Find porn that speaks to you positively. An actor/actress you admire, a good story to tell, interesting characters, elegant prose, beautiful artwork – something that sets it above the ordinary.
Alternatively, create some of your own. Write some erotica, draw some hentai – whatever stimulates your mind will often stimulate other parts as well.
Try to eat more varied food (both for the nutritional health benefits and the psychological benefits of more varied experiences).
Sleep enough.
Find a way to feel safe.
Exercise.
Maybe stop worrying about it so much? Constant (stress-laden) monitoring of any emotion can distract you from the emotion itself, making it weaker. Except fear. Fear flourishes.
So maybe your libido is taking a break – so what? You might as well enjoy not having to deal with it. Trust that it’ll be back when the time is right.
I really enjoyed the BEAUTIFUL art in it. Porn Lord Willis REALLY outdid himself! 🤩
While I did enjoy it in many ways and it made me REALLY happy, I actually didn’t enjoy it sexually.
Because of that, I was actually really worried that I was truly broken because of my depression and anxiety, that I wouldn’t be able to pleasure myself ever again. I also felt hella guilty about not being as happy as I should have been for Porn Lord Willis’s wonderful gift to us all.
But after some days of healthy eating and exercise, and quitting caffeine, up to today I was able to pleasure myself to things that usually aroused me for a long time.
However, Willis’s work didn’t quite conjure the same effect in me even then.
That’s when I realized something really important about myself. Reflecting my many fetishes that have come and gone, I realized that I was never really attracted to humans and their shape, or even to the act of sex or arousal alone.
I discovered that I’m an asexual, just like Dina!!! 😆
Speaking of Dina, while I’m not sexually attracted to her (or anyone really), I really love her in just about every other way. The brainiac girl’s like Rock and Roll to me!!! Up there with Sailor Moon and Son Goku, she’s my favorite socially challenged hero!!!
This whole story arc, where she used the Power of Science, her AWESOME BRAIN POWER, to break Becky’s Chains of the Sunday School, with the epic climax in the Slipshine? I HAVE LIVED!!!
In general, sometimes I have a little trouble reading social cues like that. Neurodivergence!
It’s just that something that was so important to me, that allowed me to escape this world, to relieve and relax myself, to bring me so much joy, I have been without in SO LONG. It’s like I lost a limb, an important part of myself! 😭
And now it’s coming back, slowly but surely, I’m recovering 🥹
I know through the Power of Science that ALL of you continue to play a HUGE role in my recovery, always being here, supporting me directly and indirectly, talking to me, giving me opportunities stimulate my mind, not to mention how good it feels to be helping all of you!!!
As we all make it through these tumultuous times together…
For all of you Good Demons, you lovable demonic screwballs in this community, and all your help, THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!!! 🥹🥹🥹
Honestly, I did not click on the comment section to find out someone successfully had a wank?
This is vaulting over the boundaries of folk who similarly don’t want to know; you ideally need to find a Discord or something where everyone is on board with hearing about this kinda personal info.
I’m not offended, I’m not upset, but this is not your Facebook.
Seconding this. I’m not offended either but I am uncomfortable. I don’t read the comments often so it’s deeply awkward when I do hop down here and the first thing I see is this wall of parasocial oversharing.
It’s not like this isn’t the place for it. We did just have a story arc about sexual gratification in the last week or so. I get that people may be uncomfortable about it but… let’s be frank, a healthy discussion of sex and gratification is probably healthier than 90% of the discussion that’s going to happen in here over the week.
By that logic, no one could post anything because no one can consent to a discussion in the comments without having someone post unprompted. That’s how the comments section works.
Also, the topic of arousal and asexuality is EXACTLY that the recent Dina arc in the comic was about, and that is, as it turns out, exactly what the OP was talking about. So… yeah.
I mean wanting to discuss the fictional sex lives of not real characters on a comic I wanted to discuss it on is a bit different than talking about someone’s IRL wank and Libidio exercises.
Oh well, at least there’s a little break here from the absolute shitstorms of debates about ableism and spanking. I guess that’s a step in the right direction, for what it’s worth.
From what I can tell, the problem is probably less the content of the comment, and more the timing. Wellerman managed to squeeze in before Ana commented, which results in this being the very top comment in the chain, and a lot of people that head to the comics will check right underneath first, either because that makes sense or because they’re just wanting to read Ana’s first before they skim
That and it does read very similar to a vtuber talking to their community which yea, also triggers the parasocial warning flags
I mean, I was pretty uncomfortable with the 1000+ comment discussion of spankings, and clearly so were a lot of other people, but the comic opened the door to them and people felt like arguing.
When I hit a comment thread that makes me uncomfortable, as many of those did, I either skim past to the next comment thread, or I leave the Dumbing of Age comments section alone for a day.
It’s kinda hard to know that the comic has opened up this discussion when the last comic about sexual attraction and arousal was several days ago, and it’s harder to skip this discussion when the very top comment is “hey I’ve been having trouble with libido and I went and did a sexual thing and it felt good!”
I wouldn’t walk up to a group of strangers and start talking about my masturbatory habits. I think we can all agree that’s out of line. So why is it okay to just throw that out here? Receiving positive consent for sexual matters is very heavily emphasized in modern society, and I think getting people’s consent to talk about your (generic you) sex life before doing so is pretty important.
They said “Well today, I gave it a spin.” (it referring to the word libido in the previous sentence)
That’s a copy/paste quote.
They provided no inappropriate details. That was, in fact, about as discrete and tasteful as it is possible to be.
So they masturbated. Or had sex. Or looked at porn. And it felt, and I quote, “SO GOOD.” I don’t need to know about any of that. I didn’t ask to know about any of that. Even as vague as they were, it’s more specific than is appropriate for an open for that is not dedicated to talking about our sex lives without them at least providing a content warning.
Is it appropriate for me to walk up to people on the street and tell them “I’ve been having issues withy libido but last night I gave it a spin and it felt SO GOOD”? Because if it’s sexual, it’s not directly related to today’s comic, and it’s not appropriate to talk about to strangers in the street, I don’t consider it appropriate to talk about here without at least a content warning.
Personally I’m fine leaving it up to the author’s discretion to moderate what does and doesn’t belong in the comment section. I figure we’re in his house, we play by his rules here.
But do you really not see the significance of those comments taking place underneath a page where the characters discuss the practice of spanking? That sort of context just isn’t at all a relevant factor for you?
Because I feel like at that point we’ve run into some pretty wildly conflicting paradigms on the precise nature of a comment section. Perhaps we’re not on the same page about what everybody is commenting on here? Or perhaps not even on the same page about what a comment is in the first place?
🥺 Oooo! I’m REALLY REALLY sorry if I caused any of you any stress!!!!
All I really wanted was to express how thankful I am for being surrounded by all of you, for helping me get back something important to myself, and maybe introduce some better vibes in the room then the really nauseating conflicts that have been going on here lately.
You all have the right to express yourselves on the matter, I will not deny that. But one thing’s for sure, to turn what was intended as a grand expression of gratitude for the community as a whole into yet another point of division is… pretty unfortunate. 😕
I wouldn’t say you caused me stress, per se, but I don’t find it appropriate to talk about sex in specific personal terms without giving people a chance to opt out. Sometimes that chance comes in the form of the discussion being on an appropriate forum; for instance, no one could go into a subreddit devoted to sex and complain that they had no warning and didn’t give consent. Sometimes it comes in the form of putting a content warning at the start of a comment or post. I don’t know if this comment section is a wholly appropriate place in any case, but if Willis is cool with this sort of discussion, I suspect a content warning would suffice.
You can express your thanks without giving us the personal information that you decided to engage in whatever sexual behavior your ‘libido’ being reinvigorated entailed.
Don’t worry on it too much, but please, consider: I also offered that suggestion because a controllable space (like a Discord or social account) is a FAR safer place to share these things, too.
Having your personal news saved on someone else’s website that you cannot edit, cannot remove, and gets viewed by tens of thousands of people per day, while tied to your username and contact info, is sweeping right past “stranger danger” into new realms of potential misadventure.
While I will admit that your revelation was a bit surprising, I will say that the fact that you were able to find some personal happiness and credited this webcomic and the peanut gallery for helping you with your issue gives me a warm feeling. And I was impressed that you felt comfortable enough and trusting enough to reveal something that personal with a bunch of internet strangers.
@The Wellerman
I would like to apologize to you about all this. Some of the above comments made me very angry (obviously). However, I should have kept in mind your commitment to good vibes and not submitted to bad ones. For that, I am truly sorry.
I think I’m going to take a break from posting comments here for a day or two to reset and refresh.
Although I agree they have been some ways in error, forgive these people, Rose.
Just like you, they’re only human. Deep down, we’re all just living things — crudely assembled piles of protein and sugar, crawling about this giant rock we call a planet.
We’re all doing our best to survive, to function, to maintain health and sanity, in an unjust, indifferent universe that doesn’t care about anyone or anything, including itself. There’s only so much that the product of 4.5 billion years worth of happy accidents can do right. 🥲
P.S. I’ve seen tomorrow’s strip, and you’ll DEFINITELY want to stick around! 😉 😈
I’m just so fucking THANKFUL to be surrounded by a community of Good Demons like you and many others that have helped me feel better in these difficult times, and I am SO GRATEFUL!!! 😭
I’m torn between congratulating you on this amazing comment and trying to fight you to defend the honor of a genre (like any normal, healthy person on the internet would do).
Sarah wasn’t in the room when Joyce said that. This might just as well be an expression of anger, or a bit to avoid the conversation altogether from Sarah’s point of view.
Also, for women, this is not some kind of special rare situation. This returns every month for several days. You have to learn to function during period. Life doesn’t take breaks for 1/4 of the adult life. Last example from my life, my grandmother just got diagnosed with covid19, she’s not vaccinated and my period will start soon. I’ll have to handle that while being in pain, I’ll have to handle my mother going nuts for being helpless (my grandmother is basically refusing any therapy and relies on placebo and tea to cure herself) and all that on top of my usual workday. I have to function, and I have to function well. That is not something you can do if you don’t practice it.
not everyone who gets periods CAN function even if they try and practice or whatever. some have debilitating symptoms due to underlying conditions/separate health issues which exercerbate period woes (PTSD definitely counts and might apply to Joyce)
Most folks can. For those who can’t it’s usually known to the close social circle. Not being able to da basically anything every month usually gets noticed.
Also six hours ago she could switch from “laying on the bed face down” to “full cheer mode” pretty fast when liz showed up.
My fiance would rip me a new one for having an attitude like that. If she’s having a really bad period, I help more, simple as that. Not everyone can afford to do that with work but at the very least family should be able to understand and accept that, as well as friends.
Honestly, it sounds like your Grandmother should have gotten vaccinated, cause she decided to take an unnecessary medical risk. Why do YOU have to go out of your way to help HER over something she could control while dealing with something you can’t?
How the hell is my boyfriend supposed to help me with a woman he literally met once for one minute? She won’t listen to him. She has zero reason to.
Yes, she should. She didn’t. Her main medical advisor is her other daughter, who believes in basically every conspiracy theory known to humankind, which is why they’re both not vaccinated (albeit they both should be). Why I should go out of my way to help her now? Is that a rhetoric question? She’s my grandmother. There’s a very real chance this kills her. And I won’t sit idle and watch. If this ends badly, I want to be able to tell myself I tried.
About your particular situation, I’m not honestly certain. I cut all ties from my racist anti-vaccine republican family. I just don’t think you should be dismissing the fact that women SHOULD be given extra consideration for things outside their control, just like anyone else born to anything ever. The reality we live in is that they aren’t, but at the very least it SHOULD be better with your family and friends, and you going around minimizing that is not helpful for others.
Good for you that you can function on your period. I can too. But not everybody can. Endo and PCOS are both very common and make for a different level of hell version of a period that my experiences just can’t compare to. The average age of diagnoses for both is usually after college, often significantly so.
The driver was some wise old Uncle Iroh type who gave her sage advice and then drove off never to be seen again. Somehow the charge will never actually appear on Carla’s account.
Carla’s tech billionaire parents are paying, and apparently they own the rideshare app to begin with. Charge away, Sagelike Wisdom Driver. Charge away.
I don’t know doodly-squat about anime characters, but the holdover of my old-school religion makes me say that the rideshare drive was actually Sarah’s guardian angel, taking a little more hands-on approach to its assigned task. And you’re right; the charge for the ride will never appear on anyone’s earthly account.
As the nuns used to tell us whenever they couldn’t fully explain how or why something had happened, “God works in mysterious ways, and it is not for us to know.” Most of the time it’s hogwash, but there are enough personal examples in my own lifetime that makes me believe it’s not ALWAYS bullshit.
I don’t think it was an epiphany. I think Sarah’s known all this for a while and is having trouble acting on it. She did the thing that prioritized her own feelings by speeding away from Liz once back at Ball State, and then came back right after, realizing she fucked up.
As I mentioned further down, sometimes character development is less that you stop making mistakes, and more that the gap between making and fixing mistakes shrinks.
Yeah I’ve realized other people had it much worse than me as well. I was bullied in school by other kids for acting different, probably because I’m autistic but didn’t know it back then, but at least I had pretty good parents.
Also: “Why can’t everyone just get off my case?” is a valid question for a girl being reamed on constantly by her friends and is currently in physical and mental pain.
There was one comic strip where Joyce asked Sarah why she can’t help in little ways and not just big ones. Must’ve been in Book 9, I forgot what happened afterwards.
Joyce didn’t ask for help in small ways. She asked for Sarah to “show you like me” in small ways. And Sarah gave those. There are plenty of examples from the past ten years of Sarah offering affection in small ways unprompted, in ways ranging in magnitude from “giving Joyce a hug after a weekend with Joyce’s parents” to “letting her sit with her at lunch.”
They did not translate meaningfully to problem-solving skills.
See the hug after the parents thing might be a good indicator of why this is hard for her.
I don’t view it as unprompted by Sarah in that it began with her cracking at Joyce that she was “real broken up about Billie” which then made Joyce almost flip her off, but that was Sarah throwing herself into being there for Joyce when Joyce needed her, and as best as she could. Joyce is sad, Joyce gets a hug and a reinforcement that things suck and can be better. That is, genuinely, Sarah being the kind of emotional support Joyce wants from her.
And then immediately after, Becky and Dina burst into the room and make it a group hug. Sarah’s already someone who struggles with letting people see her vulnerable, and not only did those two see it, Dina got to crack a big smug smile in Sarah’s direction over it because Dina was right and Sarah did care.
Maybe it was just for the funny joke punchline, but Sarah did the right thing and then ate shit for it five seconds later.
I feel like a better example is when Joyce’s toenail fell off and she was also dealing with the stress of learning toedad was out of jail. She followed Joyce and Dorothy outside and gave them a hug (in public no less!) And then helped Joyce with her toenail issue. It was a small moment but it was one that always stuck with me as very sweet. There might have been a crisis going on with toedad but that moment still felt like Sarah showing she cares in small ways. I wouldn’t call releasing a dead nail a grand gesture
It’s a Sarah moment too in that Joyce has a problem not getting solved, so Sarah handles it while Dorothy talks complicated feelings. Plus that one bit where she snarks that maybe an adult can do their job instead of leaving it to Joyce, and then ribbing Dorothy for putting Joyce in charge of it.
Dina, don’t wake people up just so you can understand your girlfriend’s backstory better. Life isn’t an RPG everyone else isn’t NPC’s for you to run through dialogue options at your convenience and it’s both rude and socially unacceptable to randomly wander into people’s rooms and wake them up.
Joyce, I get it, you’re in pain right now and everything sucks but do try to not be a jerk to those around you.
Sarah, maybe you should actually take a minute to learn the situation before you jump in and tell people off. Also having an epiphany doesn’t mean you’re actually right so maybe don’t assume you’ve personally grown and become a better person just because something occurred to you in the back of an Uber.
Sarah would probably agree with you. Those last couple of panels read to me like, “I thought I had some things figured out, but I guess not, so you shouldn’t look to me for answers.”
She is currently not sure what is up with her sister, and I suspect something happened with her sister’s friend back at her school which is an early red flag she is concerned about, but knows it’s too early to think too highly of it. I think we are deliberately being left in the dark about that as readers.
To be fair to Dina she is only doing to Joyce what Joyce does to everyone else. As far as Dina knows that is socially acceptable behaviour for Joyce. Dina has no way to know that Joyce is a hypocrite.
I’m giving Joyce a pass for a couple hours or days, but if I were Dina or Sarah at some point I would use this as an example to talk to her about boundaries and letting people sleep in.
Am I misremembering, or have Joyce’s friends already had talks with her about boundaries and the inappropriateness of waking people up by sitting on them? At least, I know I remember Joyce waiting for Dorothy’s permission before giving her a hug when they started the semester, so her sense of boundaries has improved.
Has Joyce ever politely declined to stop causing someone immediate physical pain like Dina did in this interaction?
In either case, I love all these characters and I still want Joyce and Dina to patch things up and improve their relationship at some point. Maybe not any time soon, based on how this went.
I have been trying so hard not to get hung up on this, but! Yes! This kind of wild boundary-violation used to be one of Joyce’s hallmarks! It was played for comedy, but it was always inappropriate, and she got called on it enough that she eventually, slowly, realized she was being inappropriate, and then she stopped doing it. (Growth!)
I do think it’s pretty funny in-comic to see other characters comedically performing Joyce’s old boundary-crossing behaviors! What is actually not funny is the audience insisting that a thing Joyce *explicitly learned not to do* years ago in real time, and months ago in comic time, is JOYCE’S JUST DESERTS when someone else does it to her, in un-funny circumstances where she’s emotionally vulnerable and in physical pain.
(Do we really think Dina has *ever* looked to Joyce for behavioral cues? Dina truly does not like Joyce. If Dina is channeling anyone in this subplot, she’s channeling Becky, who historically shares Joyce’s boundary violating-behavior, but has not yet gotten schooled on that in any way that made Becky learn to *fucking stop.*)
To be fair, Dina did say explicitly at the start of this that she was trying to “perform how you and Becky prefer to be discharged from slumber”. Which I suspect actually means she’s drawing mostly from Becky here – who probably hasn’t learned better. She didn’t see to get it in the strip I linked above.
