I honestly think that that was her reaction once she’d thought about it a bit, and she actually has a point – the change of her rating to zero-minus DEobjectified her.
It’s be best kind of burn, cos she doesn’t mean it burnily, she just means it, but it throws into sharp relief the nature of the criteria all the OTHER girls, ALL the other girls, were judged on.
it is SO GOOD.
The fact that Joyce probably had no intention of dunking on Joe this hard just makes the backboard shattering all that more satisfying.
In other words, yes, that probably was Joyce’s legitimate reaction. The fact that it also intentionally or unintentionally doubles as a sick burn is just icing on the cake.
That specific use of the word “burn” is informal and has slightly differing meanings for different people. We just appear to have hit a particularly even split in what the word means to people so that it’s hard to call one or the other “proper”. Of course I could be wrong.
So…er, isn’t burn synonymous with “insult”? Or am I wrong?
Joyce’s comment insults, unintentionally, and only implicitly. The implicit insult is, “99% of the time you’re a shallow sexist.”
So, it’s a sick burn if Joe has been still in denial about this and came to realize this aspect of his own nature only now, due to Joyce’s implication. But if the subtext is lost on Joe, or if Joe was already being honest with himself about his own nature, then it’s not a very good burn.
wait zero minus means something? i just thought it was like the number i. something you use to make stuff that shouldnt work work. or at least when i was taught it in middle school my teacher never explained its purpose….. oh wait i mean high school good thing i noticed before i hit post.
Negative-zero isn’t part of normal arithmetic, but it can be a useful idea in some contexts. One of the most common uses is in computer floating point numbers, where it can be used to determine which “side” an operation approached zero from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_zero
Following that, negative zero would intuitively apply to the ranking in the same manner as one would apply “A-/A+”; As such, a 0- would imply the very bottom-most ranking possible.
The thing is, being thought of as a godawful human being is still a step up from not being thought of as human at all. I believe that’s Joyce’s point here.
Oh I think Joyce realizes what it means, but she also realizes where that score is coming from, emotionally. Remember in the last interaction they had, she asked him “what was I before I hurt you?”
Anyone know how I can change that display pic? I don’t know why this pic is here and I don’t want it there, previous posts just showed a normal gravatar.
Normally that would work, but that looks like a user gravatar, not a random one. I’m not familiar with that, but I assume you’d have to go to the site and change it manually.
I don’t think it’s an attack. People don’t give Joyce enough credit… earnest and true people seek those qualities in others. Honesty and directness is a rarity in a world where all people have two faces, and to be treated as a person – even a disliked person – rather than a body, probably did make Joyce happy.
Error report sent.
“Dammit I didn’t mean to do that! And why has snark become a subroutine!! How was that possible with the current program?!? Wait. Why is my last back up date when I had R Rosenthal 2.5?!? I specifically upgraded to the J Rosenthal version 2.0! That’s it I’m calling tech support.”
30 minutes later…
“What do you mean you’re having maintenance issues with a planned update?!? Yes I have a secure internet connection and have tried turning my computer on and off again!! Wait no don’t put me on hold again!!!” *elevator music* Dammit all!!!!
Our skin doesn’t really differentiate between “too fricking cold” and “too fricking hot”, so putting something really cold on your skin will lead to the same “burned” skin reaction; though other reactions may happen underneath.
Preach! But let us put aside our differences and join hands in unity against the foul deceivers who believe it is ok to fill a maple bar with cursed cake frosting! Whatever your sweetened pastry preference know that we are brothers against this abomination!
Not sure if this has ever been brought up before, but I think it is truly impressive the depth of emotion and personality that Willis can convey with such subtle changes to the faces of drawn characters.
Just looking at Joe in this strip, you can tell more or less exactly what he’s thinking / feeling, without anything so blatant as a thought bubble.
Agreed, and without necessarily even the most detailed faces. I’d also add that the occasional ambiguity actually somehow helps to makes them feel more like real characters, as it leaves you wondering/guessing just what that expression means and using context to fill it in, much like how we relate to actual real people.
You know, I have a feeling that comment may have done just as much to make Joe stop and think as everything else that’s happened over the course of the day.
I think that with burns it depends on the type of burn, this is a very good burn but its not done maliciously and its given Joe something to think about and because its from Joyce specifically it means Joe listens to it more than if it was from Rachel or someone
Oh, definitely not discounting the growth that had already occurred, maybe I should have phrased that differently. I think that this did help him to get his head around things a bit better and drive the point home about what exactly was wrong about his whole rating system thing, whereas up until now I’m still not really quite sure that he understood that properly.
Yes, he may actually be realizing that he’s been reducing women to sex & missing/losing the other dimensions of their humanity. “This. Could be the start of a beautiful friendship”
Meanwhile planners are still debating whether it’s most likely replacement should be named the USS Joycob or the USS Jayce. There are also speculations of a separate replacement being designed just in case, with the various proposed names of “Jorla”, “Joyla”, “Carce”, or this reporter’s current favorite “Caryce” (pronounce as Kar-eice). More information as the situation develops. Back to you Needfuldoer.
How Joe hasn’t burst into flames from the intensity of that burn is beyond me. If he had, Joyce could’ve totally slipped on sunglasses and walked away from the explosion while eating a donut. :p
(On a related note, I got into a 15-minute argument with my family where I proposed naming the bushes in the backyard Joyce, Becky, Other Becky, Other Becky #1, and Other Becky #2. My proposal was unwisely dismissed.)
Take a look at that last panel. Joyce, with her back to Joe, eyes closed, serene, munching on a donut… that IS her walking away from an explosion. The explosion she made in Joe’s heart.
And now I’m wondering how much it would cost me to commission Willis to do Joe and Joyce dressed as Bill and Kiddo either during or after her performing the five point palm exploding heart technique on him (possibly with Joyce in the iconic yellow tracksuit rather than the outfit from the actual scene).
Joyce: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
Joe: …LOOK I APOLOGISED FOR DOROTHY’S RATING AND GAVE A POUND OF FLESH, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT ME TO DO???
Joe: Wait a minute. I’m the Jewish one here. Why are you using that speech?
Joyce: IT’S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE MATTER AND I JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT THAT PLAY AND REALLY LIKE IT OK!!!
