I kind of disagree. It is lesser. At least in the sense that partnership has aspects to it that change the nature of the relationship in a few key and fundamental respects and friendship lacks these aspects. Maybe a better way to say it would be that friendship is less entangled, less intimate, than partnership.
Friendships, besides (usually) lacking a sexual aspect, are less intimate and more tolerant of failings and differences. If your friend says something awful, you can tell them they’re being awful and fuck off home. If your partner says something awful, that has implications, because you may have made some vows about sticking with them, you have to live with them and see them every day, and that may affect how you are treated. Kind of the essence of pair-bonding is that you have some kind of connection with your partner that you *don’t have* with everyone else.
She’s spent almost her entire time with Jacob thinking of him as boyfriend-material, first for Sarah, then for herself. She’s never imagined him as friend-material instead.
Well Walky, I did vote for you to take a personal day and eat a taco but I’m proud of you being in class anyway. Also Walky’s particular brand of smartass might be exactly what is needed here. It might not actually /solve/ anything but it will certainly make things seem better.
This is also an acceptable outcome, mostly I just don’t want to deprive Walky of some tacos. His healing process can’t truly begin until he has some burritos and tacos to munch on.
I love completely flustered and affronted Joyce and I also love that everyone in this universe has just accepted weenus as the term they’re gonna use. Teenagers. In 2018. Saying weenus. It’s adorable.
Walky and Joyce dynamics are typically good for a laugh. This is no exception.
Also, I do want to stress before saying this that I know it’s easy to forget it due to webcomic time, and that it’s still not a GOOD thing or anything, but I feel like a shitload of gravity is being put on a relationship that cannot have been going on for more than a few weeks. The rhetoric has been extremely heated for what might not even be an L word situation yet.
I realize Jacob and Raidah haven’t been dating long (three weeks I think? I dunno, I know I calculated it but I’m tired rn), but they’ve decided to have an exclusive (i.e. monogamous) relationship and I’m not okay with people meddling with that, even if they’re not yet in love. They could have decided that yesterday and I’d still think this wasn’t okay on Joyce’s part.
They were definitely not dating yet when Sarah initially was talking to him, before she blew that by being extremely Sarah and keeping him at arm’s length, presumably to not get hurt.
L-word? You mean lust? True enough I guess since both Raidah and Jacob are willing to postpone the “premarital hanky-panky” though there is a difference between suppression and existence.
No evidence they’re postponing pre-marital hanky-panky.
Jacob made a comment to Sarah early on about wanting relationships not just casual sex. That’s it, as far as I know.
He did ask Raidah, after the church trip with Joyce if she wanted to go fool around. She did turn him down, but not in a way that suggested the question was out of line.
I’ve never seen the show but from what people tell me, situations where someone was trying to get together with someone already in a relationship where numerous.
Actually, to me it is unimaginable that some seriously define themselves as in a monogamous relationship after dating for two and a half weeks. One or both wanting to tie it up and be done with it, yes I know there are people who feel married after the first date.
But, getting to saying to each other, hey we passed the line from dating into a relationship and I what this to be a exclusive after less than two weeks? My mind boggles.
Yet a lot of people assume this is a step Raidah and Jacob already made, had already made when Sarah had the idea of involving Joyce.
And I do not get on which in-story stuff they base this idea. They do appear together in public but that is in itself not a statement of “hey, we are a monogamous couple.” Or is it, in the US?
I’m accustomed to assuming any relationship is designated monogamous right from the point it officially exists. “Are they together?” “Yeah, they got together yesterday.” “Damn, I’m too late.”
me too. even in highschool, everyone seemed to assume that relationships worked that way. heterosexual ones, at least. A relationship might only last days, but there had to be a breakup before seeing someone else or it was cheating.
this probably makes more sense when you actually get to know people *before* dating – not when you start learning who they are during the first date.
If they hadn’t made the step from ‘just seeing each other’ into relationship there wouldn’t be any reason for them to be referred to as each other’s boyfriend/girlfriend, and we know Jacob doesn’t really like casual fooling around/dating. He wants a real relationship. It wouldn’t surprise me if they hammered that out early.
@Arian: I don’t take it as a given that relationships are monogamous. That’s just like assuming a women will take then man’s last name after marriage. It’s a common concept but not everyone adheres to it.
@BBCC: And just how reliable is that decision after two weeks of knowing each other? To me, that idea is totally part of the true love trope.
“how reliable”? I’m not even sure what you mean.
It’s their decision. It’s exactly as reliable as any other decision. That doesn’t mean it’s permanent “True Love”. It doesn’t mean they won’t break up someday – maybe even soon. It just means they’ve decided they’re a couple and not dating anyone else.
Would you be surprised if I told you that this semi-sincere “dating” step usually is skipped completely in my country?
While looking for a partner, most actually have dates with several partners with no commitment to any of them. If one of them gets more serious, you stop seeing others but usually don’t speak about it in public. Close friends often know, but you wouldn’t, say, invite the other to eat with friends.
It’s usually made public (this includes meeting friends and such) when it’s a relationship. It may be short-lived or casual, but comes with all obligations both parties agreed on.
This is serious enough to meet the family. A family Jacob wants to impress. He probably wouldn’t introduce a fling.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘how reliable’ because relationships aren’t on a timetable. If Jacob wanted to only do relationships, it’d make sense he wouldn’t go out with someone he didn’t think it could possibly work with. They probably hammered all that out early on.
I assume monogamous until proven otherwise, because that’s how the world currently works. And if someone was poly (as opposed to uncommitted) that still doesn’t mean it’s a bloody free-for-all.
And if a couple is open to whatever degree, that still doesn’t mean it’s OK to ignore and disrespect their other partner.
I WANT poly to be more common and respected, but that also includes wanting everyone to be respectful of peoples’ chosen relationship models.
