Especially as one gets older. 😉 After a while, you get so, SO tired of drama and baggage and you just find yourself craving someone who’s calm, reliable, steady and at peace with who they are and know what they want out of life.
I’ve had enough chaos from the people in my life. A partner who’s a dependable rock that isn’t going to suddenly go fucking nuts on me is about as an ideal a romantic fantasy as I can muster.
You guys can motorcycle down the Mediterranean in gripping love triangles all you want, I’m playing scrabble with the missus/hubby.
Tbh I’m 21 and i just want boring. If my life is boring i can say I’ve succeeded. I just want a stable house and a couple dogs with my partner and only have to worry about things like. Taxes and the weather and shit. And not my current worries like girls getting kidnapped from my campus and a pervasive national r*pe culture
I hate drama because the relationships in my life have been constantly unreliable and hectic.
I know I’m the common denominator, I’m still a person, I’m still capable of the same kind of folly and mistakes as everyone around me (and also a cocktail of mental disorders doesn’t help), but that just means I want to vibe with someone where we mutually don’t trip over each others’ alarms.
n.b. My life is a trainwreck caused by a dumpster fire in a flood. I know where my drama comes from and I know how to mitigate it as much as possible. I know the mistakes I’m responsible for. Looking at the mistakes I let myself walk into, and I am very confident in the original assertion, and its fairness. I respect your feelings on this, but I’ve seen far too much support for the assertion to disregard it from one claim that it’s not fair.
I’d suggest that maybe Joe was using that as a pickup line and tries it on everyone, but honestly I figure this is one area where he can be counted on to be totally honest.
We know her number before she was changed to zero. He said she was a 4, with the potential to be ‘upgraded to a ten’ with his dick once he ‘fixed’ her.
**sigh**
It makes me sad when I go out of my way to make my meaning clear and people still post replies that either misinterpret me or take my words out of context.
I did not suggest that Joyce was a “1”. I suggested that she is “#1” as in the one above Sal re the comic we are talking about.
Joe probably means Joyce, although purely looks wise, he might mean Rachel, who’s the one person we know he ‘rated’ higher than Sal. Given Danny only knows of Joe’s list, that’s probably what he’s thinking of, based on when he last saw it (which was probably when it was being deleted). Joyce definitely means more to him though.
He says “hottest”, so I’d guess he’s thinking more looks wise, rather than personal interest. It also doesn’t really make sense to rank Sal second in terms of his personal interest, since he’s had next to no contact with her. Thinking Joyce, then Sal would be an odd mixing of levels, one being rated high because he likes her and the other purely on looks/style.
When? He seemed pretty legitimate about it during that storyline.
I wouldn’t be shocked if she was number one in his mind now, though Rachel’s probably the number one on his list (which is probably what Danny thinks he means).
It may, in fact, not be a huge deal to Danny. Which changes little.
If someone has a ‘non-standard’ orientation which could cause other people to treat them differently and in some cases treat them very badly, then basic decency requires you to exercise caution in who you mention it to. If the person wishes to announce it to the world at large, as Becky has done, it’s their choice. It’s not your choice, or shouldn’t be.
Joe is unfamiliar with the dynamic between Danny and Sal, and while he’s known Danny for a lifetime, he has no basis for knowing how Sal will react. Joe now knows that Sal is into Danny and while he doesn’t know that Danny cares enough about Sal to buy her a bike, Danny has just confessed that Sal is far enough out of his league to terrify him. So with no idea if it will be a deal killer for Sal, Joe puts it out there. Some friend.
Doesn’t mean that Joe is being intentionally malicious, but if he was, his behavior might not be much different.
It strikes me as likely that Danny has both told Sal (because puns), though maybe not that he’s open to Sal to Joe.
Becky in Leslie’s classroom for example publicly outed Ruth and Jennifer to both Leslie and everyone else in the room, and more pointedly Jennifer is someone who has no interest in acknowledging her attraction to women at the moment.
It was definitely still a violation of boundaries and I think doing it to an entire classroom of people when one of them is insistent they don’t actually like girls right now is pretty dang awful, but it’s also how Becky would be written: she’s a loud jackass and Leslie’s her gay mom, so of course Becky’s going to scream about it to her.
Joe meanwhile is talking to his lifelong best friend in front of the girl who’s so into him she literally scaled a wall to come see him, someone we know or can at least infer that Danny is out to, and he’s making some nominal headway back into Fun No Feelings Sex Bro Joe after last chapter had him confront his feelings for Joyce.
If you want to make an endpoint to a few strips where Joe is going “how the hell is this super hot girl into my nerdy best friend?” where he comes up with a silly chauvinist and heteronormative reading why Sal likes him, it kind of had to play out like this, like how Becky in Leslie’s classroom would play out like it did.
i sometimes feel like the central characters in this comic can all be depended upon to be sort of above-average woke. those who aren’t are either comically vile (Mary) or they’re well-meaning but— ok, they’re Joyce.
there have been instances of casual bigotry by sympathetic characters, like Jennifer being off-handedly classist on the phone in Sal’s presence, but for the most part the characters all exhibit a level of sensitivity that’s kind of unrealistic for a random sample of college freshmen.
so i get the sense that when we see Joe (or Becky) casually outing people, we’re not supposed to find that worrisome, like there’s a sort of comic licence going on?
Yes, this is not an ok thing to do irl. and i don’t know how i feel about the way it’s portrayed here like it’s nbd: on the one hand there’s something relaxing about this sort of soft utopia; i can enjoy today’s comic because within this universe’s parameters, i know that this is fine. on the other hand, this is different from superhero stunts where disbelief is suspended by genre conventions.
“Woke” isn’t an on/off switch. A person who believes in progressive ideals is still as fallible as everyone else in living up to those ideals because ideals are perfect and people aren’t. I believe in progressive values but that does not make me incapable of ever doing wrong, even wrong that I stringently believe shouldn’t ever be committed.
Like, let’s compare Becky and Joe.
Becky is in a classroom of people she doesn’t know and walks in Ruth and Jennifer. Becky immediately starts talking out loud about their relationship to Leslie and, by consequence, the entire class until they get angry enough to leave (also Becky had a Machiavellian plan to keep them apart which is in-character since Becky is a stupid idiot).
Now, this is deeply, morally wrong in any real life scenario and fiction requires a suspension of disbelief before you even get into character motivations. Becky as a character would absolutely yell loudly about this to Leslie, that isn’t a dunk on Becky that is who she is and how she talks, and then there’s how the camera of the panels only focuses on the core cast so even though Ruth and Jennifer were forcibly outed, they were forcibly outed to people who only barely exist. It’s that Becky’s specific actions (and especially her later revealed stupid idiot motivation) still trip over these pitfalls and turn her into someone who just goes “HEY THESE TWO USED TO FUCK” at a teacher neither of them know, while Jennifer is adamant that she doesn’t like girls because she’s still in denial.