I quite like panels 2 – 4 here, Joe says something boneheaded, Joyce (who has anger issues) doesn’t bite but looks like shes about to, Joe sees the look and realises what he said and apologises, more importantly with a sincere apology
What I find interesting about Joe’s statement about the donut is that it seems to come from a place of self-loathing.
What he did was nice. He knew she deserved a donut apology (donut-pology?), knew he might run out, thought about which one she would like more based on his past interactions with her and set it aside.
I mean, it doesn’t make up for what he did, but it was still thoughtful of him, and he doesn’t feel like he deserves to be thanked for it (or, more likely, anything) right now…
yea that’s what I read into it too. thoughtful isn’t “manly”. Considerate isn’t “strong”. kindness has no place here.
It’s nice he could back away from that
I dunno. If that were the aim, I think he’d just brush it off as “Eh, no big deal” or something. It has the bonus of still getting praised, while dismissing caring about the praise.
Saying “I didn’t want to get yelled at” is a step beyond that. It’s outright refusing the praise and saying that he was just looking out for himself, like he always does. Or at least, that’s how he thinks about himself.
Might be wrong. But sometimes, when you’re reeling from a giant fuck-up, you want to push away anyone that makes you try to feel better, because you think you don’t deserve it.
To me that reads less as self-loathing and more as him avoiding the implication that he did anything thoughtful. Especially since its exactly the way he usually gets all defensive, accusing the woman of being angry and unreasonable. He was starting to run away from sincerity, but stopped and actually apologized properly. That was a really good catch on his part.
To me, THAT moment, where he started falling back into a bad pattern and caught himself, THAT is a bigger indicator that he may have really learned from this than the apology itself.
I’m not sure why he’s upset with her though? Last I remember they were friends. Is the zero minus not updated since their date or has something else happened that I don’t recall?
And even then he didn’t update the description at ALL, not even like a foonote about her hiring a goon to beat you up. JUST the rating and the original description.
Joe doesn’t update his list much, is my vibe. He puts down his notes and then forgets about them.
It doesn’t have to be “flattering” to be better than being seen as a walking pair of boobs. Joyce prefers meanness that recognizes her basic humanity to “flattery” that does not. Most people do.
see that there that..comment. is joe acting resentful for having to think about a girl’s feelings
and then seeing that he had like exactly the opposite effect on joyce that he expected. like. she has an existence entirely outside of his understanding of her. like. joyce is ok with it because she earned that 0 minus. and it kind of just…cuts through all the bullshit like she’s cutting through a gordian knot
And Joe would be even more devastated if he could see it.
Is Joyce’s “burns with truth” here something learned out of being restricted from all the stuff teens do, like general non-G-rated words, or direct insults?
Massively off topic here but I don’t have a Tumblr account to comment there… I’m one of those weirdos who has Sal Buscema as their favorite Spider-Man artist, so I loved that post about recreating his punching style in DOA.
“Sssh.”
“WhaMMMPH“
“I said SSSH.”
“What the hell is your problem?”
“There has been an awakening. Someone, somewhere, just got…dunked on. And it was the sickest dunk.”
“MMMMPH!”
“Get your hand off Billie’s mouth, Carla.”
“Just wait. I want to savor this.”
Nah, it’s a “Do List”, not a friends list. He doesn’t want to sleep with her, no sexual interest, at all.
He obviously gets along with her, kind of? They seem to have talked more since the face-punching incident. We get glimpses of that here and there.
That look in the last panel is the dawning realization that maybe he should be apologizing for creating the list in the first place, not just for individual ratings. That’s the part that seemingly hasn’t sunk in yet.
It’s also return fire for his little dig in panel 2.
Or maybe it’s the dawning realization that Joyce holds a special place in his feelings. I mean, he’s practically accepting her as an equal, which in japanese visual novel terms practically makes her the True End.
I agree.
“Burns” are usually hurtful, and I don’t get why everything has to be hurtful. Sure, it would be funnier – but I can do with the mood this day’s comic conveys, at least for me. Empathy and understanding, and ultimately, Joyce seems to be the more mature person here, and that’s only gonna help Joe get the hint/s.
OK, so as one of the “burners”, I’ll do my best and try and explain better how I feel:
Now, a good burn, in my mind, is not actually about being hurtful (though I’ll grant you that they often can be). For it to be a good burn as opposed to just being mean, it has to reveal an uncomfortable truth about someone. This can be done hurtfully, of course, but it can also be polite and mild. It’s just that the truth in itself can hurt.
Indeed, I know a couple of people that has made it into an artform to politely tell someone with a sentence or two how they are being hypocritical. Other times, it’s as simple as taking that person’s own words and applying it to them. The latter in particular, when done right, is something I love two watch; as it has the added bonus that the target cannot possibly claim it was mean without having to consider if they were then being mean in the first place.
And so, what Joyce did here? It was friendly, it was polite, and it was revealing a truth to Joe that stopped him right in his tracks. And so, as I define burns, this was definitely one.
If you still don’t agree, at least I hope you now understand my position better.
I agree that a good burn should reveal an uncomfortable truth, but revealing an uncomfortable truth alone is not sufficient to qualify as a burn. I also agree that a burn need not be hurtful, but even the non-hurtful ones need… A ‘bite’ to them, sort of. There’s none of that here, not even an unintentional one.
Being reminded of just how sleazy that list was —that it reduced women to a number based on practically nothing but their physical attractiveness and maaaybe one or two other things, if he’s feeling “generous”— is not biting?
Wow! Way to tear out Joe’s heart an stomp on it, Joyce! Still, it is typical that she, in happy friendship, would casually make it clear to Joe what it was that he had done wrong, which all these women (and Danny) haven’t been able to make clear to him in their anger: The problem with what he did was the dehumanisation.
I think that they will date for a while but they will both feel uncomfortable because romance is not what they’re about. I can even hear Joe muttering that “now I know what it’s like to kiss your sister!”
look how his FACE HARDENS OVER when he distances himself from the niceness of the thing he did, and then it falls away again, and then Joyce Joyces and it actually hits him, not stabs right through him but he actually hears what she’s saying and the silent space around what she’s saying that is full of what everyone else is saying.