But also relying more on “Joyce likes to be woken this way” than “Joyce woke other people this way, so it’s payback time”.
The idea that Sarah thinks of Joyce’s feelings as precious is the best joke of 2022.
Okay more seriously; Sarah is honest to god trying her best, but she doesn’t get it. While I certainly expected a lot more Sarah in ‘Trial & Sarah,’ that lack of panel time ended up being a pretty good indicator of what she took away from all this: nada.
Sarah’s little sisters have problems, and since they’re approaching Sarah with them, or Sarah’s in the vicinity and they’re not getting solved, it’s up to Sarah to solve them, and to Sarah that’s taking complete control over the problem. Liz is a dumb spoiled kid and just needs to go back to college and face the music, but then Sarah doubles back and tries to encourage her. Even if Sarah does not recognize Liz’s problems as real, she took control and put Liz in a position that (Sarah thinks) worked out for the best.
But Sarah can’t help Joyce because to help Joyce would mean scooping all the trauma out of her brain. Sarah can’t listen to Joyce, can’t support her in small ways, because Sarah honest to god has no idea how to offer support unprompted. It’s why her conversations with Joyce since the Faith-Off have been badgering her to get back in line; Sarah doesn’t know how to approach Joyce as Joyce needs (ie: what Walky and Joe have done where she’s given an opportunity to just feel shit without someone telling her it’s wrong), and so Sarah’s contributions have been to moralize at her, because “you’re worse than you were as a fundie” and “you deserve to be fired for karma and I think it’d be funny” is Sarah-speak for “I want you to be happy again, and you were happier when you weren’t like this.”
And I think Sarah resents that about herself here. She wants to help Joyce, but that she can’t solve a tangible problem with a clear, direct, straight line to the solution means she’s left adrift because Sarah’s never been able to do that outside a crisis pretty much the whole series, and that’s worked out pretty well because “talk about feelings” duty was relegated to Becky and Dorothy, but they’re not helping much either.
Dana’s the hardest problem of her life, and Sarah could not support her emotionally, ergo, Sarah’s solution was to skip over all of Dana’s friends, call her dad, and get her out of college. Liz is the same broad idea; Liz has problem, Sarah makes it go away.
But Sarah can’t make 19 years of religious trauma boiled over and dealt with by trying to stuff Joyce back into it vanish. She can’t call Joyce’s dad to pick her up and bring her to the Not Traumatized clinic, she can’t drive Joyce back to college so she faces up to being traumatized and angry, and so Sarah feels she is helpless and unable to be who Joyce wants her to be right now.
TLDR: When Joyce told Sarah she had a role model she wasn’t sure she believed in anymore, she was half-correct because her role model doesn’t believe in herself either.
It’s also one of the great mysteries of Sarah that we don’t KNOW if Dana actually is better off out of college and getting therapy or medication versus self-medictating OR if Dana went to some abusive hellhole. The ambiguity is what makes the story fascinating.
Carla made the right choice getting Ruth help and meds.
But we know that Ruth going back to her granddad is horrifying.
According to Raidah Dana is miserable but she’s not exactly an unbiased source on the subject (plus that still leaves open the possibility that she was miserable at first but is doing better now)
Yeah, we have no idea WHEN ‘last Raidah checked’ was, and per Sarah Dana was masking around her friends anyway. Even if Dana WERE being abused, I’m not certain she’d actually tell Raidah honestly as opposed to downplaying it. (This is not me ruling out ‘Dana is genuinely being abused,’ but the sense I got from Raidah and Dana is a more casual ‘we met here at college and hit it off’ one than ‘we are BEST FRIENDS and have unlocked each other’s tragic backstories’ – Joyce and Jennifer more than Joyce and Dorothy. I don’t think Joyce knows about the DUI, and if Jennifer’s issues hadn’t become so public I doubt she’d know about them now, either. Plus, I think if Raidah DID know Dana was in genuinely bad shape, she’d have flung that at Sarah at some point between the drive-by harassments and the mall blowout in a much less ambiguous way, or told it to Jacob. ‘Not according to Dana last I checked’ doesn’t get her the win the way ‘Ruth’s home isn’t safe!’ did for Jennifer and Carla’s fight… and given discussion of the two paralleling, I think it’s worth noting that Jennifer DID bring it up to Carla when they discussed it. Yeah, it outs Dana to some extent, but there would be ways to do so without going into too much detail. ‘Didn’t you wonder why she was back so soon after the funeral?’ or something. So even if Dana is in an unsafe situation, I GENUINELY think Raidah doesn’t know.)
I really do love the Dana mystery. I understand why so many commenters seem convinced that what Raidah said was 1) an accurate representation of what Dana said and 2) that was Dana said was true: after all, given what most parents in the Dumbingverse are like, the balance of probability does seem to suggest that Dana’s not lying. But on the other hand, for all we know, what Dana’s complaining about is that her father won’t let her be stoned 24/7, the way she could get away with at college.
Admittedly, what disturbs me most is the people insisting that the evidence that Dana’s home must be abusive is that it’s not natural for her to return to college as soon as possible and not want to go home, which feels like demanding that everyone grieve or perform grief in one particular way. Especially since we know — or at least, have seen through Sarah’s perspective — that Dana performs for others, and is very good at it (and yes, that could also point towards an abusive home). It always struck me as just as plausible that she returned to college because her mother’s death had her father on the verge of a breakdown, and she figured going back was the best way she could help him, to reassure him she was fine.
Sometimes I stop to read Spencer comments, because they explain a lot of history again and again. I’m not so smart, and DoA have a lot of implicit history running through.
I often have trouble understanding the comic, too. There’s so many things I miss, and sometimes a strip just leaves me confused.
It’s so cool that all I have to do is look at the comments, and in 90% of cases someone has already spelled it out for us 🙂
Quick aside because it’s not really the point but Sarah did try to tell Dana’s friends first, they just didn’t believe her because Dana put on the happy act in front of them
I think the reason that so many other characters are on Joyce’s case is that she spent a long time very vocally on theirs.
That is not a good reason, of course. It is an explanation but not a justification. Retaliation in kind is not right speech.
Maybe, if Joyce recognised that the world and the people in it are flawed but not utterly vile, somewhere in between perfect and worthless, she could apologise for her prior conduct and break the chain of consequences.
NGL I’m getting a little burnt out on everything Joyce does being treated by the narrative as some big moral failing. Sarah in particular has been ascribing a ton of overwrought philosophical weight to every little thing Joyce does that deviates from Old Joyce, and it’s coming across as extremely judgmental.
Joyce is in the middle of terminal worldview collapse and is trying to put the pieces together. I understand that her behavior in the midst of that might be hurtful, but maybe people (Becky, Dina) should stop seeking her out and pouncing on her in moments of vulnerability to pass judgment on the stuff she’s trying to work through on her own.
Fuck’s sake. I understand if you don’t want to hang out with her while she’s being a pill, but don’t track her down and then tell her off for being an asshole when she clearly wants to be left alone.
Yeah. I agree that we’re seeing other characters and many of the commenters react harshly to Joyce’s mistakes and peccadillos, but I don’t think the narrative has done so.
I don’t feel like it’s really calling them out for it either, though. It’s mostly just letting everyone’s behavior be displayed, which is kind of to Joyce’s detriment because she’s constantly on the defensive and less eloquent as a result.
I mean yeah, of course it’s just being displayed. That’s how writing works.
If The Narrative, however one wants to define it, went “dang Joyce’s friends are huge nobheads” then it stops being a story that can be interpreted, we’d just be waiting for them to acknowledge their nobheaditude. If, say, Joe goes up to Dorothy and says “she told me she was an atheist before you” then that should prompt some kind of change in Dorothy, but if you get that moment of change then you lose out on all the time spent with Dorothy doing wrong by Joyce.
Joyce is also, by design, a meticulous people pleaser. I don’t even think she’s capable of saying to Dorothy and Becky that they’re doing wrong, because Joyce chronically puts Becky’s feelings over her own (like in Galasso’s, where Becky calls back to Joyce’s listlessness that Joe helped her with, but Becky’s doing it to condemn her, but Joyce doesn’t get to be mad about that, she has to apologize to Becky because apologize to Becky is what Dorothy and Sarah are telling her to do).
If I’m being honest, the only reason I’m as confident as I am here in that view of the story is that Dorothy and Becky are doing so badly by Joyce that it feels intentional, and even more so because the genesis of their behaviour was running the exact same routine when Joyce went slightly off-script. It’s a conflict that starts with Joyce needing to be who Becky wants her to be, and that’s not a conflict in the sense that both sides have a point, that’s a conflict in that one side is doing all the wrong they aren’t even cognizant of as wrong because of Becky’s terrible coping mechanisms.
The idea of, for lack of a better term, a narrative bias for Becky is definitely something I’ve felt, because Becky gets to do fucked up bullshit all the time like demean Roz’s activism and forcibly out Billie and Ruth, but the reason I think there’s A Point to that instead of “Becky’s just so cool and also her parents are dead, so you can’t be mad at her” is that whenever she does something effed, she’s got Dorothy or Leslie there to defend or justify her actions, and those two are also absurdly coddling of her. I don’t think that’s The Narrative insisting that Becky is the coolest and bestest person ever and is actually just morally entitled to act how she pleases with everyone around her, I think that’s someone in-universe who’s got people who apologize for her.
TLDR: I absolutely understand these feelings in that seeing yesterday’s strip on Patreon absolutely gave me them too, like it’s a scenario where Joyce has all the wrong being done to her by Dina but it was more important that we know Joyce is ableist now, but then I pulled back and thought about it some. It’s an ongoing story, characters gotta suffer and screw up as much as they do resolve their problems, but also yes it’d be nice if Joyce could have a spa day or something.
I remember in Shortpacked, when Ethan met Amber, Amber’s mom said she tried to give Amber everything she could, to make up for Blaine’s abuse. But it doesn’t work that way. It’s not something you can balance out.
But by the time we met Amber, she was at the end of that arc and crawling out the other side. Seeing this arc from the beginning would be something Willis hasn’t shown before, and also something they’ve been interested in before. So… I personally give them the benefit of a doubt.
On a day to day strip, it is hard to watch though. But that’s because it’s a hard thing to write.
There was a certain amount of time where Gunnerkrigg court was like this and it got pretty frustrating there too ngl. Though the comic seems to have improved since it’s moved away from the plot line of trying to make her terrible father deep or justify his actions.But maybe it’s all building up to something more interesting than Annie going she doesn’t care what people say about her shitty dad.
Granted it’s kind of a coin flip whether this kind of thing is more frustrating then say Harry Potter where it’s fine for say the narrator or Harry or one of his friends to be a fat phobic arse but it’s the end of the world if a Slytherin is towards a character deemed as good by the same people.
Maybe overall we’re supposed to be frustrated by it and it’s building to something? But it’s hard to say. We might not find out for a year or so real time even if Joyce is arguably the main character.
Thank you for this comment. This is exactly what I’ve been feeling for awhile. It’s getting really tiring especially since in some instances, Joyce was just venting her own feelings in what she felt was a private setting. Joyce needs a vacation.
On the one hand Joyce isn’t feeling to hot I get that loud and clear but on the other hand I wonder if she still wouldn’t have said what she said if she was just fine since she hasn’t been the most caring person lately when it comes to her behavior to others.
So maybe this is a needed conversation but it’s just coming at the wrong time.
I think she might have been less… vicious about it but that kind of sentiment probably would have been there regardless considering the worldview she’s trying to unlearn
And I appreciate the recognition of “I do not know what to prioritize.” Acknowledging that seems like an important step…and realizing there isn’t One Right Answer to the question, either.
Are Kappas well known for their irony? I mostly only know them for their fondness for cucumbers, crippling dedication to performative politeness, and for tearing magic balls out of people’s buttholes.
It almost reads like a self-parody of Dumbing of Age. All these wonderful philosophical and religious insights like everyone is Drizzt Do’Urden and no one can read the room that Joyce is just not in the mood to talk.
There was oddly a funny Star Trek novel series called STAR TREK: NEW FRONTIER which had one of its funniest gags that the crew was all having a massive amount of relationship drama and everyone blabbed their problems to the First Officer one after the other on her way to the bridge, one after the other.
And the biggest part of the humor being that said first officer was a Vulcan and pauses enough to break her stoicism to go, “Why the Hell is everyone coming to ME to talk about their feelings?”
I think your art is twisting my brain. I saw this was a comment by you and automatically read the last word as “threesome.” And then was surprised there was no imgur link.
I have come to look forward to spotting a link in a Yoto post, because that means I am about to experience some awesomeness, and very likely NSFW at that, which is the best kind of awesomeness.
Sometimes, being a good support to someone isn’t seeing them be a shithead and going, “That was a good thing you did. It was good that you were being a shithead.”
I get Joyce feeling dogpiled. I’m not even going to say I think her lashing out was unjustified, exactly. But it’s also very Brooklyn 99 “Cool motive, still murder” to do a bad thing for a reason. Like, congrats, that’s some context for the apology you’re going to have to make later for being a dick, but that isn’t an out.
I’ve had depression since I was like 10, and am very likely bipolar. I’ve had low days where I take it out on people, but I also try to make things right with them. That’s part of being a friend to people, seeing, “I got mad because this and this reason” isn’t a blank check to take it out on them.
I have faith in Joyce, and I’m sure it’ll be fine, but I do think it’s worth remembering that “I had a bad day” isn’t the beginning, middle, and end of reflection unless you want a whole lot fewer people in your life.
Yeah, Dina was definitely pushing farther here than Joyce was up for… but this isn’t the only time Joyce has been unnecessarily rude to a friend lately (*cough RUTH cough*,) and even if her world’s falling apart around her, at some point I do think apologies will be merited for at least a few people. Some of them, Dina and Becky in particular, will owe her apologies in return. But no matter how much pain you’re in – and I do think Dina made some bad moves starting this conversation – when you choose to respond by insulting someone with something you KNOW they’re sensitive to, that’s a dick move. The pain you’re in might be a mitigating factor in friends choosing to accept an apology, depending on the pain, the insult, and the friends, but it doesn’t mean the apology isn’t merited for hurting them back.
Having been an absolute horror to my loved ones while depressed, I definitely get how it DOES warp your mindset and make you unsympathetic… but that doesn’t mean that, when you’re in a better state of mind, you don’t owe them some recompense for hurting them. Plus you probably regret it by that point. One of the reasons I try and stay more on top of it these days is that I don’t want to reach a point where I do that again.
I’m pretty sure Joyce is going to regret some of the things she’s said, when she finally gets the breathing room to sort through the hurt. I also think that her friends will – or at least should – eventually apologize for some of the ways they’ve been inconsiderate towards her. But ‘both people are wrong’ means ‘both people need to set this right,’ not ‘no one apologizes’ or sorting out who is Less Wrong and therefore doesn’t need to apologize.
Joyce retreated to the closest thing to a private safe space she has: Her bed. And still people are attacking her. She is right to lash out. She has already tried everything else to be left alone, she has no other places to flee to.
If you corner a cat, you’re going to get scratched.
Yes, Dina did wrong to go into Joyce’s bedroom while Joyce was sleeping. She also did wrong to waken Joyce when Joyce did not need to be woken. And to press a condemnation of Joyce’s family, upbringing, and values. But Dina did those things because Joyce taught her by example to do such things. This is what Joyce did to others all through last semester.
Joyce is reaping what she sowed. But “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. The art of living is to be able to make the consequences of your mistakes stop. A lot of it has to do with communicating.
The problem isn’t that Dina did one of Joyce’s running gags, the problem is that Dina didn’t get off when she was told to and then made Joyce have a conversation she’s not equipped to have.
Joyce can jump into Billie’s bed to wake her up but she has yet to do so to make her explain why she’s not actually bi
I feel like Joyce needs new friends for a little while. Clearly no one directly or indirectly involved with what happened wants to understand her; maybe she needs perspective from people outside her peer circle.
Or, she can see a therapist. I hope she sees a therapist or someone professional who can help.
She needs to talk to Sal more, I dont recall the last time they’ve had a conversation and I recall they bonded over not wanting to be shoved in a box by other people
Yeah, I’ve thought so for some time. Joyce’s world-view has collapsed, and she needs to build a new one that will satisfy her love of consistency. That sort of construction is best done by discussing and arguing about ethics and politics and aesthetics and epistemology and teleology in a group of peers who accept that everything suggested is subject to critical judgement. The best thing about university campuses for young people attempting the metamorphosis from teenager subordinacy is that such groups are readily to be found. The people who happen to have been assigned dorm rooms near Joyce’s are not necessarily the most suitable people to undertake that process with, nor necessarily Joyce’s most suitable friends for life. She ought to get around more.
Literally, give this girl like five fucking seconds to process her own emotions and thoughts??? Also the actual tangible physical pain she was sleeping to avoid feeling??
It would be nice if she actually got some time to process what’s happened to her and how she feels about it. Joyce never seems to get much time to do that.
I mean, there was kinda a 3-month time skip in there; presumably she could’ve processed some stuff then.
Ah, who am I kidding? It’s a comic. Everyone’s locked in and nothing important or impacting ever happens during time skips. (Pay no attention no that Jennifer behind the curtain)
Well, once the Christian Conversion Squad hears she’s down, and Becky realizes that Joyce is probably on the rag, and would be easy to return to the fold with some gentle support and chocolate, they can swoop in and try to make Joyce feel better.
Which will be excruciating, as Joyce initially wants Becky to just leave, then opens up and trusts her a bit, and slowly…slowly realizes, that Becky is also here with ulterior motives, and the universe just shits on Joyce some more today.
Ok, minor defense of Joyce here… There are times when perfectly ordinary people act less than kindly. One of those times tends to be when they themselves are in a dark place, mentally and physically. That she isn’t reacting well to being (or feeling) constantly pushed, and pushed, and pushed, and pushed, is hardly surprising, and that she’s repeatedly requested people leave her alone is enough to indicate that they might want to do exactly that.
