And in fairness to Joyce, her Moral Shame has had to be shifted throughout her college experience due to seeing the real-world impacts her rigid morality was having (e.g. Becky). Her Sexual Shame has largely gotten reinforced.
Yeah, Joyce is still re-examining what the axis of Moral is supposed to be, especially when you consider that to her, “breaking up the couple that shouldn’t be together because this is True Love” probably does count as a moral option. But having to examine that this might be less “true love” and more “I want that weenus” miiiiiiiiiight carry some additional weight.
She’s referenced Becky marrying a girl a couple times (mentioning “find(ing) her a wife” in the strip where she’s panicking and trying to think of ways to make up for being homophobic in the past, saying “you still should wait until marriage for hanky-panky” to her) so I think it’s safe to say she’s supportive of two folks with the same ding-dong situation getting married. 😛
Also, I know a lot of folks are expecting Joyce to freak out when someone inevitably brings Trans Stuff up with her, but I’m kind of crossing my fingers for her to at least be vaguely aware of it? She’s been to a LGBT group meeting before, and she’s in a gender studies class, so I think it’s plausible that she’s come across some information. It could just be wishful thinking, though.
Also going back to the end days of Shortpacked reminded me that Pat Lee ended up working there right before the Invasion, and may have been consumed by the Soggy tide. Good times.
You know, considering how repressed Joyce is, I’d actually be fascinated to see what kind of smut she would draw. Hopefully some high quality butts, the world(and definitely myself) can use some more drawing of butts in our lives.
If I’m remembering correctly, she is aware it’s a thing, at least one that Sarah does? But I’m certain if she knows it’s only through the lens of Sinful Sinful Premarital Sexuality, which of course Joyce as a Good Christian Woman is immune to. And then pile on the Ryan PTSD she may still be experiencing in that theater, and oof.
“My sexual shame cannot be exploited because I have no sexual shame because I am Pure. But, on an unrelated note, maybe I shouldn’t be pursuing Jacob, which I am definitely not doing for sexual reasons.”
While division by zero is undefined in the vast majority of mathematical systems, there are a few for which it is defined and has actual meaningful results.
1 / a ridiculously small number = a ridiculously huge number. However, at 0, 1/x has no value – not zero, not infinity, NO VALUE. It’s called an ‘asymptote’. 1/0 does not exist.
/0 is simply a lexicographic error, like “/purple”. there is no number, in any coherent system, such that 0*X = 1, and such an X is necessary to the definition of what it means to “divide”
I think she means ‘one cannot’ as in ‘a person cannot,’ and also that she has zero moral nor sexual shame, so neither can be any portion of what changed her mind?
(although obviously she is just claiming she’s done/thought nothing she’s ashamed of (thus the only thinking about marriage))
Like others have said, it’s “one cannot” not “one cannot be”. Also, Dorothy is trying to compare Joyce’s moral shame to her sexual shame, which we can think of as a fraction, moral shame/sexual shame, but Joyce is saying that she has no sexual shame, i.e sexual shame=0, hence, she can’t divide by zero.
They had 4 kids because they were kinky bastards behind closed doors. Joyce’s shame has nothing to do with faith in any of Willis’ universes. She is just a self hating horny mess.
I mean, it does though? Joyce’s shame is directly tied into her education and development as a child, in which she was told that God was watching and that to think, let alone do anything “dirty” like that was an insult to God. It has absolutely everything to do with faith, it didn’t exactly come out of a void.
I think it’s possibly both and hard to disentangle one from the other, given the whole ‘Joyce is autobiographical’ and author comments on Bring Back It’s Walky. But it’s really hard to deny that a culture that teaches shame, especially to the people it reads as female, has a really big impact, especially on someone who appears to have internalized that shame so fully she may not be able to separate it from her faith.
If I understand correctly Joyce’s parents aren’t that religious in the walkyverse, and Joyce is still a yandere even if you replace her religious believes with alien conspiracy theories. She is just that way because of some sort of shame to her own body.
No, they still were. They just weren’t outright called fundamentalists or had their religion mentioned much, if at all. Everyone in early Walkyverse was religious, but again, it wasn’t really pointed out because the assumption was that everyone had faith in the same higher being. Danny, Mary, and Sal were all a part of the same fundie church growing up and were raised with the same beliefs. It wasn’t really until later Roomies! comics that the idea of not being religious was mentioned, let alone losing faith in God and religion. Add to the fact that Willis didn’t start examining his faith and his upbringing until later after the Walkyverse had already been established for several years, so you don’t have the same kind of reflection that you see in DoA today.
For everyone giving Walky shit over the past week for sassing Joyce, I present to you exhibit A: Joyce maybe learning something. Now if she actually sticks with learning the lesson, things will be great. Joyce’s lack of moral shame is a subject for another day, and sassing her with sexual shame may not have been the best solution but it did the job I guess. Now question, how will Jacob react if Joyce suddenly begins avoiding him?
Well, except for the many interactions he’s had with her where he’s gone out of his way to be supportive of her.