You remeber how in primary school you had to make class rules and the teacher said to phrase them positively, so it’s not ‘Don’t run in the classroom’ but ‘walk in the classroom’ because then you can focus on proactively DOING a gud thing rather than getting punished for bad things.
DO gauge people as people. DO have impressions regarding their humanity.
I’ve heard it as little kids don’t always understand the word no.
Unless someone volunteers for a frank assessment based on one particular set of skills. This includes taking your classes and getting a job directly or indirectly working for you. Whenever you judge someone you should take the time to look at them as a human beings.
Also the ability to interact with others without hurting them is sort of up for grabs is sort of a grey area. By that I mean the person could have a good reason to hurt the other person. When judging Rachel on her speech it is only fair to consider Ruth’s actions which hurt Rachel and her friends, its also fair to not consider those actions when you remember that she hurt most everyone in the room with that speech, when judging Mary on her driving Ruth to suicide we don’t need to analize why Mary feels justified trying to bully Ruth.
That’s quite an optimistic way to look at it but… yeah Joyce has a point. She might have been one of the first girls whom Joe saw as a person rather than a vagina on legs…
Sorry, folks, but that was not a burn. Joyce always, always, ALWAYS, tries to end things on a good note. Always tries to find something positive. Even after her Joyce is awesome like that.
Here’s something I learned back when I was hand-coding HTML: always type your opening tag/closing tag FIRST, and then go back and put your content inside. Example:
First, write the tags:
<a href=””></a>
Then, fill them in:
<a href=”http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/episcopalian/”>Joyce belongs in a hippie church!</a>
Kinda feel like Joyce wasn’t the only one to get an accidental burn in during that exchange. I think Joe was just trying to deflect away from his feelings in the second panel but the implication of ‘if I don’t keep you happy bad things will happen to me’ deflects straight into the baggage of Joyce beating Joe up.
A number in Joe’s list is Joe’s opinion of how much he wants to hook up with the girl in question.
The only meaning of Joyce’s zero minus of which one can be certain is that Joe would never want to hook up with her. The reasons why he arrived at that number are totally opaque.
Maybe she concluded that zero-minus was him communicating their friendship was *definitely not* about sex.
Ah, but if you then come back to the list later, having not seen that person around for a while, how do you remember if they aren’t on the list because you don’t want anything to do with them, or if it’s just because you didn’t get around to adding her yet?
Having her name on there along with the 0- is an effective way to record that, yes, they have been rated; and no, STAY AWAY.
Well additional context is that her rating was changed TO a zero minus because he then factored in his opinion of her character. Before that it was how much he wanted to bang.
I don’t feel like this was a “burn” per say, tho it had the stopping effect of one for Joe. Joyce is neither that mean nor particularly prone to pettiness – and despite the tensions and squabbles they’ve had (or heck, maybe partly BECAUSE of it), she genuinely cares about Joe as a person, which is something else he isn’t used to. I think Joe is as much used to be written off as he does the writing.
His expression in the final panel strikes me as one more of uncomfortable epiphany than skepticism.
I think in some ways Joe still thought this was about the rankings themselves instead of the way he treats women, and Joyce finally drove that “No, this is why” point home about as hard as possible. This donut thing has been more “I’m sorry I made a list” and less “I’m sorry I treated all of you as vaginas glued to a board”. Hence the look on his face when he realizes otherwise.
if by ‘special feelings’ you mean ‘considers she might be a friend or an enemy or a fellow classmate or someone with a rich interesting life outside her interactionds with Joe’, then sure
Panel #1: Joyce thanks Joe sincerely for a thoughtfull act, after his explanation for why he saved her a plain, a choice which she *had* been giving him a hard time about — Joyce switched gears from the previous strip to appreciate the act, even if plain wouldn’t be her first choice.
#2: Joe rejects her apology reflexively …
#4. Joe regrets his reflex & offers an apology to Joyce re his objectifyinh rating of her. With #2 this shows the only two things Joe sees re women: their sexual attractiveness to him — which he sincerely believes is something that they should and do care about — AND, do the yell/flash anger at him, anger that to him is always irrational & undeserved. And from Joe — so Joyce was on the wrong side of both Joe’s criteria re women.
And his apology for the zero minus is, from Joe, HUGE . He might have been expecting Joyce to be pleased.
On the other hand, he’d be baffled & infuriated if she’d yelled “F you & your F’ing ratings….”
#6: BUT Joyce opened a 3rd path, one Joe might not have ever seen before
#7 And Joe is … well, look at that single, raised, quizzical eyebrow. If joe were a dog (rather than a hound), his head would be cocked to the side “Huh: what was that? This seems important, but I don’t really get it.” Treat you like a … “human being” … ie, not just a sex doll that might yell for unintelligible reasons.
With Number 7, it could also be a, “What? Why would you think it’s how I see you as a person? We’re so close I can’t see myself with you in that way that’s why you get a 0”
Have an awkward and possibly slightly offensive question to ask, asking here because reasonably certain I won’t be lynched for it:
Is there a difference between transgender and transsexual? IIRC the latter is the older term of the former…
And since gender and sex are different (social presentation versus physical sex), why is transgender the term used for the group that, as far as I am aware, typically undergoes operations for those sexual characteristics? Is it simply because the term covers both those who undergo surgery and those who present as a separate gender? No bigotry here, just trying to put things in their proper boxes.
Trans person here. Transexual is an older, more medical sounding (and somewhat offensive) term. It tends to only include binary trans people (binary = always 100% female OR always 100% male) and leaves out people who don’t medically transition (get hormones, surgeries, etc) and/or people who are nonbinary. Hope that helped. That’s my understanding anyway. And thanks for asking.
They were originally the same term but as “transgender” came to expand to include people who don’t transition, “transsexual” fell out of use, so yes there are some people who have medically transitioned who have reclaimed it.
transgender includes anyone whose gender doesn’t match the gender they were assumed to be / assigned at birth. this holds true regardless of what they do or don’t do with their genitalia. also, using ‘transgender’ highlights ‘hey gender this person correctly’ instead of ‘hey think about this person’s sex’.
what the other folks have already said, plus for many trans folk ‘transsexual’ is associated with the history of the medical establishment making the way we are pathology. it also tends to be used far more by people who hate us and/or don’t know wtf they’re talking about/are using outdated information; this may be because of the aforementioned history with the psychiatric system, or it might simply be a result of the term falling somewhat out of use.
there’s also some bad blood there because a decent amount of self-labelled transsexual folks have tried to separate themselves from those of us who, for various reasons, are non-op, claiming that we’re fundamentally different groups and even that we’re holding them back.
