See it? I was on it!
Used to do Extra working. Ms. Hewitt was incredibly sweet for the couple sentences she said to me and the other Extra I was paired with.
Shia Labeouf on Even Stevens, on the other hand… I have stories.
When you said the BC whisperer, I thought of BC the person and was struggling mightily to make some kind of sense of it. Was it BC who was whispering? Was this supposed to indicate some kind of weird analogy between Roz and BC?
Roz being helpful out of nowhere despite her…Roziness, kinda reminds me of a Doctor Who fan cartoon where the Doctor has just regenerated into 13, remembers she has a letter from Missy in case that ever happens, and reads it.
The letter is nothing but a page of mad cackling…followed by “PS: Drink cranberry juice. Trust me.”
1: Inserting herself into a conversation not about her, with someone to whom she has never shown anything but abject hostility.
2: She gets it wrong, precisely because she doesn’t know jack about Joyce’s situation. Joyce needs to know about how long she should expect the meds to affect her menstrual pain, not the sexual information.
Basically, Roz is simply giving the info she thinks everyone should have, not necessarily the information they actually need, because she’s a narcissist who can’t see the world from any viewpoint but her own. Hell, Joyce isn’t likely to even remember these factoids if she does choose to become sexually active at some point, because they were dumped on her when she had no interest in them.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that she opted to do this info-dump in a crowded hallway where the class is letting out, despite Joyce clearly trying to phrase things in a very general fashion. Sure, Sarah was prodding for a more direct response, but she was leaving Joyce space to actually say it, even if she fully guessed what Joyce’s new Rx was.
The ‘same time every day’ is relevant to the overall effectiveness, including period regulation as much as pregnancy prevention. They’re not separate aspects of the medication, they’re just how it works, and it’s important info doctors might not think to give you.
And Joyce probably knows as little about STD prevention as she does about pregnancy prevention, based on my own religious upbringing. She can find answers in her own time, but it’s critical that she even knows there are questions she should be asking!
It’s also important make sure important information is given in a way that respects privacy and gives the person agency. Blurting out someone prescription details without even bothering to ask what said person knows or if they are fine with that is not ok.
Yes, that was my thought. That her prescription was likely something Joyce had wanted to keep private, and that Roz’s blurting it out was like “outing” her in a crowded hallway. Almost like shaming her in front of her friends.
I’m also by no means sure that Joyce’s prescription actually is for hormonal contraceptive pills. It could be a prescription for a progesterone IUD. It could be a prescription for some other endocrine issue. It could be anti-inflammatory pain medication. It could be psychiatric medication. There are a lot of different types of treatment that Joyce might be wanting to keep private, especially with the nebulous “referral”.
The Wellerman, thank you for the nice shoutout. It’s nice to be thought of kindly.
Wishing warmth and gentleness to all who read this,
We can be pretty certain the prescription is for some sort of BC because Joyce is *so* ashamed about it – and it’s the first line treatment for problematic periods unless there’s a specific contraindication. It definitely *isn’t* for a progesterone IUD because IUDs often make periods even heavier and I think it’s pretty safe to assume that a female doctor wouldn’t make that basic blunder unless she had an ulterior motive, and I feel like “haha wow this random doctor just HAPPENS to be corrupt” is the most garbage of garbage writing.
Ehh. Many people are that secretive and ashamed about psychiatric medication and pain meds and muscle relaxers. An IUD would be particularly “shameful” because conserva-types often call it an “abortifacient” or an “abortion device”.
And a progestin IUD would make periods lighter — I’m getting one for that very reason.
But really, the prescription could be anything. Depends on what the underlying issue is. My money’s on the plot twist.
Yeah, for Roz to be a “better friend”, she’d have to be a friend at all, and Roz and Joyce have, to my knowledge, had literally no positive interactions before this, so, no, no dice.
I will say she is either A. giving advice about a topic she is passionate about because she wants it out there, or B. doing it as a flex to rub it in about Joyce reneging on her past stances. I am inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt that it’s A, plus I feel like it’s less likely to be B. because she wasn’t sly or sarcastic about throwing things in Joyce’s face in the past when he stance changed, she was outwardly hostile still. So, yeah, probably just Roz speaking from experience.
There was also the party that Joyce invited Roz to. When Joyce was asked why she was invited Joyce admitted that she trusts Roz and thinks it’s good that someone is willing to push her (if my memory serves me)
This is more akin to someone asking “I’m drawing a dinosaur, what should I do” in earshot of Dina. This is something she is both knowledgeable and passionate about.
Nah, this is a dick move on Roz’s part, clearly Joyce did not want to disclose what kind of meds she was taking it but Roz basically announced it because she wanted to sound smart
I don’t think it’s as bad as people are making it. She gave Joyce advice in earshot of two of her most trusted friends. It’s not like she shouted it out to the everyone nearby. It’s a bit obnoxious but so are most of the characters in DoA , even the likable ones.
There are figures passing by in the background. These are, in all likelihood, other students from the same class, all pouring out into the hallway at once. Intro level class, mid-large school, figure 30-50 students, at least, all trying to get through the same doorway and down the hall. These are strangers and near-strangers passing in close proximity. And there’s no indication she’s using anything like a ‘private conversation’ voice, even if she’s not shouting it to the rooftops.
Are we really supposed to assume randos not even worth really drawing past shadows are both paying attention to a close proximity conversation over all the traffic noise and other assumed conversation, and also care enough about that conversation to comprehend and retain the subject matter?
Honestly it just seems like Joyce was a bit self conscious about her friends knowing which does make Roz obnoxious, but I doubt it’s gonna cause much strife for her overall.
We’re not supposed to assume anything about them. My assumptions here are all about Joyce–namely, that she would not want some ‘randos’ hearing about what meds she’s on.
Whether or not those people are actually paying attention and listening is irrelevant to the fact that Roz has just managed to be worse about another person’s personal boundaries than Joyce at her worst.
Maybe not as bad as shouting but it still comes off as insensitive at best and passive aggressive at worst. Roz knows how to approach people quietly, she did that previously when giving Joyce a info for help if something bad happened at thst party. She could have easily approached Joyce after or offerd to message her but it’s like she just wanted to rub these facts in Joyce’s face. The look Joyce is giving her definatly makes Roz’s “congratulations and good luck” sound insincere.
It’s not even just about it being private. It’s just really annoying to be given unsolicited medical advice. Because it usually tends to be the most basic obvious advice of the “first thing anyone would think to suggest” variety and you end up hearing the same thing over and over from dozens of people who somehow think they’re the first person ever to give you this advice that you couldn’t have possibly been told by a doctor or figured out yourself.
Just, don’t give people medical advice unless you are their doctor or they specifically ask for it, is a good rule of thumb. I say this as someone who has had to deal with this WAY too often.
Complete strangers who see me using my rescue med are often very convinced Big Pharma is trying to turn me into a drug addict (not for these meds), think it’s some sort of gotcha to say I’m chemically dependent on my life saving meds (I mean, sure. It keeps me being alive and breathing so you get this one Randos), and are confident that a diet, acupuncture, yoga or mindfulness would let me go off meds entirely (nope, my lungs didn’t form right because I was born way too early, I can’t woo-woo my way out of what amounts to a mild congenital birth defect in my lungs.).
So sympathy. Can relate.
Often I get very petty and condescending if I can spare breath for it because condescending asshattery doesn’t deserve anything but a response in kind.
That said, Roz is better than most because she’s looking to inform about something stigmatized that doctors & pharmacists often gloss over, and her advice is accurate (the same time of day restriction is responsible for 2 of my younger relatives, and for me and at least one of our siblings). Joyce legitimately might not have been warned about this.
But I’m still putting her in the bad behaviour box because if you see someone who obviously doesn’t want to discuss a private health issue publicly you should not 1, out that health issue in public and 2, put they’re on a stigmatized med.
Also, one time that I had gout in my foot I had three separate people deliver extensive slabs of unsolicited advice about plantar fascitis, which they assumed I had just without my telling them anything or even, in one case, knowing who they were.
Shut up, medical ignoramuses! You do not know how to diagnose a disorder just because who had one once!
In my experience doctors aren’t likely to sit down and explain the possible side effects of meds. Eg, anti anxiety meds that ended up making me dizzy and screwed with my libido. Heart meds that made me tired and disinterested while making it hard for me to concentrate. If theyre not going to tell me that what makes you think they’d bother to tell Joyce anything useful? While Roz may have not been particularly discrete good on her for actually saying something.
I’m honestly kinda feeling … is this really Roz? Like, being helpful about the technical aspects of sex positivity, sure, definitely. Not a single snide word or any patronizing besides the unsolicited advice? Does not feel like Roz.
She offered unsolicited but extremely valuable advice to Joyce on counseling options after she was assaulted, and she wasn’t snarky or condescending then, either. Roz has many faults, but this is an area where she has previously shown to be straight-up helpful and not to get in her own way. This is one area where she seems to be good about withholding judgment.