There’s a lot of equivocation I’m noticing where Walky calling out Joyce on having a sex drive is being seen as him being an asshole, but we’ve seen Walky do a lot of things to go to bat for Joyce before. All he’s doing here is needling Joyce about something which is obviously true and which Joyce herself is only mildly annoyed by. It’s him pointing out what she’s doing in a way that’s more likely to strike a nerve than, well, Dorothy’s kind of empty moralizing.
(That being said, there’s also a lot of people taking up arms and saying that Joyce has been uniformly nasty to Walky, which also isn’t true; the nastiest thing she’s done is insist that Dorothy can do better, something that Walky himself agrees with. Joyce and Walky might be friends who snipe at each other quite a bit, but they are pretty decidedly friends.)
This^. I’d compare Joyce and Walky’s snipping at each other to friends arguing because they have different values and views, their interactions aren’t always kind, but neither one has expressed any hate of the other. And they do seem to be friends at best, frenemies at worst. The worst that can be said of either in regards to each other is that they aren’t always fair to each other.
Joyce is changing and trying to do better, which Walky has surely noticed even if he doesn’t give her as much credit as she deserves at times. And while Walky is in a slump from breaking up with Dorothy, he is learning some valuable lessons and trying to do better, again even if Joyce doesn’t want to admit it. They’re both pretty dumb at times, but if they were wise they wouldn’t be main characters in this comic.
The way I’ve always seen it is like they’re siblings. They’ll go out of their way to be supportive but at the same time they’ll needle each other and stuff just to annoy the other person.
1) Walky was giving Joyce shit for BEING HORNY, not for trying to break up someone’s relationship
2) Joyce has not actually learned anything. She’s backing down because she’s ashamed of her sexuality, not because she’s learned what was actually wrong with what she was doing
I can completely forgive him for doing it. He only JUST got dumped and he’s understandably crabby. It’s STILL a shitty thing to do.
And yes, it’s still crappy even if they normally have an antagonistic friendship. I have many that are like that, but this isn’t something he deserves praise for
Technically, I’d say he was giving her shit for being in denial about being horny, which is subtly different. Wouldn’t have worked otherwise.
Someone else suggested that she’s thinking of backing down she’s realized that her motivations don’t match the romantic story she’s been telling herself – if she’s not acting out of Godly True Love, but simple lust, then she’s not the romantic heroine overcoming obstacles in their love story, but the Other Woman trying to break up the couple in their love story.
If those are actually the lines she’s thinking along, then Walky may have actually put a useful crack in the facade – not really intentionally of course.
Even if not, I don’t see much worse about this than much of the rest of their relationship, on either side. Not something to praise, but it seems to work for them.
man, that kinda short-term solution mindset isn’t gonna solve anything. It’ll be good for the situation at hand but Joyce needs to actually become a better person, and that means understanding and addressing why the issue’s bad and extremely manipulative and horrible in the first place and not just being embarrassed about sex
Trying to get someone interested in you is human, not bad, extremely manipulative and horrible. You can do horrible things trying to get someone interested in you, but Joyce hasn’t done any of those things.
I’ve basically accepted there’s some deep divide here we’re not going to easily cross. Not sure where it comes from, but there’s some basic axiom that’s not shared.
I doubt there’s any way to reason through this. We’re talking from different principles.
In our society, across many generations, there has been a standard way to signal that you are not available. You wear a ring on your left hand like the one I’m wearing now. Jacob isn’t wearing a wedding ring. He isn’t wearing an engagement ring. He isn’t wearing a freaking friendship ring. He’s dated a girl for a couple of weeks and had some conversations about what’s important to them. He also feels free to flirt with Joyce. Until Jacob says he’s taken he isn’t taken. People who would object to Joyce imposing her moral concepts on them should stop trying to impose their moral concepts on her.
Baby steps, I know people want to Joyce to become a better person, but lets face it, she has had over 15 years of “education” that she has to get over and considering how far she has come (Being a couple months in terms of how much time has gone by) and a massive setback she had, she isn’t doing badly. If Dorothy goes the wrong way with this, she could make things worse…..
I think it’s touching upon an aspect of Dorothy’s character that is getting more and more dominant; she needs to have control over the situation. It’s not enough for the results; they have to happen for the right reasons, and those reasons have to be Moral Superiority instead of having a moment to think about something and realizing you might be wrong.
…and now I’m flashing back to Ruth’s little diatribe to Danny in the original timeline. “The big lessons are supposed to be humbling.”
Joyce DIDN’T think for a moment and realize she might be wrong to end a relationship, she doesn’t want to face up that Jacob makes her horny. That’s what Dorothy is saying here.
As far as Joyce is concerned, Raidah is a Bad Person. Her actions aren’t bad so long as she’s doing it for good reasons. Appealing to her premise on moral grounds isn’t going to work, because as long as Raidah deserves it, it’s a good act. (That doesn’t mean her analysis is right, obviously, but it’s the moral framework she’s working from.)
Walky pointing out her sexual issues made her ask if she was, in fact, doing it for the right reasons. Dorothy’s attempt to challenge the moral framework isn’t nearly as convincing Joyce that her premises might be flawed.
Is she though?
If she was really just avoiding that confrontation, she’d just stay in denial and keep plowing ahead with the plan – leading to marriage of course. And perhaps some chaste kisses and side-hugs before then.
