like me with a stack of Amiibo cards, Raymond in hand: “So Chrissy, you thinking of moving out soon?”
(j/k I didn’t buy any villagers, they’ll all eventually cycle through)
Though, what’s Becky’s endgame? Wouldn’t she just get saddled with a new roommate, or is she betting on no one else needing a room so to get a free single?
Happened to me too. And the next year I had a roommate who was always studying or at his girlfriend’s place, so my friend’s never believed he existed either.
Happened to me twice at a much smaller school. Freshman year, my roomie moved out to his new fraternity house. I believed the letters the school sent saying they’d pick a new roomie for me if I didn’t, and I really wish I’d called their bluff. Junior year, my roomie failed out before the year even started (apparently music majors don’t do well if they skip all their lessons, who knew?) and I did call the school’s bluff. Having a double to myself in one of the best dorms on campus was pretty damn cool.
They made me pay more for a double-as-single when my roommate (who was a freshman when I was a junior) moved out to a fraternity, and the dorm was a former military barracks, but otherwise yeah it was pretty nice.
Junior year, my roommate moved in with his Significant Other. Maybe once a week, I’d come back to the dorm room to find a sign he’d come back to get something, or leave something. Didn’t mind. He was a slob.
Senior year, I finally got a single room — next door to two freshmen who hated each other. One was always in my room whining about the other, despite gentle hints such as “get the f*** out of here.”
My on-campus apartment did a cycle w/ the single room: house mate who had the single studied abroad 2nd and 3rd quarters, I took her single room and no-one bothered to replace my spot in the double, so we effectively both had singles for the rest of the year. It was pretty sweet.
Oh, if you have an amiibo card you can pick which villager you’re kicking out and they’ll just bounce. You just have to do favors for the character on the card before they’ll move in
You can actually ‘pick’ it but it requires savescumming and you can’t have talked to the camper at all prior to that. Combine that with autosaves and it’s just a huge pain in the rear and not worth it
Her endgame is “no longer in competition with Dorothy to be Joyce’s best friend” – she doesn’t mind having a 2nd roommate, she minds Dorothy specifically.
I dunno, that page where Danny destroyed his chances with Ethan had a lot of people defending his actions throughout the comic because he did one good thing. And before that, it was because he “was an Asshole Sage”. At least with Becky, we know what she’s been through (this bit’s still worn out, though).
No, no. Mike is a jerk. He’s just a hugely entertaining one (as long as I’m not the one who has to deal with him). And he provides a valuable service in pointing out the flaws in one’s world views in the most irritating way possible. Also your mother likes him.
Occasionally he provides that valuable service. Often by accident. Mostly he’s just targeting weaknesses. Sometimes those are flaws it’s useful to have pointed out. More often, they’re just vulnerable spots.
I think he got more leeway in the comments after his face turn on the fire escape, after he realized the similarities between his “tough love” attitude and Blaine’s. But yeah, Mike tends to get more slack around here than he really should because “he means well”.
He’s had plenty of leeway all along. And much of the post stairway moment leeway has been framed in terms that basically ignore it and suggest he was good all along.
In-comic Becky has been doing this “act like we’re enemies” thing for months now, and I’m surprised Dorothy hasn’t gotten tired of it and insisted she stop by now.
Yeah. Most people who are continually teased in e.g. school learn that it is best not to object. It is the taunts and jibes that you object to that get most relentlessly repeated. Maybe Dorothy has had an experience like that.
I can believe that. Though I do really think Dorothy puts up with it part because she wants to be the bigger woman, as well as maybe thinking Becky’s just trying to be flippant and funny instead of how barbed she actually is.
As somebody who’s been the “rebound” romance before, I completely agree. It hurts SO much to discover that the person you love and are mentally building towards a future with never let go of their previous love. Worse still, if their ex-flame becomes available and they dump YOU without a second thought to go back to them. 😛
OTOH, it’s also possible to have residual painful feelings and still genuinely fall in love with the “rebound”.
Becky’s never shown any sign of not being completely serious about Dina.
I celebrate a secular Christmas too, but both my parents are from (at least nominally) Christian backgrounds. I know some people who aren’t still celebrate Christmas, but considering her parents said she was raised areligiously, it’d be kinda weird if they were okay doing secular Christian holidays but not secular Jewish ones.
The Japanese treat religion much differently than Western societies do. It’s not unusual for a family to follow aspects of Shinto, Buddhist, and even Christian religion, and yet not identify themselves as being members of any of them. Being a ‘member’ of a religion is thought of as an unusual religious devotion, similar to how Westerners would view joining a monastery or convent.
Likewise, my non-religious family celebrates Christmas by putting up lights, decorating a tree, eating dinner together, giving presents, etc. We pretty much do all of the more secular aspects of the holiday and none of the religious ones.
I don’t think it’s entirely an act.
Sure the “enemies” part is because Dorothy isn’t playing along, but dragging this not funny in the first place “joke” out this long, you don’t do that unless you’re digging at a person or completely clueless about how humor works.
And Becky isn’t clueless.
It might be subconscious, but I think Becky does not like Dorothy. It’s not just that Joyce likes her. Becky knows she can’t “compete” with Dorothy because Dorothy seems so perfect.
Becky needs to get it through her head that she doesn’t need to compete with Dorothy and that acting like an ass towards her isn’t going to help with Joyce.
Becky’s reminding me of me at my worst and I’m incredibly amused and a little embarrassed.
That being said: This plot development? Becky and Dorothy rooming together? I’m super excited, Willis had a stroke of genius here. I’m hoping it’s played for comedy and for drama both
Agreed. I really would like to see Becky forced to confront her insecurities, best friend jealousy and ‘nobody likes a Debbie Downer’ alike. Dorothy’s an excellent conduit for that – generally very supportive and emotionally aware, which means if Becky DOES push her to her limit, she’s probably going to realize the degree of screwing up there quick, and the slightly lower stakes emotionally (since she won’t have the same fear of abandonment going on as with Joyce) might push Becky to open up more. Meanwhile, Dorothy seems likely to be hitting the wall again/harder this semester of ‘when academics alone aren’t enough to reach your goals,’ and Becky’s accidentally falling into a congressional aide position is a prime contrast/frustration point there. (If and when they hash things out, maybe Becky could be the one to say it in a way Dorothy can work with – she’s a really compassionate, competent person, but she needs some extra flash to be able to sell herself as those things or get someone with a high Charisma stat to help her out.)
I definitely see them getting on each other’s nerves- they’re practically antithetical people, outside of morality and a shared love for Joyce. I think they’re both smart enough people to look at *why* they can find each-other frustrating and grow- learn their own flaws by experience them, or “screwing up over and over” in DoA tagline terms. I’m… definitely rooting for conflict before friendship, at least at first; but honestly main char. vs. main charachter arguments where nobody’s entirely wrong is just a favorite writing style of mine
( I honestly don’t envy the position joyce herself could be in trying to deal with having two best friends who don’t like each-ohter but hopefully that’s another fun story we’ll get to see)
She hasn’t, at all! she’s honestly incredibly stable and mature, ~and in literary terms that mean’s she’s got nearly infinite potential energy if/when she finally snaps~
Yep! Dorothy’s current low point in the comic (her crunch mode studying shutting out her friends) was self-destructive, but even then she was a kind, put-together person to them (sometimes inasmuch as she could be.) She’s been unknowingly insensitive to Amber during her idolization of AG, she did very quickly get more emotionally involved with Walky than intended and wasn’t as clear about the moving goalposts as she should have (probably because she wasn’t as clear about them in her mind,) and obviously the Danny breakup wasn’t the best handled but he was clearly resistant to the trying to do so gently before it reached this point, but other than that? Dorothy is a steady rock of maturity in her interactions with others.
Which means seeing her lose her cool when pushed by someone who Dorothy knows to be a generally reasonable person with this inexplicable hate-on for her in particular? Fantastic.
(Especially since it’s clear to us the readers with a line on Becky’s inner thoughts that it’s not an inexplicable hate-on so much as an irrational one based in pretty understandable fears that are still out of line. But Becky continues to cover her negative emotions pretty significantly, which means she is ALSO a dam waiting to burst.)
Part of the problem with Becky – and part of the fascinating thing about her as a character – is how much of the portrayal we see is her surface defense mechanism. “Don’t be a Debbie Downer”.
The frustrating thing is how much of the audience falls for it. The recurring thing about Becky having no subtlety or not being able to keep secrets? Have these people paid any attention to Becky at all?
And that’s exactly why this joke (and, yes, it is obviously a joke, of a kind with his she acts with Joyce) continues – Dorothy has just accepted it and not snapped at her. But now she’s poked at an actual sore spot.
Incidentally, I saw people talking about Bloodrose in the comments yesterday? This Gravatar is Bloodrose. Can’t even end up in focus in her own gravatar.
Since we’re only covering freshman year of tnese people, I wonder, will Dorothy go on to Yale after freshman year or will she stay there with her friends?
I mean, a lot can happen in ten years (and I doubt we’ll reach that plotpoint with an actual potential transfer on the horizon any sooner.) In that Willis probably wants to keep Dorothy in the cast to play around with, yeah, it’s unlikely. But if the strip eventually pivoted to post-college life after a timeskip through the next few years, I could see her transferring off-screen. And it’s always possible Willis decides to pull the same thing Jeph Jacques did with Hannelore a while back, and decide it’s better for Dorothy’s arc to let her leave and the rest of the cast can support itself without her. (Though I suspect not permanently – even if the comic stayed at college and Dorothy did transfer, she’d probably still have SOME presence the way Jocelyne does.)
QC seems to run on sitcom time, where the calendar takes a backseat to the stories. There have been a few skips here and there, and at this point at least several years must have gone by.
Assuming she did well, getting in on a transfer can actually work. The freshman classes are large and competative to get in. The upper classes are successively smaller as a certain percentage flunk out, so with a solid record and less demand for slots, there is a better chance. One semester may not do it though. Best chance may be after a solid Junior year.
With any transfer there’s going to be a loss of credits though, so it might well cost an extra year.
Transfers tend to give you a loss of credits because a given course may not be offered at the target school or might not be required in your new program.
But transfer equivilencies are usually published, so an obsessive planner like Dorothy is likely to get their full value, assuming they had planned on transferring the whole time and go relatively early in the program.
My understanding is that transferring into Yale (or any of the Ivies) is exceptionally rare.
What she’d actually be best off with most likely, is aiming to get into Yale Law School after graduation. She’ll want an advanced degree and once you’ve got that no one cares where your undergrad degree was from.
I looked a bit deeper and as far as I can tell the acceptance rate for transfers to Yale is even lower (~2%) than the normal acceptance rate (~6%). As that site points out, the advantage is that if your high school record wasn’t good enough, that’s essentially wiped away and they’ll only look at your new college record, but that had better be damn good.
All the Hacking White Hats in the world won’t save the guy who makes Dina cry on camera. I’m quite sure it would be Flame World War III of the internet.
Becky and Dina forever!
Dorothy would get along fine with Sarah. Sarah likes her. Both need to do a lot of studying. In some ways, Dorothy would be a better roommate for Sarah than Joyce is.
I’m operating under the assumption IU is like most schools where roommates only change between semesters when something weird happens- so in this case, Sierra might’ve had somewhere to go (maybe like an interest dorm) but most people’d keep their rooms by default
Not like that, but it is against school regulations to change rooms so in case of an emergency, the school can find you to let you know …. whatever happened. Death/hospitalization/sudden change/ in the family. They need (For themselves) to be Able to find you.