Where “a lot of people” includes everybody in the comic. Including Joyce and Sarah, since they assume getting Joyce together with with Jacob will involve him not being with Raidah. Including Raidah and her cronies with their “sniffing around your man.”
Part of it is the nature of webcomic time, especially in a college comic with a big focus on relationship drama. Dismissing drama around any relationship of only around a few weeks basically dismisses all the drama.
“Who cares? It’s just a freshman college fling. It won’t last anyway.” Doesn’t really make for great storytelling.
Yeah, because this is a webcomic, a lot of them are going to be committing to it being an actual relationship a lot sooner. For instance, Billie and Ruth have only been dating three weeks, but nobody dismisses them as girlfriends. Dorothy and Walky only dated for six weeks but they hit ‘I love you’ territory.
And we know a lot of what happened between them because Willis showed it in-comic. We know practically nothing about Raidahs and Jacob’s relationships but people in the comments act as if certain things were clear while they are not.
I kinda have to disagree with Dorothy on this one. You find the right person then take your shot. Put it all on the table. Let Jacob make a decision too. Sometimes it hurts to be “friends” when you want more. If that sounds selfish it’s because it is. So is love.
Yeah that sucks and I get that objectively and morally Joyce should back off, but don’t pitch the “friend” angle. That doesn’t work for some people. Example: Is Dorothy enjoying being friends with Walky right now? Panel 2 looks like they’re both having lots of fun with that.
Joyce might not (probably won’t based on the thirst for weenus) be able to compartmentalize her romantic feelimgs into platonic friendship. So what option does she have then?
That would be fine except Joyce was happy with the friends angle until she got it into her head that she was good enough to be be more than friends.
She never thought about not being friends prior to that.
Now could she develop feelings to the point that just friendship is unbearable? Yes.
But since friendship was fine three days ago, I don’t think we’ve reached that point, yet.
Except Joyce never was happy with the friends angle. She was just sublimating it all into her plans to get him with Sarah – and flirting massively with him in the process.
No. She was always happy with the friends angle. Facilitating Jacob and Sarah together doesn’t equal her not wanting to be friends with Jacob and scheming on him, in her mind, doesn’t equal false friendship.
What dynamic do you think she pictured if her plan had worked and Jacob has dumped Raidah for Sarah? She would have then tried to break them up to get Jacob with someone else? No. She would have stopped interacting with Jacob? No.
Joyce always saw the dynamic between him and her as friends until Joe told her it could be more. After that, she threw friendship out the window to make him hers.
She imagined it that way, but it never would have worked that way. All her descriptions of Jacob’s body made it very clear where her interest lay. She
wouldn’t have tried to get them to break up, because she likes Sarah too much, but she also wouldn’t have stopped flirting with Jacob, like she was doing even before her talk with Joe.
Much like Jacob still sees her as a friend, even as he’s flirting with her and getting more and more interested.
Wouldn’t have happened anyway, since despite that being her official goal, she was succeeding at getting Jacob interested in her, not in Sarah.
Except neither Jacob nor Joyce saw it as flirting then. They would almost certainly call it being friendly, joking around, or teasing.
But I bet you Joyce would say she’s flirting with him now.
Because then she wanted friendship. And now she doesn’t.
But Jacob still only wants friendship, which is why things won’t go well for Joyce when he finds out what she’s been trying to do.
I think the point of panel 2 is not just Dorothy telling Joyce that, but also trying to convince Walky (and herself) that they can still be friends and friendship isn’t lesser. Both of which are true, but they may still desire romance because people aren’t robots who have feelings disappear the minute they’re not convenient.
Yeah, Dorothy basically submarined her whole point in her panel 2 rationalization. Not to mention, trying to contradict the central thesis of When Harry met Sally. Don’t mess with the classics.
I don’t think that’s what she’s saying here. I think she’s saying that, if you aren’t compatible with a romantic partner as friends, the relationship isn’t going to be fulfilling. Speaking from experience, I tend to agree. Infatuation comes and goes, but if you genuinely like each other and are good friends, the love sticks around. (But YMMV, of course.)
Being friends with someone you want a relationship with can work, but it also can hurt you badly and keep you occupied with what’s not happening.
Also, not everyone want to be friends with someone who had other feelings for them.
For some people, they look for very different things in friends and lovers, so the option isn’t there.
Every person will have different needs when it comes to a relationship, of course, but I’m personally with Dorothy on this one. I cannot be in a romantic relationship with someone who can’t also be my friend. Other friends tend to eventually drift apart from you, kept busy with their own families or careers or life goals. And as you yourself have children, rise in your career, or as passions fade, my observations of other relationships has firmed my belief that you had better have SOMETHING other than kids or lust or social benefits to keeping your partner around, because it will reach a point where you realize that your partner is no longer fulfilling your needs and you’re just two people sharing the same house together.
This is romcom advice and therefore a terrible guide to actual relationships. You don’t “put it all on the table.” You respect peoples’ boundaries. You respect their existing relationships. You respect them as people. Life isn’t a romcom and there’s more than one person you could have a good, loving romantic relationship with, and you don’t go after people that are taken just because you *suspect* that they fit into that category.
Joyce, I don’t think we have seen the same Spider-man. He is quite horny, has his own anti Peter when under the symbiote’s influence, and always make Faustian bargains that make Linkara angry. Also, his ass is quite noticeable.
Looking through the last time Spider-Man was tagged in Dumbing of Age – about four years ago – a bunch of the comments there were talking about how he was Doctor Octopus for a while.
It wasn’t a thing in the comics. Peter’s feelings on the Symboite in the comics amounted to “A black suit? Awesome. Wait, it’s alive? Ugh, creepy! Get it off!”
People always come here like using “weenus” to refer to elbow skin has any more weight than using it to refer to a dick. They both fall into the category of slang.
