Actually, this makes me wonder — over/under on a Dina encounter? Amber would just ignore Carol or snark at her (more likely the former but maybe the latter since she’s trying to build a relationship with Joe in her own weird way), but Dina could be interesting narratively.
I feel like Dina might just nope out. Joyce finally stopped believing unreasonable things, and now an infinitely worse version of beginning_of_semester!Joyce shows up? Doesn’t seem worth spending energy on.
True, it’s pretty much established that Dina is Schrodinger’s dinosaur, both behind and not behind every door until someone collapses the waveform by actually looking.
Carla dumping her brain into a computer and taking the form of her favorite cartoon character, Ultra Car, would certainly make for a neat parallel with Shortpacked!
Joe at this point is basically me in college to a spooky level. Played into the ropes of who he thought he had to be. Realised he doesn’t really want to be that. Starting to find who he really is. It’s important to him that people know what he’s thinking and stop assuming things about him, because those assumptions inevitably are things he’s making an effort to move away from. It hurts to know that people think those things about you, so you kind of forcibly show your progress for a while. Sadly I think he may be drawn to Joyce as a safe space where he’s unlikely to have the opportunity to fall back into actions he’s trying to move away from and a shortcut to some imagined purity level he feels he must attain. And that’s something he’ll grow out of, although the way time passes in the comic it may be 2030 before he does.
TBH when I was pursuing my wife, saying your Mom looks pretty good, so you should also look pretty good at her age and beyond was generally taken as a complement.
Dorothy listed first. A man of culture, I see. Let these common Blanche-ites balk at your choices even as they chase only what they feel is free for all.
He is growing on me. But so do tumours, so that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Joking aside, it’s obvious that he really does care about Joyce. Whether or not he avoids screwing things up horribly is still up in the air, but he has good motivation to try and do right.
Never talk about religion and she might be okay to be around in small doses…maybe. Like if you keep the topic on something safe, like baking, you could possibly make it to the bed before terms like “woke” start setting off red flags.
Ok, I am prepared for hate to come my way for this, but in a way it was kinda nice that Joe said that her mom looked good for 60. He just told her the two things that have hit her out of nowhere, things that are big after saying that her mom is going to die (in a joking way of course). Regardless of how Joyce feels about her mother in this moment, I don’t think she would wish her to be dead. Maybe Joe was overcompensating and it just came out in a very… hit on the mom way?
lol i wonder how many ppl have made that mistake before. tho among some friends i’m sure some would say that on purpose to get under older ppl’s nerves
I get it a lot, my mom was also 60 around when i started college. People also mistook my brother for my dad when i was a kid, he’s only 14 years older so i joked that something must’ve gone seriously wrong
Given Joyce is the youngest of… what, again, five? with a decent age spread, and the kind of attitudes the Brown siblings have almost certainly been raised with, it’s a little surprising that Carol isn’t a grandma yet from at least one of them. 60 is actually pretty late to not be a grandmother with that many kids who are all adults now in a subculture that strongly demands settling down and pumping them out.
Well, their oldest, John, only just got married recently so they have time.
Jordan doesn’t speak to his parents so even if he DOES have children now, Carol has no access to them and may not even know.
Jocelyne is only a relatively recent graduate who is still establishing herself – and also her parents don’t know she’s a ‘her’. That’ll put a damper on the relationship eventually. But yeah, he’s still young enough that it’s not weird he’s not married yet.
Now in Walkyverse, we have no idea what her extra two brothers’ deal was but we know Carol gave up on them having kids eventually.
well it’d probably have a bunch of other ppl’s stuff too but other than basic bath sets and stuff i imagine there wouldn’t be anything too customized (though most of them shower in the communal showers so idk if they’d keep anything in the bathroom that they couldn’t keep in their drawers)
i mean, this university isn’t as religious leaning as becky’s was before she ran, so she’d have to expect joyce would be around ppl she’d consider ‘blasphemous’, even if she had stayed a ‘perfect angel’ in her moms eyes other than condemning an acquaintances’ behavior/personal life, she can’t physically stop them from keeping their stuff in a shared bathroom (tho i suppose some ppl who don’t wanna deal with the headache would be discreet and hide something they wouldn’t want an uptight christian to see)
I’ve never lived in a dorm, but my recollection when I helped my girlfriend move her stuff back home at end of term (from a different school) is of a very bare-bones room with fixtures and nothing else. Space on the edges of things for maybe a bar of soap. You’d keep your stuff in your room. Not a bad plan, really, with four girls raised in different homes sharing such a space.