If she is changing the plan based on Walky’s comments, then to some extent she’s acknowledging it.
I’d say yes because she’s also refusing to acknowledge that’s the reason why she won’t continue out loud (“It’s just not me…”).
Even if she did acknowledge it though, she can still avoid it. The point of not pursuing Jacob anymore is because she doesn’t want to confront what that means (that she really really wants to bang Jacob). Sort of kicking the can down the road.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good” is a true and valid statement, and I agree that Dorothy being too aggressive here could derail Joyce making the good choices in the short term, but I agree with Sam and Roger as well that it’s a topic that should be broached down the line with Joyce, and sooner rather than later.
That’s fair sdrainbow. It isn’t that I don’t want Dorothy to help Joyce…. despite myself, but I am worried if she and Dorothy overthink this… well it is as you said. Derail her. Dorothy’s track record with people isn’t exactly great… but I also have to admit, the only way she is going to get better with people is practice.
my man a little confused but she got spirit. I’m glad she’s entertaining second thoughts about this terrible venture but the central issue’s still there so nothing’s really being solved. Which sucks. But maybe some actual comeuppance would be good for all parties involved.
Joyce: Please ignore the fact that my mind whiteboard is only spotless because I took off all the dingdongs and drew them on everyone else’s whiteboards instead.
I think Dorothy would actually look more kindly on that one, seeing as it was them breaking into Becky’s own house to get her documents.
Now, if they had finished by burning the bad memories to the ground, FMA-style, that might be a different story. But it would have been cool. A spectacularly bad idea, probably, but cool.
Yep! Breaking into your own house to get proof of your identity while your abusive ex-parent is in jail is a-okay in Dotty’s book. Lawful is less important to her than Good, after all.
I’m pretty sure that what Becky did was not illegal. After all, it was a house that she had regular access to as her home, and that access had not been specifically revoked. What she removed was her own stuff, and fully within her rights to take. In fact, denying her access to them could be considered a crime in itself.
If they’d been caught and it came before a judge, I find it hard to see how it could have resulted in any adverse judgment.
Not a legal expert, but since Becky’s 18, I’m pretty sure the law treats her as a tenant. So her access to her home COULD be revoked, but Toedad would have had to give her whatever notice is required in their state. A friend of mine was in a similar (but less-escalated) situation, and that’s what she was told by the police she called when her parents refused to let her leave the house.
Even then you’d have rights to get some stuff from the house – documentation and paperwork, probably personal items (with some debate over which things were actually hers and which still counted as parental property.
Becky’s problem was more that local authorities weren’t likely be sympathetic and she didn’t have the resources to make the legal case. Or for that matter couldn’t prove she was the tenant without having the paperwork she was looking for in the house. Catch-22.
Ignoring all the very interesting conversation points that this strip brings, which I’m sure will be adequately explored by many capable individuals, I would just like to say:
Look at panel 5 Joyce face. How friggin cute!
LIES! LIES!!!! Joyce, your mind is full of the suppressed desire for intimacy, making love, male abs and whatever you saw when you drew those ding dongs in white boards. If you only do good things because of personal shame and not because of conscience, then you aren’t a true woman of faith. Even Mary who is a bigot embraces her sexuality with her bigot boyfriend (possibly).
How so?
She’s worried, and she’s vocal about it. Which is a good thing, in a friend. In my opinion.
But I do want to know what you mean, my experiences in friends might be different to yours.
I love the symbolism of Joyce undoing her ponytail. As I recall, the first time we saw her with her hair up was when she put on a hoodie to try and resemble Amber. She also had it up when she went to church with Jacob, and when she went to the gym to show off in front of Jacob. Possibly it’s a coincidence that Raidah also had her hair up just now (in comic time), but…
Anyhow, hair-up seems to indicate that Joyce is in man-hunting mode, so her letting it down here suggests that she might actually mean what she says.
To her defense, she didn’t know Jacob was in the gym that morning and hadn’t planned to be there in the first place, she had the hair up because she was gonna go out and run with Dorothy and she suggested the basement gym.
But the other times, yes, I like that too. It’s her battle mode and winning a man is her war xD
Given that she was unconsciously flirting with Jacob back when she thought she was landing him for Sarah, she will likely return to flirting with him (consciously or not) the second she sees him again.
I mean honestly, Joyce decides to intentionally break up a couple, Dorothy says “Dude, that’s ethically dodgy, and I’d have expected you to know that”, and Dorothy’s the manipulative one? I’m not even sure what you think Dorothy’s endgame is here.
Dorothy’s endgame is to become president, and as far as I can tell, this invalidates everything she does.
She can’t break up with someone who doesn’t really respect her goals.
She can’t hook up with someone who does.
And then she definitely can’t prioritize her school over him.
Even when she is physically and emotionally exhausted, she can’t postpone talking to a friend who is doing something wrong.
And when she does talk to them, she can’t express concern whether they are actually doing the right thing, or hurting themselves.
Joyce might be readily forgiven for things like trying to ruin other people’s relationships, because these manipulations are the actions of a good girl only looking for love. But for Dorothy these things are confirmation of selfish, manipulative, controlling nature, because we already know she has a selfish, manipulative, controlling nature. Because she has enough self-worth to think she could make something special of herself, and actually tries to do so.
