that Danny teaching himself a skill, even a “trivial” skill like the ukulele* is a positive sign, a sign of him just -doing something for himself-, a sign of him trying to define himself by what he is doing, rather than who he is with.
And the result of trying to define himself by his own skills? That he no longer has to tolerate the BS of the people he are with. Because he is Danny. Not so-and-so’s friend, or so-and-so’s boyfriend. He’s just Danny. With a ukulele and a dapper hat.
*Anyone who thinks ukulele is a trivial/non-serious instrument to play has never heard Jake Shimabukuro play it.
Yup. This isn’t for anyone. And that’s a huge point of growth for him and as you note frees him from the idea that he needs to tolerate certain shit in service to his role and someone else’s ancillary half.
Panel 4: And this is a revealing phrase. He wants everything to stay the same, to be able to harass without consequence, to have Danny as a masculinity foil to prop himself up with, to have everything stay the same while he invests nothing to keep it so.
And the terrible brutal irony is that Danny would probably have been only too willing to old Danny-it-up here if Joe had actually paid the upkeep of being there for Danny through his crises and didn’t demean and mock and push him away.
And there’s a metaphor there. He wants the “reward” of being friends with Danny without any of the work in the same way he wants the “reward” of power and sexual gratification and objectification without having to pay the consequences of that or do the work of building a genuinely consensual and respectful hyper-sexual identity.
And that’s a thing a lot of guys get caught into when they drift into PUA and MRA territory. They want all the benefits of patriarchy but none of its downsides. They want to be able to look down on women and see them as the enemy, but still expect women to put up with that and not angrily reject them.
And I think that’s why Joe needs to crash and burn here. To learn that no, he can’t keep on his path forever, exploiting social power to escape the consequences of that path. He needs to start living by the Joe he shows to Joyce in secret, being someone worth supporting and freaking out for.
Panels 5-6: And Danny is too good for his own good. He should walk away here and let Joe deal with the mess he has laid for himself. Especially since none of these women are likely to do anything worse than glare at him and maybe blow up at him if he tries to engage with them. For all his panic and fear, he’s not actually in any real danger unlike a woman stuck alone with him.
But Danny is a good egg and still cares that his friend is in distress. And so he remains firm that this is just a one-time thing rather than a slip back to that poisonous dynamic, but he offers to give Joe that little out from his own mess nonetheless.
And it makes me want to see Danny continue to get friends who actually appreciate him or to see Joe actually appreciate what he had and threw away to feel a few points more stoic and thus relieved about his frantic worries about his masculine standing.
And maybe that last face is that. Is Joe finally appreciating what he took for granted and cruelly exploited for something that at the end of the day doesn’t matter for shit (like he’s seen Jacob demonstrate every day how to be masculine without being a gross piece of shit). I can hope so. But I think no matter what, he’s got a long road ahead of him.
Well the good thing is, if Joe matures of course, that the friendship is very salvageable. I mean rooming together and knowing people in the same social group helps
Even being in gender studies can work for him now…if he wants to change.
Might just be the wake up call Joe needs to improve
It really is. This is so salvageable for Joe, but he’s going to have to put in the time and work doing real change and he’s going to have to approach this as equals…
Which ironically is also how he would salvage his reputation with the women of the college.
The only major block is Joe is real unused to doing any real work and has invested a lot into himself as someone who views women as equal as bullshit and mistreating Danny. But if he wants to still have these things he cares about, it’s necessary.
I like to think that panel 6 is Joe’s wake up to reality, at the very least in terms to his relationship with Danny. And let me just say, I don’t like Joe. He creeps me out and his misogyny is something I find despicable. But…I still feel this bit of sympathy for him. Given the revelation that Joe started the list back in middle school, it feels like Joe’s father “coached” him into being this way. Even then Joe still could have tried to push away from that, but he didn’t. Maybe that’s when his parents were getting divorced and he felt it was one of the few activities he could “bond” with his father over. Maybe not. But the fact that Joe doesn’t know how to help himself shows that as shitty and toxic as he can be, he’s also damaged as well in his own way. He’s just chosen never to recognize or address that damage, hiding it instead with what he thought was behavior he was “supposed” to express as a guy. And what I find very telling is that Danny’s offering to drag Joe “to safety”. Not off to a private space, but safety. And Joe says yes. It makes me wonder, has Joe ever really felt safe on his own? Because up until this point he always had Danny to “drag him to safety”. Knowing Danny was there for him could very well be the only form of security he feels relationship wise. His mother has barely ever been mentioned and seems to not be involved in his life anymore, we’ve only ever seen him interact with his father, and he’s at the very least embarrassed about how his dad acts. It’s also not to far fetched given the few actions we’ve seen Joe’s father make that, if the divorce happened sometime in middle school or even high school before Joe got his driver’s license and Joe was living with his dad, Joe might very well have been forgotten at school by his father because his father had a random hook up or something. I really wouldn’t put it past that man. And now that Danny looks like he might be leaving Joe behind, Joe has these minutes to realize something he’s probably been unconsciously thinking about and has probably been nagging him since Joyce and Sarah joined him and Jacob at Galasso’s: he’s been lying to himself for years. The real Joe isn’t some suave ladies man. The real Joe is a sad, scared kid who never grew out of middle school, is afraid of emotional attachment and tries to overcompensate by acting as “macho” as he’s been lead to believe “real men” should be. And now he has to make a choice that he can no longer put off. Does he keep up the facade, lose his best friend, and keep pretending to be the “macho” guy who’s secretly all alone? Or does he acknowledge that who he’s trying to be is toxic for himself and his friends and try to change and grow as a result? I’m hoping it’s path two that he takes. Let me repeat, I don’t like Joe. But a part of my heart can’t help but see him as this seven grader on the school steps, waiting for his dad to come pick him up as the sun begins to set, only now sniffling because he’s sure no one’s around and ache for that kid. That type of little kid was one of my best friends who went through the same type of experience but worse because he was bi and his father thought if he had enough straight sex he wouldn’t have feelings towards guys, while a couple bullies would always say that his parents were splitting because he was *insert slur for a gay man*. So I can’t help but see those similarities. And the similarities between the responses Joe and my friend both had. Going into high school he closeted up quick and stopped hanging with the rest of us in public for a couple years, until he found out it was safe at our high school to be out. He wouldn’t even join a sports team despite loving sports because he was afraid of being called gay in the locker room. Once he found out he was safe, and after his father got some actual sense, he started hanging out with the rest of us in public again, got back into sports, and is now one of my roommates and in a happy relationship with his boyfriend. But, for a while, he was very much on the edge of being a “dude bro”. So, I guess I see a bit of my friend in Joe, and I hope Joe can grow like my friend was able to do.
This post is amazing and I think you’re right. That meekness and fear when he’s about to be left completely alone, Danny’s unwillingness to do it, and the request to take him to “safety” suggests a lot of things about the past and their past dynamic.
And it makes me wonder if this is also an attempt to “be adult”. Like, it was fine to let Danny drag him to safety when things went wrong and show real support and gratitude for that when he was a “kid”, but now he wanted to prove he was an adult and thought it was all the emotional, being dragged to safety stuff that needed to go.
And yeah, I think the toxic masculinity trap is often waiting there for dudes and can be a really easy thing to fall into. Like, there’s a lot of culture surrounding reinforcing it and it preys very nicely on insecurity. Feel reduced in power? Unsure of where to begin with relationships and feeling awkward about the vulnerability? Feeling targeted for one aspect or another? Or just feeling disconnected from the fantasy of adult masculinity you see reflected in culture?
Those are often entry points that are quickly followed up with abusive dynamics that trap you more and more in the system. Getting more and more bitter that you only feel more trapped and vulnerable and scared, but now you’re not even allowed to express it. And you’re then trained to dump all of those complicated feelings on women and non-toxic masculinity dudes because they are somehow the ones making you feel uneasy and not great.