I gotta say, this is good advice, delivered more bluntly and directly than most of Joyce’s friends would be willing to try, and it even tacitly conveys that Roz knows Joyce is likely going on BC for non-sex-related health reasons (even if she includes the relevant sex-related information anyway because Roz isn’t going to censor that part). It’s true that she wasn’t asked and it isn’t really her business…but *shrug* they were technically in public, she’s an outspoken advocate on reproductive health and safety, and while they aren’t friends, they’re also not strangers. Roz absolutely knows enough about Joyce to reasonably (and probably correctly) assume that the fundamentalist, evangelical Christian home-school upbringing that once prompted Joyce to tell Roz she was used goods for having pre-marital sex did not prepare her for using hormonal birth control for any reason, and that doctors don’t always tell you things you need to know about how to take the medications they prescribe. Her intent was clearly to be helpful and the impact is likely helpful, in the sense of giving Joyce essential information about managing her health she may very well not have had.
Tl;dr – unsolicited advice from people you aren’t close with can be helpful sometimes.
Yeah, there’s an air of “Oh by the way, you should have already known this and been doing it, and this is a failure on your part”, not helped by her intense glare.
In theory, the doctor should give you all relevant information, and with any new medication you can also ask the pharmacist who’s filling the prescription for advice(they often are more aware than doctors of some of the intricacies of the meds). That said, what should happen and what does are often very different, and if you have practical experience of a med, sharing that info can be very helpful to someone who is just starting it.
What Viktoria said. Plus, this is set in Indiana. I wouldn’t be surprised if the doctor was very uninformative. Or, if they were informative, Joyce could have been not in the right headspace to soak it in. Either due to “oh my god birth control” or “oh my god I’m in so much pain and I cannot comprehend what this doctor is blathering about” or “oh no someone had to examine my capoodle I cannot even with this”.
Or the doctor could have told Joyce all this, Joyce knew all this, and what Roz said was just a repeat of information Joyce had received from the doctor (minus the “Congratulations, and good luck” part, probably). It was just too sudden and unexpected for Joyce to jump in like, “Yeah, I got a pamphlet.”
I once had a very bad one try to tell me to use the rhythm method but accidentally explain it backwards (so the opposite of a birth control), dismissed my concerns when I said I had been hurting for over two months since I got my IUD because they don’t cause that (there was a problem and yes they can), AND recommended I use a specific brand of lube which turned out to not be pH balanced and ended up leaving me badly irratated. She worked at Planned Parenthood. I wish I was joking.
Pharmacist caught a potential allergy when I was picking up a prescription at 0200 after getting off work. I wasn’t technically allergic to the medication but I was allergic to a close relative and apparently they tend to have overlap with allergic reactions. Turns out I DID have a reaction to it. It was just a mild rash, but I will forever be grateful to that woman for catching it and advising me to either delay starting it or to stay overnight with a friend, just in case. I switched neurologists soon after that, needless to say.
It took me a moment to realize that you meant that you’re allergic to a similar medication, and not to (for example) a sibling, which would somehow cause you to have a reaction there.
Regardless of how good the doctor was, the pharmacist definitely would have handed her the standard info about the medication along with the prescription itself.
I don’t know whether she would have (or did) read it. I get the feeling those medication explainers are generally treated like a service’s Terms and Conditions. Which is a shame because those have always included relevant information that neither the doctor nor the pharmacist told me.
Those medical explainers are also written like terms and conditions, in that they are in tiny text and have to cover every little detail to the detriment of the overall important messages.
That came up earlier and there’s a pharmacist in the same building as the health center, so it’s basically like “go over to that counter to pick up the prescription I just wrote for you”. No reason not to do it right then and there.
I think she might still need to go through the same sort of “I don’t have to believe this any more” revelation that she had to with evolution and the arc.
And then maybe overcome some sort of this-is-how-she-imagines-it misconceptions of a squick level akin to food touching.
Okay but I saw a chance to make a follow-up comment where you take a thing the previous person said and change a single word to create a different meaning and I’m not going to not take that
Helpful if Joyce becomes sexually active within the timespan during which she remembers this conversation as anything other than Roz butting in where she wasn’t wanted and announcing to the other students in their class (whom we can see walking behind them) that Joyce is now on birth control meds.
I see Roz has not yet learned when to let people speak for themselves and keep quit. She didnt let Joyce have any say or control in a conversation that was about her.
Yeah, the “you have to take it at the same time of day, every day” thing was a big factor in me switching off it pretty quickly. Like, doc, I tried, but this is not happening. (I’ve been on other meds for years, and I am still so bad about this.)
yeah this is a big part of why my antidepressants don’t work as well as I’d like and why I knew I couldn’t be on a pill for birth control. ideally you want to take it with food, and working a job with shifts from 3-9 hours long that can start as early as 4am or end as late as 9pm with lunch breaks “whenever you get a chance to take them” is uh not very kind to daily medication.
you can get slow release anti-depressants which are great for that sort of thing, it’s specifically why my doctor put me on the ones i’m on as i had issues with my circadian rhythms.
This is how my third child was conceived… we think. Mornings in our household were hectic and sometimes the pill went down about 0400, and sometimes about 0630. Apparently that’s enough to make it not work.
Yeahhh i only take it for medical reasons and this is pretty much the reason i plan on switching to an IUD when I’m actually in a position to be potentially sexually active
Yeah I’m appreciative, don’t get me wrong. But I’m gonna say DON’T openly talk about my medication. Hell even it was like an Epipen or Insulin it might be something I’m shy about. Let ME talk about it before you start givin’ me advice.
There’s also a chance I might…already know since I got it from a doctor.
I’m really glad you started doing the ‘story so far’ links cause my original plan to just keep a tab open for each page would not have survived to this point.
If birth control pills don’t only help with being a type of protection from pregnancy but also help ease the pain with some women’s minstrel cycles then why do they call it “birth control” and not something more accurate?
Unless whoever invented it made it with the soul purpose of being a type of protection and they just so happened to realize it helps with minstrel pain and thought of it as a bonus feature.
I have been asking this for years!!! The amount of people I know (including myself) who have taken birth control for health reasons entirely unrelated to pregnancy is well into the double digits!!! This is important stuff, and access is so often limited due to -gestures broadly at Joyce’s backstory and also the world in general-
At a guess, because it’s a lot easier for those interested to villainize birth control and the “loose women” that use it than it would be to fight against “menstrual regulation medication.” Kinda like how they’re not “anti-abortion,” they’re “pro-life” because that sounds better and harder to fight against.
That was my guess too. Like calling the “Affordable Care Act” “Obamacare” so tht racists would vote against it. But when I checked it seemed that the people who invented the Pill called it “Combined Oral Contraceptive”.
You can call Tylenol lots of things. “Painkiller” or “Pain Meds” is a common one, particularly in common parlance. “Analgesic” is the more scientific term. And “Acetaminophen” is the long-ass name for what’s actually in it.
But drugs can have more than one use all the time, because the human body is a fucking complicated ass mess that doesn’t do things simple. In this case, the same drugs that are used by huge amounts of people for Birth Control also can help alleviate the symptoms of painful menstrual cycles.
This storyline has set up an interesting parallel between Joyce and Becky in that they’ve finally done something they’ve needed to for a long time but still have internalized that it’s morally wrong. Wouldn’t be surprised if Joyce reacts to hearing Becky’s news by sharing that she’s on birth control
I won’t lose hope yet that Roz can eventually try to give this very useful information without outing people from things that they might want to be private….
Y’know that one person who’s a super nerd about some fandom and will chime in like ‘actually, that cameo in Episode 4 was a set up for a long running storyline payoff in season 5 episode 11?’
She barges in on private conversations with people who she’s gleefully mocked IN CLASS for not already knowing the class material ahead of time?
I don’t doubt Roz’s heart is in the right place. But in every interaction with anyone who’s not to her perfectly enlightened level, she’s pushy and condescending at best, and an outright bully at worst. Roz’s first priority is ALWAYS about how correct her position is, damn everyone else’s feelings or needs.
I’m not sure hoe much of that Dina heard. I personslly think it’s unlikely she heard zny from her position behing the exiting crowd, but if she did that woulc be deeply innappropriste. Like it would be a legitimate dick move that while keeping a secret from Joyce for Becky, she also elected to reveal her private information to Becky. Hypocrisy at its finest.
To be clear though I don’t think she heard or would tell without Joyce’s consent first. Becky probably wouldn’t think Joyce is fucking now. She’s knows how bad Joyce’s periods are. BC makes sense for her.
Becky was part of the initial conversation about “Joyce will freak if the treatment is BC,” so I’m pretty sure she already understands the actual context and won’t do a Wacky Misunderstanding
Pretty much everyone is treating Joyce like they expect her to freak out and or be uninformed while at the same time really eager for her to say shes on birth control and have the freak out they expect … while in public. At this point I think Joyce probably thinks that Dorothy and Becky being weird was also about her medication since everyone is prying into it.