I mean, hopefully that’s not where all her critics are coming from, but I really have no other explanation for why there is so much condemnation for every little or normal thing she does.
Seriously, one of the biggest barriers to Dorothy becoming president is that she’s too nice and well intentioned to excel in the amoral shit heap that is American politics.
No, it runs on fear of consequences. They believe their god is always watching them, and if they do something bad they’re going to pay for it. Morals is what you’d do if you could get away with everything, scot-free.
eh, as with joyce’s conduct, the etic and the emic differ considerably. the sufferers of the abrahamic religions aren’t incapable of human decency, they’re just incapable of *acknowledging* human decency.
bad priorities, we shouldn’t be ashamed of our sexuality, but we SHOULD be ashamed of amoral behavior like, oh, tearing apart a happy and stable couple so you can take one of them for yourself.
At first I thought Jacob would be good for Joyce with how understanding he is and he would be a good experience after all that had happened to her with Ryan and Ethan, but now I’m not so sure that Joyce will be good for Jacob.
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Figures this’d be the thing that gets her to stop.
“The more things change” is like Joyce’s M.O. or something I swear.
Now I wanna make a playlist for DoA characters. And put Bon Jovi on Joyce’s. Thanks, Neen. :p
Joyce and Walky need each other
Like a dog needs a rabies shot
[Wasn’t being sarcastic, in case [somehow] that was implied. I really feel this way about them]
But as friends, or a romantic couple?
In this version of reality, I mean. 🙂
As their particular version of harassing each other and pretending not to be friends.
The way they argue makes me think they’ll end up together though.
J&W transcends realities.
Her whiteboard is also decorated by ding-dongs, lest we forget the bandit.
And in fairness to Joyce, her Moral Shame has had to be shifted throughout her college experience due to seeing the real-world impacts her rigid morality was having (e.g. Becky). Her Sexual Shame has largely gotten reinforced.
Yeah, Joyce is still re-examining what the axis of Moral is supposed to be, especially when you consider that to her, “breaking up the couple that shouldn’t be together because this is True Love” probably does count as a moral option. But having to examine that this might be less “true love” and more “I want that weenus” miiiiiiiiiight carry some additional weight.
Jacob does have AMAZING elbows.
But it’s okay, because this time they’re married ding-dongs! That’s why they’re wearing little tuxes and veils.
If she’s okay with ding-dongs getting married, and with girl ding-dongs, maybe she’s gone further with accepting the LGBT community than we thought!
She’s referenced Becky marrying a girl a couple times (mentioning “find(ing) her a wife” in the strip where she’s panicking and trying to think of ways to make up for being homophobic in the past, saying “you still should wait until marriage for hanky-panky” to her) so I think it’s safe to say she’s supportive of two folks with the same ding-dong situation getting married. 😛
Also, I know a lot of folks are expecting Joyce to freak out when someone inevitably brings Trans Stuff up with her, but I’m kind of crossing my fingers for her to at least be vaguely aware of it? She’s been to a LGBT group meeting before, and she’s in a gender studies class, so I think it’s plausible that she’s come across some information. It could just be wishful thinking, though.
Maybe. I think it would be kind of anti-climatic for her to just be cool when she finally learns about Jocelyne.
If theres drawings on the whiteboard is it really spotless?
Yep totally spotless, totally doesn’t have the image of a dozen well detailed wenises edged in there with permanent marker.
Its spelled “weenus”
And as a second-declension masculine noun, the plural is “weeni”.
None of the married families have dogs.
So the REAL Whiteboard Ding-Dong Bandit is Jacob, because he’s the one covering Joyce’s mental board with smutty thoughts.
Smutty thoughts of his ding dong.
…Fundie childhoods really screw you up, don’t they?
yeah, you get a shame-filled adolescence and then twenty years down the line you end up peddling cartoon smut on the internet
Are we still talking about Joyce?
we’re not NOT talking about joyce
I hereby declare it my personal headcanon that Walkyverse Joyce is now a smut-peddler.
“Head Alien Performs a Sex”
(writing smutty hatefiction about your vanquished foes is the best way to spit on their memory)
I mean, it pays whatever bills SEMME/You Saved The World A Lot pensions don’t cover.
Assuming the whole family isn’t now fighting Soggies, of course. They may rule.
Wonder if the Colorado cast ever met back up with Dina? Guessing probably, if she and Becky hooked up there as well.
Also going back to the end days of Shortpacked reminded me that Pat Lee ended up working there right before the Invasion, and may have been consumed by the Soggy tide. Good times.
You know, considering how repressed Joyce is, I’d actually be fascinated to see what kind of smut she would draw. Hopefully some high quality butts, the world(and definitely myself) can use some more drawing of butts in our lives.
Canonically, in this universe, she draws highly detailed dicks…
Oh god, the day Joyce discovers masturbation her world is going to spin out of control.
If I’m remembering correctly, she is aware it’s a thing, at least one that Sarah does? But I’m certain if she knows it’s only through the lens of Sinful Sinful Premarital Sexuality, which of course Joyce as a Good Christian Woman is immune to. And then pile on the Ryan PTSD she may still be experiencing in that theater, and oof.
