One the one hand: yeah, yikes. Even if her concern is reasonable, trying to pick a fight with Joe about it isn’t. On the other hand: I remember being Dorothy’s age, and I certainly didn’t have the maturity to recognize that the diplomatic option was usually better than the dramatic one. She’s got her heart in the right place.
I have to believe Dorothy is in the right here. If Joe doesn’t have feelings for Joyce, and he’s giving Dorothy no reason to believe he does, then there’s no reason for diplomatic being around the bush.
It’s important to remember she hasn’t been around for any of his character growth, too. She’s operating on the assumption he’s still the same Joe she knew in high school. She wasn’t there to witness Rachel tear him down, the many heart-to-heart moments he’s shared with Joyce, their science classes together, or the art class ‘yesterday’. Something tells me this outing will end with Joyce a little bit more skeptical, Joe on the back foot, and Dorothy with egg on her face.
Dorothy should talk to Amber about this. It feels like that’s where we’re headed, since the story brought Joe and Amber into each others’ orbits, and she probably wouldn’t want to go to Danny. (Although, has she seen that he’s moved on yet? Would Dorothy reappearing potentially cause an issue with him and Sal? This could go a number of directions…)
Diplomacy should be the default option, not something you need a reason for. This strip demonstrates exactly why: if your first instinct is to come in guns blazing, you’ll end up hitting a lot of people who don’t actually deserve it.
Right, but she also apparently doesn’t trust Joyce enough to assume that the fact that she’s willing to spend time with him means there has been development. And doesn’t care enough to talk to her.
Doctor, as I am sure you have elucidated to more than one possessive alien/robot/alien robot, you cannot call dibs on a romantic partner because people are not objects.
Well, rather, you can, but it’s pretty crappy behavior.
Clearly its got nothing to do with Dorothy knowing what Joe is like and being concerned about his motives. Nope, must be that she’s secretly lusting after Joyce herself and doesnt want the competition.
Joe is barely two seconds into his atonement for his past behavior. There’s no guarantee this is nothing more than a passing infatuation for him that will leave her close friend hurt. You can see her suspicion transmute into rage with each passing frame and honestly, it’s totally warranted. After what Joyce went through, navigating the advances of someone who only sees her as a sex object won’t end well.
Yup. It’s been made quite clear that Dorothy has known Joe for many years now. He was her boyfriend’s best friend and she had a front row seat to his conquests and his bragging. It’s going to take Joe a while to prove that his intentions are wholesome.
Yes, this exactly. I’m confused by people reacting as if these are the terms that Dotty thinks in – they’re clearly meant to be an accusation against Joe.
You aren’t alone. Dorothy regards Joe through the lens *he* crafted. She is using his terminology to be sure he understands her “suggestion”.
Speaking to an audience using their language is a well-known method for trying to make yourself understood. Applying lingo beyond kenning of auditory perceivers degrokifies.
Joe has been shitty and misogynistic for a very long time but he’s never been dishonest about his intentions, only about his prowess. Maybe in the past he’s played the angle of acting like he’s romantically interested to get partners but in the comic he’s been very clear that he’s looking for sexual partners first and romantic partners never.
Dorothy isn’t even giving him the opportunity to say “No, this is new and different,” and she’s not using his lens, she’s equating him to Ryan.
I think she did. That is what the ‘Do you like her?’ gives an opening for. Either a ‘I like her as a friend, I don’t intend to go any further’ or a ‘I genuinely want a romantic relation for her. This isn’t like anything before’. In the absence of such a thing, it is not unreasonable for Dorothy to react as she does.
Trouble is, this is new to Joe and he’s still working it out. He doesn’t know how to respond. IIRC he hasn’t actually told Joyce what he’s feeling — he’s not going to tell Dorothy first, even after he knows what he wants to say.
Yep. It’s entirely understandable that Joe isn’t just going to bare his heart to Dorothy. But it is also entirely understandable that, in the absence of said heart bearing, Dorothy will assume that Joe will follow the usual MO.
Sometimes a situation can be shitty and tragic even though everyone involved is currently acting decently.
@Needfuldoer
Thanks for the clarification!
I read Mark’s post like four times to be sure and still managed to misread it.
I present you my apologies for the remark.
The comic format does interfere with our ability to tell how much time elapses between “Do you like her?” and “Find different prey,” but Dorothy doesn’t wait for an answer regardless if she immediately continues speaking or she waits 5 minutes while Joe’s brain restarts.
> Joe has … never been dishonest about his intentions
He has though, to Joyce, in this comic. He absolutely misrepresented what he was looking for, in the face of extremely direct evidence that Joyce wasn’t looking for a sexual relationship, with the expectation that he could convince her otherwise and ‘break her in’. He considered it for Joyce’s own good.
that is incredibly shortsighted. Joe has given off an extremely shitty vibe for most of the comic’s run time. I love him now, but his unnuanced meathead womanizer persona is all dotty has seen.
And given that she’s known him since high school, she’s seen it for far longer than anyone else in the cast besides Danny. She knows what Joe is (or was, but she wasn’t there for his character development).
She’s also known him a long time. She knows that he doesn’t “trick” girls into thinking ge likes them to get laid. He’s alway been very upfront about what he’s looking for and doesn’t try to bully anyone into something they don’t want.
For her to assume he’s trying to get laid is understandable. For her to be this aggressive isn’t. He is not a rapist, or even close to it. He’s a horny guy who is honest and upfront about it. People need to stop shitting on him.
Not really in that date scene. He asked her on a date, not for sex.
Of course it all blew up into Mike/Joyce violence before it could get very far, but at the start Joyce was definitely thinking in terms of relationship and he’d didn’t make it clear. He didn’t lie, but he also wasn’t upfront.
He literally made a list ranking women’s fuckability at one point, that’s like as objectifying women as you can get. He’s getting better but not everyone is required to forgive and just forget about how he used to be.
Lol haha don’t forget she knew him even before “the list”. She probably had to spend a lot of time with him in high school, listening to this jerk who was her boyfriend’s best friend, talk about all of his conquests and his opinions of women’s bodies. He has made quite the turn around since school started but she hasn’t seen any of that and she also hasn’t seen any of his wholesome friendship with Joyce.
I have to believe this is trolling. There’s no way that someone read this comic and got “Joe is a precious baby who never did anything misogynistic from it”… I really NEED to believe that, because otherwise this comments section is displaying a really worrying number of people who don’t think Joe’s previous actions were objectionable.
Which kind of suggests how those commenters view women, and it’s not a good look.
So you’re just gonna gloss over the time he ranked every single woman he knows by fuckability? That’s a pretty big reason to truly think bad about him. Dorothy also knows him since their school days, one of the longest timeframes alongside Danny, so that Joe is probably still ingrained in her mind, and she hasn’t seen any of his wholesome turnaround. Only Amber and Joyce really know Joe can see women as anything other than prey
I think she does. She is sitting behind Joe and can’t see his big watery-eye puppy face, so she likely thinks his silence is a not him struggling to talk about feelings but an guilty admission that he doesn’t like her and only wants her for her body. That is probably why she is so angry.
I had the exact opposite initial understanding – that Dorothy used the word “like” as a synonym for any kind of “interested in.” And she doesn’t approve of Joe being interested in Joyce in any way, because she assumes Joe is who he’s always been and he will her Joyce.
I initially suspected that if Joe had immediately admitted that he really has true feelings for Joyce, Dorothy’s reaction would have been the same.
But having read your take, I’m not so sure anymore.
I hope this leads him to turn around and give Dorothy a passionate speech about the many ways he thinks Joyce is amazing, that catches her off-guard. The strip ends on a single frame from Dorothy’s perspective, showing Joyce behind him carrying their tray of food, blushing, with her irises the size of dinner plates. Both of them have extra shiny highlights on their eyes. He only notices her in the next one.
That strip generates at least 350 comments and a few new Patrons.
That would be super grand.
Alternate sad timeline: Dorothy successfully scares Joe away (by hitting his fear that he’s garbage who will wreck Joyce). Joyce sees this as the biggest mom-overstep in the world, creating a huge rift between Joyce and Dorothy. Oh noooo.
Yes I am too. He’s such a wimp in many ways, it’s going to be hard for him to be the soft, brave, generous boyfriend she knows Joyce deserves. It takes guts to not paper over your feelings with bro-talk and he’s only just learning how.
I don’t. I know this side of Joe is genuine because I’m the audience, but from her POV, I think she’s completely right to say what she did there. I even think she was nice about it.
I get the distinct sense that this is where my whatever of ND kicks in and everyone tells me I’m wrong.
I don’t. She cares for Joyce and knows she likely is looking for love not empty physicality – which was kind of Joe’s thing. Also if you notice, Dorothy is sitting behind Joe, she can’t see his face so she likely interprets his silence as a guilty admission that he doesn’t like her.
She’s judging him but what he advertised himself to be just a couple of months ago. And it’s not like they’ve been hanging out for her to see his struggles to grow as a person instead of a penis.
Dorothy not trusting Joe might be reasonable, especially since she doesn’t know what we do. But Dorothy deciding that Joyce isn’t capable of making her own calls seems a little too controlling.
Agree asking Joyce if she’s sure about Joe is as fine, but she’s should not be deciding Joyce’s dating life for her. Dorothy’s micromanaging tendencies seem to be alot worse lately.
Even if you don’t trust Joe this is not a conversation you have here while the three of you are out. You have it 1×1. And you need to trust Joyce more? Dorothy is been way too mommy over Joyce and it needs to stop
Dorothy has known Joe far longer (in universe) than we have. Far longer than she’s known Joyce. This isn’t possessiveness or being the mom friend. This is the right move, given the information available to her.
Okay let’s game this out: There’s four options Joe can either be legit or bad and Dorothy can trust him or not. We can rule out the Dorothy trusting him part because no matter what he says here she won’t.
Joe is legit and Dorothy doesn’t trust him: She has overstepped her bounds and shown she doesn’t trust Joyce, potentially makes a normal lunch at Taco Bell awkward and pisses Joyce off.
Joe is bad and Dorothy doesn’t trust him: Don’t think Joe would say anything that gives him away if he is bad because he’s not an idiot but let’s say he does say something that is a little sus. Dorothy STILL has to go talk to Joyce about this anyways because this is ultimately her choice, oversteps her bounds and shown she doesn’t trust Joyce, potentially makes a normal lunch at Taco Bell awkward and pisses Joyce off which is bad because she needs Joyce to actually trust her now.
This all goes back to Dorothy does not respect Joyce as an equal. She thinks Joyce needs to be protected. Joyce is trying to navigate alot of things on her own and Dorothy keeps trying to hold her hand through it.
I think the idea is that the ‘Joe is bad and Dorothy doesn’t trust him’, Dorothy managed to shame and scare him into finding ‘easier’ (and more willing) prey, because this one will have a lot of drama involved, and of course the accusation of being a predator.
I don’t think she is in the wrong here, based on the information she has. The thing with Jennifer, yeah, that was a bit possessiveness, but this one is done from a good place.
You can see her trying to hold it in though?
If I knew someone like how Joe was in highschool and had no evidence he changed? Yeah I would be a lot less kind than Dorothy is being here. Especially when I was like 18/19 like them? I’d have had to hold myself back from punching him
I definitely get where Dorothy’s coming from. If you search for her and Joe’s tags together, they’re in surprisingly few comics together. And in those, Joe’s being a creep.
and they knew each other in high school, via Danny, and even Danny has expressed some disgust at joe’s attitudes towards women and sex.
also she’s 18 and is worried for her friend who has been incredibly naive and repeatedly traumatized in the months they’ve known each other. of course she’s gonna be quick to defend Joyce without taking hours or days to find the right quiet moment for a reasonable adult discussion.
Oooh, another test for Joe! He was okay with telling Joyce about his feelings, but Dorothy is a whole other kettle of fish. Dorothy knows him better than anyone on campus except Danny (and Joyce) and therefore is in a good position to tease or belittle him about them, but also – and probably more worryingly to him – to confirm the bad little voice inside him saying ‘you are toxic trash and don’t deserve Joyce’s future perfection’.
It would be frankly braver of him to tell Dorothy ‘no, this is real feelings’ than it was to tell Joyce, and that was solid courage. Let’s see if he sticks this landing! (I hope he does.)
I agree, very well said. This is going to be difficult for him here and I’m keeping my fingers crossed. All he really wants is to spend as much time with Joyce as possible and make her happy. Sound great but Dorothy may be afraid he won’t be able to keep from running away.
I don’t think Dorothy believes he has enough feeling TO run away, is the thing. She thinks he’s just after another bedpost-notch and doesn’t mind if he has to okay-act being friends to get it, which will hurt Joyce. She asked’do you LIKE her’ in the certain knowledge that the answer is somewhere between ‘hell no’ and ‘I like her boobs’.
She’d honestly be more justified. She dated walky and knows what he’s like. And let’s be fair. Walky does kinda just…go through girls. Walky has dated more people in 6 months than I’ve dated in 28 years.
I don’t think “having relationships and getting broken up with” counts as “going through girls” in the way you’re implying. Plenty of people date in that way without it being a negative, despite not matching up with your personal experience.
I will also say that Dorothy believes she knows what Joe is like, too. She has known him longer than almost any other member of the cast and hasn’t been privy to his recent improvements.
Dorothy, I know this is a comic strip and Joyce is off-panel, meaning she might as well be on another plane of existence for narrative purposes, but would it kill you to do voice your concerns to Joe when she isn’t in the room?
No, this is the wrong direction. If she has concerns (which she does, and, to be fair, not entirely unwarranted), she should voice them to JOYCE, not Joe.
I would have said that a large-ish noisy hall full of groups ignoring each other is a very good place for a quick private conversation. She can see whether Joyce is getting close enough to hear. And her intent seems to be simply to deliver a warning and be done.
I hope this doesn’t get to him, it is super not her place. usually I wouldn’t expect it to, but his self esteem is a little tanked and even with Joyce responding positively I could see him going ‘yeah, dorothy probably knows better than me’ right now
My worry is Dorothys words back up the voice in Joes brain that tells him hes not worthy of Joyce so he goes ahead and self-sabotages which lets Dorothy feel vindicated
Very controlling, but I can get it on one level because Joyce doesn’t exactly have a ton of dating experience and Joe’s dating history leans more toward mutually enjoyable one-night stands.
might’ve been kinder to them both to go with something like “you do realize there’ll be massive emotional fallout for her if this is just a fling, right?”