Basically, in other words, if someone says or indicates “I’m kind of a bear right now. Go away and come back when I am more able to handle people”, and people continue to push past that warning, it’s on them if the latent ire gets fired in their direction.
Why offer basic human interactions like “hey that wasn’t cool” or “look I know you’re upset right now, but can we talk about this later?” when you could instead be turning every interaction with your heavily traumatized roommate into a fun little speech for exclusively your benefit
Seems like Sarah recognizes Joyce isn’t in a good place [and maybe they shouldn’t have been prodding her into admitting there was a problem] but also doesn’t want to condone these actions so she’s going back to wallow in misanthropy. Which is fair, I guess. Joyce does deserve slack, but Dina also deserves an apology at some point. But it doesn’t have to be right now. It was a hurtful term, but really not as concerning as the severe pain that Joyce is going through atm?
How is that constructive? Joyce already knows or will soon figure it out. At the moment telling Joyce she should apologize is only going to make her feel worse, and the reason she doesn’t want to apologize is because she feels terrible. By pushing her now, you’d be reducing the probability of an apology instead of increasing it.
I mean not any less constructive than this little tirade. At least mentioning that apologizing is a thing she should do, maybe not now, maybe not tommorow but in general just seems…better than this?
1. Joyce can probably infer that she should apologize, or knows it already, anyway. Telling her is probably not actually necessary.
2. Her whole point is that she isn’t really equipped to tell Joyce what best to do. Her saying that, then “oh and also, apologize” would be really weird messaging.
The thing about Sarah is that she’s been here for a long time.
She’s been antisocial. She’s shut people out. She’s taken big moral swings that might not have helped. She’s taken big selfish steps that, while achieving what she wanted, didn’t make her feel great in the long run. And she’s prioritized her own feelings, because she felt entitled to the ability to be a misanthrope, entitled to a roommate who wouldn’t fill the air with pot smoke, and entitled to end Raidah’s relationship. That’s not to say that’s all there was to any of that, but it was there. It happened.
Sarah has been there for Joyce. To talk to her, to joke with her, to share meals with her. She’s coming out of her shell because Joyce told her, point blank, that’s what she wants and needs. Not just someone to defend her with a baseball bat. It’s difficult for her, and she’s not always happy about it, but she does it, because she cannot forsake other people’s feelings because hers are so precious.
I don’t know if it’s so much that she had to relearn that with Liz as it is that Liz simply needed more from her. Liz had a big, thorny, difficult issue that, from Sarah’s point of view, wasn’t going to be solved by kind words. It was a baseball-bat scale crisis. Dropping out of school is a big deal. Sarah handled it poorly and, y’know…course corrected. Tried to fix it. Sometimes character development isn’t you stop doing the stupid thing. Sometimes it’s that the time between doing something stupid and fixing it shrinks.
Sarah doesn’t know the perfect way to big sister yet. She can’t say the magic words that’ll make Joyce feel better, or stop herself from instinctively being kind of a dick. But she has this wisdom. You can’t let your desire to be thorny and difficult let you hurt the people around you.
And until Sarah figures out how to do that, Joyce will need to take her post-fundie social cues from someone else.
Ooh, good catch. Yeah, Sarah’s definitely got some experience in the misanthropy because you’re also maybe hurting department, and I could see this being a factor in her reaction here.
I very much didn’t consider the possibility of Sarah worrying that Joyce was internalizing her behavior, that is a really interesting angle to their relationship. I don’t necessarily think that’s what’s happening, but it would be very rational for Sarah to have that perspective,
Based on the 99% certainty we have as a collective that she’s on her period, her iron is probably pretty damned low right now, and who knows what in her diet is even high in iron, in the first place?
This is one of the comics where it really hits that someone out there is writing this, has their own interpretations and intentions, and they must think at least a substantial chunk of the people responding have some really wild takes.
Works of fiction are weird that way.
Like, I’m reading this going “Wow, Willis is really blowing some mildly harmful behaviour out of proportion. Everybody’s a massive dick to somebody who’s worldview just fell apart, and willis is treating them as right to do so.
But who knows? Maybe he’s actually showing how much shit people give you when you’re coping, and how singularly unhelpful any of it is.
This is why “Death of the Author” is a pretty standard take on fiction. If you always worry about what the author intended you’ll never enjoy or find meaning in anything.
The comic is in a good part autobiographical, so the author’s experiences are a great part of the context. Context is everything for interpretation, and the people responding with what seem wild takes are reading the comment within entirely different contexts, also autobiographical in many cases, as they readily point out when they share their takes.
So, I’m not especially equipped to say this The Articulate Way, but there’s a thought at the back of my mind about this whole scene, and something said elsewhere brought it forward.
Where I live, and maybe elsewhere but I’m not there so I don’t know, there’s this really shitty phenomenon where a person makes a lot of mistakes and is pretty crummy to others for a while, so people avoid them naturally, BUT whenever they clean up their act, everyone suddenly is perfectly fine and cozy with approaching them now. And so there’s this endless wave of person after person constantly getting in the original person’s face, more or less screaming “YOU STILL SUCK” in their face, or saying shit like “Well, it’s only a matter of time before you fuck up again”. And then the person who’s trying to improve sees that nothing they do can get people to stop acting like they’re still being a jerk so they just give up and start lashing out, and then the crowd is all smug about how right they were about that person the entire time. And the thing is, the crowd never went around the individual until they started acting differently, which makes it feel sort of itchy. I don’t know if there’s a term or metaphor or whatever-the-hell for it, but I’ve seen it a lot and it always makes me uncomfortable, especially when it’s obvious the person is really trying to improve.
Anyway, that broad concept is starting to feel like it’s sort of getting aimed in Joyce’s direction and I’m getting that same itch about it. This isn’t a fully-formed opinion/argument/whatever and I’m not interested in any “transactional”-type #discourse about it, it’s just a thought I needed to get out before bed.
One of the things is that, as a practical matter, if you don’t tell people that you recognise your faults and are trying to change they have no way of knowing that. So they will naturally act on the supposition that you are still standing by your past actions.
Again, the transactional #discourse isn’t a priority. I may not have explicitly SAID the hypothetical person would tell people they were trying to improve, but I frankly don’t think I needed to. I trust people’s intelligence and ability to infer more than that.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, if you just mean Joyce then I totally agree. I kinda wanna see her get prickly and…not necessarily push people away or put up a wall, but at least set up a fence. Some kind of boundary, since she’s not especially known for having/observing them and people thusly can’t tell she wants one.
I feel like I prefer this to the hypothetical “articulate way.” I mean, I can only guess. But we don’t have to be articulate about what we already know. If we try too hard about that, then people find ways to tear down the framing and style and everything else that comes with “polish.” I’m glad you phrased it like this.
I definitely do feel this, as a broad concept, and as something happening in this strip and recently. It’s like, a person’s continued success or growth is this neverending betting match. If they get better and better forever, others can’t feel superior anymore. So they are convinced there’s something else going on that makes them a worse person ultimately, that’ll come to light soon enough. And if that’s true, then why not just skip the waiting and treat them like shit in advance?
See, I’d forgotten about Tall Rachel, but she really does sort of embody that concept to a degree. Far as we know, she didn’t go out of her way to find Ruth and tell her “Ummm ackshually you’re NOT improving yourself or getting better??? Because I have a prior long-standing beef with you??? So ummm yeah…” until Ruth started processing stuff and coming out of her depression loop. It’s kinda like she just wants Ruth back in that cozy little box where she didn’t have to think of her as a human being with a complex existence beyond their preexisting history? And that’s not to say that whatever gripes she has with Ruth aren’t legit, but when I dislike/hate a person, I don’t walk up to them and point my finger and say “Fuck you, die.”, I just simply avoid them and try NOT to interact at all.
I think if you presented that argument to Rachel, she’d counter with the fact that Ruth is her RA and so it’s inevitable that there would be some interaction. Which is true- the bad actor here is Ruth’s grandfather who forced her back into a responsibility she didn’t want.
See, I don’t think Rachel would come to Ruth with an actual problem though, on account of she hates Ruth and wouldn’t have cared if she died. And I think Ruth is aware of this and therefore probably isn’t especially inclined to check in on Rache, so we don’t have that angle. Also the floor meetings are only “mandatory” in that Ruth Said So and since when does Rachel care what Ruth wants, and I don’t think it’s enforceable or punishable in any official capacity. So in short, the only interaction between them that comes of Ruth being RA is the kind that at least one of them seeks out.
I think the mandatory floor meetings are mandatory because the school requires her to do them and requires those living on the floor to attend them. The only power trip Ruth goes on with those is the one where she threatens bodily harm to anyone who skips. I don’t know what actual punishments can be set for skipping since I don’t think we’ve seen that, but it doesn’t really seem to be a “Ruth decided this is mandatory so show up or else” sort of thing.
There have been some meetings where only a couple of people showed up. I would assume the penalty amounts to “You didn’t get to hear the conversation”, which isn’t exactly steep.
Other than the early one where she literally dragged people in after threatening them. And I believe the threats were repeated at the start of this semester.
While I won’t condone Joyce’s recent hurtful behavior, it really dkes feel like things would be healthier for everyone actually left her alone for a little while to deal with her shit instead of coming to her and putting her on the defensive.
I’m inclined to agree. Being in the defensive all the time is fucking exhausting and people like to take it as a sign of hostility when you react normally.
I agree, and to this end it would behove Joyce to tell people that that is what she wants. Up until recently she acted with scant regard of anybody’s boundaries and as though company were not optional. They have no way of knowing that she now wants solitude and her boundaries respected unless she says so.
Just the previous night, Joyce told Sarah to “quiet the heck up” after gentle concern, so I’d view it as one continuous event. Dealing with this from your own roommate is much different than someone you don’t have to live with. So while Joyce may actually just mean “leave me alone just right now seriously,” Sarah’s hearing “if you won’t say what I want to hear, regardless of how you feel about what I do, are you even my friend?” Sarah’s understandably hurt by that interpretation and redirects the feeling into her monologue habit, before, ultimately, leaving her alone as asked.
Sarah wants connection and she isn’t used to Joyce lashing out at her. I think she’s really scared of losing a good thing. It’s hard because the person Joyce is becoming is ultimately up to Joyce. Maybe the only thing Sarah feels a sense of control to say is “You want me out of it? Keep me out of all of it then. I don’t know what to do. You can handle yourself.”
I am also going to qualify this by saying: Joyce has never expected Sarah to treat her feelings as precious. Sarah’s confusing her own view of Joyce as precious as something Joyce asked of her, instead of a feeling Sarah had all on her own by valuing Joyce as precious. It’s a terrible thing to say out loud and pin on the other person.
To be fair, “martyr complex” would be one of the first notes you’d jot down in Sarah’s dossier, if you were writing it. So her thinking of it that way is par for the course.
I wouldn’t write such a thing. I don’t think it is being fair to say this behavior is just how she is. That feels much worse than holding her accountable for said behavior. She isn’t a golf course. Don’t add this kind of thing to my comments again, please.
Yaaaaay just what Joyce needs, someone else jumping on her case and kicking her while she’s down for the heinous crime of not being perfectly polite and kind while she’s in several different layers and flavors of pain.
While I will never think casual ableism is cool, it’s still tiresome as heck to be constantly interacted with, especially with how much drama is going on and the pain Joyce is physically in.
I mean, ye. Great and very right epiphany.
But very, very bad timing Sarah.
Such an amazing great timing, like Dina jumping up on a grumpy Joyce and asking so many questions (while Joyce is in the middle of going through her own stuff) and getting upset when the other person dismisses them…
So much great timing from all! lol
I mean… this IS Dumping of Age, and not “Everyone is clever from the start” after all.
Later on, everyone will become better (hopefully)… 😉
It was a bit harsh, sorry, just, I really haven’t gotten any indication Sarah’s probably is just not caring about peoples’ feelings. I don’t think she’d have gotten pulled into so many of Joyce’s escapades if she didn’t care at all.
You’re not reading what she’s been saying lately, then. She’s made it clear that she wants Joyce to go back to being the pollyanna she used to be, because it was uncomplicated for Sarah to deal with. Dorothy’s done the same thing. Joyce has been suffering and it’s made her difficult to be around; instead of saying “hey, are you okay?” everyone is just acting like she’s the villain, because her feelings are inconvenient.
Controversial opinion: All the commenters going on about how people should be nicer to Joyce in this moment are displaying exactly the sort of “Joyce’s feelings are especially precious!” mentality that Sarah is quite rightly unable to (though she probably shouldn’t be vocalizing it).
I mean, it makes sense that Joyce would be easier for her to confront than Dina would. And also that Sarah would have more sympathy for Dina’s behavior when she kinda piled on as well. All Sarah’s feelings are directed toward Joyce because she feels as though she’s “responsible” for Joyce, or something.
I just see this as a moment where more scolding isn’t going to help. Joyce needs someone to listen and take her side so she can talk it all out without hurting anyone else.
I keep being amazed at how Sarah always does and says what I would do and say if I were in the situation. Is Willis’ superpower reading the mind of commenters? Is this some kind of monstruous collective-writing system? Will we have Billie back next storyline? (The last one deserves a poll: do you want Billie back? Keep Jennifer? Expel both of them from IU?)
I want my Billie back Billie back Billie back i want my Billie back Billie back Billie back i want my Billie back Billie back Billie back
Billie back ribs!
…wait hold on
Don’t really get why everyone’s acting like the epiphany Sarah had was “I can’t forsake other people’s feelings because yours are too precious” when I’m pretty sure the epiphany she’s talking about is how maybe she should just let Joyce vent and yell a bit since she’s been through a lot of shit. Seems like that’s what she was thinking when walking into the room until the stuff with Dina went down.
I dunno, I’m seeing a lot of, “well, it’s not like Sarah’s been doing a great job of *ever* prioritizing Joyce’s feelings so what the hell are you even on about?” when that just… doesn’t seem to be what she was saying. I don’t know.
I think it’s the other way around? Sarah thinks she’s been coddling Joyce and letting her run roughshod over other people, and she shouldn’t do that anymore is my take on it.
I don’t think Sarah is being entirely fair here, but there’s something of a point there.
But also I was incorrect that she’s correcting herself from this epiphany.
And…like…the two things aren’t mutually exclusive? You cN let Joyce vent in a space where it doesn’t hurt others. That’s…like the entire point of venting.
For what it’s worth, I construed it the same way you did. The epiphany was “allow Joyce some agency and stop scolding her”, this is Sarah explaining that she is going to reject her epiphany and continue as before.
Plaaaa is indicating that they know what it is like to be in a relationship with more than one woman and that for some reason, which is not clear, believe that Sarah now shares that knowledge.
Sarah, you can be the worst person in this floor. Neither Joyce or nobody will leave you.
As in my life. You can slap people on the face or tell they to fuck off. They always come back, begging for help.
Oh god, imagine if Emothan and Joyce met up right now, the sheer energy may go critical and create a chain reaction, ending the worldthe USA this particular building of the school as we know it
So something I’ve thought for a while is that a low-effort, high-reward thing Joyce should do is to play a super violent video game.
No, hear me out.
One of the best small things I can do for my mental health, particularly when I’m feeling a lack of control, is to play a game where I can just go apeshit on some bad guys. It’s 100% indulging in power fantasy- I can’t control my boss or my students or my family or anything like that, but I can one hundred percent control these pixelmen with bullets until they’re no longer a problem. And I think that realization of how her parents and environment have controlled her and shaped her into a person she realizes harms others is a big part of her issues.
As a college student, it’s hard to get control over your life- classes dictate your schedule and parents dictate your finances. Fixing those issues is super challenging. But shooting zombies isn’t, and might help put her back on an even keel.
Great, now I want Joyce to develop a special interest in Devil May Cry and similar games and start streaming. She’s already hot, just set ‘er up a Twitch channel and a Lady cosplay and we’re in business.
Back in college, for me it ended up being Halo 3, come to think of it. My roommate and I shared a Wii, but while Smash Bros would fit the super-violent bill, he always kicked my ass. So I would go to the student center where they had an XBox 360 set up and you could borrow controllers, and I’d play my favorite levels again and again and shoot some Covenant.
Co-signed! Destiny 2 or one of the Division games are my shoot’em-ups of choice. It’s frankly ridiculous how much better I feel, sometimes, after plugging a few bad guys in the head.
Horizon Zero Dawn/Horizon Forbidden West. They’re not ultra-violent, so you lose the cathartic factor, but they require enough thought and planning that they take me out of my negative headspace and allow me to reset while I’m playing.
I’ve been playing Sable lately and it’s been doing this for me, but for the opposite reason.
It’s a sandbox exploration game with zero combat, you just explore the world on a hoverbike, solve puzzles, and explore ancient ruins and surreal alien landscapes.
As a game, it’s basically playing the art of Jean “Moebius” Girard. It rules.
Making an enemy of Dina is not the smartest move. She can sneak up on you. She’s a Playful Predator, but not easily upset. “Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are Crunchy, and good with Ketchup.” – Suzanne McMinn
Love a comic with long term structure. Under all this drama is Joyce, Sarah’s “little sister” and Sarah’s actual little sister. Both having their egg shell faith broken when they leave home and handling it in different ways. Neither quite knowing how to behave now. The similarities and contrasts are deliberate choices.
Liz and Joe is an alternate universe version of Joyce and Joe. Sarah’s relationship with Liz illuminates her relationship with Joyce.
Spanking was brought up to discuss its value but to contrast the “ sinner in the hands of a vengeful god” Vs a rational atheist approach. The day to day nature of how we read this masks the overarching themes. I’m tempted to read it once a week avoid being caught up in the daily aspects.
Honestly, I’m not sure how chill I’d be if I was woken out of a stone cold slumber when sick to do a deep dive into the ethics of my upbringing.
Just talk about not being remotely equipped to have this conversation right now. Let a gal grab a coffee and some soup and get back to you on this.