We REALLY need to get Joyce some help.
She’s aware of it, but she’s afraid that her grandmother will look down from heaven and see her doing it, so she doesn’t.
>.< joyce is Trying.
Yes, extremely so.
did
joyce did you just call your mind zero
Wait what’s the “1 cannot be divided by 0” supposed to mean?
“My sexual shame cannot be exploited because I have no sexual shame because I am Pure. But, on an unrelated note, maybe I shouldn’t be pursuing Jacob, which I am definitely not doing for sexual reasons.”
I took it as Joyce saying she has no ‘sexual’ anything to be shamed over.
Divide anything by zero will always and exclusively be zero.
NO. Multiply anything by zero and you get zero. Division by zero is undefined, impossible, or an error.
Sorry. Inadvertent capitalisation, unintended stridency.
While division by zero is undefined in the vast majority of mathematical systems, there are a few for which it is defined and has actual meaningful results.
1/0 = 0
1/0×0 = 0×0
1
/0×0= 01 = 0
1 / a ridiculously small number = a ridiculously huge number. However, at 0, 1/x has no value – not zero, not infinity, NO VALUE. It’s called an ‘asymptote’. 1/0 does not exist.
/0 is simply a lexicographic error, like “/purple”. there is no number, in any coherent system, such that 0*X = 1, and such an X is necessary to the definition of what it means to “divide”
I think she means ‘one cannot’ as in ‘a person cannot,’ and also that she has zero moral nor sexual shame, so neither can be any portion of what changed her mind?
(although obviously she is just claiming she’s done/thought nothing she’s ashamed of (thus the only thinking about marriage))
aka what everyone else typed faster than me
Like others have said, it’s “one cannot” not “one cannot be”. Also, Dorothy is trying to compare Joyce’s moral shame to her sexual shame, which we can think of as a fraction, moral shame/sexual shame, but Joyce is saying that she has no sexual shame, i.e sexual shame=0, hence, she can’t divide by zero.
There’s a book title.
Today’s strip is brought to you by Daz3D. For when your porn needs to cross the Uncanny Valley.
*And the P.A. speakers are playing The Fixx’ “Saved By Zero”*
Hm. Can Joyce be duplicated in Victoria?
Could probably get close.
The real question is, where are the sweater-vest packs?
+1
Yeah about that marriage whiteboard… usually there’s ding-dongs involved so…
But when it’s within the bonds of marriage it’s pure and good and God approved.
The Browns didn’t have four kids because they prayed really hard.
They had 4 kids because they were kinky bastards behind closed doors. Joyce’s shame has nothing to do with faith in any of Willis’ universes. She is just a self hating horny mess.
I mean, it does though? Joyce’s shame is directly tied into her education and development as a child, in which she was told that God was watching and that to think, let alone do anything “dirty” like that was an insult to God. It has absolutely everything to do with faith, it didn’t exactly come out of a void.
I think it’s possibly both and hard to disentangle one from the other, given the whole ‘Joyce is autobiographical’ and author comments on Bring Back It’s Walky. But it’s really hard to deny that a culture that teaches shame, especially to the people it reads as female, has a really big impact, especially on someone who appears to have internalized that shame so fully she may not be able to separate it from her faith.
If I understand correctly Joyce’s parents aren’t that religious in the walkyverse, and Joyce is still a yandere even if you replace her religious believes with alien conspiracy theories. She is just that way because of some sort of shame to her own body.
No, they still were. They just weren’t outright called fundamentalists or had their religion mentioned much, if at all. Everyone in early Walkyverse was religious, but again, it wasn’t really pointed out because the assumption was that everyone had faith in the same higher being. Danny, Mary, and Sal were all a part of the same fundie church growing up and were raised with the same beliefs. It wasn’t really until later Roomies! comics that the idea of not being religious was mentioned, let alone losing faith in God and religion. Add to the fact that Willis didn’t start examining his faith and his upbringing until later after the Walkyverse had already been established for several years, so you don’t have the same kind of reflection that you see in DoA today.
For everyone giving Walky shit over the past week for sassing Joyce, I present to you exhibit A: Joyce maybe learning something. Now if she actually sticks with learning the lesson, things will be great. Joyce’s lack of moral shame is a subject for another day, and sassing her with sexual shame may not have been the best solution but it did the job I guess. Now question, how will Jacob react if Joyce suddenly begins avoiding him?
Just because the outcome was positive, doesn’t really mean that Walky gets to avoid scrutiny for his actions.
You mean the type of actions and interactions he’s always had with Joyce?
Well, except for the many interactions he’s had with her where he’s gone out of his way to be supportive of her.
There’s a lot of equivocation I’m noticing where Walky calling out Joyce on having a sex drive is being seen as him being an asshole, but we’ve seen Walky do a lot of things to go to bat for Joyce before. All he’s doing here is needling Joyce about something which is obviously true and which Joyce herself is only mildly annoyed by. It’s him pointing out what she’s doing in a way that’s more likely to strike a nerve than, well, Dorothy’s kind of empty moralizing.
(That being said, there’s also a lot of people taking up arms and saying that Joyce has been uniformly nasty to Walky, which also isn’t true; the nastiest thing she’s done is insist that Dorothy can do better, something that Walky himself agrees with. Joyce and Walky might be friends who snipe at each other quite a bit, but they are pretty decidedly friends.)