Meanwhile you’ve got this strip here where both Sal and Joe know Danny is bisexual (Joe was outright told, Sal is pretty easy to infer), but realistically Joe does not know that Sal knows and at most can make a sensible assumption that Danny has told her. Joe is backsliding into his old macho persona and so lands on Danny’s sexuality as some kind of magical excuse for why Sal is into him, and so lands on Danny’s sexuality. To actually set all this up we’d have to get a strip where Danny either tells Joe “yeah it’s fine to tell people” or for Sal to learn Danny is bi while Joe is in the room, meaning this one gag strip now has to get set up even though it won’t have any tangible impact on anyone’s relationship.
It’s really not as simple as “the characters are good so it’s not actually a mistake”, it’s not a binary thing where you’re either Woke or Problematic, and you’re correct to bring up the suspension of disbelief since I think that’s why it’s easier for me to roll with this versus how Becky acted.
yes i completely agree with you and Clif that outing people without their consent is bad, and that you cannot count on people being “woke” enough not to do bad things with that information some way or other. (and actually i don’t like this word, and now wish i’d phrased my comment differently.)
but this being fiction, my point is that for me, as a reader, i get the feeling that the author is not interested in exploring the possible consequences of those transgressions. i may yet be proven wrong. let’s see how Danny (or Sal) reacts to this tomorrow. But in the Becky situation as i recall neither Ruth, Leslie, or even Jennifer (or Carla) seemed to have anything to say specifically about Becky loudly outing two non-straight people.
anyway, you make good points about it being in character for both Joe and Becky to be sketchy regarding others’ consent in both instances.
in any case, i’m grateful to you and Clif and others for pointing out that this is not ok, because i might not have noticed. which in a way, is my point? although probably that says more about me than it does about the strip. oh well.
Joe also already had intimacy with Roz (which is an odd way to phrase it). Doesn’t mean that Joe thinks either is the hottest. Just that they met his standards, which seem to be (a) willing and (b) above a 3 in his internal ranking system.
Personal anecdote time. Back in the 80’s I was going through AIT in the Army (Advanced training, which for my field was a year) and living in the barracks. They were brick and co-ed, but separated by sex. Women on one end of the third floor, men on the other floors and on the other end of the third floor. The third floor had a ‘temporary’ (permanent) wall built at the half-way point, separating the sexes.
They put the married men, or men with dependents, on the other end of the third floor, increasing the odds that nothing would happen.
Each floor, on the outside of the building, had a concrete extension, about 2 and a half feet wide, supposedly acting as ‘awnings’ or rain/sun shields, if you will.
What they ACTUALLY were, was a highway to bypass that inner wall. My room was the first inside the separation on the side of the building facing the center of the quad.
Every weekend night, and quite a few weekday nights, people would (nicely, mind you) ask if they could use our room, and proceed to come in, and go out the window, down the building, and in one of the female’s rooms. (Remember, most new Army personnel are under 21; I was 22 at the time).
Some of the people were other married men, as well… man, what a time that was. *I*, of course, *NEVER* used highway, nope, nope, never. This was before cell phones and ubiquitous cameras…
Even a normal spider, if you bite some of their legs off, they grow back.
I have no idea if machine learning could be trained to interface with spider brains in such a way as to allow spiders to operate appropriately scaled motorcycles. Like backbreeding chickens into classic dinosaurs, it’s a project that’s appealing on it’s own merits, or lack thereof.
What is time? Time is an imaginary distance, and I use imaginary in the mathematical sense, not the everyday conversational sense.
Calling imaginary numbers ‘imaginary’ was a bad move as they are no more imaginary (in the common sense) than fractions or irrationals or any other number. If they called them orthogonal numbers instead of imaginary numbers, a great deal of misunderstanding would have been avoided.
Also in my admittedly very limited dating experience being even slightly open about being bi has alienated both sides of the dating pool. But maybe things have changed for the better in the college scene since then. It’s been almost a decade now.
Yeah, 10 or so years ago, it was terrible, and I know there’s a lot of issues even now, but it’s a lot easier to be bi or pan these days. I’m a closeted pan, and my fiance is bi. At first my parents were like “Ok, does that mean she’s straight and trying to be cool? Or is she going to leave you once she finds an attractive girl?”
Thankfully, my parents now love her so much, my mom informed me this morning that, if I divorce her, they’re adopting her.
So I suppose it’s better now, but it depends on who you’re around. Nearly all of my friends are LGBTQA+, my fiance is the second bi I’ve dated, and we’ve had someone come out NB and it caused zero ruckus other than people apologizing as they struggle to not use their old gender pronouns for the first two years.
Things have gotten waaaay better, OP. There’s still work to do, but it is definitely better.
He’s sweet and considerate. He bought her a bike, then backed off when she said she didn’t want people buying her things. He likes her without putting her on a pedestal or in a box.
Sal may, in fact, know Danny is bi. But it does not follow that Joe knows that Sal knows Danny is bi. If he knew that Sal knew, then he wouldn’t have to say it. So, yeah. Joe is being a jerk.
Yeah, seems like there’s an assumption in some circles that sexuality has to always be treated like a secret, even when the person in question isn’t doing so themselves. Makes no sense to me.
Maybe I’m just old. I grew up in a time when the risks were even more common than today and plenty of people did treat it as a secret. Even then though, for those who were out, there was never an expectation that only they were allowed to refer to it unless you were certain that everyone present had already been informed.
And that’s the way it still is in the circles of people I know today.
It’s also as far as I can tell, the way it’s being treated in the comic. Rightly or wrongly, I don’t think potential revelations like this have ever been called out in the comic itself.
The general rule seems deceptively simple, but it actually isn’t. Since unless a big deal is made of it, you’ll rarely know who has already been informed and thus there’s all sorts of topics that are off limits. Again, this only applies when the person is open about it themselves.
And it ain’t about hoss, or you either. In this case it’s about Danny, and he seems to want it out. Based on the comic’s presentation. And handling this case-by-case seems to be the way to go.
How do those with disabilities and indigenous people put it?
Handling this case by case, as in it matters to the individual how their info is meted out, has actually been what I’ve been saying, meaning you are the third person tonight to crawl up my asshole because you decided what my words meant instead of what is there.
“Consistent pattern of other people misunderstanding” motherfucker it’s you three. You just decided “hey don’t out people without their consent” meant “you, specifically, need to go hide in the closet forever, there is no other option.”
Nothing I said had anything to do with you, you just decided it did. Why the fuck do I have a responsibility to someone like that?
And I’m gonna be charitable that “Not about us without us.” ain’t what I think it means.
I am, in fact, an Us in this scenario. I do actually have a say in how people learn about me, much like how every other Us has a say in how they come out.
It’s been several months since Danny realized it himself. I think we can probably just assume based on Danny’s reaction or lack thereof next strip. (I.e., no reaction probably means Danny and Joe have an understanding that he’s out, while a negative reaction would be…self-explanatory).
Also does it still make sense timeline-wise for Danny to have a Rebecca Saint James poster? (Hell, does it make sense in general for DoA Danny, who is to our knowledge Christian but not necessarily evangelical enough to have posters of Christian rock artists who have put out only two albums since 2002? Christian rock now being firmly out of the secular pop vogue?) It’s an acceptable grandfather clause poster IMO, but I suspect it’s by now anachronistic.
