Danny doesn’t want to hurt Joe’s feelings on being a good boyfriend, but Danny doesn’t necessarily believe that Joe is capable of it. I feel like Danny and Sal are going to place bets on how long it takes for Joe and Joyce’s relationship to implode.
As of this strip, I genuinely WANT Danny and Sal to work. The rest of the existing couples, I’m willing to see go down in entertaining flames if that’s where it takes us, but the chemistry in that last panel is palpable, and displays a considerable level of mutual understanding.
Danny: “I believe in Joe! Yessir, I am completely, 100% certain that Joe exists. No figment of my imagination could possibly leave that many unwashed sweat-socks around. Look, the paint on the ceiling above the pile is crinkling, no way I made Joe up. Though granted, I did once trip, fall face first into that, and spend the next two days seeing Eleanor Roosevelt hiding behind the curtains.”
I have screenshotted your comment (with your username, because crediting people is a Good Thing). I don’t know when I will deploy it, but I am morally certain that at some point I will do so.
I am currently expecting that Joe is going to try really hard to be the good boyfriend, exceed all expectations, then Joyce will snap and want to get absolutely destroyed by him and they will ultimately break up because Joe became a good Christian boy and Joyce became a crazed sex monster.
I can say with certainty that this comic will not be featuring the conversion of its most prominent Jewish character to Christianity, because the author is not a gigantic asshole.
I wanna believe in Joe…! There’s a genuine effort being put in & an acknowledgement of his dangerous tendencies to the point he was scared of corrupting Joyce.
Danny speaking like an elf; they don’t lie, but they don’t necessarily give you the truth either. It’s a wise strategy to adopt, especially if you plan to go into law or politics.
That’s how I lie. Well no, I’ll usually lie by telling mostly the truth but peppering in lies here and there to make me seem more sympathetic while admitting enough fault that I don’t seem like I’m outright fibbing.
There is an art form to conveying false information by telling the strict and absolute truth that is an interesting intellectual challenge. It is performed strictly for your own amusement though, because people won’t remember what you actually said, but rather what they thought you were saying, or sometimes what they expected you to say regardless of anything you actually said.
I’m trying to play a D&D character right now that is a Fey that does exactly this, and yeah, that shit is HARD to maintain. Especially when you have a lot of secrets.
“You’re a cleric, right?”
“Well gosh, why else would I be carryin’ around this holy symbol?”
“What god do you worship?”
“Oh! Have you heard of Pelor, god of the Sun? He’s amazin’! My light is but a meager candle compared t’his.”
“Why do you have horns and hooves?”
“Aw, I hope ya don’t judge my daddy too harshly. It must get so lonely on a goat farm.”
The game has been online since this character was introduced (my previous one retired), which is lucky because I have a bunch of post-its on my screen with reminders for ways to get out of saying things. The southern accent really helps; it makes me seem harmless, makes double negatives sound unintentional, lets me get away with omitting “a” and “the” to mask whether I’m speaking generally or specifically, that sort of thing. In practice it winds up less like “don’t tell lies” and more like “avoid actually making any concrete statements of fact at all.”
The most effective way of lying is the conspiracy peddler way: tell an obvious, absurd lie, but a different one every day. Never try to be self-consistent, you should contradict yourself constantly. Just flood your victims under a deluge of incoherent lies. In the end, people will give up and stop believing your contradictors instead of being rational and stopping paying attention to what you say.
They give you the truth, just not all of the truth. Enough of the truth that you fill in the gaps how they want you to. It’s very useful in all manner of scenarios; I used to use it to get out of morning shifts by telling a completely unrelated story about how my brother needed a lift to work.
One ring for the Ukele Dorks under their hats
Three rings for the freshmen in their halls of dorm
Seven rings to alchohlic RA’s doomed to cry
And one ring to Prof Brock in the sublab of Bio101
Where the shadows lie
This conversation must look very strange from the outside of the building. I would have thought someone would have stopped Sal from doing this awhile ago, butt I guess no body cares.
You tend not to make rules about things you expect no-one to be stupid enough to try. That is, until someone tries them.
Depending on the state, speed limits apply to all motorized vehicles and if you have a car with no motor, you can drive it down a mountain just as fast as it will go by picking up speed, and it’s perfectly legal. There didn’t use to be laws preventing you from climbing the outsides of skyscrapers.
Well, sometimes it’s because someone made up stories about doing the thing and perpetuated that lie in an attempt to demonize the group that “did the thing”. But, like, usually it’s the reason you said.
Have you ever stopped to consider how friggin’ huge this campus is? Like, we only see the stuff the main cast is doing, but everywhere, always, all those other people are having their own adventures we’ll never ever know!
Dorothy can be the wedding triple-date smasher. Having two of her ex-boyfriends in the same place would make for a lot of possibilities for Bad Decisions to happen, and she’s been falling into a lot of those.
I hope she doesn’t actually believe that for two reasons: 1) It doesn’t give Joe as much credit, as he actively trying to be a better person. and 2) Joyce thinking she can singlehandedly “fix” someone is not a healthy mindset and is fraught with the potential to backfire.
Hey, she’s still young and has grown a lot and so has Joe. She isn’t gonna be perfectly wise and all-knowing about relationships while still in her freshmen year of college. Also, I think she’s being tongue-in-cheek.
As Joe himself once pointed out, Joyce is gradually but continually shedding the layers of fucked-up-ness embedded in her brain; she might be okay after all.
Of course, in this story, there’s always the chance that she’ll make a wrong turn somewhere. But Joyce being who she is, it seems unlikely.
Sometimes, the best you can do is to die in a science lab explosion give your friend all the supportive words that you can honestly give without lying.
I love Joe and Danny’s friendship more than any couple in this comic. They can all break up, but if Danny and Joe stop being bros is when we know it’s really over.