This^. I’d compare Joyce and Walky’s snipping at each other to friends arguing because they have different values and views, their interactions aren’t always kind, but neither one has expressed any hate of the other. And they do seem to be friends at best, frenemies at worst. The worst that can be said of either in regards to each other is that they aren’t always fair to each other.
Joyce is changing and trying to do better, which Walky has surely noticed even if he doesn’t give her as much credit as she deserves at times. And while Walky is in a slump from breaking up with Dorothy, he is learning some valuable lessons and trying to do better, again even if Joyce doesn’t want to admit it. They’re both pretty dumb at times, but if they were wise they wouldn’t be main characters in this comic.
The interesting thing is that Walky was sniping with Joyce on automatic because his real attention was on his text conversation with Amber.
I’ll just point out that Walky’s needling of Joyce, as described, is not so very far from what many people have treated as Mike’s SOP for a long time.
The way I’ve always seen it is like they’re siblings. They’ll go out of their way to be supportive but at the same time they’ll needle each other and stuff just to annoy the other person.
1) Walky was giving Joyce shit for BEING HORNY, not for trying to break up someone’s relationship
2) Joyce has not actually learned anything. She’s backing down because she’s ashamed of her sexuality, not because she’s learned what was actually wrong with what she was doing
I can completely forgive him for doing it. He only JUST got dumped and he’s understandably crabby. It’s STILL a shitty thing to do.
And yes, it’s still crappy even if they normally have an antagonistic friendship. I have many that are like that, but this isn’t something he deserves praise for
Technically, I’d say he was giving her shit for being in denial about being horny, which is subtly different. Wouldn’t have worked otherwise.
Someone else suggested that she’s thinking of backing down she’s realized that her motivations don’t match the romantic story she’s been telling herself – if she’s not acting out of Godly True Love, but simple lust, then she’s not the romantic heroine overcoming obstacles in their love story, but the Other Woman trying to break up the couple in their love story.
If those are actually the lines she’s thinking along, then Walky may have actually put a useful crack in the facade – not really intentionally of course.
Even if not, I don’t see much worse about this than much of the rest of their relationship, on either side. Not something to praise, but it seems to work for them.
Dorothy, Joyce is trying to do the right thing (finally) don’t turd this up on questions about the why of it. Just be happy this is happening.
man, that kinda short-term solution mindset isn’t gonna solve anything. It’ll be good for the situation at hand but Joyce needs to actually become a better person, and that means understanding and addressing why the issue’s bad and extremely manipulative and horrible in the first place and not just being embarrassed about sex
I agree! It doesn’t really solve the underlying issue that caused the situation in the first place.
Trying to get someone interested in you is human, not bad, extremely manipulative and horrible. You can do horrible things trying to get someone interested in you, but Joyce hasn’t done any of those things.
Just because something is “human” doesn’t make it not bad.
Pursuing someone is not bad.
Disrespecting Jacob’s boundaries (his monogamy) is bad.
How do you people still not have this figured out?
I’ve basically accepted there’s some deep divide here we’re not going to easily cross. Not sure where it comes from, but there’s some basic axiom that’s not shared.
I doubt there’s any way to reason through this. We’re talking from different principles.
In our society, across many generations, there has been a standard way to signal that you are not available. You wear a ring on your left hand like the one I’m wearing now. Jacob isn’t wearing a wedding ring. He isn’t wearing an engagement ring. He isn’t wearing a freaking friendship ring. He’s dated a girl for a couple of weeks and had some conversations about what’s important to them. He also feels free to flirt with Joyce. Until Jacob says he’s taken he isn’t taken. People who would object to Joyce imposing her moral concepts on them should stop trying to impose their moral concepts on her.
Like I said. A deep divide.
Baby steps, I know people want to Joyce to become a better person, but lets face it, she has had over 15 years of “education” that she has to get over and considering how far she has come (Being a couple months in terms of how much time has gone by) and a massive setback she had, she isn’t doing badly. If Dorothy goes the wrong way with this, she could make things worse…..
I think it’s touching upon an aspect of Dorothy’s character that is getting more and more dominant; she needs to have control over the situation. It’s not enough for the results; they have to happen for the right reasons, and those reasons have to be Moral Superiority instead of having a moment to think about something and realizing you might be wrong.
…and now I’m flashing back to Ruth’s little diatribe to Danny in the original timeline. “The big lessons are supposed to be humbling.”
Joyce DIDN’T think for a moment and realize she might be wrong to end a relationship, she doesn’t want to face up that Jacob makes her horny. That’s what Dorothy is saying here.
Because Joyce doesn’t think it’s wrong. I mean, she lays it out right here.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/several/
As far as Joyce is concerned, Raidah is a Bad Person. Her actions aren’t bad so long as she’s doing it for good reasons. Appealing to her premise on moral grounds isn’t going to work, because as long as Raidah deserves it, it’s a good act. (That doesn’t mean her analysis is right, obviously, but it’s the moral framework she’s working from.)