Depends on what language it is, and if it’s Latin or Greek, which declension. For example, the plural of “bonus” is “bonī”, the plural of “nexus” is “nexūs” “octopus” is “octopodes”, and the plural of. But then, neither of those languages has “w” in it (Greek lost the digamma!), so it’s probably English.
I just noticed that Walky’s eyes really don’t leave his cellphone in this strip, which makes me believe he’s still having that conversation with Amber.
Ok, this is my prediction about how it’ll all go down:
Joyce comes to some sort of realization via dorothy or joe or both together that she shouldn’t be pursuing Jacob. She decides to be friends with him, but Raidah keeps on passive aggressively going after Joyce and ends up torpedoing her relationship with Jacob. Jacob then realizes what joyce has done and confronts her over it.
She’ll have deceived him about her motives to spend time together, attempted to influence him in a way he has expressed he didn’t want, and schemed to undermine his relationship.
Some people consider that as her having done something.
Somehow, I want Joyce to watch Labyrinth starring David Bowie. Now there’s an awkward bulge that’s hard to ignore. Anyway, DoA Joyce has always pursued a relationship before friendship. She had the failed date with Joe before they became friends. She had the problematic relationship with Ethan. As far as I’m concerned, Joyce can go get it. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Maybe she was watching that old, horrible Spiderman cartoon that Ralph Bakshi did, the one that recycled plots and used them in Rocket Robin Hood as well.
My bet is she’s been very carefully looking at quite a lot of Spiderman art now she has unrestricted, uncontrolled access to the Internet.
You know, so as to make sure that there aren’t any bulges anywhere. As a precautionary measure for kids’ safety.
Frankly, Joyce, refusing to admit that you have sexual feelings towards someone to whom you are attracted is a disaster waiting to happen. It’s always the problems the existence of which you’re unwilling to admit that are the ones that actually drop on your head.
I dont see why you dont think dotty DOESNT have the moral high ground here.She started dating walky after she dumped danny and didnt even know walky before she dumped him
Dorothy… did you have to say that when you did… in front of the person you passed when you did…
Anyway I hope Joyce eventually learns how to have a healthy relationship with someone. This is what happens when you don’t let someone date until they’re legally an adult, Mr and Mrs Brown.
I should addendum this with, if you chose not to or just didn’t happen to start dating til college that’s cool, it’s that Joyce has clearly been interested in boys a long time but never got to express it because of her parents before now
@Willis: Hey. I wanted to order the book combo, but apparently it won’t let me do it without filling the State/Province field, which is meaningless here in Portugal. Does that thing auto-fill something “official” and I have to come up with something, or do you just look at it and fill the address by hand in the actual package, so I can put in “Not applicable” or something of the sort?
It worked. I put in how the address should look for the mail system over here at the bottom box, and then you can do whatever changes you find necessary to account for that side’s and the international stuff.
Jacob wants Sex to be meaningful. Something to be shared with a special person. This is not equivalent to “waiting until marriage”. This isn’t necessarily a thing they share.
But, I think by the end of the comic (Christmas Break or Summer Break? It’s not going past Freshman year) if not the end of this arc Joyce will shift towards “If it’s the right guy, it will not have to wait until marriage.”
I suspect (and have for quite awhile) that if she actually starts dating someone she’s attracted to (and who isn’t completely resistant to that attraction like Ethan was), she’d start doing sex stuff, up to and possibly including PiV. She will likely not change her actual opinion opinion about it so quickly and will be guilty and traumatized by it. Joyce is sexually repressed and horny. It’s not a good combination.
It’s possible she’ll have some other crisis of faith that’ll supersede all that, of course.
Okay, I know that Joyce is getting a lot of flak here, for being anti-sex and being in denial and also trying to break up Jacob and Raidah and a bunch of other things. And a lot of that’s deserved. But I’d like to take a moment to call out the (largely) undeserved flak she’s getting from Walky. Yes, it’s teasing, but it takes everything she’s feeling excited and happy about and dismisses it all in order to say it’s about sex instead.
Her best friend since basically ever said a few strips ago that Joyce is horny. Assuming that becky knows her best friend well enough to recognize horniness, walky is not that far off.
Yeah, Walky’s being a bit of a dick, but I don’t think the point is to dismiss everything as being really about sex, so much as say she does in fact totally want sex.
Divorce rates are actually highest among devoted Christians. I’m wondering if it turns out none of them are any good at sex because they don’t get any practice beforehand or if they just get married to have sex and then realize they don’t really like their spouse.
Unmarried teen pregnancy rates are also high among fundamentalist Christians. I wouldn’t count too much on “don’t get any practice beforehand.”
Some of the studies I’ve seen suggest that teen sex rates aren’t significantly lower, but contraceptive use is much lower. The suggested reason is that “getting caught up in the moment and sinning” is one thing, but actually getting contraception is planning the sin ahead of time and that’s worse.
I’d add “not sexually compatible with their spouse” if they did abstain and “got railroaded into a marriage with someone they didn’t love because pregnancy” if they didn’t. Plus the cultural pressure to get married unwisely young before you or your partner have even really developed your adult identity.
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so they’re literal Ken dolls until the ring goes on??
“is it a cock ring lolololol”
*suddenly has the WEIRDEST Slipshine idea*
SEXXY ELBOWS
Magical cock-ring, you put it on a flat surface and that surface grows a cock.
Sounds more like an Oglaf idea.
Kinda surprised they haven’t done it already, honestly.
Well, there was the “Ol’ Drunk Stiffy” beer in [i][a href=”https://www.oglaf.com/wildyeast/”]Wild Yeast[/a][/i].
Speaking of Oglaf, has anyone besides me noticed that it’s rather less rapey now, and that we never see the Apprentice and Mistress any more?
Yeah, I miss ’em.