If scientists tried to formulate an environment that would facilitate hurtful remarks, they might create a conversation much like this one.
I don’t think it’s treating Joyce’s feelings as more important than anybody else’s to say that.
You could even turn it around. Dina’s in a huff because Joyce hit on her sore spot with the robot remark, but can’t see how grilling Joyce on her upbringing is the same thing. They both clearly have issues they’re sensitive about, but one of them just had an amazing night, came in here feeling alert and refreshed, and was allowed to exit the conversation when she’d had enough, and the other pretty much had the opposite experience.
It is very much a formulaic reversal of the “Wakey Wakey” Dynamic initially instigated by Joyce. Now she finds herself perfectly on the opposite end of that dynamic, and feeling the pain she caused with her Toxic Positivity.
She has to be realizing that now, and her Ego has to be taking exponentially more damage the more pressure people add on.
If she removed her face from the pillow right now, her face would be a mess with redness and tears.
She’s being defensive because people do need to back off at that point.
This aspect is not being recognized.
The fight/flight dynamic is running here.
If this trauma continues to go unresolved, I think Joyce just may kill someone.
She’s building a justification for that right now.
It’s been a while since I read the comic, and not that two wrongs would make a right, but Joyce didn’t usually do her “wakey wakey” routine before the crack of dawn, when people were unwell, and grill them about deeply sensitive topics did she?
It was like “Wakey wakey, the sun is bright and we have a wonderful day ahead of us, sleepypants!” not like “Wakey Wakey, oh you’re in pain? I’m hurting you? I’ll be only too happy to dismount but first tell me more about this Dana Character, and be prepared for several follow up questions. I wanna get into the weeds with your tragic backstory right here and now, in the darkness, and if you lash out at me I’ll be sure to find a way throw the sensitive stuff you just told me right back in your face and paint it as a moral failing on your part.”
This isn’t the crack of dawn. This is the same day. Sarah just came back from having lunch from a town a couple of hours drive away.
I assure you, if Joyce went around waking me up at the time she went around waking the cast up, I would DEFINITELY be unwell, and so would she, because I’d make her.
It’s funny too, that Dina’s presumably having this conversation with Joyce instead of asking Becky directly because she knows it would be a difficult conversation.
If we’re talking about Joyce’s feelings being more important than everybody else’s, that seems like a relevant detail. “No, I don’t want to ask Becky about the wooden spoon, but I’ll ask you, and I’ll use it as fodder to call you an asshole when you get snippy with me. Thanks for helping me work through out Becky’s issues though. I’m sure this will help me have a much more fruitful conversation with her later, you know, when she’s ready to have it.”
Well tbf dina didn’t know Joyce also received spoon punishment. And casual ableism is a bit harsher than just “getting snippy” so Dina’s pretty well within her rights to be pissed
In no way am I saying Dina is not allowed to take offence to the comment.
This entire situation happened because she considered Joyce’s feelings secondary to Becky’s though, which kind of flies in the face of Sarah’s little monologue here. Even if Dina didn’t know Joyce was also spanked when she initiated the conversation, she definitely knew by the end, and there was a specific decision to test probe the issue here with Joyce so she could come back to Becky better informed and better able to navigate Becky’s complex feelings about it.
Whether Becky’s ready for the conversation is the foremost concern. Whether Joyce is ready for the conversation is not even a consideration.
Age notwithstanding, Dina has underdeveloped social skills and has been shown working consciously to improve them by copying other characters, and by asking them for advice about and explanations of social behaviour. For example, she has done so in several conversations with Amber and with Sarah. Furthermore, the very interaction that led to the current situation explicitly began with Dina performing what she reasonably supposed was “how you and Becky prefer to be discharged from slumber“, because of the example they set.
The fact that Dina is an adult does not meant that she ought not to be allowed to learn new social behaviours, nor that she ought not to do so by copying others’ examples. It isn’t even all that unusual for young people to develop their adult behaviour and mannerisms in college and shortly after, mostly be social imitation.
And I don’t think use of the phrase “monkey see, monkey do” with reference to Dina is appropriate.
Joyce is not friends with Dina. Both of them have made it very clear, they don’t like each other and put up with each other’s presence in order to be around Becky. This dynamic means her social obligation to Dina is much lower.
Personally, if a person who was generally pretty hostile to me approached ME, woke me up from a nap (at like 5pm so I obviously need it), told me “no” when I asked them to please get off of me because I am in physical pain, and then grilled me on sensitive issues about my childhood while continuing to cause that physical pain — I would not apologize to them for ANYTHING I did in that conversation. Maybe I’d apologize after several days and them showing that they’re genuinely sorry and know why that’s so fucked up. But otherwise, no, screw them. That is a bridge I’m willing to burn and it’s a damn good reason to burn it.
Maybe that makes me a bad person but I guess I don’t care about being a bad person if that’s the threshold. I’m not apologizing to someone like that and I’m not gonna let myself feel bad about it either.
Is it? I kinda feel it’s just Dorothy and even that was more “your anger’s good as long as you use it for a good reason :)” and Sarah that one time she called Dina cranky.
Like the only time anyone’s ever gone “shut up it doesn’t count be more civil” is Joyce’s brother, I thought.
Y’know, I gotta step up a sec. To everyone being like. Actually it’s super cool and fine for Joyce to be This Much A Jerk At Everyone because she’s in pain.
I have a pain condition. I am *always* in pain. 4-8, every day. ‘Pliers twisting in the sinew of your back’ shit. Pain does not make you an asshole. It also does not excuse being an asshole. It might be hard to focus, but that’s a reason. Not an excuse.
Like. I think ‘this character is young, and going through it, and having a hard time. She’s not handling this shit gracefully, but we understand why. I don’t dislike Joyce right now. I have sympathy.
But boy, I’m kinda not. Super down with ‘well she’s in PAIN and how DARE anyone expect her to even be able to TALK let alone NOT be a JERK’. Ease it down.
I don’t think anybody here is saying treat her with the kid gloves because she’s in pain.
Waking Joyce up like that, having Joyce respond “you’re hurting me, please get off me” only for Dina to say “In a second, first tell me about your childhood trauma” is kind of a bit much though. I can’t speak from your firsthand experience but my mom has a pain disorder, and if I pulled that with her, the following scene would be me running crying to dad about what happened, and getting a very gentle explanation of where I went wrong there. Not because she’s some super bongo all day long but just because she’s human.
Like there has to be somewhere between the two extremes of “literally don’t talk to her when she’s like this” and “Wake her up to pester her about sensitive topics you don’t wanna ask your girlfriend about while while you continue to hurt her despite her protestations” where you could find reasonable human conduct.
Y’all in here arguin’ about who’s being meaner to who and the merits of jackin’ off or whatever and nobody’s talkin’ about important things like the Joyce’s pillow is all blue with cute little stripes on it.
To be fair, to jack or to jill off is a healthy part of a daily routine with health benefits. To celebrate a weight lifted from a suddenly rejuvenated sex-drive is just as worthy of a congratulatory “Good Job” as getting over an anxiety attack with positive thinking.
A Physical Renewal in a Human Being has taken place. Fireworks are required.
For the second point, the Social Dynamic, and the Analysis of it, in the Comic is one of the joys of writing in this comment section. Critical Analysis is the Sport, and the game is on.
Thirdly, while it is objectively true that Joyce’s Pillow is very Cute, its importance is debatable.
The Pilliow is a Shield, or rather a Dam for Tears unseen.
These are not tears of sadness, but of stress.
These are Tears that scream “Stop poking me if you’d like to keep your fingers.”
Sarah is monitoring her Progress down the slope of Madness into Criminality and Denial.
Sarah will be in the courtroom when Joyce is sentenced for worse crimes than those which caused her trauma.
I *truly* dislike the “you know you’ve really fucked up when you made the quiet person say angry things out loud” construction of emotional validity. Boo, Sarah! Try to walk away from that. Emotions are not more or less important or valid based on your ability to articulate them. I get why Sarah feels this way, because she and Dina have a thing about super-direct communication…but Dina is actually not terribly shy about expressing her negative emotions. It’s not that hard to piss Dina off! Sarah implying that anger from Dina is this exceptional thing that shows how badly Joyce has fucked up…kind of demonstrates that Sarah doesn’t know Dina as well as she might think.
Sarah also doesn’t know Joyce as well as she thinks she does, but that’s a different problem.
They’ve even had this problem before, haven’t they?
I forget, was it Joyce at that party, those many moons ago, who said that kissing Dina would be like kissing a child, prompting Dina and Becky to kiss in an act of defiance, kind of kickstarting that whole relationship?
Dina and Joyce have been at eachother’s throats a lot. Thought to be fair Joyce has historically usually been in the wrong in their disputes, factually certainly, but also often morally. So in that respect that “”you know you done fucked up when Dina’s mad” might stand.
Full disclosure, I’m picking up the comic now for the first time in many years, so their arc may have developed in ways I’m not accounting for, but I’m agreeing that I can’t recall it ever being the case that Dina has trouble voicing her displeasure with Joyce.
Something to remember about the incident you mentioned is Joyce apologized pretty much immediately, and I suspect when she’s in a better headspace Joyce will apologize for the robot remark made last comic
They have! Historically, I really think Joyce is much more the person who did the wrong thing, between them, too. She was always well-meaning, but one of the great things about this story is that “well-meaning” has never been an excuse for bad behavior.
The thing that’s throwing me here is that this time, Dina was the person who barged willfully into someone else’s space, ignored their boundaries and warning signs, and kept pushing until they got a nasty slap back. The strip has been pretty consistent that Joyce doing these things is actually not just a fun character quirk, but something that really pisses other people off, and she got so much consistent negative feedback for it it that she actually started to adjust her behavior. I can’t think off the top of my head when someone said something like “if you’ve offended Joyce, that’s when you knew you fucked up!”
My current read on this is that this is a Sarah thing—she thinks of Dina as a nice, low-drama person in her social sphere, and Joyce managing to say something that gets Dina to be overtly negative/show offense is surprising to Sarah. BOY Joyce fucked up, to make Dina react that way! Sarah would rather not deal with any of this! But this does not mean Sarah is right.
Nobody has ever said “if you’ve offended Joyce, that’s when you knew you fucked up!” before because pissing off Joyce intentionally was not only never really seen as that big a deal but was actually factually treated as entertainment for a lot of characters..
Man… it hurts watching Joyce go through the same shitstorm of bitterness as I did when I escaped “faith”. Having to look back and cringe so hard… I wish I had learned much sooner that ritualistic behaviors and magical thinking perform logistically useful functions for humanity. There are other ways to get the same results, but they require their own independent setup whereas faith is a prefabricated suite of social, emotional, and psychological support. … A very shoddy prefabricated suite, but there’s a reason it clings so stubbornly to humanity. It’s addictive.
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Hey everyone!
I know you might be tempted to go into battle mode right now, but I want to tell you something really important!
You know how my libido’s been broken for a while now?
Well today, I gave it a spin. For the first time in SO LONG, my head was clear and I could actually enjoy it.
It felt SO GOOD! For the first time in SO LONG!!! 😭
My life is Hell.
The WORLD is Hell.
The comments section is currently Hell.
But spite it all….
I am just SO THANKFUL to be surrounded by all you Good Demons, all you lovable demonic screwballs, in this WONDERFUL community!!!!!!!
YOU ALL MEAN SO MUCH TO ME!!!
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
*plays “Tristram Village” by Matt Uelman on Hacked Muzak*
Shhh… if Satan figures out you’re not suffering we will all be fired. However, I am glad you are feeling better.
“Tis better to be on unemployment in hell than to attend another stupid birthday party in the break room in heaven.”
-Paycheck Lost
Or at least better-ish. Sorry things have been rough for you lately.
PS.
Did you see the new BBC article “Tanis: Fossil of dinosaur killed in asteroid strike found, scientists claim”??? Pretty cool, huh?
Glad to hear it!
Thanks! 🥲
Got any personal recommendations for aiding my libido’s recovery?
Um… well…
Find porn that speaks to you positively. An actor/actress you admire, a good story to tell, interesting characters, elegant prose, beautiful artwork – something that sets it above the ordinary.
Alternatively, create some of your own. Write some erotica, draw some hentai – whatever stimulates your mind will often stimulate other parts as well.
Well, I am learning to program with Python. 🐍
Much like Biblical Eve, I actually “lost my innocence” thanks to another talking snake. 😈
Very poetic, don’t you think?
Any other recommendations? Perhaps pelvic exercises of some kind? A diet maybe?
What about caffeine and other drugs? I am exercising more too, will that help?
Try to eat more varied food (both for the nutritional health benefits and the psychological benefits of more varied experiences).
Sleep enough.
Find a way to feel safe.
Exercise.
Just… generally improve your wellbeing.
Maybe stop worrying about it so much? Constant (stress-laden) monitoring of any emotion can distract you from the emotion itself, making it weaker. Except fear. Fear flourishes.
So maybe your libido is taking a break – so what? You might as well enjoy not having to deal with it. Trust that it’ll be back when the time is right.
Have you tried the Porn of Our very own Pornlord over on Slipshine? Dina in the buff is to die for.
Funny story…
I actually did try it.
I really enjoyed the BEAUTIFUL art in it. Porn Lord Willis REALLY outdid himself! 🤩
While I did enjoy it in many ways and it made me REALLY happy, I actually didn’t enjoy it sexually.
Because of that, I was actually really worried that I was truly broken because of my depression and anxiety, that I wouldn’t be able to pleasure myself ever again. I also felt hella guilty about not being as happy as I should have been for Porn Lord Willis’s wonderful gift to us all.
But after some days of healthy eating and exercise, and quitting caffeine, up to today I was able to pleasure myself to things that usually aroused me for a long time.
However, Willis’s work didn’t quite conjure the same effect in me even then.
That’s when I realized something really important about myself. Reflecting my many fetishes that have come and gone, I realized that I was never really attracted to humans and their shape, or even to the act of sex or arousal alone.
I discovered that I’m an asexual, just like Dina!!! 😆
Speaking of Dina, while I’m not sexually attracted to her (or anyone really), I really love her in just about every other way. The brainiac girl’s like Rock and Roll to me!!! Up there with Sailor Moon and Son Goku, she’s my favorite socially challenged hero!!!
This whole story arc, where she used the Power of Science, her AWESOME BRAIN POWER, to break Becky’s Chains of the Sunday School, with the epic climax in the Slipshine? I HAVE LIVED!!!
🌈🧠🌌 🪨😆🪨 🌌🧠🌈
*plays “Chou Super Dragon Soul” by Takayoshi Tanimoto on Hacked Muzak*
>>> Followed by<a href = "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4faMbs5oQ "Good Morning World!" Burnout Syndrome
#IFLScience
—> Followed by<a href = "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF4faMbs5oQ "Good Morning World!" Burnout Syndrome
#IFLScience
One more time!
—>Followed by “Good Morning World!” Burnout Syndrome
#IFLScience
Getting sleepy, see you all in the morning! 😴
I mean. I’m happy for you I guess, but I still don’t quite get why your sexual drive/sexual interests crop up in the comments the way they do.
I don’t mean to be rude but it just feels not. Like the appropriate space for it?
Oops! Sorry if it’s a little out of place! 😅
In general, sometimes I have a little trouble reading social cues like that. Neurodivergence!
It’s just that something that was so important to me, that allowed me to escape this world, to relieve and relax myself, to bring me so much joy, I have been without in SO LONG. It’s like I lost a limb, an important part of myself! 😭
And now it’s coming back, slowly but surely, I’m recovering 🥹
I know through the Power of Science that ALL of you continue to play a HUGE role in my recovery, always being here, supporting me directly and indirectly, talking to me, giving me opportunities stimulate my mind, not to mention how good it feels to be helping all of you!!!
As we all make it through these tumultuous times together…
For all of you Good Demons, you lovable demonic screwballs in this community, and all your help, THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!!! 🥹🥹🥹
*plays “Through The Fire And Flames” by DragonForce on Hacked Muzak*
Honestly, I did not click on the comment section to find out someone successfully had a wank?
This is vaulting over the boundaries of folk who similarly don’t want to know; you ideally need to find a Discord or something where everyone is on board with hearing about this kinda personal info.
I’m not offended, I’m not upset, but this is not your Facebook.
Seconding this. I’m not offended either but I am uncomfortable. I don’t read the comments often so it’s deeply awkward when I do hop down here and the first thing I see is this wall of parasocial oversharing.
It’s not like this isn’t the place for it. We did just have a story arc about sexual gratification in the last week or so. I get that people may be uncomfortable about it but… let’s be frank, a healthy discussion of sex and gratification is probably healthier than 90% of the discussion that’s going to happen in here over the week.
A media piece showcasing sex is not carte blanche to talk about anything and everything related to sex. This isn’t the place for it.
Talking frankly about sexual experiences is only a healthy discussion when all parties can consent. Without warning, people can’t consent.
By that logic, no one could post anything because no one can consent to a discussion in the comments without having someone post unprompted. That’s how the comments section works.
Also, the topic of arousal and asexuality is EXACTLY that the recent Dina arc in the comic was about, and that is, as it turns out, exactly what the OP was talking about. So… yeah.
I mean wanting to discuss the fictional sex lives of not real characters on a comic I wanted to discuss it on is a bit different than talking about someone’s IRL wank and Libidio exercises.
Oh well, at least there’s a little break here from the absolute shitstorms of debates about ableism and spanking. I guess that’s a step in the right direction, for what it’s worth.
From what I can tell, the problem is probably less the content of the comment, and more the timing. Wellerman managed to squeeze in before Ana commented, which results in this being the very top comment in the chain, and a lot of people that head to the comics will check right underneath first, either because that makes sense or because they’re just wanting to read Ana’s first before they skim
That and it does read very similar to a vtuber talking to their community which yea, also triggers the parasocial warning flags
@Buttery Commissar and Badgermole
I mean, I was pretty uncomfortable with the 1000+ comment discussion of spankings, and clearly so were a lot of other people, but the comic opened the door to them and people felt like arguing.