Walky pointing out her sexual issues made her ask if she was, in fact, doing it for the right reasons. Dorothy’s attempt to challenge the moral framework isn’t nearly as convincing Joyce that her premises might be flawed.
But Joyce isn’t wondering whether she’s doing something for the right reasons, she’s just trying to avoid confronting her sexuality.
Is she though?
If she was really just avoiding that confrontation, she’d just stay in denial and keep plowing ahead with the plan – leading to marriage of course. And perhaps some chaste kisses and side-hugs before then.
If she is changing the plan based on Walky’s comments, then to some extent she’s acknowledging it.
I’d say yes because she’s also refusing to acknowledge that’s the reason why she won’t continue out loud (“It’s just not me…”).
Even if she did acknowledge it though, she can still avoid it. The point of not pursuing Jacob anymore is because she doesn’t want to confront what that means (that she really really wants to bang Jacob). Sort of kicking the can down the road.
“The perfect is the enemy of the good” is a true and valid statement, and I agree that Dorothy being too aggressive here could derail Joyce making the good choices in the short term, but I agree with Sam and Roger as well that it’s a topic that should be broached down the line with Joyce, and sooner rather than later.
That’s fair sdrainbow. It isn’t that I don’t want Dorothy to help Joyce…. despite myself, but I am worried if she and Dorothy overthink this… well it is as you said. Derail her. Dorothy’s track record with people isn’t exactly great… but I also have to admit, the only way she is going to get better with people is practice.
my man a little confused but she got spirit. I’m glad she’s entertaining second thoughts about this terrible venture but the central issue’s still there so nothing’s really being solved. Which sucks. But maybe some actual comeuppance would be good for all parties involved.
Joyce: Please ignore the fact that my mind whiteboard is only spotless because I took off all the dingdongs and drew them on everyone else’s whiteboards instead.
I’m not sure what drawing dingdongs on someone else’s whiteboard means in the context of this metaphor but it worries me nonetheless
Projecting all the thoughts into everyone else’s minds. Amber gets more fanfiction ideas.
And this is a bad thing?
man panel one Walky is me all the time
Ooh, wait til Dorothy finds out Joyce broke into a house!
I think Dorothy would actually look more kindly on that one, seeing as it was them breaking into Becky’s own house to get her documents.
Now, if they had finished by burning the bad memories to the ground, FMA-style, that might be a different story. But it would have been cool. A spectacularly bad idea, probably, but cool.
Dorothy already knows
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/awesome-2/
Yep! Breaking into your own house to get proof of your identity while your abusive ex-parent is in jail is a-okay in Dotty’s book. Lawful is less important to her than Good, after all.
I’m pretty sure that what Becky did was not illegal. After all, it was a house that she had regular access to as her home, and that access had not been specifically revoked. What she removed was her own stuff, and fully within her rights to take. In fact, denying her access to them could be considered a crime in itself.
If they’d been caught and it came before a judge, I find it hard to see how it could have resulted in any adverse judgment.
Not a legal expert, but since Becky’s 18, I’m pretty sure the law treats her as a tenant. So her access to her home COULD be revoked, but Toedad would have had to give her whatever notice is required in their state. A friend of mine was in a similar (but less-escalated) situation, and that’s what she was told by the police she called when her parents refused to let her leave the house.
Even then you’d have rights to get some stuff from the house – documentation and paperwork, probably personal items (with some debate over which things were actually hers and which still counted as parental property.
Becky’s problem was more that local authorities weren’t likely be sympathetic and she didn’t have the resources to make the legal case. Or for that matter couldn’t prove she was the tenant without having the paperwork she was looking for in the house. Catch-22.
And she’ll do anything to maintain that self-image.
Ignoring all the very interesting conversation points that this strip brings, which I’m sure will be adequately explored by many capable individuals, I would just like to say:
Look at panel 5 Joyce face. How friggin cute!
Yeah. I like self-confident Joyce.
Of course her moral shame is harder to exploit than her sexual shame! She’s still has a fundamentalist Christian mindset after all.
mergh dorothy, we all want you to be “good” but honestly rn you still suck. Don’t be relieved >:(
“Marriage”
“Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togefer today. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam…”
Is that part of the Wuv. Twu wuv. speach?
Joyce Brown you are one hell of a piece of work.
“My mind is a spotless whiteboard decorated only with drawings of marriage.” Yeah, I’m gonna have to call bullshit on that one.
Also, that line would be great for the next book title.
9 more strips until Joyce reaches 1000 appearances on DoA. Hoping for the Joyciest of reacts to show up.
Wow, really?? That’s awesome
LIES! LIES!!!! Joyce, your mind is full of the suppressed desire for intimacy, making love, male abs and whatever you saw when you drew those ding dongs in white boards. If you only do good things because of personal shame and not because of conscience, then you aren’t a true woman of faith. Even Mary who is a bigot embraces her sexuality with her bigot boyfriend (possibly).
It’s not a sin if you use a strap-on.
Amen.
…. anyone else notice that Joyce waited until Walky was GONE before bragging about how her mind was blank?
its only 10:30 over here why the hell are all of you awake?!
Time zones.
It’s 12:31 over here and the solar probe doesn’t launch for another 3 hours.
Insomnia, caffeine, different time zones, 10:30 not being particularly late, and probably more.