Joe/Danny are pretty much the only genuinely, 100%, consistently wholesome friendship in the whole damn comic, and Dina/Becky are pretty much the only wholesome romance. It amuses me to no end how, like, literally every other line in this soap opera’s relationship graph has SOME kind of horribly toxic BS mixed in somewhere or other, EXCEPT for those two.
..And yes, I know Sal and Danny’s relationship is also looking pretty good so far, but like she said, they’ve only been dating a week, so I’m not counting them here.
(I eagerly await your counterexamples!)
Oh, and just to be clear: I’m not saying that Dina/Becky is on the *same* level of wholesomeness as Joe & Danny. Like Yotomoe, I like Joe/Danny more than all other pairings of all kinds. Dina/Becky might be great, but they haven’t been together since before the beginning of the comic, while Joe & Danny have. I don’t make the rules, sorry Dina/Becky fans, that’s just the way it is.
It’s quite a sad story, really.
Joe’s gram met this dashing young dryer in a shop and they fell in love. She would go to the shop after hours with a skeleton key to spend time with the dryer. But her family found out, and also the shop owner, and because this was a different time, they were both found guilty on charges of obscenity, breaking & entering and being a fucking weirdo (well, mostly her).
Her parents got her married and moved away in a hurry, the dryer was quickly sold at half-price. They never saw each other again. But nine months later…..
Is Sal going to actually enter I mean she might be comfortable with her abodmen pressing against the window with her touchus hanging out in the cold but for me personally it’s uncomfortable.
Never tried being halfway in a window like that myself but I imagine it can’t be very comfortable. But Sal has a lot more experience climbing windows and stuff so who knows?
I always assumed it’s an inside joke for readers who previously read Roomies: Joyce was obsessed with Danny in that strip so it’s funny/ironic that she is so indifferent to him she can’t even remember his name in this alternate universe.
Nah, Joyce is just super invested in the state of Danny’s headwear. If he starts experimenting in different styles, she will start making charts to follow the progression.
I don’t think she’s pretending not to know Danny’s name….
In one strip, Lucy was asking Joyce if she knew any boys to invite to a movie night. Joyce pictured images of Mike, Ethan, Joe and Jacob in her mind. But when it came to Danny, she just imagined an empty shirt and the hat. So for whatever reason, she seems to genuinely have a blank in her mind when it comes to Danny.
Wouldn’t not believing Joe exists be an anti-Joetheist? Joetheism would be believing in and worshipping Joe; anti-Joetheism would be not worshipping or believing in Joe.
Sigh.. I’m converting to agJoestic. If Joe exists, he has deliberately concealed his true nature from us average non-Joes; therefore, a truly benevolent Joe would never judge me for being uncertain.
Becky and Dina will never break up. As long as I keep saying that, it will definitely be true. So the correct answer is Joe and Joyce; as much as I want them to never break up, they have a higher chance of it happening.
I mean Willis did say “when will people realize these two are gonna be just fine” when people were initiating Dina’s asexuality would doom them. So probably JoJo
I’m glad that Danny has the good sense to not blurt out exactly what he’s thinking here for a change, because I honestly don’t think there’s a single character who could hurt Joe more.
I’d put her at second place. Joe definitely cares about what Joyce thinks of him, but Danny is a constant in his life. He has been with Joe through everything.
I feel like he’s being honest that he believes in Joe, but probably he believes Joe is sincere in wanting to do his best, since he’s seen Joe’s efforts and knows Joe has gone to him for advice, etc. I don’t think he necessarily expects Joe to not slip up, at least, not yet, but that’s also realistic as far as expectations go.
Really not looking forward to the payoff where Joyce’s aggressively unsolved issues with intimacy traumatize Joe at his most well-meaning. At least, that’s where this dynamic seems to be pointing?
Yeah it’s possible his previous encounter with Liz will make him more anxious about the same thing happening with Joyce and make him unexpectedly (to her) reluctant.
I kinda feel like that scene with Liz will end up being a foil to when the Jos actually hook up. Because as much as that wasn’t too long ago in comic, Liz still represented Joyce at a very different point of her journey. She’d *just* left the church, not even publicly yet, and had all the hangups surrounding that. And her sexual trauma and repression was still largely unaddressed. A lot has happened since then. She’s been forced to face her sexuality with the “hussy pills”, her still very christian best friend had premarital Hankey pankey and they had a really good conversation about both those things. She’s been orgasming, on purpose, even if the start was a bit unconventional. And throughout the day even she’s been getting more and more comfortable with just, being a person with sexual desires and stating that, at least to the one she desires. She still has a ways to go, you can’t undo 18 years of sexual repression in a week, and there’s potentially unrelated to all that her SA trauma which could be triggered. But Joe is taking things really slow and at her pace (he’s made some positive steps after recovering from the initial “ruined” hit) and they’ve been really good about communicating. I think their first time will be fine
Tldr Joyce is in a good place and they have been really good at communicating, their first time will probably be fine at least emotionally and act as a narrative foil to Liz
I declare that from now on, Sal should only be seen in this position: sticking halfway through the window in perpetuity, like a sideways Oscar the Grouch.
I really shouldn’t be as charmed as I am by Joyce and Joe just being happy with each other while everyone around them is all ‘YIKES here comes the dumpster fire, I’ll just carry marshmallows with me’.
But yeah, good job Danny – support your eternal BFF without lying in words OR sentiment. (I do think the first time Joe gets really squishy about Joyce or otherwise does boyfriend/emotional things without being prodded Danny will take note.)
This is the couple I most desperately want to work out and I am terrified it will somehow implode and hoping it does not.
It IS basically one of the most classic romance tropes: bad boy, morally grey character, or guy uninterested in being tied down, reformed by his falling in love with someone totally unexpected. I’m always a sucker for that trope.
Kind of a love/hate relationship with that trope. It’s often cute and enjoyable when it’s well done, but it really feeds into the idea that it’ll work in real life. That if the bad boy’s interested in you, he’ll really fall for you and change, when it’s far more likely he’ll just get what he wants and move on.