Dorothy would be right from her perspective. Remember that she doesn’t know what we know, but she also knows how he was like in High school. All signs point to: He’s scum, for her. So I think Dorothy is pretty valid in feeling this way.
Seriously. If she’s that worried about it she could stay with them both for the rest of this “date,” so that Joe doesn’t get a chance to ask her out*, then talk to Joyce after. There’s no reason to do what she’s doing, and I hope it backfires into Joyce overhearing.
*Dotty doesn’t know he already indicated his interest to Joyce, and I imagine she thinks Joe wants to be sneaky about it
You’re right, she should talk to Joyce, but frankly, I don’t blame her for telling the skeezeball who was talking about using alcohol to get laid to back off if he was showing interest in her best friend. That isn’t being possessive, that’s being a good friend (especially given how someone spiked Joyce’s drink last semester).
Maybe I missed this, where was Joe talking about using alcohol to get laid? Because as I remember it Joe has always been about enthusiastic consent. Consent for meaningless throwaway sex, but consent nonetheless.
On the other hand, for all of what is reputation IS that Dorothy is aware of, what he does NOT have is the reputation for leading women on and making them think he’s interested in more than what he’s offering. His usual M.O. is one-night stands and he’s not deceptive in his approach.
So Dorothy is either assuming that he IS being deceptive, which is not what he’s known for, or she’s assuming that he’s operating as usual and that Joyce is too naive to recognize it, and possibly falling into the benevolent ableism trap in which she thinks it’s up to her to speak up and protect Joyce from what should be her own decision/potential mistake to make. We’ve seen a fair bit so far of Dorothy going ‘do you think it’s your (yet undiagnosed) autism?’ about Joyce, the last instance being just two strips ago.
Joe has absolutely been deceptive at the start of the comic, with Joyce by making out like he was after an innocent date while planning to ‘fix her with his penis’.
Dorothy’s not privy to THAT specific conversation but she’s known Joe for a while.
To be fair it did feel like Joe changed his tune when he saw Joyce in that dress and realized “oh this isn’t the horny repressed christian girl getting back at daddy” archetype. This is a very earnestly chaste and pure girl who wants to be treated like a LADY.
“To be fair” suddenly realizing that Joyce was a person and not a porn trope doesn’t mean the original dishonest start to the date didn’t happen. It is also still the kind of behaviour that would prompt disgust from Dorothy.
If that was what Joe initially thought of Joyce, I don’t see how he was being dishonest. From his POV they would have been playing a game by unspoken consent, one that’s meant to be won by both players.
It turned out that Joyce was playing a game with similar expected outcome but very different rules, and things did not go well.
Right, the thing about assuming “unspoken consent” is that you didn’t actually get any consent. He assumed something about Joyce based on a misogynistic trope and was not upfront with her about his intentions as a result.
Regardless of what he believed was happening, that is a deceptive start to a relationship and it’s likely not the only time that kind of misunderstanding happened. Joe is a flawed individual, as are we all.
I’ll repeat this for those in the back: Presumed, unspoken consent to “play a game” that you have in no way alerted the other person to IS NOT CONSENT and it does not count as honesty.
I don’t read those strips as Joe changing his tune significantly.
Remember he tried to bribe her chaperone (Mike) into going away.
(before learning that Mike was Mike so he doesn’t have that defense).
After that, he tried to convince her lust was OK, which while not damning doesn’t really speak towards him having shifted his goals for the evening.
(The “date” then devolved into punching and ended).
It’s been a minute, but I don’t think he ever actually ended up ogling Conquest. He got punched for it, yeah, but a big factor in him looking at her chest was Joyce and Mike basically insisting he was already doing it. Good odds he would have ogled regardless, but we can’t very well go around punishing people for things they probably might have done if we hadn’t already suggested them into doing those things.
I wonder how much of this is concern for Joyce but also trying to stamp what little control she still has over Joyce but attempting to scare away a, possible, rival for her affections
If anyone would be Dorothy’s rival for Joyce’s affections as a friend, it would be Becky or Sarah, and she has never expressed anything like that towards them.
And I don’t believe she has romantic affection for Joyce, which is really the only way Joe could compete at all.
Also, please remember that, aside from there being a difference between not wanting to share affection and wanting to play the role of leader, Dorothy wasn’t mad that Jennifer stepped up, she was mad that Jennifer stepped up and left her to do what she considered the heavy lifting; similar to the stereotype of one parent being the cool one who lets the child have fun or do whatever they want while the other is always forced to be reasonable or parents who share custody but one only gets custody on the weekends and a couple weeks in the summer.
I disagree with the many people saying this should be a private conversation with Joe at another time. This should be a conversation with Joyce (although yeah private and at another time), or a conversation with both of them in the know.
Saying “no, leave her alone” to someone trying to date or befriend your friend without ASKING YOUR FRIEND is bullshit.
Wohoho I’d like to see that after Joyce expresses her displeasure at being treated like a child, the triumvirate tells her that they don’t like her new boyfriend
Given that this storyline opened with Becky, despite her own neuroses and being generally on her bullshit, as I admit she is, actually prioritizing Joyce the person over her precious crystallized ideals of Joyce, I think this is gonna be Dorothy’s solo quest
Also given that Becky has been intimate with Dina, she felt free to make a good “mistake”, and shouldn’t Joyce be free to?
I hope that Joe is able to articulate his true interest, and that Dorothy is convinced of his sincerity.
That’s my hope. We shall see what actually happens.
What would make Dorothy think that’s what Joyce is doing when she’s only ever expressed wanting the opposite? Heck, what makes you think that’s what she’s doing?
Joe’s old m.o. was quite a bit different than two people just deciding to have some fun dating. She only knows that Joe and hasn’t seen any of the changes he’s made recently.
Remember it wasn’t that long ago in universe he was absolutely garbage.
Well, for one, Dorothy was raised by parents who were relatively open-minded and made sure she was emotionally ready for whatever might reasonably happen to a person (including “casual” relationships.) So her dating Walky was not a big deal.
Joyce was raised by close-minded parents, and thanks to her rather trusting nature and past focus on “morality” (e.g. “only sex inside marriage”), its reasonable to have concerns she might fall victim to Joe’s schemes, if he were really trying just to “score” (with no intention of anything long term).
Admittedly, he did try to sex his way out of having feelings for Joyce last Friday (I think this is Wednesday).
People can change. Joe used to be a piece of shit, but people can change. And it might take the rest day, but I think Dorothy’s eventually going to give him a chance to not be a piece of shit. I got a feeling the chapter title is about Dorothy’s jealousy though. People can change includes Dorothy.
People can definitely change, but it’s rarely safe to assume a predator has changed without evidence. We know he has, but Dorothy has no reason to think he’s not still aiming to “fix Joyce with his penis.”
Until the memes reached my awareness, the image my brain conjured up for a “cask” was a sort of plaster sarcophagus woven like a wicker basket, and I assumed “Amontillado” was like, a vampire or ancient deity or mayor of some kind. The fact that the story was written by Vincent van Gogh also set off some kind of alarm in my mind, at the time. A very skewed understanding, really.
I’m confused, are you mixing up Vincent van Gogh with Edgar Allen Poe (the author of the story), or did you actually think it was written by the painter?
Yeah, Dorothy’s missed some critical Joe updates. She’s still on ‘guy who brags in class about using booze to facilitate threesomes’ from way back when.
Dorothy’s got years of experience of Joe’s behaviour. I’m team Dorothy here. But also Team Joyce and Team Joe. Everyone is acting in reasonable ways according to their own experiences and knowledge! Woo! Good writing!
Exactly. Here’s hoping for “good communication” too!
(I know that bad communication is a tried-and-true tool of comedy, but I’d rather not see much of it here.)
I get Dorothy’s misgivings on Joe’s advances towards Joyce thinking that he’s just after another labido conquest. However, if Joe’s going towards this as someone he like actually wants to be with for the long term commitment, he shouldn’t let Dorothy or anyone else talk him down.
https://imgur.com/a/jJTZymo (NSFW)
I started drawing this before midnight but I kinda…got a little too into it and added the 2nd panel.
(Probably woulda added more but I’m way to into Adult Swim’s Yule long.)
I think the big thing that’s tipping my opinion in this case against Dorothy is that she knows Joyce knows what Joe is like. Or was like, rather. If it was Dorothy defending Joe against somebody who he hasn’t spent a long time around, yeah, totally understand why she’d want to step in. She doesn’t know current Joe like the audience does and has good reason to be worried.
But she knows about the history between Joe and Joyce. She knows they are familiar with each other. And so her stepping in here feels like not just her not trusting Joe, but like she’s decided that Joyce has just… gone brainless and forgotten everything from the past 5 months. It’s a step too far towards patronizing for me.
I think it’s more like she thinks Joe is pretending to be better to purposely lure Joyce into his clutches, hence the word choice of “prey”.
Which is actually unfair to Joe because even at his worst, he was always upfront about who he is.
At least I don’t remember him lying to get into bed with someone.
He admittedly objectified women, and still does to an extent, but I don’t think he did so to the point he considered himself a predator or hunter of them.
His entire schtick was that he was honest about being no-strings. Right before Joyce revealed that Ryan attacked her he was adamant that his approach was designed to prevent damage on both sides, because anyone who approached him or was approached by him knew that he was not emotionally interested.
Obviously his approach devalued people, which is in fact the primary problem, but Dorothy’s poor history with him has led her opinion to be so poor that she doesn’t even believe that his initial assertion or that he’s being honest now, just that Joe interacting with Joyce will harm Joyce.
I think people may have forgotten about lines like these ones. He’s not above using alcohol here to get people to do things they might not otherwise do.
Her family doesn’t know about Joe so he won’t have to explain she’s not prey to any of the siblings, at least (until Becky says something anyway).
But the lady in the lobby is watching him like a hawk.
Pretty sure her family, or at least her mom (not that she seems to matter now), also wanted her to find a husband at school, so they’re not against her dating, they’re against premarital hanky panky.
HAHAHAHAHAHA, I just remembered Joe is ethnically jewish! That’s gonna go over well with the majority of the Browns. And by “well” I mean “where’s my popcorn and fireproof garments?”.
I feel like the conversation with Becks is gonna be “OOOOHHH you like JOE?? Hahaha gross but also get it sis! also hell yes no sex experiments with Dina for THAT guy! Everything’s comin’ up MacIntyre!!”
Yeah, I agree. She hasn’t seen Joe’s new change of heart, so all she can go on is the years and years of Joe being a horndog. She’s wrong in this instance, but she has no way of knowing otherwise.
I mean…yeah. We know Joe so we know he’s not tryin’ to be a horndog. And Dorothy’s not just saying “don’t be a horndog.” She’s basically saying “Leave”.
The hard delineation between “This is my best friend, you better be careful,” and “I’m forbidding you, two people who have their own agency whom I do not control,” is the problem here.
For all she knows, Joe is (to steal Joyce’s words from the last storyline) “a libido with a face”. Reacting to that with “Leave” is more than valid. Dorothy didn’t witness any of Joe’s positive development, and he has only shared that with Amber and Joyce
True, but this still presupposes that she doesn’t think Joyce is aware or smart enough to realize he’s a libido with a face. Maybe Joyce WANTS to fuck a libido with a face. She WAS the one who invited Joe. Her overprotectiveness is also kind of a disservice to Joyce’s decision making.
No need to warn anyone if you know someone’s a predator. Doing so just presupposes you think they’re not aware or smart enough to figure it out. Couldn’t have anything to do with you knowing that person for years before.
I wonder if it’s a little disheartening for Willis that with all his experience and hard work writing webcomics and the improvements in his craft that have resulted, his strips can still be so divisively interpreted?
I think it’s better that people are divided over the intentions of his work.
He’s active enough to clearly say if he meant for us to only take one view or to lockdown the comments if he feels the back and forth gets out of hand.
So I think he intending to be nuanced enough to get different viewpoints going.
Also people can and are nuanced so art that is nuanced is more relatable as a whole.
I know Joe hasn’t redeemed himself to Dorothy because obvs she’s got years of dealing with his crappy self but man, Joyce can make her own decisions and is definitely trying to do so more.
I’d really love for her to hear *this one* from Dorothy since she’s clearly enjoying her own power over Joe since he admitted to liking her and it’s very clear that Joe doesn’t know what to DO ABOUT LIKING HER as he clearly likes her more than a fling with how they’ve interacted for months at this point.
Granted, Dorothy has every reason to be surly but we know more than the characters do. Also both her and Joyce were prey to Amber’s dad/No Neck Dad, etc, and Ryan – so there’s another reason that Dorothy may also be more hostile, especially with the “prey” comment as she’s been going to therapy for nearly getting stabbed and kidnapped, etc.
Really interesting though; I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of it.
On its own, yellow mustard or fish sauce. But after culinary school I’m starting to realize that everything is LEGOs and it just needs to be in the right context. I’ll even eat rice if it’s sushi, risotto, or the cook just really knows what they’re doing. And a good kimchi or Korean-inspired coleslaw is possibly the perfect pickle/acid.
But fuck hot dogs with solo yellow mustard, the gas’s name is well-deserved.
If you ever get a chance, NG, try Amora Dijon mustard. It will ROCK your world! That and Trader Joe’s garlic aioli mustard. Mustard mixed with honey, olive oil, and vinegar is my favorite salad dressing… I learned to make it when I was a kid, and never went back. But for sauce on asparagus or broccoli, there’s nothing like mustard and mayo mixed together with dill! My favorite is to pluck mustard flowers by the side of the road and crunch them between my teeth. A field of yellow mustard flowers is a sight (and smell) of beauty.
Yeah, all food is just different pieces put together until you get the shape you want. It’s not a puzzle, where there’s a “correct” configuration, but a plane with the wings installed backwards won’t be a normal plane, it will be something else.
Mayonnaise and hollandaise are my go-to example. They’re almost identical emulsions (egg yolk, acid, fat) with the most important difference being the fat that’s added. With mayo, you add room temperature oil and that defines the resulting emulsion. Hollandaise gets melted butter (or that time I made bacon fat hollandaise, that was weird) and is a completely different sauce for it.