Is that in IU’s handbook? (not interested enough in looking up myself)
bc in my… second or third year, shortly after the semester began, my new roommate found out her bestie was in the other end of the hall and asked me if I was willing to trade roommates, so I did
new roommate was, at the time, THE WORST EVAR, but in hindsight I can see it was just we failed to talk about literally anything and all the perceived microaggressions that could have been avoided just simmered the whole rest of the semester
I feel like President Keener’s still less of a threat than present, actively potentially competition Dorothy. (Given what Becky said about emotions around a parent’s death last arc, her worries about overstaying her welcome with Leslie, and the general putting on an act thing, I’m really wondering if there’s not some sense/fear of abandonment from the Bonnie stuff going on. Especially since Ross seemed to get distant in the immediate aftermath, too, and as bad as things ended between them she is sad they couldn’t be better.)
Isn’t it nice that Dorothy has a supportive roommate that actively roots for her to achieve her dreams!? I feel like this arrangement is really going to work out smoothly for both of them!
I dont know that comment seemed like a passive aggressive low blow from becky either ” l hope you get into yale so I wont have to deal with you” or what about yale dorothy it’s never gonna happen. Seems like a low blow either way.
Nah, first panel is opening it. Two beat panels as she stares in increasing confusion, last panel of one-liner about how this is missing some zeroes or the like.
I was thinking the deleted song from Hunchback of Notre Dame that was replaced by ‘God Help The Outcasts,’ but IIRC Willis doesn’t much care for Someday compared to the final song.
And I’m p sure the “she herself in her confusion” gag, among other things, super didn’t- Sarah even called Dina a rebound to her face (when becky went home with joyce post shooty-toe); I’m thinking they might be an endgame pairing depending but also aren’t exactly going to get there drama free
This is the first time one of Becky’s attempts to get a rivalry going with Dorothy has felt like a real, vicious poke, instead of playful. Bad move, Becks.
Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing. Becky’s “frenemies” gag hasn’t really gotten on my nerves like it has to many readers, since it usually came across as just screwing with Dorothy a bit. The blatant, proprietary jealousy here seems purely assholish.
I never liked the “just screwing with Dorothy” because Dorothy has been nothing but kind and has always tried to help Becky so Becky, in her interactions with Dorothy just comes off as being entitled, selfish and ungrateful, to me anyway
Yeah, Becky’s jokes up til now have mostly just amounted to “haha we are mortal enemies haha” while still staying generally civil with Dorothy. I figured that most of the actual resentment that made her make the joke in the first place was gone by now and she mostly just kept it up for tradition, so it didn’t seem so bad, but this is the first time it really seems like she’s showing she actively dislikes Dorothy, at least recently.
Joyce’s dialog reminds me of the history of my company’s end-of-year party. At one point, there was a Children’s Christmas Party (which was a bring-your-kids-to-sit-on-Santa’s-lap sort of thing) and an Adult Christmas Party (which was a dinner with music, dance floor, and bar). Later, the “Christmas” was removed from the employee dinner, but the word wasn’t replaced with anything, so the invitations were for The Adult Party. Having “adult” as your only descriptor is, uhhh, kind of an awkward, especially for newer hires who don’t know the history. It became a running joke, because “what kind of party is this?!” I think it eventually was named the Adult Winter Party.
Sometimes a person can be too nice. Dorothy has (inadvertently) allowed Becky to be this way by not seriously challenging her on her behaviour and now Becky thinks it’s ok to ride to someone that has only ever been friendly and helpful
Becky might actually back off a little if Dorothy established she’s tired of it, or even got mad. I’m not sure.
…Speaking of, when was the last time we saw Dorothy get really angry? Last occasion I can recall is that time in Leslie’s class, when she thought Mike was trying to upset her, but his actual target was Walky…
Maybe, I just don’t like the idea that part of the reason Becky goes after Dorothy is that Dorothy doesn’t challenge Becky so Becky sees her as soft target
Mind you I could also be seeing these interactions through a lens of my own personal history…
people getting mad at becky for this seem to be forgetting that she has lost fucking EVERYTHING. her life changed entirely in just a few weeks, and she has no family; her ONLY familiar support system is Joyce, her BFF and lifelong secret crush. watching her embrace another girl, a supposed future president, while having to deal with the hurricane of loss that is Becky’s life, would break a lot of people. passive-aggressive digs are one of the best ways she could deal with a situation like this, especially considering she’s a teenager. most adults i know wouldn’t be as stable as becky has been through all this (hell i lost a boyfriend and a shitty job soon after moving back in with my parents over the course of one summer and i was a broken, depressed wreck for MONTHS afterwards; in her position? i couldn’t have continued to function at all).
Thanks for the burst of perspective, I for one didn’t see that. I still don’t Appreciate Becky’s actions, but in that light we can forward her a large sum of patience.
I won’t bore you with my sob story, but I’ve had to go through a lot this past year. You wanna know what I didn’t do?
Publicly, continually antagonize my best friend’s other closest friend.
Becky should’ve gotten the point by now. This behavior isn’t funny at all. It’s irritating. And I’m sure Dorothy is being extremely lenient and tolerant. But even she has a tipping point, and it looks like it’s close.
yall have a very different idea of antagonizing than i do. everything Mike does, for example, is what i think of. or the stuff trump does. actively being cruel, humiliating people, harassing them, etc. ruth and billie have both done way more selfish, antagonizing shit and people love them to an extent i have never understood.
becky’s finding the most lighthearted way she can to express her negative feelings. she’s not required to like dorothy (and i’m saying that as someone who very much likes dorothy), and she’s probably not happy about this arrangement. maybe by hinting at her feelings she can afford herself some space without being hurtful, or maybe she’s just allowed to not be perfectly friendly to someone whose very presence probably eats away at her self worth?
idk it’s super weird to me that people are reacting so harshly to someone being not 100% supernice to someone who probably terrifies her when other characters can be cruel to each other for funsies and still be worshipped.
She’s essentially saying “Hey, I want to see you gone, you’re not welcome here”. To her effing ROOMMATE. Joking or not, it’s an incredibly terrible thing to say.
Going through traumatic experiences does not give you a full license to be an asshole, especially since she’s been acting like this towards Dorothy since before the traumatic experiences even happened.
She didn’t meet Dorothy until she was kicked out of college, homeless and on the run from her father. (While still not over her mother’s death a couple years before.) The trauma kept going from there, but it was already in full swing.
Not to mention, on a smaller scale, but more closely linked, her rejection by Joyce, which is why seeing close moments like this hurts. This kind of joking is how she deals with that – as we’ve seen with Becky again and again. No one likes a Debbie Downer, so cover it all up, be wacky, make jokes, never let people see.
And yes, it’s not cool. It’s a character flaw. Moving her into close proximity with Dorothy brings this bit of conflict to the front and will likely force a resolution. Thus, character growth.
Agreed. At the moment it’s an ‘I enjoy this narrative turn because I’m certain it’s going to lead to development on behalf of both characters,’ but as actual people? Becky’s behavior is understandable to us looking in while still being objectively a dick move. I think a lot of her past stuff was mostly a bit and that Dorothy read it as such (note that when she asks Dorothy for advice about the campaign manager development, she’s genuinely asking for advice rather than consciously using it to antagonize her from what we can see, and that while she DOES call Dorothy’s attention to Walky and Amber’s potential hookup immediately in that ‘why wouldn’t I be okay?’ strip she’s only about as awkward as Joyce on the subject, not lording it over Dorothy.) It’s telling that Dorothy calls what Becky’s reaction to a lunch invitation would be alongside Joyce last arc, but they both agree it wouldn’t have any real hostility in it. But she does hit sore spots, it is still a dick move in general since Dorothy’s not playing off it as well, and now that they’re in proximity that tension’s only going to get worse. Can’t wait!
In fact, in that strip about the potential hookup, I read her as checking in to make sure Dorothy was okay. Not realizing Dorothy had no idea there was anything to be not okay about. She’s awkward when she realizes that and realizes she screwed up.
The behavior is a problem and there is real pain and jealousy she’s using it to cover, but I don’t think she actually has a problem with Dorothy herself. She’s one of the few characters on the floor she’s actually sought out to talk to beyond Dina and Joyce.
Your lack of of perspective on the opinions of others aside, that’s a terrible way to judge a person’s character.
I much rather have a disagreeable person I can have a conversation with and improve my relations with than a relatively nice person who microaggresses at me for the better part of a year.
It never crossing certain lines is as much of a strategic choice as it is ‘nicer’. It doesn’t make her a better Person than the others, it makes her a better Harrasser. That’s not actually a good thing.
I can get behind giving Becky a Break. I can’t get behind the delusion her behavior is better because she can give herself plausible deniability effectively.
Well maybe she should find a better coping mechanism than being a complete dick and trying to push someone she has to live with for at least the next six months out of your so-called “best friend”‘s life. If she’s been acting like this for the past several months, I’m incredibly surprised Dorothy actually agreed to be her roommate.
Yeah, sorry,, no dice. She’s been doing this to Dorothy since day one. Significantly motivated by her healousy over the fact that Joyce made a New Friend.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel for Becky, but I have had the “friend” whi continuously puts you down because they’re jealous of you, and it feels fucking miserable.
Except that Dorothy has always tried to be supportive of Becky, and all Becky can do is try and push her buttons more. Hell, Dorothy tried giving Becky advice when she (Becky) got the campaign manager job, something that Becky was woefully unqualified for, even though she (Dorothy) most likely wanted to scream in her face. Going through trauma doesn’t give you free reign to be an asshole.
As someone who’s suffered a great deal of loss and recently got abandoned by her family to “burn” due to the current fire situation…Your circumstances and hurt is not a trump card that lets you get away with treating people badly.
Becky’s treated Dorothy like this for a while, Dorothy has done nothing to deserve it.
I mean she probably made the news with the hostage situation and after showing real leadership skills during an actual crisis, I can see her being able to write one HELL of an essay.
That being said, her staying means she wants to be here.
It’s fine to be a Jewish atheist. Defining your religion by what you personally believe is actually kind of a Christian thing!
IIRC, Dorothy identifies as “half-Jewish”. She has one Jewish parent and one Christian parent, and she was raised in a very secular way.
Secular Jews (like Dorothy) and Reform Jews (like me) tend to define religion as an identity. Conservative Jews and Orthodox Jews tend to define religion by heredity, buffered by doing traditional practices.
(Tend to. Happily, Jews will disagree on everything ever.)
So, if we were asking a Conservative or Orthodox Jew: Dorothy is 100% Jewish if her mom is Jewish, and 100% Christian if her mom is Christian. Assuming that Dorothy was born Jewish, they’d say she’s being naughty by eschewing traditional Jewish practices (such as keeping kosher and celebrating Shabbat). Worshiping Jesus would count as idolatry, so that would be very naughty indeed. But, even if a Jew participates in Christmas, they’re still Jewish by blood. You can’t stop being Jewish inside.
If we were asking a Secular Jew (which would be a better choice, since that what Dorothy is): if Dorothy identifies as Jewish, then she’s Jewish. Judaism belongs to her, and she gets to make educated decisions about what that means.
Some Jews think that assimilating into Christian culture is an existential threat to Judaism, and some Jews think it’s pluralistic and cool. Secular Jews, like Dorothy’s family, almost always go with the latter.
— oh wait, I might be misremembering. Does Dorothy identify as “mostly Catholic”?
In that case… Christians mainly define your religion by what you believe, don’t they? (or is that just Protestants?) Does an atheist who is mostly descended from Christians typically identify as a Christian?
That could be quite a loss of community and identity, if they can’t.
Atheists (in the Christian world at least) don’t tend to identify as Christian. Many emphatically do not identify as Christian, if they’re rebelling against a particularly toxic Christian upbringing.
I was raised much like Dorothy – without religion by non-religious/atheist (though not Jewish) parents. My grandparents (on both sides) were mainline Protestant Christians, so I got a little exposure from that, but it wasn’t a big focus of their lives. We did all the basic mostly secular family holidays like Christmas.