“Sounds private. What is it?” coming from Sarah is still allowing Joyce to dictate the conversation. If she wants out, she can say “don’t wanna talk about it now”. Roz’s reaction is a lot more aggressive and gives far less of a shit whether Joyce wants to hear it. Roz might say “it’s ALWAYS time for a sex ed lesson” but that’s easy to say when the conversation isn’t complicated and traumatic for you.
Me, reading this comic: Oh, “Sounds private, what is it?”, that’s a funny moment. Aw, Roz gets to be helpful without the narrative tearing her down! It’s really nice to see her very obviously being just supportive and neighborly and super-pro-body-liberation, that aspect of her personality hasn’t gotten to shine a lot lately. I bet the comments will be glowingly pro-Roz for a change!
Me, reading the comments: *deafening silence, because I try to never read the comments on Roz comics*
I sometimes think the comments get a bit too critical of various behaviors but I’m with them on this one. Every single person who has had to live with a medical condition knows JUST how annoying the constant onslaught of unsolicited medical advice is.
I mean I can see why someone might think it’s helpful but odds are Joyce was already told ALL of this by the doctor and while this genuinely may be the first time she’s had to deal with this, it gets oooooold after a while when every single person thinks they are the first person to offer you said advice.
Although scrolling up now it actually looks like a lot of people think this was positive behavior. Yeah, please please please folks do not do what Roz is doing here. It’s almost never actually helpful.
The sheer number of people who think they know more about my health issues, which I’ve been living with for years (back injury) to my entire life (atopic triad), than either me or my doctor based on seeing some half remembered quack on Oprah two months ago is jaw dropping.
My script for such cases, “My doctor and I have worked very hard to get it to where it is. We’re happy with it right now. I’m not looking to make changes to my treatment right now as I’m stable and healthy, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
1. Roz is a lot better than most who offer unsolicited medical advice as hers is accurate and not offered judgmentally, and
2. The overwhelming majority of people who offer unsolicited medical advice are both wrong and entirely convinced of their own superiority, like your health issue is a moral failing and if you just follow their pet lifestyle it’ll disappear. And,
3, Even accurate unsolicited advice often isn’t welcome as someone probably either already knows or wants to keep it private.
I’m on team Roz and Sarah both are being rude here. Fine to ask if your friend’s ok or after a known health issue (like Dorothy did), but if they indicate (even nonverbally) they’re not comfortable discussing it you need to back off. Picking up on nonverbal cues to drop the subject shouldn’t ever be followed with, “Sounds private. What is it?” Or advice on your guess as to what they’re dealing with (in this case Roz is right but she might not have been).
Roz is not my favorite character, but uh, some of these takes are…stunningly bad faith even for this comments section.
Joyce is 18 and she was raised in a religious cult that told her she’d go to hell for taking birth control. Which Roz knows. She is attempting to be helpful, and likely, she is being helpful and yes, telling Joyce things probably *does not* already know, and probably would have anxiety even investigating on her own.
Or because Roz believes in destigmatizing this subject and Sarah was already interrogating it anyways and people are taking a comedy-drama webcomic way too literally?
😛 It doesn’t matter if Roz believes in destigmatizing the subject or if Sarah, one of Joyce’s friends was already prodding her for an answer. Sarah’s a much closer friend of Joyce than Roz.
But I mean it’s not like I’m actually mad at Roz. The irony is that I could argue I wasn’t being all that serious either, though I doubt you’d be all that convinced. (I even considered posting a “well actually I think…” to point out that’s not what I actually think)
I mean it’s funny in the comic, because it’s very much Roz being Roz and clearly both a joke about that and about how it feels to get unsolicited medical advice (see: Joyce’s deer in headlights look).
I can’t speak for everyone but it’s not the joke in the *comic* that got me riled up. It’s the people in the comments who seem to genuinely think this would be good and helpful behavior in real life. As someone who has been subjected to such “helpfulness” waaaaay too many times.
I mean many of our takes are coming from actual lived experience having unsolicited medical advice constantly thrown at us which is sure a weird thing to describe as a “bad faith” argument. If you have not lived this experience, please recognize that you likely do not understand what it feels like.
EVEN if intentions are good and the information is accurate and helpful, there are ways to approach it that are better than this. Like saying “hey, I know a lot about these meds if you would like any more info.” Put the ball in their court. Don’t just lecture them in public because you think it might be helpful with no regard to how they might feel about being put in that position.
Dorothy was there when Jennifer suggested the doctor’s visit for birth control, she even tried to swoop in and take control like a maternal vulture. Sarah is the only one here who legitimately didn’t know. Probably because she doesn’t care past a small curiosity. This whole storyline assumes way more interest in your friends sexual health and activity than common.
I think Joyce would probably handle being perscribed the pill better if everyone stopped acting like it was the big deal she already thinks it is. Like instead of prying onto her prescription itself, they could have hoped joyce felt better soon, normalizing the experience. Instead everyone is either being in her face about what it is (Roz) or acting in a way that reinforces the idea that it should be a big secretive deal.
Post-Becoming-Atheist Joyce had a huge conflict when it came to getting bloody glasses. Folks really need to stop assuming that everything would be fine if people just treated shit normal, Joyce flips out at normal shit all the time.
I’m not saying Joyce is only conficted because of other people’s behavior but that standing by her, expecting her to freak out is also not helping because it’s putting her in the spotlight, reinforcing the idea to her that her medication is a big deal to everyone.
Yes, exactly. People aren’t being sensitive to how big of a deal this is to her.
Just because her medication is *also* birth control, people could support that Joyce is taking it as cramp medication. Which is valid. And if it helps her feel less guilty, it’s valid to phrase it like that. It’s medication to handle her problem.
It shouldn’t be treated like it means she’s inevitibly about to be sexually active.
I mean as the storyline and her suppressed horniness go, we all know it *will* happen eventually, but her medication has nothing to do with it. The birth control aspect is an extra perk she doesn’t need at this point, so people could stop referencing it.
Joyce will get there, but atm she’s crampy and entirely unsettled by her new situation as an apostate, give her some space.
Jennifer suggested a doctor’s visit for treatment of dysmenorrhea, not for birth control. For all Dorothy knows the doctor might have prescribed short-term pain relief and an urgent consultation with a gynecologist.
Proper doctors do a differential diagnoses for a reason. Dorothy is a freshman pre-law student.
At this point it would almost be good if the medication wasnt birth control and everyone else had to ask themselves why they all got so obsessed with the idea of Joyce on birth control. Yes she wasn’t great last time about getting glasses at first but nobody treated her getting glasses this weirdly and she accepted them after the appointment.
You don’t need a prescription to pick up some Aleve or Tylenol or whatever and that’s the pain relief doctors give for period cramps.
For things like endometriosis, PCOS, etc. Pretty much all the regular causes of dysmenorrhea except cancer and that’s not a casual ‘Oh, just a prescription and a referral’ that is significantly more urgent.
I have no idea why people get so stuck on the characters for assuming birth control when THAT IS ACCURATE for all the differential diagnoses except cancer.
This quite horrible behavior. Your medical information is private and you may keep it that way for any reason you choose. If you guess what new medication someone has (in a conversation that you where not a part of: she just walked close by) you don’t disclose your suspicion to the world. Especially about birth control.
Just imagine for a second that Joyce was still a very fundamentalist christian (or associates with people with such views). Knowledge of her using birth controll could have ramifications for her (reputation) in that community.
And don’t give unsollicitated medical advice in a public hallway like this to someone you don’t even like.
Yeah sadly this is very very common behavior.
Speaking as someone who has a chronic illness, I just brace myself for the flurry of unsolicited advice every time someone new finds out. The sentence “Have you tried yoga?” has become a running joke between me and my friends and husband.
I’ve been debating getting some cards made up to hand out to people like this. It would serve double duty as instructions on where to find my EpiPen if I have passed out.
was about to say that, too 🙂
Intention and Impact both exist alongside. Just because you didn’t know better / didn’t mean it / etc doesn’t mean it’s not hurtful / uncomfortable for the other person.
But something tells me that Roz feels the need to overcompensate like that because she learned at least a few of those lessons the hard way and didn’t want Joyce to suffer like she did.
Poor Joyce, her worst nightmare has come true. Why couldn’t someone have given her some useful advice, such as, come up with a plausible but face-saving lie when you don’t want to tell the truth. What you don’t or won’t say can be it’s own tell.
I assume the medication is hormones for preventing periods, in which case Roz’s advice to take it at the same time every day is appropriate, since the key to preventing periods is to prevent ovulation.
And Roz probably said the same thing Joyce did the first time she was on birth control pills, and the memory resonated.
Even if you’re still gonna have periods, it’s good to take it at the same time everyday or else you can get breakthrough bleeding, which is why I ultimately stopped cuz I’m terrible at remembering stuff and if end up getting a “period” twice a month.