I mean I’m kinda in that boat – not with bad boys but sarcassholes. I do best with really strong personalities so a good majority of my long relationships had started antagonistic. That said… breaking up seems to have brought the most change or maybe clarity in my former partners… a suspiciously large amount of them married the one after me. I chock that up to them learning EXACTLY what they like and dislike after spending time with a mutual strong headed idiot. 🙂
The art in this comic has gotten so friggin good. That dynamic picture of Joyce in the first panel is so precise and also shows movement. And Joe’s eyes watering up are precious. Everything is great.
they could go on a triple date for maximum awkward. but honestly i do believe in joe. im worried im going to get my heart broken but im choosing to believe in him.
People keep thinking that when this goes wrong, it will be Joe that does something bad in Joyce’s direction. But I remain true to my conviction that Joyce has the potential to destroy Joe (No, not THAT way, but — maybe?). Joe has opened himself up to having — feelings, and I think he’s potentially WAY more vulnerable than people give him credit for.
Oh, definitely. Joe actually strikes me as a pretty sensitive guy, in the sense that he went out of his way to keep his relationships at an arms distance for casual hook ups.
Both Joyce and Joe are putting a lot of stock into this relationship emotionally.
I wonder if Joe’s horndog persona wasn’t constructed precisely because Joe is sensitive and wanted a shield against feelings that he couldn’t deal with when he was a bit younger.
Now I wonder if Dorothy could shed some light on that.
It’s possible there’s some of that, but we’ve got a good look at why Joe constructed the horndog persona and the main motivation was so that no girls would get attached to him and get hurt when he inevitably turned out like his dad and cheated.
Some of that could have been an excuse for not letting his own feelings get hurt, but there’s been a lot of narrative investment in that part of it. It’s got to be at least the major reason.
At this point it’s such a running joke that I want to suspend disbelief and have her irrationally never ever learn his name.
Like 6 years down the line, things miraculously go well for a couple in this comic and Sal and Danny invite Joyce to their wedding…but she still doesn’t know Danny’s name.
She’s showing Joe the invitation, with “You are invited to the wedding of Danny and Sal” and she still doesn’t know it even though it’s written RIGHT THERE.
The most dramatic and unexpected thing that could possibly happen is that Joe does nothing wrong, grows as a person and gets over some of his issues.
My money is on Joyce fucking it up again. I’d rather that then Joe cheat or anything else that he could be capable of doing, since pretty much anything he believes himself capable of is varying levels of ‘I can never like this character again’.
I’d rather they just not work as a couple mutually since any end to their relationship seems like a really bad one, but probably not this comic.
One of the things that frustrates me about Joe as a character is that we’ve never seen him do anything remotely that bad. Despite that being a very likely outcome of his early approach to women, there’s no indication that he’s ever actually hurt anyone personally.
Plenty of other characters have gotten their really dark moments, but Joe’s have always been kept on the kind of impersonal creepy level.
I think you might be forgetting the list. Ignoring the dehuminification that it requires to make people into numbers, and that definitely seemed to offend even some of the people he slept with, there is also the fact that he’s on a college. There is a culture on most campuses that also demunizes women.
I’m not, but the list was kind of abstract. It’s creepy and awful, but it doesn’t hit as hard as one woman he’d slept with serious regrets about it would.
Right, which is what I think Danny is saying here that he believes in, Joe’s earnestness. Guessing his reservation is more in if he can pull it off or not, but he knows Joe *is* trying, genuinely.
Hehe, guess Danny knows the true identity of “Julia Gray”, since Joe would not initially tell him who he was going after.
It would be really funny to me if one of Danny’s reservations here is “Joe literally just told me he was interested in Julia, how good a boyfriend can he possibly be for Joyce”.
I wonder if Joyce is going to snap about people assuming it’s going to go wrong.
Becky, Dina, and (eventually) Dorothy were accepting but people who don’t know her quite as well are probably going to react more like Sal and Walky. Amber doesn’t get to place as accepting, more excessively enthusiastic to a potentially well documented (online in an anonymised AO3 fic) degree.
It’s… somewhat understandable from the POV that Joyce is Super Innocent but she’s been moving away from that person and getting mad when people don’t accept the change.
Anyway, beyond a certain point “lol good luck with that relationship” gets insulting and she’s been learning being the kind of person to get judgey at people’s bad decisions that don’t effect others is kind of a dick move literally the entire time.
(As well as radically reevaluating what a bad decision is and removing things like “atheism” or “dancing with boys without parental supervision” or “sex” from that list.)
The point of a double date, is for couples to effectively chaperone themselves via public shame and embarassment. This prevents the couple from finding alone time with their ~bodily urges~. This assumes of course that the double date doesn’t descend into some sort of sex party. But that is why Joyce and Lucy are into such things. They should do their double date together, and leave Sal and Danny alone.
The double dates I’ve been on were just two sets of couple friends who wanted to hang out?
Like even in sitcoms it’s a common trope for someone in a newly married couple to constantly try to push their friends into relationships so they can all ~*double date*~ as a group couple activity.
Meantimes i’m yawning my jaw off, all this straight cutesiness does nothing for my blackened queer heart. I just hope this is Willis painstakingly lining up all his ships only to go Naval Battle on them like some scary kid playing by himself in a psychiatrist’s office 😙
Joe almost had sex with Liz less than a week ago, a couple of days before he told Joyce he had the feels, and Sarah might have suspicions about that (Danny definitely knows, and he has a tendency to say inopportune things without thinking).
Joyce had a sexual encounter with Dorothy after Joe told her he had feelings for her, and since Dorothy took her to a public place to do it, other people possibly know, but definitely Carla, who has a tendency to want to say inopportune things.
Anyways, can’t wait for the next chapter, “This was Roller Derby”
THIS! This is how you can be honest without being a d**k. You don’t have to lie to be supportive of people. You just tell truths that can be open to interpretation and if you can’t do that respectfully, you just keep your dang mouth shut!