And I hope you are right, that this is him connecting to that scared kid on his own and his first step to doing it right this time.
Wwwoooohhhh! I’m back, trachea intact and thyroid tumor gone!! Suck it thyroid cancer!!! Time to catch up.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Joe’s getting some backlash for that stupid list. That makes me very happy. Oh the uke has proven itself. This instrument is growing on me.
Joe will now hopefully go through some character growth. Also, Joe looks very defeated in that last panel. And in panels two and six he looks about to cry. And I think it’s for two different reasons. In panel 2 he’s realizing he screwed up and is desperately scared as a result. In panel six he looks like he added “And the new Danny thinks that we maybe shouldn’t be friends anymore, doesn’t he?” in his head while he was off panel in panel 5 to Danny’s statement. It just feels like Joe’s finally realizing that he does need to grow and change if he wants to keep Danny as a friend, and he’s worried that he may not be able to. It’s like he assumes that Danny’s “for old times sake” is Danny low-key saying that they aren’t friends anymore. Which as far as we now isn’t true. But Joe’s frightened that it is. And while I personally don’t like Joe, I’m very empathic towards someone losing a friend.
A fiddle, wow. When you pick a hobby, you don’t screw around. What else to you do for fun, solve fourier transform problems? Bring peace to the middle east?
Nope. Write shitty alternate history timelines, read, chill out with some Paradox, Bethesda, and Bioware games, read, head to the movies, volunteer at a soup kitchen on Saturdays, go to the gym on Tuesday and Friday evenings, read, and spend ten hours every Sunday playing Shadowrun and Pathfinder with my best friends. As you can tell, lots of reading, and my friends and I may all be tabletop addicts. Oh, also came up with a premise for a fantasy world subverting as many tropes as possible and embracing fully those that remain. Have yet to write an actual story in this setting I set out to create though. Combine this with one full time and one part time job, and I only sleep about six or seven hours a night.
…
I’m freaking weird.
Everyone I’d heard had gotten cancer in real life in the past year has pulled through it. Glad to see this trend applying to folks on the Internet as well.
I realised this is not gonna be a popular opinion, but while Joe definitively have had this coming – and has been a bad friend – Danny actually did his part in that toxic relationship.
Danny pre-collage had a rather obvious *need* to place others on pedestals. For him Joe was the perfect best friend forever, and he did nothing to ever call out Joe. Instead he kept feeding Joe’s “I’m perfect” ego. Looking at Joe’s father, Kid-Joe probably could have needed someone else to give him a healthy reality check on proper behaviour. Danny failed spectacularly doing so.
My point here is that nobody is perfect. And while Joe did use Danny, Danny also in his way very much used Joe as well.
Danny’s growing now, so I hope the same will happen for Joe.
because like. you’re not doing the thing, exactly, but you’re allowing it to continue. and like you’re not responsible for the thing being done, but you are responsible for not pushing back. but like sometimes it’s just like – what could you have even done, anyways? it’s not like everyone gets taught how to push back. and passively accepting this kind of behavior was all that Danny knew.
so I mean. if Danny is responsible for not pushing back, Joe is equally responsible for this transgression. like, Joe could have just as easily refused to be on the pedestal in the first place. and if we really want to play the blame out, we can blame it out to teachers and parents and the people around them who didn’t say anything whenever they saw this happening –
but like, at the end of the day, they still gotta deal with the people they are and the things they’ve done.
but. like. i…really don’t think it’s an accurate summation of the relationship to say that Joe and Danny were using each other? I mean, sometimes relationships boil down to what you do for each other, and how that fills a need the other person has, but…there is some genuine affection here. i don’t think either of them are malicious people.
it’s just, y’know, they weren’t used to thinking of women as people, and being able to be that blithely unconcerned is the entire problem
All friends use each other. A good friendship is like leaning two playing cards against each other – each holds the other up.
But, you don’t get to pick and choose – if you choose someone as a friend, you can’t then come back and say, “Yeah, he’s my friend, but I claim no responsibility for his bullshit.” Like it or not, everyone’s got a dark side, and your friendship helps prop up your friends’ dark sides, as well as their good sides.
What can you do, have no friends who aren’t absolutely angelically perfect? Have fun being alone, or living in a fantasy. OR, you can accept your friends’ dark sides, and support them, too. After all, they’re supporting yours, aren’t they?
i guess i’m not super comfortable thinking of relationships in terms of use. need, ok, yes, i can work with – but use feels more. clinical? disposable. like after someone stops their use to you you can leave them.
i mean like it’s not like any of this has to be either-or. you can’t discount someone’s influence. it’s communal and individual responsibility
I don’t anyone would deny that Danny did his part in enabling Joe’s horrible habits. I mean, yesterday we found out that it was Danny who set up that fucking rating site to begin with. And many of us have also been discussing how Danny is only now trying to define himself by his own skills (yay!), rather than defining himself by his relationships (platonic and romantic) and the negative consequences that that has lead to.
I can forgive them both for setting up the site. They were middle schoolers, as young as 12 years old, an age that isn’t known for nuanced insights regarding gender, plus Joe’s dad is horrid and would absolutely have taught Joe that this was the right thing to do.
The problem is that he did grow up, in some respects, but not in others. Compare him to Walky, especially about the ownership of shoes, and you can see Joe is quite mature but then when it comes other aspects…
And what is “safety” now? Danny at a computer saying “You know this thing needs to go, right?” and Joe nodding, gravely. (Danny types for about a minute) “There, now all it says is that the ‘Do’ list was stupid and you’re sorry and it’s gone.” (Ukulele chords, fade)
I had been thinking lately; dollars to donuts Joe’s dad introduced him to porn at a very young age. Why should he be less destructive than many other parents in the ‘verse?
Definitely don’t need a parent to do it. I learned it from a friend who wanted to teach that the internet could be used for more than looking up cheat codes to computer games. Although technically he was introduced to porn because he stumbled upon his dad’s porn magazine hidingplace, but he figured out the “google boobs” part on his own and was only too happy to share it with others.
True, most kids find it on their own. But I wouldn’t put it past Joe’s dad to gift his son with an organized set of links at an age when other kids were still looking up cheat codes.
Or he at least didn’t pay enough attention to stop him finding out about it. If he has a stash, I imagine it wasn’t well hidden – if he didn’t, he just didn’t take actions to stop him discovering it on his own or to stop older kids teaching him about it too young.
I can imagine lot of small moments that for a kid are devastating.
The first step to having your bad ideas not get out is to have fewer of them. Second, don’t develop each and every one of them. Third, get some kind of filter in your brain before they reach the speech center.
He’s been doing that for awhile, to the point where Dorothy and Danny have given up pushing back on him. But this is a fresh crop of folks and they’re not just letting him “boys will be boys” his way out of it.
Personally bad ideas just sort of show up unwanted, but if that’s the case with Joe as well it’s just a matter of establishing that the stuff you think of in your head isn’t appropriate and/or legal in reality.
Keeping all of that in a box with a lock and recognizing that it’s bad is also a passable substitute until you can get around to actually bettering yourself.
Actually, he’s not facing it. He’s upset at having his commentary known to all these women, he’s annoyed because Danny is “throwing everything off banance” and he wonders how he’s going to get to safety. What he’s NOT doing is taking responsibility for being a jerk or even admitting that he is one. He’s like a criminal that’s gotten caught and doesn’t care about rehabilitation just his lawyer keeping him out of prison.
Oh dang, new facets for new Danny. I did not expect him to do anything but crumble after the introduction we got. Go new Danny! Play Ukulele Wonderwall!
He’d be thrilled (as long as the number was high enough).
Joe would very much like to be valued for his looks and thought of as a sex object, and unlike every woman ever, he has never experienced this as dehumanizing or super threatening.