When I hit a comment thread that makes me uncomfortable, as many of those did, I either skim past to the next comment thread, or I leave the Dumbing of Age comments section alone for a day.
It’s kinda hard to know that the comic has opened up this discussion when the last comic about sexual attraction and arousal was several days ago, and it’s harder to skip this discussion when the very top comment is “hey I’ve been having trouble with libido and I went and did a sexual thing and it felt good!”
I wouldn’t walk up to a group of strangers and start talking about my masturbatory habits. I think we can all agree that’s out of line. So why is it okay to just throw that out here? Receiving positive consent for sexual matters is very heavily emphasized in modern society, and I think getting people’s consent to talk about your (generic you) sex life before doing so is pretty important.
They said “Well today, I gave it a spin.” (it referring to the word libido in the previous sentence)
That’s a copy/paste quote.
They provided no inappropriate details. That was, in fact, about as discrete and tasteful as it is possible to be.
So they masturbated. Or had sex. Or looked at porn. And it felt, and I quote, “SO GOOD.” I don’t need to know about any of that. I didn’t ask to know about any of that. Even as vague as they were, it’s more specific than is appropriate for an open for that is not dedicated to talking about our sex lives without them at least providing a content warning.
Is it appropriate for me to walk up to people on the street and tell them “I’ve been having issues withy libido but last night I gave it a spin and it felt SO GOOD”? Because if it’s sexual, it’s not directly related to today’s comic, and it’s not appropriate to talk about to strangers in the street, I don’t consider it appropriate to talk about here without at least a content warning.
Re Content Warnings – sure, content warnings are a good thing. No issue there.
Re Everything Else – Disagree.
Personally I’m fine leaving it up to the author’s discretion to moderate what does and doesn’t belong in the comment section. I figure we’re in his house, we play by his rules here.
But do you really not see the significance of those comments taking place underneath a page where the characters discuss the practice of spanking? That sort of context just isn’t at all a relevant factor for you?
Because I feel like at that point we’ve run into some pretty wildly conflicting paradigms on the precise nature of a comment section. Perhaps we’re not on the same page about what everybody is commenting on here? Or perhaps not even on the same page about what a comment is in the first place?
@Gangler
I didn’t say anything about the significance. I said they made me uncomfortable. Because they did. However, as you say, they were relevant.
So I ignored them.
I read other comments, or I went and watched stuff on Youtube instead of posting here.
What I didn’t do is post comments complaining that people having a conversation that didn’t involve me was something that violated my consent.
🥺 Oooo! I’m REALLY REALLY sorry if I caused any of you any stress!!!!
All I really wanted was to express how thankful I am for being surrounded by all of you, for helping me get back something important to myself, and maybe introduce some better vibes in the room then the really nauseating conflicts that have been going on here lately.
You all have the right to express yourselves on the matter, I will not deny that. But one thing’s for sure, to turn what was intended as a grand expression of gratitude for the community as a whole into yet another point of division is… pretty unfortunate. 😕
I wouldn’t say you caused me stress, per se, but I don’t find it appropriate to talk about sex in specific personal terms without giving people a chance to opt out. Sometimes that chance comes in the form of the discussion being on an appropriate forum; for instance, no one could go into a subreddit devoted to sex and complain that they had no warning and didn’t give consent. Sometimes it comes in the form of putting a content warning at the start of a comment or post. I don’t know if this comment section is a wholly appropriate place in any case, but if Willis is cool with this sort of discussion, I suspect a content warning would suffice.
See my post above. I’d really love to hear how “Well today, I gave it a spin” could be considered, to use your words, ‘specific personal terms’.
You can express your thanks without giving us the personal information that you decided to engage in whatever sexual behavior your ‘libido’ being reinvigorated entailed.
Don’t worry on it too much, but please, consider: I also offered that suggestion because a controllable space (like a Discord or social account) is a FAR safer place to share these things, too.
Having your personal news saved on someone else’s website that you cannot edit, cannot remove, and gets viewed by tens of thousands of people per day, while tied to your username and contact info, is sweeping right past “stranger danger” into new realms of potential misadventure.
While I will admit that your revelation was a bit surprising, I will say that the fact that you were able to find some personal happiness and credited this webcomic and the peanut gallery for helping you with your issue gives me a warm feeling. And I was impressed that you felt comfortable enough and trusting enough to reveal something that personal with a bunch of internet strangers.
@The Wellerman
I would like to apologize to you about all this. Some of the above comments made me very angry (obviously). However, I should have kept in mind your commitment to good vibes and not submitted to bad ones. For that, I am truly sorry.
I think I’m going to take a break from posting comments here for a day or two to reset and refresh.
It’s alright, really.
Although I agree they have been some ways in error, forgive these people, Rose.
Just like you, they’re only human. Deep down, we’re all just living things — crudely assembled piles of protein and sugar, crawling about this giant rock we call a planet.
We’re all doing our best to survive, to function, to maintain health and sanity, in an unjust, indifferent universe that doesn’t care about anyone or anything, including itself. There’s only so much that the product of 4.5 billion years worth of happy accidents can do right. 🥲
P.S. I’ve seen tomorrow’s strip, and you’ll DEFINITELY want to stick around! 😉 😈
I’m just so fucking THANKFUL to be surrounded by a community of Good Demons like you and many others that have helped me feel better in these difficult times, and I am SO GRATEFUL!!! 😭
tl;dr: are you cape comics, ’cause you got issues
also cape comics are so last century
also this analogy is falling apart
like cape comics
I’m torn between congratulating you on this amazing comment and trying to fight you to defend the honor of a genre (like any normal, healthy person on the internet would do).
I think that if a comic wants to wear a cape they should be allowed to do so.
There’s normal, healthy people on the internet?
They all tried their best. There’s always tomorrow to work on the whole being a funtioning human thing.
Each one of them is a little pissed off so it kind of broke out pretty even!
I would dispute this assessment.
Noted.
Sarah maybe this isn’t the best conversation to have when the other person is in physical pain and clearly trying to get back to sleep
Yeah, it’s not her best moment to have her big epiphany about needing to care about more than just Joyce when Joyce is suffering horribly.
And unlike Dina she knew Joyce was in pain before coming in to this conversation, she was very smug about it at the start of the chapter
Sarah wasn’t in the room when Joyce said that. This might just as well be an expression of anger, or a bit to avoid the conversation altogether from Sarah’s point of view.
Also, for women, this is not some kind of special rare situation. This returns every month for several days. You have to learn to function during period. Life doesn’t take breaks for 1/4 of the adult life. Last example from my life, my grandmother just got diagnosed with covid19, she’s not vaccinated and my period will start soon. I’ll have to handle that while being in pain, I’ll have to handle my mother going nuts for being helpless (my grandmother is basically refusing any therapy and relies on placebo and tea to cure herself) and all that on top of my usual workday. I have to function, and I have to function well. That is not something you can do if you don’t practice it.
not everyone who gets periods CAN function even if they try and practice or whatever. some have debilitating symptoms due to underlying conditions/separate health issues which exercerbate period woes (PTSD definitely counts and might apply to Joyce)
Most folks can. For those who can’t it’s usually known to the close social circle. Not being able to da basically anything every month usually gets noticed.
Also six hours ago she could switch from “laying on the bed face down” to “full cheer mode” pretty fast when liz showed up.
My fiance would rip me a new one for having an attitude like that. If she’s having a really bad period, I help more, simple as that. Not everyone can afford to do that with work but at the very least family should be able to understand and accept that, as well as friends.
Honestly, it sounds like your Grandmother should have gotten vaccinated, cause she decided to take an unnecessary medical risk. Why do YOU have to go out of your way to help HER over something she could control while dealing with something you can’t?
How the hell is my boyfriend supposed to help me with a woman he literally met once for one minute? She won’t listen to him. She has zero reason to.
Yes, she should. She didn’t. Her main medical advisor is her other daughter, who believes in basically every conspiracy theory known to humankind, which is why they’re both not vaccinated (albeit they both should be). Why I should go out of my way to help her now? Is that a rhetoric question? She’s my grandmother. There’s a very real chance this kills her. And I won’t sit idle and watch. If this ends badly, I want to be able to tell myself I tried.
About your particular situation, I’m not honestly certain. I cut all ties from my racist anti-vaccine republican family. I just don’t think you should be dismissing the fact that women SHOULD be given extra consideration for things outside their control, just like anyone else born to anything ever. The reality we live in is that they aren’t, but at the very least it SHOULD be better with your family and friends, and you going around minimizing that is not helpful for others.
She was in the room when she first said it, at the start of this chapter, as I pointed out she was very smug about it as some kind of karma thing
Good for you that you can function on your period. I can too. But not everybody can. Endo and PCOS are both very common and make for a different level of hell version of a period that my experiences just can’t compare to. The average age of diagnoses for both is usually after college, often significantly so.
It’s kinda shitty demanding everyone else be perfect when you let yourself make mistakes.
Seriously what the hell kind of epiphany did Sarah have in that car
The driver was some wise old Uncle Iroh type who gave her sage advice and then drove off never to be seen again. Somehow the charge will never actually appear on Carla’s account.
Carla’s tech billionaire parents are paying, and apparently they own the rideshare app to begin with. Charge away, Sagelike Wisdom Driver. Charge away.
I don’t know doodly-squat about anime characters, but the holdover of my old-school religion makes me say that the rideshare drive was actually Sarah’s guardian angel, taking a little more hands-on approach to its assigned task. And you’re right; the charge for the ride will never appear on anyone’s earthly account.
As the nuns used to tell us whenever they couldn’t fully explain how or why something had happened, “God works in mysterious ways, and it is not for us to know.” Most of the time it’s hogwash, but there are enough personal examples in my own lifetime that makes me believe it’s not ALWAYS bullshit.
There is no stress in Ba Sen Se?
I don’t think it was an epiphany. I think Sarah’s known all this for a while and is having trouble acting on it. She did the thing that prioritized her own feelings by speeding away from Liz once back at Ball State, and then came back right after, realizing she fucked up.
As I mentioned further down, sometimes character development is less that you stop making mistakes, and more that the gap between making and fixing mistakes shrinks.
She didn’t say it was in the car, she said it was walking back into the room.
Yeah, being a big sister is hard, Sarah. This’ll be a tough conversation but hopefully, when Joyce feels better, a productive one.
Sarah likes Dina more than I expected
Dina is eminently likeable.
Some could say too likeable! No one person should hold that much power.
Sarah and Dina have always had a good relationship.
Sarah and Dina have been friends for a long time.
According to Dina in fact, Sarah is her second-favorite person after Becky.
They did have that whole “we can sit in silence and not make it weird? You’re a-okay in my book” interaction in the dining hall, after all
She also has selective amnesia because Joyce has pissed Dina off from the very first interaction.
The more time passes the more i realize I had it pretty good
Not good but any means, but by comparison
Yeah I’ve realized other people had it much worse than me as well. I was bullied in school by other kids for acting different, probably because I’m autistic but didn’t know it back then, but at least I had pretty good parents.
Wait, in what universe is “everything sucks all the time” an epiphany for Sarah? That is her default attitude.
I think the “epiphany” is in the next panel
“I can’t forsake other people’s feelings because YOURS are too precious.”
You’ve been doin a good job of forsakin her feelings quite recently, what’s stopping you now?
Also: “Why can’t everyone just get off my case?” is a valid question for a girl being reamed on constantly by her friends and is currently in physical and mental pain.
I was gonna say, she hasn’t been especially helpful in that regard anyway. It’s not a big change to stop entirely.
There was one comic strip where Joyce asked Sarah why she can’t help in little ways and not just big ones. Must’ve been in Book 9, I forgot what happened afterwards.
That was in like Book 3, wasn’t it?
Ten years real time coming up, yeah.
Joyce didn’t ask for help in small ways. She asked for Sarah to “show you like me” in small ways. And Sarah gave those. There are plenty of examples from the past ten years of Sarah offering affection in small ways unprompted, in ways ranging in magnitude from “giving Joyce a hug after a weekend with Joyce’s parents” to “letting her sit with her at lunch.”
They did not translate meaningfully to problem-solving skills.
See the hug after the parents thing might be a good indicator of why this is hard for her.
I don’t view it as unprompted by Sarah in that it began with her cracking at Joyce that she was “real broken up about Billie” which then made Joyce almost flip her off, but that was Sarah throwing herself into being there for Joyce when Joyce needed her, and as best as she could. Joyce is sad, Joyce gets a hug and a reinforcement that things suck and can be better. That is, genuinely, Sarah being the kind of emotional support Joyce wants from her.
And then immediately after, Becky and Dina burst into the room and make it a group hug. Sarah’s already someone who struggles with letting people see her vulnerable, and not only did those two see it, Dina got to crack a big smug smile in Sarah’s direction over it because Dina was right and Sarah did care.
Maybe it was just for the funny joke punchline, but Sarah did the right thing and then ate shit for it five seconds later.
I feel like a better example is when Joyce’s toenail fell off and she was also dealing with the stress of learning toedad was out of jail. She followed Joyce and Dorothy outside and gave them a hug (in public no less!) And then helped Joyce with her toenail issue. It was a small moment but it was one that always stuck with me as very sweet. There might have been a crisis going on with toedad but that moment still felt like Sarah showing she cares in small ways. I wouldn’t call releasing a dead nail a grand gesture
That’s a good one too!
It’s a Sarah moment too in that Joyce has a problem not getting solved, so Sarah handles it while Dorothy talks complicated feelings. Plus that one bit where she snarks that maybe an adult can do their job instead of leaving it to Joyce, and then ribbing Dorothy for putting Joyce in charge of it.
Actually, Sarah, that is exactly what you’re doing right now.
Honestly, everyone really does suck here.
Dina, don’t wake people up just so you can understand your girlfriend’s backstory better. Life isn’t an RPG everyone else isn’t NPC’s for you to run through dialogue options at your convenience and it’s both rude and socially unacceptable to randomly wander into people’s rooms and wake them up.
Joyce, I get it, you’re in pain right now and everything sucks but do try to not be a jerk to those around you.
Sarah, maybe you should actually take a minute to learn the situation before you jump in and tell people off. Also having an epiphany doesn’t mean you’re actually right so maybe don’t assume you’ve personally grown and become a better person just because something occurred to you in the back of an Uber.
Sarah would probably agree with you. Those last couple of panels read to me like, “I thought I had some things figured out, but I guess not, so you shouldn’t look to me for answers.”
I’m mostly just curious what the hell Sarah is even on about.
Whatever it is, it seems to involve actually opening up to people instead of mostly being grumpy and curmudgeonly.
She is currently not sure what is up with her sister, and I suspect something happened with her sister’s friend back at her school which is an early red flag she is concerned about, but knows it’s too early to think too highly of it. I think we are deliberately being left in the dark about that as readers.
To be fair to Dina she is only doing to Joyce what Joyce does to everyone else. As far as Dina knows that is socially acceptable behaviour for Joyce. Dina has no way to know that Joyce is a hypocrite.
I’m giving Joyce a pass for a couple hours or days, but if I were Dina or Sarah at some point I would use this as an example to talk to her about boundaries and letting people sleep in.
Am I misremembering, or have Joyce’s friends already had talks with her about boundaries and the inappropriateness of waking people up by sitting on them? At least, I know I remember Joyce waiting for Dorothy’s permission before giving her a hug when they started the semester, so her sense of boundaries has improved.
Has Joyce ever politely declined to stop causing someone immediate physical pain like Dina did in this interaction?
In either case, I love all these characters and I still want Joyce and Dina to patch things up and improve their relationship at some point. Maybe not any time soon, based on how this went.
I believe so. It was pretty explicitly called out with Sal, much to Becky’s confusion.
But it’s a thing Joyce used to do, months ago, and thus eternally associated with her.
I have been trying so hard not to get hung up on this, but! Yes! This kind of wild boundary-violation used to be one of Joyce’s hallmarks! It was played for comedy, but it was always inappropriate, and she got called on it enough that she eventually, slowly, realized she was being inappropriate, and then she stopped doing it. (Growth!)
I do think it’s pretty funny in-comic to see other characters comedically performing Joyce’s old boundary-crossing behaviors! What is actually not funny is the audience insisting that a thing Joyce *explicitly learned not to do* years ago in real time, and months ago in comic time, is JOYCE’S JUST DESERTS when someone else does it to her, in un-funny circumstances where she’s emotionally vulnerable and in physical pain.
(Do we really think Dina has *ever* looked to Joyce for behavioral cues? Dina truly does not like Joyce. If Dina is channeling anyone in this subplot, she’s channeling Becky, who historically shares Joyce’s boundary violating-behavior, but has not yet gotten schooled on that in any way that made Becky learn to *fucking stop.*)
To be fair, Dina did say explicitly at the start of this that she was trying to “perform how you and Becky prefer to be discharged from slumber”. Which I suspect actually means she’s drawing mostly from Becky here – who probably hasn’t learned better. She didn’t see to get it in the strip I linked above.
But also relying more on “Joyce likes to be woken this way” than “Joyce woke other people this way, so it’s payback time”.
The idea that Sarah thinks of Joyce’s feelings as precious is the best joke of 2022.
Okay more seriously; Sarah is honest to god trying her best, but she doesn’t get it. While I certainly expected a lot more Sarah in ‘Trial & Sarah,’ that lack of panel time ended up being a pretty good indicator of what she took away from all this: nada.
Sarah’s little sisters have problems, and since they’re approaching Sarah with them, or Sarah’s in the vicinity and they’re not getting solved, it’s up to Sarah to solve them, and to Sarah that’s taking complete control over the problem. Liz is a dumb spoiled kid and just needs to go back to college and face the music, but then Sarah doubles back and tries to encourage her. Even if Sarah does not recognize Liz’s problems as real, she took control and put Liz in a position that (Sarah thinks) worked out for the best.