I get the impression Joe was not truly comfortable in the sex monster presentation; it is literally how he was raised. Goes off to college, hits consequences + counterexamples, and immediately moves in a better direction.
He literally says in-comic it was a coping mechanism because he didn’t want to hurt people like his dad hurt people, and he thinks he’s genetically incapable of being faithful because his dad is a serial cheater.
He thinks/thought that if he’s up front with being a man ho, the people who get with him don’t expect him to be faithful, so when his dad genes kick in and he cheats, it won’t hurt them as badly.
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the Danny version of “Bless your heart”
Danny doesn’t want to hurt Joe’s feelings on being a good boyfriend, but Danny doesn’t necessarily believe that Joe is capable of it. I feel like Danny and Sal are going to place bets on how long it takes for Joe and Joyce’s relationship to implode.
I feel like “implode” is emphatically not how their relationship will end – there will be lots of sound and fury, no matter what it signifies
As of this strip, I genuinely WANT Danny and Sal to work. The rest of the existing couples, I’m willing to see go down in entertaining flames if that’s where it takes us, but the chemistry in that last panel is palpable, and displays a considerable level of mutual understanding.
*Reads what I just wrote, sighs melancholily, and prepares the inevitable DYW! post to come….*
“Bless your hat.”
well if he stuck through with him after the list leak i’d assume he’d def be supportive at his attempt at a ‘real’ relationship lol
Danny: “I believe in Joe! Yessir, I am completely, 100% certain that Joe exists. No figment of my imagination could possibly leave that many unwashed sweat-socks around. Look, the paint on the ceiling above the pile is crinkling, no way I made Joe up. Though granted, I did once trip, fall face first into that, and spend the next two days seeing Eleanor Roosevelt hiding behind the curtains.”
Thank you.
Awwww best frieeeeends!
Can I just say, Joe has great facial expressions in this comic. Five, especially, is just really heartwarming. Danny’s affirmance means a lot to him.
The key to being a good, supportive friend is an incomplete and selective honesty.
Me when given a gift: “It is very shiny. And round. I like things which are shiny and round.”
I have screenshotted your comment (with your username, because crediting people is a Good Thing). I don’t know when I will deploy it, but I am morally certain that at some point I will do so.
I believe he will try his best.
And what do you think his best is?
Probably better than he thinks.
Maybe he won’t be good enough, but I expect him to exceed expectations
I am currently expecting that Joe is going to try really hard to be the good boyfriend, exceed all expectations, then Joyce will snap and want to get absolutely destroyed by him and they will ultimately break up because Joe became a good Christian boy and Joyce became a crazed sex monster.
Possibly.
Joe is Jewish.
So were literally all of the apostles.
I can say with certainty that this comic will not be featuring the conversion of its most prominent Jewish character to Christianity, because the author is not a gigantic asshole.
Joyce not knowing Danny’s name is one of my favourite running gags in this comic.
It pleases me that Danny is learning to effectively snark
It’s also good to see Danny and Sal having this same-wavelength snark. Marvel Teammate snark.
I believe….that Joe will put forth his best effort and that’s all that matters
At the very least it won’t be his worst effort.
I wanna believe in Joe…! There’s a genuine effort being put in & an acknowledgement of his dangerous tendencies to the point he was scared of corrupting Joyce.
Danny speaking like an elf; they don’t lie, but they don’t necessarily give you the truth either. It’s a wise strategy to adopt, especially if you plan to go into law or politics.
fucking twist Danny becomes president.
Dorothy would die.
And be reborn as a supervillain.
I think Dorothy would have a breakdown if Danny became president. I would love to see her reaction.
Okay, I low-key want to see this because that would be hilarious.
That tracks.
That’s how I lie. Well no, I’ll usually lie by telling mostly the truth but peppering in lies here and there to make me seem more sympathetic while admitting enough fault that I don’t seem like I’m outright fibbing.
There is an art form to conveying false information by telling the strict and absolute truth that is an interesting intellectual challenge. It is performed strictly for your own amusement though, because people won’t remember what you actually said, but rather what they thought you were saying, or sometimes what they expected you to say regardless of anything you actually said.
I’m trying to play a D&D character right now that is a Fey that does exactly this, and yeah, that shit is HARD to maintain. Especially when you have a lot of secrets.
“You’re a cleric, right?”
“Well gosh, why else would I be carryin’ around this holy symbol?”
“What god do you worship?”
“Oh! Have you heard of Pelor, god of the Sun? He’s amazin’! My light is but a meager candle compared t’his.”
“Why do you have horns and hooves?”
“Aw, I hope ya don’t judge my daddy too harshly. It must get so lonely on a goat farm.”
I think I might have to try this method of Roleplay.
It’s definitely a thing that works better in fiction. It falls apart pretty fast if people start to question you.
The game has been online since this character was introduced (my previous one retired), which is lucky because I have a bunch of post-its on my screen with reminders for ways to get out of saying things. The southern accent really helps; it makes me seem harmless, makes double negatives sound unintentional, lets me get away with omitting “a” and “the” to mask whether I’m speaking generally or specifically, that sort of thing. In practice it winds up less like “don’t tell lies” and more like “avoid actually making any concrete statements of fact at all.”
Also like an elf, if you tickle Danny’s chin and answer his riddles three, he’ll grant you a wish.
It’s Danny though, so hopefully your wish is for haberdashery advice or a ukulele cover of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”.
Such a hard decision to choose, I can’t decide which would be “better.”
You think he’d try and do different character voices or just sing every part the same?
Telling the truth, even a half-truth, is always going to be more effective than having to tell an outright lie.
On the contrary: The world belongs to those who can look you straight in the eye and say the sky is green.
People actually pick up pretty well on too-clever-by-half evasions. A simple lie, delivered with confidence, is far more convincing.