Them, and the animated globs of semen.
“I’m telling…MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSS!”
The Lord of the Rings would be a VERY different story.
One Ring to Rule Them All indeed.
shit that sounds familiar
wasn’t there like an SNL sketch or something about that
Ah, you’re thinking of the Jack Black cock-ring Council of Elrond scene they used at the MTV music awards. 😀
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do9xPQHI9G0
There gotta be SO many gay porn titled around LotR puns.
guy: Why would I need that?
girl: *smirks*
next scene: *guy bent over bed*
[i]Oglaf[/i]: not even a little bit safe for work. [i][a href=”https://www.oglaf.com/moves/”]Moves[/a][/i]
Use the angled brackets.
Cock-Ringo is the drummer for the Fap Four (along with John Thomas, Pole, and Engeorged).
Oh, Walky.
And I see you there in panel 2 Dorothy
For all her faults, she’s got a few things down PAT.
I kind of disagree. It is lesser. At least in the sense that partnership has aspects to it that change the nature of the relationship in a few key and fundamental respects and friendship lacks these aspects. Maybe a better way to say it would be that friendship is less entangled, less intimate, than partnership.
Friendships, besides (usually) lacking a sexual aspect, are less intimate and more tolerant of failings and differences. If your friend says something awful, you can tell them they’re being awful and fuck off home. If your partner says something awful, that has implications, because you may have made some vows about sticking with them, you have to live with them and see them every day, and that may affect how you are treated. Kind of the essence of pair-bonding is that you have some kind of connection with your partner that you *don’t have* with everyone else.
Depends. Some people DO have very committed and intimate relationships with friends and quasi platonic relationships are a thing.
There were a lot of jokes in the 1970s about Tricky Dick that ended on the punchline, “but he couldn’t get it down Pat”. Just Sayin’.
So Joyce’s mind was just blank when she was the Whiteboard Ding-Dong Bandit, good to know
No, apparently she did her research for that… 😛
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/familiar-2/
Maybe she completely disassociated when doing that. That’s this universe’s Anti-Joyce.
In drawing those dongs she achieved a transcendent state of action without a causal self. Wu weinus.
While I despise puns and portmanteaus, I feel like I should congratulate you on that one.
No, those were just renditions of married men.
But she says weeni aren’t on her mind…
Those weren’t weeni, they were Ding-Donga. Totes different
Little-known fact:
The reason why downstairs boy parts are smooth and featureless is because somebody stole them all and put them on whiteboards.
ever heard of a band called prozzak?
No.
…isn’t Prozak a brand of medication?
the weenus abides
But is evil.
The gun, on the other hand, is good.
Joyce has a barely suppressed obsession with penises? What could have given anyone that idea?
… oh dear GOD Joyce.
She wants to get his weenus super bad, after a ceremony and safely within the bounds of holy matrimony
Til then, his non-weenus bits are plenty, most chiefly his brain
Also, IS friendship off the table? I’ve seen no evidence of that so far, yet Joyce very much did not answer
Since she skipped past friendship to trying to steal him, that would arguably be seen as evidence.
She’s spent almost her entire time with Jacob thinking of him as boyfriend-material, first for Sarah, then for herself. She’s never imagined him as friend-material instead.
So not off the table so much as never an option placed on the table to begin with, now placed on the table for Joyce’s analysis
We’re talking Joyce-level denial here. There is no table.
Poor Jacob thinks friendship is on the table.
LOL I’ve heard, in the original Tron movie, they had to edit down the main character’s crotch bulge cause it was too big… 😛
Didn’t they do the same with Brandon Routh’s Superman?
That is, at least, what Brandon Routh claims.
On the othe hand, when making Labyrinth they were always on the lookout for outfits that would bring out Bowie’s bulge even more
And Walky doesn’t even know that Joyce was the whiteboard dingdong bandit.
Yeah like she can’t really pretend to not know what a dick looks like considering she has an artistic ability to draw them.
Oops, I mean weenus.
I’m guessing Walky does know how sexually repressed a lot of fundie Christians are though.
This would be a fun moment for Leslie to walk into.
Well Walky, I did vote for you to take a personal day and eat a taco but I’m proud of you being in class anyway. Also Walky’s particular brand of smartass might be exactly what is needed here. It might not actually /solve/ anything but it will certainly make things seem better.
I voted for suck it up and go to class, but only because suck it up, go to class, and eat a taco wasn’t an option.
This is also an acceptable outcome, mostly I just don’t want to deprive Walky of some tacos. His healing process can’t truly begin until he has some burritos and tacos to munch on.
I love completely flustered and affronted Joyce and I also love that everyone in this universe has just accepted weenus as the term they’re gonna use. Teenagers. In 2018. Saying weenus. It’s adorable.
Shout out to my friend who didn’t know the term “dick” until like a month into freshmen year in college.
It’s really fun to say. Weenus. Weeeeeeenus. Weenus. Just rolls off the tongue, you know?
Someone has NOT seen all the art of Spider-Man out there…
Although it’s not her primary ship, I imagine Amber can at least provide a few links to start with.
There’s like a bajillion images of Spidey’s taint so odds are that at least one would have a dong.
I feel like he does have a dick nowadays.
Huh. Miles sometimes does but Peter very conspicuously doesn’t. Weird.
The Cat needs something to suck.
*Black Cat
Is it smooth? Listen, you yutz: there’s not even a trace of nuts.
Is it big? Is it hard?
Try “as flat as a new schoolyard”.
Look therrrrrrrrre!
There is no Spider-Dick!
Hey there – their is no Spider-Ween!
Damn. Beat-en to the weenus.
Walky and Joyce dynamics are typically good for a laugh. This is no exception.