“Sounds private. What is it?” is probably my least favorite thing Sarah has said since she implied it would be good if Joyce lost her comic job cuz she upset her poor invasive, controlling Christian friend
Someone should tell her antibiotics can also interfere with hormonal birth control. (I don’t know if they mess with what she’s using it for, but I’ve heard it interferes with the birth control part.)
Roz may be a jerk, but she’s still a feminist. The female experience is still paramount to her own understanding of the world, and she recognises that women need to help and support each other.
Feminism is also supposed to include giving women agency. Roz coming out of nowhere to talk about Joyce’s prescription in public without her consent is very misguided. Its like that time Leslie had to call roz out for ignoring her (an actual gay person) when she thought she was in the right for going off on Joyce in class for being associated with anti gay religion. She’s speaking over the people she claims to be helping.
So, we’re gonna ignore that Joyce herself said she needed Roz to be mean in that instance?
Joyce’s boundaries matter, but this is also information she needs to have if she’s going to use her meds effectively. Time and place could’ve been better but that doesn’t change that Joyce absolutely needed this information if it’s actually going to help her.
Looking at the comments my own take is: meh not great to come out unsolicited and out medical knowledge like this but Roz is far from evil. There’s been far worse unsolicited advice/ attempts to butt in where not wanted. After the time skip too. So I don’t really care/can’t feel outraged at this and would find it weird if the narrative called her out in this too hard comparatively. And at least the advice is accurate and somewhat helpful both inside and outside the comic universe.
Can get it bugging some folks but can’t muster up the rage, sorry.
Say what you want about Roz, but she was giving Joyce helpful advice on how to be the most effective, when taking her birth control. I find it ironic that the people, to whom most of the readers cheer for as Joyce’s friends, do not really help her, just placate her; while the girls that the same readers would call, “selfish bongoes”, have been the most helpful. Yes, they most likely make Joyce feel uncomfortable, but they are being more helpful than her alleged friends are.
Roz did this in matter in which it was unsolicted and in public. she automatically assumed Joyce’s doctor or pharmacist didn’t explain things or giver her a pamphlet. She ended the sentence in a condcending matter with “congratulations and good luck” then walked off without bothering to listen if Joyce acknowledged her or even listen to see if Joyce questions. She immediately went on about the sexual aspects of birth control which she knew would cause Joyce discomfort. She didn’t mention the benefits when it came to treating symptoms involved with menstruation.
Helpful advice it may be but it was delivered in a matter that it was less about helping Joyce then was about confirming that Roz knows what birth control does and she knows more then Joyce. Dorothy Jennifer and Sarah would have answered Joyce’s questions with more discretion. Hell Dorothy would probably give Joyce the same advice only after asking Joyce about it.
My favorite part of this is that Roz is accurately assuming that the purpose of Joyce taking birth control is to regulate her period. I don’t know how she did that hard read, but having her acknowledge that sexual activity is only an if in the third panel makes it clear that nothing in the second panel is intended to be about it’s effectiveness as “birth” control and all about it’s effectiveness as menustral control
I mean its Joyce and I don’t believe Roz knows about her not being Christian anymore, she probably assumes one of her friends dragged her into doing this like what happened when she got glasses
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the BC whisperer
Did you ever see that campy show “The Ghost Whisper” that was on in the late 2000s?
See it? I was on it!
Used to do Extra working. Ms. Hewitt was incredibly sweet for the couple sentences she said to me and the other Extra I was paired with.
Shia Labeouf on Even Stevens, on the other hand… I have stories.
That is super cool. Maybe not the Shia Labeouf part but the other stuff is pretty rad.
How many of the cast never came back from their woodland walks?
Hmm… Well, the entire other track team was only there for the first day of shoots, so I can assume they never came back from the woods!
When you said the BC whisperer, I thought of BC the person and was struggling mightily to make some kind of sense of it. Was it BC who was whispering? Was this supposed to indicate some kind of weird analogy between Roz and BC?
On a reread, I just now got it.
“Blood in the water” is one way of putting it, yes. But this seems like it comes out of a place of compassion.
Like sharing helpful, potentially life-saving information with another human in need, reminds me of Laura actually, I LOVE that.
🥹🥹🥹 🥰
*plays “Spirit Bomb Theme” from Dragon Ball Z CD on hacked muzak*
Roz being helpful out of nowhere despite her…Roziness, kinda reminds me of a Doctor Who fan cartoon where the Doctor has just regenerated into 13, remembers she has a letter from Missy in case that ever happens, and reads it.
The letter is nothing but a page of mad cackling…followed by “PS: Drink cranberry juice. Trust me.”
Except this is still typical Roz:
1: Inserting herself into a conversation not about her, with someone to whom she has never shown anything but abject hostility.
2: She gets it wrong, precisely because she doesn’t know jack about Joyce’s situation. Joyce needs to know about how long she should expect the meds to affect her menstrual pain, not the sexual information.
Basically, Roz is simply giving the info she thinks everyone should have, not necessarily the information they actually need, because she’s a narcissist who can’t see the world from any viewpoint but her own. Hell, Joyce isn’t likely to even remember these factoids if she does choose to become sexually active at some point, because they were dumped on her when she had no interest in them.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that she opted to do this info-dump in a crowded hallway where the class is letting out, despite Joyce clearly trying to phrase things in a very general fashion. Sure, Sarah was prodding for a more direct response, but she was leaving Joyce space to actually say it, even if she fully guessed what Joyce’s new Rx was.
The ‘same time every day’ is relevant to the overall effectiveness, including period regulation as much as pregnancy prevention. They’re not separate aspects of the medication, they’re just how it works, and it’s important info doctors might not think to give you.
And Joyce probably knows as little about STD prevention as she does about pregnancy prevention, based on my own religious upbringing. She can find answers in her own time, but it’s critical that she even knows there are questions she should be asking!
It’s also important make sure important information is given in a way that respects privacy and gives the person agency. Blurting out someone prescription details without even bothering to ask what said person knows or if they are fine with that is not ok.
Yes, that was my thought. That her prescription was likely something Joyce had wanted to keep private, and that Roz’s blurting it out was like “outing” her in a crowded hallway. Almost like shaming her in front of her friends.
I’m also by no means sure that Joyce’s prescription actually is for hormonal contraceptive pills. It could be a prescription for a progesterone IUD. It could be a prescription for some other endocrine issue. It could be anti-inflammatory pain medication. It could be psychiatric medication. There are a lot of different types of treatment that Joyce might be wanting to keep private, especially with the nebulous “referral”.
The Wellerman, thank you for the nice shoutout. It’s nice to be thought of kindly.
Wishing warmth and gentleness to all who read this,
-your friend Laura.
We can be pretty certain the prescription is for some sort of BC because Joyce is *so* ashamed about it – and it’s the first line treatment for problematic periods unless there’s a specific contraindication. It definitely *isn’t* for a progesterone IUD because IUDs often make periods even heavier and I think it’s pretty safe to assume that a female doctor wouldn’t make that basic blunder unless she had an ulterior motive, and I feel like “haha wow this random doctor just HAPPENS to be corrupt” is the most garbage of garbage writing.
Progestin IUDs make periods lighter. Copper IUDs make periods heavier.
Ehh. Many people are that secretive and ashamed about psychiatric medication and pain meds and muscle relaxers. An IUD would be particularly “shameful” because conserva-types often call it an “abortifacient” or an “abortion device”.
And a progestin IUD would make periods lighter — I’m getting one for that very reason.
But really, the prescription could be anything. Depends on what the underlying issue is. My money’s on the plot twist.
“Always take it at the same time every day” is good practice for daily medications in general.
Yeah, I take an antiarrhythmic twice per day, and it’s really not good to be even three hours late.
Yup, this is, yet again, a huge violation of Joyce’s privacy that is almost guaranteed to be ignored and steamrolled by her friends.
Via unsolicited advice, that is.
In her defense, they already know she’s a Jane Fonda wannabe and that tip about timing and effectiveness doesn’t hurt…
That, and something tells me she learned at least a few of those lessons the hard way.
😵💫😵💫😵💫
Obviously not so pretty happening to someone like Roz or the next person. Imagine them happening to Joyce.
Is…is Roz suddenly a better friend than Becky?….Probably not but what if?
Roz is just VERY sex positive and a strong supporter of birth control/safe sex. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/04-the-bechdel-test/late/
Yeah, for Roz to be a “better friend”, she’d have to be a friend at all, and Roz and Joyce have, to my knowledge, had literally no positive interactions before this, so, no, no dice.
I will say she is either A. giving advice about a topic she is passionate about because she wants it out there, or B. doing it as a flex to rub it in about Joyce reneging on her past stances. I am inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt that it’s A, plus I feel like it’s less likely to be B. because she wasn’t sly or sarcastic about throwing things in Joyce’s face in the past when he stance changed, she was outwardly hostile still. So, yeah, probably just Roz speaking from experience.