The most effective way of lying is the conspiracy peddler way: tell an obvious, absurd lie, but a different one every day. Never try to be self-consistent, you should contradict yourself constantly. Just flood your victims under a deluge of incoherent lies. In the end, people will give up and stop believing your contradictors instead of being rational and stopping paying attention to what you say.
They give you the truth, just not all of the truth. Enough of the truth that you fill in the gaps how they want you to. It’s very useful in all manner of scenarios; I used to use it to get out of morning shifts by telling a completely unrelated story about how my brother needed a lift to work.
One ring for the Ukele Dorks under their hats
Three rings for the freshmen in their halls of dorm
Seven rings to alchohlic RA’s doomed to cry
And one ring to Prof Brock in the sublab of Bio101
Where the shadows lie
That was fantastic, I had to take a moment to breathe and not choke to death after laughing. Thank you.
“There’s no question in my mind, Joe does exist. Just like love, we know he’s there, waiting to be missed.”
This conversation must look very strange from the outside of the building. I would have thought someone would have stopped Sal from doing this awhile ago, butt I guess no body cares.
This college is like Hogwarts with its indifference to student safety
You tend not to make rules about things you expect no-one to be stupid enough to try. That is, until someone tries them.
Depending on the state, speed limits apply to all motorized vehicles and if you have a car with no motor, you can drive it down a mountain just as fast as it will go by picking up speed, and it’s perfectly legal. There didn’t use to be laws preventing you from climbing the outsides of skyscrapers.
Safety regs are written in blood.
Yup. Everytime you come across some absurd law or regulation, remember that it only exists because somebody did the thing.
Well, sometimes it’s because someone made up stories about doing the thing and perpetuated that lie in an attempt to demonize the group that “did the thing”. But, like, usually it’s the reason you said.
Folks of all genders are too busy checking out Sal’s posterior to think of the safety implications.
Dan’s got a good balance of loyalty to his friend and realism going.
Yeeeeaaaaaah, you’re gonna have to prove that, Joe.
I take it your quest for Sal continues? Or has Robin won you over?
Mine does. I have Walky, but Sal tends to be elusive for us mere mortals.
Touché, Sal, but… YOU get a double date! YOU get a double date! Everyone gets a triple date!! Because so far it’s
Lucy with Walky
Sal with Danny
Joyce with Joe
Dorothy with
Dorothy with Arnold.
Dorothy with Maytag.
I appreciate your commitment to this ship. Speaking as someone who goes back from time to time to reread every Shortpacked!Arnold strip.
Have you ever stopped to consider how friggin’ huge this campus is? Like, we only see the stuff the main cast is doing, but everywhere, always, all those other people are having their own adventures we’ll never ever know!
until the meet cute.
Dorothy with Jacob. 🙂
Yeah I honestly hope they swing this thing into a triple date.
Dorothy with “fun-size” Walky.
Dorothy can be the
weddingtriple-date smasher. Having two of her ex-boyfriends in the same place would make for a lot of possibilities for Bad Decisions to happen, and she’s been falling into a lot of those.Joyce saying/believing she seduced Joe is somehow the cutest thing about this whole thing.
I hope she doesn’t actually believe that for two reasons: 1) It doesn’t give Joe as much credit, as he actively trying to be a better person. and 2) Joyce thinking she can singlehandedly “fix” someone is not a healthy mindset and is fraught with the potential to backfire.
Repeat of Ethan?
Hey, she’s still young and has grown a lot and so has Joe. She isn’t gonna be perfectly wise and all-knowing about relationships while still in her freshmen year of college. Also, I think she’s being tongue-in-cheek.
As Joe himself once pointed out, Joyce is gradually but continually shedding the layers of fucked-up-ness embedded in her brain; she might be okay after all.
Of course, in this story, there’s always the chance that she’ll make a wrong turn somewhere. But Joyce being who she is, it seems unlikely.
well, if they had gone to diff colleges i don’t think joe would be the way he is now…so she’s not wrong, if a bit more indireclty lol
Yeah, who is this woman who used both “sex” and “seduced” in a sentence, and what has she done with Joyce?
Sometimes, the best you can do is to
die in a science lab explosiongive your friend all the supportive words that you can honestly give without lying.joyce not knowing dan’s name continues to be hilarious
getting some excellent joe expressions here
I love Joe and Danny’s friendship more than any couple in this comic. They can all break up, but if Danny and Joe stop being bros is when we know it’s really over.
Joe/Danny are pretty much the only genuinely, 100%, consistently wholesome friendship in the whole damn comic, and Dina/Becky are pretty much the only wholesome romance. It amuses me to no end how, like, literally every other line in this soap opera’s relationship graph has SOME kind of horribly toxic BS mixed in somewhere or other, EXCEPT for those two.
..And yes, I know Sal and Danny’s relationship is also looking pretty good so far, but like she said, they’ve only been dating a week, so I’m not counting them here.
(I eagerly await your counterexamples!)
Oh, and just to be clear: I’m not saying that Dina/Becky is on the *same* level of wholesomeness as Joe & Danny. Like Yotomoe, I like Joe/Danny more than all other pairings of all kinds. Dina/Becky might be great, but they haven’t been together since before the beginning of the comic, while Joe & Danny have. I don’t make the rules, sorry Dina/Becky fans, that’s just the way it is.
Danny knows Joe, and I don’t blame him for his lack of faith.
But I will have faith in Joe. Please Willis, please. Let us have this one.
You are praying to a mad god, your wishes mean nothing in the grand scheme. Only He knows how this will end.
But I can predict the ending: Everybody breaks up and the only person still standing at the end is Carla with her sign.
Eat at Arby’s.
And the sign will read: “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair”. Nothing beside reamins.
Soggies may rule.
Or perhaps doggies. Autocorrect seems quite insistent on the latter.
I mean, Autocorrect has a point.
doggies do rule
Cats rule, doggies drool.
(That’s an actual quote, but I can’t remember from where.)
“I believe Joe will either be a perfect gentleman, or give Joyce a truly phenomenal first time. Maybe both but probably just one of those things.”