Yeah, I’d expect toothbrushes and that kind of thing. Maybe birth control, though we know Joyce doesn’t keep hers there.
It would be a weird place to keep condoms and vibrators
At least with the shared bathroom, Joyce can blame anything Carol finds on three other people. It’s harder to deflect the birth control when it’s sitting on her personal desk.
I met a guy in New York back in ’67 who referred to girls as “gilkens.” If he was being nice. Otherwise it was “ginch.” Never heard either word anywhere else. I think I can figure out “ginch,” but “gilken” has me beat.
-ken is dimuntive in germanic languages (examples in standard English: lambkin, pumpkin, munchkin, mannequin). Gill sounds like a non-rhotic version of girl, like “gal” or the british “gel”.
not an unreasonable age if you’ve already had kids
amusing if she ended up having another kid to be like “hopefully this daughter will turn out better” or so, i mean it’d be a lot of effort but i can totally imagine a person having another kid outta spite
Interesting. I wonder if it’s significant to the plot somehow that Carol is 60. My parents were also in their early 40’s when they had me but most parents are not. Was it a Quiverfull thing, where more kids = better, so she continued having them as long as she safely could? Or was her oldest already showing signs of not following her wishes and she wanted an additional “clean slate”? I’m curious to learn more.
Considering how religious they are, I’m thinking it’s Quiverfull/”be fruitful and multiply” in which case we’re lucky they only had 4 kids, rather than 7. Also, since they did stop with Joyce, it’s possible they were subconsciously trying until they finally had a girl, as I’ve seen many people do. Granted, they do have a daughter in Jocelyne, they just don’t know/wouldn’t accept her.
So reading this for a second time and thinking about that final panel, it strikes me that this is not only a joke, but Joe’s way of saying “this is me. I’m not going to hide anything from you. You’ll know exactly how bad I am, so you can always make the choice to walk away when you want.”
Joyce absolutely needs someone without pretense. She has had a lot of traumatic experiences involving pretense – I’d say Becky kissing her counts, even if things ended up okay between the two of them. And yeah, thinking back on Ryan, Ethan, and Jacob, pretense was a major part of all those relationships.
Yeah, Joe doesn’t believe in springing stuff on Joyce, and vice versa. It’s been a recurring thing with these two in some of their previous heart to hears.
Paraphrasing, but at least one or two “This is what you’re signing up for” “Do you see me running?” kinds of exchanges.
Lately I’ve been getting ads for “most romantic hotels in [random city]”, all with at least four women smiling and laughing. Pretty sure something about my browsing history seems to be making the adgorithm think I’m in a lesbian polycule, and I sorta wonder if this gay-ass comic might be skewing things.
Officially Team Joe, now. He is so on point, even including the comments on her mom’s looks. I’m also on board the SS Joeyce, though I shudder to mention it for fear of what Willis may do to us later . . .
That’s just aesthetics. Nothing wrong with pursuing libido as a hobby, as it were. Besides, he’s serious enough about Joyce that he may be curious about what life might be like 40 years from now.
It just dawned on me that Carol may be way more on the spectrum than Dina, only for her it’s God instead of dinos. Also, dinos are statistically 50.000% less likely to make people sell their houses.
Marten’s dad got this reaction from Claire, too, though she had not yet really properly acknowledged her attraction to Marten yet, guess that was an early clue.
Joyce has a way prettier face than her mom, so I mean, odds are she’ll look better at 60, so Joe’s probably more noticing curves.
1. Can relate to Joyce, I can remember sitting with my “boyfriend” when I was 13 on the front porch on the day my grandmother died. I was chatting with other people about something, then looked at him and saw he looked really stormy. “What’s wrong?” I asked. He looked back at me and said flatly “your grandmother just *died*.” I loved my grandmother and admired her a lot, just it took a long time for bad news to really internalise for me, and I would often forget it, probably as a defense mechanism? My emotions have always been too intense.
2. I think Joe’s been through similar actually? Didn’t his parents divorce? Or maybe he lost his mom entirely? So he probably gets it better than just about anybody Joyce knows.