Also, I do want to stress before saying this that I know it’s easy to forget it due to webcomic time, and that it’s still not a GOOD thing or anything, but I feel like a shitload of gravity is being put on a relationship that cannot have been going on for more than a few weeks. The rhetoric has been extremely heated for what might not even be an L word situation yet.
Teenagers. ’nuff said.
I realize Jacob and Raidah haven’t been dating long (three weeks I think? I dunno, I know I calculated it but I’m tired rn), but they’ve decided to have an exclusive (i.e. monogamous) relationship and I’m not okay with people meddling with that, even if they’re not yet in love. They could have decided that yesterday and I’d still think this wasn’t okay on Joyce’s part.
Same.
Correction: they’ve been together for two and half weeks.
Do we know this for definite? They can’t have started dating before Jacob started college?
Definitely not. It was their second date in The Butterflies Won’t Fly Away which was two and a half weeks ago from now.
They were definitely not dating yet when Sarah initially was talking to him, before she blew that by being extremely Sarah and keeping him at arm’s length, presumably to not get hurt.
L-word? You mean lust? True enough I guess since both Raidah and Jacob are willing to postpone the “premarital hanky-panky” though there is a difference between suppression and existence.
No evidence they’re postponing pre-marital hanky-panky.
Jacob made a comment to Sarah early on about wanting relationships not just casual sex. That’s it, as far as I know.
He did ask Raidah, after the church trip with Joyce if she wanted to go fool around. She did turn him down, but not in a way that suggested the question was out of line.
I’ve never seen the show but from what people tell me, situations where someone was trying to get together with someone already in a relationship where numerous.
Actually, to me it is unimaginable that some seriously define themselves as in a monogamous relationship after dating for two and a half weeks. One or both wanting to tie it up and be done with it, yes I know there are people who feel married after the first date.
But, getting to saying to each other, hey we passed the line from dating into a relationship and I what this to be a exclusive after less than two weeks? My mind boggles.
Yet a lot of people assume this is a step Raidah and Jacob already made, had already made when Sarah had the idea of involving Joyce.
And I do not get on which in-story stuff they base this idea. They do appear together in public but that is in itself not a statement of “hey, we are a monogamous couple.” Or is it, in the US?
I’m accustomed to assuming any relationship is designated monogamous right from the point it officially exists. “Are they together?” “Yeah, they got together yesterday.” “Damn, I’m too late.”
me too. even in highschool, everyone seemed to assume that relationships worked that way. heterosexual ones, at least. A relationship might only last days, but there had to be a breakup before seeing someone else or it was cheating.
this probably makes more sense when you actually get to know people *before* dating – not when you start learning who they are during the first date.
You assume that anyone who dates is going steady? How wierd.
If they hadn’t made the step from ‘just seeing each other’ into relationship there wouldn’t be any reason for them to be referred to as each other’s boyfriend/girlfriend, and we know Jacob doesn’t really like casual fooling around/dating. He wants a real relationship. It wouldn’t surprise me if they hammered that out early.
@Arian: I don’t take it as a given that relationships are monogamous. That’s just like assuming a women will take then man’s last name after marriage. It’s a common concept but not everyone adheres to it.
@BBCC: And just how reliable is that decision after two weeks of knowing each other? To me, that idea is totally part of the true love trope.
“how reliable”? I’m not even sure what you mean.
It’s their decision. It’s exactly as reliable as any other decision. That doesn’t mean it’s permanent “True Love”. It doesn’t mean they won’t break up someday – maybe even soon. It just means they’ve decided they’re a couple and not dating anyone else.
Would you be surprised if I told you that this semi-sincere “dating” step usually is skipped completely in my country?
While looking for a partner, most actually have dates with several partners with no commitment to any of them. If one of them gets more serious, you stop seeing others but usually don’t speak about it in public. Close friends often know, but you wouldn’t, say, invite the other to eat with friends.
It’s usually made public (this includes meeting friends and such) when it’s a relationship. It may be short-lived or casual, but comes with all obligations both parties agreed on.
This is serious enough to meet the family. A family Jacob wants to impress. He probably wouldn’t introduce a fling.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘how reliable’ because relationships aren’t on a timetable. If Jacob wanted to only do relationships, it’d make sense he wouldn’t go out with someone he didn’t think it could possibly work with. They probably hammered all that out early on.
I assume monogamous until proven otherwise, because that’s how the world currently works. And if someone was poly (as opposed to uncommitted) that still doesn’t mean it’s a bloody free-for-all.
And if a couple is open to whatever degree, that still doesn’t mean it’s OK to ignore and disrespect their other partner.
I WANT poly to be more common and respected, but that also includes wanting everyone to be respectful of peoples’ chosen relationship models.
Where “a lot of people” includes everybody in the comic. Including Joyce and Sarah, since they assume getting Joyce together with with Jacob will involve him not being with Raidah. Including Raidah and her cronies with their “sniffing around your man.”
Part of it is the nature of webcomic time, especially in a college comic with a big focus on relationship drama. Dismissing drama around any relationship of only around a few weeks basically dismisses all the drama.
“Who cares? It’s just a freshman college fling. It won’t last anyway.” Doesn’t really make for great storytelling.
Yeah, because this is a webcomic, a lot of them are going to be committing to it being an actual relationship a lot sooner. For instance, Billie and Ruth have only been dating three weeks, but nobody dismisses them as girlfriends. Dorothy and Walky only dated for six weeks but they hit ‘I love you’ territory.
And we know a lot of what happened between them because Willis showed it in-comic. We know practically nothing about Raidahs and Jacob’s relationships but people in the comments act as if certain things were clear while they are not.
The long awaited return of Leslie?
as an unmarried dude, I can totally confirm this is the case
As a recently married dude, the change takes some getting used to
I am imagining some vaguely Kafka-esque sequence where you wake up one the morning of the wedding and -VOILA- the joystick is just there
“Gregor Samza awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find himself in possession of an enormous *********.”
ppfff the joystick, this conversation is why I get up in the morning
Premeditated affairs seem to be a subject going on through out all the DW Multiverse right now.