—Michael Scott
He’ll never be able to top the dryer. she peaked on that Maytag and it’s all downhill from here.
Joe is actually part Dryer on his fathers side.
The Philadelphia Dryers or the Boston Dryers?
It’s quite a sad story, really.
Joe’s gram met this dashing young dryer in a shop and they fell in love. She would go to the shop after hours with a skeleton key to spend time with the dryer. But her family found out, and also the shop owner, and because this was a different time, they were both found guilty on charges of obscenity, breaking & entering and being a fucking weirdo (well, mostly her).
Her parents got her married and moved away in a hurry, the dryer was quickly sold at half-price. They never saw each other again. But nine months later…..
It’s been 15 whole seconds, and Joe has not said anything lewd about Sal’s position. This might only go sideways temporarily.
I went looking for previous Joyce and Danny interactions and yeah, Joyce’s response here checks out.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/02-but-the-sun-still-shines/guys-2/
Ooh, new Joyce avatar, topical.
Is Sal going to actually enter I mean she might be comfortable with her abodmen pressing against the window with her touchus hanging out in the cold but for me personally it’s uncomfortable.
Never tried being halfway in a window like that myself but I imagine it can’t be very comfortable. But Sal has a lot more experience climbing windows and stuff so who knows?
Is it just me, or is Joyce actively trying to not remember Danny’s name? Or at least actively pretend to not know his name?
Part of me thinks that she thinks it’s a clever inside joke they share
I always assumed it’s an inside joke for readers who previously read Roomies: Joyce was obsessed with Danny in that strip so it’s funny/ironic that she is so indifferent to him she can’t even remember his name in this alternate universe.
Nah, Joyce is just super invested in the state of Danny’s headwear. If he starts experimenting in different styles, she will start making charts to follow the progression.
I don’t think she’s pretending not to know Danny’s name….
In one strip, Lucy was asking Joyce if she knew any boys to invite to a movie night. Joyce pictured images of Mike, Ethan, Joe and Jacob in her mind. But when it came to Danny, she just imagined an empty shirt and the hat. So for whatever reason, she seems to genuinely have a blank in her mind when it comes to Danny.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/02-but-the-sun-still-shines/guys-2/
I am a committed Joetheist! There’s no such thing as Joe and there never was!
Wouldn’t not believing Joe exists be an anti-Joetheist? Joetheism would be believing in and worshipping Joe; anti-Joetheism would be not worshipping or believing in Joe.
Sigh.. I’m converting to agJoestic. If Joe exists, he has deliberately concealed his true nature from us average non-Joes; therefore, a truly benevolent Joe would never judge me for being uncertain.
Who will break up first?
Becky and Dina
Joyce and Joe
Becky and Dina will never break up. As long as I keep saying that, it will definitely be true. So the correct answer is Joe and Joyce; as much as I want them to never break up, they have a higher chance of it happening.
I mean Willis did say “when will people realize these two are gonna be just fine” when people were initiating Dina’s asexuality would doom them. So probably JoJo
Them being fine is not necessarily fine together and Willis has backtracked previously.
Joe genuinely wants to be a better person and is trying and is making progress and everycreature has such lack of faith in him 😭😭😭😭😭 it Pains me
I’m glad that Danny has the good sense to not blurt out exactly what he’s thinking here for a change, because I honestly don’t think there’s a single character who could hurt Joe more.
You mean besides Joyce right? I feel like both Joyce and Danny have equal power to hurt Joe emotionally.
I’d put her at second place. Joe definitely cares about what Joyce thinks of him, but Danny is a constant in his life. He has been with Joe through everything.
This is only because Mike is dead. See Joe and Joyce’s first date where Mike hurt Joe plenty.
The best way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth and shut up.
Good job, Danny.
I feel like he’s being honest that he believes in Joe, but probably he believes Joe is sincere in wanting to do his best, since he’s seen Joe’s efforts and knows Joe has gone to him for advice, etc. I don’t think he necessarily expects Joe to not slip up, at least, not yet, but that’s also realistic as far as expectations go.
Wow that interaction made me literally yelp with joy. Been a minute since that happened.
Heh nice one gravatar
I hope Joe successfully becomes a better person out of spite for those who don’t believe in him
Spite *is* a powerful motivator.
Really not looking forward to the payoff where Joyce’s aggressively unsolved issues with intimacy traumatize Joe at his most well-meaning. At least, that’s where this dynamic seems to be pointing?
I feel like the payoff might be that Joyce will want to have sex before Joe does, and Joe’s going to have to navigate that fear.
Plus for him “sexual desire” and “emotional intimacy” have been disconnected for so long, he might have difficulty when they’re aligning.
Joe already has had that trauma with whatshhername, Sarah’s sister. He seems too have navigated through, but we haven’t seen him going for sex again
I think his encounter with Liz served that need for the story, or at least set those wheels in motion in his head.
Yeah it’s possible his previous encounter with Liz will make him more anxious about the same thing happening with Joyce and make him unexpectedly (to her) reluctant.
I kinda feel like that scene with Liz will end up being a foil to when the Jos actually hook up. Because as much as that wasn’t too long ago in comic, Liz still represented Joyce at a very different point of her journey. She’d *just* left the church, not even publicly yet, and had all the hangups surrounding that. And her sexual trauma and repression was still largely unaddressed. A lot has happened since then. She’s been forced to face her sexuality with the “hussy pills”, her still very christian best friend had premarital Hankey pankey and they had a really good conversation about both those things. She’s been orgasming, on purpose, even if the start was a bit unconventional. And throughout the day even she’s been getting more and more comfortable with just, being a person with sexual desires and stating that, at least to the one she desires. She still has a ways to go, you can’t undo 18 years of sexual repression in a week, and there’s potentially unrelated to all that her SA trauma which could be triggered. But Joe is taking things really slow and at her pace (he’s made some positive steps after recovering from the initial “ruined” hit) and they’ve been really good about communicating. I think their first time will be fine
Oops, rambly wall of text. Sorry!