I wouldn’t identify as Christian, but I’ve definitely been influenced by Christianity – growing up in a basically Christian world, surrounded by Christians and by Christian symbolism everywhere. The ways I think about religion are atheist, but also Christian. My atheism is a reaction to Christian assumptions. If I’d grown up atheist in say a Hindu culture, how I thought about religion even from outside would be shaped by that.
That’s sort of a tangent though.
I don’t think it’s as much a loss of community and identity as you suggest. As it might be for a Jew. Judaism subsumes religious and ethnic identity into one term in a way Christian doesn’t – at least in the US. I lose a religious identity by not being Christian, but I don’t change my ethnic one. Not that I ever had a religious identity to lose other than “atheist”, I suppose.
I’ll be honest, the levels of hate Becky’s getting for her behaviour here seems almost as unfair as the time the comments holding her using the $20 Billie gave her to get a haircut against her for ages. Like, this is mildly more justified, because she’s kind of stretched out the jokey bit beyond it being a jokey bit, but Dorothy’s outright said she’s happy to go along with it.
Like, it’s reasonable to criticise her when she’s like this, but some people really are quick to justify visceral hate of a lesbian character who, for most of the time we’ve known her in story, has recently been through *a lot*, for minor flaws at most
What does Becky being a lesbian have to do with it? She’s asking Dorothy when she’s leaving, maybe 5 minutes or less after moving in. It’s rude, and this “joke” was never funny to begin with.
Mostly that she’s always had a disproportionate level of hate compared to straight characters whenever she’s anything less than perfect. Like, yeah, her behaviour towards Dorothy isn’t okay regardless of her sexuality, but Becky hate has been periodically bubbling up since she first became a regular character in the comic, sometimes very much on the lines of her sexuality – she got a haircut with money Billie gave her to express her identity in a way she clearly felt was more authentic to her sexuality, and the comments section hated on her for months because she “should have spent the money on something important” (when it was hardly like $20 would have saved her from being made homeless because of her sexuality).
Other things Becky has been hated on for include:
Making an inappropriate joke when her and Joyce went home because she was nervous meeting Joyce’s older siblings (one of whom was ultra conservative and hated her sexuality, the other of whom was cool but Becky had no reason to know that)
Having a supportive and loving relationship with Dina, but still not being fully over her complex romantic feelings for Joyce.
And now, being rude to Dorothy.
I do think the last one merits criticism, but being rude is just a human flaw, not “toxic” as it’s been called in this comments section. And it’s the only thing Becky’s done that merits the criticism. Instead she’s gotten fully hate for it and for far more innocuous actions.
Becky’s a victim of abuse and has been stuck in horrible circumstances, because of her sexuality, but whenever she’s not a victim in what people deem an appropriate way (spending money she’s gifted on the “wrong” things) or when she shows human flaws, she gets full on hate in the comments. That’s why I’m mentioning her sexuality.
I’m just saying that, if you’re going to invoke Becky’s orientation because people are tired of this bit, you should do the same for Danny being bi whenever people shred him for getting used as a punching bag in-comic and out.
To see the pattern you have to compare with the monstrous and unwarranted criticism the the comments constantly level at other QILTBAG characters, such as Carla, Dina, Ethan, and Marcie, and contrast with our unconditional love for straights such as Mary, Peter, Asher, Raidah, and Joe.
Carla’s taken her share. And comparing with outright villains or at least antagonists isn’t quite helpful.
Joe’s problems were called out clearly in the narrative as a problem and he still gets a lot of defenders who refuse to see anything wrong with him. As well as a lot of criticism of course.
For Becky, it’s not nearly as true now, but holy god was it apparent early on. The furor over the haircut. Blaming her for being a freeloader and mooching off of Joyce. Accusing her of intruding on Joyce’s time with her parents.
Yeah. Walky cops some, too. The dean, all the university staff except for Leslie and Asma, all parents except Dorothy’s and Dina’s, all of Billie’s new neighbours including Lucy, Ruth’s grandfather, Asher, and Faz have all taken a shellacking too. Not to mention outright villains such as Ryan, the the Bad Dads, Clinton and Asher’s gramps. Vociferous criticism is not confined to QILTBAG characters. The comments are just very critical.
While on the other hand Dina, Ethan, and Sierra seem very well-liked by the readers. Rachel and Other Rachel don’t attract much comment, but at least no hostility. To me it seems that attributing dislike of Becky to her orientation rather than to her cruelty to the popular Ethan may be confirmation bias.
idk Dorothy pretty clearly disagrees that this is their relationship and acts opposite to what Becky does all the time. I’d say that’s pretty much exactly Not going along with it. I think Becky initially acting like this was out of jealousy but Dorothy kind of shot it down from the start. IMO Becky continuing to act in this way was going farther than she should have, and then she goes the extra step here which was totally unnecessary. At this point it seems like Becky really does want her roommate for half a year to just not get along with her? And it really isn’t right for her to lash out like that even considering what she went through. It might make her actions understandable, but it does not make them acceptable. And she had been acting this way pretty much since she met Dorothy, so it isn’t like it’s new.
And, having been the Dorothy in this kind of situation, the constant badgering can get Grating. I’m not a saint and I’m not even Dorothy but some commentors seem to be suggesting that Dorothy not explicitly telling Becky to stop means she is giving Becky the green light to continue, which isn’t what I see happening at all? It just means that if Dorothy ever loses it about it (I did in my case) the brunt of the blame in the comments will fall to Dorothy because she didn’t explicitly tell Becky to stop it right now. Does “No, we aren’t like that we are going to just be friends” not mean the same thing here?
So if I like girls does that mean I get a pass on not being okay with Becky’s treatment towards Dorothy???? Cause that’s been my main issue with Becky…Dorothy will be nice, take her out for food, try to help in any way she can and Becky just kinda..back hands it into her face.
I don’t care who Becky loves (so long as it’s Dina bc Dina and Becky are life) but that’s not a “get out of being a butthole” free card people seem to treat it as.
THANK YOU omg it’s been so weird and uncomfortable. Like, I love Mike but he’s a real asshole and the comparisons to him are so unfair. Like, sure criticize the character but I hate seeing how eager people are to hate her. They’re treating her like a serial abuser for… *Checks notes* a slightly rude running joke that dorothy hasn’t shown to be legitimately upset by
Frankly, I doubt that she’s ready to understand that in her head. It will be the day Joyce issues an ultimatum to her that she’ll finally get it and, even then, it will take a calm, dispassionate talking-to from Dina to make her see that Joyce isn’t abandoning her, merely standing up for herself in the face of unreasonable demands.
Anyways, my actual take on today’s comic: Joyce and Dorothy continue to be adorable and very shippable, and Becky does need to work on how she acts towards Dorothy if they’re to have an actual functional roommate relationship (in turn, Dorothy is very justified in drawing a line and saying “Becky, I’ve had enough of this and don’t want to play along any more, can you please stop?”
So I woke up earlier than needed, checked Dumbing of Age, and then slept a while longer. But it was clearly in my head, because I dreamt I was looking at the newest strip, and it was almost like this one, just that the last panels was Becky asking: so Joyce, if both Dorothy and I were drowning, who would you save? Since the dream was logival enough that I only get one strip aday, I did not know what Joyce answered.
Apperantly that’s what happens when I read the new strip halfasleep.
I’m very curious how Joyce and Becky’s christmas break went. Things were not good in the Brown-family when we left then, so how was Christmas? And where did Becky stay over break? Did she join Joyce with her family (would be uncomfortable for her, with how it was last time and now with new shit piled on) or did she stay somewhere else? I hope we get some flashbacks.
here’s as good a place as any to ask this, Dorothy has been very clear about the plan to transfer to Yale, but do we have any reason to believe she’d be successful if she (presumably???) didn’t get in the first time around?
Maybe it’s because I’m a Brit and so don’t understand American university, but I’d have thought transferring from a different university to one of the most prestigious would be just as hard if not harder than going there directly out of school (certainly in the UK, university transfers during undergrad are extremely rare, involve essentially reapplying, and doing well at your previous uni wouldn’t really count in your favour because people would wonder why you’re leaving).
What it’s meant is that I’ve never been entirely clear how realistic this whole Yale scheme is, if it’s the naivete of a very determined but nevertheless young woman who might have ideas beyond herself (which although maybe hinted at when Dorothy’s grades slipped, doesn’t seem to be the comic’s characterisation otherwise) or if this is like somehow a super common thing that happens all the time (which just doesn’t tally with my university experience, in a different country but tbh at an institution of a similar prestige level to Yale and knowledge of how that worked)
Most people get accepted at an institution and go there for four years. Doesn’t mean that transfers don’t happen. There’s a whole segment of people that will go two years at a nearby Junior College and then transfer into a four year institution that’s further away. Sometimes in another country. I bet you anything that your prestigious University.had an exchange program and accepted suitable transfers, both.
Poking around on the internets I found that Yale accepts somewhere around 2% of transfer applicants. This is well below their regular acceptance rate, meaning it’s harder to get in as a transfer.
Since Yale’s a very prestigious school, I don’t think “wonder why you’re leaving” your previous school would be a factor. You’re leaving because you want to get into Yale.
I do think Dorothy’s whole plan is pretty naive. Not necessarily that it’s beyond her abilities, but that it isn’t well thought out. She’s fixated on Yale as a stepping stone to the Presidency, though there doesn’t seem to be any clear link there or any mention of a plan on how to get there from there. Though she did eventually say that she’d been volunteering with Manley’s campaign and hint about moving up through that route.
At the very least, I can’t see any reason why Yale and not any of the big-name Ivy schools. And treat the transfer as the long shot it is and focus on getting into a prestigious school for grad work.
I imagine that is conflated across GPAs and college grades. Includes all the people who can’t follow instructions in their applications, etc. Also I imagine that Dorothy has done her research and knows better than to think she can apply and get in after one semester. She would have a better chance yet by waiting till her Junior year.
While a less than 2% rate sounds bad, it’s not all that much worse than the regular rate. And compares to a 0% acceptance rate if you don’t try. There’s nothing wrong with believing in yourself while having a backup plan in place.
I believe the regular rate is around 6%. That’s 3 times the transfer rate.
Yeah, it includes the screws ups and everything, but so does the regular rate.
I agree, there’s nothing wrong with trying, but I also think the chances remain slim.
“You hitting on my girl? I liked her first you know, no we’re not “together”-together but we have super tight bound, we’re childhood friends, you guys just met, haha very well then engarde sir you shall be my rival, nemesis if you will”
Her grandparents on her fathers side are “both Catholic and Jewish” (which I guess mean they are descended from converted Jewish people?), while the ones on the mothers side are just Catholics. Dorothy also said “most of my family is Catholic”.
Like, her parents are actually non religious, but, regardless, the impression given is that Catholicism is a bigger part of her family upbringing, so you would expect Dorothy’s family to celebrate Christmass even if they also happened to celebrate Hanukkah.
Joyce was practically straining at the leash there, wasn’t she? She absolutely could not wait to hug her Perfect Cinnamon Roll (that’s Dorothy’s ID in Joyce’s address book)! It’s genuinely sweet and I love the way Dorothy isn’t even remotely uncomfortable with it or with the fact that even when Becky starts letting her jealousies run the conversation, Joyce and Dorothy are still attached!
I’m looking forward to a follow-up on this point of Dorothy wanting to go to an Ivy League college. The way I see it, it could go one of two ways: Dorothy gets lots of rejection letters and has to confront not being as perfect as part of her imagines; Or Dorothy gets into a big college and then has to decide whether she wants to take this opportunity although it means it will separate her from her friends( particularly Joyce).
Some People: Becky’s been acting like an asshole to Dorothy and that’s not okay.
Other People: Becky’s been through a lot of trauma and that excuses it. How dare you sling “hate” at her, the Lesbian Character (TM)?