Ooh yeah, Joe’s parents definitely divorced. In his case, it was because his father wasn’t loyal. It’s a big part of why Joe leans into just casual sex before dating Joyce (if he never actually dates anyone, he never has to worry about getting divorced/cheating), as well as why he had reservations about his dad actually starting a relationship with Amber’s mom, viewing the relationship as a ticking time bomb until his dad ‘inevitably’ cheats.
It definitely reminds me of my parents. Both of them came from divorced households, and so even though my parents were together for over 30 years, raised me together, and lived in the same home for all that time, the two didn’t never got married. Likely due to the divorces that happened in their childhoods.
It’s one thing to say you can forgive it because it’s self-sabotage or a backslide into old habits, but please y’all, this isn’t genuinely helpful by any stretch of the imagination
I don’t know if anyone’s really told him much about that or not. I think he’s making strictly a physical assessment, though, I seriously doubt he’d actually want to bang her.
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Sympathy via large contact
♥
It’s like thermal pads and paste for computers, the larger the contact area, the better it transfers warmth.
Actually, this makes me wonder — over/under on a Dina encounter? Amber would just ignore Carol or snark at her (more likely the former but maybe the latter since she’s trying to build a relationship with Joe in her own weird way), but Dina could be interesting narratively.
I feel like Dina might just nope out. Joyce finally stopped believing unreasonable things, and now an infinitely worse version of beginning_of_semester!Joyce shows up? Doesn’t seem worth spending energy on.
You assume Dina hasn’t been here all along.
True, it’s pretty much established that Dina is Schrodinger’s dinosaur, both behind and not behind every door until someone collapses the waveform by actually looking.
Put me down for $20 on a resonating HOMPK! from the bathroom.
Hug any harder and that fire alarm will go off.
awe. sympathy via physical contact 🥺
sympathy via heavy physical contact and much weeping and gnashing of teeth
Dumbing of Age Book 13: Your Mom is Looking Pretty Good
I think that would be for book 60, but the line has been burned.
I hope she leaves and never returns ever.
You ever play Ghost Busters: The Video Game? It had a cursed toilet that drowned people as a collectible. That game scared me silly as a kid.
While that would be ideal, Willis is far too cruel a god to let us off that easy.
She wanders into a real-life game of Oops! All CHUDs! and is never heard from again. Everybody wins!
well , if it is 100% autobiographical, she would die at some point but i don’t think she’d die ‘on screen’/within this year
https://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/185450907842/this-is-todays-dumbing-of-age-strip-my-mothers
Not 100% autobiographical. But yes, all the characters would die at some point because of mortality.
You say that like Carla won’t figure out how to dump her brain into a supercomputer before then.
Carla dumping her brain into a computer and taking the form of her favorite cartoon character, Ultra Car, would certainly make for a neat parallel with Shortpacked!
The heat death of the universe will come for Carla… unless she answers “The Last Question”.
INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER
I saw that planetarium show!
What if she dies while Joyce is in college, for extra pathos?
Joe is doing this right.
(Okay, the last panel is a little iffy, but he’s got a point.)
I mean, if you think about it, Joyce is gonna look a lot like her mom with her dad’s hair and eyes. Minus the total batshit.
Batshittery ages people. Or turns them into plastic. Mostly, though, ages them. I think Joyce’ll do pretty well.
Zapped Joyce right out of her sadness spiral though.
Joyce can have a little sadness. You know, as a treat.
She will probably get back into it soon enough. During the next alone, quiet time.
Joe at this point is basically me in college to a spooky level. Played into the ropes of who he thought he had to be. Realised he doesn’t really want to be that. Starting to find who he really is. It’s important to him that people know what he’s thinking and stop assuming things about him, because those assumptions inevitably are things he’s making an effort to move away from. It hurts to know that people think those things about you, so you kind of forcibly show your progress for a while. Sadly I think he may be drawn to Joyce as a safe space where he’s unlikely to have the opportunity to fall back into actions he’s trying to move away from and a shortcut to some imagined purity level he feels he must attain. And that’s something he’ll grow out of, although the way time passes in the comic it may be 2030 before he does.
This was almost a perfectly wholesome moment, then Joe had to be Joe.
Guess I can’t blame him, when I do something I too follow the pattern of, Kyrik being Kyrik
At least she knows that if he didn’t say “I could do her as a MILF and then later as a GILF; with a little work.” he probably didn’t think it.