Tldr Joyce is in a good place and they have been really good at communicating, their first time will probably be fine at least emotionally and act as a narrative foil to Liz
I declare that from now on, Sal should only be seen in this position: sticking halfway through the window in perpetuity, like a sideways Oscar the Grouch.
I am half-expecting a strip to just show that there are a handful of people outside just staring at her ass.
Ssh! No bonus strip spoilers!
I really shouldn’t be as charmed as I am by Joyce and Joe just being happy with each other while everyone around them is all ‘YIKES here comes the dumpster fire, I’ll just carry marshmallows with me’.
But yeah, good job Danny – support your eternal BFF without lying in words OR sentiment. (I do think the first time Joe gets really squishy about Joyce or otherwise does boyfriend/emotional things without being prodded Danny will take note.)
This is the couple I most desperately want to work out and I am terrified it will somehow implode and hoping it does not.
It IS basically one of the most classic romance tropes: bad boy, morally grey character, or guy uninterested in being tied down, reformed by his falling in love with someone totally unexpected. I’m always a sucker for that trope.
Kind of a love/hate relationship with that trope. It’s often cute and enjoyable when it’s well done, but it really feeds into the idea that it’ll work in real life. That if the bad boy’s interested in you, he’ll really fall for you and change, when it’s far more likely he’ll just get what he wants and move on.
I mean I’m kinda in that boat – not with bad boys but sarcassholes. I do best with really strong personalities so a good majority of my long relationships had started antagonistic. That said… breaking up seems to have brought the most change or maybe clarity in my former partners… a suspiciously large amount of them married the one after me. I chock that up to them learning EXACTLY what they like and dislike after spending time with a mutual strong headed idiot. 🙂
The art in this comic has gotten so friggin good. That dynamic picture of Joyce in the first panel is so precise and also shows movement. And Joe’s eyes watering up are precious. Everything is great.
Agree! That first panel is just perf 🤌
This one is also very cute. I love Joe legitimately appreciating his best bro’s belief, even if it’s a little sideways.
I can see these guys, and Amber as becoming a group with each other.
Joe’s face as he’s emotionally touched is just too goddamn cute.
Panel 3 Joyce and Joe’s faces are also fucking adorable.
Surprised no one has commented with a “I believe in Joe….. Joe mama!” joke yet. Thought for sure it’d be snatched up
Mike would have had a Joe mama joke ready.
It would have involved nickles.
they could go on a triple date for maximum awkward. but honestly i do believe in joe. im worried im going to get my heart broken but im choosing to believe in him.
I do believe in Joe here, but only because this is fiction. Pretty sure Willis isn’t going to turn his arc around at this point.
If it was real life, I’d be with Danny.
Or Dorothy.
People keep thinking that when this goes wrong, it will be Joe that does something bad in Joyce’s direction. But I remain true to my conviction that Joyce has the potential to destroy Joe (No, not THAT way, but — maybe?). Joe has opened himself up to having — feelings, and I think he’s potentially WAY more vulnerable than people give him credit for.
Oh, definitely. Joe actually strikes me as a pretty sensitive guy, in the sense that he went out of his way to keep his relationships at an arms distance for casual hook ups.
Both Joyce and Joe are putting a lot of stock into this relationship emotionally.
A pretty sensitive guy? Joe??
I wonder if Joe’s horndog persona wasn’t constructed precisely because Joe is sensitive and wanted a shield against feelings that he couldn’t deal with when he was a bit younger.
Now I wonder if Dorothy could shed some light on that.
Could? Maybe.
Would? Eeh…
It’s possible there’s some of that, but we’ve got a good look at why Joe constructed the horndog persona and the main motivation was so that no girls would get attached to him and get hurt when he inevitably turned out like his dad and cheated.
Some of that could have been an excuse for not letting his own feelings get hurt, but there’s been a lot of narrative investment in that part of it. It’s got to be at least the major reason.
Sal goes on double dates with Jesus Christ?
is that Historical Jesus or the other one?
lol you’d think being able to date sal/getting her as a gf would be enough for joyce to learn dan’s name lol
At this point it’s such a running joke that I want to suspend disbelief and have her irrationally never ever learn his name.
Like 6 years down the line, things miraculously go well for a couple in this comic and Sal and Danny invite Joyce to their wedding…but she still doesn’t know Danny’s name.
She’s showing Joe the invitation, with “You are invited to the wedding of Danny and Sal” and she still doesn’t know it even though it’s written RIGHT THERE.
“Sal and who?? I thought she was really serious with your friend with the hat!”
All good eggs that go good in ramen, and straight into my alien belly! 🤤
No, Joyce, i think it’s possible that you used to put on a front as a good girlfriend and you have seduced yourself into turning into a sex monster.
I genuinely hope that’s how this goes down anyway ^^
Yeah I’m with you, I think Joe will be the good boyfriend and Joyce the sex monster 😀
The most dramatic and unexpected thing that could possibly happen is that Joe does nothing wrong, grows as a person and gets over some of his issues.
My money is on Joyce fucking it up again. I’d rather that then Joe cheat or anything else that he could be capable of doing, since pretty much anything he believes himself capable of is varying levels of ‘I can never like this character again’.
I’d rather they just not work as a couple mutually since any end to their relationship seems like a really bad one, but probably not this comic.
Hell yes! I’ve got a Danny avatar now. And one that really suits me!
One of the things that frustrates me about Joe as a character is that we’ve never seen him do anything remotely that bad. Despite that being a very likely outcome of his early approach to women, there’s no indication that he’s ever actually hurt anyone personally.
Plenty of other characters have gotten their really dark moments, but Joe’s have always been kept on the kind of impersonal creepy level.
Probably because that’s more common than people who hurt others physically?
I can definitely see that, but for me it leaves Joe in this really awkward place.