The bacondaise was actually way too much, it was concentrated bacon flavor. I cut it half-and-half with maple syrup to put on French toast but it really was just too intense.
Yeah, mayo can be one of those edge foods: you either hate it or love it, but those who hate it REALLY can’t stand it. (I used to hate it, now I like it, but only when it’s mixed with something spicy.)
Part of the problem for those who don’t like it, is that it’s often gopped onto things in huge amounts. Spread it thin on a sandwich I can tolerate it, but it’s usually leaking out the sides.
Thanks for finding that reference! I had been looking for it.
…Perhaps he just meant that if HE gets drunk, he’ll be relaxed enough to enjoy sex with other men?
That’s an overly charitable reading of that quote, but the alternative (reading it as him trying to get his potential partners drunk before sex) is just too terrible even to imagine.
D-8< (Emoticon for outraged-face.)
I really don’t understand people hating on Dorothy. If having my back trying to warn off someone shown to be a womanizer at best is being “overbearing”, I hope everyone is overbearing with me. Yes *we* know Joe has changed, but it’s been less than a year since high school ended and Dorothy has not had our benefit of peering into peoples lives with time slowed down. Plus they went through a shooting threat, a kidnapping… this would have affected them a lot, and people are telling Dorothy to eff off? No! I don’t see how so many people seem so holier than thou when it comes to the (college level) cast in general tbh.
People are being pretty hard on Dorothy. Like she’s known Joe for years, and she’s watched him treat women like conquests, and, frankly, like prey to be hunted.
This isn’t about possessiveness, at least not with the context we have (imo). She just doesn’t want her friend Joyce to be taken advantage of by Joe, who has, up until this point, been a womanizer concerned purely with “hitting & quitting” if you will.
That is the least offensive reason to be waiting like a dog at a fast food counter, I”ll give Joyce that much. I am not burdened with an excess of classiness but I always think that looks so trashy.
The reference to President Doris in the alt-text reminds me that Paetron revealed there’s an upcoming Roommates!!! strip which introduces a Walky counterpart, with the entire joke being “Can you believe President Doris likes this guy?”
It’s been … nearly a year? over a year? … since Dorothy and Walky broke up and Joyce is still dragging her over ever wanting to date him.
Not the same thing as warning the guy off, sure, but interesting.
(For further context, it hasn’t even been five full in-universe months yet since the beginning of the comic. We began in the last days of August/early December, and it’s currently early-to-mid-January in the comic.)
The time-skip itself was three months, and then there were also the couple of days/weeks (?) were Walky was kinda entangled with Amber. It’s for sure over 3 months, but yeah a vast overestimate of how long the strip actually spans
The timeskip started a week-ish before Halloween, and dropped us back into the story in the opening days of January. Due to the actual time covered in-story since then it’s possible that it’s now been over three full months, but the actual time skipped was on the order of ~70ish days, not 90+ days.
(Incidentally doing some more precise math on a whim, the Great Timeskip began the night of October 21 and ended the morning of January 10. That’s 80 days, or just a little over two and a half months.)
And then in the next four panels, they calmly talked through their differences, showing respect for perspectives they hadn’t considered before. All thanks to Space Captain Julia!
Sometimes I feel like people in these comment sections forget that we are omniscient readers with full access to all of everyone’s thoughts and actions on an easily accessible archive, whereas the characters only have access to the information they have in universe. Dorothy has always know Joe to be a kinda detached piece of shit guy! She hasn’t seen any significant evidence to the contrary! Why would or should she expect anything different from him based on the back catalog of behavior he’s displayed?
Everyone is so quick to bag on characters who are interfering or negative toward their pet ship fantasy that they don’t actually holistically consider the strip.
Also everyone is way too harsh on Dorothy specifically, for some reason. So she was driving in the wrong lane and crashed into a car in Ireland back in 1987, instantly killing both people in it, so what?
I feel like famous men get let off the hook way too easily for such things.
-Matthew Broderick
-Ted Kennedy
-William S. Burroughs
-Mark Wahlberg (not causing death, but still…)
-And then that whole crew behind the deaths of Anna Mae Aquash and Perry Ray Robinson… (some were convicted but others were not)
…I dunno. Just those particular victims have been on my mind a lot, recently, when I see media referencing or even celebrating the perpetrators with no mention of their crimes. 🙁
…Not that a person’s crimes should follow them their whole life, of course! But there should be *some* accountability and public acceptance of personal responsibility before social reintegration, I do believe.
that said even if dorothy wasn’t seemingly more hostile , i feel like a lot of joyce’s friends would ‘warn’ any potential male suitor like becky did with ethan despite that relationship being a sham
lol idk how ‘open’ taco bell kitchens are to where you could peek in/hover tho other than someone missing a side if i got something i’d ask to leave off i’d just pick it off my self unless it’s sauce as opposed to bothering an employee lol
given that they’re having it in the restaurant i wouldn’t expect them to be fully wrapped Cept like burritos but i usually only get tacos from local places
Logic brain is telling me that Dorothy of course has no idea about Joe’s character development, so naturally she doesn’t know that his crush is genuine and adorable.
Shipper brain is saying Dorothy should butt out of it and let them be cute together.
DRAMA brain wants to see Joyce and Dorothy’s relationship explode gloriously when Joyce finds out that Dorothy Mom Friended so hard she chased Joe away.
Do you want to be President of the United States of America, Dorothy?
This is where you start acting like one, and I don’t mean the noble and peaceful person you’ve been up until recently.
Politicians are called Snakes because we send our Smart Criminals into High Offices.
Politics requires Criminality as a form of Intelligence.
I see you trying to be calm and tactful by sitting there being vile as you fold your hands trying not to kill Joe, but this is obvious and entirely uncivil.
The Manners of the Court deny power to those who obviously seek it.
You are a child.
Joe would win an election against you.
He should calmly walk away and run for Student Senate.
If only Dorothy could see the way Joe smiles at Joyce, maybe she could sense that, this time, it’s something else. But I’m happy to see Dorothy question Joe’s intentions with her friend. I think it’s good that they talk to each other without involving Joyce and I hope for a comical situation with them glaring and making menacing/apologetic jesture at each other whenever Joyce isn’t looking at them.
Oh, man, Joyce got roofied bt a serial rapisr, a gun pointed at her, kidnapped, witnessed a murder, acquaintence mike got murdered, and yet this comment thread is full of clowns saying Dorothy showing concern is being controlling and mean.
People, if you see a lion stalking your best friend and say nothing, you’re a shitty friend. An absolute fucking failure of a friend.
But, but, you sputter, Joe isnt a lion!
He has been for the last 4 years. This is fiction, so whether Joe ends up hurtiing Joyce will be determined entirely by whatever plot point, fan service, and societal commentary that Willis decides to tickle. But joe has been a serial womanizer for years. And Joyce is a virgin who names her future children before a first date. Dorothy is being a friend. If you woukd say nothing, you are no friend.
I don’t disagree that protecting the people around you is important, but if you’re trying to scare off the lion without telling your friend “Hey, watch out for the lion,” I would think your priorities are very skewed.
“if you’re trying to scare off the lion without telling your friend “Hey, watch out for the lion,””
Really?
Put jennifer or sarah in the room and they get to watch as gash face is trying to roofie Joyce. Joyce goes to the bathroom and they walk up to gash face and tell him “find different prey”, and your response would be “NOOOO! You have to tell Joyce! She has to do it!”
No. She doesnt. And sarah or jennifer wouldnt be bad people for scaring him off.
Jfc. I didnt misread. You literally said ““if you’re trying to scare off the lion without telling your friend… your priorities are very skewed.”
My priority number one is that my friend doesnt get eaten by a lion. There is nothing skewed about it.
“My response would be to go to Joyce and say “Hey, some dude just roofied your fucking drink, throw it away and let’s get the hell out of here.””
Joyce looks at you, and says: but he’s a good christian boy. His father is a minister. He quoted the bible. He’s a nice boy. You must be mistaken.
And then because “keeping your friend from being eaten by a lion” is not your top number one priority, you shrug as she walks back to gash face and gets eaten by a lion.
You realize that the way it went down between joyce and gash face is entirely romanticized right? Joyce got extremely lucky to realize she had been roofied in time, and extremely lucky she had a whole bunch of friends looking for her at that exact moment, who all ended up right next to her at just the right moment. Several other girls werent so lucky. At least one of them had to have been raped while unconscious.
Sometimes your friend is too drunk to drive and too drunk to admit it, so you actually have to take his keys against his protestations.
If youre not willing to do that, then we have very, very different priorities. I’ll keep mine. You can keep yours.
Also, in purely practical terms, she happened to get the chance to talk to Joe separately first.
Unless something clears up what’s going on, she’ll probably talk to Joyce when she gets the chance.
I think all the conversation in the comments about what is or isn’t the right thing to do in this situation for either character, what it means, what they intend, what it implies, is a testament to Willis being a fantastic writer.
As a reader of the comic, who is privy to seeing what went on with Joe & Joyce, I find myself rooting for them and an interesting parallel is that I find myself on guard for Dorothy’s “helicopter parenting” of Joyce similar to how Dorothy herself is on guard for Joe in the comic. As such, my instinct is to be antagonistic towards Dorothy’s behavior from how she phrased what she said to her choice of where/when to voice what she did.
Objectively, I still think it’s a pretty over-the-line aggressive thing to say so suddenly, but IMO that’s kind of the point here, as I believe we’re headed towards a lot of conflict between Dorothy and Joyce. Particularly with Joyce’s recent past, Dorothy is feeling like she needs to go to extremes to protect Joyce from herself, particularly in the realm of college & sexual politics/predation. However, despite Dorothy’s best intentions, I think she is unknowingly falling victim to infantilizing Joyce after learning about her autism diagnosis and unconsciously taking on this persona of “resentful caretaker” when she really has no obligation or business to do so. Like so much in the comic, I see it being rooted in trauma response to recent (in their timeline) events and Dorothy’s inherent nature to see herself as a born leader & thus a shepherd. Again, it is unfortunate because while she has good intentions, she’s actually just filling the void in Joyce’s life of being an authority figure trying to rob Joyce of her autonomy because “she doesn’t know better.” I think we keep seeing examples of Dorothy viewing Joyce’s autism as clinical vs. subjective and for her, a validation that she’s not capable of making choices herself. I also believe Dorothy is in this space where she’s making a lot of uninformed assumptions about autism, but I think it’s also somewhat a commentary on her character where her own intelligence/self-perceived intelligence is very high, but her emotional IQ is not nearly as such.
“despite Dorothy’s best intentions, I think she is unknowingly falling victim to infantilizing Joyce after learning about her autism diagnosis”
Yeah, couldnt be that Joe has been a serial womanizer for years and Joyce is a virgin who comes up with her future childrens names before a first date? Couldnt be that Joyce got roofied bt a serial rapist, was kidnapped, witnessed a murder, had Mike get murdered and there are plenty of real world dangers out there, and Joe has skirted the edges of dangerous behavior for years?
Has to be the autism?
“being an authority figure trying to rob Joyce of her autonomy because “she doesn’t know better.” ”
Good grief. Ruth and Jennifer were in a mutual suicide pact and carla was portrayed as the villian for stepping in and saving their lives.
This idea relating to “mah automomy!” is reducivist and stupid, but willis indulges it. DoA is so full of mommy and daddy issues so much that i shoukdnt be surprised that the biggedt insult readers can throw at dorothy is to call her a “controlling mother”.
I have no intent on arguing with you, nor is my intention to “insult Dorothy” who is a fictional character and not a real person. However I acknowledge that that is the tone many comments take (taking character sides and supporting or hating/insulting others.) I’m just trying to comment on the writing and what I think Willis’ intention in creating these scripts are/where I think he’s going with the story.
The story is full of traumatic events and the characters are all just barely not children anymore. They’re all going to make mistakes, make bad choices, take actions/say things in general that they’ll later in life look back on and learn something from but they’re all operating on instinct and the level at which their respective judgements are developed.
Does it “have to be the autism?” I mean, given that that’s what has JUST happened in the comic, Dorothy literally just commented on it in the previous strip and this is fiction that is written and crafted by someone where they build upon things that have just transpired, yes, I think it is “the autism” because that’s partly what the comic is about in this current point in time.
I’m not casting Dorothy as “wrong” or “bad” or “ill-intentioned,” just that how things are unfolding, there is going to be inevitable conflict between her and Joyce based on how things are unfolding. Dorothy might not consciously want that, but her instincts are telling her that she has to do what she has to do, which for her is justified through the recent past she experienced that you listed out and that I referenced in my comment. It’s not good or bad, it just is what it is. Lots of people find themselves in these situations irl where they believe they are doing what is right and find themselves being thought of as a villain. It doesn’t mean that they are or are not.
I think Dorothy’s attitude here is far more about her attitude towards Joe than anything about Joyce. It’s probably added to by her thinking Joyce is naive about such things, but it’s far more about her years of experience knowing how Joe treats women.
100% that’s where Dorothy’s head is at & what her intent consciously is, that’s justified by her canonical experiences & backstory. The stuff about how she is interacting with Joyce & how it seems from the distance we have as an audience IMO is more about her subconscious & how her emotions are being informed by her experiences.
Joyce IS naive. She is the dictionary definition of naive.
The weird thing is the characters on DoA who are presented as NOT naive all present as misanthropes or suicide cases or playing it “cool” to keep distant from people.
Sarah
Ruth, Jennifer, Amber
Sal
Between these two extremes, between Joyce on one end and suicidal misanthropes on the other, somewhere in the middle, is Dorothy.
I think the issue is not that Joyce isn’t naive, because she is, but its the assumption that BECAUSE she is naive, she needs to be protected, even at the expense of her autonomy, or even her trust in her friends to respect her wishes and boundaries.
Sometimes people who are naive only stop being naive once they make mistakes and learn through experience. You may want to instinctively protect someone from having to learn things the hard way, but a lot of the time that does them a disservice. Those are their mistakes to make, their lessons to learn, and the most supportive thing to do sometimes is to just keep a watchful eye out and make sure to be there to help pick up the pieces afterward–and to foster a relationship of trust and non-judgement with them so that that they come to you for help when they need it.