For real, some commentators here are acting like the barest bit of criticism of a character’s annoying flaws are throwing hate around and then having the gall to say that the character’s sexuality is the reason why. Fucking Christ on a Bike that’s a whole lotta reaching there.
Becky’s trauma and experiences does not mean she gets a free pass to continuously throw her jealousy fit at Dorothy without criticism/annoyance.
You know what, reading back through the comments, I’ll acknowledge I was wrong. I do think hate on Becky in the past (particularly the drama over her haircut) has been a bit extreme in places, but here the criticism is pretty proportionate to the flaws in her behaviour.
I wanted to mention that other side of the coin too but neglected to do so which is my bad. That any time a character acts a little bit asshole-ish there are commentators that are like “X Character is a complete monster with 0 redeemable qualities.”
I like this strip, because it feels like Becky’s worst behaviours are getting signaled to be reaching a breaking point.
I wonder if it’s hard to write characters with deliberate, poisonous flaws and actions. Not just constantly making well intended mistakes like Joyce, but that Becky genuinely has a bone to pick with Dorothy and expresses that in a negative fashion. Then you get to the part where everyone reads it and suddenly starts disliking a beloved character like Becky. Wouldn’t it just be easier to have Becky be nice and smooch Dina all the time instead of being mean to Dorothy? Sure, and I think a lot of people would be okay with that, but to me a character is only truly worth reading about if they let their worst instincts take over at least once in a while, and that’s what we’re seeing here.
I like Becky a lot, but I’m not gonna defend her on this, and that’s okay. Joyce is best character and she was still compliant in ruining Jacob’s relationship with Raidah.
Like, people expressing their annoyances with Becky doesn’t necessarily mean people hate her. From what I’ve seen from the common complaint about Becky is that she’s been a jerk to Dorothy in a lot of their interactions together. And it looks to be one sided. People can have flaws and others can comment on them.
No one is saying that Becky has to be perfect, nice, and only be smooching Dina all the time. What some people are saying is that Becky should work on her jealousy riff with Dorothy. And also Dorothy should put her foot down.
Agreed. Even (probably) knowing why Becky’s doing this doesn’t make it an okay thing to do, and I look forward to her working through it and (hopefully) Dorothy getting to express some ‘I’m not a saint with infinite patience, this is genuinely irritating’ about the whole thing.
Dorothy burning out over one of the many issues plaguing her feels like something we’ve been waiting years for that may never happen, if not for a long time.
I hope we do. Not that I wish ill on Dorothy, but her previous burnout story being resolved by breaking up with Walky has never sat well with me. A surface fix to a deeper problem.
The parallel would be Walky resolving his school problems by dropping Calc and never learning to study or deal with his insecurities around his effortless smartness.
Thank Sal more than anyone else. She’s the one who finally broke through to Joyce about asking permission before making physical contact, especially in an intimate way. There is still a kind of sweet “I know this is right but I don’t know why” aspect to how Joyce does this that makes me think of the character Melon in Jeph Jaques’ ‘Questionable Content’. Nonetheless, Joyce is starting to get it!
Yep. Bad behaviour is still bad behaviour regardless of which side you’re on. The side Joyce was on was the side of breaking up Jacob’s relationship and then withholding sex.
Joyce’s project was to use romantic allure and sexual appeal to separate Jacob from Raidah. That’s not heinous, but it’s not angelic.
She flirted with him, suggesting romantic and sexual attraction. That is of course not a contractual offer of sex — and I don’t believe that any such contract is conscionable anyway — but her intention was that he should boyfriend for her for months or years during which she would categorically refuse to consider any suggestion of sex that he made. I’m not calling that diabolical, and I am neither saying nor do I believe that having done a bad thing or several bad things makes Joyce evil through and through. But I call shenanigans on the suggestion that the screwed-up unhappy manipulative relationships encouraged by her sex-negative upbringing are the “side of the angels”.
No, I do not believe and I did not say that if you flirt with someone you then have to have sex with them.
But yes, I did say that the kind of relationship in which a man is expected to say “you wanna fool around?” and the woman to say “My own! My beloved! My transcendant one! No. Go slay another dragon and then sign over half your stuff” is diabolical. It not Joyce’s fault that she was raised to think they are deeply romantic and divinely ordained. But she wasn’t on the side of the angels when she tried to inveigle Jacob into such a relationship.
Yes, a similar relationship with the sexes reversed, or involving a non-cishet couple would be bad too. But they are not a norm promoted by religion and the romance industry, so a less prominent threat to angelichood.
So, any relationship that Joyce got into would be bad because she’d be “withholding sex”? That’s a pretty fucked up attitude. Especially since it wouldn’t be a surprise. She’d made her opinions quite clear up front.
I agree that there’s something messed up on the societal level about that expectation, but at the same time so is the idea that women are bad if they get you into a relationship but won’t put out.
Also – she wouldn’t have lasted a month. Joyce is horny.
I don’t agree at all. Raidah and Jacob’s relationship was fine and the only reason we as readers hated it is because we like Joyce and Sarah more than Raidah.
If you think Jacob going with Raidah because he thought it would be something his brother would approve of and Raidah actively pushing Jacob’s insecurity buttons to manipulate him was okay, then sure, their relationship was fine.
Panels 4&5: I’m not tryin’ ta get rid of ya, I’d just like my own room!
Alt-text: Technically, none of Dottie’s ‘mitts’ are on Joyce – it’s Joyce’s mitts that are on Dottie. One of them, anyway – Joyce’s left hand is on her own right arm. Dottie’s hands are both at her sides.
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like me with a stack of Amiibo cards, Raymond in hand: “So Chrissy, you thinking of moving out soon?”
(j/k I didn’t buy any villagers, they’ll all eventually cycle through)
Though, what’s Becky’s endgame? Wouldn’t she just get saddled with a new roommate, or is she betting on no one else needing a room so to get a free single?
The two times my roommate at Major State University moved out mid-year, I didn’t get a replacement.
Happened to me only six weeks into my sophomore year: my roommate dropped out to join the Air Force. They never got around to replacing him.
Happened to me too. And the next year I had a roommate who was always studying or at his girlfriend’s place, so my friend’s never believed he existed either.
Happened to me twice at a much smaller school. Freshman year, my roomie moved out to his new fraternity house. I believed the letters the school sent saying they’d pick a new roomie for me if I didn’t, and I really wish I’d called their bluff. Junior year, my roomie failed out before the year even started (apparently music majors don’t do well if they skip all their lessons, who knew?) and I did call the school’s bluff. Having a double to myself in one of the best dorms on campus was pretty damn cool.
They made me pay more for a double-as-single when my roommate (who was a freshman when I was a junior) moved out to a fraternity, and the dorm was a former military barracks, but otherwise yeah it was pretty nice.
Junior year, my roommate moved in with his Significant Other. Maybe once a week, I’d come back to the dorm room to find a sign he’d come back to get something, or leave something. Didn’t mind. He was a slob.
Senior year, I finally got a single room — next door to two freshmen who hated each other. One was always in my room whining about the other, despite gentle hints such as “get the f*** out of here.”
My junior year roommate failed out after the first semester and I didn’t get a replacement until senior year.
My on-campus apartment did a cycle w/ the single room: house mate who had the single studied abroad 2nd and 3rd quarters, I took her single room and no-one bothered to replace my spot in the double, so we effectively both had singles for the rest of the year. It was pretty sweet.
She gets Joyce’s undivided attention … Dina or not, she’s still got huge feelings for Joyce.
Even if it’s not undivided attention, at least she doesn’t have to watch Joyce gushing over a girl that isn’t her.
No no, Raymond is so popular because he’s too new to have an Amiibo, so he can only be found on islands.
Oh, if you have an amiibo card you can pick which villager you’re kicking out and they’ll just bounce. You just have to do favors for the character on the card before they’ll move in
No, the incoming neighbour will “talk to” the outgoing neighbour and find out “Yes, they WERE planning to move out!”
Uh-huh
You can actually ‘pick’ it but it requires savescumming and you can’t have talked to the camper at all prior to that. Combine that with autosaves and it’s just a huge pain in the rear and not worth it
Her endgame is “no longer in competition with Dorothy to be Joyce’s best friend” – she doesn’t mind having a 2nd roommate, she minds Dorothy specifically.
Eh.
It’s getting old.
No no Becky is like totes amazing and everything she does is ok and good and she shall receive no criticism whatsoever
So, just like Mike then?
I think most people, at this point in the comic’s run, have *sympathy* for Mike, but don’t necessarily condone his methods.
I dunno, that page where Danny destroyed his chances with Ethan had a lot of people defending his actions throughout the comic because he did one good thing. And before that, it was because he “was an Asshole Sage”. At least with Becky, we know what she’s been through (this bit’s still worn out, though).
It’s just the usual social media attitude toward criticism — anything or anyone is either The. Best. Evah. or irredeemably evil.
No, no. Mike is a jerk. He’s just a hugely entertaining one (as long as I’m not the one who has to deal with him). And he provides a valuable service in pointing out the flaws in one’s world views in the most irritating way possible. Also your mother likes him.
Occasionally he provides that valuable service. Often by accident. Mostly he’s just targeting weaknesses. Sometimes those are flaws it’s useful to have pointed out. More often, they’re just vulnerable spots.
I think he got more leeway in the comments after his face turn on the fire escape, after he realized the similarities between his “tough love” attitude and Blaine’s. But yeah, Mike tends to get more slack around here than he really should because “he means well”.
Mike has his own theory about people cutting him way more slack than he deserves:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/recording/
He’s had plenty of leeway all along. And much of the post stairway moment leeway has been framed in terms that basically ignore it and suggest he was good all along.
Yeah, I feel bad for Dorothy.
Must be hard to have one in the friend group acting like that.
I -have- been that friend, but only because I expect that kind of crap to be thrown back at me. Equivalent exchange and all that.
And I would NEVER behave like that with someone I don’t trust enough to know that they would be okay with that.
I feel bad for Dina. It can’t be pleasant to have her supposed lover publicly rehearsing jealousy over another woman.
In-comic Becky has been doing this “act like we’re enemies” thing for months now, and I’m surprised Dorothy hasn’t gotten tired of it and insisted she stop by now.
Yeah. Nope. You “insist that they stop” and they just do it all the more because your irritation in funny.
Bloke I knew ended up flat on his back on the floor in a pub before “insist” really made it home.
Well, Dorothy actually hasn’t said stop yet. She’s just passively accepted Becky’s worst behaviour.
Oh, I imagine Becky’s worse behavior is a good deal worse than anything we’ve seen.
Yeah. Most people who are continually teased in e.g. school learn that it is best not to object. It is the taunts and jibes that you object to that get most relentlessly repeated. Maybe Dorothy has had an experience like that.
I can believe that. Though I do really think Dorothy puts up with it part because she wants to be the bigger woman, as well as maybe thinking Becky’s just trying to be flippant and funny instead of how barbed she actually is.
Or maybe Becky is just trying to be funny, even if she’s screwing it up.
And using it to cover the hurt she actually feels.
Which doesn’t make it okay. It’s going to have to be addressed.
Yup.
As somebody who’s been the “rebound” romance before, I completely agree. It hurts SO much to discover that the person you love and are mentally building towards a future with never let go of their previous love. Worse still, if their ex-flame becomes available and they dump YOU without a second thought to go back to them. 😛
OTOH, it’s also possible to have residual painful feelings and still genuinely fall in love with the “rebound”.
Becky’s never shown any sign of not being completely serious about Dina.
Becky allowed to be flawed.
Becky’s got her priorities straight.
Well I mean… straight as a Crescent Moon
… moon prism power.
Make up!
Becky can’t even THINK straight
*incredibly angry-at-everybody-for-who-knows-what girl in my high school got mad at the flamingly gay boy who wore a button that said that
[tho the button said “I” not “Becky”]
I’m so proud of how much Joyce has grown!