There was that one time, post attempted rape.
There was also the party that Joyce invited Roz to. When Joyce was asked why she was invited Joyce admitted that she trusts Roz and thinks it’s good that someone is willing to push her (if my memory serves me)
This is more akin to someone asking “I’m drawing a dinosaur, what should I do” in earshot of Dina. This is something she is both knowledgeable and passionate about.
Nah, this is a dick move on Roz’s part, clearly Joyce did not want to disclose what kind of meds she was taking it but Roz basically announced it because she wanted to sound smart
Also because Roz immediately assumed Joyce would be taking it for sex reasons, which is even less of her business than what Joyce is taking
I didn’t read that as assuming. I read that as a “just in case” warning.
Wow I don’t read it that way at all. I read it as “This isn’t something you’re doing for sex reasons, but if you change your mind, here’s this.”
That was, textually and explicitly, definitely not an assumption Roz made.
Really? Where’s the explicit text that Roz actually knows what “new medication” Joyce is about to start?
Sorry, my mistake. You were referring to a different assumption.
Pfp irony is ironic.
She very obviously is not assuming that
Had Joyce approached her for advice privately sure
Unsolicited advice is crappy, especially since it’s entirely likely that the doctor already went over this stuff with Joyce
I don’t think it’s as bad as people are making it. She gave Joyce advice in earshot of two of her most trusted friends. It’s not like she shouted it out to the everyone nearby. It’s a bit obnoxious but so are most of the characters in DoA , even the likable ones.
There are figures passing by in the background. These are, in all likelihood, other students from the same class, all pouring out into the hallway at once. Intro level class, mid-large school, figure 30-50 students, at least, all trying to get through the same doorway and down the hall. These are strangers and near-strangers passing in close proximity. And there’s no indication she’s using anything like a ‘private conversation’ voice, even if she’s not shouting it to the rooftops.
Are we really supposed to assume randos not even worth really drawing past shadows are both paying attention to a close proximity conversation over all the traffic noise and other assumed conversation, and also care enough about that conversation to comprehend and retain the subject matter?
Honestly it just seems like Joyce was a bit self conscious about her friends knowing which does make Roz obnoxious, but I doubt it’s gonna cause much strife for her overall.
We’re not supposed to assume anything about them. My assumptions here are all about Joyce–namely, that she would not want some ‘randos’ hearing about what meds she’s on.
Whether or not those people are actually paying attention and listening is irrelevant to the fact that Roz has just managed to be worse about another person’s personal boundaries than Joyce at her worst.
Were was Becky while this was going on?
Telling Robin she and Dina have fucked.
Chased off by Jennifer/Billie.
Maybe not as bad as shouting but it still comes off as insensitive at best and passive aggressive at worst. Roz knows how to approach people quietly, she did that previously when giving Joyce a info for help if something bad happened at thst party. She could have easily approached Joyce after or offerd to message her but it’s like she just wanted to rub these facts in Joyce’s face. The look Joyce is giving her definatly makes Roz’s “congratulations and good luck” sound insincere.
It’s still not Roz’s call to make. Joyce was using evasive phrasing, read the room Roz
It’s not even just about it being private. It’s just really annoying to be given unsolicited medical advice. Because it usually tends to be the most basic obvious advice of the “first thing anyone would think to suggest” variety and you end up hearing the same thing over and over from dozens of people who somehow think they’re the first person ever to give you this advice that you couldn’t have possibly been told by a doctor or figured out yourself.
Just, don’t give people medical advice unless you are their doctor or they specifically ask for it, is a good rule of thumb. I say this as someone who has had to deal with this WAY too often.
Yep. Random acquaintances have been giving me bad stupid advice about my depression for thirty years.
Complete strangers who see me using my rescue med are often very convinced Big Pharma is trying to turn me into a drug addict (not for these meds), think it’s some sort of gotcha to say I’m chemically dependent on my life saving meds (I mean, sure. It keeps me being alive and breathing so you get this one Randos), and are confident that a diet, acupuncture, yoga or mindfulness would let me go off meds entirely (nope, my lungs didn’t form right because I was born way too early, I can’t woo-woo my way out of what amounts to a mild congenital birth defect in my lungs.).
So sympathy. Can relate.
Often I get very petty and condescending if I can spare breath for it because condescending asshattery doesn’t deserve anything but a response in kind.
That said, Roz is better than most because she’s looking to inform about something stigmatized that doctors & pharmacists often gloss over, and her advice is accurate (the same time of day restriction is responsible for 2 of my younger relatives, and for me and at least one of our siblings). Joyce legitimately might not have been warned about this.
But I’m still putting her in the bad behaviour box because if you see someone who obviously doesn’t want to discuss a private health issue publicly you should not 1, out that health issue in public and 2, put they’re on a stigmatized med.
Also, one time that I had gout in my foot I had three separate people deliver extensive slabs of unsolicited advice about plantar fascitis, which they assumed I had just without my telling them anything or even, in one case, knowing who they were.
Shut up, medical ignoramuses! You do not know how to diagnose a disorder just because who had one once!
In my experience doctors aren’t likely to sit down and explain the possible side effects of meds. Eg, anti anxiety meds that ended up making me dizzy and screwed with my libido. Heart meds that made me tired and disinterested while making it hard for me to concentrate. If theyre not going to tell me that what makes you think they’d bother to tell Joyce anything useful? While Roz may have not been particularly discrete good on her for actually saying something.
Not better, especially, just more knowledgeable about sexual and the reproductive system, and without the brainwashing Becky went through growing up.
I’m honestly kinda feeling … is this really Roz? Like, being helpful about the technical aspects of sex positivity, sure, definitely. Not a single snide word or any patronizing besides the unsolicited advice? Does not feel like Roz.
I’m a little impressed?
She offered unsolicited but extremely valuable advice to Joyce on counseling options after she was assaulted, and she wasn’t snarky or condescending then, either. Roz has many faults, but this is an area where she has previously shown to be straight-up helpful and not to get in her own way. This is one area where she seems to be good about withholding judgment.
I gotta say, this is good advice, delivered more bluntly and directly than most of Joyce’s friends would be willing to try, and it even tacitly conveys that Roz knows Joyce is likely going on BC for non-sex-related health reasons (even if she includes the relevant sex-related information anyway because Roz isn’t going to censor that part). It’s true that she wasn’t asked and it isn’t really her business…but *shrug* they were technically in public, she’s an outspoken advocate on reproductive health and safety, and while they aren’t friends, they’re also not strangers. Roz absolutely knows enough about Joyce to reasonably (and probably correctly) assume that the fundamentalist, evangelical Christian home-school upbringing that once prompted Joyce to tell Roz she was used goods for having pre-marital sex did not prepare her for using hormonal birth control for any reason, and that doctors don’t always tell you things you need to know about how to take the medications they prescribe. Her intent was clearly to be helpful and the impact is likely helpful, in the sense of giving Joyce essential information about managing her health she may very well not have had.
Tl;dr – unsolicited advice from people you aren’t close with can be helpful sometimes.
Thank you Cerusee. Fully agree.
Roz brings out the snide and patronizing stuff when she’s trying to win rhetorically. Here she’s just trying to help, so she’s blunt and to the point
Ending a statment “congratulations and good luck” then leaving without even having Joyce verbally acknowledge her still feels very condcending.
Yeah, there’s an air of “Oh by the way, you should have already known this and been doing it, and this is a failure on your part”, not helped by her intense glare.
Sometimes I worry “Sounds private. What is it?” is far too close to how I sometimes conduct conversations.
Doesn’t the doctor have a pamphlet to give you or something?
In theory, the doctor should give you all relevant information, and with any new medication you can also ask the pharmacist who’s filling the prescription for advice(they often are more aware than doctors of some of the intricacies of the meds). That said, what should happen and what does are often very different, and if you have practical experience of a med, sharing that info can be very helpful to someone who is just starting it.
What Viktoria said. Plus, this is set in Indiana. I wouldn’t be surprised if the doctor was very uninformative. Or, if they were informative, Joyce could have been not in the right headspace to soak it in. Either due to “oh my god birth control” or “oh my god I’m in so much pain and I cannot comprehend what this doctor is blathering about” or “oh no someone had to examine my capoodle I cannot even with this”.
Or the doctor could have told Joyce all this, Joyce knew all this, and what Roz said was just a repeat of information Joyce had received from the doctor (minus the “Congratulations, and good luck” part, probably). It was just too sudden and unexpected for Joyce to jump in like, “Yeah, I got a pamphlet.”
I once had a very bad one try to tell me to use the rhythm method but accidentally explain it backwards (so the opposite of a birth control), dismissed my concerns when I said I had been hurting for over two months since I got my IUD because they don’t cause that (there was a problem and yes they can), AND recommended I use a specific brand of lube which turned out to not be pH balanced and ended up leaving me badly irratated. She worked at Planned Parenthood. I wish I was joking.