And 24 years since the first Walkyverse comic. I definitely didn’t read it when it first started back then, because I was 8 at the time and wasn’t aware of webcomics.
It’s not that he’s afraid, Sal. It’s that hte last time he went doing dangerous things outside a window, it was on a date with Amazi-Girl, and the memories still torment him.
Danny seems rightfully scared to see Sal looking at him clinging to his window surrounded by light, like some sort of mystical apparition. Or maybe he’s really Scaroused…. Sal, on the other hand, has no more problems to say she likes him, even with an other person around. This is a very nice thing ♡.
He hasn’t become a totally different person, no. But he’s no longer sharing his list on the Internet and is at least partially aware of the damage it can do.
Joyce would be a fucking yaoi devourer if she could get past her:
– Christian shame. Just because she doesn’t believe in God doesn’t mean she doesn’t fear sin.
– Xenophobic upbringing. I’m sure she’s tolerant of other cultures but at the same time I can’t picture her getting past all the -san and -kun and -chan’s, or the festival chapters or w/e.
I think it’s pretty clear Sal is that into Danny. I’d argue someone wouldn’t generally climb a building to your window to hang out with you if they’re not into you.
While you’re right, internalized bi erasure means even we forget people are supposed to take that seriously about us. It’s such an easy aspect of identity to forget is marginalizing, because it rarely actually causes you any problems, despite being just as queer as anybody else.
Has Danny shown any sign of treating it like a secret in months? Does he need to make a formal announcement? Take out ads? Proclaim it every time he enters a room, like Becky does? (Would it be wrong to mention Becky’s a lesbian, if you somehow managed to find someone she hadn’t already announced it to?)
I absolutely agree with not outing people who are in any fashion in the closet, but if they’re not, it seems to just stigmatize it to treat it as a secret.
It’s about making sure the means of our sexuality are in our control, and that’s before getting into legitimate safety reasons.
Danny doesn’t have to keep it secret (and I’m pretty sure the implication here is that he hasn’t, considering he’s making bi puns in Sal’s face) but that doesn’t mean Joe could walk up to someone, even someone they both know, and say “oh yeah Danny likes guys” without first checking that’s something Danny is comfortable with.
It’s really not that hard, and it doesn’t really matter what you think about the hows and whys. Straights don’t get to decide what it means for us, simple as.
Yeah, no, though? People around me treating it as some secret shame they need to check in with me about before mentioning is kinda the exact opposite of how I want to be treated? It’s alienating and otherizing and awkward and logistically difficult and honestly kinda insulting.
The choice to do so… what? I’m not sure what you think I said, but I’m having trouble making sense of your response in light of what I was trying to communicate.
You are, specifically, taking away my choice to be out. You would, hypothetically, in my presence, be treating my orientation as something deserving of being hidden. You treating a basic aspect of my being as something that needs to be danced around and whose mention needs to be avoided in casual conversations would be incredibly frustrating and disempowering.
Danny is not in the closet. Joe knows Danny well enough to know he’s not in the closet. Treating him like he is, when he isn’t, is infantalizing and insulting, and Joe did nothing wrong (in this particular situation)
Okay sure let me try and put it this way, Weiss-sensei is gonna drop a hot take.
If I say “oh yeah it’s cool you can tell anyone (within reason)” then my control over the situation is as large as I want it to be. If someone finds out without my knowledge then that’s a parameter I’ve established.
If I trust someone with it in confidence for whatever reason and they violate that trust, I am nettled. My control is lost and it’s lost because I trusted someone who proved themselves untrustworthy, even if actually everyone around me is super cool with the liking guys thing, it fundamentally changes how they and I view each other because I, myself, had something about me dragged out that I can dole out on my own time.
Do you get it yet? Do I need to explain this any further? Is the part about how queer folks get to control the means of how they are out (as in, that also includes anyone who wants to be as open as possible) sunken in?
And Danny is a cartoon character, he can’t actually want anything.
Oh, I get it, you think people should default to treating a basic part of my nature is weird and bad and taboo until they are reassured otherwise. You’ve literally been making the same argument the whole time, and when anyone points out that your approach is problematic, you do this. The problem isn’t that we don’t “get it”, it’s that we disagree.
That isn’t what Spencer’s said at all. Spencer’s said that people should default to not telling people about another’s sexuality if they aren’t sure the person is okay with that. That’s not about their sexuality being weird/bad/taboo, it’s about respecting the person’s comfort level with telling personal information. It’s not that different then, for example, not telling others about someone being pregnant if you’re not sure they’re okay with that. Especially given some people react badly and even violently when they find out someone is LGBTQ+ and so it’s perfectly reasonable to think someone might not want that information widely known. It’s not ‘Your sexuality is bad and should only be mentioned if you’re reassured it’s not’, it’s ‘don’t tell others personal information about someone (especially personal information that may put someone in danger) if you’re not sure they’re okay with that’.
I will wait for Danny’s reaction before deciding how uncool this is. It wouldn’t be the first time that Joe’s macho pose led him to overstep the limits of friendship, but maybe he’s just acting on some knowledge about the situation that we readers don’t have.
We haven’t seen that Joe knows, or that Joe knows Danny is out. But Joe is BFF and roommate with Danny, they’re going to have interactions we don’t see.
Since Joe is completely surprised by Sal wanting to talk to Danny, Joe and Danny have clearly not had long interactions about Sal we haven’t seen.
Look, my sexual orientation is pretty vanilla, but there is a lot about me that is pretty weird. To pick an example I’m comfortable talking about on the Internet, I will hyperfocus. To the extent that everything except what I’m thinking about goes away. This mostly uncontrolled ability to hyperfocus on things I’m interest in is largely an advantage, but the thing is, I continue to function without my attention while it’s going on. I can drive and obey customary traffic laws, though the correct destination is a bit of a crap shoot. I can carry on rudimentary every day conversations I will have no memory of later. I’m not ignoring things that may be important to me while I’m hyperfocusing, they just don’t exist.
There are other weirdnesses I’m not going to discuss. My wife needed to know how weird I was before we got married. She didn’t need to know before our first date. If my best friend had been there when we were first in the hanging out phase and I wanted her to like me, and the first thing he did was talk about how weird I was, I would not have taken it well. To the point of wondering why they were my best friend.
I kinda resent your notion that someone having a different sexuality than you is “weird” and its something they should be ashamed of and keep a secret. Should their friends also be hush hush about his relationships if he ever dates a guy lest other people find out how “weird” he is?
I’ve described Danny as “an affectionate golden retriever” lately and I think that’s appropriate considering we now know that Sal is like a cat emotionally and in the ability to climb through windows.
However, it’s fun to read the developments of this (almost) date the same week that Komi and Tadano have their first date and they ask each other why he/she is happy to be with the other because; one feel to be to much ordinary and the other to complicated to be together with. it’s one of those magical coincidences that I like so much ♡
Speaking as a being of pure chaos and my long string of failed romantic partners I could tell you a thing or two about how long-term relationships really want an element of boring. Sal’s got a good thing going.
Okay, so silly me for forgetting that it was originally Danny on the phone with Sal while Joe was climbing up the outside wall to the femme floor’s windows.