And I love Becky. You know she really does want Dorothy to succeed because she wants her to be happy, but she also wats to act like they’re enemies.
I also appreciate the insight into the Keeners holidays! I wonder if they also do secular Jewish holidays?
I mean, my family always celebrated Christmas, and we aren’t particularly religious. It’s got enough secular trappings after all.
Enough, shnough. It barely has any non-secular trappings.
I celebrate a secular Christmas too, but both my parents are from (at least nominally) Christian backgrounds. I know some people who aren’t still celebrate Christmas, but considering her parents said she was raised areligiously, it’d be kinda weird if they were okay doing secular Christian holidays but not secular Jewish ones.
The Japanese celebrate Christmas at this point. It’s a huge commercial success.
The Japanese treat religion much differently than Western societies do. It’s not unusual for a family to follow aspects of Shinto, Buddhist, and even Christian religion, and yet not identify themselves as being members of any of them. Being a ‘member’ of a religion is thought of as an unusual religious devotion, similar to how Westerners would view joining a monastery or convent.
I’ve seen the Japanese take on religious practice as ‘born Shinto, married Christian, buried Buddhist.’
Likewise, my non-religious family celebrates Christmas by putting up lights, decorating a tree, eating dinner together, giving presents, etc. We pretty much do all of the more secular aspects of the holiday and none of the religious ones.
It feels like this is more of a ‘that’s it, push Dorothy’s buttons…’ move. If Dorothy got into Yale, it’d be the first thing she talked about.
I don’t think it’s entirely an act.
Sure the “enemies” part is because Dorothy isn’t playing along, but dragging this not funny in the first place “joke” out this long, you don’t do that unless you’re digging at a person or completely clueless about how humor works.
And Becky isn’t clueless.
It might be subconscious, but I think Becky does not like Dorothy. It’s not just that Joyce likes her. Becky knows she can’t “compete” with Dorothy because Dorothy seems so perfect.
Becky needs to get it through her head that she doesn’t need to compete with Dorothy and that acting like an ass towards her isn’t going to help with Joyce.
No, Becky doesn’t. No reason she should or has to.
She should probably try to like the person she’s roommates with.
If there’s a drama tag, you have to wiggle it. Them’s the rules.
Becky may be a bit clueless.
I think this may be a version of the humor she uses with Joyce. Inappropriate, since she doesn’t know Dorothy well enough
Becky often ACTS clueless. She’s a lot savvier than Joyce is.
In the environment they grew up in, that’s a survival strategy.
“wait was that sarcasm or are you actually rooting for me to get into Yale so i’ll leave”
“figure it out yourself, nemesis”
Subtle, Becks.
Reeeeeal subtle.
Becky’s reminding me of me at my worst and I’m incredibly amused and a little embarrassed.
That being said: This plot development? Becky and Dorothy rooming together? I’m super excited, Willis had a stroke of genius here. I’m hoping it’s played for comedy and for drama both
Agreed. I really would like to see Becky forced to confront her insecurities, best friend jealousy and ‘nobody likes a Debbie Downer’ alike. Dorothy’s an excellent conduit for that – generally very supportive and emotionally aware, which means if Becky DOES push her to her limit, she’s probably going to realize the degree of screwing up there quick, and the slightly lower stakes emotionally (since she won’t have the same fear of abandonment going on as with Joyce) might push Becky to open up more. Meanwhile, Dorothy seems likely to be hitting the wall again/harder this semester of ‘when academics alone aren’t enough to reach your goals,’ and Becky’s accidentally falling into a congressional aide position is a prime contrast/frustration point there. (If and when they hash things out, maybe Becky could be the one to say it in a way Dorothy can work with – she’s a really compassionate, competent person, but she needs some extra flash to be able to sell herself as those things or get someone with a high Charisma stat to help her out.)
I definitely see them getting on each other’s nerves- they’re practically antithetical people, outside of morality and a shared love for Joyce. I think they’re both smart enough people to look at *why* they can find each-other frustrating and grow- learn their own flaws by experience them, or “screwing up over and over” in DoA tagline terms. I’m… definitely rooting for conflict before friendship, at least at first; but honestly main char. vs. main charachter arguments where nobody’s entirely wrong is just a favorite writing style of mine
( I honestly don’t envy the position joyce herself could be in trying to deal with having two best friends who don’t like each-ohter but hopefully that’s another fun story we’ll get to see)
Agreed! I can see a solid ground someday, but first I want some tension and conflict.
This is all on Becky, when has Dorothy been anything less than friendly or helpful towards Becky
She hasn’t, at all! she’s honestly incredibly stable and mature, ~and in literary terms that mean’s she’s got nearly infinite potential energy if/when she finally snaps~
Anti-Dorothy.
The power of fanfic compels you!
We’ve seen hints of Anti-Joyce, now we just need Anti-Becky, Anti-Sal, and Anti-Amber, then we can start assembling DoA’s Mirror Universe.
Yep! Dorothy’s current low point in the comic (her crunch mode studying shutting out her friends) was self-destructive, but even then she was a kind, put-together person to them (sometimes inasmuch as she could be.) She’s been unknowingly insensitive to Amber during her idolization of AG, she did very quickly get more emotionally involved with Walky than intended and wasn’t as clear about the moving goalposts as she should have (probably because she wasn’t as clear about them in her mind,) and obviously the Danny breakup wasn’t the best handled but he was clearly resistant to the trying to do so gently before it reached this point, but other than that? Dorothy is a steady rock of maturity in her interactions with others.
Which means seeing her lose her cool when pushed by someone who Dorothy knows to be a generally reasonable person with this inexplicable hate-on for her in particular? Fantastic.
(Especially since it’s clear to us the readers with a line on Becky’s inner thoughts that it’s not an inexplicable hate-on so much as an irrational one based in pretty understandable fears that are still out of line. But Becky continues to cover her negative emotions pretty significantly, which means she is ALSO a dam waiting to burst.)
Part of the problem with Becky – and part of the fascinating thing about her as a character – is how much of the portrayal we see is her surface defense mechanism. “Don’t be a Debbie Downer”.
The frustrating thing is how much of the audience falls for it. The recurring thing about Becky having no subtlety or not being able to keep secrets? Have these people paid any attention to Becky at all?
And that’s exactly why this joke (and, yes, it is obviously a joke, of a kind with his she acts with Joyce) continues – Dorothy has just accepted it and not snapped at her. But now she’s poked at an actual sore spot.
i really hope they both stayed with Jocelyn during winter break i cannot imagine a good Christmas at the Brown family home
Yeah, assuming it’s still a single home.
Incidentally, I saw people talking about Bloodrose in the comments yesterday? This Gravatar is Bloodrose. Can’t even end up in focus in her own gravatar.
Subtle, Becky, subtle.
Since we’re only covering freshman year of tnese people, I wonder, will Dorothy go on to Yale after freshman year or will she stay there with her friends?
Let’s be honest, Dorothy’s never getting into Yale.
I mean, a lot can happen in ten years (and I doubt we’ll reach that plotpoint with an actual potential transfer on the horizon any sooner.) In that Willis probably wants to keep Dorothy in the cast to play around with, yeah, it’s unlikely. But if the strip eventually pivoted to post-college life after a timeskip through the next few years, I could see her transferring off-screen. And it’s always possible Willis decides to pull the same thing Jeph Jacques did with Hannelore a while back, and decide it’s better for Dorothy’s arc to let her leave and the rest of the cast can support itself without her. (Though I suspect not permanently – even if the comic stayed at college and Dorothy did transfer, she’d probably still have SOME presence the way Jocelyne does.)
Hannelore came back eventually, though.
QC seems to run on sitcom time, where the calendar takes a backseat to the stories. There have been a few skips here and there, and at this point at least several years must have gone by.
Yeah, but it was still significant to see her out of the cast for like, a year given how major a character she is.
Assuming she did well, getting in on a transfer can actually work. The freshman classes are large and competative to get in. The upper classes are successively smaller as a certain percentage flunk out, so with a solid record and less demand for slots, there is a better chance. One semester may not do it though. Best chance may be after a solid Junior year.
With any transfer there’s going to be a loss of credits though, so it might well cost an extra year.
Why does a transfer give you loss of credits?
Transfers tend to give you a loss of credits because a given course may not be offered at the target school or might not be required in your new program.
But transfer equivilencies are usually published, so an obsessive planner like Dorothy is likely to get their full value, assuming they had planned on transferring the whole time and go relatively early in the program.
Do you know this merely from experience? Or do you work in the Registrar’s Office? Cause this sounds just like The Voice of The Dean.
My understanding is that transferring into Yale (or any of the Ivies) is exceptionally rare.
What she’d actually be best off with most likely, is aiming to get into Yale Law School after graduation. She’ll want an advanced degree and once you’ve got that no one cares where your undergrad degree was from.
It may be rare, but that’s part of what makes it feasible. Let me refer you to https://ivycollegeessay.com/2020/01/21/transferring-ivy-league-college-harvard/
I looked a bit deeper and as far as I can tell the acceptance rate for transfers to Yale is even lower (~2%) than the normal acceptance rate (~6%). As that site points out, the advantage is that if your high school record wasn’t good enough, that’s essentially wiped away and they’ll only look at your new college record, but that had better be damn good.
This better not be a prelude to finding out Becky/Dina broke up off-screen.
Willis may be He Who Is Many-Damned, but I truly hope he would never do something so cruel.
Right, yeah- if Becky is gonna break up with Dina he’d have the decency to do it onscreen in front of us, and end it on a shot of Dina crying ;P
All the Hacking White Hats in the world won’t save the guy who makes Dina cry on camera. I’m quite sure it would be Flame World War III of the internet.
Becky and Dina forever!
She tried to hold it together, but it was the best she could do.
Of course he wouldn’t.
Having them break up ON screen would let him be even MORE cruel.
It happened at the Halloween party.
Did the brief rebound end at Thanksgiving, too?
I thought we agreed to never talk about that.
What happens at off-screen Halloween parties STAYS at off-screen Halloween parties.
Unless it shows up on Slipshine.
Well, THEN it’s not off-screen anymore, is it?
nooooo
Last Christmas I gave you my heart
But the very next day you gave it away…
Kill Bill siren in Dorothy’s mind
Can Dorothy and Joyce just swap rooms?
Before we ask that, we should ask
A) Who is Joyce rooming with, and
B) Is Dorothy willing to admit that she’s not equal to the task of getting along with Becky?
Dorothy would get along fine with Sarah. Sarah likes her. Both need to do a lot of studying. In some ways, Dorothy would be a better roommate for Sarah than Joyce is.
I’m operating under the assumption IU is like most schools where roommates only change between semesters when something weird happens- so in this case, Sierra might’ve had somewhere to go (maybe like an interest dorm) but most people’d keep their rooms by default
So Ruthless or Puddinghead does bed checks to make sure everyone is sleeping where the university thinks they ought?
Not like that, but it is against school regulations to change rooms so in case of an emergency, the school can find you to let you know …. whatever happened. Death/hospitalization/sudden change/ in the family. They need (For themselves) to be Able to find you.
Is that in IU’s handbook? (not interested enough in looking up myself)
bc in my… second or third year, shortly after the semester began, my new roommate found out her bestie was in the other end of the hall and asked me if I was willing to trade roommates, so I did
new roommate was, at the time, THE WORST EVAR, but in hindsight I can see it was just we failed to talk about literally anything and all the perceived microaggressions that could have been avoided just simmered the whole rest of the semester
also the besties broke up
Becky’s really committing to being a toxic roommate as soon as possible. Doesn’t she have a girlfriend?
“please succeed in a way that means I don’t have to see your face again”
“I’m going to be president”
“damnit”
Yes, but not like the Orange Man who holds
campaign ralliespress conferences every day.Yes, but not like the Orange Man who holds
campaign ralliespress conferencesCovid Parties every day.FTFY.
not EVERY day
sometimesmost days he plays golfMost days he
playscheats at golf.Poor Becky, always ending up rooming with political figures.