That’s why I think Jo-Jo is still a possibility, because she sees the positive, because she doesn’t write anyone off (well most anyway) so I think if she sees real, positive change in Joe she might be willing to try another date with him
Loading ...
“did I just get a sick burn”
“Depends, do you want ice for it?”
A burn like that just doesn’t hurt as bad coming from a known asshole like Mike
Joyce is ON FIRE here.
well actually
JOE is on fire here
because of Joyce’s sick burn
Serious question – what burn?
I honestly think that that was her reaction once she’d thought about it a bit, and she actually has a point – the change of her rating to zero-minus DEobjectified her.
It’s be best kind of burn, cos she doesn’t mean it burnily, she just means it, but it throws into sharp relief the nature of the criteria all the OTHER girls, ALL the other girls, were judged on.
it is SO GOOD.
The fact that Joyce probably had no intention of dunking on Joe this hard just makes the backboard shattering all that more satisfying.
In other words, yes, that probably was Joyce’s legitimate reaction. The fact that it also intentionally or unintentionally doubles as a sick burn is just icing on the cake.
“The fact that it also intentionally or unintentionally doubles as a sick burn”
…But it doesn’t…???
Either I and several others don’t know what a burn is, or you and several others don’t, and at this point I’m honestly not sure which.
That specific use of the word “burn” is informal and has slightly differing meanings for different people. We just appear to have hit a particularly even split in what the word means to people so that it’s hard to call one or the other “proper”. Of course I could be wrong.
So…er, isn’t burn synonymous with “insult”? Or am I wrong?
Joyce’s comment insults, unintentionally, and only implicitly. The implicit insult is, “99% of the time you’re a shallow sexist.”
So, it’s a sick burn if Joe has been still in denial about this and came to realize this aspect of his own nature only now, due to Joyce’s implication. But if the subtext is lost on Joe, or if Joe was already being honest with himself about his own nature, then it’s not a very good burn.
Lol, I can’t tell if Joe feels bad for what he did or he’s just wondering if Joyce realizes what ranking her a Zero-Minus as a person means.
wait zero minus means something? i just thought it was like the number i. something you use to make stuff that shouldnt work work. or at least when i was taught it in middle school my teacher never explained its purpose….. oh wait i mean high school good thing i noticed before i hit post.
No mate i is root of negative 1. Complex numbers are extremely important in the world around us.
Negative-zero isn’t part of normal arithmetic, but it can be a useful idea in some contexts. One of the most common uses is in computer floating point numbers, where it can be used to determine which “side” an operation approached zero from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_zero
Following that, negative zero would intuitively apply to the ranking in the same manner as one would apply “A-/A+”; As such, a 0- would imply the very bottom-most ranking possible.
I thought it was more of a subtle realization face, since he clearly never thought of that until just now.
And/or questioning what that means for his own feelings toward her.
The thing is, being thought of as a godawful human being is still a step up from not being thought of as human at all. I believe that’s Joyce’s point here.
Yep. Joyce’s ranking was mean but not dehumanizing and that makes it better than anyone else’s ranking.
Oh I think Joyce realizes what it means, but she also realizes where that score is coming from, emotionally. Remember in the last interaction they had, she asked him “what was I before I hurt you?”
She’s naive in a lot of things, but not this.
Anyone know how I can change that display pic? I don’t know why this pic is here and I don’t want it there, previous posts just showed a normal gravatar.
gotta go to the gravatar website i think
Try changing the capitalization in the ’email’ field. The Gravatar algorithm appears to be case sensitive.
Normally that would work, but that looks like a user gravatar, not a random one. I’m not familiar with that, but I assume you’d have to go to the site and change it manually.
Test
Congrats!
Used a different email and it worked. Yay!
Zero minus as a person, but relating to how much he wants to sleep with her. In that context, I think she’s fine with a “No.”
Also it’s about how she treated him. She was in the wrong there, and she’s aware of that.
I don’t think it’s an attack. People don’t give Joyce enough credit… earnest and true people seek those qualities in others. Honesty and directness is a rarity in a world where all people have two faces, and to be treated as a person – even a disliked person – rather than a body, probably did make Joyce happy.
Oh shit
Burns all around
That burn though.
great way to think of it joyce. even though what he did wasn’t even close to good maybe what he just heard shows him something he can think about.
Joe last panel: processing…processing………bluescreen
and so soon after that massive ddos.
That’s.. not what that is.
Abort, retry, fail?
Joe.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close.
Would you like to send an error report?
Nah, we’ll just revert back to last backup. Joe.exe rarely accepts change.
Error report sent.
“Dammit I didn’t mean to do that! And why has snark become a subroutine!! How was that possible with the current program?!? Wait. Why is my last back up date when I had R Rosenthal 2.5?!? I specifically upgraded to the J Rosenthal version 2.0! That’s it I’m calling tech support.”
30 minutes later…
“What do you mean you’re having maintenance issues with a planned update?!? Yes I have a secure internet connection and have tried turning my computer on and off again!! Wait no don’t put me on hold again!!!” *elevator music* Dammit all!!!!
Ah, shit, someone ran the HCF command.
Daaaaaaamn
That is one way to put it.
Damn, That’s cold AND she made a decent point on how she’s important to him.
Quite impressively cold, given what a sic burn it was.
Our skin doesn’t really differentiate between “too fricking cold” and “too fricking hot”, so putting something really cold on your skin will lead to the same “burned” skin reaction; though other reactions may happen underneath.
“You know what, I changed my mind. I’d rather get yelled at about a donut.”
Come on how can you think that the jelly donut is the best when an apple fritter is obviously superior!
Preach! But let us put aside our differences and join hands in unity against the foul deceivers who believe it is ok to fill a maple bar with cursed cake frosting! Whatever your sweetened pastry preference know that we are brothers against this abomination!
My men and all their waffles are as one with yours! Let us vanquish this foul foe… TOGETHER!