Thing is, there are two kinds of naive. One is oblivious to evil. Joyce is the other kind. She believes in evil and has an idea of the shapes it can take, and she doesn’t want to learn the details personally, so she guards her innocence. Joyce can be fierce! And she knows more about the big bad world than she’d like you to believe. I’d trust her with Joe, not having seen recent developments, with maybe just a word of “are you sure this is a good idea?”
But at the same time, there are times when you want to try to keep your naive friends from making mistakes that are too drastic. That’s not a bad thing.
When people ask me emotionally complex questions, I often jam up for anywhere from seconds to years. Then they draw all sorts of conclusions from my silence.
Also, everything FadingMemory said above. Dorothy has seen awful things happen to Joyce and sort of appointed herself Joyce’s caretaker… except no one asked her to do that.
While part of me is like DOROTHY NO because I love Joe/Joyce, I also think it’s completely understandable how she feels and what she’s saying based on what she’s known about Joe for pretty much their whole (pretty long) acquaintance.
While she doesn’t have the most updated information, which we do, that’s not really her fault.
I don’t even particularly like Dorothy, but I will say she’s got a pretty good track record of admitting when she’s wrong about stuff, so I trust her to come around.
Aw, I knew this was coming: Dorothy’s known Joe for a long time and doesn’t know about A) his character development, and B) how his and Joyce’s relationship has changed. Combine that with firsthand witnessing the way guys have hurt Joyce, and this makes complete sense.
I’ve said this before, but if this were a Historical Romance, Joyce wouldn’t end up with Joe (not sure who her match would be… possibly someone we haven’t met yet… too bad Dina is already taken!). But in the next book or the final book, Joe and Dorothy would totally end up with each other. Because Rake and Bluestocking + enemies to lovers tropes.
If I had a friend like Joe and a best friend, I would ask Joe to back off too not taking into account any other factors, only because Joyce is my friend.
I (Dorothy) am not really supposed to know the development that happened between JoJo in the meantime.
– Does Dorothy know that Joe and Joyce dated once at the start of the first term? (I know Sarah knows, and Mike did, but I don’t recall it ever brought up as a topic of discussion with Dorothy.)
– I wonder if this might set off a subplot that leads to Joyce and Dorothy’s friendship having problems. We know that things have been a little strained (Dorothy upset when Joyce was distracted when she received the art supplies, etc.). I could see an argument like “I want to date Joe”…”He’s not good for you” causing even more conflict.
I was thinking the same thing and I don’t think it ever came up either. They didn’t talk about it at the time and Joyce doesn’t really bring it up afterwards.
Man, everyone out here is arguing about who is in the right or not, whereas I’m just delighted by the drama, as per usual. I love when characters have flaws which are actually perfectly reasonable, but which lead to inevitable conflict regardless.
Dorothy has every reason to think that Joe’s intentions are shitty, because quite frankly, even though Joe HAS changed, the literal only person he’s really shown any of that change to has been Joyce. (And Amber.) To basically everyone else, he’s doubled down pretty hard on shoving his usual chauvinistic mask back on to avoid being vulnerable.
She also has no reason to believe him if he tried to convince her that ‘he’s changed’ or whatever, but quite frankly, I don’t think that Joe would even attempt to say that! Because he still has shaky feelings about whether it’s possible for him to change. It’s a thing I think he’d LIKE to believe, and deciding to be genuinely vulnerable with Joyce about his feelings is a big step in showing that he’s willing to give it a shot, but that’s not going to be enough to shake the foundation of his core belief and anxiety that despite his best efforts, in the end he’ll end up the same as he always was. So there’s no chance he’ll try to convince Dorothy with an “I’m different now” tactic, because he doesn’t believe that. At most, he might say that he’s trying something different, which is true enough.
But Dorothy has no reason to think that allowing Joe to use Joyce as some experiment around his own personal growth is good for Joyce! And quite frankly, when you put it that way, it sounds kinda shitty, doesn’t it?!
And even though those feelings of Dorothy’s are totally reasonable, there is STILL an undercurrent of her jumping the gun and being a bit overly aggressive about this because she is feeling particularly insecure about her relationship with Joyce, and is leaning into often somewhat possessive and controlling behaviors. Not egregiously so, in my mind, but enough that it’s going to inevitably cause conflict with Joyce and make the situation worse.
Joyce is going to be reactive and overprotective of her own agency right now, even from well-meaning people she cares about, because well…all of the people who have caused her horrific trauma thus far have been people she previously trusted implicitly doing things to hurt and control her while ‘meaning well’ the entire time. She is going to be wary, even of her friends doing relatively innocuous things in comparison. That’s how trauma works, unfortunately.
And all of this is just very very good writing, and good character drama, and I love this comic.
the thing is that I don’t think that Dorothy has to know he’s changed or see any of his efforts in order for what she’s doing to be wrong and dumb (not a complaint, as they say it’s not Smarting of Age). She can fully disapprove of Joe and not like him, and want to ‘protect’ Joyce. The problem is meddling behind Joyce’s back.
Even putting meddling aside, if she genuinely wants to help or be protective, that’s a conversation with Joyce. Telling someone “I think [acquaintance] is being creepy toward you and here’s why” is not only more effective, it’s far more useful to Joyce if she actually was at some kind of risk
Joe and Joyce as the Couple. Joe and Dorothy Hatefucking. Dorothy wears a Mask, and Joe finally gets that 3-way he always wanted, forgetting that 2 on 1 is never fair play! Joe is the Prey.
The exchange I feared. New fear emerges: the infantilising of autistic person (Joyce). “You don’t understand people because you’re autistic, he doesn’t really care and I know because I’m not autistic. I need to protect you”
One thing I like about this strip is that Joe’s shitty, creepy behavior has consequences. It’s cathartic for me to watch. Even if he changes he has to also deal with the consequences later on, without expecting or demanding hand holding. It’s more interesting and less frustrating.
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Silence is a valid option
if not always the best option
The great truth of Tell Tale games.
No, I won’t mute Strong Bads Cool Game For Attractive People. That would eliminate 80% of the fun.
Indeed it will!
Sam and Max has some good writing too.
woulda been the best option for dotty; yikes
One the one hand: yeah, yikes. Even if her concern is reasonable, trying to pick a fight with Joe about it isn’t. On the other hand: I remember being Dorothy’s age, and I certainly didn’t have the maturity to recognize that the diplomatic option was usually better than the dramatic one. She’s got her heart in the right place.
I have to believe Dorothy is in the right here. If Joe doesn’t have feelings for Joyce, and he’s giving Dorothy no reason to believe he does, then there’s no reason for diplomatic being around the bush.
* beating around the bush
It’s important to remember she hasn’t been around for any of his character growth, too. She’s operating on the assumption he’s still the same Joe she knew in high school. She wasn’t there to witness Rachel tear him down, the many heart-to-heart moments he’s shared with Joyce, their science classes together, or the art class ‘yesterday’. Something tells me this outing will end with Joyce a little bit more skeptical, Joe on the back foot, and Dorothy with egg on her face.
Dorothy should talk to Amber about this. It feels like that’s where we’re headed, since the story brought Joe and Amber into each others’ orbits, and she probably wouldn’t want to go to Danny. (Although, has she seen that he’s moved on yet? Would Dorothy reappearing potentially cause an issue with him and Sal? This could go a number of directions…)
?? Joe and Joyce have been on an OTP trajectory since she hired Mike to punch him. It’s not a false path.
Also, aren’t Joe and Amber step-siblings now?
Diplomacy should be the default option, not something you need a reason for. This strip demonstrates exactly why: if your first instinct is to come in guns blazing, you’ll end up hitting a lot of people who don’t actually deserve it.
Eh, given Joe’s track record which I don’t blame her for jumping straight to aggressive here, could she handle it better? Sure.
But I get it.
Here’s the thing – Joyce also knows Joe’s track record as well, yet she still chose to hang out with him.
The difference is that Joyce has had actual meaningful reactions with post-list Joe. I don’t think Dorothy has.
Interactions, not reactions. Although reactions too, I guess, come to think of it.
I mean, that still means Dorothy should have probably talked to Joyce first instead of what she’s doing right now.
Nah, this is reasonable. Dorothy is wrong, since she doesn’t know Joe’s development, but given what she does know, it’s a good reaction.
Right, but she also apparently doesn’t trust Joyce enough to assume that the fact that she’s willing to spend time with him means there has been development. And doesn’t care enough to talk to her.
I woulda said, “buh?”
Uh oh. Dotty called dibs.
She can share. -_-
Doctor, as I am sure you have elucidated to more than one possessive alien/robot/alien robot, you cannot call dibs on a romantic partner because people are not objects.
Well, rather, you can, but it’s pretty crappy behavior.
That’s not the face of a woman who is calling dibs, it’s just the face of a woman who wants to eat some taco.
Well that doesn’t change the tone of this topic at ALL now does it?
It’s the face of someone who is concerned about Joyce’s taco not being contaminated by sour cream?
… nope, not an improvement.
It is the face of someone who wants to keep the taco to herself, as it were.
Clearly its got nothing to do with Dorothy knowing what Joe is like and being concerned about his motives. Nope, must be that she’s secretly lusting after Joyce herself and doesnt want the competition.
Hey, we all have our fantasies.
Oh ho ho, this’ll be fun
“Fun” here means “an intersection of the discourses I am excited to see flip over and catch on fire in the driveway”
Calling Joyce prey might say something about Dorothy we’re not ready to talk about.
It’s an insanely bad look! I get why Dotty is going there but wow! Shit is bad, sis! Retract!
Joe is barely two seconds into his atonement for his past behavior. There’s no guarantee this is nothing more than a passing infatuation for him that will leave her close friend hurt. You can see her suspicion transmute into rage with each passing frame and honestly, it’s totally warranted. After what Joyce went through, navigating the advances of someone who only sees her as a sex object won’t end well.
Yup. It’s been made quite clear that Dorothy has known Joe for many years now. He was her boyfriend’s best friend and she had a front row seat to his conquests and his bragging. It’s going to take Joe a while to prove that his intentions are wholesome.
But he doesn’t.
And Dorothy has no way to know that right now.
This is gonna get messy…
There’s no reason for Dorothy to think it’s even an infatuation, rather than just Joe making his usual attempts to get into some girl’s pants.
It seems mostly like an indication of how she views Joe than how she views Joyce- she sees him as someone who can only think in that predatory mindset
Even given this, it’s a real crappy thing to say!
Yes, this exactly. I’m confused by people reacting as if these are the terms that Dotty thinks in – they’re clearly meant to be an accusation against Joe.
You aren’t alone. Dorothy regards Joe through the lens *he* crafted. She is using his terminology to be sure he understands her “suggestion”.
Speaking to an audience using their language is a well-known method for trying to make yourself understood. Applying lingo beyond kenning of auditory perceivers degrokifies.
If you just now created degrokifies, you have my undying respect.
On account of I’m not intending to die (if the singularity gets here in time).
Joe has been shitty and misogynistic for a very long time but he’s never been dishonest about his intentions, only about his prowess. Maybe in the past he’s played the angle of acting like he’s romantically interested to get partners but in the comic he’s been very clear that he’s looking for sexual partners first and romantic partners never.
Dorothy isn’t even giving him the opportunity to say “No, this is new and different,” and she’s not using his lens, she’s equating him to Ryan.
I think she did. That is what the ‘Do you like her?’ gives an opening for. Either a ‘I like her as a friend, I don’t intend to go any further’ or a ‘I genuinely want a romantic relation for her. This isn’t like anything before’. In the absence of such a thing, it is not unreasonable for Dorothy to react as she does.
Trouble is, this is new to Joe and he’s still working it out. He doesn’t know how to respond. IIRC he hasn’t actually told Joyce what he’s feeling — he’s not going to tell Dorothy first, even after he knows what he wants to say.
Yep. It’s entirely understandable that Joe isn’t just going to bare his heart to Dorothy. But it is also entirely understandable that, in the absence of said heart bearing, Dorothy will assume that Joe will follow the usual MO.
Sometimes a situation can be shitty and tragic even though everyone involved is currently acting decently.
He hasn’t given her a romantic, gushing speech about how she leaves him breathless, but he’s made his feelings known through a crack in his armor.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-13/01-bring-me-to-life-drawing/doodling/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-13/01-bring-me-to-life-drawing/littlehearts/
@Needfuldoer
Dorothy wasn’t there
Also I wanted to point the do list existing, unprotected, during the time a predator was out that targeted Dorothy.
She is being rather chill in fact.
@khn0
Mark said “IIRC he hasn’t actually told Joyce what he’s feeling”. I pointed out that he got about as close as he can currently get to doing so.
@Needfuldoer
Thanks for the clarification!
I read Mark’s post like four times to be sure and still managed to misread it.
I present you my apologies for the remark.
The comic format does interfere with our ability to tell how much time elapses between “Do you like her?” and “Find different prey,” but Dorothy doesn’t wait for an answer regardless if she immediately continues speaking or she waits 5 minutes while Joe’s brain restarts.
There’s a beat panel, which suggests at least some noticeable passage of time.
> Joe has … never been dishonest about his intentions
He has though, to Joyce, in this comic. He absolutely misrepresented what he was looking for, in the face of extremely direct evidence that Joyce wasn’t looking for a sexual relationship, with the expectation that he could convince her otherwise and ‘break her in’. He considered it for Joyce’s own good.
If you grok something, why would you want to degrok it?
Probably true. I prefer to believe Dorothy is realizing she’s not a zero after all.
Those aren’t all freckles. She’s a vampire – run Joe you’ve gotten between her and blood!
If nothing else, she’s assuming that’s what Joe’s view is, which is pretty shitty. Joe has never given anyone reason to think truly badly of him.
Joe has a long history of objectification and misogyny. Dorothy has not been around for his redemption arc.
that is incredibly shortsighted. Joe has given off an extremely shitty vibe for most of the comic’s run time. I love him now, but his unnuanced meathead womanizer persona is all dotty has seen.
And given that she’s known him since high school, she’s seen it for far longer than anyone else in the cast besides Danny. She knows what Joe is (or was, but she wasn’t there for his character development).
She’s also known him a long time. She knows that he doesn’t “trick” girls into thinking ge likes them to get laid. He’s alway been very upfront about what he’s looking for and doesn’t try to bully anyone into something they don’t want.