Pharmacist caught a potential allergy when I was picking up a prescription at 0200 after getting off work. I wasn’t technically allergic to the medication but I was allergic to a close relative and apparently they tend to have overlap with allergic reactions. Turns out I DID have a reaction to it. It was just a mild rash, but I will forever be grateful to that woman for catching it and advising me to either delay starting it or to stay overnight with a friend, just in case. I switched neurologists soon after that, needless to say.
It took me a moment to realize that you meant that you’re allergic to a similar medication, and not to (for example) a sibling, which would somehow cause you to have a reaction there.
Joyce might have already been told those things or have a pamphlet. Roz has no way of knowing though lol
Regardless of how good the doctor was, the pharmacist definitely would have handed her the standard info about the medication along with the prescription itself.
I don’t know whether she would have (or did) read it. I get the feeling those medication explainers are generally treated like a service’s Terms and Conditions. Which is a shame because those have always included relevant information that neither the doctor nor the pharmacist told me.
Joyce knows how to use the Internet. Hopefully this includes finding credible sources on the Internet.
Those medical explainers are also written like terms and conditions, in that they are in tiny text and have to cover every little detail to the detriment of the overall important messages.
I don’t think Joyce has been to the pharmacy yet.
That came up earlier and there’s a pharmacist in the same building as the health center, so it’s basically like “go over to that counter to pick up the prescription I just wrote for you”. No reason not to do it right then and there.
Yeah, but we saw her say that she had a referral and a prescription, not a referral and a box of pills.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/referral/
Joyce has a couple of slips of paper in her hand, not a packet of pills.
Would Joyce even choose to be sexually active?
There must be something in the water *hums Orgonon Gurlz*
Ah, I see you too are in “I only know the Neil mashup” heaven.
I think she might still need to go through the same sort of “I don’t have to believe this any more” revelation that she had to with evolution and the arc.
And then maybe overcome some sort of this-is-how-she-imagines-it misconceptions of a squick level akin to food touching.
Maybe also some residual Ryan-induced PTSD.
Yeah I fully expect Joyce to have at least one Liz-style freakout over sex due to her upbringing, and that’s without going into her other trauma
The world is full of people that changed their choices very quickly in this regard.
Dunno if Joyce would “choose to be sexually active” but the time-skip was long enough that she may have done so, and even gotten pregnant.
It’s not impossible that Jennifer’s talking about the same person (Joyce) in this comic:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/strangers/
It’s narratively impossible.
We also know that Jennifer used that same line before, when it really couldn’t have been Joyce.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/alpha-bongo/
Link probably won’t work due to the Scongahorpe problem. Replace the bongo.
Helpful and completely unsolicited advice.
That was definitely a DeSanto.
Also, the server clock is off by like…. 14 minutes.
As it has been for like… 14 weeks.
No, the server clock has been fast for like 5 years or so, they got it right for a few months and the next changeover to DST it borked again.
Isn’t it wonderful how easy technology makes our lives?
Okay but I saw a chance to make a follow-up comment where you take a thing the previous person said and change a single word to create a different meaning and I’m not going to not take that
Helpful if Joyce becomes sexually active within the timespan during which she remembers this conversation as anything other than Roz butting in where she wasn’t wanted and announcing to the other students in their class (whom we can see walking behind them) that Joyce is now on birth control meds.
I put that timespan at about 15 seconds.
Joyce: I am uncomfortable about Thing and want to keep it private
Roz: You shouldn’t be uncomfortable about Thing; I will tell everyone in hearing range about Thing to help you
Okay but this is also, like, a third of the young adults in this strip. I recognize it…um, fondly, from young adulthood.
I see Roz has not yet learned when to let people speak for themselves and keep quit. She didnt let Joyce have any say or control in a conversation that was about her.
Yeah, the “you have to take it at the same time of day, every day” thing was a big factor in me switching off it pretty quickly. Like, doc, I tried, but this is not happening. (I’ve been on other meds for years, and I am still so bad about this.)
yeah this is a big part of why my antidepressants don’t work as well as I’d like and why I knew I couldn’t be on a pill for birth control. ideally you want to take it with food, and working a job with shifts from 3-9 hours long that can start as early as 4am or end as late as 9pm with lunch breaks “whenever you get a chance to take them” is uh not very kind to daily medication.
thank god for depo shot my beloved
you can get slow release anti-depressants which are great for that sort of thing, it’s specifically why my doctor put me on the ones i’m on as i had issues with my circadian rhythms.
This is how my third child was conceived… we think. Mornings in our household were hectic and sometimes the pill went down about 0400, and sometimes about 0630. Apparently that’s enough to make it not work.
Yeahhh i only take it for medical reasons and this is pretty much the reason i plan on switching to an IUD when I’m actually in a position to be potentially sexually active
Yeah I’m appreciative, don’t get me wrong. But I’m gonna say DON’T openly talk about my medication. Hell even it was like an Epipen or Insulin it might be something I’m shy about. Let ME talk about it before you start givin’ me advice.
There’s also a chance I might…already know since I got it from a doctor.
I’m surprised Roz didn’t end that “conversation” with: “you’re welcome”.
https://i.imgur.com/IBoz4hh.png (NSFW)
https://i.imgur.com/CTwq45I.png (NSFW)
https://i.imgur.com/EiBTX87.png (NSFW)
It’s crazy to say after all this time, but it’s almost over. I had a rush of energy cuz this is the part I’ve been looking forward to.
Story so far…
https://imgur.com/a/9Ob1cy3
I’m really glad you started doing the ‘story so far’ links cause my original plan to just keep a tab open for each page would not have survived to this point.
Looking forward to the… conclusion.
I’m glad you got such an energy rush, 3 in one night is damn awesome. I’ll need to make sure I’ve got the sfory so far bookmarked.
excellent job on the facial expressions!
We’re in the home stretch.
Hold strong, Walky!
😍 🤩 😂
I LOVE IT!
*excited gasp*
PERFECT!!!
The faces, the action, her hair, everything is just PERFECT!
😳 Holy crap Billie’s attractive here
You are becoming insanely close to True Porn Lord, I can feel it
This is the part Walky has been looking forward to too, judging by his expression.
If birth control pills don’t only help with being a type of protection from pregnancy but also help ease the pain with some women’s minstrel cycles then why do they call it “birth control” and not something more accurate?
Unless whoever invented it made it with the soul purpose of being a type of protection and they just so happened to realize it helps with minstrel pain and thought of it as a bonus feature.
Hm. Good autocorrect.
Actually the opposite of that
I have been asking this for years!!! The amount of people I know (including myself) who have taken birth control for health reasons entirely unrelated to pregnancy is well into the double digits!!! This is important stuff, and access is so often limited due to -gestures broadly at Joyce’s backstory and also the world in general-
At a guess, because it’s a lot easier for those interested to villainize birth control and the “loose women” that use it than it would be to fight against “menstrual regulation medication.” Kinda like how they’re not “anti-abortion,” they’re “pro-life” because that sounds better and harder to fight against.
That was my guess too. Like calling the “Affordable Care Act” “Obamacare” so tht racists would vote against it. But when I checked it seemed that the people who invented the Pill called it “Combined Oral Contraceptive”.
Politics, frankly. Same reason why absorption products are called “feminine hygiene” products euphemistically.
Think about it like Tylenol.
You can call Tylenol lots of things. “Painkiller” or “Pain Meds” is a common one, particularly in common parlance. “Analgesic” is the more scientific term. And “Acetaminophen” is the long-ass name for what’s actually in it.
But drugs can have more than one use all the time, because the human body is a fucking complicated ass mess that doesn’t do things simple. In this case, the same drugs that are used by huge amounts of people for Birth Control also can help alleviate the symptoms of painful menstrual cycles.
And there’s a whole lot of types of birth control drugs out there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_control_pill_formulations
“Acetaminophen” is one of the two short-ass names for it, the other being “Paracetamol”. The long-ass name is “Para-acetylaminophenol”.
i’ve been wondering and mad about this for years and i agree with everyone else here that the reason is likely entirely political.
I think i just called it hormone pills when i first started for medical reasons
Thank you, Ross.
…oh, no.
Oh shit!
This storyline has set up an interesting parallel between Joyce and Becky in that they’ve finally done something they’ve needed to for a long time but still have internalized that it’s morally wrong. Wouldn’t be surprised if Joyce reacts to hearing Becky’s news by sharing that she’s on birth control
Oh, that would be cool actually!
I won’t lose hope yet that Roz can eventually try to give this very useful information without outing people from things that they might want to be private….
bender-serious.gif
Y’know that one person who’s a super nerd about some fandom and will chime in like ‘actually, that cameo in Episode 4 was a set up for a long running storyline payoff in season 5 episode 11?’
That’s Roz, with sexual facts.
I love Roz. This is one of the reasons why.