Whoo! Get it Joyce. You enjoy every last crumb of that plain Jane donut.
It’s bitter medicine, but she’s being honest in her appraisal. He needs that right now if he’s going to learn going forward.
Not sure if this has ever been brought up before, but I think it is truly impressive the depth of emotion and personality that Willis can convey with such subtle changes to the faces of drawn characters.
Just looking at Joe in this strip, you can tell more or less exactly what he’s thinking / feeling, without anything so blatant as a thought bubble.
Agreed, and without necessarily even the most detailed faces. I’d also add that the occasional ambiguity actually somehow helps to makes them feel more like real characters, as it leaves you wondering/guessing just what that expression means and using context to fill it in, much like how we relate to actual real people.
Love-Hate At it’s best
I know Joyce isn’t trying to flirt with Joe here but damn if she isn’t inadvertently doing a really good job
Joyce knows exactly what she is doing.
Yup. It’s clumsy, but intended.
Not to worry, Joe, Danny has a tune for that.
“♩♪♫ I fell into a burning ring of fire! ♫♪♩”
“And I’m all alone, and the fire grows.
I’m all alone, and the fire grows.”
with sprinkles
“Oh, light the sky and hold on tight
The world is burning down”
Dammit, now that song is stuck in my head, and I haven’t heard it in years.
You know, I have a feeling that comment may have done just as much to make Joe stop and think as everything else that’s happened over the course of the day.
I think that with burns it depends on the type of burn, this is a very good burn but its not done maliciously and its given Joe something to think about and because its from Joyce specifically it means Joe listens to it more than if it was from Rachel or someone
A controlled burn, to remove deadwood that is blocking the Road to a Better Joe, so to speak.
This is like an Icy-Hot burn – it’s medicinal.
Nah, he was already at stop-and-think mode. The self-loathing in refusing Joyce’s thanks for being thoughtful is a clear sign in that.
Oh, definitely not discounting the growth that had already occurred, maybe I should have phrased that differently. I think that this did help him to get his head around things a bit better and drive the point home about what exactly was wrong about his whole rating system thing, whereas up until now I’m still not really quite sure that he understood that properly.
Yes, he may actually be realizing that he’s been reducing women to sex & missing/losing the other dimensions of their humanity. “This. Could be the start of a beautiful friendship”
I ship it
SS Joeyce is getting tugged back to drydock, even though it’s capsized and on fire.
I thought it broke when the bottle of.Champagne hit the bow.
Meanwhile planners are still debating whether it’s most likely replacement should be named the USS Joycob or the USS Jayce. There are also speculations of a separate replacement being designed just in case, with the various proposed names of “Jorla”, “Joyla”, “Carce”, or this reporter’s current favorite “Caryce” (pronounce as Kar-eice). More information as the situation develops. Back to you Needfuldoer.
Aaaaand Love,
It won’t hurt,
Anymore.
It’s an open smile,
On a friendly shoooooore!
PCS Joece, AKA The DOA Princess AKA The Ship Boat!
Oooooh, Shiiiiip
Life’s sweetest reward
Let it float
It floats back to youuuuu
Pretty sure Joyce got the zero-minus for punching Joe in the face during their date, which really isn’t something to be proud of.
Yes, but her rating actually was about who she is, not about his phantasy of her as all the rest.
Being thought of as a crappy human being is preferable to not being thought of as a human being at all. That’s the point she’s making right now.
i kinda want them to be friends but at the same time i dont?
mind blown
Hot damn but Joyce makes a good point while clearly being owed extra donuts now. Tribute must be paid in the face of an attack that devastating.
Yes Joe women are human beings.
Moments like this make me ship them, hard.
How Joe hasn’t burst into flames from the intensity of that burn is beyond me. If he had, Joyce could’ve totally slipped on sunglasses and walked away from the explosion while eating a donut. :p
(On a related note, I got into a 15-minute argument with my family where I proposed naming the bushes in the backyard Joyce, Becky, Other Becky, Other Becky #1, and Other Becky #2. My proposal was unwisely dismissed.)
………I’m siding with your family on that one. Mostly just for the 4 Beckies…
… People name [i]bushes[/i]?
Only give something a name if it’s going to come when you call it.
But I like naming kitties!
Cats come when you call them. You just need to use Electric Can-Opener Language.
Just beware of plants named Audrey (esp during eclipses)
Seems like a bad move to me. When you name it, you get attached, and you really don’t want to get attached to bushes.
True, especially since I helped murder their predecessors.
Still, I’m not a normal kid. :p
As long as you don’t let them be president.
Using numbers is bad for naming. You should use “Left Becky” and “Right Becky”.
Take a look at that last panel. Joyce, with her back to Joe, eyes closed, serene, munching on a donut… that IS her walking away from an explosion. The explosion she made in Joe’s heart.
Nah, his heart won’t explode until he takes five steps; this is just Joyce preparing for it. 😛
And now I’m wondering how much it would cost me to commission Willis to do Joe and Joyce dressed as Bill and Kiddo either during or after her performing the five point palm exploding heart technique on him (possibly with Joyce in the iconic yellow tracksuit rather than the outfit from the actual scene).
I keep getting shipping signals here. But I kind of want to grenade blast that ship and run.
Joe lost an eye brow to that sick burn.
Adam Savage playing Joe: “Am I missing an eyebrow?”
(Courtesy of an early episode of Mythbusters, repeated may times in their openings.)
I just witnessed a murder from Joyce. I love it.
“Dorothy’s seven on the other hand…”
“You realize I will need to take a pound of flesh, per ancient tradition.”
“Figuratively?”
*Joyce pulls out butcher’s knife*
“‘Fraid not.”
Now I’m thinking about Merchant of Venice.
🎶These are probably the worst pies in London…
Joyce: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
Joe: …LOOK I APOLOGISED FOR DOROTHY’S RATING AND GAVE A POUND OF FLESH, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT ME TO DO???
Oops, that was meant as a reply to Cerberus.
Joe: Wait a minute. I’m the Jewish one here. Why are you using that speech?
Joyce: IT’S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE MATTER AND I JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT THAT PLAY AND REALLY LIKE IT OK!!!
(yeah, I thought about that too)
This is one of the pages that I can only think to call sweet.