And for that we are thankful that he did not think about it.
TBH when I was pursuing my wife, saying your Mom looks pretty good, so you should also look pretty good at her age and beyond was generally taken as a complement.
I mean, Joyce is not sad anymore.
Gilf? More like Gilttiawc, Aka Grandma I’d Like To Throw In A Wood Chipper.
interesting idea.
Joe: I’m just saying, I watched the entirely of The Golden Girls, and…
Joyce: Joe.
Joe: I’m mean, Dorothy, obviously, then Rose and Blanche tied for second…
Joyce: Joe.
Joe: Might need a few drinks in me before I’d go for Sophia, but…
Joyce: Joe.
Nuts to Dorothy and Rose. Blanche was the milf of ages.
Rose has a higher body count, I cackled.
“Oh, come on, Blanche, how can you say that? So the woman had fifty-six boyfriends in one year. She’s not a slut.”
“Thank you, Dorothy.”
“She is THE slut! She is the Grand Poobah of slutdom! She is the easiest woman in this room!”
“Dorothy Zbornak, you take that back!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7cJMqBMFR0
Oh, no no no! Didn’t you see the episode where Rose becomes the crush object of Blanche’s lesbian friend? Hott hott hott!
Nope. I only saw a few episodes.
Rue McClanahan was younger than Carol is when The Golden Girls ended in 1992.
i agree dorothy was indeed a gilf
Dorothy listed first. A man of culture, I see. Let these common Blanche-ites balk at your choices even as they chase only what they feel is free for all.
Huh. Why are so many DoA charachters named the same as the Golden Girls?
Here’s hoping Joyce doesn’t get Doctor Budd for her autism diagnosis.
Joe’s getting her mind off it! He’s doing his best.
comfort through mildly inappropriate humor.
It’s the only way Joe knows.
(I am also Joe).
Honestly, a fully effective way to help someone when you don’t have the chance to just bawl it out.
I can’t tell was this the right time and place? I wasn’t totally shocked by that one, and also as mad as I am at Carol…Joe ain’t totally wrong.
Joe doing his best, he’s only not been his worst for like a few days. So cutting him some slack.
I love Joe’s response of “your murderer mom can get over it or die”.
He is growing on me. But so do tumours, so that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Joking aside, it’s obvious that he really does care about Joyce. Whether or not he avoids screwing things up horribly is still up in the air, but he has good motivation to try and do right.
*plays “200 Balloons” from the Batdance CD/Batman 1989 soundtrack on the hacked Muzak*
thanks Mr Bierce! this is just what I need to numb my brain and relax out of necessity before I attempt an incredibly queer culinary feat!
Like, doing the dishes?
Rainbow Chicken! Or rather, brown colorslop chicken, damn. Still tastes good tho. 😅😋
No, No Joe’s right. I wouldn’t kick Carol out of bed, at least.
I’d have a lot of questions about we ended up in the same bed, probably.
Never talk about religion and she might be okay to be around in small doses…maybe. Like if you keep the topic on something safe, like baking, you could possibly make it to the bed before terms like “woke” start setting off red flags.
She has like 4-5 kids so she must’ve been doing something right.
Not out of bed. But downstairs.
I wonder if Malaya has class on Friday morning.
Ok, I am prepared for hate to come my way for this, but in a way it was kinda nice that Joe said that her mom looked good for 60. He just told her the two things that have hit her out of nowhere, things that are big after saying that her mom is going to die (in a joking way of course). Regardless of how Joyce feels about her mother in this moment, I don’t think she would wish her to be dead. Maybe Joe was overcompensating and it just came out in a very… hit on the mom way?
Where is Mike and his nickels when we need him?
Always a pertinent question.
Banging all the moms that have passed beyond this earthly, mortal coil, of course.
Joe hit a “reverse course and overcompensate” resonance frequency, and amplified back and forth a couple times before he got back on track.
A conversational tank slapper, if you will.
WHAT’S SHE GOING TO FIND IN THE BATHATHROOM HMMMMM?
…i mean, the only person she could find in the bathroom that would actually lead to any drama would be carla
and i’m really hoping carla never has to meet carol in her life
Carla would destroy her.
The bathroom panel, I’m only assuming, is not there just for dialogue.