I think you might be forgetting the list. Ignoring the dehuminification that it requires to make people into numbers, and that definitely seemed to offend even some of the people he slept with, there is also the fact that he’s on a college. There is a culture on most campuses that also demunizes women.
I’m not, but the list was kind of abstract. It’s creepy and awful, but it doesn’t hit as hard as one woman he’d slept with serious regrets about it would.
Joe’s asked Danny advice on being a Good Boyfriend before, so at least Danny has a little more context and forewarning than everyone else!
Right, which is what I think Danny is saying here that he believes in, Joe’s earnestness. Guessing his reservation is more in if he can pull it off or not, but he knows Joe *is* trying, genuinely.
Hehe, guess Danny knows the true identity of “Julia Gray”, since Joe would not initially tell him who he was going after.
I think Danny’s blind spot is himself. He seems pretty solid when it comes to others.
It would be really funny to me if one of Danny’s reservations here is “Joe literally just told me he was interested in Julia, how good a boyfriend can he possibly be for Joyce”.
I would bet Joyce would be the one to ruin this relationship.
I wonder if Joyce is going to snap about people assuming it’s going to go wrong.
Becky, Dina, and (eventually) Dorothy were accepting but people who don’t know her quite as well are probably going to react more like Sal and Walky. Amber doesn’t get to place as accepting, more excessively enthusiastic to a potentially well documented (online in an anonymised AO3 fic) degree.
It’s… somewhat understandable from the POV that Joyce is Super Innocent but she’s been moving away from that person and getting mad when people don’t accept the change.
Anyway, beyond a certain point “lol good luck with that relationship” gets insulting and she’s been learning being the kind of person to get judgey at people’s bad decisions that don’t effect others is kind of a dick move literally the entire time.
(As well as radically reevaluating what a bad decision is and removing things like “atheism” or “dancing with boys without parental supervision” or “sex” from that list.)
Amber’s trying to be The Good Supportive Sister, for the value of Good Supportive Sister that coexists with “I am Garbage.”
I’m really liking this Danny.
The point of a double date, is for couples to effectively chaperone themselves via public shame and embarassment. This prevents the couple from finding alone time with their ~bodily urges~. This assumes of course that the double date doesn’t descend into some sort of sex party. But that is why Joyce and Lucy are into such things. They should do their double date together, and leave Sal and Danny alone.
I mean, yes probably for Joyce and Lucy. It can also be a chance to hang out with your friends and dates
The double dates I’ve been on were just two sets of couple friends who wanted to hang out?
Like even in sitcoms it’s a common trope for someone in a newly married couple to constantly try to push their friends into relationships so they can all ~*double date*~ as a group couple activity.
Dang, Joe really needed to hear that.
But Dan Danned it up by not really meaning it.
Dan believes Joe exists. He is not just an imaginary friend created created by bronze age shepherds.
oh Dannyboy XD
I believe in Joe too. Or at least I want to believe!
*x-files theme plays*
I believe in Joe…
♫♪ Amethyst, and Pearl – And Steven
Wait, Joe has been categorized as “boyfriend” already? I have to look back thru the last weeks.
Yup. After like two days of flirting.
Meantimes i’m yawning my jaw off, all this straight cutesiness does nothing for my blackened queer heart. I just hope this is Willis painstakingly lining up all his ships only to go Naval Battle on them like some scary kid playing by himself in a psychiatrist’s office 😙
Joe almost had sex with Liz less than a week ago, a couple of days before he told Joyce he had the feels, and Sarah might have suspicions about that (Danny definitely knows, and he has a tendency to say inopportune things without thinking).
Joyce had a sexual encounter with Dorothy after Joe told her he had feelings for her, and since Dorothy took her to a public place to do it, other people possibly know, but definitely Carla, who has a tendency to want to say inopportune things.
Anyways, can’t wait for the next chapter, “This was Roller Derby”
THIS! This is how you can be honest without being a d**k. You don’t have to lie to be supportive of people. You just tell truths that can be open to interpretation and if you can’t do that respectfully, you just keep your dang mouth shut!
LET HIM BE HAPPY LOOK AT HIM
I get the impression Joe was not truly comfortable in the sex monster presentation; it is literally how he was raised. Goes off to college, hits consequences + counterexamples, and immediately moves in a better direction.
He literally says in-comic it was a coping mechanism because he didn’t want to hurt people like his dad hurt people, and he thinks he’s genetically incapable of being faithful because his dad is a serial cheater.
He thinks/thought that if he’s up front with being a man ho, the people who get with him don’t expect him to be faithful, so when his dad genes kick in and he cheats, it won’t hurt them as badly.
I remember that, but not when the discussion took place. The fact that he’s trying now suggests to me he may not believe that rationalization anymore.
His transformation didn’t happen all at once, but it started early. And it is ongoing.
I can see it now, there is a double date of Joyce. Joe, Walky, and Lucy on the horizon.
No.
Maybe if I was still 15.
Honestly kinda think I’m rooting for this now.
Joyce, it’s literally only been a few hours.
That’s weird because she’s never been impulsive before!
Ugh, I am loving the Roomies! vibes of this strip so much
Just seeing Sal and Danny hanging out together talking about Joe is good shit
And every time Joyce doesn’t know Danny’s name I am hooting and quite frequently hollering
After so much comments-section hate on Danny for so long, is it weird that he’s become the voice of the comments section?
Yeah, it’s quite the character development. I wonder when’s the last time someone said “Danny’d it up”
I feel like it was around a year ago, but I cannot remember what happened
They hated him because he was them.
Sal’s face today and yesterday are the greatest in entire comic.
Joe’s little C: made me also go C:
Joe’s eyes and calling Danny “Dan” spoke to me today.
Sal was already my favorite character but now she and Danny are my extra favorite
Oh my God, Joe’s face in panel 5 gets me right in the heart @u@
Must protecc
I don’t believe it! It seems like Sal and Danny ACTUALLY make a good couple!
A good egg?
Something tells me Joe is as cis as they come, but *shrug*