You know, ‘sweet’ can be used to describe the sharpness of a blade…
Joe got served!
<Joe’s Other Eyebrow> Well, you’re on your own. Bye!
You don’t think of them as human
You don’t think of them at all–Tina Turner
I quite like panels 2 – 4 here, Joe says something boneheaded, Joyce (who has anger issues) doesn’t bite but looks like shes about to, Joe sees the look and realises what he said and apologises, more importantly with a sincere apology
I’m not sure he does see her look- she’s angled away from him. I think he just heard himself.
Joyce just hit the nail on the head harder than she punched Toedad
What I find interesting about Joe’s statement about the donut is that it seems to come from a place of self-loathing.
What he did was nice. He knew she deserved a donut apology (donut-pology?), knew he might run out, thought about which one she would like more based on his past interactions with her and set it aside.
I mean, it doesn’t make up for what he did, but it was still thoughtful of him, and he doesn’t feel like he deserves to be thanked for it (or, more likely, anything) right now…
There are guys that act like this because being honest would make them feel vulnerable and their pride doesn’t let them.
Y’know, a long time ago (read: years ago in real time, ??? ago in comic time), Joe mentioned that his folks “yelled a lot”.
Dunno how much that weighs into what he’s saying now, but it makes you wonder —
yea that’s what I read into it too. thoughtful isn’t “manly”. Considerate isn’t “strong”. kindness has no place here.
It’s nice he could back away from that
I dunno. If that were the aim, I think he’d just brush it off as “Eh, no big deal” or something. It has the bonus of still getting praised, while dismissing caring about the praise.
Saying “I didn’t want to get yelled at” is a step beyond that. It’s outright refusing the praise and saying that he was just looking out for himself, like he always does. Or at least, that’s how he thinks about himself.
Might be wrong. But sometimes, when you’re reeling from a giant fuck-up, you want to push away anyone that makes you try to feel better, because you think you don’t deserve it.
To me that reads less as self-loathing and more as him avoiding the implication that he did anything thoughtful. Especially since its exactly the way he usually gets all defensive, accusing the woman of being angry and unreasonable. He was starting to run away from sincerity, but stopped and actually apologized properly. That was a really good catch on his part.
To me, THAT moment, where he started falling back into a bad pattern and caught himself, THAT is a bigger indicator that he may have really learned from this than the apology itself.
Speaking of zero-minus, that was ICE COLD.
A very decrementing mouseover there
Willis, a zero minus minus is a zero plus
That’s a minus minus zero.
Actually, 0– would be -1 in programming.
A lot of us have noticed that Joyce’s ground state is being sunshine.
What we forget is that if you’re not careful, a sun will burn you.
This is my favorite DOA comment ever OMG
Thank you, but personally, I don’t even think it’s the best DOA comment I have made for today’s strip.
I liked it better when below, I described Joyce’s comment as “A perfect cinnamon burn.”
*slow clap that evolves into applause*
Ok, does anyone have a medal or something? Because this comment wins on both metaphorical and humorous grounds.
I’m really enjoying this dynamic.
I’m not sure why he’s upset with her though? Last I remember they were friends. Is the zero minus not updated since their date or has something else happened that I don’t recall?
I’m pretty sure he hasn’t updated it since their date.
And even then he didn’t update the description at ALL, not even like a foonote about her hiring a goon to beat you up. JUST the rating and the original description.
Joe doesn’t update his list much, is my vibe. He puts down his notes and then forgets about them.
I mean…I guess it could be more flattering that he sees you in a negative light as a person than in a positive light as a peice of meat
It doesn’t have to be “flattering” to be better than being seen as a walking pair of boobs. Joyce prefers meanness that recognizes her basic humanity to “flattery” that does not. Most people do.
“Gods, you are SO ANNOYING!!”
“Hey, babe, NICE ass!”
Compare and contrast.
Oh wow that eyebrow isn’t even cartoonishly hovering over Joe’s head, it flat-out escaped.
No.
It got burned off.
Left eyebrow died on the way to his own planet.
Heh…it was 69 when I clicked on the comments.
Also burn.
… wow.
Perfect cinnamon bun.
You mean perfect cinnamon burn?
Panel 3 could be read as “…what do you think ‘thoughtful’ means, Joe?”
Huh. The donut is the same size in the first and last panels, but she looks like she took a bite in the last panel.
Shenanigans.
see that there that..comment. is joe acting resentful for having to think about a girl’s feelings
and then seeing that he had like exactly the opposite effect on joyce that he expected. like. she has an existence entirely outside of his understanding of her. like. joyce is ok with it because she earned that 0 minus. and it kind of just…cuts through all the bullshit like she’s cutting through a gordian knot
i love it
I love Joyce’s mic drop face in the last panel. Nothing more to see here, people, nothing more to be said.
And Joe would be even more devastated if he could see it.
Is Joyce’s “burns with truth” here something learned out of being restricted from all the stuff teens do, like general non-G-rated words, or direct insults?
I think it’s completely unintentional on her part. That’s why it burns.
Massively off topic here but I don’t have a Tumblr account to comment there… I’m one of those weirdos who has Sal Buscema as their favorite Spider-Man artist, so I loved that post about recreating his punching style in DOA.
Meanwhile, a few floors up from here:
“Sssh.”
“WhaMMMPH“
“I said SSSH.”
“What the hell is your problem?”
“There has been an awakening. Someone, somewhere, just got…dunked on. And it was the sickest dunk.”
“MMMMPH!”
“Get your hand off Billie’s mouth, Carla.”
“Just wait. I want to savor this.”
You’ve forced my hand. I now headcanon Carla as a Homestuck.
I mean yeah… sick burn.
That score also means he kind of despises her, right? Even though it’s clearly not an honest assessment.
He kinda needs to say that out loud.
Nah, it’s a “Do List”, not a friends list. He doesn’t want to sleep with her, no sexual interest, at all.
He obviously gets along with her, kind of? They seem to have talked more since the face-punching incident. We get glimpses of that here and there.
that ain’t a burn, I’m not “with” this comment section at all. she had an insight, and he was ready to get hit with some truth
That look in the last panel is the dawning realization that maybe he should be apologizing for creating the list in the first place, not just for individual ratings. That’s the part that seemingly hasn’t sunk in yet.