For her to assume he’s trying to get laid is understandable. For her to be this aggressive isn’t. He is not a rapist, or even close to it. He’s a horny guy who is honest and upfront about it. People need to stop shitting on him.
When he first asked Joyce out she definitely wasn’t aware he was trying to fuck her.
True, but he didn’t lie to her in order to fuck her. Joe has always been upfront about “this is about sex, and that’s it”.
Not really in that date scene. He asked her on a date, not for sex.
Of course it all blew up into Mike/Joyce violence before it could get very far, but at the start Joyce was definitely thinking in terms of relationship and he’d didn’t make it clear. He didn’t lie, but he also wasn’t upfront.
By that logic, Joyce also wasn’t upfront about wanting a relationship, so it’s a tie.
What?
He literally made a list ranking women’s fuckability at one point, that’s like as objectifying women as you can get. He’s getting better but not everyone is required to forgive and just forget about how he used to be.
are you sure about that?
I mean, I like Joe an awful lot, but he certainly has given people reason to think badly of him.
Particularly women-type people.
Lol haha don’t forget she knew him even before “the list”. She probably had to spend a lot of time with him in high school, listening to this jerk who was her boyfriend’s best friend, talk about all of his conquests and his opinions of women’s bodies. He has made quite the turn around since school started but she hasn’t seen any of that and she also hasn’t seen any of his wholesome friendship with Joyce.
I have to believe this is trolling. There’s no way that someone read this comic and got “Joe is a precious baby who never did anything misogynistic from it”… I really NEED to believe that, because otherwise this comments section is displaying a really worrying number of people who don’t think Joe’s previous actions were objectionable.
Which kind of suggests how those commenters view women, and it’s not a good look.
There’s always been a subcurrent of “Joe did nothing wrong” around here.
So you’re just gonna gloss over the time he ranked every single woman he knows by fuckability? That’s a pretty big reason to truly think bad about him. Dorothy also knows him since their school days, one of the longest timeframes alongside Danny, so that Joe is probably still ingrained in her mind, and she hasn’t seen any of his wholesome turnaround. Only Amber and Joyce really know Joe can see women as anything other than prey
You’re joking right?
lol
lmao even
Given the context, that she accuses Joe of thinking of Joyce like that, not really.
Things look like they’re getting real heated in there 😮
And not just because of all the spicy Taco Bell XD
Taco Bell? Spicy? Maybe for Dorothy’s bony albino ass.
Albino? Is that sometimes slang for white? If I may ask, are you white?
Dorothy, in a world of things that might be “it”, this is not that
Dorothy, even you should know there’s a difference between ‘liking’ and his usual nonsense
I think she does. She is sitting behind Joe and can’t see his big watery-eye puppy face, so she likely thinks his silence is a not him struggling to talk about feelings but an guilty admission that he doesn’t like her and only wants her for her body. That is probably why she is so angry.
That’s an interesting take, thanks for sharing.
I had the exact opposite initial understanding – that Dorothy used the word “like” as a synonym for any kind of “interested in.” And she doesn’t approve of Joe being interested in Joyce in any way, because she assumes Joe is who he’s always been and he will her Joyce.
I initially suspected that if Joe had immediately admitted that he really has true feelings for Joyce, Dorothy’s reaction would have been the same.
But having read your take, I’m not so sure anymore.
*will hurt Joyce.
I hope this leads him to turn around and give Dorothy a passionate speech about the many ways he thinks Joyce is amazing, that catches her off-guard. The strip ends on a single frame from Dorothy’s perspective, showing Joyce behind him carrying their tray of food, blushing, with her irises the size of dinner plates. Both of them have extra shiny highlights on their eyes. He only notices her in the next one.
That strip generates at least 350 comments and a few new Patrons.
That would be super grand.
Alternate sad timeline: Dorothy successfully scares Joe away (by hitting his fear that he’s garbage who will wreck Joyce). Joyce sees this as the biggest mom-overstep in the world, creating a huge rift between Joyce and Dorothy. Oh noooo.
Dorothy. Shut up.
Dorothy is judging Joe by who he was in high-school, but can you blame her?
Yeah, I’m hoping that she’ll change her tune once given the whole picture, but she definitely doesn’t have it atm.
Dorothy’s judging Joe, based on how he’s acted for the last 5 months, im interested in seeing how Joe will try to show he’s changed to Dorothy
Yes I am too. He’s such a wimp in many ways, it’s going to be hard for him to be the soft, brave, generous boyfriend she knows Joyce deserves. It takes guts to not paper over your feelings with bro-talk and he’s only just learning how.
I don’t. I know this side of Joe is genuine because I’m the audience, but from her POV, I think she’s completely right to say what she did there. I even think she was nice about it.
I get the distinct sense that this is where my whatever of ND kicks in and everyone tells me I’m wrong.
No, I’m with you 100%.
no you’re real for this
Definitely with you as well
Dorothy isn’t and shouldn’t be expected to be all-audience-knowing
You have the correct take
I don’t. She cares for Joyce and knows she likely is looking for love not empty physicality – which was kind of Joe’s thing. Also if you notice, Dorothy is sitting behind Joe, she can’t see his face so she likely interprets his silence as a guilty admission that he doesn’t like her.
She’s judging him but what he advertised himself to be just a couple of months ago. And it’s not like they’ve been hanging out for her to see his struggles to grow as a person instead of a penis.
*by. Which is to say, I agree with your assessment.
Humans are such easy prey.
Except for the protagonist of a Predator movie.
Just drop your weapon. You dont count for their kill if you are unarmed.
Dorothy not trusting Joe might be reasonable, especially since she doesn’t know what we do. But Dorothy deciding that Joyce isn’t capable of making her own calls seems a little too controlling.
Agree asking Joyce if she’s sure about Joe is as fine, but she’s should not be deciding Joyce’s dating life for her. Dorothy’s micromanaging tendencies seem to be alot worse lately.
Oh, don’t worry. Joyce doesn’t pray anymore. She’s atheist.
ha ha 😛
It’s a new thing for Joyce. Easy mistake for Dotty to make. What’s important is that she’s trying.
Amusing, but this is Joe we’re talking about preying, not Joyce praying.
Goooo fuck yourself Dorothy!
Even if you don’t trust Joe this is not a conversation you have here while the three of you are out. You have it 1×1. And you need to trust Joyce more? Dorothy is been way too mommy over Joyce and it needs to stop
You can say that again. Her possessiveness rivals even Becky’s at this point, it’s worrying to say the least 🙁
Dorothy has known Joe far longer (in universe) than we have. Far longer than she’s known Joyce. This isn’t possessiveness or being the mom friend. This is the right move, given the information available to her.
Okay let’s game this out: There’s four options Joe can either be legit or bad and Dorothy can trust him or not. We can rule out the Dorothy trusting him part because no matter what he says here she won’t.
Joe is legit and Dorothy doesn’t trust him: She has overstepped her bounds and shown she doesn’t trust Joyce, potentially makes a normal lunch at Taco Bell awkward and pisses Joyce off.
Joe is bad and Dorothy doesn’t trust him: Don’t think Joe would say anything that gives him away if he is bad because he’s not an idiot but let’s say he does say something that is a little sus. Dorothy STILL has to go talk to Joyce about this anyways because this is ultimately her choice, oversteps her bounds and shown she doesn’t trust Joyce, potentially makes a normal lunch at Taco Bell awkward and pisses Joyce off which is bad because she needs Joyce to actually trust her now.
This all goes back to Dorothy does not respect Joyce as an equal. She thinks Joyce needs to be protected. Joyce is trying to navigate alot of things on her own and Dorothy keeps trying to hold her hand through it.
I think the idea is that the ‘Joe is bad and Dorothy doesn’t trust him’, Dorothy managed to shame and scare him into finding ‘easier’ (and more willing) prey, because this one will have a lot of drama involved, and of course the accusation of being a predator.
I don’t think she is in the wrong here, based on the information she has. The thing with Jennifer, yeah, that was a bit possessiveness, but this one is done from a good place.
True, but also remember how she lashed out on Jennifer for “swooping in” to help Joyce. 😐
You can see her trying to hold it in though?
If I knew someone like how Joe was in highschool and had no evidence he changed? Yeah I would be a lot less kind than Dorothy is being here. Especially when I was like 18/19 like them? I’d have had to hold myself back from punching him
I definitely get where Dorothy’s coming from. If you search for her and Joe’s tags together, they’re in surprisingly few comics together. And in those, Joe’s being a creep.
and they knew each other in high school, via Danny, and even Danny has expressed some disgust at joe’s attitudes towards women and sex.
also she’s 18 and is worried for her friend who has been incredibly naive and repeatedly traumatized in the months they’ve known each other. of course she’s gonna be quick to defend Joyce without taking hours or days to find the right quiet moment for a reasonable adult discussion.
Oooh Scary
Oooh, another test for Joe! He was okay with telling Joyce about his feelings, but Dorothy is a whole other kettle of fish. Dorothy knows him better than anyone on campus except Danny (and Joyce) and therefore is in a good position to tease or belittle him about them, but also – and probably more worryingly to him – to confirm the bad little voice inside him saying ‘you are toxic trash and don’t deserve Joyce’s future perfection’.
It would be frankly braver of him to tell Dorothy ‘no, this is real feelings’ than it was to tell Joyce, and that was solid courage. Let’s see if he sticks this landing! (I hope he does.)
I agree, very well said. This is going to be difficult for him here and I’m keeping my fingers crossed. All he really wants is to spend as much time with Joyce as possible and make her happy. Sound great but Dorothy may be afraid he won’t be able to keep from running away.
I don’t think Dorothy believes he has enough feeling TO run away, is the thing. She thinks he’s just after another bedpost-notch and doesn’t mind if he has to okay-act being friends to get it, which will hurt Joyce. She asked’do you LIKE her’ in the certain knowledge that the answer is somewhere between ‘hell no’ and ‘I like her boobs’.
Oh snap, Joe turned into Walky! (tags are wrong, lol)
Imagine if it were actually Walky in this strip, and Dorothy’s lines were the exact same. Wouldn’t that be surreal…
She’d honestly be more justified. She dated walky and knows what he’s like. And let’s be fair. Walky does kinda just…go through girls. Walky has dated more people in 6 months than I’ve dated in 28 years.
I don’t think “having relationships and getting broken up with” counts as “going through girls” in the way you’re implying. Plenty of people date in that way without it being a negative, despite not matching up with your personal experience.
I will also say that Dorothy believes she knows what Joe is like, too. She has known him longer than almost any other member of the cast and hasn’t been privy to his recent improvements.
Plus, even if that was our criteria, Joe’s gone through more girls. And gives off the impression that it’s even more.
No. Based on what she knows she definitely more justified saying this to Joe.
Dorothy, I know this is a comic strip and Joyce is off-panel, meaning she might as well be on another plane of existence for narrative purposes, but would it kill you to do voice your concerns to Joe when she isn’t in the room?
No, this is the wrong direction. If she has concerns (which she does, and, to be fair, not entirely unwarranted), she should voice them to JOYCE, not Joe.
I would have said that a large-ish noisy hall full of groups ignoring each other is a very good place for a quick private conversation. She can see whether Joyce is getting close enough to hear. And her intent seems to be simply to deliver a warning and be done.
I hope this doesn’t get to him, it is super not her place. usually I wouldn’t expect it to, but his self esteem is a little tanked and even with Joyce responding positively I could see him going ‘yeah, dorothy probably knows better than me’ right now
My worry is Dorothys words back up the voice in Joes brain that tells him hes not worthy of Joyce so he goes ahead and self-sabotages which lets Dorothy feel vindicated
Yes, this is what I meant re:self esteem, bur couldn’t think of how to word it
Very controlling, but I can get it on one level because Joyce doesn’t exactly have a ton of dating experience and Joe’s dating history leans more toward mutually enjoyable one-night stands.
might’ve been kinder to them both to go with something like “you do realize there’ll be massive emotional fallout for her if this is just a fling, right?”
Dorothy would be right from her perspective. Remember that she doesn’t know what we know, but she also knows how he was like in High school. All signs point to: He’s scum, for her. So I think Dorothy is pretty valid in feeling this way.
Then maybe she should talk to Joyce first? If she respected Joyce as an equal she would have gone to her first after Taco Bell
Seriously. If she’s that worried about it she could stay with them both for the rest of this “date,” so that Joe doesn’t get a chance to ask her out*, then talk to Joyce after. There’s no reason to do what she’s doing, and I hope it backfires into Joyce overhearing.
*Dotty doesn’t know he already indicated his interest to Joyce, and I imagine she thinks Joe wants to be sneaky about it
You’re right, she should talk to Joyce, but frankly, I don’t blame her for telling the skeezeball who was talking about using alcohol to get laid to back off if he was showing interest in her best friend. That isn’t being possessive, that’s being a good friend (especially given how someone spiked Joyce’s drink last semester).
Maybe I missed this, where was Joe talking about using alcohol to get laid? Because as I remember it Joe has always been about enthusiastic consent. Consent for meaningless throwaway sex, but consent nonetheless.
Right here.
And Dorothy is right there.
he made a joke about it helping orchestrate threesomes. much later admitted that he’s never had a threesome
Admitted to Danny. In the privacy of their own room.
He’s never admitted that to anyone else.
sorry if I implied that he told it freely, I only meant for the audience, not the cast
On the other hand, for all of what is reputation IS that Dorothy is aware of, what he does NOT have is the reputation for leading women on and making them think he’s interested in more than what he’s offering. His usual M.O. is one-night stands and he’s not deceptive in his approach.
So Dorothy is either assuming that he IS being deceptive, which is not what he’s known for, or she’s assuming that he’s operating as usual and that Joyce is too naive to recognize it, and possibly falling into the benevolent ableism trap in which she thinks it’s up to her to speak up and protect Joyce from what should be her own decision/potential mistake to make. We’ve seen a fair bit so far of Dorothy going ‘do you think it’s your (yet undiagnosed) autism?’ about Joyce, the last instance being just two strips ago.
Joe has absolutely been deceptive at the start of the comic, with Joyce by making out like he was after an innocent date while planning to ‘fix her with his penis’.