She barges in on private conversations with people who she’s gleefully mocked IN CLASS for not already knowing the class material ahead of time?
I don’t doubt Roz’s heart is in the right place. But in every interaction with anyone who’s not to her perfectly enlightened level, she’s pushy and condescending at best, and an outright bully at worst. Roz’s first priority is ALWAYS about how correct her position is, damn everyone else’s feelings or needs.
Nah, it’s the cheerleading for reproductive rights and contraception. Especially these days, it’s gonna make me hard pressed to not like someone.
Time and place still needs some work but you can’t have everything 😛
Huh. You know, I didn’t think about it, but with Dina in the background…
Becky is totally going to assume Joyce is also sexually active now, isn’t she?
Not sure of that, given that Becky thinks Joyce doesn’t masturbate.
I’m not sure hoe much of that Dina heard. I personslly think it’s unlikely she heard zny from her position behing the exiting crowd, but if she did that woulc be deeply innappropriste. Like it would be a legitimate dick move that while keeping a secret from Joyce for Becky, she also elected to reveal her private information to Becky. Hypocrisy at its finest.
To be clear though I don’t think she heard or would tell without Joyce’s consent first. Becky probably wouldn’t think Joyce is fucking now. She’s knows how bad Joyce’s periods are. BC makes sense for her.
Becky was part of the initial conversation about “Joyce will freak if the treatment is BC,” so I’m pretty sure she already understands the actual context and won’t do a Wacky Misunderstanding
So….is that the only time we will see Roz for the next year or so?
that is EXACTLY how I thought Roz would react to knowing Joyce started birth control. Hell yeah Roz!
Everyone talking about whether or not Roz was being too intrusive but ‘sounds private. What is it?’ isn’t that cool either, Sarah.
(I’m surprised Dorothy or Becky didn’t already fill her in before Joyce got to class.)
Pretty much everyone is treating Joyce like they expect her to freak out and or be uninformed while at the same time really eager for her to say shes on birth control and have the freak out they expect … while in public. At this point I think Joyce probably thinks that Dorothy and Becky being weird was also about her medication since everyone is prying into it.
“Sounds private. What is it?” coming from Sarah is still allowing Joyce to dictate the conversation. If she wants out, she can say “don’t wanna talk about it now”. Roz’s reaction is a lot more aggressive and gives far less of a shit whether Joyce wants to hear it. Roz might say “it’s ALWAYS time for a sex ed lesson” but that’s easy to say when the conversation isn’t complicated and traumatic for you.
Dina may have been in the background, but she already pretty much knew. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/referral/
Which was supposed to be a reply to SDRainbow above.
Me, reading this comic: Oh, “Sounds private, what is it?”, that’s a funny moment. Aw, Roz gets to be helpful without the narrative tearing her down! It’s really nice to see her very obviously being just supportive and neighborly and super-pro-body-liberation, that aspect of her personality hasn’t gotten to shine a lot lately. I bet the comments will be glowingly pro-Roz for a change!
Me, reading the comments: *deafening silence, because I try to never read the comments on Roz comics*
I sometimes think the comments get a bit too critical of various behaviors but I’m with them on this one. Every single person who has had to live with a medical condition knows JUST how annoying the constant onslaught of unsolicited medical advice is.
I mean I can see why someone might think it’s helpful but odds are Joyce was already told ALL of this by the doctor and while this genuinely may be the first time she’s had to deal with this, it gets oooooold after a while when every single person thinks they are the first person to offer you said advice.
Although scrolling up now it actually looks like a lot of people think this was positive behavior. Yeah, please please please folks do not do what Roz is doing here. It’s almost never actually helpful.
The sheer number of people who think they know more about my health issues, which I’ve been living with for years (back injury) to my entire life (atopic triad), than either me or my doctor based on seeing some half remembered quack on Oprah two months ago is jaw dropping.
My script for such cases, “My doctor and I have worked very hard to get it to where it is. We’re happy with it right now. I’m not looking to make changes to my treatment right now as I’m stable and healthy, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
… which is to say:
1. Roz is a lot better than most who offer unsolicited medical advice as hers is accurate and not offered judgmentally, and
2. The overwhelming majority of people who offer unsolicited medical advice are both wrong and entirely convinced of their own superiority, like your health issue is a moral failing and if you just follow their pet lifestyle it’ll disappear. And,
3, Even accurate unsolicited advice often isn’t welcome as someone probably either already knows or wants to keep it private.
I’m on team Roz and Sarah both are being rude here. Fine to ask if your friend’s ok or after a known health issue (like Dorothy did), but if they indicate (even nonverbally) they’re not comfortable discussing it you need to back off. Picking up on nonverbal cues to drop the subject shouldn’t ever be followed with, “Sounds private. What is it?” Or advice on your guess as to what they’re dealing with (in this case Roz is right but she might not have been).
Roz is not my favorite character, but uh, some of these takes are…stunningly bad faith even for this comments section.
Joyce is 18 and she was raised in a religious cult that told her she’d go to hell for taking birth control. Which Roz knows. She is attempting to be helpful, and likely, she is being helpful and yes, telling Joyce things probably *does not* already know, and probably would have anxiety even investigating on her own.
and she’s going to do that in front of everyone, rather than in private, because…
Because Roz doesn’t really do “tactful”
How else will people see her being helpful?
Or because Roz believes in destigmatizing this subject and Sarah was already interrogating it anyways and people are taking a comedy-drama webcomic way too literally?
😛 It doesn’t matter if Roz believes in destigmatizing the subject or if Sarah, one of Joyce’s friends was already prodding her for an answer. Sarah’s a much closer friend of Joyce than Roz.
But I mean it’s not like I’m actually mad at Roz. The irony is that I could argue I wasn’t being all that serious either, though I doubt you’d be all that convinced. (I even considered posting a “well actually I think…” to point out that’s not what I actually think)
I mean it’s funny in the comic, because it’s very much Roz being Roz and clearly both a joke about that and about how it feels to get unsolicited medical advice (see: Joyce’s deer in headlights look).
I can’t speak for everyone but it’s not the joke in the *comic* that got me riled up. It’s the people in the comments who seem to genuinely think this would be good and helpful behavior in real life. As someone who has been subjected to such “helpfulness” waaaaay too many times.
I mean many of our takes are coming from actual lived experience having unsolicited medical advice constantly thrown at us which is sure a weird thing to describe as a “bad faith” argument. If you have not lived this experience, please recognize that you likely do not understand what it feels like.
EVEN if intentions are good and the information is accurate and helpful, there are ways to approach it that are better than this. Like saying “hey, I know a lot about these meds if you would like any more info.” Put the ball in their court. Don’t just lecture them in public because you think it might be helpful with no regard to how they might feel about being put in that position.
“How did Roz know?”? How does Dorothy know!?
There is an awful lot of leaping to conclusions in this storyline.
Dorothy was there when Jennifer suggested the doctor’s visit for birth control, she even tried to swoop in and take control like a maternal vulture. Sarah is the only one here who legitimately didn’t know. Probably because she doesn’t care past a small curiosity. This whole storyline assumes way more interest in your friends sexual health and activity than common.
I think Joyce would probably handle being perscribed the pill better if everyone stopped acting like it was the big deal she already thinks it is. Like instead of prying onto her prescription itself, they could have hoped joyce felt better soon, normalizing the experience. Instead everyone is either being in her face about what it is (Roz) or acting in a way that reinforces the idea that it should be a big secretive deal.
Post-Becoming-Atheist Joyce had a huge conflict when it came to getting bloody glasses. Folks really need to stop assuming that everything would be fine if people just treated shit normal, Joyce flips out at normal shit all the time.
I’m not saying Joyce is only conficted because of other people’s behavior but that standing by her, expecting her to freak out is also not helping because it’s putting her in the spotlight, reinforcing the idea to her that her medication is a big deal to everyone.
Joyce dug her heels in as Dorothy shoved her through the process of getting glasses.
Jennifer just gave her a nudge in offering to take her to see a doctor.
Big difference.
Yes, exactly. People aren’t being sensitive to how big of a deal this is to her.
Just because her medication is *also* birth control, people could support that Joyce is taking it as cramp medication. Which is valid. And if it helps her feel less guilty, it’s valid to phrase it like that. It’s medication to handle her problem.
It shouldn’t be treated like it means she’s inevitibly about to be sexually active.
I mean as the storyline and her suppressed horniness go, we all know it *will* happen eventually, but her medication has nothing to do with it. The birth control aspect is an extra perk she doesn’t need at this point, so people could stop referencing it.
Joyce will get there, but atm she’s crampy and entirely unsettled by her new situation as an apostate, give her some space.
Jennifer suggested a doctor’s visit for treatment of dysmenorrhea, not for birth control. For all Dorothy knows the doctor might have prescribed short-term pain relief and an urgent consultation with a gynecologist.