Wait… Isn’t Joe in this class, too?
Everything might actually come out, which would be good thing as Dorothy might start talking to now again
Dam phone, might start talking to joe I mean
Eyup.
Joe is in the class, too, yeah, which might provide for some laughs.
Spider-Man used to make me super uncomfortable, but the new one’s pretty cute
one of these days, dotty
I kinda have to disagree with Dorothy on this one. You find the right person then take your shot. Put it all on the table. Let Jacob make a decision too. Sometimes it hurts to be “friends” when you want more. If that sounds selfish it’s because it is. So is love.
Well no not if said person is already in a relationship
Yeah that sucks and I get that objectively and morally Joyce should back off, but don’t pitch the “friend” angle. That doesn’t work for some people. Example: Is Dorothy enjoying being friends with Walky right now? Panel 2 looks like they’re both having lots of fun with that.
Joyce might not (probably won’t based on the thirst for weenus) be able to compartmentalize her romantic feelimgs into platonic friendship. So what option does she have then?
That would be fine except Joyce was happy with the friends angle until she got it into her head that she was good enough to be be more than friends.
She never thought about not being friends prior to that.
Now could she develop feelings to the point that just friendship is unbearable? Yes.
But since friendship was fine three days ago, I don’t think we’ve reached that point, yet.
Except Joyce never was happy with the friends angle. She was just sublimating it all into her plans to get him with Sarah – and flirting massively with him in the process.
And still trying to break up him and Raidah.
No. She was always happy with the friends angle. Facilitating Jacob and Sarah together doesn’t equal her not wanting to be friends with Jacob and scheming on him, in her mind, doesn’t equal false friendship.
What dynamic do you think she pictured if her plan had worked and Jacob has dumped Raidah for Sarah? She would have then tried to break them up to get Jacob with someone else? No. She would have stopped interacting with Jacob? No.
Joyce always saw the dynamic between him and her as friends until Joe told her it could be more. After that, she threw friendship out the window to make him hers.
She imagined it that way, but it never would have worked that way. All her descriptions of Jacob’s body made it very clear where her interest lay. She
wouldn’t have tried to get them to break up, because she likes Sarah too much, but she also wouldn’t have stopped flirting with Jacob, like she was doing even before her talk with Joe.
Much like Jacob still sees her as a friend, even as he’s flirting with her and getting more and more interested.
Wouldn’t have happened anyway, since despite that being her official goal, she was succeeding at getting Jacob interested in her, not in Sarah.
Except neither Jacob nor Joyce saw it as flirting then. They would almost certainly call it being friendly, joking around, or teasing.
But I bet you Joyce would say she’s flirting with him now.
Because then she wanted friendship. And now she doesn’t.
But Jacob still only wants friendship, which is why things won’t go well for Joyce when he finds out what she’s been trying to do.
I think the point of panel 2 is not just Dorothy telling Joyce that, but also trying to convince Walky (and herself) that they can still be friends and friendship isn’t lesser. Both of which are true, but they may still desire romance because people aren’t robots who have feelings disappear the minute they’re not convenient.
Yeah, Dorothy basically submarined her whole point in her panel 2 rationalization. Not to mention, trying to contradict the central thesis of When Harry met Sally. Don’t mess with the classics.
I don’t think that’s what she’s saying here. I think she’s saying that, if you aren’t compatible with a romantic partner as friends, the relationship isn’t going to be fulfilling. Speaking from experience, I tend to agree. Infatuation comes and goes, but if you genuinely like each other and are good friends, the love sticks around. (But YMMV, of course.)
You’re not wrong, married 10 years and together for 14 years in total for what it’s worth
Being friends with someone you want a relationship with can work, but it also can hurt you badly and keep you occupied with what’s not happening.
Also, not everyone want to be friends with someone who had other feelings for them.
For some people, they look for very different things in friends and lovers, so the option isn’t there.
Every person will have different needs when it comes to a relationship, of course, but I’m personally with Dorothy on this one. I cannot be in a romantic relationship with someone who can’t also be my friend. Other friends tend to eventually drift apart from you, kept busy with their own families or careers or life goals. And as you yourself have children, rise in your career, or as passions fade, my observations of other relationships has firmed my belief that you had better have SOMETHING other than kids or lust or social benefits to keeping your partner around, because it will reach a point where you realize that your partner is no longer fulfilling your needs and you’re just two people sharing the same house together.
This is romcom advice and therefore a terrible guide to actual relationships. You don’t “put it all on the table.” You respect peoples’ boundaries. You respect their existing relationships. You respect them as people. Life isn’t a romcom and there’s more than one person you could have a good, loving romantic relationship with, and you don’t go after people that are taken just because you *suspect* that they fit into that category.
+1
Joyce’s comment on Spidey just helped me win a bet!
Story time !
As usual, whenever Walky is talking about someone else’s problems he’s absolutely right
I think Joyce is more than a bit mortified that even *Walky* can see right through her right now.
Joyce, I don’t think we have seen the same Spider-man. He is quite horny, has his own anti Peter when under the symbiote’s influence, and always make Faustian bargains that make Linkara angry. Also, his ass is quite noticeable.
Oh please don’t tell me ” Symbiote anti peter” has become a thing outside Spider-man 3.
Looking through the last time Spider-Man was tagged in Dumbing of Age – about four years ago – a bunch of the comments there were talking about how he was Doctor Octopus for a while.
Doc ock switched brains with him, started calling himself the Superior Spider-man, and made himself some mechanical spider arms.
I would hit that
Not really the same thing.
Pretty sure Symbiote anti-Peter was always kind of a thing. I remember it from one of the old cartoons.