But Sarah can’t help Joyce because to help Joyce would mean scooping all the trauma out of her brain. Sarah can’t listen to Joyce, can’t support her in small ways, because Sarah honest to god has no idea how to offer support unprompted. It’s why her conversations with Joyce since the Faith-Off have been badgering her to get back in line; Sarah doesn’t know how to approach Joyce as Joyce needs (ie: what Walky and Joe have done where she’s given an opportunity to just feel shit without someone telling her it’s wrong), and so Sarah’s contributions have been to moralize at her, because “you’re worse than you were as a fundie” and “you deserve to be fired for karma and I think it’d be funny” is Sarah-speak for “I want you to be happy again, and you were happier when you weren’t like this.”
And I think Sarah resents that about herself here. She wants to help Joyce, but that she can’t solve a tangible problem with a clear, direct, straight line to the solution means she’s left adrift because Sarah’s never been able to do that outside a crisis pretty much the whole series, and that’s worked out pretty well because “talk about feelings” duty was relegated to Becky and Dorothy, but they’re not helping much either.
Dana’s the hardest problem of her life, and Sarah could not support her emotionally, ergo, Sarah’s solution was to skip over all of Dana’s friends, call her dad, and get her out of college. Liz is the same broad idea; Liz has problem, Sarah makes it go away.
But Sarah can’t make 19 years of religious trauma boiled over and dealt with by trying to stuff Joyce back into it vanish. She can’t call Joyce’s dad to pick her up and bring her to the Not Traumatized clinic, she can’t drive Joyce back to college so she faces up to being traumatized and angry, and so Sarah feels she is helpless and unable to be who Joyce wants her to be right now.
TLDR: When Joyce told Sarah she had a role model she wasn’t sure she believed in anymore, she was half-correct because her role model doesn’t believe in herself either.
It’s also one of the great mysteries of Sarah that we don’t KNOW if Dana actually is better off out of college and getting therapy or medication versus self-medictating OR if Dana went to some abusive hellhole. The ambiguity is what makes the story fascinating.
Carla made the right choice getting Ruth help and meds.
But we know that Ruth going back to her granddad is horrifying.
There’s lots of possibilities.
According to Raidah Dana is miserable but she’s not exactly an unbiased source on the subject (plus that still leaves open the possibility that she was miserable at first but is doing better now)
Yeah, we have no idea WHEN ‘last Raidah checked’ was, and per Sarah Dana was masking around her friends anyway. Even if Dana WERE being abused, I’m not certain she’d actually tell Raidah honestly as opposed to downplaying it. (This is not me ruling out ‘Dana is genuinely being abused,’ but the sense I got from Raidah and Dana is a more casual ‘we met here at college and hit it off’ one than ‘we are BEST FRIENDS and have unlocked each other’s tragic backstories’ – Joyce and Jennifer more than Joyce and Dorothy. I don’t think Joyce knows about the DUI, and if Jennifer’s issues hadn’t become so public I doubt she’d know about them now, either. Plus, I think if Raidah DID know Dana was in genuinely bad shape, she’d have flung that at Sarah at some point between the drive-by harassments and the mall blowout in a much less ambiguous way, or told it to Jacob. ‘Not according to Dana last I checked’ doesn’t get her the win the way ‘Ruth’s home isn’t safe!’ did for Jennifer and Carla’s fight… and given discussion of the two paralleling, I think it’s worth noting that Jennifer DID bring it up to Carla when they discussed it. Yeah, it outs Dana to some extent, but there would be ways to do so without going into too much detail. ‘Didn’t you wonder why she was back so soon after the funeral?’ or something. So even if Dana is in an unsafe situation, I GENUINELY think Raidah doesn’t know.)
I really do love the Dana mystery. I understand why so many commenters seem convinced that what Raidah said was 1) an accurate representation of what Dana said and 2) that was Dana said was true: after all, given what most parents in the Dumbingverse are like, the balance of probability does seem to suggest that Dana’s not lying. But on the other hand, for all we know, what Dana’s complaining about is that her father won’t let her be stoned 24/7, the way she could get away with at college.
Admittedly, what disturbs me most is the people insisting that the evidence that Dana’s home must be abusive is that it’s not natural for her to return to college as soon as possible and not want to go home, which feels like demanding that everyone grieve or perform grief in one particular way. Especially since we know — or at least, have seen through Sarah’s perspective — that Dana performs for others, and is very good at it (and yes, that could also point towards an abusive home). It always struck me as just as plausible that she returned to college because her mother’s death had her father on the verge of a breakdown, and she figured going back was the best way she could help him, to reassure him she was fine.
this is a very good post dang
Thank you for explaining all this so well Spencer!
Sometimes I stop to read Spencer comments, because they explain a lot of history again and again. I’m not so smart, and DoA have a lot of implicit history running through.
That is not a irony.
I often have trouble understanding the comic, too. There’s so many things I miss, and sometimes a strip just leaves me confused.
It’s so cool that all I have to do is look at the comments, and in 90% of cases someone has already spelled it out for us 🙂
Quick aside because it’s not really the point but Sarah did try to tell Dana’s friends first, they just didn’t believe her because Dana put on the happy act in front of them
She did, but she didn’t tell them about calling Dana’s dad.
Which isn’t necessarily a condemnation of her since they openly signalled they weren’t gonna help and at Sarah’s expense of her scholarship.
I’d like Joyce to ask that of most of her friends (Joe is the exception)
I think the reason that so many other characters are on Joyce’s case is that she spent a long time very vocally on theirs.
That is not a good reason, of course. It is an explanation but not a justification. Retaliation in kind is not right speech.
Maybe, if Joyce recognised that the world and the people in it are flawed but not utterly vile, somewhere in between perfect and worthless, she could apologise for her prior conduct and break the chain of consequences.
Joyce, the comments section, same deal.
Co-signed to both these comments (DT and Agemegos)
NGL I’m getting a little burnt out on everything Joyce does being treated by the narrative as some big moral failing. Sarah in particular has been ascribing a ton of overwrought philosophical weight to every little thing Joyce does that deviates from Old Joyce, and it’s coming across as extremely judgmental.
Joyce is in the middle of terminal worldview collapse and is trying to put the pieces together. I understand that her behavior in the midst of that might be hurtful, but maybe people (Becky, Dina) should stop seeking her out and pouncing on her in moments of vulnerability to pass judgment on the stuff she’s trying to work through on her own.
Fuck’s sake. I understand if you don’t want to hang out with her while she’s being a pill, but don’t track her down and then tell her off for being an asshole when she clearly wants to be left alone.
Oh cool it’s not just me.
I don’t even think any of that is relevant to what she’s now.
She’s tired and having cramps and being bugged about immensely personal stuff.
NO ONE would react well to that.
This is the second time in three days Joyce had her day interrupted so someone could make her justify her own life to them.
I don’t think it’s the narrative with a bone to pick with Joyce.
It’s the narrative if those people are seen in the right for doing such.
That’s what I said yesterday, though you managed to boil down what I was trying to explain. Thanks yoto
Are they seen as right for doing such?
Yeah. I agree that we’re seeing other characters and many of the commenters react harshly to Joyce’s mistakes and peccadillos, but I don’t think the narrative has done so.
I don’t feel like it’s really calling them out for it either, though. It’s mostly just letting everyone’s behavior be displayed, which is kind of to Joyce’s detriment because she’s constantly on the defensive and less eloquent as a result.
Fair enough. I kind of hope that it is working its way up to that.
I mean yeah, of course it’s just being displayed. That’s how writing works.
If The Narrative, however one wants to define it, went “dang Joyce’s friends are huge nobheads” then it stops being a story that can be interpreted, we’d just be waiting for them to acknowledge their nobheaditude. If, say, Joe goes up to Dorothy and says “she told me she was an atheist before you” then that should prompt some kind of change in Dorothy, but if you get that moment of change then you lose out on all the time spent with Dorothy doing wrong by Joyce.
Joyce is also, by design, a meticulous people pleaser. I don’t even think she’s capable of saying to Dorothy and Becky that they’re doing wrong, because Joyce chronically puts Becky’s feelings over her own (like in Galasso’s, where Becky calls back to Joyce’s listlessness that Joe helped her with, but Becky’s doing it to condemn her, but Joyce doesn’t get to be mad about that, she has to apologize to Becky because apologize to Becky is what Dorothy and Sarah are telling her to do).
If I’m being honest, the only reason I’m as confident as I am here in that view of the story is that Dorothy and Becky are doing so badly by Joyce that it feels intentional, and even more so because the genesis of their behaviour was running the exact same routine when Joyce went slightly off-script. It’s a conflict that starts with Joyce needing to be who Becky wants her to be, and that’s not a conflict in the sense that both sides have a point, that’s a conflict in that one side is doing all the wrong they aren’t even cognizant of as wrong because of Becky’s terrible coping mechanisms.
The idea of, for lack of a better term, a narrative bias for Becky is definitely something I’ve felt, because Becky gets to do fucked up bullshit all the time like demean Roz’s activism and forcibly out Billie and Ruth, but the reason I think there’s A Point to that instead of “Becky’s just so cool and also her parents are dead, so you can’t be mad at her” is that whenever she does something effed, she’s got Dorothy or Leslie there to defend or justify her actions, and those two are also absurdly coddling of her. I don’t think that’s The Narrative insisting that Becky is the coolest and bestest person ever and is actually just morally entitled to act how she pleases with everyone around her, I think that’s someone in-universe who’s got people who apologize for her.
TLDR: I absolutely understand these feelings in that seeing yesterday’s strip on Patreon absolutely gave me them too, like it’s a scenario where Joyce has all the wrong being done to her by Dina but it was more important that we know Joyce is ableist now, but then I pulled back and thought about it some. It’s an ongoing story, characters gotta suffer and screw up as much as they do resolve their problems, but also yes it’d be nice if Joyce could have a spa day or something.
I remember in Shortpacked, when Ethan met Amber, Amber’s mom said she tried to give Amber everything she could, to make up for Blaine’s abuse. But it doesn’t work that way. It’s not something you can balance out.
But by the time we met Amber, she was at the end of that arc and crawling out the other side. Seeing this arc from the beginning would be something Willis hasn’t shown before, and also something they’ve been interested in before. So… I personally give them the benefit of a doubt.
On a day to day strip, it is hard to watch though. But that’s because it’s a hard thing to write.
This. Joyce as somekind spiderman of this universe start to drag
There was a certain amount of time where Gunnerkrigg court was like this and it got pretty frustrating there too ngl. Though the comic seems to have improved since it’s moved away from the plot line of trying to make her terrible father deep or justify his actions.But maybe it’s all building up to something more interesting than Annie going she doesn’t care what people say about her shitty dad.
Granted it’s kind of a coin flip whether this kind of thing is more frustrating then say Harry Potter where it’s fine for say the narrator or Harry or one of his friends to be a fat phobic arse but it’s the end of the world if a Slytherin is towards a character deemed as good by the same people.
Maybe overall we’re supposed to be frustrated by it and it’s building to something? But it’s hard to say. We might not find out for a year or so real time even if Joyce is arguably the main character.
Practically. Yeeeeep.
Spot on.
Thank you for this comment. This is exactly what I’ve been feeling for awhile. It’s getting really tiring especially since in some instances, Joyce was just venting her own feelings in what she felt was a private setting. Joyce needs a vacation.
On the one hand Joyce isn’t feeling to hot I get that loud and clear but on the other hand I wonder if she still wouldn’t have said what she said if she was just fine since she hasn’t been the most caring person lately when it comes to her behavior to others.
So maybe this is a needed conversation but it’s just coming at the wrong time.
I think she might have been less… vicious about it but that kind of sentiment probably would have been there regardless considering the worldview she’s trying to unlearn
If I were Joyce, I would react to Sarah’s heartfelt plea by going, “Does no one realize I’m in pain and DO NOT WANT TO TALK?”
*clap*
If only she weren’t raised specifically in an environment where externalizing your needs invites painful scrutiny. F to pay respects.
Frankly, I think that doesn’t apply because Sarah and Dina would react even worse to being told to fuck off.
It’s a shame Sarah has such a firm anti-weed stance because she and half the cast could use a FAT blünt rn
Wow, Sarah is really opening up here.
And I appreciate the recognition of “I do not know what to prioritize.” Acknowledging that seems like an important step…and realizing there isn’t One Right Answer to the question, either.
Is Sarah supposed to be an asshole here? Because she definitely just comes off as an asshole here.
Other words exist for rude people.
There’s no need to be the vocabulary police.
See irony.
I see no “Kappa”. Probably there’s no irony.
Are Kappas well known for their irony? I mostly only know them for their fondness for cucumbers, crippling dedication to performative politeness, and for tearing magic balls out of people’s buttholes.
Turns out I was missing some key information about Kappas, and they have leapfrogged up my ranking of “Which Mythological Creatures are the Scariest?”
Kappa is a term we use in Twitch, when we want to be ironic.
I don’t know if there something related to mythological Kappa
If you’re constantly twitching, no wonder you have a vocabulary problem.
What were we talking about now?
It almost reads like a self-parody of Dumbing of Age. All these wonderful philosophical and religious insights like everyone is Drizzt Do’Urden and no one can read the room that Joyce is just not in the mood to talk.
There was oddly a funny Star Trek novel series called STAR TREK: NEW FRONTIER which had one of its funniest gags that the crew was all having a massive amount of relationship drama and everyone blabbed their problems to the First Officer one after the other on her way to the bridge, one after the other.
And the biggest part of the humor being that said first officer was a Vulcan and pauses enough to break her stoicism to go, “Why the Hell is everyone coming to ME to talk about their feelings?”
I loved New Frontier. It’s so nice to hear about someone else who remembers it. <3
Drizzt Do’Urden is a strange name for a Vulcan.
o3o I do agree that everything sucks all the time. It’s all gotten so tiresome.
I think your art is twisting my brain. I saw this was a comment by you and automatically read the last word as “threesome.” And then was surprised there was no imgur link.
I have come to look forward to spotting a link in a Yoto post, because that means I am about to experience some awesomeness, and very likely NSFW at that, which is the best kind of awesomeness.
Sometimes, being a good support to someone isn’t seeing them be a shithead and going, “That was a good thing you did. It was good that you were being a shithead.”
I get Joyce feeling dogpiled. I’m not even going to say I think her lashing out was unjustified, exactly. But it’s also very Brooklyn 99 “Cool motive, still murder” to do a bad thing for a reason. Like, congrats, that’s some context for the apology you’re going to have to make later for being a dick, but that isn’t an out.
I’ve had depression since I was like 10, and am very likely bipolar. I’ve had low days where I take it out on people, but I also try to make things right with them. That’s part of being a friend to people, seeing, “I got mad because this and this reason” isn’t a blank check to take it out on them.
I have faith in Joyce, and I’m sure it’ll be fine, but I do think it’s worth remembering that “I had a bad day” isn’t the beginning, middle, and end of reflection unless you want a whole lot fewer people in your life.
Yeah, Dina was definitely pushing farther here than Joyce was up for… but this isn’t the only time Joyce has been unnecessarily rude to a friend lately (*cough RUTH cough*,) and even if her world’s falling apart around her, at some point I do think apologies will be merited for at least a few people. Some of them, Dina and Becky in particular, will owe her apologies in return. But no matter how much pain you’re in – and I do think Dina made some bad moves starting this conversation – when you choose to respond by insulting someone with something you KNOW they’re sensitive to, that’s a dick move. The pain you’re in might be a mitigating factor in friends choosing to accept an apology, depending on the pain, the insult, and the friends, but it doesn’t mean the apology isn’t merited for hurting them back.
Having been an absolute horror to my loved ones while depressed, I definitely get how it DOES warp your mindset and make you unsympathetic… but that doesn’t mean that, when you’re in a better state of mind, you don’t owe them some recompense for hurting them. Plus you probably regret it by that point. One of the reasons I try and stay more on top of it these days is that I don’t want to reach a point where I do that again.
I’m pretty sure Joyce is going to regret some of the things she’s said, when she finally gets the breathing room to sort through the hurt. I also think that her friends will – or at least should – eventually apologize for some of the ways they’ve been inconsiderate towards her. But ‘both people are wrong’ means ‘both people need to set this right,’ not ‘no one apologizes’ or sorting out who is Less Wrong and therefore doesn’t need to apologize.
Anyway I should try to get my sleep schedule back in order, so I should probably bow out of commenting this arc. Or at least try to.
Joyce retreated to the closest thing to a private safe space she has: Her bed. And still people are attacking her. She is right to lash out. She has already tried everything else to be left alone, she has no other places to flee to.
If you corner a cat, you’re going to get scratched.
Yes, Dina did wrong to go into Joyce’s bedroom while Joyce was sleeping. She also did wrong to waken Joyce when Joyce did not need to be woken. And to press a condemnation of Joyce’s family, upbringing, and values. But Dina did those things because Joyce taught her by example to do such things. This is what Joyce did to others all through last semester.
Joyce is reaping what she sowed. But “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. The art of living is to be able to make the consequences of your mistakes stop. A lot of it has to do with communicating.
The problem isn’t that Dina did one of Joyce’s running gags, the problem is that Dina didn’t get off when she was told to and then made Joyce have a conversation she’s not equipped to have.
Joyce can jump into Billie’s bed to wake her up but she has yet to do so to make her explain why she’s not actually bi
…ngl that sounds perfectly in character for early season Joyce
I feel like Joyce needs new friends for a little while. Clearly no one directly or indirectly involved with what happened wants to understand her; maybe she needs perspective from people outside her peer circle.
Or, she can see a therapist. I hope she sees a therapist or someone professional who can help.
I hope it’s not booster.
They’re not a professional, so it definitely shouldn’t be Booster. But knowing that, it probably would be.
She needs to talk to Sal more, I dont recall the last time they’ve had a conversation and I recall they bonded over not wanting to be shoved in a box by other people
I’ve been re-reading from the beginning and I really want to see Joyce reconnect with Ethan. He could use it and so could she I think
Yeah, I’ve thought so for some time. Joyce’s world-view has collapsed, and she needs to build a new one that will satisfy her love of consistency. That sort of construction is best done by discussing and arguing about ethics and politics and aesthetics and epistemology and teleology in a group of peers who accept that everything suggested is subject to critical judgement. The best thing about university campuses for young people attempting the metamorphosis from teenager subordinacy is that such groups are readily to be found. The people who happen to have been assigned dorm rooms near Joyce’s are not necessarily the most suitable people to undertake that process with, nor necessarily Joyce’s most suitable friends for life. She ought to get around more.