I guess I was thinking more of later occurrences of Sal coming in through the window?
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Sal is secretly Spider-Car, right
No wonder her boots say Bridgestone on the sides.
Basically Batman
Belatedly Black Widow
Secretly Spider-Car
Weirdly Wonder Woman
Finally Full-Metal Frog
Sal, you like him in part because he is boring.
Boring is underrated
Especially as one gets older. 😉 After a while, you get so, SO tired of drama and baggage and you just find yourself craving someone who’s calm, reliable, steady and at peace with who they are and know what they want out of life.
Yeah.
I’ve had enough chaos from the people in my life. A partner who’s a dependable rock that isn’t going to suddenly go fucking nuts on me is about as an ideal a romantic fantasy as I can muster.
You guys can motorcycle down the Mediterranean in gripping love triangles all you want, I’m playing scrabble with the missus/hubby.
There is an uncomfortable amount of truth in this.
hear me out though: mediterranean motorcycle trip WITH a scrabble game?!
Strip Scrabble!
Tbh I’m 21 and i just want boring. If my life is boring i can say I’ve succeeded. I just want a stable house and a couple dogs with my partner and only have to worry about things like. Taxes and the weather and shit. And not my current worries like girls getting kidnapped from my campus and a pervasive national r*pe culture
Or.. You get to the point where corrupting the innocent becomes a thrill unto itself?
For the young ‘uns, if someone you know rants and rants about “how much they hate drama!” THEY are the cause of their drama. Steer clear.
Not always true, and also not really fair.
Yeah.
I hate drama because the relationships in my life have been constantly unreliable and hectic.
I know I’m the common denominator, I’m still a person, I’m still capable of the same kind of folly and mistakes as everyone around me (and also a cocktail of mental disorders doesn’t help), but that just means I want to vibe with someone where we mutually don’t trip over each others’ alarms.
So you’re telling me that someone who “rants and rants” about drama, isn’t causing drama or the cause of most of the drama in their life?
Also: [xkcitationd]
n.b. My life is a trainwreck caused by a dumpster fire in a flood. I know where my drama comes from and I know how to mitigate it as much as possible. I know the mistakes I’m responsible for. Looking at the mistakes I let myself walk into, and I am very confident in the original assertion, and its fairness. I respect your feelings on this, but I’ve seen far too much support for the assertion to disregard it from one claim that it’s not fair.
Or they’ve worked with people
You think Joe is talking about Joyce or Rachel for first hottest girl?
Rachel, I think, given the whole ‘eleven’ deal.
I’d suggest that maybe Joe was using that as a pickup line and tries it on everyone, but honestly I figure this is one area where he can be counted on to be totally honest.
Might be Joyce, since we do not know what her number was before he changed it to 0, even if we take him calling Rachel an 11 at face value.
We know her number before she was changed to zero. He said she was a 4, with the potential to be ‘upgraded to a ten’ with his dick once he ‘fixed’ her.
That was later implied to have been a lie.
My money is on Joyce for #1.
Was it? I thought it was pretty clear Joe was playing into a dumb fantasy of “naive churchy girl embraces the horny thanks to Joe’s monster dong.”
I mean Joe does intentionally exaggerate his overly sexualness in an attempt to distance himself from others so that he can’t really hurt anyone.
I was referring to their date at the very start of the comic where Joe was treating his life like a sex comedy.
1 seems a lower score than 11, though…
Not if she’s standing on top of the podium. Rankings don’t matter if at the end of the day you come in first.
Sorry, that should’ve been, “Sit astride the Joedium.”
**sigh**
It makes me sad when I go out of my way to make my meaning clear and people still post replies that either misinterpret me or take my words out of context.
I did not suggest that Joyce was a “1”. I suggested that she is “#1” as in the one above Sal re the comic we are talking about.
(A few seconds after posting, I realized that Deanatay’s comment may have been a joke. If so, I didn’t register that until too late. Apologies if so.)
Joe probably means Joyce, although purely looks wise, he might mean Rachel, who’s the one person we know he ‘rated’ higher than Sal. Given Danny only knows of Joe’s list, that’s probably what he’s thinking of, based on when he last saw it (which was probably when it was being deleted). Joyce definitely means more to him though.
He says “hottest”, so I’d guess he’s thinking more looks wise, rather than personal interest. It also doesn’t really make sense to rank Sal second in terms of his personal interest, since he’s had next to no contact with her. Thinking Joyce, then Sal would be an odd mixing of levels, one being rated high because he likes her and the other purely on looks/style.
When? He seemed pretty legitimate about it during that storyline.
I wouldn’t be shocked if she was number one in his mind now, though Rachel’s probably the number one on his list (which is probably what Danny thinks he means).
He gave her a 4, but with potential to ‘upgrade’ to a 10
Joe can be a real piece of work at times.
He’s being a piece of work right now. Did Sal know that Danny was bi?
Danny’s said it’s basically an open secret, so I don’t think it’s a huge deal
It may, in fact, not be a huge deal to Danny. Which changes little.
If someone has a ‘non-standard’ orientation which could cause other people to treat them differently and in some cases treat them very badly, then basic decency requires you to exercise caution in who you mention it to. If the person wishes to announce it to the world at large, as Becky has done, it’s their choice. It’s not your choice, or shouldn’t be.
Joe is unfamiliar with the dynamic between Danny and Sal, and while he’s known Danny for a lifetime, he has no basis for knowing how Sal will react. Joe now knows that Sal is into Danny and while he doesn’t know that Danny cares enough about Sal to buy her a bike, Danny has just confessed that Sal is far enough out of his league to terrify him. So with no idea if it will be a deal killer for Sal, Joe puts it out there. Some friend.
Doesn’t mean that Joe is being intentionally malicious, but if he was, his behavior might not be much different.
It strikes me as likely that Danny has both told Sal (because puns), though maybe not that he’s open to Sal to Joe.
Becky in Leslie’s classroom for example publicly outed Ruth and Jennifer to both Leslie and everyone else in the room, and more pointedly Jennifer is someone who has no interest in acknowledging her attraction to women at the moment.
It was definitely still a violation of boundaries and I think doing it to an entire classroom of people when one of them is insistent they don’t actually like girls right now is pretty dang awful, but it’s also how Becky would be written: she’s a loud jackass and Leslie’s her gay mom, so of course Becky’s going to scream about it to her.
Joe meanwhile is talking to his lifelong best friend in front of the girl who’s so into him she literally scaled a wall to come see him, someone we know or can at least infer that Danny is out to, and he’s making some nominal headway back into Fun No Feelings Sex Bro Joe after last chapter had him confront his feelings for Joyce.
If you want to make an endpoint to a few strips where Joe is going “how the hell is this super hot girl into my nerdy best friend?” where he comes up with a silly chauvinist and heteronormative reading why Sal likes him, it kind of had to play out like this, like how Becky in Leslie’s classroom would play out like it did.
i sometimes feel like the central characters in this comic can all be depended upon to be sort of above-average woke. those who aren’t are either comically vile (Mary) or they’re well-meaning but— ok, they’re Joyce.
there have been instances of casual bigotry by sympathetic characters, like Jennifer being off-handedly classist on the phone in Sal’s presence, but for the most part the characters all exhibit a level of sensitivity that’s kind of unrealistic for a random sample of college freshmen.
so i get the sense that when we see Joe (or Becky) casually outing people, we’re not supposed to find that worrisome, like there’s a sort of comic licence going on?