I feel like President Keener’s still less of a threat than present, actively potentially competition Dorothy. (Given what Becky said about emotions around a parent’s death last arc, her worries about overstaying her welcome with Leslie, and the general putting on an act thing, I’m really wondering if there’s not some sense/fear of abandonment from the Bonnie stuff going on. Especially since Ross seemed to get distant in the immediate aftermath, too, and as bad as things ended between them she is sad they couldn’t be better.)
Isn’t it nice that Dorothy has a supportive roommate that actively roots for her to achieve her dreams!? I feel like this arrangement is really going to work out smoothly for both of them!
I dont know that comment seemed like a passive aggressive low blow from becky either ” l hope you get into yale so I wont have to deal with you” or what about yale dorothy it’s never gonna happen. Seems like a low blow either way.
“Comment may contain traces of irony.”
With just a hint of sarcasm for leavening.
I see Dotothy turning into Leslie Knope so in order to complete that transformation she must stay at IU!
Though I think Dorothy said she was Poly Sci and Leslie Knope was a History major.
How much you wanna bet her Poli Sci class will be taught by Robin this semester?
I think that’s a logical direction for the comic.Robin would being an adjunct professor and or lectuer of Legislative Politics.
And then we get a panel when she opens her first paycheck realizing how little adjuncts get paid.
Nah, first panel is opening it. Two beat panels as she stares in increasing confusion, last panel of one-liner about how this is missing some zeroes or the like.
I think i meant to type strip but typed panel my bad… but I think your right and thats how it would play out.
All good. We’re both in agreement that Robin realizing economic realities deserves proper emphasis for the Horror to sink in.
It’s a bright millenium, Becky, leave a tender moment alone.
*stares at Willis, wherever he is*
I was thinking the deleted song from Hunchback of Notre Dame that was replaced by ‘God Help The Outcasts,’ but IIRC Willis doesn’t much care for Someday compared to the final song.
The stage musical keeps both songs! (It’s also closer to the plot and tone of the book than the animated movie, for what that’s worth.)
They made a book from the Disney Movie? Kooool!
Don’t be too excited; the novelization is much more racist. Like it was written in 1831 or somethin.
Alt-text, I’m pretty sure the mitts in question are Joyce’s.
When is Joyce gonna confess her love for Dotty???
Becky: Totally in love with Joyce
Joyce: Totally in denial about her love for Dorothy
Dorothy: Totally in denial about her frenemy relationship with Becky
Let the Lesbian Love Triangle commence!
Becky gets a Lesbian Love Triangle AND a hot Dino-Babe? She’s got it all this semester.
I celebrate both Christmas and Winter Solstice, and by Winter Solstice I mean just eating dinner and drinking with friends during Winter Solstice.
Raise your glasses of wine/bailey’s, or beer cans, my secular folks!
There are worse was to celebrate the solstice.
For instance, Amber could craft a Yule Alter.
her hate bonner is so hard that her stand would be an erect phalus with Dorothy´s face
Ah. I missed jealous Becky.
Hint: I did not. I thought getting a girlfriend had helped her get over Joyce?
I unrionically did!
And I’m p sure the “she herself in her confusion” gag, among other things, super didn’t- Sarah even called Dina a rebound to her face (when becky went home with joyce post shooty-toe); I’m thinking they might be an endgame pairing depending but also aren’t exactly going to get there drama free
It says something when I had to think about which toe you were talking about, Joyce’s toe or Toe-dad..
If it helps I figured it out.
This is the first time one of Becky’s attempts to get a rivalry going with Dorothy has felt like a real, vicious poke, instead of playful. Bad move, Becks.
Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing. Becky’s “frenemies” gag hasn’t really gotten on my nerves like it has to many readers, since it usually came across as just screwing with Dorothy a bit. The blatant, proprietary jealousy here seems purely assholish.
I never liked the “just screwing with Dorothy” because Dorothy has been nothing but kind and has always tried to help Becky so Becky, in her interactions with Dorothy just comes off as being entitled, selfish and ungrateful, to me anyway
Yeah, Becky’s jokes up til now have mostly just amounted to “haha we are mortal enemies haha” while still staying generally civil with Dorothy. I figured that most of the actual resentment that made her make the joke in the first place was gone by now and she mostly just kept it up for tradition, so it didn’t seem so bad, but this is the first time it really seems like she’s showing she actively dislikes Dorothy, at least recently.
There’s nothing just about screwing with Dorothy.
I agree with the sentiment. I should’ve used “kidding around” instead.
Becky. Rude.
Joyce’s dialog reminds me of the history of my company’s end-of-year party. At one point, there was a Children’s Christmas Party (which was a bring-your-kids-to-sit-on-Santa’s-lap sort of thing) and an Adult Christmas Party (which was a dinner with music, dance floor, and bar). Later, the “Christmas” was removed from the employee dinner, but the word wasn’t replaced with anything, so the invitations were for The Adult Party. Having “adult” as your only descriptor is, uhhh, kind of an awkward, especially for newer hires who don’t know the history. It became a running joke, because “what kind of party is this?!” I think it eventually was named the Adult Winter Party.
Sometimes a person can be too nice. Dorothy has (inadvertently) allowed Becky to be this way by not seriously challenging her on her behaviour and now Becky thinks it’s ok to ride to someone that has only ever been friendly and helpful
Maybe Joyce might step in…
Becky might actually back off a little if Dorothy established she’s tired of it, or even got mad. I’m not sure.
…Speaking of, when was the last time we saw Dorothy get really angry? Last occasion I can recall is that time in Leslie’s class, when she thought Mike was trying to upset her, but his actual target was Walky…
Maybe, I just don’t like the idea that part of the reason Becky goes after Dorothy is that Dorothy doesn’t challenge Becky so Becky sees her as soft target
Mind you I could also be seeing these interactions through a lens of my own personal history…
Dorothy doesn’t seem legitimately bothered by it. She doesn’t challenge her because she doesn’t seem to care
people getting mad at becky for this seem to be forgetting that she has lost fucking EVERYTHING. her life changed entirely in just a few weeks, and she has no family; her ONLY familiar support system is Joyce, her BFF and lifelong secret crush. watching her embrace another girl, a supposed future president, while having to deal with the hurricane of loss that is Becky’s life, would break a lot of people. passive-aggressive digs are one of the best ways she could deal with a situation like this, especially considering she’s a teenager. most adults i know wouldn’t be as stable as becky has been through all this (hell i lost a boyfriend and a shitty job soon after moving back in with my parents over the course of one summer and i was a broken, depressed wreck for MONTHS afterwards; in her position? i couldn’t have continued to function at all).
Thanks for the burst of perspective, I for one didn’t see that. I still don’t Appreciate Becky’s actions, but in that light we can forward her a large sum of patience.
I won’t bore you with my sob story, but I’ve had to go through a lot this past year. You wanna know what I didn’t do?
Publicly, continually antagonize my best friend’s other closest friend.
Becky should’ve gotten the point by now. This behavior isn’t funny at all. It’s irritating. And I’m sure Dorothy is being extremely lenient and tolerant. But even she has a tipping point, and it looks like it’s close.
yall have a very different idea of antagonizing than i do. everything Mike does, for example, is what i think of. or the stuff trump does. actively being cruel, humiliating people, harassing them, etc. ruth and billie have both done way more selfish, antagonizing shit and people love them to an extent i have never understood.
becky’s finding the most lighthearted way she can to express her negative feelings. she’s not required to like dorothy (and i’m saying that as someone who very much likes dorothy), and she’s probably not happy about this arrangement. maybe by hinting at her feelings she can afford herself some space without being hurtful, or maybe she’s just allowed to not be perfectly friendly to someone whose very presence probably eats away at her self worth?
idk it’s super weird to me that people are reacting so harshly to someone being not 100% supernice to someone who probably terrifies her when other characters can be cruel to each other for funsies and still be worshipped.
She’s essentially saying “Hey, I want to see you gone, you’re not welcome here”. To her effing ROOMMATE. Joking or not, it’s an incredibly terrible thing to say.
Going through traumatic experiences does not give you a full license to be an asshole, especially since she’s been acting like this towards Dorothy since before the traumatic experiences even happened.
She didn’t meet Dorothy until she was kicked out of college, homeless and on the run from her father. (While still not over her mother’s death a couple years before.) The trauma kept going from there, but it was already in full swing.
Not to mention, on a smaller scale, but more closely linked, her rejection by Joyce, which is why seeing close moments like this hurts. This kind of joking is how she deals with that – as we’ve seen with Becky again and again. No one likes a Debbie Downer, so cover it all up, be wacky, make jokes, never let people see.
And yes, it’s not cool. It’s a character flaw. Moving her into close proximity with Dorothy brings this bit of conflict to the front and will likely force a resolution. Thus, character growth.
This is how Becky deals wi
Agreed. At the moment it’s an ‘I enjoy this narrative turn because I’m certain it’s going to lead to development on behalf of both characters,’ but as actual people? Becky’s behavior is understandable to us looking in while still being objectively a dick move. I think a lot of her past stuff was mostly a bit and that Dorothy read it as such (note that when she asks Dorothy for advice about the campaign manager development, she’s genuinely asking for advice rather than consciously using it to antagonize her from what we can see, and that while she DOES call Dorothy’s attention to Walky and Amber’s potential hookup immediately in that ‘why wouldn’t I be okay?’ strip she’s only about as awkward as Joyce on the subject, not lording it over Dorothy.) It’s telling that Dorothy calls what Becky’s reaction to a lunch invitation would be alongside Joyce last arc, but they both agree it wouldn’t have any real hostility in it. But she does hit sore spots, it is still a dick move in general since Dorothy’s not playing off it as well, and now that they’re in proximity that tension’s only going to get worse. Can’t wait!
In fact, in that strip about the potential hookup, I read her as checking in to make sure Dorothy was okay. Not realizing Dorothy had no idea there was anything to be not okay about. She’s awkward when she realizes that and realizes she screwed up.
The behavior is a problem and there is real pain and jealousy she’s using it to cover, but I don’t think she actually has a problem with Dorothy herself. She’s one of the few characters on the floor she’s actually sought out to talk to beyond Dina and Joyce.
Yyyeah that’s actually not
Your lack of of perspective on the opinions of others aside, that’s a terrible way to judge a person’s character.
I much rather have a disagreeable person I can have a conversation with and improve my relations with than a relatively nice person who microaggresses at me for the better part of a year.
It never crossing certain lines is as much of a strategic choice as it is ‘nicer’. It doesn’t make her a better Person than the others, it makes her a better Harrasser. That’s not actually a good thing.
I can get behind giving Becky a Break. I can’t get behind the delusion her behavior is better because she can give herself plausible deniability effectively.
That’s a very, very bad take.
Dorothy has done -nothing- to deserve what Becky keeps doing. NOTHING.
I’ve hated a few people so, so much – people who deserved it, and I still wouldn’t behave like Becky here. This is cruel.
Well maybe she should find a better coping mechanism than being a complete dick and trying to push someone she has to live with for at least the next six months out of your so-called “best friend”‘s life. If she’s been acting like this for the past several months, I’m incredibly surprised Dorothy actually agreed to be her roommate.
Yeah, sorry,, no dice. She’s been doing this to Dorothy since day one. Significantly motivated by her healousy over the fact that Joyce made a New Friend.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel for Becky, but I have had the “friend” whi continuously puts you down because they’re jealous of you, and it feels fucking miserable.
Except that Dorothy has always tried to be supportive of Becky, and all Becky can do is try and push her buttons more. Hell, Dorothy tried giving Becky advice when she (Becky) got the campaign manager job, something that Becky was woefully unqualified for, even though she (Dorothy) most likely wanted to scream in her face. Going through trauma doesn’t give you free reign to be an asshole.