The reason why I think Joe can change is that he’s shown maturity in the past especially in regards to Walkys ideas on manhood, hes not homophobic in the slightest but more importantly here hes showing he can be emotionally hurt
If he was just a dude bro with no feelings he’d just laugh all this off but its obviously affecting him, he has a long way to go and there’ll be slip ups but if what Rukduk suggests is true, and it sounds pretty insightful, then this might be what Joe needs to improve this side of his personality
Having friends set boundaries and being away from his father will help but I also think, based on his interactions with Joyce, that at his core Joe is a decent guy
In fairness, I don’t think pride is really Joe’s big sin so much as a more benign obliviousness. He’s not being rude to women because he doesn’t value them or doesn’t respect them as human beings etc, he’s being rude because that’s how _he_ likes to be treated and it hasn’t quite sunk in yet that other people genuinely feel differently and aren’t into his thing.
Once he actually works out that other people genuinely approach their relationships from a different angle than he does and that “do unto others as you’d have them do to you” isn’t actually a very good guide to etiquette, I would actually expect him to fairly quickly feel bad about his bullshit and genuinely apologize and try to fix his habits. The sticking point is realizing the problem, y’know, exists in the first place– he jokes around and is so dryly sarcastic about everything that it’s probably hard for him to distinguish genuine offense from obligatory pretend-offense.
(If it’s not obvious from how much I just jammed into one post I’m really digging Joe’s arc. I feel like he’s sort of distaff-Joyce here, and learning that other people actually vary in their fundamental outlook is an uphill battle for both of them with both of them _trying_ to learn the lesson but needing time and experience to get it. It’s the most “real college” of the character arcs so far.)
OK,that’s it, I’ve been patient long enough waiting for Willlis to stop fucking us around and let us know what has happened to Amber
*Unlocks Shed*
OK folks, Pitchforks on the left, Torches on the right. Use the Brazier by the door to light them and a few of you grab the Tar and Feathers from the back.
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New Danny™ has fewer
caloriesfreak-outsthe focus groups for this are gonna be awful, but don’t worry they’ll be bringing back Danny Classic™ in a few years
*eye-twitch* Damn New Coke references. New Coke focus tested great, they just neglected to account for removing the old product. And Coke Classic came back in like six months.
Well of course. Would be kind of silly to release a product without focus testing it first, even more so to do so if it failed said testing.
Actually, they did focus test it.
If I remember correctly (like that is going to happen) they only tested New Coke with a few drops on the tongue, not a full glass.
Moral: Science means doing more than one type of test.
Coke Classic came back with corn syrup sweetener instead of real sugar, and the New Coke served as misdirection to cover up the change.
One more thing to blame on Bill Cosby.
Now there’s a conspiracy theory that I can appreciate.
so we now get “real” Coke when the Kosher-for-Passover version (no corn syrup allowed) hits grocery shelves, or we can spring a buck for a 12 oz bottle produced in Mexico, where real cane sugar costs less than the corn syrup crud used in American Coca-Cola
Or buy it in Canada.
I’m waiting for the Organic Coca-Cola to appear (I just now made that up) since food mfrs figured out that a few pennies spent on organic cane sugar and seasonings lets them turn a Kosher-for-Passover product into an Organic product, ready to sell the year round, and with a higher price, too.
^ I believe that’s actually a thing called “Coca-Cola Life” but I could be mistaken. It has a green label. We’ve been getting it in Canada for awhile, but I remember seeing it before that in the UK imports sections of some grocery stores.
It’s like root beer. It sassafras (what used to be it’s main incredient) is illegal in the US, so you have to import it from elsewhere (often under its old name sasparilla) if you want the real taste. And it is soooo worth it. Especially if it’s German.
^ That green label stuff – bought it by accident. Took one swig and wondered what they hell it was I was drinking? This from someone who likes Brio and is not Italian. It took a couple of months and some experimentation to find something it could mix with and not taste god-awful.
I tried that green label stuff when it came out in Canada. It is awful, I don’t understand how anyone can drink it.
Classic coke was using corn sweetener a long time before New Coke. It has to do with trade protectionism on sugar that artificially drive up the cost of sugar in the U.S.
Which is why Coke in many foreign countries still use sugar.
Real sugar variants of colas in the U.S. are starting to emerge as premium brands.
It was in late 1984 that the announcements of an impending changeover was made by both Pepsi and Coke, but yes, bottlers had been gradually introducing corn syrup for a few years, based on the sugar prices caused by the tariffs that allowed the US to defeat the Godless Commies of Cuba – oh wait, they didn’t :-p
That’s asinine. They’d already been transitioning to corn syrup. People hadn’t noticed before is all.
Coke made a genuine mistake. Why is that so hard to believe? 😛
New Danny™ is made with aspartame instead of sugar, because when I think healthy, I think aspartame
Actually New Danny™ is a hipster so he’s probably made with stevia extract
New danny thinks hes hipster, hes made from hemp
Then what was Danny Classic™ made with? Real sugar? High fructose corn syrup?
He’s from Indiana. Of course there was corn involved.
The original Danny recipe called for cane sugar. The whole New Danny / Danny Classic™ thing is just a coverup for their switch to cheaper HFCS. (It also gives the brand a shot in the arm.)
New Danny™ has 2 whole stevia leaves per serving, and is about 20 servings. Since anything 5 or less calories/freak-outs is rounded to 0, he’s basically water/lacks panic
i theorize new danny is made with straightup honey to save the bees
Good job not buying into the internet woo peddlers’ myths about a substance that has been around for almost 40 years, then!
Which substance is that?
Clearly aspartame. There is currently a limited backlash that has been spreading from an email hoax (cf Snopes here). There have been some legit questions about the safety of aspartame over the years, just as there were regarding saccharin, but those have long since been well and truly put to bed at this point. Even cyclamate has essentially shown itself safe despite remaining banned in the US.
True, artificial sweeteners have shown themselves to be generally safe (and definitely there are no reasons to freak out about them causing cancer). However, there are still questions about their role in obesity and insulin regulation and about their effects on gut microbiota. The situation seems to be more complicated than we know yet. Sorry, this is one of my research areas.
(see ‘Low-Dose Aspartame Consumption Differentially Affects Gut Microbiota-Host Metabolic Interactions in the Diet-Induced Obese Rat’ in Plos One for more)
Also it tastes gross.
Best approach seems to be avoiding the kinds of things they put artificial sweeteners in, at least in quantity.
Save the overly sweet things for occasional treats, not regular diet.
@Kristen I specifically chose not to mention all that, because it often gets quickly into discussion on biological pathways that goes over most peoples heads (mine included at the upper end). Sort of like the really in depth discussions of why fruit juices are little to no better than soda and those of the effects of glyphosate on gut bacteria. I’ll quit there before I melt my own brain.
@Kryss LaBryn That I can definitely agree with.
@thejeff That. Hell, generally just avoiding anything heavily processed (refined sugars or their alternatives, grain starch derivatives, etc) when it can be avoided does wonders in my own experience.
Unless you’re phenylketonuric. In which case it is distilled brain poison.
New Danny, made with splenda.
ssshhh it’s okay nobody can hurt you now joe
danny’s here
it’s all gonna be OK
He’s about to Danny it up.
He’s Joe-nulerable.
Danny’s one hell of a buddy.
And Joe’s really not, I hope he realizes that soon.
YEAH, he’s been pretty awful to his so-called best friend. Danny needed support and Joe… wasn’t it. :C
(I say that as someone eagerly looking forward to Joe Character Development™ though!)
well a lot of school before college friends are only friends with you because you are there. once you get mobility you start to get ones more based on enjoyment and once you can move to different locals thats even more so the case. at least i think so.
I think that probably depends on the person?