It’s also return fire for his little dig in panel 2.
Or maybe it’s the dawning realization that Joyce holds a special place in his feelings. I mean, he’s practically accepting her as an equal, which in japanese visual novel terms practically makes her the True End.
Yes, it was the truth.
Sometimes, the truth burns.
why not both?
“Burn” may not quite be the right word for it, but she still hit him with that truth right in the tender bits, where his feels are
That last panel looks more like a DreamWorks Face than an “I just got served” face.
I agree.
“Burns” are usually hurtful, and I don’t get why everything has to be hurtful. Sure, it would be funnier – but I can do with the mood this day’s comic conveys, at least for me. Empathy and understanding, and ultimately, Joyce seems to be the more mature person here, and that’s only gonna help Joe get the hint/s.
OK, so as one of the “burners”, I’ll do my best and try and explain better how I feel:
Now, a good burn, in my mind, is not actually about being hurtful (though I’ll grant you that they often can be). For it to be a good burn as opposed to just being mean, it has to reveal an uncomfortable truth about someone. This can be done hurtfully, of course, but it can also be polite and mild. It’s just that the truth in itself can hurt.
Indeed, I know a couple of people that has made it into an artform to politely tell someone with a sentence or two how they are being hypocritical. Other times, it’s as simple as taking that person’s own words and applying it to them. The latter in particular, when done right, is something I love two watch; as it has the added bonus that the target cannot possibly claim it was mean without having to consider if they were then being mean in the first place.
And so, what Joyce did here? It was friendly, it was polite, and it was revealing a truth to Joe that stopped him right in his tracks. And so, as I define burns, this was definitely one.
If you still don’t agree, at least I hope you now understand my position better.
I agree that a good burn should reveal an uncomfortable truth, but revealing an uncomfortable truth alone is not sufficient to qualify as a burn. I also agree that a burn need not be hurtful, but even the non-hurtful ones need… A ‘bite’ to them, sort of. There’s none of that here, not even an unintentional one.
Being reminded of just how sleazy that list was —that it reduced women to a number based on practically nothing but their physical attractiveness and maaaybe one or two other things, if he’s feeling “generous”— is not biting?
Wow! Way to tear out Joe’s heart an stomp on it, Joyce! Still, it is typical that she, in happy friendship, would casually make it clear to Joe what it was that he had done wrong, which all these women (and Danny) haven’t been able to make clear to him in their anger: The problem with what he did was the dehumanisation.
If they end up dating… It could either be really good r really bad for both of them.
I think that they will date for a while but they will both feel uncomfortable because romance is not what they’re about. I can even hear Joe muttering that “now I know what it’s like to kiss your sister!”
look how his FACE HARDENS OVER when he distances himself from the niceness of the thing he did, and then it falls away again, and then Joyce Joyces and it actually hits him, not stabs right through him but he actually hears what she’s saying and the silent space around what she’s saying that is full of what everyone else is saying.
You remeber how in primary school you had to make class rules and the teacher said to phrase them positively, so it’s not ‘Don’t run in the classroom’ but ‘walk in the classroom’ because then you can focus on proactively DOING a gud thing rather than getting punished for bad things.
DO gauge people as people. DO have impressions regarding their humanity.
Er, no, none of my schools ever did anything like that. :/ I think I first encountered the concept sometime this year…
This is the first time I have ever heard of that but it sounds like a good idea.
I’ve heard it as little kids don’t always understand the word no.
Unless someone volunteers for a frank assessment based on one particular set of skills. This includes taking your classes and getting a job directly or indirectly working for you. Whenever you judge someone you should take the time to look at them as a human beings.
Also the ability to interact with others without hurting them is sort of up for grabs is sort of a grey area. By that I mean the person could have a good reason to hurt the other person. When judging Rachel on her speech it is only fair to consider Ruth’s actions which hurt Rachel and her friends, its also fair to not consider those actions when you remember that she hurt most everyone in the room with that speech, when judging Mary on her driving Ruth to suicide we don’t need to analize why Mary feels justified trying to bully Ruth.
That’s quite an optimistic way to look at it but… yeah Joyce has a point. She might have been one of the first girls whom Joe saw as a person rather than a vagina on legs…
DAAAAAAAMN JOYCE
Sorry, folks, but that was not a burn. Joyce always, always, ALWAYS, tries to end things on a good note. Always tries to find something positive. Even after her Joyce is awesome like that.
Joe’s do-list ranks girls in order of his priority in banging them, based on appearance. Joyce went from a before the date to zero minus when Joe realized that he never even wanted to try again. Or at least, not until she was the only one left (I don’t think Joe would ever completely give up). However, Joe must have some respect for Joyce, as he did set aside a doughnut for her, the (possibly) only girl who crashed and burned him on a date.
…we need someone to finally post a guide to formatting links.
Here’s something I learned back when I was hand-coding HTML: always type your opening tag/closing tag FIRST, and then go back and put your content inside. Example:
First, write the tags:
<a href=””></a>
Then, fill them in:
<a href=”http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/02-everything-youve-ever-wanted/episcopalian/”>Joyce belongs in a hippie church!</a>
And if I haven’t screwed something up above, your posted comment will read like this:
Joyce belongs in a hippie church!
The closing-tags-first approach is especially useful with things that you tend to forget need closing tags, like <i></i> and <b></b>.
Let the ship rise again!
Kinda feel like Joyce wasn’t the only one to get an accidental burn in during that exchange. I think Joe was just trying to deflect away from his feelings in the second panel but the implication of ‘if I don’t keep you happy bad things will happen to me’ deflects straight into the baggage of Joyce beating Joe up.
Something to think about:
A number in Joe’s list is Joe’s opinion of how much he wants to hook up with the girl in question.
The only meaning of Joyce’s zero minus of which one can be certain is that Joe would never want to hook up with her. The reasons why he arrived at that number are totally opaque.
Maybe she concluded that zero-minus was him communicating their friendship was *definitely not* about sex.
Well, obviously. A zero minus on a Do-List sounds like a “never”.
A “never” would be not being on the list at all.
Ah, but if you then come back to the list later, having not seen that person around for a while, how do you remember if they aren’t on the list because you don’t want anything to do with them, or if it’s just because you didn’t get around to adding her yet?