Yes, this is not an ok thing to do irl. and i don’t know how i feel about the way it’s portrayed here like it’s nbd: on the one hand there’s something relaxing about this sort of soft utopia; i can enjoy today’s comic because within this universe’s parameters, i know that this is fine. on the other hand, this is different from superhero stunts where disbelief is suspended by genre conventions.
Well yeah but that doesn’t actually matter.
“Woke” isn’t an on/off switch. A person who believes in progressive ideals is still as fallible as everyone else in living up to those ideals because ideals are perfect and people aren’t. I believe in progressive values but that does not make me incapable of ever doing wrong, even wrong that I stringently believe shouldn’t ever be committed.
Like, let’s compare Becky and Joe.
Becky is in a classroom of people she doesn’t know and walks in Ruth and Jennifer. Becky immediately starts talking out loud about their relationship to Leslie and, by consequence, the entire class until they get angry enough to leave (also Becky had a Machiavellian plan to keep them apart which is in-character since Becky is a stupid idiot).
Now, this is deeply, morally wrong in any real life scenario and fiction requires a suspension of disbelief before you even get into character motivations. Becky as a character would absolutely yell loudly about this to Leslie, that isn’t a dunk on Becky that is who she is and how she talks, and then there’s how the camera of the panels only focuses on the core cast so even though Ruth and Jennifer were forcibly outed, they were forcibly outed to people who only barely exist. It’s that Becky’s specific actions (and especially her later revealed stupid idiot motivation) still trip over these pitfalls and turn her into someone who just goes “HEY THESE TWO USED TO FUCK” at a teacher neither of them know, while Jennifer is adamant that she doesn’t like girls because she’s still in denial.
Meanwhile you’ve got this strip here where both Sal and Joe know Danny is bisexual (Joe was outright told, Sal is pretty easy to infer), but realistically Joe does not know that Sal knows and at most can make a sensible assumption that Danny has told her. Joe is backsliding into his old macho persona and so lands on Danny’s sexuality as some kind of magical excuse for why Sal is into him, and so lands on Danny’s sexuality. To actually set all this up we’d have to get a strip where Danny either tells Joe “yeah it’s fine to tell people” or for Sal to learn Danny is bi while Joe is in the room, meaning this one gag strip now has to get set up even though it won’t have any tangible impact on anyone’s relationship.
It’s really not as simple as “the characters are good so it’s not actually a mistake”, it’s not a binary thing where you’re either Woke or Problematic, and you’re correct to bring up the suspension of disbelief since I think that’s why it’s easier for me to roll with this versus how Becky acted.
yes i completely agree with you and Clif that outing people without their consent is bad, and that you cannot count on people being “woke” enough not to do bad things with that information some way or other. (and actually i don’t like this word, and now wish i’d phrased my comment differently.)
but this being fiction, my point is that for me, as a reader, i get the feeling that the author is not interested in exploring the possible consequences of those transgressions. i may yet be proven wrong. let’s see how Danny (or Sal) reacts to this tomorrow. But in the Becky situation as i recall neither Ruth, Leslie, or even Jennifer (or Carla) seemed to have anything to say specifically about Becky loudly outing two non-straight people.
anyway, you make good points about it being in character for both Joe and Becky to be sketchy regarding others’ consent in both instances.
in any case, i’m grateful to you and Clif and others for pointing out that this is not ok, because i might not have noticed. which in a way, is my point? although probably that says more about me than it does about the strip. oh well.
Or Malaya?
Didn’t Joe already have intimacy with Malaya?
If she was the first hottest, why would Joe envy someone who hasn’t even gone that far with the second hottest?
Sal went fucking bonkers for Danny (according to Joe). Malaya only went casual for Joe. Big difference.
Joe also already had intimacy with Roz (which is an odd way to phrase it). Doesn’t mean that Joe thinks either is the hottest. Just that they met his standards, which seem to be (a) willing and (b) above a 3 in his internal ranking system.
In his mind? Joyce.
In the version of that narrative he shares with the world? Probably Rachel.
Exactly. It’s Rachel Jackson on the List, but Joyce in his Feelings
Noooo! Not in the feeeeliiiiinnnngs! -Joe
I think he refers to Sarah as the first hottest.
Carla is hottest girl.
So true…..
I think it’s Rachel given that she was an 11 on his Do-List and that’s the criteria he’s using.
I don’t think he would be using the Do-List to talk about Joyce, considering he knows how badly his behaviour hurt her.
Joyce. Joe’s taste has improved markedly since the first semester.
They’re only on the second floor, right? Please say they’re on the second floor.
They’re on the third floor. Sorry.
I think they’re pretty high up—right behind the second E in the SEMMF sign at the top of the building.
No idea what floor they’re on, but either Sal is really good at climbing buildings or that building is very easy to climb.
Personal anecdote time. Back in the 80’s I was going through AIT in the Army (Advanced training, which for my field was a year) and living in the barracks. They were brick and co-ed, but separated by sex. Women on one end of the third floor, men on the other floors and on the other end of the third floor. The third floor had a ‘temporary’ (permanent) wall built at the half-way point, separating the sexes.
They put the married men, or men with dependents, on the other end of the third floor, increasing the odds that nothing would happen.
Each floor, on the outside of the building, had a concrete extension, about 2 and a half feet wide, supposedly acting as ‘awnings’ or rain/sun shields, if you will.
What they ACTUALLY were, was a highway to bypass that inner wall. My room was the first inside the separation on the side of the building facing the center of the quad.
Every weekend night, and quite a few weekday nights, people would (nicely, mind you) ask if they could use our room, and proceed to come in, and go out the window, down the building, and in one of the female’s rooms. (Remember, most new Army personnel are under 21; I was 22 at the time).
Some of the people were other married men, as well… man, what a time that was. *I*, of course, *NEVER* used highway, nope, nope, never. This was before cell phones and ubiquitous cameras…
I don’t blame Billie for mistaking her for Amazi-girl anymore.
That’s an odd attitude for a savage aquatic demigod to take.
It’s the attitude of 9 out of 10 savage aquatic demigods though.
And I just now made the tenth one up.
Sal has apparently been bitten by a radioactive spider.
She bit the spider right back, and now it rides around on a sick motorcycle.
I think this kills the spider, actually.
no, i’m fairly sure radioactive spiders are harder to kill. it makes sense if you think about, like, very quickly
Obviously they’re super tough, otherwise the radiation would have killed them.
Even a normal spider, if you bite some of their legs off, they grow back.
I have no idea if machine learning could be trained to interface with spider brains in such a way as to allow spiders to operate appropriately scaled motorcycles. Like backbreeding chickens into classic dinosaurs, it’s a project that’s appealing on it’s own merits, or lack thereof.
what about classic dinosaurs on motorcycles?!