A therapist is always a good idea, but what Joyce needs right now is sleep and time alone to feel bad.
Literally, give this girl like five fucking seconds to process her own emotions and thoughts??? Also the actual tangible physical pain she was sleeping to avoid feeling??
As long as she processes them, not just cram them into a crate and memory-hole into a Raiders of the Lost Ark style “Joyce’s issues” warehouse.
It would be nice if she actually got some time to process what’s happened to her and how she feels about it. Joyce never seems to get much time to do that.
I mean, there was kinda a 3-month time skip in there; presumably she could’ve processed some stuff then.
Ah, who am I kidding? It’s a comic. Everyone’s locked in and nothing important or impacting ever happens during time skips. (Pay no attention no that Jennifer behind the curtain)
Well, once the Christian Conversion Squad hears she’s down, and Becky realizes that Joyce is probably on the rag, and would be easy to return to the fold with some gentle support and chocolate, they can swoop in and try to make Joyce feel better.
Which will be excruciating, as Joyce initially wants Becky to just leave, then opens up and trusts her a bit, and slowly…slowly realizes, that Becky is also here with ulterior motives, and the universe just shits on Joyce some more today.
Ok, minor defense of Joyce here… There are times when perfectly ordinary people act less than kindly. One of those times tends to be when they themselves are in a dark place, mentally and physically. That she isn’t reacting well to being (or feeling) constantly pushed, and pushed, and pushed, and pushed, is hardly surprising, and that she’s repeatedly requested people leave her alone is enough to indicate that they might want to do exactly that.
Basically, in other words, if someone says or indicates “I’m kind of a bear right now. Go away and come back when I am more able to handle people”, and people continue to push past that warning, it’s on them if the latent ire gets fired in their direction.
I second this.
It’s really weird how in Sarah’s monologue she never says the statement “You should apologize” or something constructive.
Why offer basic human interactions like “hey that wasn’t cool” or “look I know you’re upset right now, but can we talk about this later?” when you could instead be turning every interaction with your heavily traumatized roommate into a fun little speech for exclusively your benefit
Sarah’s gotten in the habit of being a Greek chorus and now she has to monologue whenever she has the slightest disagreement in views with Joyce
Seems like Sarah recognizes Joyce isn’t in a good place [and maybe they shouldn’t have been prodding her into admitting there was a problem] but also doesn’t want to condone these actions so she’s going back to wallow in misanthropy. Which is fair, I guess. Joyce does deserve slack, but Dina also deserves an apology at some point. But it doesn’t have to be right now. It was a hurtful term, but really not as concerning as the severe pain that Joyce is going through atm?
(since she’s admitting that laying off doesn’t sound totally unreasonable)
How is that constructive? Joyce already knows or will soon figure it out. At the moment telling Joyce she should apologize is only going to make her feel worse, and the reason she doesn’t want to apologize is because she feels terrible. By pushing her now, you’d be reducing the probability of an apology instead of increasing it.
I mean not any less constructive than this little tirade. At least mentioning that apologizing is a thing she should do, maybe not now, maybe not tommorow but in general just seems…better than this?
Yeah, agreed. Honestly just say “Well, that wasn’t great” and then leave Joyce alone. Don’t make it a whole big thing right now.
Two things.
1. Joyce can probably infer that she should apologize, or knows it already, anyway. Telling her is probably not actually necessary.
2. Her whole point is that she isn’t really equipped to tell Joyce what best to do. Her saying that, then “oh and also, apologize” would be really weird messaging.
Just based on second-panel Joyce, I think such a suggestion would go over like a ton of bricks.
Joyce’s experience reminds me of a video game protag – just minding her own business as each NPC sidles into camera to dump their life story.
Every goddamn holiday event in Persona 3
I get why Sarah is saying this, narratively, but this is absolutely something that did not need to be said out loud at this moment.
agreed
The thing about Sarah is that she’s been here for a long time.
She’s been antisocial. She’s shut people out. She’s taken big moral swings that might not have helped. She’s taken big selfish steps that, while achieving what she wanted, didn’t make her feel great in the long run. And she’s prioritized her own feelings, because she felt entitled to the ability to be a misanthrope, entitled to a roommate who wouldn’t fill the air with pot smoke, and entitled to end Raidah’s relationship. That’s not to say that’s all there was to any of that, but it was there. It happened.
Sarah has been there for Joyce. To talk to her, to joke with her, to share meals with her. She’s coming out of her shell because Joyce told her, point blank, that’s what she wants and needs. Not just someone to defend her with a baseball bat. It’s difficult for her, and she’s not always happy about it, but she does it, because she cannot forsake other people’s feelings because hers are so precious.
I don’t know if it’s so much that she had to relearn that with Liz as it is that Liz simply needed more from her. Liz had a big, thorny, difficult issue that, from Sarah’s point of view, wasn’t going to be solved by kind words. It was a baseball-bat scale crisis. Dropping out of school is a big deal. Sarah handled it poorly and, y’know…course corrected. Tried to fix it. Sometimes character development isn’t you stop doing the stupid thing. Sometimes it’s that the time between doing something stupid and fixing it shrinks.
Sarah doesn’t know the perfect way to big sister yet. She can’t say the magic words that’ll make Joyce feel better, or stop herself from instinctively being kind of a dick. But she has this wisdom. You can’t let your desire to be thorny and difficult let you hurt the people around you.
And until Sarah figures out how to do that, Joyce will need to take her post-fundie social cues from someone else.
Ooh, good catch. Yeah, Sarah’s definitely got some experience in the misanthropy because you’re also maybe hurting department, and I could see this being a factor in her reaction here.
I very much didn’t consider the possibility of Sarah worrying that Joyce was internalizing her behavior, that is a really interesting angle to their relationship. I don’t necessarily think that’s what’s happening, but it would be very rational for Sarah to have that perspective,
That comes with the big sister/little sister interaction. Younger siblings take behavioral cues from older siblings all the time.
I have diagnosed Joyce’s illness: she has a severe chronic deficiency of the essential nutrients that are created by different foods touching.
Synergamins.
Based on the 99% certainty we have as a collective that she’s on her period, her iron is probably pretty damned low right now, and who knows what in her diet is even high in iron, in the first place?
This is one of the comics where it really hits that someone out there is writing this, has their own interpretations and intentions, and they must think at least a substantial chunk of the people responding have some really wild takes.
Synergamins.
This reply has appeared in the wrong place.
Or the right one.
That would be “serendipamins”.
Works of fiction are weird that way.
Like, I’m reading this going “Wow, Willis is really blowing some mildly harmful behaviour out of proportion. Everybody’s a massive dick to somebody who’s worldview just fell apart, and willis is treating them as right to do so.
But who knows? Maybe he’s actually showing how much shit people give you when you’re coping, and how singularly unhelpful any of it is.
This is why “Death of the Author” is a pretty standard take on fiction. If you always worry about what the author intended you’ll never enjoy or find meaning in anything.
The comic is in a good part autobiographical, so the author’s experiences are a great part of the context. Context is everything for interpretation, and the people responding with what seem wild takes are reading the comment within entirely different contexts, also autobiographical in many cases, as they readily point out when they share their takes.
Eat at arbys
…shit now I wanna eat at Arbys.
It concerns me that nihilist marketing actually might work
Well, if nothing else, it is a refreshing change from the usual barrage of marketing we are assaulted with.
I’ll have a Jamoca Death Shake, please.
So, I’m not especially equipped to say this The Articulate Way, but there’s a thought at the back of my mind about this whole scene, and something said elsewhere brought it forward.
Where I live, and maybe elsewhere but I’m not there so I don’t know, there’s this really shitty phenomenon where a person makes a lot of mistakes and is pretty crummy to others for a while, so people avoid them naturally, BUT whenever they clean up their act, everyone suddenly is perfectly fine and cozy with approaching them now. And so there’s this endless wave of person after person constantly getting in the original person’s face, more or less screaming “YOU STILL SUCK” in their face, or saying shit like “Well, it’s only a matter of time before you fuck up again”. And then the person who’s trying to improve sees that nothing they do can get people to stop acting like they’re still being a jerk so they just give up and start lashing out, and then the crowd is all smug about how right they were about that person the entire time. And the thing is, the crowd never went around the individual until they started acting differently, which makes it feel sort of itchy. I don’t know if there’s a term or metaphor or whatever-the-hell for it, but I’ve seen it a lot and it always makes me uncomfortable, especially when it’s obvious the person is really trying to improve.
Anyway, that broad concept is starting to feel like it’s sort of getting aimed in Joyce’s direction and I’m getting that same itch about it. This isn’t a fully-formed opinion/argument/whatever and I’m not interested in any “transactional”-type #discourse about it, it’s just a thought I needed to get out before bed.
One of the things is that, as a practical matter, if you don’t tell people that you recognise your faults and are trying to change they have no way of knowing that. So they will naturally act on the supposition that you are still standing by your past actions.
Again, the transactional #discourse isn’t a priority. I may not have explicitly SAID the hypothetical person would tell people they were trying to improve, but I frankly don’t think I needed to. I trust people’s intelligence and ability to infer more than that.
Sorry, I was talking about Joyce.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, if you just mean Joyce then I totally agree. I kinda wanna see her get prickly and…not necessarily push people away or put up a wall, but at least set up a fence. Some kind of boundary, since she’s not especially known for having/observing them and people thusly can’t tell she wants one.
I feel like I prefer this to the hypothetical “articulate way.” I mean, I can only guess. But we don’t have to be articulate about what we already know. If we try too hard about that, then people find ways to tear down the framing and style and everything else that comes with “polish.” I’m glad you phrased it like this.
I definitely do feel this, as a broad concept, and as something happening in this strip and recently. It’s like, a person’s continued success or growth is this neverending betting match. If they get better and better forever, others can’t feel superior anymore. So they are convinced there’s something else going on that makes them a worse person ultimately, that’ll come to light soon enough. And if that’s true, then why not just skip the waiting and treat them like shit in advance?
It’s gross in a very human way.
Oh yeah, the pattern Tall Rachel fell into re: Ruth.
See, I’d forgotten about Tall Rachel, but she really does sort of embody that concept to a degree. Far as we know, she didn’t go out of her way to find Ruth and tell her “Ummm ackshually you’re NOT improving yourself or getting better??? Because I have a prior long-standing beef with you??? So ummm yeah…” until Ruth started processing stuff and coming out of her depression loop. It’s kinda like she just wants Ruth back in that cozy little box where she didn’t have to think of her as a human being with a complex existence beyond their preexisting history? And that’s not to say that whatever gripes she has with Ruth aren’t legit, but when I dislike/hate a person, I don’t walk up to them and point my finger and say “Fuck you, die.”, I just simply avoid them and try NOT to interact at all.
I think if you presented that argument to Rachel, she’d counter with the fact that Ruth is her RA and so it’s inevitable that there would be some interaction. Which is true- the bad actor here is Ruth’s grandfather who forced her back into a responsibility she didn’t want.
See, I don’t think Rachel would come to Ruth with an actual problem though, on account of she hates Ruth and wouldn’t have cared if she died. And I think Ruth is aware of this and therefore probably isn’t especially inclined to check in on Rache, so we don’t have that angle. Also the floor meetings are only “mandatory” in that Ruth Said So and since when does Rachel care what Ruth wants, and I don’t think it’s enforceable or punishable in any official capacity. So in short, the only interaction between them that comes of Ruth being RA is the kind that at least one of them seeks out.
I think the mandatory floor meetings are mandatory because the school requires her to do them and requires those living on the floor to attend them. The only power trip Ruth goes on with those is the one where she threatens bodily harm to anyone who skips. I don’t know what actual punishments can be set for skipping since I don’t think we’ve seen that, but it doesn’t really seem to be a “Ruth decided this is mandatory so show up or else” sort of thing.
There have been some meetings where only a couple of people showed up. I would assume the penalty amounts to “You didn’t get to hear the conversation”, which isn’t exactly steep.
Other than the early one where she literally dragged people in after threatening them. And I believe the threats were repeated at the start of this semester.
Yeah, but that’s in the past. I was thinking more forward than backward.
While I won’t condone Joyce’s recent hurtful behavior, it really dkes feel like things would be healthier for everyone actually left her alone for a little while to deal with her shit instead of coming to her and putting her on the defensive.
I’m inclined to agree. Being in the defensive all the time is fucking exhausting and people like to take it as a sign of hostility when you react normally.
I agree, and to this end it would behove Joyce to tell people that that is what she wants. Up until recently she acted with scant regard of anybody’s boundaries and as though company were not optional. They have no way of knowing that she now wants solitude and her boundaries respected unless she says so.
True.
Just the previous night, Joyce told Sarah to “quiet the heck up” after gentle concern, so I’d view it as one continuous event. Dealing with this from your own roommate is much different than someone you don’t have to live with. So while Joyce may actually just mean “leave me alone just right now seriously,” Sarah’s hearing “if you won’t say what I want to hear, regardless of how you feel about what I do, are you even my friend?” Sarah’s understandably hurt by that interpretation and redirects the feeling into her monologue habit, before, ultimately, leaving her alone as asked.
Sarah wants connection and she isn’t used to Joyce lashing out at her. I think she’s really scared of losing a good thing. It’s hard because the person Joyce is becoming is ultimately up to Joyce. Maybe the only thing Sarah feels a sense of control to say is “You want me out of it? Keep me out of all of it then. I don’t know what to do. You can handle yourself.”
I am also going to qualify this by saying: Joyce has never expected Sarah to treat her feelings as precious. Sarah’s confusing her own view of Joyce as precious as something Joyce asked of her, instead of a feeling Sarah had all on her own by valuing Joyce as precious. It’s a terrible thing to say out loud and pin on the other person.
To be fair, “martyr complex” would be one of the first notes you’d jot down in Sarah’s dossier, if you were writing it. So her thinking of it that way is par for the course.
If *I* were or if you were?
I wouldn’t write such a thing. I don’t think it is being fair to say this behavior is just how she is. That feels much worse than holding her accountable for said behavior. She isn’t a golf course. Don’t add this kind of thing to my comments again, please.
I think that was the general “you”, not anyone specific.
This entire comic is amazingly structured.
It is. I’m not sure we all agree on what the structure is though.
Dina has difficulties reading social cues, but Sarah doesn’t so maybe she could deduce something is really eating at Joyce.
I think Becky is gonna come in all furious-like and they are gonna have A TALK.
Yaaaaay just what Joyce needs, someone else jumping on her case and kicking her while she’s down for the heinous crime of not being perfectly polite and kind while she’s in several different layers and flavors of pain.
Becky’s thing has literally never been giving Joyce space.
Ooh, Sarah’s turn to twist the phone!
the phone meme never stops giving me life
And it’s all thanks to the phone company’s best surgeon.
While I will never think casual ableism is cool, it’s still tiresome as heck to be constantly interacted with, especially with how much drama is going on and the pain Joyce is physically in.
Joyce needs a long nap
I mean, ye. Great and very right epiphany.
But very, very bad timing Sarah.
Such an amazing great timing, like Dina jumping up on a grumpy Joyce and asking so many questions (while Joyce is in the middle of going through her own stuff) and getting upset when the other person dismisses them…
So much great timing from all! lol
I mean… this IS Dumping of Age, and not “Everyone is clever from the start” after all.
Later on, everyone will become better (hopefully)… 😉
Oh Sarah, stop lying to yourself. You haven’t given a shit about Joyce’s feelings in quite some time.
Sounds familiar.
You read a comic very different from the one everyone else does if that was your takeaway.
I think most people are reading their own version of the comic at this point tbh, so I don’t know why you’re coming for me for it.
It was a bit harsh, sorry, just, I really haven’t gotten any indication Sarah’s probably is just not caring about peoples’ feelings. I don’t think she’d have gotten pulled into so many of Joyce’s escapades if she didn’t care at all.
You’re not reading what she’s been saying lately, then. She’s made it clear that she wants Joyce to go back to being the pollyanna she used to be, because it was uncomplicated for Sarah to deal with. Dorothy’s done the same thing. Joyce has been suffering and it’s made her difficult to be around; instead of saying “hey, are you okay?” everyone is just acting like she’s the villain, because her feelings are inconvenient.
Actually, a couple people seemed to agree with my similar take on that earlier in the Comments Collective.
I don’t think I was as abrasive in my verbiage, but it was a similar intent.
Everyone around Joyce loves and cherishes her, they just think they’re loving and cherishing the Joyce that’s there instead of the one they want.
Controversial opinion: All the commenters going on about how people should be nicer to Joyce in this moment are displaying exactly the sort of “Joyce’s feelings are especially precious!” mentality that Sarah is quite rightly unable to (though she probably shouldn’t be vocalizing it).
This is not an entirely serious opinion.
This isn’t even all that controversial.
While true, it’s also notable that Sarah is displaying Dina’s annoyance is more precious than Joyce’s.
Which notably is not any better.
I mean, it makes sense that Joyce would be easier for her to confront than Dina would. And also that Sarah would have more sympathy for Dina’s behavior when she kinda piled on as well. All Sarah’s feelings are directed toward Joyce because she feels as though she’s “responsible” for Joyce, or something.
I just see this as a moment where more scolding isn’t going to help. Joyce needs someone to listen and take her side so she can talk it all out without hurting anyone else.
I keep being amazed at how Sarah always does and says what I would do and say if I were in the situation. Is Willis’ superpower reading the mind of commenters? Is this some kind of monstruous collective-writing system? Will we have Billie back next storyline? (The last one deserves a poll: do you want Billie back? Keep Jennifer? Expel both of them from IU?)
I’m sort of hoping for Billie to return, but both personas are problematic. So maybe if Jennifer cleans up her act we can excuse the name change.