I mean, I’ve met a LOT of great people during college, but with changing courses, those were more or less acquaintances and not friendships (though there were a few I was closer with, and one whom I also worked together with on irregular basis whom I also consider a friend). We mostly basically talked because of group work, we needed to, or just for exchange.
BUT: My dearest friends I’ve known from two different schools, three dating back to the years 2000-2002 (three sisters), and the other two I got friends with around ten years ago in a different school (same class) – it also helped that we learned for our finals together as a group and we all started studying the same subjects with slight variations (which is a long thing of the past). And we established, while still sharing courses, to meet up once every week for cooking, eating, talking and watching stuff. We had small breaks in between – but we’re very consistent in meeting up and we’re very close, although we also have veeery different personalities. What keeps us together is that we’re very considerate of each other and are basically our own little additional family.
But I also may be a very special case, I dunno.
My close friends are all from school. I was at uni for four years and only made 1 actual friend there (and a bunch of acquaintances) but I haven’t spoken to them in a long time. I still regularly chat and meet up with my old friends who live five hours away from me .
I think I was just lucky that my school has these people in it.
Just like me. Couldn’t imagine how my life’d have developed without my friends from school (it’d have probably stayed very bleak, or I’d have developed into a very pessimistic person).
I’m only still in touch with one person from high school, but a fairly large circle of people from college (or met through people from college).
None I think from college classes, but from other stuff. The core being tied to an RPG group.
Interesting! And awesome – I wish we had something of an RPG group at college, I’d have definitely joined it. But as it went, we only had film- or pub-meet-ups, and you never got to talk with anyone about more than university-related stuff.
Maybe Joe can get a harmonika and back up Danny musically.
Bros
It’s almost like people have different reactions based on context or something.
Tough not getting emotional support when you want/need it, isn’t it Joe?
Joe once mused that when he was with Jacob, he was the Danny.
Now he realizes that now he’s the Danny everywhere.
Except he’s not even a good Danny, he’s maybe a 0.4 Danny at best.
The ‘Danny Scale’ for me can’t really operate upon a line, perhaps within a triangle, since which type of Danny that Joe is acting as, and to which extent, seems to be shifting.
I like this system. Are the three points of Danny the three basic interpretations of Danny’s character from the comments section: Noble, Awful, Good Egg.
It is an interesting observation. Sheds light on why they became friends in the first place.
STAY TUNED, FOR MORE,
REAL LIFE DRAMA, REAL LIFE CONSEQUENCES!
now in comic form so there is no chance of you being caught in the cross fire. all for your own safety
Why is this part of Chapter 1 of Book 8?
Huh, this again. This seems to happen once in a while with every last chapter.
And it’s fixed.
LET THE ARM WHIRLING BEGIN.
They make inflatable figures to do that for us these days. Truly we live in a decadent, degenerate age 🙁
Ah, Danny. With great hipsterdom comes great responsibility.
FREAK OUT! Le Freak! So Chic! FREAK OUT!
OHHHHH THAT’S WHAT THE LYRICS ARE! I’ve been mishearing them for years!
Joe: Danny save me!
Danny: *sigh* Fine, but only a little bit.
‘All the Joes will look up and shout “Save us!”… and I’ll look down and whisper “*sigh* Fine.”‘
Danny, as Rorschach
My cats were like this, in that one calms down as soon as the other starts complaining. (She’s like, “Cool, my pal is taking care of things, I’m gonna nap.”) It’s a good deal.
(My point is, this is another way their old friendship worked for Joe. He could outsource any anxiety or emotion, because he hates experiencing anxiety or emotion himself but knew Danny would pick up the slack. New Danny won’t be so useful for that — good job, New Danny.)
This is a very thoughtful interpretation!
That is a really great point! I love it!
Could be worse, Joe; one of them could decide to pepper spray you for your list!
It may yet happen.
So where is the real Danny tied up?
Well, we can rule out AmaziGirl’s lair.
Heh, I first read
“Where is the real Danny tied up?”
“Well, we can rule out AmaziGirl’s hair.”
Her hair does look a bit unkempt.
We’ve replaced regular Danny with Folger’s Crystals. Let’s see if Joe notices the difference.
Probably not. Joe’s too focused on women that he hasn’t paid any attention to his bro-brew.
That made me laugh much more than you probably expected.
/twitch
so what im getting from the last few days is that joe is having much the same problem billie did in the beginning, in that he still has the mentality of high school joe and not fully processing that college is different so your behavior will have to change.
I think that’s pretty much the whole idea of every character in this comic, when you get right down to it. 🙂
It really is. Who you were, but now you find out who you are when you’re out on your own.
The big problem is Joe created a persona for college and up until now it was pretty much working for him. But now he’s been exposed and his persona’s not safe anymore and he’s vulnerable and doesn’t know what to do.
Walky went through something similar it’s just instead of being a douche bro he was being super immature.
Well, judging by the bit about when the list was “password protected”, Joe created a persona for
junior highand up until now it was pretty much working for him.Sadly, in real life, the mostly likely way to go from here is full on MRA, blame the women for everything. This being a comic and Joe being intended as a sympathetic character, he’s likely going to learn the correct lesson and grow out of it – at least a little bit.
*tents fingers* I am noticing a new spine in Danny…he’s no longer going to hold Joe’s hand on these types of situations. Now the question is, is it because he realized it’s not healthy for Joe, or not healthy for himself, or both?
Ooooh, I hope it’s both. Both is good.
I also wonder if a little itty bit of it is spite, consciously or not. Danny has had an absolutely bonkers start to his college career that Joe barely knows anything about because he adamantly refuses to care about anything unrelated to his playboy persona. He repeatedly didn’t want to help when Danny really needed a friend, and Danny got the hint and stopped trying. And now Joe’s freaking out and wants Danny’s help and Danny’s just seems a little more ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ than I expected, despite everything
Joe tells Danny he’s adding Dorothy to his list IMMEDIATELY after he gets dumped: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/seven/
He’s gloating about being right about when it was going to happen in the previous strip. So if any of this is spite, I ain’t mad at him.
Oh, Danny definitely deserves a little spite for how Joe’s treated him so far this semester. I’m just wondering if that’s motivating him at all and if it is, how much he consciously realizes it
honestly once you get on the self-respect/having boundaries/having a spine train it’s hard to get off! it’s like…wow….i can tell people no! it’s a miracle!
Yup. It sucks to start noticing your friends’ lack of boundaries, though. No more blissful ignorance.
on the other hand like – you get to enforce having boundaries, which…hopefully…helps them have their own boundaries. and you do it just by minding your own shit i guess?? which is cool. either people learn or they don’t and after that it is out of your hands
Kermit GIF.
Face it, Joe, this isn’t Danny’s problem. It’s yours. And you’re going to have to face up to it.
(rape tw for the rest of the comment)
Much like the dude who messaged me on Okcupid earlier. I helpfully reminded him that last time, when I took issue with the way he addressed me and told him where he could shove it, he threatened sexual violence against me. Unable to face up to his past actions, he doubled down with the misogyny while in the same breath telling me how well he treats women. It was a wild ride, let me tell you.
May Joe handle his comeuppance and redemption better.
good god your comment was a wild ride. hopefully joe will handle things better than okc guy.
Ugh, I hate guys like that. Where nothing is worse than admitting fault, so it quickly devolves into threats.
*hugs offered*
*hugs accepted and returned*
Thank you ♥ Yeah…I found some solace in the fact that he is the person sabotaging his own attempts at finding a relationship, and his blatant douchebaggery means no woman has to deal with him long-term.
“Handling things better” would suggest this kind of misogynistic assholes is barely mistaken. But as Danny says in today’s strip, they kinda mean it. They need to learn to assume responsibility for this shit, you can’t have redemption without admitting you did wrong.