Dorothy’s not privy to THAT specific conversation but she’s known Joe for a while.
To be fair it did feel like Joe changed his tune when he saw Joyce in that dress and realized “oh this isn’t the horny repressed christian girl getting back at daddy” archetype. This is a very earnestly chaste and pure girl who wants to be treated like a LADY.
Didn’t stop him from ogling a waitress though.
“To be fair” suddenly realizing that Joyce was a person and not a porn trope doesn’t mean the original dishonest start to the date didn’t happen. It is also still the kind of behaviour that would prompt disgust from Dorothy.
If that was what Joe initially thought of Joyce, I don’t see how he was being dishonest. From his POV they would have been playing a game by unspoken consent, one that’s meant to be won by both players.
It turned out that Joyce was playing a game with similar expected outcome but very different rules, and things did not go well.
Right, the thing about assuming “unspoken consent” is that you didn’t actually get any consent. He assumed something about Joyce based on a misogynistic trope and was not upfront with her about his intentions as a result.
Regardless of what he believed was happening, that is a deceptive start to a relationship and it’s likely not the only time that kind of misunderstanding happened. Joe is a flawed individual, as are we all.
I’ll repeat this for those in the back: Presumed, unspoken consent to “play a game” that you have in no way alerted the other person to IS NOT CONSENT and it does not count as honesty.
I don’t read those strips as Joe changing his tune significantly.
Remember he tried to bribe her chaperone (Mike) into going away.
(before learning that Mike was Mike so he doesn’t have that defense).
After that, he tried to convince her lust was OK, which while not damning doesn’t really speak towards him having shifted his goals for the evening.
(The “date” then devolved into punching and ended).
It’s been a minute, but I don’t think he ever actually ended up ogling Conquest. He got punched for it, yeah, but a big factor in him looking at her chest was Joyce and Mike basically insisting he was already doing it. Good odds he would have ogled regardless, but we can’t very well go around punishing people for things they probably might have done if we hadn’t already suggested them into doing those things.
As much as I feel bad for Joe, Dorothy’s choice makes sense and is kind of right
Granted it’s still not letting Joyce be the mess she wants to be but even if there’s good intent to change, it can still get messy
Tricky stuff. I hope Joes able to explain where he’s at and be okay with Dorothy not being chill with him
I wonder how much of this is concern for Joyce but also trying to stamp what little control she still has over Joyce but attempting to scare away a, possible, rival for her affections
None of that last part.
You think theres nothing to that?
Dorothy likes being in control, likes being ‘the leader’ and she just had to deal with Jennifer coming in and taking over her self-designated ‘role’
If anyone would be Dorothy’s rival for Joyce’s affections as a friend, it would be Becky or Sarah, and she has never expressed anything like that towards them.
And I don’t believe she has romantic affection for Joyce, which is really the only way Joe could compete at all.
Also, please remember that, aside from there being a difference between not wanting to share affection and wanting to play the role of leader, Dorothy wasn’t mad that Jennifer stepped up, she was mad that Jennifer stepped up and left her to do what she considered the heavy lifting; similar to the stereotype of one parent being the cool one who lets the child have fun or do whatever they want while the other is always forced to be reasonable or parents who share custody but one only gets custody on the weekends and a couple weeks in the summer.
Yeah, that’s how I read it. “Back off: she’s mine!”
Not the angle I’m getting at all, based on what we know she knows she’s telling a guy with a reputation to not try his old shit with Joyce.
I disagree with the many people saying this should be a private conversation with Joe at another time. This should be a conversation with Joyce (although yeah private and at another time), or a conversation with both of them in the know.
Saying “no, leave her alone” to someone trying to date or befriend your friend without ASKING YOUR FRIEND is bullshit.
Wohoho I’d like to see that after Joyce expresses her displeasure at being treated like a child, the triumvirate tells her that they don’t like her new boyfriend
Given that this storyline opened with Becky, despite her own neuroses and being generally on her bullshit, as I admit she is, actually prioritizing Joyce the person over her precious crystallized ideals of Joyce, I think this is gonna be Dorothy’s solo quest
Also given that Becky has been intimate with Dina, she felt free to make a good “mistake”, and shouldn’t Joyce be free to?
Also Becky HAS always been interested in Joyce dating someone
Except she knows what Joe was like and has no reason to think he’s trying to date or befriend, rather than just score with.
Joe, in her experience, doesn’t date or befriend women.
I mean, Joyce ALSO knows – yet she chose to hang out with him regardless.
So maybe Dorothy should have – oh, I don’t know – talked to Joyce first?
yeah this
hands grip each other lest they find a THROAT.
I hope that Joe is able to articulate his true interest, and that Dorothy is convinced of his sincerity.
That’s my hope. We shall see what actually happens.
It would be an interesting turn of events ,
If Joe told her he knew he wasnt good enough for Joyce and started to cry
Why is Dorothy allowed to date someone she obviously sees no future with in Walky but Joyce can’t do the same thing?
What would make Dorothy think that’s what Joyce is doing when she’s only ever expressed wanting the opposite? Heck, what makes you think that’s what she’s doing?
It’s almost like Dorothy doesn’t have all the information. Weird. Maybe she could have rectified that by talking to Joyce instead of threatening Joe.
Oh how the table’s have turned.
Joe’s old m.o. was quite a bit different than two people just deciding to have some fun dating. She only knows that Joe and hasn’t seen any of the changes he’s made recently.
Remember it wasn’t that long ago in universe he was absolutely garbage.
Well, for one, Dorothy was raised by parents who were relatively open-minded and made sure she was emotionally ready for whatever might reasonably happen to a person (including “casual” relationships.) So her dating Walky was not a big deal.
Joyce was raised by close-minded parents, and thanks to her rather trusting nature and past focus on “morality” (e.g. “only sex inside marriage”), its reasonable to have concerns she might fall victim to Joe’s schemes, if he were really trying just to “score” (with no intention of anything long term).
Admittedly, he did try to sex his way out of having feelings for Joyce last Friday (I think this is Wednesday).
People can change. Joe used to be a piece of shit, but people can change. And it might take the rest day, but I think Dorothy’s eventually going to give him a chance to not be a piece of shit. I got a feeling the chapter title is about Dorothy’s jealousy though. People can change includes Dorothy.
People can definitely change, but it’s rarely safe to assume a predator has changed without evidence. We know he has, but Dorothy has no reason to think he’s not still aiming to “fix Joyce with his penis.”
Dorothy, you’ll have to get in the Joyce-Protective-Murder line behind Sarah.
I don’t see straight up murder as Dorothy’s style. I moreso imagine her plotting subtle, elaborate downfalls, Count of Monte Cristo style.
And then murder, also Count of Monte Cristo style.
For the love of god, Dorothy!
Is Joe a fan of Amontillado wine?
Until the memes reached my awareness, the image my brain conjured up for a “cask” was a sort of plaster sarcophagus woven like a wicker basket, and I assumed “Amontillado” was like, a vampire or ancient deity or mayor of some kind. The fact that the story was written by Vincent van Gogh also set off some kind of alarm in my mind, at the time. A very skewed understanding, really.
I’m confused, are you mixing up Vincent van Gogh with Edgar Allen Poe (the author of the story), or did you actually think it was written by the painter?
I thought maybe he wrote a book or something. Idk, it’s not like it was something I spent a lot of brain space on.
Yeah, Dorothy’s missed some critical Joe updates. She’s still on ‘guy who brags in class about using booze to facilitate threesomes’ from way back when.
“Way back when” a couple months ago and for the entire time she’s known him since high school. Yes, she’s still on that.
Way back when for us. It was over ten years ago for us. XD
Dorothy’s got years of experience of Joe’s behaviour. I’m team Dorothy here. But also Team Joyce and Team Joe. Everyone is acting in reasonable ways according to their own experiences and knowledge! Woo! Good writing!
Exactly. Here’s hoping for “good communication” too!
(I know that bad communication is a tried-and-true tool of comedy, but I’d rather not see much of it here.)
I get Dorothy’s misgivings on Joe’s advances towards Joyce thinking that he’s just after another labido conquest. However, if Joe’s going towards this as someone he like actually wants to be with for the long term commitment, he shouldn’t let Dorothy or anyone else talk him down.
https://imgur.com/a/jJTZymo (NSFW)
I started drawing this before midnight but I kinda…got a little too into it and added the 2nd panel.
(Probably woulda added more but I’m way to into Adult Swim’s Yule long.)
Most excellent. Dorothy’s faces are supremely cute.
It’s perfect, Yoto!
(I wish Dorothy get feelings for Joyce, too)
Nicely done Yoto! Definitely a fun piece for those of us who are rooting for the Dorothy/Joyce route.
I’ll be honest I’m definitely rooting for JoeJoyce but I’m glad I can please both sides.
OK, this is just pure GOLD! 🤣🤣🤣
Re: Dorothy, is this what humans somtimes call a “cuck fantasy”?
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions.”
-Joe right now, probably
To be honest, Joe has been living in the consequences of his actions before they even happened, that’s how he got himself into this pickle
MAMA WOLF MODE ACTIVATED
I think the big thing that’s tipping my opinion in this case against Dorothy is that she knows Joyce knows what Joe is like. Or was like, rather. If it was Dorothy defending Joe against somebody who he hasn’t spent a long time around, yeah, totally understand why she’d want to step in. She doesn’t know current Joe like the audience does and has good reason to be worried.
But she knows about the history between Joe and Joyce. She knows they are familiar with each other. And so her stepping in here feels like not just her not trusting Joe, but like she’s decided that Joyce has just… gone brainless and forgotten everything from the past 5 months. It’s a step too far towards patronizing for me.
I think it’s more like she thinks Joe is pretending to be better to purposely lure Joyce into his clutches, hence the word choice of “prey”.
Which is actually unfair to Joe because even at his worst, he was always upfront about who he is.
At least I don’t remember him lying to get into bed with someone.
He admittedly objectified women, and still does to an extent, but I don’t think he did so to the point he considered himself a predator or hunter of them.
His entire schtick was that he was honest about being no-strings. Right before Joyce revealed that Ryan attacked her he was adamant that his approach was designed to prevent damage on both sides, because anyone who approached him or was approached by him knew that he was not emotionally interested.
Obviously his approach devalued people, which is in fact the primary problem, but Dorothy’s poor history with him has led her opinion to be so poor that she doesn’t even believe that his initial assertion or that he’s being honest now, just that Joe interacting with Joyce will harm Joyce.
I think people may have forgotten about lines like these ones. He’s not above using alcohol here to get people to do things they might not otherwise do.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/theplural/
Though he later admitted he hadn’t actually had any threesomes, so it’s not quite clear if the alcohol part is true either.
OTOH, Dorothy heard that bit, but not the later retraction of the threesomes. At the very least he postures as someone who very definitely isn’t safe.
Ok Joe buckle up. You just have to have that same conversation with Becky, Sarah, her Brother, Jennifer, Sal and that lady in lobby
Her family doesn’t know about Joe so he won’t have to explain she’s not prey to any of the siblings, at least (until Becky says something anyway).
But the lady in the lobby is watching him like a hawk.
I assumed anyone outside the Church would be treated like Joe by her family
Pretty sure her family, or at least her mom (not that she seems to matter now), also wanted her to find a husband at school, so they’re not against her dating, they’re against premarital hanky panky.
I rather think mommy dearest would not be too happy to learn her one and only daughter was taking up with one of the chosen people…
…or anyone not white anglo-saxon protestant, if it comes to that.
HAHAHAHAHAHA, I just remembered Joe is ethnically jewish! That’s gonna go over well with the majority of the Browns. And by “well” I mean “where’s my popcorn and fireproof garments?”.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/moral/
I feel like the conversation with Becks is gonna be “OOOOHHH you like JOE?? Hahaha gross but also get it sis! also hell yes no sex experiments with Dina for THAT guy! Everything’s comin’ up MacIntyre!!”
As much as I don’t like this, it’s a fairly reasonable response from Dorothy.
Yeah, I agree. She hasn’t seen Joe’s new change of heart, so all she can go on is the years and years of Joe being a horndog. She’s wrong in this instance, but she has no way of knowing otherwise.
Dorothy: Known Horndog Joe, don’t be a horndog over my friend
This comment section: How dare she! That devil!
I mean…yeah. We know Joe so we know he’s not tryin’ to be a horndog. And Dorothy’s not just saying “don’t be a horndog.” She’s basically saying “Leave”.
The hard delineation between “This is my best friend, you better be careful,” and “I’m forbidding you, two people who have their own agency whom I do not control,” is the problem here.
For all she knows, Joe is (to steal Joyce’s words from the last storyline) “a libido with a face”. Reacting to that with “Leave” is more than valid. Dorothy didn’t witness any of Joe’s positive development, and he has only shared that with Amber and Joyce
True, but this still presupposes that she doesn’t think Joyce is aware or smart enough to realize he’s a libido with a face. Maybe Joyce WANTS to fuck a libido with a face. She WAS the one who invited Joe. Her overprotectiveness is also kind of a disservice to Joyce’s decision making.
No need to warn anyone if you know someone’s a predator. Doing so just presupposes you think they’re not aware or smart enough to figure it out. Couldn’t have anything to do with you knowing that person for years before.
I wonder if it’s a little disheartening for Willis that with all his experience and hard work writing webcomics and the improvements in his craft that have resulted, his strips can still be so divisively interpreted?
On the other hand, maybe its heartening that he can land in a delicately balanced grey area so precisely that leads to such diverse opinions.
(I may have a gripping hand thought later as well, but I doubt I’ll voice it)
I think it’s better that people are divided over the intentions of his work.
He’s active enough to clearly say if he meant for us to only take one view or to lockdown the comments if he feels the back and forth gets out of hand.
So I think he intending to be nuanced enough to get different viewpoints going.
Also people can and are nuanced so art that is nuanced is more relatable as a whole.
Listen, I’m all team “Joe can do this-no, he HAS to do this”, but Dorothy’s attitude is warranted given what she knows
This is the guy that made a list rating all women in campus based on fuckable he thought they were
Also bragged about using alcohol to “facilitate” threesomes…in one of the college courses Dorothy was attending.
Some people use alcohol to drown their own inhibitions. I won’t say it’s a good idea, but it’s their choice. All three of them.