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. I don’t know why she swallowed a fly. Perhaps she’ll die.
Getting that spider tattoo also didn’t help to keep her alias secret.
Alternatively, if she got a fancy red hat to go along with that Jacket she could pull off a decent Carmen Sandiego impersonation.
Ten years! Wait, no, Eleven? Twenty-four??? ARGH WHAT IS TIME.
Yesterday Ninja High School creator Ben Dunn reposted a story he did in the Nineties to explain the continuity and time issues in his own works…
ASRIAL: Are you following all of this?
SAMMI: I think I’ll just stick with TED NOMURA’s idea…that we’re stuck in a ‘forever present’ like in ‘Archie’.
ah, NHS. That takes me back.
What is time? Time is an imaginary distance, and I use imaginary in the mathematical sense, not the everyday conversational sense.
Calling imaginary numbers ‘imaginary’ was a bad move as they are no more imaginary (in the common sense) than fractions or irrationals or any other number. If they called them orthogonal numbers instead of imaginary numbers, a great deal of misunderstanding would have been avoided.
what would you call real numbers?
Let’s call those imaginary numbers.
brilliant!
Also in my admittedly very limited dating experience being even slightly open about being bi has alienated both sides of the dating pool. But maybe things have changed for the better in the college scene since then. It’s been almost a decade now.
I mean, I count being bi as a plus.
Cause I’m bi. And so’s my wife.
And we’ve done some dating with other bi couples.
Yeah, 10 or so years ago, it was terrible, and I know there’s a lot of issues even now, but it’s a lot easier to be bi or pan these days. I’m a closeted pan, and my fiance is bi. At first my parents were like “Ok, does that mean she’s straight and trying to be cool? Or is she going to leave you once she finds an attractive girl?”
Thankfully, my parents now love her so much, my mom informed me this morning that, if I divorce her, they’re adopting her.
So I suppose it’s better now, but it depends on who you’re around. Nearly all of my friends are LGBTQA+, my fiance is the second bi I’ve dated, and we’ve had someone come out NB and it caused zero ruckus other than people apologizing as they struggle to not use their old gender pronouns for the first two years.
Things have gotten waaaay better, OP. There’s still work to do, but it is definitely better.
Actually, its a strange question for Joe to ask. Unless he’s willing to explore being bi, whether it would make more chicks dig him is irrelevant.
Maybe he’s willing to fake being bi.
Faking it probably wouldn’t end well. Which makes it all the more likely to actually happen.
I think that’s part of the joke…
#dontexplainthejokenoreallyyoujustdid
Remember he’s still trying to make sure everyone thinks of him as a clueless guy who only thinks about sex.
Joe is incapable of understanding that Sal likes Danny because he’s kind and honest, so he fixates on Danny’s sexuality.
…took me a sec to realize what day it was, and the significance of that to what specific characters are in today’s strip.
Care to explain for those of us who don’t know?
24 years ago.
Same three characters involved, dorm room, posters on the wall, and someone climbing through a window.
And the last time Danny tried going out the window.
Nobody talking on a phone though, which explains the alt text.
Oh come on Sal, Danny’s “boring” nature is half his charm. No idea what the other half is comprised of.
What do you guys think are the other parts of his charm?
He gives good Mario Kart tips.
Didn’t Sal give Danny tips, hence the Rainbow Road record?
Well, he got her to start singing again.
he can play several chords on the ukulele.
I was gonna say the other half is him being a normal college student but I guess that’s part of the boring.
Shit even his clothes are normal, uh… He listens?
…he’s wearing a necktie and a beret.
He’s endearingly clueless except for the important things.
The hat, of course.
He’s Bi.
His name’s Danny.
Okay, I’m out of suggestions, but I hope this helped us reach closer to some kind of conclusion.
his own roommate couldn’t think of more reasons. surely we must trust his judgement.
We must trust Joe’s judgement.
Let me get back to you on that one.
He’s a good egg. Also the competition is pretty scarce on the ground.
He’s so socially awkward he’s incapable of deception.
Dapper hat and party in the back haircut.
He’s sweet and considerate. He bought her a bike, then backed off when she said she didn’t want people buying her things. He likes her without putting her on a pedestal or in a box.
This. ^^^
WHUP she’s a climber!
The road to M/M Joe Slipshine begins here.
Why Joe, I love your can do attitude!
And blessed with Joe myself, clearly we be fine by asking, ‘what if?’ While staring into a mirror.
now picturing you holding your phone up to a mirror and doing smoochy sounds
You don’t like him because he’s fun, Sal, you like him because he’s sweet, considerate and patient.
and ridiculously honest. which can be infuriating, but i think Sal values it
With her life experiences so far, “honest and earnest to a fault” is what she really wants/needs.
Very much so.
He’s all the things Asher isn’t. Danny’s bona fide.
Did Sal already know Danny is bi? Otherwise, not cool of Joe to out him…
He has referred to it as an “open secret” so I don’t think it’s an issue.
Sal may, in fact, know Danny is bi. But it does not follow that Joe knows that Sal knows Danny is bi. If he knew that Sal knew, then he wouldn’t have to say it. So, yeah. Joe is being a jerk.
It would still make sense for him to say it, even if he knew Sal knew, since he’s asking if that’s what makes him attractive.
Yeah, seems like there’s an assumption in some circles that sexuality has to always be treated like a secret, even when the person in question isn’t doing so themselves. Makes no sense to me.
As long as a person’s sexuality can result in them being treated badly, in some cases very badly, it should be their information to impart or not.
Yeah, there might be some circumstances that could alter things, but the general rule isn’t terribly complicated.
I don’t know why this is so hard for some folks to understand.
“I don’t get it it’s no big deal” well golly fucking gosh ain’t that swell, it’s not really about you, hoss!
Maybe I’m just old. I grew up in a time when the risks were even more common than today and plenty of people did treat it as a secret. Even then though, for those who were out, there was never an expectation that only they were allowed to refer to it unless you were certain that everyone present had already been informed.
And that’s the way it still is in the circles of people I know today.
It’s also as far as I can tell, the way it’s being treated in the comic. Rightly or wrongly, I don’t think potential revelations like this have ever been called out in the comic itself.
The general rule seems deceptively simple, but it actually isn’t. Since unless a big deal is made of it, you’ll rarely know who has already been informed and thus there’s all sorts of topics that are off limits. Again, this only applies when the person is open about it themselves.
And it ain’t about hoss, or you either. In this case it’s about Danny, and he seems to want it out. Based on the comic’s presentation. And handling this case-by-case seems to be the way to go.
How do those with disabilities and indigenous people put it?
“Not about us without us.”
Danny is a cartoon character.
He does not actually have agency.
Handling this case by case, as in it matters to the individual how their info is meted out, has actually been what I’ve been saying, meaning you are the third person tonight to crawl up my asshole because you decided what my words meant instead of what is there.
If there’s a consistent pattern of other people misunderstanding what you’re saying, perhaps you need to find a different way to say it.
Maybe you can use your brain for five goddamn seconds.