Truuuuth. I’m holding out hope that Joe will eventually learn he is not the poor maligned innocent in this, and change and develop for the better. And hey, small internet! 😀 Glad to run into you here!
(And hi Shiro! Nice to see you around. Sorry for your experience. 🙁 )
I’m so sorry you had to deal with such a douchewaffle. I don’t know what it is about the male ego that makes so many of us into abusive a-holes.
Sucks to suck, Joe.
Good to see these two interacting again, as friends.
I’m surprised that Joe didn’t try to blame Danny’s “shitty coding” for causing this to happen. But that might just be my IT background talking.
I kind of felt like he left a tiny hint the other comic, but since danny left a logical explanation he let it be.
Yeah, it’s kinda weird seeing Danny calm and Joe freaking out for once. But I like the new more confidant Danny, even if he’s heading into hipsterdom.
You have no idea how tempted I am to replace that ukulele with something sinister. Daddy needs a new Gravatar.
Like a phone?
That joke is always timely.
The real question is who are you and how did you get a picture of my brother from 20 years ago?
(I know it’s probably not him, but the resemblance is uncanny.)
If this picture were from 20 years ago, you’d be looking at a toddler.
Better yet, take Ryan’s ‘phone’ pic – and replace the phone with a ukelele.
I think you are going to be getting jabbed about that for a while.
More like getting stabbed about that for a while, eh?
Well that’s good to know, thank you.
Nothing says nascent self-confidence like a BFG-9000…
I think that’s currently my favorite metal song. It’s just Meshuggah enough to stand on its own, but it’s still an excellent background tune.
Dangerous driving music, though, on the level of Katamari Damacy.
KA-ta-Ma-ri, do your best!
Danny can’t save you this time Joe, face it your lady man days are over.
their character history is older than them? thats interesting.
Well, considering the sliding time scale, they were born in, what, 1999? Roomies! is older than that, so, yeah.
The broship that never ends.
Yes, it goes on and on my friend.
Why does he think he got hacked anyway? So he supposedly gave people access to this list for some reason right? What was he expecting was going to happen?
to be fair I dont think that he is comptia security plus certified.
For some reason, a non-insignificant number of people would consider a freely given password being widely disseminated in a way that it wasn’t meant to be “hacking”
Yeah, this.
Because that’s how the media in general describes it. If someone gets a hold of something and it was in a computer then it was “hacked”.
It seems like any news source that isn’t specifically dedicated to technology gets this wrong. It’s probably on purpose too: the general public has an idea of what hacking is so it’s easier to just say ‘hacking’ any time it involves a computer.
Social engineering is the most common (and most effective) way to hack. Much easier in most cases to get someone to tell you their password (for some plausible reason) than to actually crack it.
In Joe’s case, all the “social engineering” that was really required seems to be to stand still in his presence for a few minutes.
Because he can’t imagine that the women he’s been giving the password out to could possibly have a problem with it.
Not even when they are clearly stating that they find the whole thing repulsive.
Yes, he really is that dense and self-absorbed.
And as someone mentioned the other day, whenever he shared his password, it’s mainly on a one-at-a-time basis; so that any negative reaction he gets from it can be dismissed with “Ehh, she’s just a percussion instrument, probably on her period or something.” And since the power balance is in his favour, the women disgusted by it knows better than trying to push it; because they know that that kind of person might well take that pushing back as an “invite” to assault them. So they keep quiet, and he keeps feeling safe to continue doing what he does.
So whoever changed this power dynamic by making the list public (my money’s on Raidah): Well done!
That’s our Danny.
10 bucks says Danny leaked the Do List on purpose to lead to a change in Joe and/or to spread his hidden post-breakup sadness to Joe.
I can’t really see Danny doing that sort of thing. Joe may not have been supportive when Danny had problems, but Danny is probably more likely to just turn his unhappiness inwards, and he’s not the type to go around to try to ‘fix’ people without being asked.
Or it could be an elaborate ruse by Mike to screw over Joe and lead Danny to Ethan.
What? It could happen *crosses fingers*
This is making me think… in Roomies!, it was always implied that Joe was constantly sexually harassing the girls’ floor, but it mostly happened off-camera. I guess that what we’re seeing now is the DoA corollary to this:
http://www.itswalky.com/comic/overcome-with-irrational-lust/
Joe’s been Joe’d so hard.
….. so what Joe’s saying is that the dynamic between them is bro-ken?
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: What’s really interesting here is how much Joe was kinda exploiting Danny beforehand. Like, he’s mad that Danny isn’t freaking out and running around trying to fix everything. Like, every time he did that, Joe mocked him relentlessly, but no when he’s no longer doing it he’s pissed.
And yeah, of course that was something Danny used to do. Danny used to define himself solely in terms of his usefulness to others, so running around trying to “fix” the problems of those in his life was an easy default mode to get stuck in, especially with folks like Joe who frequently stumbled into fuck ups that were bigger deals than he was pretending they were.
And I love that Danny isn’t feeling that pressure here. And that’s something he’s learned that was super healthy from his relationship with Amber and that’s there’s some things you can’t really fix. Like that you just need to step back and offer support, cause running around trying to make everything better doesn’t help.
And that’s something that he learned with Amber not as a consequence of Amber. She had stuff going on that was big and when he tried to fix it by meddling, he ended up serving as a hostage with her abusive dad. With stuff like that he learned when to intervene and when to just be a shoulder to cry on.
And for Joe… well, he’s been using Danny. Him looking down at Danny allowed him to ride out crises while patting himself on the back at being the masculine calm one, propping up the toxic masculinity he’s enmeshed in. As long as Danny freaked out and felt emotions strongly, he could grin and use that to feel better about himself.
And that is another way that getting stuck into this system starts to fuck with you. Viewing everything in utilitarian terms of marks and wingmen and so on, you stop seeing them as people but more as the roles they can provide.
And the worst part of all of this is he was deliberately looking down on Danny to prop himself up, while Danny was going out of his way to try and keep the friendship alive and do right by his friend. And Joe has shown no respect or honor to that. And now that Danny is growing and not freaking out, he’s been trying every action he can to try and force Danny to “change back” so he can continue using him as a surrogate for the “feels”.
And that above all is what makes him a toxic friend. He doesn’t support Danny’s growth, even though that’s all he’s been demanding for for years. And he’s trying to sabotage it, to the point where he’s getting mad and angry at Danny for not making him feel better about his own massive fuck up.
And it makes it hard to feel sympathy for him in this moment, because that is so callously fucked up and especially fucked up to a poor kid like Danny whose self-esteem has been relentlessly destroyed by his parents and really was just trying to do the best by Joe.
I really love how you pointed out Amber’s part in Danny’s growth–I hadn’t even thought of that.
Panel 2: And I love Danny here that he’s not falling for Joe’s desperate bullying. There’s nothing to fix here and it’s not at all on him. Joe can collapse right now and that’s not on him and something he fully brought on himself.
And Joe is trying to reassert the dynamic by force. “Flail”. Be wacky. Create a space where I can feel better about my fuck up by looking down on you freaking out about it trying to fix it. He’s downright yelling at him to play that not-equal role in his life and save him from the consequences of his own actions.
And Danny finally has the self-esteem to resist that. And that’s a beautiful proof of growth and makes me so happy for him.
Panel 3: And yeah, I love this, because it also cuts through the bullshit. Any “fixing” of this would involve actively lying and taking the flak for him and Danny’s done with that. He thinks Joe has done wrong and he’s not going to lie to people who have a right to be upset with him to try and save him face an allow him to continue down the shitty poisonous path he’s been going down.
Joe meant to be a creep. Meant to demean women. Meant to harass them. He just thought his gender would make him immune to facing any real consequences for that and that’s fucked.
Again, I’m proud of Danny for sticking to his guns.
Is it just me who’s seeing some Becky in panel 3 Danny? He’s done with things almost to the extent that she is.