I do recall a poster that said that even if both people were drunk and have sex there’s no consent. And also it’s the guy’s fault.
I know Joe hasn’t redeemed himself to Dorothy because obvs she’s got years of dealing with his crappy self but man, Joyce can make her own decisions and is definitely trying to do so more.
I’d really love for her to hear *this one* from Dorothy since she’s clearly enjoying her own power over Joe since he admitted to liking her and it’s very clear that Joe doesn’t know what to DO ABOUT LIKING HER as he clearly likes her more than a fling with how they’ve interacted for months at this point.
Granted, Dorothy has every reason to be surly but we know more than the characters do. Also both her and Joyce were prey to Amber’s dad/No Neck Dad, etc, and Ryan – so there’s another reason that Dorothy may also be more hostile, especially with the “prey” comment as she’s been going to therapy for nearly getting stabbed and kidnapped, etc.
Really interesting though; I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of it.
…Anyone up for a game?
Ok, here goes:
Q: Joyce is hovering to guard against errant sour cream. Which condiment do YOU find particularly unpalatable (or, if you prefer, particularly tasty)?
Ok, I’ll go first:
A: My favorite condiment is mustard. Butter is a close runner up.
As for unpalatable, I just can’t develop a taste for fermented fish paste.
OK, what’s yours?
Balsamic vinegar and Turkish yogurt, but not together, are up there.
As for my never-never, definitely mustard. I’d be joining Joyce at the counter if there was any risk of my food being contaminated with it.
That balsamic vinegar and Turkish yogurt sound DELICIOUS. Especially on salad!
Balsamic vinegar is my hell no.
Meanwhile, I’ll put tzatziki on nearly anything, and pesto on anything else.
Ohh, yes, tzatziki and pesto, yes please! :-9
On its own, yellow mustard or fish sauce. But after culinary school I’m starting to realize that everything is LEGOs and it just needs to be in the right context. I’ll even eat rice if it’s sushi, risotto, or the cook just really knows what they’re doing. And a good kimchi or Korean-inspired coleslaw is possibly the perfect pickle/acid.
But fuck hot dogs with solo yellow mustard, the gas’s name is well-deserved.
Oh wow, we’re polar opposites! I would put mustard on every meal if I could, but kimchi— I just can’t stomach it. Maybe I haven’t had the right kind?
Same here Laura, I wuv mustard! Very spicy and tasty! 😋💛🌭😊
If you ever get a chance, NG, try Amora Dijon mustard. It will ROCK your world! That and Trader Joe’s garlic aioli mustard. Mustard mixed with honey, olive oil, and vinegar is my favorite salad dressing… I learned to make it when I was a kid, and never went back. But for sauce on asparagus or broccoli, there’s nothing like mustard and mayo mixed together with dill! My favorite is to pluck mustard flowers by the side of the road and crunch them between my teeth. A field of yellow mustard flowers is a sight (and smell) of beauty.
And wow, culinary school! That’s so cool!
What do you mean by LEGOs? Like building blocks?
Yeah, all food is just different pieces put together until you get the shape you want. It’s not a puzzle, where there’s a “correct” configuration, but a plane with the wings installed backwards won’t be a normal plane, it will be something else.
Mayonnaise and hollandaise are my go-to example. They’re almost identical emulsions (egg yolk, acid, fat) with the most important difference being the fat that’s added. With mayo, you add room temperature oil and that defines the resulting emulsion. Hollandaise gets melted butter (or that time I made bacon fat hollandaise, that was weird) and is a completely different sauce for it.
Wow, so cool! You are a culinary *artiste*! (That hollandaise is making my mouth water…)
The bacondaise was actually way too much, it was concentrated bacon flavor. I cut it half-and-half with maple syrup to put on French toast but it really was just too intense.
Speaking of bacon fat, you ever try schmaltz on brown bread?
A little too fatty in texture for my taste, but many love it.
Literally any kind of mayo or mayo based thing.
Yeah, mayo can be one of those edge foods: you either hate it or love it, but those who hate it REALLY can’t stand it. (I used to hate it, now I like it, but only when it’s mixed with something spicy.)
Part of the problem for those who don’t like it, is that it’s often gopped onto things in huge amounts. Spread it thin on a sandwich I can tolerate it, but it’s usually leaking out the sides.
Oh yeah! Too much is too much!
D-X (emoticon for yuck face)
i assume they’re going to a ‘nicer’ restaurant but be good timing for walky’s group to walk in now lol
No, I believe they are specifically getting Taco Bell, unless I’m just mixing that up with an earlier Walky date. That would make a lot of sense…
seems like a waste to ‘dress up nicer’ if he ends up spilling sauceo n himself unless he has a hoodie or bib lol
yandere dorothy!!!! important
President Doris can fuck off back to the Oval Office, she doesn’t get to dictate to people how to live their lives.
Joe has literally said in front of her face in the past that’s like alcohol because it helps facilitate threesomes.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/theplural/
The Joe she knew was garbage, it hasn’t been that long since he said this.
Thanks for finding that reference! I had been looking for it.
…Perhaps he just meant that if HE gets drunk, he’ll be relaxed enough to enjoy sex with other men?
That’s an overly charitable reading of that quote, but the alternative (reading it as him trying to get his potential partners drunk before sex) is just too terrible even to imagine.
D-8< (Emoticon for outraged-face.)
I do like this quote of his, from a few strips later, though:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/manhood/
I really don’t understand people hating on Dorothy. If having my back trying to warn off someone shown to be a womanizer at best is being “overbearing”, I hope everyone is overbearing with me. Yes *we* know Joe has changed, but it’s been less than a year since high school ended and Dorothy has not had our benefit of peering into peoples lives with time slowed down. Plus they went through a shooting threat, a kidnapping… this would have affected them a lot, and people are telling Dorothy to eff off? No! I don’t see how so many people seem so holier than thou when it comes to the (college level) cast in general tbh.
Amen! I’d wish somebody would look out for me in regards to (publicly only known as) horndogs
People are being pretty hard on Dorothy. Like she’s known Joe for years, and she’s watched him treat women like conquests, and, frankly, like prey to be hunted.
This isn’t about possessiveness, at least not with the context we have (imo). She just doesn’t want her friend Joyce to be taken advantage of by Joe, who has, up until this point, been a womanizer concerned purely with “hitting & quitting” if you will.
Could someone take Panel 5 Dorothy and put laser beams in her eyes, please? Asking for a friend.
That is the least offensive reason to be waiting like a dog at a fast food counter, I”ll give Joyce that much. I am not burdened with an excess of classiness but I always think that looks so trashy.
Jennifer was right: This is the only moment Dorothy get some charisma.
The reference to President Doris in the alt-text reminds me that Paetron revealed there’s an upcoming Roommates!!! strip which introduces a Walky counterpart, with the entire joke being “Can you believe President Doris likes this guy?”
It’s been … nearly a year? over a year? … since Dorothy and Walky broke up and Joyce is still dragging her over ever wanting to date him.
Not the same thing as warning the guy off, sure, but interesting.
Dorothy and Walky broke up maybe three months ago in-universe, if not less. Not even close to half a year, much less over a year. 😛
(For further context, it hasn’t even been five full in-universe months yet since the beginning of the comic. We began in the last days of August/early December, and it’s currently early-to-mid-January in the comic.)
*last days of August/early September, that should read above…
The time-skip itself was three months, and then there were also the couple of days/weeks (?) were Walky was kinda entangled with Amber. It’s for sure over 3 months, but yeah a vast overestimate of how long the strip actually spans
The timeskip started a week-ish before Halloween, and dropped us back into the story in the opening days of January. Due to the actual time covered in-story since then it’s possible that it’s now been over three full months, but the actual time skipped was on the order of ~70ish days, not 90+ days.
(Incidentally doing some more precise math on a whim, the Great Timeskip began the night of October 21 and ended the morning of January 10. That’s 80 days, or just a little over two and a half months.)
Oops, yes. Somehow I got the idea that we’d entered the second year in the timeskip, when we’d just entered the new semester.
Have I mentioned I’m possibly dyscalculic before?
And then in the next four panels, they calmly talked through their differences, showing respect for perspectives they hadn’t considered before. All thanks to Space Captain Julia!
Sometimes I feel like people in these comment sections forget that we are omniscient readers with full access to all of everyone’s thoughts and actions on an easily accessible archive, whereas the characters only have access to the information they have in universe. Dorothy has always know Joe to be a kinda detached piece of shit guy! She hasn’t seen any significant evidence to the contrary! Why would or should she expect anything different from him based on the back catalog of behavior he’s displayed?
Everyone is so quick to bag on characters who are interfering or negative toward their pet ship fantasy that they don’t actually holistically consider the strip.
Also everyone is way too harsh on Dorothy specifically, for some reason. So she was driving in the wrong lane and crashed into a car in Ireland back in 1987, instantly killing both people in it, so what?
TIL Ireland only has a population of two.
Or, well, had. Thanks Dorothy.
I meant both people in the other car, you scoundrel.🤣
Can’t believe Dorothy genocoided all two Irish people.
Dorothy’s Irish-Jewish herself, so surely not all of them? Just in Ireland.
…jeez, just realized that that background’s another area where Amber resembles Dorothy.
…Matthew Broderick?
I feel like famous men get let off the hook way too easily for such things.
-Matthew Broderick
-Ted Kennedy
-William S. Burroughs
-Mark Wahlberg (not causing death, but still…)
-And then that whole crew behind the deaths of Anna Mae Aquash and Perry Ray Robinson… (some were convicted but others were not)
…I dunno. Just those particular victims have been on my mind a lot, recently, when I see media referencing or even celebrating the perpetrators with no mention of their crimes. 🙁
…Not that a person’s crimes should follow them their whole life, of course! But there should be *some* accountability and public acceptance of personal responsibility before social reintegration, I do believe.
Sure, Dorothy knows about his previous shitty behaviour – but guess who also knows about that?
Joyce.
that said even if dorothy wasn’t seemingly more hostile , i feel like a lot of joyce’s friends would ‘warn’ any potential male suitor like becky did with ethan despite that relationship being a sham
lol idk how ‘open’ taco bell kitchens are to where you could peek in/hover tho other than someone missing a side if i got something i’d ask to leave off i’d just pick it off my self unless it’s sauce as opposed to bothering an employee lol
You open up all of the wrappers and check, just like any normal person.
given that they’re having it in the restaurant i wouldn’t expect them to be fully wrapped Cept like burritos but i usually only get tacos from local places
JOE, LET DOROTHY EAT OUT OF WHICHEVER TACO SHE CHOOSES
*paps dorothy with a newspaper* NO. HE’S GROWN. Bad dotty
Logic brain is telling me that Dorothy of course has no idea about Joe’s character development, so naturally she doesn’t know that his crush is genuine and adorable.
Shipper brain is saying Dorothy should butt out of it and let them be cute together.
DRAMA brain wants to see Joyce and Dorothy’s relationship explode gloriously when Joyce finds out that Dorothy Mom Friended so hard she chased Joe away.
It is a day of many brains.
Do you want to be President of the United States of America, Dorothy?
This is where you start acting like one, and I don’t mean the noble and peaceful person you’ve been up until recently.
Politicians are called Snakes because we send our Smart Criminals into High Offices.
Politics requires Criminality as a form of Intelligence.
I see you trying to be calm and tactful by sitting there being vile as you fold your hands trying not to kill Joe, but this is obvious and entirely uncivil.
The Manners of the Court deny power to those who obviously seek it.
You are a child.
Joe would win an election against you.
He should calmly walk away and run for Student Senate.
As far as she knows joe is still THIS guy.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/theplural/
How the hell is she being vile given that was who he was not even a few months ago?
“Joe would win an election against you.”
Yeah, Trump won an election in 2016.
Elections reflect how terrible the voters are, not hkw good the candidate is.
If only Dorothy could see the way Joe smiles at Joyce, maybe she could sense that, this time, it’s something else. But I’m happy to see Dorothy question Joe’s intentions with her friend. I think it’s good that they talk to each other without involving Joyce and I hope for a comical situation with them glaring and making menacing/apologetic jesture at each other whenever Joyce isn’t looking at them.
Uh-oh. Mother does not approve.
Ooooooooh! Mama Dorothy’s not having it. Your move, Joe! Prove you’re worthy!
Ah so we get the answer. Dorothy was upset because she’s running under the assumption of this is past Joe. Got it.
Oh, man, Joyce got roofied bt a serial rapisr, a gun pointed at her, kidnapped, witnessed a murder, acquaintence mike got murdered, and yet this comment thread is full of clowns saying Dorothy showing concern is being controlling and mean.
People, if you see a lion stalking your best friend and say nothing, you’re a shitty friend. An absolute fucking failure of a friend.
But, but, you sputter, Joe isnt a lion!
He has been for the last 4 years. This is fiction, so whether Joe ends up hurtiing Joyce will be determined entirely by whatever plot point, fan service, and societal commentary that Willis decides to tickle. But joe has been a serial womanizer for years. And Joyce is a virgin who names her future children before a first date. Dorothy is being a friend. If you woukd say nothing, you are no friend.
I don’t disagree that protecting the people around you is important, but if you’re trying to scare off the lion without telling your friend “Hey, watch out for the lion,” I would think your priorities are very skewed.
She also just found out Joe’s trying to get closer to Joyce, and she’s missing all the context of his character growth.
She jumped to a not-unreasonable conclusion given the information she has to work with, the question is how open-minded she is that Joe can change.
“if you’re trying to scare off the lion without telling your friend “Hey, watch out for the lion,””
Really?
Put jennifer or sarah in the room and they get to watch as gash face is trying to roofie Joyce. Joyce goes to the bathroom and they walk up to gash face and tell him “find different prey”, and your response would be “NOOOO! You have to tell Joyce! She has to do it!”
No. She doesnt. And sarah or jennifer wouldnt be bad people for scaring him off.
Nice misread of what I wrote.
My response would be to go to Joyce and say “Hey, some dude just roofied your fucking drink, throw it away and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Dorothy isn’t doing that right now.
Jfc. I didnt misread. You literally said ““if you’re trying to scare off the lion without telling your friend… your priorities are very skewed.”
My priority number one is that my friend doesnt get eaten by a lion. There is nothing skewed about it.