“Consistent pattern of other people misunderstanding” motherfucker it’s you three. You just decided “hey don’t out people without their consent” meant “you, specifically, need to go hide in the closet forever, there is no other option.”
Nothing I said had anything to do with you, you just decided it did. Why the fuck do I have a responsibility to someone like that?
And I’m gonna be charitable that “Not about us without us.” ain’t what I think it means.
I am, in fact, an Us in this scenario. I do actually have a say in how people learn about me, much like how every other Us has a say in how they come out.
He’s at least implied as much to her.
It’s been several months since Danny realized it himself. I think we can probably just assume based on Danny’s reaction or lack thereof next strip. (I.e., no reaction probably means Danny and Joe have an understanding that he’s out, while a negative reaction would be…self-explanatory).
I was wondering the same thing.
Keeping the tradition alive I see.
… who’s the first hottest? In his opinion, that is.
Joyce.
I agree. I suspect that’s why he ran back when she asked for her score on the Do-List.
We do know what his initial score for her was
Wow, I’m usually the one popping that fandom bubble. Thanks! I think?
Her score is a zero but it was not always a zero
It was a 4. I’m fairly sure he likes Joyce the most, but the hottest on the list is likely Rachel, who he said was an 11.
Zero minus, I believe.
Rachel, I think.
Did Sal even know that?
if she didn’t, that’s Joe’s question answered.
Just your friendly neighborhood Spider-Sal.
has anyone clicked on the “share” button below the comic in the past decade? i swear these icons are musty XD
I told you, Sal could have climbed up and punched Joe if she wanted to.
Happy Dumbing of Age Anniversary!!!
And Roomies too!
What celebrations are underway for this special day?!?!?
Climbing up buildings and entering through windows
Sounds about right.
But not, this year, calling them to assure them college is fine.
Also does it still make sense timeline-wise for Danny to have a Rebecca Saint James poster? (Hell, does it make sense in general for DoA Danny, who is to our knowledge Christian but not necessarily evangelical enough to have posters of Christian rock artists who have put out only two albums since 2002? Christian rock now being firmly out of the secular pop vogue?) It’s an acceptable grandfather clause poster IMO, but I suspect it’s by now anachronistic.
It’s already been a year since the season 2 soft reboot?
It’s already been 11 years since the comic started?! That’s ridiculous, it’s not even funny.
And 24 years since the first Walkyverse comic. I definitely didn’t read it when it first started back then, because I was 8 at the time and wasn’t aware of webcomics.
There’s a Bloodhound Gang song in there, somewhere.
Hey Sal, you and me are mammals…
So let’s go watch the Discovery Channel!
I’ve got 73 hours of it saved on my DVR.
Although that kinda sounds like something Dina would say….
Dina isn’t a mammal.
Fair point.
bless these three
Remember that she had a superhero phase, Danny. She’s never going to do things in a ‘normal’ way! Well, it sure isn’t going to be boring!
Last chance to back out! XD
He’s kinda into that 😉
It’s not that he’s afraid, Sal. It’s that hte last time he went doing dangerous things outside a window, it was on a date with Amazi-Girl, and the memories still torment him.
Oh so there wasn’t a scene to imply he was lying about the 4? Is this my Shazam?
Not that I recall, and he definitely seemed earnest about ‘upgrading’ her before she came to the date with a date punching chaperone.
Danny seems rightfully scared to see Sal looking at him clinging to his window surrounded by light, like some sort of mystical apparition. Or maybe he’s really Scaroused…. Sal, on the other hand, has no more problems to say she likes him, even with an other person around. This is a very nice thing ♡.
I mean, she’s climbed up to his window just to ask him to skip class. Kinda hard to deny it at this point.
He’s biting his lip, definitely scaroused.
“second hottest girl at college”
Joe hasn’t really given up on his *list* thinking…
He hasn’t become a totally different person, no. But he’s no longer sharing his list on the Internet and is at least partially aware of the damage it can do.
Well, Joe, the good news is that you probably could score points with girls who are into Yaoi.
The bad news is that the only one I can think of likely into that sort of thing is your step sister.
I think Mary is secretly into that sort of thing too.
eeeh i think Joyce has read Amber’s fanfiction. so, she’s probably not not into Yaoi
Joyce would be a fucking yaoi devourer if she could get past her:
– Christian shame. Just because she doesn’t believe in God doesn’t mean she doesn’t fear sin.
– Xenophobic upbringing. I’m sure she’s tolerant of other cultures but at the same time I can’t picture her getting past all the -san and -kun and -chan’s, or the festival chapters or w/e.
Depends on how she processes sex fiction as something to observe or something to vicariously live through.
I’m more leaning towards the latter.
How did Sal get all the way up there?
Easy, she is in a rebel phase so strong that she rebels against gravity.
Nah, like most of the other girls in the cast, she’s just really strong and agile.
She is a Rebel! Rebel against the laws of physics which try to control her!
The gravity that controls her (as with all matter in the universe) has no idea that F = ma.
Those alleged “laws” are really descriptors, not controllers.
Not to mention the fact that they may very well help her in her cause.
Female equals Male with Attitude?
The math checks out.
One step forward and two steps back eh Joe?
I think it’s pretty clear Sal is that into Danny. I’d argue someone wouldn’t generally climb a building to your window to hang out with you if they’re not into you.
Counterpoint, sal only uses windows.
I vaguely recall that happening in it’s walky, too Or was it shortpacked ?
It’s an invariant of her personality.
Is no one going to mention the fact that Joe has intentionally (I assume) outed Danny to someone who might not know about Danny’s sexual persuasion?
That was NOT cool, Joe, and I thought doing that could actually be grounds for some sort of official reprisal…
Yeah that was my first thought too. What the heck, Joe?
You are at least the third.
While you’re right, internalized bi erasure means even we forget people are supposed to take that seriously about us. It’s such an easy aspect of identity to forget is marginalizing, because it rarely actually causes you any problems, despite being just as queer as anybody else.
Danny doesn’t seem to be so much actively closeted as he just doesn’t bother telling people.
Has Danny shown any sign of treating it like a secret in months? Does he need to make a formal announcement? Take out ads? Proclaim it every time he enters a room, like Becky does? (Would it be wrong to mention Becky’s a lesbian, if you somehow managed to find someone she hadn’t already announced it to?)
I absolutely agree with not outing people who are in any fashion in the closet, but if they’re not, it seems to just stigmatize it to treat it as a secret.
It’s about making sure the means of our sexuality are in our control, and that’s before getting into legitimate safety reasons.
Danny doesn’t have to keep it secret (and I’m pretty sure the implication here is that he hasn’t, considering he’s making bi puns in Sal’s face) but that doesn’t mean Joe could walk up to someone, even someone they both know, and say “oh yeah Danny likes guys” without first checking that’s something Danny is comfortable with.
It’s really not that hard, and it doesn’t really matter what you think about the hows and whys. Straights don’t get to decide what it means for us, simple as.
Yeah, no, though? People around me treating it as some secret shame they need to check in with me about before mentioning is kinda the exact opposite of how I want to be treated? It’s alienating and otherizing and awkward and logistically difficult and honestly kinda insulting.