There’s all sorts of analogues between those who bear the brunt of toxic masculinity. Best hope they don’t team up, Joe.
Definitely. There’s a similar dynamic of a lotta love for that time, but an absolute refusal to play the same roles and believe the same things.
And those two panels are why I do not agree with people saying that Danny was running from himself when he decided to start playing the ukulele. I was and am of the opinion that Danny teaching himself a skill, even a “trivial” skill like the ukulele* is a positive sign, a sign of him just -doing something for himself-, a sign of him trying to define himself by what he is doing, rather than who he is with.
And the result of trying to define himself by his own skills? That he no longer has to tolerate the BS of the people he are with. Because he is Danny. Not so-and-so’s friend, or so-and-so’s boyfriend. He’s just Danny. With a ukulele and a dapper hat.
*Anyone who thinks ukulele is a trivial/non-serious instrument to play has never heard Jake Shimabukuro play it.
Yup. This isn’t for anyone. And that’s a huge point of growth for him and as you note frees him from the idea that he needs to tolerate certain shit in service to his role and someone else’s ancillary half.
Panel 4: And this is a revealing phrase. He wants everything to stay the same, to be able to harass without consequence, to have Danny as a masculinity foil to prop himself up with, to have everything stay the same while he invests nothing to keep it so.
And the terrible brutal irony is that Danny would probably have been only too willing to old Danny-it-up here if Joe had actually paid the upkeep of being there for Danny through his crises and didn’t demean and mock and push him away.
And there’s a metaphor there. He wants the “reward” of being friends with Danny without any of the work in the same way he wants the “reward” of power and sexual gratification and objectification without having to pay the consequences of that or do the work of building a genuinely consensual and respectful hyper-sexual identity.
And that’s a thing a lot of guys get caught into when they drift into PUA and MRA territory. They want all the benefits of patriarchy but none of its downsides. They want to be able to look down on women and see them as the enemy, but still expect women to put up with that and not angrily reject them.
And I think that’s why Joe needs to crash and burn here. To learn that no, he can’t keep on his path forever, exploiting social power to escape the consequences of that path. He needs to start living by the Joe he shows to Joyce in secret, being someone worth supporting and freaking out for.
Panels 5-6: And Danny is too good for his own good. He should walk away here and let Joe deal with the mess he has laid for himself. Especially since none of these women are likely to do anything worse than glare at him and maybe blow up at him if he tries to engage with them. For all his panic and fear, he’s not actually in any real danger unlike a woman stuck alone with him.
But Danny is a good egg and still cares that his friend is in distress. And so he remains firm that this is just a one-time thing rather than a slip back to that poisonous dynamic, but he offers to give Joe that little out from his own mess nonetheless.
And it makes me want to see Danny continue to get friends who actually appreciate him or to see Joe actually appreciate what he had and threw away to feel a few points more stoic and thus relieved about his frantic worries about his masculine standing.
And maybe that last face is that. Is Joe finally appreciating what he took for granted and cruelly exploited for something that at the end of the day doesn’t matter for shit (like he’s seen Jacob demonstrate every day how to be masculine without being a gross piece of shit). I can hope so. But I think no matter what, he’s got a long road ahead of him.
Well the good thing is, if Joe matures of course, that the friendship is very salvageable. I mean rooming together and knowing people in the same social group helps
Even being in gender studies can work for him now…if he wants to change.
Might just be the wake up call Joe needs to improve
yeah like hopefully these consequences came in time for them to change!!
It really is. This is so salvageable for Joe, but he’s going to have to put in the time and work doing real change and he’s going to have to approach this as equals…
Which ironically is also how he would salvage his reputation with the women of the college.
The only major block is Joe is real unused to doing any real work and has invested a lot into himself as someone who views women as equal as bullshit and mistreating Danny. But if he wants to still have these things he cares about, it’s necessary.
I like to think that panel 6 is Joe’s wake up to reality, at the very least in terms to his relationship with Danny. And let me just say, I don’t like Joe. He creeps me out and his misogyny is something I find despicable. But…I still feel this bit of sympathy for him. Given the revelation that Joe started the list back in middle school, it feels like Joe’s father “coached” him into being this way. Even then Joe still could have tried to push away from that, but he didn’t. Maybe that’s when his parents were getting divorced and he felt it was one of the few activities he could “bond” with his father over. Maybe not. But the fact that Joe doesn’t know how to help himself shows that as shitty and toxic as he can be, he’s also damaged as well in his own way. He’s just chosen never to recognize or address that damage, hiding it instead with what he thought was behavior he was “supposed” to express as a guy. And what I find very telling is that Danny’s offering to drag Joe “to safety”. Not off to a private space, but safety. And Joe says yes. It makes me wonder, has Joe ever really felt safe on his own? Because up until this point he always had Danny to “drag him to safety”. Knowing Danny was there for him could very well be the only form of security he feels relationship wise. His mother has barely ever been mentioned and seems to not be involved in his life anymore, we’ve only ever seen him interact with his father, and he’s at the very least embarrassed about how his dad acts. It’s also not to far fetched given the few actions we’ve seen Joe’s father make that, if the divorce happened sometime in middle school or even high school before Joe got his driver’s license and Joe was living with his dad, Joe might very well have been forgotten at school by his father because his father had a random hook up or something. I really wouldn’t put it past that man. And now that Danny looks like he might be leaving Joe behind, Joe has these minutes to realize something he’s probably been unconsciously thinking about and has probably been nagging him since Joyce and Sarah joined him and Jacob at Galasso’s: he’s been lying to himself for years. The real Joe isn’t some suave ladies man. The real Joe is a sad, scared kid who never grew out of middle school, is afraid of emotional attachment and tries to overcompensate by acting as “macho” as he’s been lead to believe “real men” should be. And now he has to make a choice that he can no longer put off. Does he keep up the facade, lose his best friend, and keep pretending to be the “macho” guy who’s secretly all alone? Or does he acknowledge that who he’s trying to be is toxic for himself and his friends and try to change and grow as a result? I’m hoping it’s path two that he takes. Let me repeat, I don’t like Joe. But a part of my heart can’t help but see him as this seven grader on the school steps, waiting for his dad to come pick him up as the sun begins to set, only now sniffling because he’s sure no one’s around and ache for that kid. That type of little kid was one of my best friends who went through the same type of experience but worse because he was bi and his father thought if he had enough straight sex he wouldn’t have feelings towards guys, while a couple bullies would always say that his parents were splitting because he was *insert slur for a gay man*. So I can’t help but see those similarities. And the similarities between the responses Joe and my friend both had. Going into high school he closeted up quick and stopped hanging with the rest of us in public for a couple years, until he found out it was safe at our high school to be out. He wouldn’t even join a sports team despite loving sports because he was afraid of being called gay in the locker room. Once he found out he was safe, and after his father got some actual sense, he started hanging out with the rest of us in public again, got back into sports, and is now one of my roommates and in a happy relationship with his boyfriend. But, for a while, he was very much on the edge of being a “dude bro”. So, I guess I see a bit of my friend in Joe, and I hope Joe can grow like my friend was able to do.
This whole post is so insightful
This post is amazing and I think you’re right. That meekness and fear when he’s about to be left completely alone, Danny’s unwillingness to do it, and the request to take him to “safety” suggests a lot of things about the past and their past dynamic.
And it makes me wonder if this is also an attempt to “be adult”. Like, it was fine to let Danny drag him to safety when things went wrong and show real support and gratitude for that when he was a “kid”, but now he wanted to prove he was an adult and thought it was all the emotional, being dragged to safety stuff that needed to go.