Proper doctors do a differential diagnoses for a reason. Dorothy is a freshman pre-law student.
But Dorothy, being Dorothy, already would know that.
At this point it would almost be good if the medication wasnt birth control and everyone else had to ask themselves why they all got so obsessed with the idea of Joyce on birth control. Yes she wasn’t great last time about getting glasses at first but nobody treated her getting glasses this weirdly and she accepted them after the appointment.
You don’t need a prescription to pick up some Aleve or Tylenol or whatever and that’s the pain relief doctors give for period cramps.
For things like endometriosis, PCOS, etc. Pretty much all the regular causes of dysmenorrhea except cancer and that’s not a casual ‘Oh, just a prescription and a referral’ that is significantly more urgent.
I have no idea why people get so stuck on the characters for assuming birth control when THAT IS ACCURATE for all the differential diagnoses except cancer.
Easily beating Mike’s staircase adventure into second place in the leaping to conclusions hall of fame.
Thanks I guess???
This quite horrible behavior. Your medical information is private and you may keep it that way for any reason you choose. If you guess what new medication someone has (in a conversation that you where not a part of: she just walked close by) you don’t disclose your suspicion to the world. Especially about birth control.
Just imagine for a second that Joyce was still a very fundamentalist christian (or associates with people with such views). Knowledge of her using birth controll could have ramifications for her (reputation) in that community.
And don’t give unsollicitated medical advice in a public hallway like this to someone you don’t even like.
Yeah sadly this is very very common behavior.
Speaking as someone who has a chronic illness, I just brace myself for the flurry of unsolicited advice every time someone new finds out. The sentence “Have you tried yoga?” has become a running joke between me and my friends and husband.
A relative of mine got SO many well-meaning suggestions for his terminal cancer. He learned to just smile and say “thanks, I’ll look into it.”
It would be so nice if we could normalise just saying “Mind your own business, you’re not a doctor.” in response to unsolicited medical “advice”.
I’ve been debating getting some cards made up to hand out to people like this. It would serve double duty as instructions on where to find my EpiPen if I have passed out.
Don’t give fucking paragraphs of unsolicited medical advice based on a hunch, ROZ.
I know safe sex is your thing but read the goddamned room for once in your life.
Who “reads the room” at age 19?
Decent people? Age isn’t an excuse.
Age is an excuse for a lot of things up to and including social mistakes.
Excuse? No.
An explanation? A reason? Yup.
was about to say that, too 🙂
Intention and Impact both exist alongside. Just because you didn’t know better / didn’t mean it / etc doesn’t mean it’s not hurtful / uncomfortable for the other person.
If Walky said that last line, someone would’ve punched him.
…
I’m not saying they’d be WRONG, mind you.
Nice and informative but also a bit invasive for my comfort
Yeah I understand that.
But something tells me that Roz feels the need to overcompensate like that because she learned at least a few of those lessons the hard way and didn’t want Joyce to suffer like she did.
😵💫😵💫😵💫
Yeah, that’s how I feel about Roz here too.
Poor Joyce, her worst nightmare has come true. Why couldn’t someone have given her some useful advice, such as, come up with a plausible but face-saving lie when you don’t want to tell the truth. What you don’t or won’t say can be it’s own tell.
I assume the medication is hormones for preventing periods, in which case Roz’s advice to take it at the same time every day is appropriate, since the key to preventing periods is to prevent ovulation.
And Roz probably said the same thing Joyce did the first time she was on birth control pills, and the memory resonated.
Even if you’re still gonna have periods, it’s good to take it at the same time everyday or else you can get breakthrough bleeding, which is why I ultimately stopped cuz I’m terrible at remembering stuff and if end up getting a “period” twice a month.
“Sounds private. What is it?” is probably my least favorite thing Sarah has said since she implied it would be good if Joyce lost her comic job cuz she upset her poor invasive, controlling Christian friend
Someone needs to give Joyce a hug and take her away from all these horrible people.
I really hope Joyce can make some friends soon.
everything is setting up for eventual premarital hanky-panky with Joe.
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Someone should tell her antibiotics can also interfere with hormonal birth control. (I don’t know if they mess with what she’s using it for, but I’ve heard it interferes with the birth control part.)
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Joyce is probably imagining some distant voice (maybe Carol’s voice?) going “HUSSSSSSSYYYYY!!!”
Roz can smell your menstrual blood, confirmed.
And for the second time, Roz is the one that gives the best piece of advice to Joyce, the girl who once called her a worthless plucked flower.
Roz may be a jerk, but she’s still a feminist. The female experience is still paramount to her own understanding of the world, and she recognises that women need to help and support each other.
Good on her
Feminism is also supposed to include giving women agency. Roz coming out of nowhere to talk about Joyce’s prescription in public without her consent is very misguided. Its like that time Leslie had to call roz out for ignoring her (an actual gay person) when she thought she was in the right for going off on Joyce in class for being associated with anti gay religion. She’s speaking over the people she claims to be helping.
Roz’s agency is more equal than others.
So, we’re gonna ignore that Joyce herself said she needed Roz to be mean in that instance?
Joyce’s boundaries matter, but this is also information she needs to have if she’s going to use her meds effectively. Time and place could’ve been better but that doesn’t change that Joyce absolutely needed this information if it’s actually going to help her.
Looking at the comments my own take is: meh not great to come out unsolicited and out medical knowledge like this but Roz is far from evil. There’s been far worse unsolicited advice/ attempts to butt in where not wanted. After the time skip too. So I don’t really care/can’t feel outraged at this and would find it weird if the narrative called her out in this too hard comparatively. And at least the advice is accurate and somewhat helpful both inside and outside the comic universe.
Can get it bugging some folks but can’t muster up the rage, sorry.
Nobody’s really calling get evil or demanding rage though.
i agree. It was unsolicited (and therefore probably not super helpful) but at least it’s correct information afaik, so there’s that.
I think this is pretty classic Roz stuff. She has a good point, even she’s being a bit of an asshole about it
She’ll never pass up a good Rozsplaining opportunity.
“Sounds private, what is it?“ is a phrase i’m gonna steal 😛
People talking about Roz failing to respect Joyce’s boundaries is hilarious.
It’s Joyce. Not respecting boundaries is a primary character aspect for her.
Good job Joyce! You look significantly less horrified than you would have been previously. So proud of your growth.
just the normal amount of disturbed that someone’s been keeping tabs on your medical prescriptions who has no business doing so
Say what you want about Roz, but she was giving Joyce helpful advice on how to be the most effective, when taking her birth control. I find it ironic that the people, to whom most of the readers cheer for as Joyce’s friends, do not really help her, just placate her; while the girls that the same readers would call, “selfish bongoes”, have been the most helpful. Yes, they most likely make Joyce feel uncomfortable, but they are being more helpful than her alleged friends are.
selfish bongoes
There’s an automated filter that “corrects” the word you were trying to use.
Roz did this in matter in which it was unsolicted and in public. she automatically assumed Joyce’s doctor or pharmacist didn’t explain things or giver her a pamphlet. She ended the sentence in a condcending matter with “congratulations and good luck” then walked off without bothering to listen if Joyce acknowledged her or even listen to see if Joyce questions. She immediately went on about the sexual aspects of birth control which she knew would cause Joyce discomfort. She didn’t mention the benefits when it came to treating symptoms involved with menstruation.
Helpful advice it may be but it was delivered in a matter that it was less about helping Joyce then was about confirming that Roz knows what birth control does and she knows more then Joyce. Dorothy Jennifer and Sarah would have answered Joyce’s questions with more discretion. Hell Dorothy would probably give Joyce the same advice only after asking Joyce about it.
Also while she is correct she had no way of actually knowing the meds in question are birth control, she’s essentially guessing
Roz’s advices are really useful, but this is kinda scary!
Honestly I don’t know why people hate Roz. She genuinely tries to be helpful and she’s generally right on whatever she’s talking about.
My favorite part of this is that Roz is accurately assuming that the purpose of Joyce taking birth control is to regulate her period. I don’t know how she did that hard read, but having her acknowledge that sexual activity is only an if in the third panel makes it clear that nothing in the second panel is intended to be about it’s effectiveness as “birth” control and all about it’s effectiveness as menustral control
I mean its Joyce and I don’t believe Roz knows about her not being Christian anymore, she probably assumes one of her friends dragged her into doing this like what happened when she got glasses
Roz’s demeanor here reminds me of Video Game Discourse, so I made an unfunny edit. Idk if this is anything.
https://tinyurl.com/23dksu3z
I have no idea why, but “I fucked your entire mother.” has me cackling.
It’s a shame it has to be complicated, in an ideal utopia i would’ve gotten a hysterectomy as soon as i turned 18-21 lol
No kidding. Why should we have to suffer if we don’t want it.
everyone’s arguing over whether or not this makes roz the worst person in the universe and im like. i thought it was just a punchline bro
Humans…. go figure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
…
Was that a menstruation joke?