As is well known, Jennifer is Mike.
I want my Billie back Billie back Billie back i want my Billie back Billie back Billie back i want my Billie back Billie back Billie back
Billie back ribs!
…wait hold on
Don’t really get why everyone’s acting like the epiphany Sarah had was “I can’t forsake other people’s feelings because yours are too precious” when I’m pretty sure the epiphany she’s talking about is how maybe she should just let Joyce vent and yell a bit since she’s been through a lot of shit. Seems like that’s what she was thinking when walking into the room until the stuff with Dina went down.
I dunno, I’m seeing a lot of, “well, it’s not like Sarah’s been doing a great job of *ever* prioritizing Joyce’s feelings so what the hell are you even on about?” when that just… doesn’t seem to be what she was saying. I don’t know.
I think Sarah is going on an exceptionally long winded rant that Joyce was being mean to Dina.
Except, Sarah has been shitting on Joyce’s bad attitude since it began.
Seriously, Joyce, take up Trekkism or Jediism and be happy again! Is what apparently Sarah is about.
I think it’s the other way around? Sarah thinks she’s been coddling Joyce and letting her run roughshod over other people, and she shouldn’t do that anymore is my take on it.
I don’t think Sarah is being entirely fair here, but there’s something of a point there.
Appropriate gravatar.
But also I was incorrect that she’s correcting herself from this epiphany.
And…like…the two things aren’t mutually exclusive? You cN let Joyce vent in a space where it doesn’t hurt others. That’s…like the entire point of venting.
Yeah, it’s like Toe Dad to me.
Sarah has been shitty to Joyce and treating her change as a failure.
But Sarah thinks she’s being too nice.
I think Sarah had resolved to be nicer to Joyce, but seeing a pissed-off Dina leave the room made her reconsider.
For what it’s worth, I construed it the same way you did. The epiphany was “allow Joyce some agency and stop scolding her”, this is Sarah explaining that she is going to reject her epiphany and continue as before.
Now Sarah, you know what it’s like to be in a relationship with women.
What do you mean?
Plaaaa is indicating that they know what it is like to be in a relationship with more than one woman and that for some reason, which is not clear, believe that Sarah now shares that knowledge.
Sarah, you can be the worst person in this floor. Neither Joyce or nobody will leave you.
As in my life. You can slap people on the face or tell they to fuck off. They always come back, begging for help.
Joyce’s day can’t go better of this. She has make Dina and Sarah angry and she’s still in her bed. Impressive!
If only Dorothy were here.
Oh god, imagine if Emothan and Joyce met up right now, the sheer energy may go critical and create a chain reaction, ending
the worldthe USAthis particular building of the school as we know itAre you saying Ethan is the anti-Joyce?
I’m saying they seems to be in a similar state of mind
I have such deep appreciation for the writing that went into Sarah not trying to wrap this up neatly and cleanly.
So something I’ve thought for a while is that a low-effort, high-reward thing Joyce should do is to play a super violent video game.
No, hear me out.
One of the best small things I can do for my mental health, particularly when I’m feeling a lack of control, is to play a game where I can just go apeshit on some bad guys. It’s 100% indulging in power fantasy- I can’t control my boss or my students or my family or anything like that, but I can one hundred percent control these pixelmen with bullets until they’re no longer a problem. And I think that realization of how her parents and environment have controlled her and shaped her into a person she realizes harms others is a big part of her issues.
As a college student, it’s hard to get control over your life- classes dictate your schedule and parents dictate your finances. Fixing those issues is super challenging. But shooting zombies isn’t, and might help put her back on an even keel.
I personally recommend DOOM 2016.
Great, now I want Joyce to develop a special interest in Devil May Cry and similar games and start streaming. She’s already hot, just set ‘er up a Twitch channel and a Lady cosplay and we’re in business.
Back in college, for me it ended up being Halo 3, come to think of it. My roommate and I shared a Wii, but while Smash Bros would fit the super-violent bill, he always kicked my ass. So I would go to the student center where they had an XBox 360 set up and you could borrow controllers, and I’d play my favorite levels again and again and shoot some Covenant.
Co-signed! Destiny 2 or one of the Division games are my shoot’em-ups of choice. It’s frankly ridiculous how much better I feel, sometimes, after plugging a few bad guys in the head.
Horizon Zero Dawn/Horizon Forbidden West. They’re not ultra-violent, so you lose the cathartic factor, but they require enough thought and planning that they take me out of my negative headspace and allow me to reset while I’m playing.
I’ve been playing Sable lately and it’s been doing this for me, but for the opposite reason.
It’s a sandbox exploration game with zero combat, you just explore the world on a hoverbike, solve puzzles, and explore ancient ruins and surreal alien landscapes.
As a game, it’s basically playing the art of Jean “Moebius” Girard. It rules.
I haven’t heard of this game but it sounds right up my alley. I’ll have to check it out.
Making an enemy of Dina is not the smartest move. She can sneak up on you. She’s a Playful Predator, but not easily upset. “Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, for you are Crunchy, and good with Ketchup.” – Suzanne McMinn
Joyce has gone back to sleep.
Love a comic with long term structure. Under all this drama is Joyce, Sarah’s “little sister” and Sarah’s actual little sister. Both having their egg shell faith broken when they leave home and handling it in different ways. Neither quite knowing how to behave now. The similarities and contrasts are deliberate choices.
Liz and Joe is an alternate universe version of Joyce and Joe. Sarah’s relationship with Liz illuminates her relationship with Joyce.
Spanking was brought up to discuss its value but to contrast the “ sinner in the hands of a vengeful god” Vs a rational atheist approach. The day to day nature of how we read this masks the overarching themes. I’m tempted to read it once a week avoid being caught up in the daily aspects.
Honestly, I’m not sure how chill I’d be if I was woken out of a stone cold slumber when sick to do a deep dive into the ethics of my upbringing.
Just talk about not being remotely equipped to have this conversation right now. Let a gal grab a coffee and some soup and get back to you on this.
If scientists tried to formulate an environment that would facilitate hurtful remarks, they might create a conversation much like this one.
I don’t think it’s treating Joyce’s feelings as more important than anybody else’s to say that.
You could even turn it around. Dina’s in a huff because Joyce hit on her sore spot with the robot remark, but can’t see how grilling Joyce on her upbringing is the same thing. They both clearly have issues they’re sensitive about, but one of them just had an amazing night, came in here feeling alert and refreshed, and was allowed to exit the conversation when she’d had enough, and the other pretty much had the opposite experience.
It is very much a formulaic reversal of the “Wakey Wakey” Dynamic initially instigated by Joyce. Now she finds herself perfectly on the opposite end of that dynamic, and feeling the pain she caused with her Toxic Positivity.
She has to be realizing that now, and her Ego has to be taking exponentially more damage the more pressure people add on.
If she removed her face from the pillow right now, her face would be a mess with redness and tears.
She’s being defensive because people do need to back off at that point.
This aspect is not being recognized.
The fight/flight dynamic is running here.
If this trauma continues to go unresolved, I think Joyce just may kill someone.
She’s building a justification for that right now.
Sarah needs to run.
It’s been a while since I read the comic, and not that two wrongs would make a right, but Joyce didn’t usually do her “wakey wakey” routine before the crack of dawn, when people were unwell, and grill them about deeply sensitive topics did she?
It was like “Wakey wakey, the sun is bright and we have a wonderful day ahead of us, sleepypants!” not like “Wakey Wakey, oh you’re in pain? I’m hurting you? I’ll be only too happy to dismount but first tell me more about this Dana Character, and be prepared for several follow up questions. I wanna get into the weeds with your tragic backstory right here and now, in the darkness, and if you lash out at me I’ll be sure to find a way throw the sensitive stuff you just told me right back in your face and paint it as a moral failing on your part.”
This isn’t the crack of dawn. This is the same day. Sarah just came back from having lunch from a town a couple of hours drive away.
I assure you, if Joyce went around waking me up at the time she went around waking the cast up, I would DEFINITELY be unwell, and so would she, because I’d make her.
Ah, I guess I thought the Becky/Dina sex scene took place overnight.
It was noonery, not a nunnery. :p
I did not see that. Very impressive.
It’s funny too, that Dina’s presumably having this conversation with Joyce instead of asking Becky directly because she knows it would be a difficult conversation.
If we’re talking about Joyce’s feelings being more important than everybody else’s, that seems like a relevant detail. “No, I don’t want to ask Becky about the wooden spoon, but I’ll ask you, and I’ll use it as fodder to call you an asshole when you get snippy with me. Thanks for helping me work through out Becky’s issues though. I’m sure this will help me have a much more fruitful conversation with her later, you know, when she’s ready to have it.”
Well tbf dina didn’t know Joyce also received spoon punishment. And casual ableism is a bit harsher than just “getting snippy” so Dina’s pretty well within her rights to be pissed
In no way am I saying Dina is not allowed to take offence to the comment.
This entire situation happened because she considered Joyce’s feelings secondary to Becky’s though, which kind of flies in the face of Sarah’s little monologue here. Even if Dina didn’t know Joyce was also spanked when she initiated the conversation, she definitely knew by the end, and there was a specific decision to test probe the issue here with Joyce so she could come back to Becky better informed and better able to navigate Becky’s complex feelings about it.
Whether Becky’s ready for the conversation is the foremost concern. Whether Joyce is ready for the conversation is not even a consideration.
Dina has a right to be pissed at being told that she doesn’t count as human.
Dina does not have a right to be in Joyce’s bedroom uninvited.
Dina does not have a right to waken Joyce when Joyce doesn’t need to be woken.
Dina doesn’t have a right to subject Joyce to a scathing criticism of her values.
Dina is acting as though she had such rights because she learned from the example of Joyce’s previous conduct.
She learned from Grace’s example? Like, this is an adult woman we’re talking about, right?
This sounds about as bad as anything Grace has said about her. Painting her as some impressionable child monkey see monkey do.
Grace? What’s Grace got to do with it.
Age notwithstanding, Dina has underdeveloped social skills and has been shown working consciously to improve them by copying other characters, and by asking them for advice about and explanations of social behaviour. For example, she has done so in several conversations with Amber and with Sarah. Furthermore, the very interaction that led to the current situation explicitly began with Dina performing what she reasonably supposed was “how you and Becky prefer to be discharged from slumber“, because of the example they set.
The fact that Dina is an adult does not meant that she ought not to be allowed to learn new social behaviours, nor that she ought not to do so by copying others’ examples. It isn’t even all that unusual for young people to develop their adult behaviour and mannerisms in college and shortly after, mostly be social imitation.
And I don’t think use of the phrase “monkey see, monkey do” with reference to Dina is appropriate.
I meant Joyce, not Grace.
I mix up her name with Grace from El Goonish Shive a lot for some reason. They just give off similar vibes.
Joyce is not friends with Dina. Both of them have made it very clear, they don’t like each other and put up with each other’s presence in order to be around Becky. This dynamic means her social obligation to Dina is much lower.
Personally, if a person who was generally pretty hostile to me approached ME, woke me up from a nap (at like 5pm so I obviously need it), told me “no” when I asked them to please get off of me because I am in physical pain, and then grilled me on sensitive issues about my childhood while continuing to cause that physical pain — I would not apologize to them for ANYTHING I did in that conversation. Maybe I’d apologize after several days and them showing that they’re genuinely sorry and know why that’s so fucked up. But otherwise, no, screw them. That is a bridge I’m willing to burn and it’s a damn good reason to burn it.
Maybe that makes me a bad person but I guess I don’t care about being a bad person if that’s the threshold. I’m not apologizing to someone like that and I’m not gonna let myself feel bad about it either.
I feel like Sarah is incredibly condescending here. “Maybe I should let you yell.” Joyce doesn’t need your permission or approval to be angry!
“Anger is a bad” is a distressingly common take from the cast.
Is it? I kinda feel it’s just Dorothy and even that was more “your anger’s good as long as you use it for a good reason :)” and Sarah that one time she called Dina cranky.
Like the only time anyone’s ever gone “shut up it doesn’t count be more civil” is Joyce’s brother, I thought.
No discussion here, only bee puns.
This week has already been a Buzz-kill
Sometimes, everyone hurts each other and nothing’s super okay. That just happens. Give them time, the kids will be alright.
Y’know, I gotta step up a sec. To everyone being like. Actually it’s super cool and fine for Joyce to be This Much A Jerk At Everyone because she’s in pain.
I have a pain condition. I am *always* in pain. 4-8, every day. ‘Pliers twisting in the sinew of your back’ shit. Pain does not make you an asshole. It also does not excuse being an asshole. It might be hard to focus, but that’s a reason. Not an excuse.
Like. I think ‘this character is young, and going through it, and having a hard time. She’s not handling this shit gracefully, but we understand why. I don’t dislike Joyce right now. I have sympathy.
But boy, I’m kinda not. Super down with ‘well she’s in PAIN and how DARE anyone expect her to even be able to TALK let alone NOT be a JERK’. Ease it down.
If she didn’t wanna be in pain so badly, why’s she keep hitting herself in the balls with a cartoon hammer?
I don’t think anybody here is saying treat her with the kid gloves because she’s in pain.
Waking Joyce up like that, having Joyce respond “you’re hurting me, please get off me” only for Dina to say “In a second, first tell me about your childhood trauma” is kind of a bit much though. I can’t speak from your firsthand experience but my mom has a pain disorder, and if I pulled that with her, the following scene would be me running crying to dad about what happened, and getting a very gentle explanation of where I went wrong there. Not because she’s some super bongo all day long but just because she’s human.
Like there has to be somewhere between the two extremes of “literally don’t talk to her when she’s like this” and “Wake her up to pester her about sensitive topics you don’t wanna ask your girlfriend about while while you continue to hurt her despite her protestations” where you could find reasonable human conduct.
Y’all in here arguin’ about who’s being meaner to who and the merits of jackin’ off or whatever and nobody’s talkin’ about important things like the Joyce’s pillow is all blue with cute little stripes on it.
To be fair, to jack or to jill off is a healthy part of a daily routine with health benefits. To celebrate a weight lifted from a suddenly rejuvenated sex-drive is just as worthy of a congratulatory “Good Job” as getting over an anxiety attack with positive thinking.
A Physical Renewal in a Human Being has taken place. Fireworks are required.
For the second point, the Social Dynamic, and the Analysis of it, in the Comic is one of the joys of writing in this comment section. Critical Analysis is the Sport, and the game is on.
Thirdly, while it is objectively true that Joyce’s Pillow is very Cute, its importance is debatable.
The Pilliow is a Shield, or rather a Dam for Tears unseen.
These are not tears of sadness, but of stress.
These are Tears that scream “Stop poking me if you’d like to keep your fingers.”
Sarah is monitoring her Progress down the slope of Madness into Criminality and Denial.
Sarah will be in the courtroom when Joyce is sentenced for worse crimes than those which caused her trauma.
What the hell are you talking about?
I’m not sure how to answer that.
Could you please elaborate?
No.
I *truly* dislike the “you know you’ve really fucked up when you made the quiet person say angry things out loud” construction of emotional validity. Boo, Sarah! Try to walk away from that. Emotions are not more or less important or valid based on your ability to articulate them. I get why Sarah feels this way, because she and Dina have a thing about super-direct communication…but Dina is actually not terribly shy about expressing her negative emotions. It’s not that hard to piss Dina off! Sarah implying that anger from Dina is this exceptional thing that shows how badly Joyce has fucked up…kind of demonstrates that Sarah doesn’t know Dina as well as she might think.
Sarah also doesn’t know Joyce as well as she thinks she does, but that’s a different problem.
They’ve even had this problem before, haven’t they?
I forget, was it Joyce at that party, those many moons ago, who said that kissing Dina would be like kissing a child, prompting Dina and Becky to kiss in an act of defiance, kind of kickstarting that whole relationship?
Dina and Joyce have been at eachother’s throats a lot. Thought to be fair Joyce has historically usually been in the wrong in their disputes, factually certainly, but also often morally. So in that respect that “”you know you done fucked up when Dina’s mad” might stand.
Full disclosure, I’m picking up the comic now for the first time in many years, so their arc may have developed in ways I’m not accounting for, but I’m agreeing that I can’t recall it ever being the case that Dina has trouble voicing her displeasure with Joyce.
Something to remember about the incident you mentioned is Joyce apologized pretty much immediately, and I suspect when she’s in a better headspace Joyce will apologize for the robot remark made last comic
Good point.
They have! Historically, I really think Joyce is much more the person who did the wrong thing, between them, too. She was always well-meaning, but one of the great things about this story is that “well-meaning” has never been an excuse for bad behavior.
The thing that’s throwing me here is that this time, Dina was the person who barged willfully into someone else’s space, ignored their boundaries and warning signs, and kept pushing until they got a nasty slap back. The strip has been pretty consistent that Joyce doing these things is actually not just a fun character quirk, but something that really pisses other people off, and she got so much consistent negative feedback for it it that she actually started to adjust her behavior. I can’t think off the top of my head when someone said something like “if you’ve offended Joyce, that’s when you knew you fucked up!”
My current read on this is that this is a Sarah thing—she thinks of Dina as a nice, low-drama person in her social sphere, and Joyce managing to say something that gets Dina to be overtly negative/show offense is surprising to Sarah. BOY Joyce fucked up, to make Dina react that way! Sarah would rather not deal with any of this! But this does not mean Sarah is right.
Nobody has ever said “if you’ve offended Joyce, that’s when you knew you fucked up!” before because pissing off Joyce intentionally was not only never really seen as that big a deal but was actually factually treated as entertainment for a lot of characters..
Man… it hurts watching Joyce go through the same shitstorm of bitterness as I did when I escaped “faith”. Having to look back and cringe so hard… I wish I had learned much sooner that ritualistic behaviors and magical thinking perform logistically useful functions for humanity. There are other ways to get the same results, but they require their own independent setup whereas faith is a prefabricated suite of social, emotional, and psychological support. … A very shoddy prefabricated suite, but there’s a reason it clings so stubbornly to humanity. It’s addictive.