As someone who’s suffered a great deal of loss and recently got abandoned by her family to “burn” due to the current fire situation…Your circumstances and hurt is not a trump card that lets you get away with treating people badly.
Becky’s treated Dorothy like this for a while, Dorothy has done nothing to deserve it.
Dina.
…Shipping of Joyce with Dorothy intensifies.
Absolutely.
Dorothy-hug achieved!
Joyce edging closer in panel 1 is adorable!
The eyebrows, the lip-biting? Panel one Joyce has a look I haven’t seen on her except when Jacob or Ethan were in her sights.
Perfect gravatar is perfect
Hey, do you remember the crazy, corny, talented, and catchy band The Darkness?
Wondering how apt this song is.
Yeah, I am reaaaaaally getting sick of Becky’s shtick.
“My Dorothy! Connecticut get your own!”
I mean she probably made the news with the hostage situation and after showing real leadership skills during an actual crisis, I can see her being able to write one HELL of an essay.
That being said, her staying means she wants to be here.
Also, Dorothy’s Jewish? (I mean, of course she’s an atheist, but…)
Something like half-Jewish and half-Catholic, but not practicing either one.
It’s fine to be a Jewish atheist. Defining your religion by what you personally believe is actually kind of a Christian thing!
IIRC, Dorothy identifies as “half-Jewish”. She has one Jewish parent and one Christian parent, and she was raised in a very secular way.
Secular Jews (like Dorothy) and Reform Jews (like me) tend to define religion as an identity. Conservative Jews and Orthodox Jews tend to define religion by heredity, buffered by doing traditional practices.
(Tend to. Happily, Jews will disagree on everything ever.)
So, if we were asking a Conservative or Orthodox Jew: Dorothy is 100% Jewish if her mom is Jewish, and 100% Christian if her mom is Christian. Assuming that Dorothy was born Jewish, they’d say she’s being naughty by eschewing traditional Jewish practices (such as keeping kosher and celebrating Shabbat). Worshiping Jesus would count as idolatry, so that would be very naughty indeed. But, even if a Jew participates in Christmas, they’re still Jewish by blood. You can’t stop being Jewish inside.
If we were asking a Secular Jew (which would be a better choice, since that what Dorothy is): if Dorothy identifies as Jewish, then she’s Jewish. Judaism belongs to her, and she gets to make educated decisions about what that means.
Some Jews think that assimilating into Christian culture is an existential threat to Judaism, and some Jews think it’s pluralistic and cool. Secular Jews, like Dorothy’s family, almost always go with the latter.
— oh wait, I might be misremembering. Does Dorothy identify as “mostly Catholic”?
In that case… Christians mainly define your religion by what you believe, don’t they? (or is that just Protestants?) Does an atheist who is mostly descended from Christians typically identify as a Christian?
That could be quite a loss of community and identity, if they can’t.
Atheists (in the Christian world at least) don’t tend to identify as Christian. Many emphatically do not identify as Christian, if they’re rebelling against a particularly toxic Christian upbringing.
I was raised much like Dorothy – without religion by non-religious/atheist (though not Jewish) parents. My grandparents (on both sides) were mainline Protestant Christians, so I got a little exposure from that, but it wasn’t a big focus of their lives. We did all the basic mostly secular family holidays like Christmas.
I wouldn’t identify as Christian, but I’ve definitely been influenced by Christianity – growing up in a basically Christian world, surrounded by Christians and by Christian symbolism everywhere. The ways I think about religion are atheist, but also Christian. My atheism is a reaction to Christian assumptions. If I’d grown up atheist in say a Hindu culture, how I thought about religion even from outside would be shaped by that.
That’s sort of a tangent though.
I don’t think it’s as much a loss of community and identity as you suggest. As it might be for a Jew. Judaism subsumes religious and ethnic identity into one term in a way Christian doesn’t – at least in the US. I lose a religious identity by not being Christian, but I don’t change my ethnic one. Not that I ever had a religious identity to lose other than “atheist”, I suppose.
Very interesting.
And I’m glad that most Christians don’t have to lose their tribe just for not believing the same things.
I’ll be honest, the levels of hate Becky’s getting for her behaviour here seems almost as unfair as the time the comments holding her using the $20 Billie gave her to get a haircut against her for ages. Like, this is mildly more justified, because she’s kind of stretched out the jokey bit beyond it being a jokey bit, but Dorothy’s outright said she’s happy to go along with it.
Like, it’s reasonable to criticise her when she’s like this, but some people really are quick to justify visceral hate of a lesbian character who, for most of the time we’ve known her in story, has recently been through *a lot*, for minor flaws at most
What does Becky being a lesbian have to do with it? She’s asking Dorothy when she’s leaving, maybe 5 minutes or less after moving in. It’s rude, and this “joke” was never funny to begin with.
Mostly that she’s always had a disproportionate level of hate compared to straight characters whenever she’s anything less than perfect. Like, yeah, her behaviour towards Dorothy isn’t okay regardless of her sexuality, but Becky hate has been periodically bubbling up since she first became a regular character in the comic, sometimes very much on the lines of her sexuality – she got a haircut with money Billie gave her to express her identity in a way she clearly felt was more authentic to her sexuality, and the comments section hated on her for months because she “should have spent the money on something important” (when it was hardly like $20 would have saved her from being made homeless because of her sexuality).
Other things Becky has been hated on for include:
Making an inappropriate joke when her and Joyce went home because she was nervous meeting Joyce’s older siblings (one of whom was ultra conservative and hated her sexuality, the other of whom was cool but Becky had no reason to know that)
Having a supportive and loving relationship with Dina, but still not being fully over her complex romantic feelings for Joyce.
And now, being rude to Dorothy.
I do think the last one merits criticism, but being rude is just a human flaw, not “toxic” as it’s been called in this comments section. And it’s the only thing Becky’s done that merits the criticism. Instead she’s gotten fully hate for it and for far more innocuous actions.
Becky’s a victim of abuse and has been stuck in horrible circumstances, because of her sexuality, but whenever she’s not a victim in what people deem an appropriate way (spending money she’s gifted on the “wrong” things) or when she shows human flaws, she gets full on hate in the comments. That’s why I’m mentioning her sexuality.
I’m just saying that, if you’re going to invoke Becky’s orientation because people are tired of this bit, you should do the same for Danny being bi whenever people shred him for getting used as a punching bag in-comic and out.
To see the pattern you have to compare with the monstrous and unwarranted criticism the the comments constantly level at other QILTBAG characters, such as Carla, Dina, Ethan, and Marcie, and contrast with our unconditional love for straights such as Mary, Peter, Asher, Raidah, and Joe.
Carla’s taken her share. And comparing with outright villains or at least antagonists isn’t quite helpful.
Joe’s problems were called out clearly in the narrative as a problem and he still gets a lot of defenders who refuse to see anything wrong with him. As well as a lot of criticism of course.
For Becky, it’s not nearly as true now, but holy god was it apparent early on. The furor over the haircut. Blaming her for being a freeloader and mooching off of Joyce. Accusing her of intruding on Joyce’s time with her parents.
Yeah. Walky cops some, too. The dean, all the university staff except for Leslie and Asma, all parents except Dorothy’s and Dina’s, all of Billie’s new neighbours including Lucy, Ruth’s grandfather, Asher, and Faz have all taken a shellacking too. Not to mention outright villains such as Ryan, the the Bad Dads, Clinton and Asher’s gramps. Vociferous criticism is not confined to QILTBAG characters. The comments are just very critical.
While on the other hand Dina, Ethan, and Sierra seem very well-liked by the readers. Rachel and Other Rachel don’t attract much comment, but at least no hostility. To me it seems that attributing dislike of Becky to her orientation rather than to her cruelty to the popular Ethan may be confirmation bias.
idk Dorothy pretty clearly disagrees that this is their relationship and acts opposite to what Becky does all the time. I’d say that’s pretty much exactly Not going along with it. I think Becky initially acting like this was out of jealousy but Dorothy kind of shot it down from the start. IMO Becky continuing to act in this way was going farther than she should have, and then she goes the extra step here which was totally unnecessary. At this point it seems like Becky really does want her roommate for half a year to just not get along with her? And it really isn’t right for her to lash out like that even considering what she went through. It might make her actions understandable, but it does not make them acceptable. And she had been acting this way pretty much since she met Dorothy, so it isn’t like it’s new.
And, having been the Dorothy in this kind of situation, the constant badgering can get Grating. I’m not a saint and I’m not even Dorothy but some commentors seem to be suggesting that Dorothy not explicitly telling Becky to stop means she is giving Becky the green light to continue, which isn’t what I see happening at all? It just means that if Dorothy ever loses it about it (I did in my case) the brunt of the blame in the comments will fall to Dorothy because she didn’t explicitly tell Becky to stop it right now. Does “No, we aren’t like that we are going to just be friends” not mean the same thing here?
So if I like girls does that mean I get a pass on not being okay with Becky’s treatment towards Dorothy???? Cause that’s been my main issue with Becky…Dorothy will be nice, take her out for food, try to help in any way she can and Becky just kinda..back hands it into her face.
I don’t care who Becky loves (so long as it’s Dina bc Dina and Becky are life) but that’s not a “get out of being a butthole” free card people seem to treat it as.
They’re not saying you have to be okay with it, they’re saying the sheer level of hatred for her is weird and disproportionate
THANK YOU omg it’s been so weird and uncomfortable. Like, I love Mike but he’s a real asshole and the comparisons to him are so unfair. Like, sure criticize the character but I hate seeing how eager people are to hate her. They’re treating her like a serial abuser for… *Checks notes* a slightly rude running joke that dorothy hasn’t shown to be legitimately upset by
Becky is jelly
Becky is jelly :y
Y’know, if Becky is trying to force a confrontation that will most likely leave all three of them unhappy, she’s doing a great job.
Frankly, I doubt that she’s ready to understand that in her head. It will be the day Joyce issues an ultimatum to her that she’ll finally get it and, even then, it will take a calm, dispassionate talking-to from Dina to make her see that Joyce isn’t abandoning her, merely standing up for herself in the face of unreasonable demands.
Anyways, my actual take on today’s comic: Joyce and Dorothy continue to be adorable and very shippable, and Becky does need to work on how she acts towards Dorothy if they’re to have an actual functional roommate relationship (in turn, Dorothy is very justified in drawing a line and saying “Becky, I’ve had enough of this and don’t want to play along any more, can you please stop?”
Wow, fair and legitimately criticism of Becky without treating her like a terrible/malicious person. Nice
So I woke up earlier than needed, checked Dumbing of Age, and then slept a while longer. But it was clearly in my head, because I dreamt I was looking at the newest strip, and it was almost like this one, just that the last panels was Becky asking: so Joyce, if both Dorothy and I were drowning, who would you save? Since the dream was logival enough that I only get one strip aday, I did not know what Joyce answered.
Apperantly that’s what happens when I read the new strip halfasleep.
FWIW, Joyce is the sort of girl who would get herself killed trying to save everyone.
We saw plenty of evidence back in the kidnapping arc.
Yeah, that seems very plausible.
I’m very curious how Joyce and Becky’s christmas break went. Things were not good in the Brown-family when we left then, so how was Christmas? And where did Becky stay over break? Did she join Joyce with her family (would be uncomfortable for her, with how it was last time and now with new shit piled on) or did she stay somewhere else? I hope we get some flashbacks.
Becky needs to be friendlier to Joyce’s girlfriend if she wants to be invited to the wedding.
She’ll only be friendly if she’s promised Best Gal position for Joyce in the wedding party.
here’s as good a place as any to ask this, Dorothy has been very clear about the plan to transfer to Yale, but do we have any reason to believe she’d be successful if she (presumably???) didn’t get in the first time around?