“My response would be to go to Joyce and say “Hey, some dude just roofied your fucking drink, throw it away and let’s get the hell out of here.””
Joyce looks at you, and says: but he’s a good christian boy. His father is a minister. He quoted the bible. He’s a nice boy. You must be mistaken.
And then because “keeping your friend from being eaten by a lion” is not your top number one priority, you shrug as she walks back to gash face and gets eaten by a lion.
You realize that the way it went down between joyce and gash face is entirely romanticized right? Joyce got extremely lucky to realize she had been roofied in time, and extremely lucky she had a whole bunch of friends looking for her at that exact moment, who all ended up right next to her at just the right moment. Several other girls werent so lucky. At least one of them had to have been raped while unconscious.
Sometimes your friend is too drunk to drive and too drunk to admit it, so you actually have to take his keys against his protestations.
If youre not willing to do that, then we have very, very different priorities. I’ll keep mine. You can keep yours.
Also, in purely practical terms, she happened to get the chance to talk to Joe separately first.
Unless something clears up what’s going on, she’ll probably talk to Joyce when she gets the chance.
Some delicious drama to start out the week. Well played, Willis.
I think all the conversation in the comments about what is or isn’t the right thing to do in this situation for either character, what it means, what they intend, what it implies, is a testament to Willis being a fantastic writer.
As a reader of the comic, who is privy to seeing what went on with Joe & Joyce, I find myself rooting for them and an interesting parallel is that I find myself on guard for Dorothy’s “helicopter parenting” of Joyce similar to how Dorothy herself is on guard for Joe in the comic. As such, my instinct is to be antagonistic towards Dorothy’s behavior from how she phrased what she said to her choice of where/when to voice what she did.
Objectively, I still think it’s a pretty over-the-line aggressive thing to say so suddenly, but IMO that’s kind of the point here, as I believe we’re headed towards a lot of conflict between Dorothy and Joyce. Particularly with Joyce’s recent past, Dorothy is feeling like she needs to go to extremes to protect Joyce from herself, particularly in the realm of college & sexual politics/predation. However, despite Dorothy’s best intentions, I think she is unknowingly falling victim to infantilizing Joyce after learning about her autism diagnosis and unconsciously taking on this persona of “resentful caretaker” when she really has no obligation or business to do so. Like so much in the comic, I see it being rooted in trauma response to recent (in their timeline) events and Dorothy’s inherent nature to see herself as a born leader & thus a shepherd. Again, it is unfortunate because while she has good intentions, she’s actually just filling the void in Joyce’s life of being an authority figure trying to rob Joyce of her autonomy because “she doesn’t know better.” I think we keep seeing examples of Dorothy viewing Joyce’s autism as clinical vs. subjective and for her, a validation that she’s not capable of making choices herself. I also believe Dorothy is in this space where she’s making a lot of uninformed assumptions about autism, but I think it’s also somewhat a commentary on her character where her own intelligence/self-perceived intelligence is very high, but her emotional IQ is not nearly as such.
“despite Dorothy’s best intentions, I think she is unknowingly falling victim to infantilizing Joyce after learning about her autism diagnosis”
Yeah, couldnt be that Joe has been a serial womanizer for years and Joyce is a virgin who comes up with her future childrens names before a first date? Couldnt be that Joyce got roofied bt a serial rapist, was kidnapped, witnessed a murder, had Mike get murdered and there are plenty of real world dangers out there, and Joe has skirted the edges of dangerous behavior for years?
Has to be the autism?
“being an authority figure trying to rob Joyce of her autonomy because “she doesn’t know better.” ”
Good grief. Ruth and Jennifer were in a mutual suicide pact and carla was portrayed as the villian for stepping in and saving their lives.
This idea relating to “mah automomy!” is reducivist and stupid, but willis indulges it. DoA is so full of mommy and daddy issues so much that i shoukdnt be surprised that the biggedt insult readers can throw at dorothy is to call her a “controlling mother”.
I have no intent on arguing with you, nor is my intention to “insult Dorothy” who is a fictional character and not a real person. However I acknowledge that that is the tone many comments take (taking character sides and supporting or hating/insulting others.) I’m just trying to comment on the writing and what I think Willis’ intention in creating these scripts are/where I think he’s going with the story.
The story is full of traumatic events and the characters are all just barely not children anymore. They’re all going to make mistakes, make bad choices, take actions/say things in general that they’ll later in life look back on and learn something from but they’re all operating on instinct and the level at which their respective judgements are developed.
Does it “have to be the autism?” I mean, given that that’s what has JUST happened in the comic, Dorothy literally just commented on it in the previous strip and this is fiction that is written and crafted by someone where they build upon things that have just transpired, yes, I think it is “the autism” because that’s partly what the comic is about in this current point in time.
I’m not casting Dorothy as “wrong” or “bad” or “ill-intentioned,” just that how things are unfolding, there is going to be inevitable conflict between her and Joyce based on how things are unfolding. Dorothy might not consciously want that, but her instincts are telling her that she has to do what she has to do, which for her is justified through the recent past she experienced that you listed out and that I referenced in my comment. It’s not good or bad, it just is what it is. Lots of people find themselves in these situations irl where they believe they are doing what is right and find themselves being thought of as a villain. It doesn’t mean that they are or are not.
I think Dorothy’s attitude here is far more about her attitude towards Joe than anything about Joyce. It’s probably added to by her thinking Joyce is naive about such things, but it’s far more about her years of experience knowing how Joe treats women.
100% that’s where Dorothy’s head is at & what her intent consciously is, that’s justified by her canonical experiences & backstory. The stuff about how she is interacting with Joyce & how it seems from the distance we have as an audience IMO is more about her subconscious & how her emotions are being informed by her experiences.
“thinking Joyce is naive about such things,”
Joyce IS naive. She is the dictionary definition of naive.
The weird thing is the characters on DoA who are presented as NOT naive all present as misanthropes or suicide cases or playing it “cool” to keep distant from people.
Sarah
Ruth, Jennifer, Amber
Sal
Between these two extremes, between Joyce on one end and suicidal misanthropes on the other, somewhere in the middle, is Dorothy.
I think the issue is not that Joyce isn’t naive, because she is, but its the assumption that BECAUSE she is naive, she needs to be protected, even at the expense of her autonomy, or even her trust in her friends to respect her wishes and boundaries.
Sometimes people who are naive only stop being naive once they make mistakes and learn through experience. You may want to instinctively protect someone from having to learn things the hard way, but a lot of the time that does them a disservice. Those are their mistakes to make, their lessons to learn, and the most supportive thing to do sometimes is to just keep a watchful eye out and make sure to be there to help pick up the pieces afterward–and to foster a relationship of trust and non-judgement with them so that that they come to you for help when they need it.
Thing is, there are two kinds of naive. One is oblivious to evil. Joyce is the other kind. She believes in evil and has an idea of the shapes it can take, and she doesn’t want to learn the details personally, so she guards her innocence. Joyce can be fierce! And she knows more about the big bad world than she’d like you to believe. I’d trust her with Joe, not having seen recent developments, with maybe just a word of “are you sure this is a good idea?”
But at the same time, there are times when you want to try to keep your naive friends from making mistakes that are too drastic. That’s not a bad thing.
When people ask me emotionally complex questions, I often jam up for anywhere from seconds to years. Then they draw all sorts of conclusions from my silence.
Also, everything FadingMemory said above. Dorothy has seen awful things happen to Joyce and sort of appointed herself Joyce’s caretaker… except no one asked her to do that.
Joe better be glad Dorothy isn’t president right now or Joe might get disappeared
With that expression on her face, I’m not 100% sure that not currently being president would stop her.
Dorothy is not covering herself in glory here.
aaaaaaaaaaaa
that small little smile at learning something new about Joyce
PRECIOUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSS
While part of me is like DOROTHY NO because I love Joe/Joyce, I also think it’s completely understandable how she feels and what she’s saying based on what she’s known about Joe for pretty much their whole (pretty long) acquaintance.
While she doesn’t have the most updated information, which we do, that’s not really her fault.
I don’t even particularly like Dorothy, but I will say she’s got a pretty good track record of admitting when she’s wrong about stuff, so I trust her to come around.
Me too. I sure hope so. 🙂
Also, Jennifer is right. Dorothy IS much more charismatic when she’s angry, haha.
Aw, I knew this was coming: Dorothy’s known Joe for a long time and doesn’t know about A) his character development, and B) how his and Joyce’s relationship has changed. Combine that with firsthand witnessing the way guys have hurt Joyce, and this makes complete sense.
Hope Joe can change her mind.
Dorothy: do you like her?
Joe: you remember that first time you and Walky jumped in the sack to have a purely physical fling?
Dorothy: yes?
Joe: more than that. I like Joyce more than you liked Walky on that day. Ok?
Dorothy: did you tell her you loved her to get in her pants?
Joe: no. Did you tell walky you loved him, but then made it weird when he didnt? And then had on again off again , guilt sex?
Dorothy: … maybe…
Joe: i promise i wont do that.
Dorothy: fine. You may fuck my friend. But only after sufficient cunnilingus. You rock her world or i will cut you.
Joe: no you wont.
Dorothy: i will have sal cut you and sarah will help me dispose of the body
Joe: ….
Dorothy: well?
Joe: fine
Dorothy: fine
Joyce: whatcha talking about?
Dorothy: sour creme on your taco
Joe: (blush)
That was a long walk to a very dirty pun.
Willis started it.
Literally. See panel 1
I’ve said this before, but if this were a Historical Romance, Joyce wouldn’t end up with Joe (not sure who her match would be… possibly someone we haven’t met yet… too bad Dina is already taken!). But in the next book or the final book, Joe and Dorothy would totally end up with each other. Because Rake and Bluestocking + enemies to lovers tropes.
If I had a friend like Joe and a best friend, I would ask Joe to back off too not taking into account any other factors, only because Joyce is my friend.
I (Dorothy) am not really supposed to know the development that happened between JoJo in the meantime.
Two issues I am wondering about:
– Does Dorothy know that Joe and Joyce dated once at the start of the first term? (I know Sarah knows, and Mike did, but I don’t recall it ever brought up as a topic of discussion with Dorothy.)
– I wonder if this might set off a subplot that leads to Joyce and Dorothy’s friendship having problems. We know that things have been a little strained (Dorothy upset when Joyce was distracted when she received the art supplies, etc.). I could see an argument like “I want to date Joe”…”He’s not good for you” causing even more conflict.
I was thinking the same thing and I don’t think it ever came up either. They didn’t talk about it at the time and Joyce doesn’t really bring it up afterwards.
Harsh, but fair.
How’d I get billified.
This is worse^
Man, everyone out here is arguing about who is in the right or not, whereas I’m just delighted by the drama, as per usual. I love when characters have flaws which are actually perfectly reasonable, but which lead to inevitable conflict regardless.
Dorothy has every reason to think that Joe’s intentions are shitty, because quite frankly, even though Joe HAS changed, the literal only person he’s really shown any of that change to has been Joyce. (And Amber.) To basically everyone else, he’s doubled down pretty hard on shoving his usual chauvinistic mask back on to avoid being vulnerable.
She also has no reason to believe him if he tried to convince her that ‘he’s changed’ or whatever, but quite frankly, I don’t think that Joe would even attempt to say that! Because he still has shaky feelings about whether it’s possible for him to change. It’s a thing I think he’d LIKE to believe, and deciding to be genuinely vulnerable with Joyce about his feelings is a big step in showing that he’s willing to give it a shot, but that’s not going to be enough to shake the foundation of his core belief and anxiety that despite his best efforts, in the end he’ll end up the same as he always was. So there’s no chance he’ll try to convince Dorothy with an “I’m different now” tactic, because he doesn’t believe that. At most, he might say that he’s trying something different, which is true enough.
But Dorothy has no reason to think that allowing Joe to use Joyce as some experiment around his own personal growth is good for Joyce! And quite frankly, when you put it that way, it sounds kinda shitty, doesn’t it?!
And even though those feelings of Dorothy’s are totally reasonable, there is STILL an undercurrent of her jumping the gun and being a bit overly aggressive about this because she is feeling particularly insecure about her relationship with Joyce, and is leaning into often somewhat possessive and controlling behaviors. Not egregiously so, in my mind, but enough that it’s going to inevitably cause conflict with Joyce and make the situation worse.
Joyce is going to be reactive and overprotective of her own agency right now, even from well-meaning people she cares about, because well…all of the people who have caused her horrific trauma thus far have been people she previously trusted implicitly doing things to hurt and control her while ‘meaning well’ the entire time. She is going to be wary, even of her friends doing relatively innocuous things in comparison. That’s how trauma works, unfortunately.
And all of this is just very very good writing, and good character drama, and I love this comic.
Well said!
the thing is that I don’t think that Dorothy has to know he’s changed or see any of his efforts in order for what she’s doing to be wrong and dumb (not a complaint, as they say it’s not Smarting of Age). She can fully disapprove of Joe and not like him, and want to ‘protect’ Joyce. The problem is meddling behind Joyce’s back.
Even putting meddling aside, if she genuinely wants to help or be protective, that’s a conversation with Joyce. Telling someone “I think [acquaintance] is being creepy toward you and here’s why” is not only more effective, it’s far more useful to Joyce if she actually was at some kind of risk
Am I the only one who sees the tags as Dorothy and Walky??
The role of “Joe” will be played tonight by David “Walky” Walkerton.
Oh shit her face. She means BUSINESS.
Plot twist: Joe and Dorothy.
Joe and Joyce as the Couple. Joe and Dorothy Hatefucking. Dorothy wears a Mask, and Joe finally gets that 3-way he always wanted, forgetting that 2 on 1 is never fair play! Joe is the Prey.
The exchange I feared. New fear emerges: the infantilising of autistic person (Joyce). “You don’t understand people because you’re autistic, he doesn’t really care and I know because I’m not autistic. I need to protect you”
I like Dorothy.
One thing I like about this strip is that Joe’s shitty, creepy behavior has consequences. It’s cathartic for me to watch. Even if he changes he has to also deal with the consequences later on, without expecting or demanding hand holding. It’s more interesting and less frustrating.
I appreciate Dorothy so much. I don’t care if you think it’s a bad look. I don’t care if you think it’s overprotective.
tag is still wrong (walky instead of joe)