And yeah, I think the toxic masculinity trap is often waiting there for dudes and can be a really easy thing to fall into. Like, there’s a lot of culture surrounding reinforcing it and it preys very nicely on insecurity. Feel reduced in power? Unsure of where to begin with relationships and feeling awkward about the vulnerability? Feeling targeted for one aspect or another? Or just feeling disconnected from the fantasy of adult masculinity you see reflected in culture?
Those are often entry points that are quickly followed up with abusive dynamics that trap you more and more in the system. Getting more and more bitter that you only feel more trapped and vulnerable and scared, but now you’re not even allowed to express it. And you’re then trained to dump all of those complicated feelings on women and non-toxic masculinity dudes because they are somehow the ones making you feel uneasy and not great.
And I hope you are right, that this is him connecting to that scared kid on his own and his first step to doing it right this time.
Holy wall of text Batman! and well said, and you are back! Yay.
Wwwoooohhhh! I’m back, trachea intact and thyroid tumor gone!! Suck it thyroid cancer!!! Time to catch up.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Joe’s getting some backlash for that stupid list. That makes me very happy. Oh the uke has proven itself. This instrument is growing on me.
Joe will now hopefully go through some character growth. Also, Joe looks very defeated in that last panel. And in panels two and six he looks about to cry. And I think it’s for two different reasons. In panel 2 he’s realizing he screwed up and is desperately scared as a result. In panel six he looks like he added “And the new Danny thinks that we maybe shouldn’t be friends anymore, doesn’t he?” in his head while he was off panel in panel 5 to Danny’s statement. It just feels like Joe’s finally realizing that he does need to grow and change if he wants to keep Danny as a friend, and he’s worried that he may not be able to. It’s like he assumes that Danny’s “for old times sake” is Danny low-key saying that they aren’t friends anymore. Which as far as we now isn’t true. But Joe’s frightened that it is. And while I personally don’t like Joe, I’m very empathic towards someone losing a friend.
Yay! Congratulations! And welcome!
Also, good analysis.
Congrats and happy de-tumoring! 😀
nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AW YEAH! I’m glad it went well and hopefully the stupid ass tumour stays gone! Good job! *hugs if wanted*
And yeah, Joe is an ass, but he might be waking up to that.
Congrats!
And thanks for your commentary, too.
Congratulations! Wow.
Congratulations, Rukduk!
Congratulations!!
Congrats, dude.
Yay for health!
Nice! Be thou vanquished, foul tumor!
Woo and hoo!
WOO HOO HOO!!!
I reckon you need to celebrate by buying a ukulele.
Let’s not get crazy here, I already have a fiddle for a hobby.
A fiddle, wow. When you pick a hobby, you don’t screw around. What else to you do for fun, solve fourier transform problems? Bring peace to the middle east?
Nope. Write shitty alternate history timelines, read, chill out with some Paradox, Bethesda, and Bioware games, read, head to the movies, volunteer at a soup kitchen on Saturdays, go to the gym on Tuesday and Friday evenings, read, and spend ten hours every Sunday playing Shadowrun and Pathfinder with my best friends. As you can tell, lots of reading, and my friends and I may all be tabletop addicts. Oh, also came up with a premise for a fantasy world subverting as many tropes as possible and embracing fully those that remain. Have yet to write an actual story in this setting I set out to create though. Combine this with one full time and one part time job, and I only sleep about six or seven hours a night.
…
I’m freaking weird.
I am amazed you have any time to sleep at all.
Yaaaay.
Huzzah! Suck a dick, cancer! 😀
You kicked cancer’s ass!
1: Fuck cancer!
2: Hey, you did just that! Congrats, dude!
3: At least you had a good reason to not show up much; I disappeared for a few months because I was playing video games.
Yay congratulations! *giant high five*
Good for you, dude! Glad you’re okay.
As we say in my social circle, ‘F**K Cancer’. Glad you’re back.
Congrats and welcome back.
Welcome back! Glad that everything went okay!
Welcome back, Rukduk! It seems everyone here is expressing their full-throated support for you.
….
…. *flees for dear punning life, hoping it’s not taken the wrong way*
Hahaha, don’t worry about being taken the wrong way with that pun.
Double high-fives in the air!
Everyone I’d heard had gotten cancer in real life in the past year has pulled through it. Glad to see this trend applying to folks on the Internet as well.
Just want to thank you to everyone saying congratulations.
YEA!
Or you could take him out by hitting him with the ukulele, but that’d be a waste of a perfectly good instrument.
Wander over to the School of Music and get a viola. A viola would make more of an impact.
I realised this is not gonna be a popular opinion, but while Joe definitively have had this coming – and has been a bad friend – Danny actually did his part in that toxic relationship.
Danny pre-collage had a rather obvious *need* to place others on pedestals. For him Joe was the perfect best friend forever, and he did nothing to ever call out Joe. Instead he kept feeding Joe’s “I’m perfect” ego. Looking at Joe’s father, Kid-Joe probably could have needed someone else to give him a healthy reality check on proper behaviour. Danny failed spectacularly doing so.
My point here is that nobody is perfect. And while Joe did use Danny, Danny also in his way very much used Joe as well.
Danny’s growing now, so I hope the same will happen for Joe.
being an enabler is kind of…a weird situation.
because like. you’re not doing the thing, exactly, but you’re allowing it to continue. and like you’re not responsible for the thing being done, but you are responsible for not pushing back. but like sometimes it’s just like – what could you have even done, anyways? it’s not like everyone gets taught how to push back. and passively accepting this kind of behavior was all that Danny knew.
so I mean. if Danny is responsible for not pushing back, Joe is equally responsible for this transgression. like, Joe could have just as easily refused to be on the pedestal in the first place. and if we really want to play the blame out, we can blame it out to teachers and parents and the people around them who didn’t say anything whenever they saw this happening –
but like, at the end of the day, they still gotta deal with the people they are and the things they’ve done.
but. like. i…really don’t think it’s an accurate summation of the relationship to say that Joe and Danny were using each other? I mean, sometimes relationships boil down to what you do for each other, and how that fills a need the other person has, but…there is some genuine affection here. i don’t think either of them are malicious people.
it’s just, y’know, they weren’t used to thinking of women as people, and being able to be that blithely unconcerned is the entire problem
All friends use each other. A good friendship is like leaning two playing cards against each other – each holds the other up.
But, you don’t get to pick and choose – if you choose someone as a friend, you can’t then come back and say, “Yeah, he’s my friend, but I claim no responsibility for his bullshit.” Like it or not, everyone’s got a dark side, and your friendship helps prop up your friends’ dark sides, as well as their good sides.
What can you do, have no friends who aren’t absolutely angelically perfect? Have fun being alone, or living in a fantasy. OR, you can accept your friends’ dark sides, and support them, too. After all, they’re supporting yours, aren’t they?
i guess i’m not super comfortable thinking of relationships in terms of use. need, ok, yes, i can work with – but use feels more. clinical? disposable. like after someone stops their use to you you can leave them.
i mean like it’s not like any of this has to be either-or. you can’t discount someone’s influence. it’s communal and individual responsibility
I don’t anyone would deny that Danny did his part in enabling Joe’s horrible habits. I mean, yesterday we found out that it was Danny who set up that fucking rating site to begin with. And many of us have also been discussing how Danny is only now trying to define himself by his own skills (yay!), rather than defining himself by his relationships (platonic and romantic) and the negative consequences that that has lead to.
I can forgive them both for setting up the site. They were middle schoolers, as young as 12 years old, an age that isn’t known for nuanced insights regarding gender, plus Joe’s dad is horrid and would absolutely have taught Joe that this was the right thing to do.
Keeping the site, though… don’t rate women, Joe.
….I don’t remember why this comment was a reply to any of the above posts. Looks like I read something and went on a bit of a tangent. Oh wells.
Danny in that last two panels brought tears to my eyes. It’s so real I can hear that sentence.
I’m sure all the nines and tens he hasn’t slept with yet will be really flattered and lining up at his door!