It wasn’t a thing in the comics. Peter’s feelings on the Symboite in the comics amounted to “A black suit? Awesome. Wait, it’s alive? Ugh, creepy! Get it off!”
So is Joyce a old classic spiderman fan? Then again who isn’t.
Also, this is apparently the second time Spider-Man has been tagged.
Squirrel still has only the one tag.
I wonder if Walky knows what a weenus actually is?
People always come here like using “weenus” to refer to elbow skin has any more weight than using it to refer to a dick. They both fall into the category of slang.
Since we’re talking linguistics, shouldn’t the plural be weeni? ;p
Apparently that’s not how ‘penis’ pluralizes (‘penes’), so perhaps ‘weenus’ should go to ‘weenes’. Dunno. Fan of English, not an expert.
Depends on what language it is, and if it’s Latin or Greek, which declension. For example, the plural of “bonus” is “bonī”, the plural of “nexus” is “nexūs” “octopus” is “octopodes”, and the plural of. But then, neither of those languages has “w” in it (Greek lost the digamma!), so it’s probably English.
I love that you peeps actually answered this question seriously.
Agemegos, since there’s a W, would that make it Germanic or Teutonic?
Denial ain’t just that river that turned into blood.
That’s one badass river then. So metal…
Metal? Well, I guess blood does have iron in it…
there’s also copper, zinc, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iodine, selenium, lithium, cadmium, and perhaps some lead and mercury.
blood is very metal.
But it’s mostly water and salt.
Each of us carries within ourselves our own personal ocean. We may have left it, long ago, but it has not left us.
I just noticed that Walky’s eyes really don’t leave his cellphone in this strip, which makes me believe he’s still having that conversation with Amber.
I don’t know why, but that makes me really happy.
I was actually reluctant to touch on this but it turns out you did it for me.
Wait, so according to number three, Jacob wants his own weenus?
I’d imagine so. If he didn’t want his weenus, well…..he’s got a new set of issues besides dealing with a horny Joyce.
No. The list is “things Joyce sees in Jacob that she doesn’t see in other guys”, not “things Joyce and Jacob have in common.”
I mean, presumably Jacob is quite content with his own weenus, I guess, but that’s neither here nor there.
Oh god, I sounded like Joyce growing up.
Ok, this is my prediction about how it’ll all go down:
Joyce comes to some sort of realization via dorothy or joe or both together that she shouldn’t be pursuing Jacob. She decides to be friends with him, but Raidah keeps on passive aggressively going after Joyce and ends up torpedoing her relationship with Jacob. Jacob then realizes what joyce has done and confronts her over it.
But in that hypothetical scenario, she WON’T have done anything.
Exactly; that’s how Willis likes punishing his characters.
She’ll have deceived him about her motives to spend time together, attempted to influence him in a way he has expressed he didn’t want, and schemed to undermine his relationship.
Some people consider that as her having done something.
^This
Somehow, I want Joyce to watch Labyrinth starring David Bowie. Now there’s an awkward bulge that’s hard to ignore. Anyway, DoA Joyce has always pursued a relationship before friendship. She had the failed date with Joe before they became friends. She had the problematic relationship with Ethan. As far as I’m concerned, Joyce can go get it. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Thought she was gonna go into Ken dolls there, but that works too
I’m surprised Joyce got to watch Spiderman. I thought that, in her upbringing, the only superhero allowed was Jesus.
Like others have said, she probably got to read old school, kid targeted comics. Before he sold his soul to the devil.
Maybe she was watching that old, horrible Spiderman cartoon that Ralph Bakshi did, the one that recycled plots and used them in Rocket Robin Hood as well.
She might not be allowed to watch it, but she’s probably seen imagery of him somewhere like movie posters and such.
My bet is she’s been very carefully looking at quite a lot of Spiderman art now she has unrestricted, uncontrolled access to the Internet.
You know, so as to make sure that there aren’t any bulges anywhere. As a precautionary measure for kids’ safety.
The Mike is strong in Walky right now; I can totally see Mike saying this to Joyce right now.
Frankly, Joyce, refusing to admit that you have sexual feelings towards someone to whom you are attracted is a disaster waiting to happen. It’s always the problems the existence of which you’re unwilling to admit that are the ones that actually drop on your head.
Funny thing is Walky’s not even talking about dicks.
Becky and Walky both have the same diagnosis, arrived.at separately. They do get along even when not together.
Dorothy still on a fucking high horse when idealism doesn’t fucking translate to your own reality.
I dont see why you dont think dotty DOESNT have the moral high ground here.She started dating walky after she dumped danny and didnt even know walky before she dumped him
You’re on a pretty high horse yourself, I hope you’ve never done anything bad ever or you’re a giant hypocrite.
That last comment is just asking for it! And with Walky literally talking to Amber right now, he’s primed to deliver. This will end in tears.
Walky is contributing!
Reminds me the description of Victorian Times “People did not exist below the waist”
“those horrible victorians were nearly the death of me. they couldn’t even admit that their furniture had legs”
-Eros, in _The Books of Magic_
from memory, so i probably mangled it. gently
Ooooooh, so that’s why!! It’s because Spiderman isn’t married!! 😀
The local priest is holding onto his bulge for safe-keeping, he will get it back once he marries Mary Jane.
Does that mean Mephisto sanded off his dick when he undid the marriage?
No, it just… magically disappear. Yeah.
*disappearED
I admit I would figure Joyce as going for a ken doll analogy here.
Me too. But has she seen a naked Ken doll?
Of course, she had to check if it had a weenus.
Dorothy… did you have to say that when you did… in front of the person you passed when you did…
Anyway I hope Joyce eventually learns how to have a healthy relationship with someone. This is what happens when you don’t let someone date until they’re legally an adult, Mr and Mrs Brown.