Having her name on there along with the 0- is an effective way to record that, yes, they have been rated; and no, STAY AWAY.
Probably partly that, partly the face-punching
What she’s missing is that these lists often end up cyclical. So a 0- is actually a 10- in disguise.
Well additional context is that her rating was changed TO a zero minus because he then factored in his opinion of her character. Before that it was how much he wanted to bang.
Last panel: Joe was burned so much, he lost an eyebrow!
I don’t feel like this was a “burn” per say, tho it had the stopping effect of one for Joe. Joyce is neither that mean nor particularly prone to pettiness – and despite the tensions and squabbles they’ve had (or heck, maybe partly BECAUSE of it), she genuinely cares about Joe as a person, which is something else he isn’t used to. I think Joe is as much used to be written off as he does the writing.
His expression in the final panel strikes me as one more of uncomfortable epiphany than skepticism.
Joe, suddenly realizing.
I want that list, I want to know the criteria he’s using.
Oh and Joe lost an eyebrow, is that normal?
Consensus is that the eyebrow was burnt off. By Joyce’s burn.
Oh, Joyce. You need some standards, really.
I honestly fail to see how this comic presents Joyce as having no standards.
Quite so. I misunderstood and the comic has since corrected me.
I think in some ways Joe still thought this was about the rankings themselves instead of the way he treats women, and Joyce finally drove that “No, this is why” point home about as hard as possible. This donut thing has been more “I’m sorry I made a list” and less “I’m sorry I treated all of you as vaginas glued to a board”. Hence the look on his face when he realizes otherwise.
By “the look” you mean the look when he realizes he has special feelings only for Joyce out of the whole female population of the college?
if by ‘special feelings’ you mean ‘considers she might be a friend or an enemy or a fellow classmate or someone with a rich interesting life outside her interactionds with Joe’, then sure
I’m so totally shipping these two. Both have a cliche upbringing, and both are kinda step to the side of it now.
Panel #1: Joyce thanks Joe sincerely for a thoughtfull act, after his explanation for why he saved her a plain, a choice which she *had* been giving him a hard time about — Joyce switched gears from the previous strip to appreciate the act, even if plain wouldn’t be her first choice.
#2: Joe rejects her apology reflexively …
#4. Joe regrets his reflex & offers an apology to Joyce re his objectifyinh rating of her. With #2 this shows the only two things Joe sees re women: their sexual attractiveness to him — which he sincerely believes is something that they should and do care about — AND, do the yell/flash anger at him, anger that to him is always irrational & undeserved. And from Joe — so Joyce was on the wrong side of both Joe’s criteria re women.
And his apology for the zero minus is, from Joe, HUGE . He might have been expecting Joyce to be pleased.
On the other hand, he’d be baffled & infuriated if she’d yelled “F you & your F’ing ratings….”
#6: BUT Joyce opened a 3rd path, one Joe might not have ever seen before
#7 And Joe is … well, look at that single, raised, quizzical eyebrow. If joe were a dog (rather than a hound), his head would be cocked to the side “Huh: what was that? This seems important, but I don’t really get it.” Treat you like a … “human being” … ie, not just a sex doll that might yell for unintelligible reasons.
With Number 7, it could also be a, “What? Why would you think it’s how I see you as a person? We’re so close I can’t see myself with you in that way that’s why you get a 0”
Have an awkward and possibly slightly offensive question to ask, asking here because reasonably certain I won’t be lynched for it:
Is there a difference between transgender and transsexual? IIRC the latter is the older term of the former…
And since gender and sex are different (social presentation versus physical sex), why is transgender the term used for the group that, as far as I am aware, typically undergoes operations for those sexual characteristics? Is it simply because the term covers both those who undergo surgery and those who present as a separate gender? No bigotry here, just trying to put things in their proper boxes.
Trans person here. Transexual is an older, more medical sounding (and somewhat offensive) term. It tends to only include binary trans people (binary = always 100% female OR always 100% male) and leaves out people who don’t medically transition (get hormones, surgeries, etc) and/or people who are nonbinary. Hope that helped. That’s my understanding anyway. And thanks for asking.
They were originally the same term but as “transgender” came to expand to include people who don’t transition, “transsexual” fell out of use, so yes there are some people who have medically transitioned who have reclaimed it.
transgender includes anyone whose gender doesn’t match the gender they were assumed to be / assigned at birth. this holds true regardless of what they do or don’t do with their genitalia. also, using ‘transgender’ highlights ‘hey gender this person correctly’ instead of ‘hey think about this person’s sex’.
what the other folks have already said, plus for many trans folk ‘transsexual’ is associated with the history of the medical establishment making the way we are pathology. it also tends to be used far more by people who hate us and/or don’t know wtf they’re talking about/are using outdated information; this may be because of the aforementioned history with the psychiatric system, or it might simply be a result of the term falling somewhat out of use.
there’s also some bad blood there because a decent amount of self-labelled transsexual folks have tried to separate themselves from those of us who, for various reasons, are non-op, claiming that we’re fundamentally different groups and even that we’re holding them back.
Um, trying to put people in boxes never works out well…
Not trying to. Just trying to find the reason behind the terminology and why it is what it is.
Many thanks for the responses, things make sense.
I’ve accepted that challenge before. It’s very hard to do so and be a good person to all. Well, all those that are good people, at least.
Willis, please, stop. I don’t want to ship Joe and Joyce. Please don’t make me.
Just give in, it’s going to happen so you may as well just go with it
Daaaamn am I gonna have to testify because I witnessed that MURDER
At least make sure you get to finish your soup first.
Trust Joyce to see the positive in a negative.
That’s why I think Jo-Jo is still a possibility, because she sees the positive, because she doesn’t write anyone off (well most anyway) so I think if she sees real, positive change in Joe she might be willing to try another date with him
LMAOUIP Let’s not go nuts, PR.
I read comic 001 years ago and didn’t come back until Aug 9th, 2017. I missed a lot. Glad I caught up.
Welcome back!
Joe now has the perfect opportunity to ask Joyce if she’d like to go get a donut (with sprinkles!)
This is what we call a fraught option in the biz.
Joe should go for it.