You may be a big guy, Joe, but you never did get around to doing the ‘grow up’ thing before, did you?
The problem is that he did grow up, in some respects, but not in others. Compare him to Walky, especially about the ownership of shoes, and you can see Joe is quite mature but then when it comes other aspects…
Nobody grows up symmetrically. Different aspects come and go at different paces, til you kinda grow into yourself, you know?
Do what Commissars do
‘When in deadly danger,
When beset by doubt,
Run in little circles,
Wave your arms and shout.’
+1
Linus: “When you’re down and out, lift up your head and shout—”
Lucy: “SOMEBODY’S gonna PAY for this!”
(Actual Peanuts strip, no cite.)
Heh, nice parallel to this moment. They both know how to be there for each other.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-teenage-churchmouse/romance/
And what is “safety” now? Danny at a computer saying “You know this thing needs to go, right?” and Joe nodding, gravely. (Danny types for about a minute) “There, now all it says is that the ‘Do’ list was stupid and you’re sorry and it’s gone.” (Ukulele chords, fade)
I had been thinking lately; dollars to donuts Joe’s dad introduced him to porn at a very young age. Why should he be less destructive than many other parents in the ‘verse?
You don’t need a parent to introduce you to porn. Just internet and someone not paying enough attention to filter.
Definitely don’t need a parent to do it. I learned it from a friend who wanted to teach that the internet could be used for more than looking up cheat codes to computer games. Although technically he was introduced to porn because he stumbled upon his dad’s porn magazine hidingplace, but he figured out the “google boobs” part on his own and was only too happy to share it with others.
True, most kids find it on their own. But I wouldn’t put it past Joe’s dad to gift his son with an organized set of links at an age when other kids were still looking up cheat codes.
Or he at least didn’t pay enough attention to stop him finding out about it. If he has a stash, I imagine it wasn’t well hidden – if he didn’t, he just didn’t take actions to stop him discovering it on his own or to stop older kids teaching him about it too young.
I can imagine lot of small moments that for a kid are devastating.
Dan Out!
(And yes, I really think his father did A LOT to send Joe down the path of toxic masculinity).
And in the glorious year of God Bloody Knows, HBO presents it’s new TV series “Dumbing Of The Age”!
“Dumb Of Thrones”!
“Your Do List feed is out there. It’s not going back in…How does one ‘solve’ this?”
Reminds me of Joyce, to Joe:
“In with it. Shove it right back in.”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/participate/
The first step to having your bad ideas not get out is to have fewer of them. Second, don’t develop each and every one of them. Third, get some kind of filter in your brain before they reach the speech center.
We’ll see if Joe learns any of these steps.
Or you could go the other route, have even more bad ideas until everyone is used to it.
I’ve figured Joe is so far down that route his GPS has stopped speaking to him.
I want you to know that I am stealing that super hard.
Cool. I.probably steal 50 for every 1 someone likes, so anything to help balance the ledger.
He’s been doing that for awhile, to the point where Dorothy and Danny have given up pushing back on him. But this is a fresh crop of folks and they’re not just letting him “boys will be boys” his way out of it.
Personally bad ideas just sort of show up unwanted, but if that’s the case with Joe as well it’s just a matter of establishing that the stuff you think of in your head isn’t appropriate and/or legal in reality.
Keeping all of that in a box with a lock and recognizing that it’s bad is also a passable substitute until you can get around to actually bettering yourself.
Looks like Joe’s having to face that douchbag actions have consequences.
Actually, he’s not facing it. He’s upset at having his commentary known to all these women, he’s annoyed because Danny is “throwing everything off banance” and he wonders how he’s going to get to safety. What he’s NOT doing is taking responsibility for being a jerk or even admitting that he is one. He’s like a criminal that’s gotten caught and doesn’t care about rehabilitation just his lawyer keeping him out of prison.
I’ve just spent like the last week and a half reading all of the Walky-verse comics and suddenly I see every character in a new light
Oh dang, new facets for new Danny. I did not expect him to do anything but crumble after the introduction we got. Go new Danny! Play Ukulele Wonderwall!
Hmm. Danny 2.0. Would that be Dan-ni or NiDan? My teensy slice of Japanese is MIA, and it IS Monday morning…
NEW from Dan Corp! It’s Danny 2.0! Now with 25% less “Danning it Up!”
Can we keep new Danny but remove the hat and ukelele from the deal?
I think that you only get one with the others!
So are we to assume the “Do List” he hands out (see http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/prediction) his RSS feed of and his rating list are two seperate things?
No, I just don’t think that Joe ever expected one of the Brotherhood of Testosterone to hand the information over to their prey.
You know, as much as Joe is the biggest whore this side of Hollywood, this is the first time he’s ever been well and truly fucked.
I like this Danny! He should definitely keep the ukulele.
I already miss Old Danny.
Not Roomies Danny, early DoA Danny.
Fuck Roomies Danny
“Hey Joe where you gonna go with that Dan in yr hand?”
“Le nouveau Danny, c’est moi”
Yo know what I’m thinking? How would Joe react to being put on an equivalent list?
Depends on what number he gets I suppose, didn’t seem to mind being on Rozs sex tape
A three would see a reaction similar to other Rachel as he’d be thinking he’s, at minimum, an eight
He’d be thrilled (as long as the number was high enough).
Joe would very much like to be valued for his looks and thought of as a sex object, and unlike every woman ever, he has never experienced this as dehumanizing or super threatening.
The reason why I think Joe can change is that he’s shown maturity in the past especially in regards to Walkys ideas on manhood, hes not homophobic in the slightest but more importantly here hes showing he can be emotionally hurt
If he was just a dude bro with no feelings he’d just laugh all this off but its obviously affecting him, he has a long way to go and there’ll be slip ups but if what Rukduk suggests is true, and it sounds pretty insightful, then this might be what Joe needs to improve this side of his personality
Having friends set boundaries and being away from his father will help but I also think, based on his interactions with Joyce, that at his core Joe is a decent guy
New Danny reminds me of New Spider-Man from 1997. Very odd and not as quippy as the original material.
In fairness, I don’t think pride is really Joe’s big sin so much as a more benign obliviousness. He’s not being rude to women because he doesn’t value them or doesn’t respect them as human beings etc, he’s being rude because that’s how _he_ likes to be treated and it hasn’t quite sunk in yet that other people genuinely feel differently and aren’t into his thing.
Once he actually works out that other people genuinely approach their relationships from a different angle than he does and that “do unto others as you’d have them do to you” isn’t actually a very good guide to etiquette, I would actually expect him to fairly quickly feel bad about his bullshit and genuinely apologize and try to fix his habits. The sticking point is realizing the problem, y’know, exists in the first place– he jokes around and is so dryly sarcastic about everything that it’s probably hard for him to distinguish genuine offense from obligatory pretend-offense.
(If it’s not obvious from how much I just jammed into one post I’m really digging Joe’s arc. I feel like he’s sort of distaff-Joyce here, and learning that other people actually vary in their fundamental outlook is an uphill battle for both of them with both of them _trying_ to learn the lesson but needing time and experience to get it. It’s the most “real college” of the character arcs so far.)
OK,that’s it, I’ve been patient long enough waiting for Willlis to stop fucking us around and let us know what has happened to Amber
*Unlocks Shed*
OK folks, Pitchforks on the left, Torches on the right. Use the Brazier by the door to light them and a few of you grab the Tar and Feathers from the back.
I’m more interested in seeing more of Joyce and Jacob interacting
So far it’s been five days and no one has pointed out the “red” scrawled above “center desk.” Handmaid’s Tale joke maybe?
It says “Read,” as our cast lives in Read Hall.
Just to note, Amber and Dorothy will never be referenced again in the strip.
🙂
I’m okay with that. We can leave it up to our imaginations!