I should addendum this with, if you chose not to or just didn’t happen to start dating til college that’s cool, it’s that Joyce has clearly been interested in boys a long time but never got to express it because of her parents before now
I refuse to believe that any human being consistently calls penises wenises
Suspension of disbelief, shattered.
“SEE? The crotchtal area is COMPLETELY BLANK!! NOTHING!!!”
“Hrm, yeah, but what about… THE POINT OF THEIR ELBOWS?”
*sproing*
“Yep, thought as much!!”
@Willis: Hey. I wanted to order the book combo, but apparently it won’t let me do it without filling the State/Province field, which is meaningless here in Portugal. Does that thing auto-fill something “official” and I have to come up with something, or do you just look at it and fill the address by hand in the actual package, so I can put in “Not applicable” or something of the sort?
Thanks.
Try putting in something meaningless, sure, see if it works.
It worked. I put in how the address should look for the mail system over here at the bottom box, and then you can do whatever changes you find necessary to account for that side’s and the international stuff.
Gotcha!
Jacob wants Sex to be meaningful. Something to be shared with a special person. This is not equivalent to “waiting until marriage”. This isn’t necessarily a thing they share.
Joyce did describe herself just now as not wanting to rush into sex, along the same line as Jacob, but not specifically waiting until marriage.
If so, that’s a huge, huge change in her thinking on the subject.
More likely, she’s just conflating his attitude with hers to make them seem closer, not actually saying that she’s now up for premarital hanky-panky.
If we questioned her, absolutely.
But, I think by the end of the comic (Christmas Break or Summer Break? It’s not going past Freshman year) if not the end of this arc Joyce will shift towards “If it’s the right guy, it will not have to wait until marriage.”
Since it takes about 2 days to be “the right guy” for her, this could end with her having a pretty high body count 😀
I don’t think she’ll give up on that though. At least, not so fast. It’s too much part of her identity.
I suspect (and have for quite awhile) that if she actually starts dating someone she’s attracted to (and who isn’t completely resistant to that attraction like Ethan was), she’d start doing sex stuff, up to and possibly including PiV. She will likely not change her actual opinion opinion about it so quickly and will be guilty and traumatized by it. Joyce is sexually repressed and horny. It’s not a good combination.
It’s possible she’ll have some other crisis of faith that’ll supersede all that, of course.
I’m surprised to hear Joyce has even seen art of Spider-Man. I mean, after he made that deal with the devil, seems like he’d be on Joyce’s shit list
That’s a good point, when the hell did Joyce read Spiderman comics. This might actually be super important character development.
I think her exposure wouldn’t have her go fair enough down the rabbit hole to know that?
Okay, I know that Joyce is getting a lot of flak here, for being anti-sex and being in denial and also trying to break up Jacob and Raidah and a bunch of other things. And a lot of that’s deserved. But I’d like to take a moment to call out the (largely) undeserved flak she’s getting from Walky. Yes, it’s teasing, but it takes everything she’s feeling excited and happy about and dismisses it all in order to say it’s about sex instead.
Her best friend since basically ever said a few strips ago that Joyce is horny. Assuming that becky knows her best friend well enough to recognize horniness, walky is not that far off.
ALSO nailed it
Yeah, Walky’s being a bit of a dick, but I don’t think the point is to dismiss everything as being really about sex, so much as say she does in fact totally want sex.
Nailed it
Considering what Joyce said about Walky a couple of strips ago I’m not too bothered with what he’s saying here
Dagnabbit, last strip
At this point Joyce and Walky being low-key jerks to each other is a morally neutral action because that’s just how they treat each other.
Exactly. And Joyce and Raidah being high-key passive aggressive jerks to each other is morally neutral because that’s just how they treat each other.
Dorothy has an excellent point, but it got upstaged by new favorite Walky/Joyce interaction.
How much of the Repression ™ have you dealt with, Joyce? Are we still on tummy rubbing with weird dildo things? That aren’t Dildos?
Those are FOR SURE “protest to much” expressions
Divorce rates are actually highest among devoted Christians. I’m wondering if it turns out none of them are any good at sex because they don’t get any practice beforehand or if they just get married to have sex and then realize they don’t really like their spouse.
Unmarried teen pregnancy rates are also high among fundamentalist Christians. I wouldn’t count too much on “don’t get any practice beforehand.”
Some of the studies I’ve seen suggest that teen sex rates aren’t significantly lower, but contraceptive use is much lower. The suggested reason is that “getting caught up in the moment and sinning” is one thing, but actually getting contraception is planning the sin ahead of time and that’s worse.
Plus a lack of education about them/being told contraceptive use is sinful/’slutty’, yeah.
I’d add “not sexually compatible with their spouse” if they did abstain and “got railroaded into a marriage with someone they didn’t love because pregnancy” if they didn’t. Plus the cultural pressure to get married unwisely young before you or your partner have even really developed your adult identity.
Is this the biggest Joyce embarrassed blush ever?
Well.
Not ALL art of Spider-Man.
Welp. Never thought I’d be on google images looking for never evident spider-bulge…
Friendship, when you want romance, is by definition lesser. You don’t kiss them. You don’t hold hands. You don’t build a life together.
Dorothy should honestly just leave Walky alone instead of trying to steamroll him into remaining friends with her.
You are allowed to hold hands with friends.
People don’t HAVE to be friend’s with exes. But you don’t have to NOT be.
And. You don’t build a life with your friends in it? Don’t build it with them?
Pretty metal because my number one fear is to do exactly that.
I can handle being single. That is NOT the same as being Alone.
Wait.
People get that the reason that is, if Spider guy is cis, it’s because he tucks, right? Or wear’s a can or something?
Panel 2: This one of the most selfish self dealing things Dorothy has ever said.
Its not wrong in itself but it shows shes insensitive to Walkys feelings, many times over.