Then you have the choice to do so.
Why does my choice need to be taken away? Why does anyone other than myself get to decide how I come out?
The choice to do so… what? I’m not sure what you think I said, but I’m having trouble making sense of your response in light of what I was trying to communicate.
You are, specifically, taking away my choice to be out. You would, hypothetically, in my presence, be treating my orientation as something deserving of being hidden. You treating a basic aspect of my being as something that needs to be danced around and whose mention needs to be avoided in casual conversations would be incredibly frustrating and disempowering.
Danny is not in the closet. Joe knows Danny well enough to know he’s not in the closet. Treating him like he is, when he isn’t, is infantalizing and insulting, and Joe did nothing wrong (in this particular situation)
Why is my desire to only be out to the people I trust taking away your choice to be out to whoever you want.
You personally? Not at all. If you personally prefer it that way, that is certainly your right.
But establishing it as a general rule that every one needs to follow is beyond your desire to only be out to the people you trust.
In the case of this story, you’re condemning characters on behalf of other characters who haven’t been shown to have any problems with it.
Okay sure let me try and put it this way, Weiss-sensei is gonna drop a hot take.
If I say “oh yeah it’s cool you can tell anyone (within reason)” then my control over the situation is as large as I want it to be. If someone finds out without my knowledge then that’s a parameter I’ve established.
If I trust someone with it in confidence for whatever reason and they violate that trust, I am nettled. My control is lost and it’s lost because I trusted someone who proved themselves untrustworthy, even if actually everyone around me is super cool with the liking guys thing, it fundamentally changes how they and I view each other because I, myself, had something about me dragged out that I can dole out on my own time.
Do you get it yet? Do I need to explain this any further? Is the part about how queer folks get to control the means of how they are out (as in, that also includes anyone who wants to be as open as possible) sunken in?
And Danny is a cartoon character, he can’t actually want anything.
Oh motherfucker I used a different forum name there.
I spend too much time on the internet.
Oh, I get it, you think people should default to treating a basic part of my nature is weird and bad and taboo until they are reassured otherwise. You’ve literally been making the same argument the whole time, and when anyone points out that your approach is problematic, you do this. The problem isn’t that we don’t “get it”, it’s that we disagree.
That isn’t what Spencer’s said at all. Spencer’s said that people should default to not telling people about another’s sexuality if they aren’t sure the person is okay with that. That’s not about their sexuality being weird/bad/taboo, it’s about respecting the person’s comfort level with telling personal information. It’s not that different then, for example, not telling others about someone being pregnant if you’re not sure they’re okay with that. Especially given some people react badly and even violently when they find out someone is LGBTQ+ and so it’s perfectly reasonable to think someone might not want that information widely known. It’s not ‘Your sexuality is bad and should only be mentioned if you’re reassured it’s not’, it’s ‘don’t tell others personal information about someone (especially personal information that may put someone in danger) if you’re not sure they’re okay with that’.
I will wait for Danny’s reaction before deciding how uncool this is. It wouldn’t be the first time that Joe’s macho pose led him to overstep the limits of friendship, but maybe he’s just acting on some knowledge about the situation that we readers don’t have.
Sal remind Danny a bit too much about his ex right now…
I wasn’t expecting Sal to tap that. And by “that” I mean the window.
Y’all Danny’s been making bi puns around Sal.
She knows.
Joe didn’t know she knows.
Do we know that?
We haven’t seen that Joe knows, or that Joe knows Danny is out. But Joe is BFF and roommate with Danny, they’re going to have interactions we don’t see.
Since Joe is completely surprised by Sal wanting to talk to Danny, Joe and Danny have clearly not had long interactions about Sal we haven’t seen.
Look, my sexual orientation is pretty vanilla, but there is a lot about me that is pretty weird. To pick an example I’m comfortable talking about on the Internet, I will hyperfocus. To the extent that everything except what I’m thinking about goes away. This mostly uncontrolled ability to hyperfocus on things I’m interest in is largely an advantage, but the thing is, I continue to function without my attention while it’s going on. I can drive and obey customary traffic laws, though the correct destination is a bit of a crap shoot. I can carry on rudimentary every day conversations I will have no memory of later. I’m not ignoring things that may be important to me while I’m hyperfocusing, they just don’t exist.
There are other weirdnesses I’m not going to discuss. My wife needed to know how weird I was before we got married. She didn’t need to know before our first date. If my best friend had been there when we were first in the hanging out phase and I wanted her to like me, and the first thing he did was talk about how weird I was, I would not have taken it well. To the point of wondering why they were my best friend.
Joe is being a crap friend here.
I kinda resent your notion that someone having a different sexuality than you is “weird” and its something they should be ashamed of and keep a secret. Should their friends also be hush hush about his relationships if he ever dates a guy lest other people find out how “weird” he is?
Didn’t say (or mean) someone having a different sexual orientation than me is weird. I said that I’m weird and I think I can stand by that.
So if it’s not weird (or bad or something to be ashamed of), then how is anything you wrote comparable or relevant?
I’ve described Danny as “an affectionate golden retriever” lately and I think that’s appropriate considering we now know that Sal is like a cat emotionally and in the ability to climb through windows.
Wait, does Sal not know how to handle doors?
It’s more that she’s too cool for doors.
If she knocks on his door that’s admitting she wants to see him.
Better to climb through the window.
Sal is a disaster and I love her.
Sal, in any incarnation, has never used doors by choice. Not sure why that makes her a disaster though.
Walkyverse Sal climbed through windows because she was a super strong bioweapon infused with Martian DNA.
DoA Sal is doing so because she has a crush on Danny, who is going to respond to any affection her part by hitting max level Deer in Headlights.
They are my disaster children.
Happy 24iversary! I love how Sal “jumping up” to the window is a callback to the first page of Roomies.
Don’t rank women, Joe!
But also, who’s THE hottest, huh?
I’m assuming it’s supposed to be Rachel.
Not to be confused with Other Rachel.
Honestly surprised you arn’t bi Joe. Double the fuckery to be had!
Danny/Joe shippers continue to cross their fingers.
Joe, I can tell you from experience that unfortunately the answer to that question is no.
However, it’s fun to read the developments of this (almost) date the same week that Komi and Tadano have their first date and they ask each other why he/she is happy to be with the other because; one feel to be to much ordinary and the other to complicated to be together with. it’s one of those magical coincidences that I like so much ♡
I love her. I absolutely adore her.
She’s trying SO hard to act “casual” with Dan that she looks abso-fucking-lutely obsessed with the boy.
Man, I hope nothing buggers this relationship up. I actually wanna see this one go on for a while.
Yaaaasss! And we have wall-scaling, window entry Sal again! 😀 <3
Speaking as a being of pure chaos and my long string of failed romantic partners I could tell you a thing or two about how long-term relationships really want an element of boring. Sal’s got a good thing going.
I’m afraid I’m not quite getting the title text in this strip’s mouseover
Okay, so silly me for forgetting that it was originally Danny on the phone with Sal while Joe was climbing up the outside wall to the femme floor’s windows.
I guess I was thinking more of later occurrences of Sal coming in through the window?