It was like 9pm where I am when this comic updated.
3rd shift.
i mean seriously!
okay all of that makes sense. On a note completely unrelated note, i think i’m starting to get the hang of the timing of the posts now.
It can be both, Dorothy!
Can Joyce and Dorothy go solve crimes now? One’s a horny Christian. The other isn’t. It just makes sense.
Dorothy is very controlling for a friend.
How so?
She’s worried, and she’s vocal about it. Which is a good thing, in a friend. In my opinion.
But I do want to know what you mean, my experiences in friends might be different to yours.
Joyce LITERALLY went to harass her in the toilet to demand she give her the time she previously gave Walky, and DOROTHY is the controlling friend?
I… I’m glad Joyce made this decision if not why she made it
I’m not at all convinced Joyce has made this decision. Or at least it last next time she’s near Jacob.
CALLBACK!
I heard that in Sardonyx’s voice.
Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, Joyce! XD
YOU WERE THE DING DONG BANDIT
Uh, and also infinite progressively more artistic weenuses.
Embrace that flesh-coloured crayon you hypocrite.
I love the symbolism of Joyce undoing her ponytail. As I recall, the first time we saw her with her hair up was when she put on a hoodie to try and resemble Amber. She also had it up when she went to church with Jacob, and when she went to the gym to show off in front of Jacob. Possibly it’s a coincidence that Raidah also had her hair up just now (in comic time), but…
Anyhow, hair-up seems to indicate that Joyce is in man-hunting mode, so her letting it down here suggests that she might actually mean what she says.
To her defense, she didn’t know Jacob was in the gym that morning and hadn’t planned to be there in the first place, she had the hair up because she was gonna go out and run with Dorothy and she suggested the basement gym.
But the other times, yes, I like that too. It’s her battle mode and winning a man is her war xD
Logically, yeah, hair up at the gym makes perfect sense. Symbolically, though, it’s totally her win-her-man hair.
Now, Joyce, we all know that isn’t true.
I’d be surprised if this is actually the end of this particular episode.
Given that she was unconsciously flirting with Jacob back when she thought she was landing him for Sarah, she will likely return to flirting with him (consciously or not) the second she sees him again.
Dorothy still sees other people as assets to be molded, manipluated and used, though she more frequently simulates giving a shit.
One of these days I’ve got to find the comic you people are reading, just for curiosity’s sake.
I mean honestly, Joyce decides to intentionally break up a couple, Dorothy says “Dude, that’s ethically dodgy, and I’d have expected you to know that”, and Dorothy’s the manipulative one? I’m not even sure what you think Dorothy’s endgame is here.
Strawmen know no bounds.
Dorothy’s endgame is to become president, and as far as I can tell, this invalidates everything she does.
She can’t break up with someone who doesn’t really respect her goals.
She can’t hook up with someone who does.
And then she definitely can’t prioritize her school over him.
Even when she is physically and emotionally exhausted, she can’t postpone talking to a friend who is doing something wrong.
And when she does talk to them, she can’t express concern whether they are actually doing the right thing, or hurting themselves.
Joyce might be readily forgiven for things like trying to ruin other people’s relationships, because these manipulations are the actions of a good girl only looking for love. But for Dorothy these things are confirmation of selfish, manipulative, controlling nature, because we already know she has a selfish, manipulative, controlling nature. Because she has enough self-worth to think she could make something special of herself, and actually tries to do so.
I mean, hopefully that’s not where all her critics are coming from, but I really have no other explanation for why there is so much condemnation for every little or normal thing she does.
Seriously, one of the biggest barriers to Dorothy becoming president is that she’s too nice and well intentioned to excel in the amoral shit heap that is American politics.
Well, she’s 18. She’s got decades to build up cynicism.
Seriously. v_v
The Ding-Dong Bandit becomes… the Weenus Vigilante.
“quick, put your hand on my belly !”
It’s moments like this that really make me want to slap Joyce on the back of the head.
*SMACK* “Bad Joyce, shut your noise hole. It’s leaking lies again.”
Newsflash: Joyce’s brand of christian doesn’t really have any moral shame.
Oh it’s got plenty of moral shame. It pretty much runs on moral shame.
It’s just what you get shame over that’s weird.
No, it runs on fear of consequences. They believe their god is always watching them, and if they do something bad they’re going to pay for it. Morals is what you’d do if you could get away with everything, scot-free.
eh, as with joyce’s conduct, the etic and the emic differ considerably. the sufferers of the abrahamic religions aren’t incapable of human decency, they’re just incapable of *acknowledging* human decency.
Spotless whiteboard. Right. You just go on thinking that Joyce. We all know it’s not true.
Where else would she draw all those ding-dongs?
Starting to see what attracted Dorothy to Danny in the first place…
With her upbringing I would think she would see sexual shame and moral shame as one and the same.
bad priorities, we shouldn’t be ashamed of our sexuality, but we SHOULD be ashamed of amoral behavior like, oh, tearing apart a happy and stable couple so you can take one of them for yourself.
At first I thought Jacob would be good for Joyce with how understanding he is and he would be a good experience after all that had happened to her with Ryan and Ethan, but now I’m not so sure that Joyce will be good for Jacob.