Maybe it’s because I’m a Brit and so don’t understand American university, but I’d have thought transferring from a different university to one of the most prestigious would be just as hard if not harder than going there directly out of school (certainly in the UK, university transfers during undergrad are extremely rare, involve essentially reapplying, and doing well at your previous uni wouldn’t really count in your favour because people would wonder why you’re leaving).
What it’s meant is that I’ve never been entirely clear how realistic this whole Yale scheme is, if it’s the naivete of a very determined but nevertheless young woman who might have ideas beyond herself (which although maybe hinted at when Dorothy’s grades slipped, doesn’t seem to be the comic’s characterisation otherwise) or if this is like somehow a super common thing that happens all the time (which just doesn’t tally with my university experience, in a different country but tbh at an institution of a similar prestige level to Yale and knowledge of how that worked)
Most people get accepted at an institution and go there for four years. Doesn’t mean that transfers don’t happen. There’s a whole segment of people that will go two years at a nearby Junior College and then transfer into a four year institution that’s further away. Sometimes in another country. I bet you anything that your prestigious University.had an exchange program and accepted suitable transfers, both.
Poking around on the internets I found that Yale accepts somewhere around 2% of transfer applicants. This is well below their regular acceptance rate, meaning it’s harder to get in as a transfer.
Since Yale’s a very prestigious school, I don’t think “wonder why you’re leaving” your previous school would be a factor. You’re leaving because you want to get into Yale.
I do think Dorothy’s whole plan is pretty naive. Not necessarily that it’s beyond her abilities, but that it isn’t well thought out. She’s fixated on Yale as a stepping stone to the Presidency, though there doesn’t seem to be any clear link there or any mention of a plan on how to get there from there. Though she did eventually say that she’d been volunteering with Manley’s campaign and hint about moving up through that route.
At the very least, I can’t see any reason why Yale and not any of the big-name Ivy schools. And treat the transfer as the long shot it is and focus on getting into a prestigious school for grad work.
I imagine that is conflated across GPAs and college grades. Includes all the people who can’t follow instructions in their applications, etc. Also I imagine that Dorothy has done her research and knows better than to think she can apply and get in after one semester. She would have a better chance yet by waiting till her Junior year.
While a less than 2% rate sounds bad, it’s not all that much worse than the regular rate. And compares to a 0% acceptance rate if you don’t try. There’s nothing wrong with believing in yourself while having a backup plan in place.
I believe the regular rate is around 6%. That’s 3 times the transfer rate.
Yeah, it includes the screws ups and everything, but so does the regular rate.
I agree, there’s nothing wrong with trying, but I also think the chances remain slim.
It’s so she can shout “I went to YALE” at her confirmation hearings. That’s why she obsessively documents everything in her calendars.
“You hitting on my girl? I liked her first you know, no we’re not “together”-together but we have super tight bound, we’re childhood friends, you guys just met, haha very well then engarde sir you shall be my rival, nemesis if you will”
Crossing a line, Becky. Crossing. A. Line. A girl can have two best friends.
April.
I guess Joyce forgot Dorothy’s family are Catholics?
I think one parent was Catholic and the other Jewish?
Her grandparents on her fathers side are “both Catholic and Jewish” (which I guess mean they are descended from converted Jewish people?), while the ones on the mothers side are just Catholics. Dorothy also said “most of my family is Catholic”.
Like, her parents are actually non religious, but, regardless, the impression given is that Catholicism is a bigger part of her family upbringing, so you would expect Dorothy’s family to celebrate Christmass even if they also happened to celebrate Hanukkah.
Joyce was practically straining at the leash there, wasn’t she? She absolutely could not wait to hug her Perfect Cinnamon Roll (that’s Dorothy’s ID in Joyce’s address book)! It’s genuinely sweet and I love the way Dorothy isn’t even remotely uncomfortable with it or with the fact that even when Becky starts letting her jealousies run the conversation, Joyce and Dorothy are still attached!
I’m looking forward to a follow-up on this point of Dorothy wanting to go to an Ivy League college. The way I see it, it could go one of two ways: Dorothy gets lots of rejection letters and has to confront not being as perfect as part of her imagines; Or Dorothy gets into a big college and then has to decide whether she wants to take this opportunity although it means it will separate her from her friends( particularly Joyce).
Some People: Becky’s been acting like an asshole to Dorothy and that’s not okay.
Other People: Becky’s been through a lot of trauma and that excuses it. How dare you sling “hate” at her, the Lesbian Character (TM)?
For real, some commentators here are acting like the barest bit of criticism of a character’s annoying flaws are throwing hate around and then having the gall to say that the character’s sexuality is the reason why. Fucking Christ on a Bike that’s a whole lotta reaching there.
Becky’s trauma and experiences does not mean she gets a free pass to continuously throw her jealousy fit at Dorothy without criticism/annoyance.
You know what, reading back through the comments, I’ll acknowledge I was wrong. I do think hate on Becky in the past (particularly the drama over her haircut) has been a bit extreme in places, but here the criticism is pretty proportionate to the flaws in her behaviour.
Part of it’s just the usual online thing. Any criticism or defense quickly escalates to “She’s a monster”, “No, she’s a saint”.
When the truth is she has character flaws and this is one of them.
I wanted to mention that other side of the coin too but neglected to do so which is my bad. That any time a character acts a little bit asshole-ish there are commentators that are like “X Character is a complete monster with 0 redeemable qualities.”
Like seriously.
I like this strip, because it feels like Becky’s worst behaviours are getting signaled to be reaching a breaking point.
I wonder if it’s hard to write characters with deliberate, poisonous flaws and actions. Not just constantly making well intended mistakes like Joyce, but that Becky genuinely has a bone to pick with Dorothy and expresses that in a negative fashion. Then you get to the part where everyone reads it and suddenly starts disliking a beloved character like Becky. Wouldn’t it just be easier to have Becky be nice and smooch Dina all the time instead of being mean to Dorothy? Sure, and I think a lot of people would be okay with that, but to me a character is only truly worth reading about if they let their worst instincts take over at least once in a while, and that’s what we’re seeing here.
I like Becky a lot, but I’m not gonna defend her on this, and that’s okay. Joyce is best character and she was still compliant in ruining Jacob’s relationship with Raidah.
Like, people expressing their annoyances with Becky doesn’t necessarily mean people hate her. From what I’ve seen from the common complaint about Becky is that she’s been a jerk to Dorothy in a lot of their interactions together. And it looks to be one sided. People can have flaws and others can comment on them.
No one is saying that Becky has to be perfect, nice, and only be smooching Dina all the time. What some people are saying is that Becky should work on her jealousy riff with Dorothy. And also Dorothy should put her foot down.
Agreed. Even (probably) knowing why Becky’s doing this doesn’t make it an okay thing to do, and I look forward to her working through it and (hopefully) Dorothy getting to express some ‘I’m not a saint with infinite patience, this is genuinely irritating’ about the whole thing.
Dorothy burning out over one of the many issues plaguing her feels like something we’ve been waiting years for that may never happen, if not for a long time.
I hope we do. Not that I wish ill on Dorothy, but her previous burnout story being resolved by breaking up with Walky has never sat well with me. A surface fix to a deeper problem.
The parallel would be Walky resolving his school problems by dropping Calc and never learning to study or deal with his insecurities around his effortless smartness.
Agreed to all of the above.
Anyway, I wonder why Dorothy had to allow Joyce to hug her. Did something happen over the timeskip?
Boundaries. Joyce has/had issues with them before. It looks like Dorothy at least wanted to get some things settled before getting hugged.
Thank Sal more than anyone else. She’s the one who finally broke through to Joyce about asking permission before making physical contact, especially in an intimate way. There is still a kind of sweet “I know this is right but I don’t know why” aspect to how Joyce does this that makes me think of the character Melon in Jeph Jaques’ ‘Questionable Content’. Nonetheless, Joyce is starting to get it!
I think Joyce is working on her boundary issues. Likely with Dorothy’s help.
But Raidah’s relation with Jacob was toxic, and however motived, Joyce’s actions were on the side of the angels.
Maybe for the best in the long run – Jacob learned some things about himself.
But still completely screwed up. Far worse than Becky here.
Yep. Bad behaviour is still bad behaviour regardless of which side you’re on. The side Joyce was on was the side of breaking up Jacob’s relationship and then withholding sex.
“then withholding sex”?
WTF?
Joyce’s project was to use romantic allure and sexual appeal to separate Jacob from Raidah. That’s not heinous, but it’s not angelic.
She flirted with him, suggesting romantic and sexual attraction. That is of course not a contractual offer of sex — and I don’t believe that any such contract is conscionable anyway — but her intention was that he should boyfriend for her for months or years during which she would categorically refuse to consider any suggestion of sex that he made. I’m not calling that diabolical, and I am neither saying nor do I believe that having done a bad thing or several bad things makes Joyce evil through and through. But I call shenanigans on the suggestion that the screwed-up unhappy manipulative relationships encouraged by her sex-negative upbringing are the “side of the angels”.
No, I do not believe and I did not say that if you flirt with someone you then have to have sex with them.
But yes, I did say that the kind of relationship in which a man is expected to say “you wanna fool around?” and the woman to say “My own! My beloved! My transcendant one! No. Go slay another dragon and then sign over half your stuff” is diabolical. It not Joyce’s fault that she was raised to think they are deeply romantic and divinely ordained. But she wasn’t on the side of the angels when she tried to inveigle Jacob into such a relationship.
Yes, a similar relationship with the sexes reversed, or involving a non-cishet couple would be bad too. But they are not a norm promoted by religion and the romance industry, so a less prominent threat to angelichood.
So, any relationship that Joyce got into would be bad because she’d be “withholding sex”? That’s a pretty fucked up attitude. Especially since it wouldn’t be a surprise. She’d made her opinions quite clear up front.
I agree that there’s something messed up on the societal level about that expectation, but at the same time so is the idea that women are bad if they get you into a relationship but won’t put out.
Also – she wouldn’t have lasted a month. Joyce is horny.
I don’t agree at all. Raidah and Jacob’s relationship was fine and the only reason we as readers hated it is because we like Joyce and Sarah more than Raidah.
If you think Jacob going with Raidah because he thought it would be something his brother would approve of and Raidah actively pushing Jacob’s insecurity buttons to manipulate him was okay, then sure, their relationship was fine.
Where did Raidah do that?
I agree with Clif. Raidah’s attitude towards Jacob had little of love or affection and a lot of social/influence climbing.
Jacob clearly expressed a lot of fondness and admiration for their relationship and what he was learning from it.
He did not seem to be aware of the problems with it.
We got some glimpses of Raidah that he missed.
Specifically for pushing his buttons though, she used Harrison a couple of times explicitly for that.
Becky is awesome when she’s “subtle”.
Yes, And someday we will see her being subtle.
With a nuke from orbit.
And Becky is even more awesome when she’s actually being subtle. Most of the time the audience doesn’t even notice.
Comments:
Panel 2: GLOMP
Panels 4&5: I’m not tryin’ ta get rid of ya, I’d just like my own room!
Alt-text: Technically, none of Dottie’s ‘mitts’ are on Joyce – it’s Joyce’s mitts that are on Dottie. One of them, anyway – Joyce’s left hand is on her own right arm. Dottie’s hands are both at her sides.
Becky still has all the tact of a Rooster at 5AM
Spoken like someone who has experienced late nights and tipsters.
*roosters
I live in the northern suburbs of Chicago. I have no experience with Roosters but I hate mornings so I imagine that they are a pain in the ass.
They don’t just crow in the morning. They crow all the time.
It’s just the most annoying in the morning.
i honestly root for dorothy and becky to be best friends eventually (aka friend-ship them), but that’s never gonna happen does it
Dorothy’s family does a traditional Jewish Christmas; Chinese food and a movie. ‘Tis a sacred ritual for us.