It could just be to give Joe and Joyce a moment, but there could definitely be more to it.
Malaya shares Joyce’s half-bath.
Suddenly I am convinced that a Carla encounter is imminent.
Joyce hid her birth control pills so nothing of Joyce’s hopefully
Though if Sarah left Other Jacob out that might cause drama
I was gonna say Other Jacob too. Although I’m hoping Carol’s just as naive as her daughter and mistakes it for a nose cleaner or a light saber.
Becky forgot to flush. But it’s not actually anything gross, it’s just a compressed .jpg of Xehanort Kingdomhearts she had Dorothy print out for her.
*crosses fingers for a flashback to joe’s parents’ divorce*
I’m sorry but the second panel is just so funny.. you didn’t have to call her a grandma 😆
lol i wonder how many ppl have made that mistake before. tho among some friends i’m sure some would say that on purpose to get under older ppl’s nerves
I get it a lot, my mom was also 60 around when i started college. People also mistook my brother for my dad when i was a kid, he’s only 14 years older so i joked that something must’ve gone seriously wrong
Given Joyce is the youngest of… what, again, five? with a decent age spread, and the kind of attitudes the Brown siblings have almost certainly been raised with, it’s a little surprising that Carol isn’t a grandma yet from at least one of them. 60 is actually pretty late to not be a grandmother with that many kids who are all adults now in a subculture that strongly demands settling down and pumping them out.
Well, their oldest, John, only just got married recently so they have time.
Jordan doesn’t speak to his parents so even if he DOES have children now, Carol has no access to them and may not even know.
Jocelyne is only a relatively recent graduate who is still establishing herself – and also her parents don’t know she’s a ‘her’. That’ll put a damper on the relationship eventually. But yeah, he’s still young enough that it’s not weird he’s not married yet.
Now in Walkyverse, we have no idea what her extra two brothers’ deal was but we know Carol gave up on them having kids eventually.
Gah, fuck, meant to put finger quotes around the “he’s” for Jocelyne. Mea culpa.
GOOD BOYFRIENDING JOE. FIRST OFFICIAL DAY OF BOYFRIENDING YOU GET AN A.
oh no no thank you for that gravatar let me try again
Joe got a look at what he’ll be looking at with Joyce if he sticks around long term and he likes what he sees
Joe and Joyce staying together into their 60s confirmed
Alright, much is Carol gonna be snooping through Joyce’s bathroom looking for, I dunno, birth control or condoms?
Forgetting that she shares a half-bath with Dorothy, who could just as easily have those?
Bonus if she finds the AMAZI-CONDOMS.
Actually I forgot that she actually doesn’t share the half-bath with Dorothy, she shares it with Sal and Malaya.
So no AMAZI-CONDOMS but Carol could still be snooping.
And Sarah. She has her own roommate things that upset her mother can belong to even if they’re Joyce’s.
Like “other Jacob”. Wait, is she gonna see it, assume it’s Joyce’s, and find out that Joyce practices Onanism?
Honestly, I’d pay to see Malaya meet Carol and then they have a stand-off.
well it’d probably have a bunch of other ppl’s stuff too but other than basic bath sets and stuff i imagine there wouldn’t be anything too customized (though most of them shower in the communal showers so idk if they’d keep anything in the bathroom that they couldn’t keep in their drawers)
Let’s not mince words.
Carol doesn’t give a shit if it isn’t Joyce’s.
i mean, this university isn’t as religious leaning as becky’s was before she ran, so she’d have to expect joyce would be around ppl she’d consider ‘blasphemous’, even if she had stayed a ‘perfect angel’ in her moms eyes other than condemning an acquaintances’ behavior/personal life, she can’t physically stop them from keeping their stuff in a shared bathroom (tho i suppose some ppl who don’t wanna deal with the headache would be discreet and hide something they wouldn’t want an uptight christian to see)
That’s logic, vs someone who talks to gods in her sleep about selling things (I guess world peace was too easy a topic)
I’ve never lived in a dorm, but my recollection when I helped my girlfriend move her stuff back home at end of term (from a different school) is of a very bare-bones room with fixtures and nothing else. Space on the edges of things for maybe a bar of soap. You’d keep your stuff in your room. Not a bad plan, really, with four girls raised in different homes sharing such a space.
Yeah, I’d expect toothbrushes and that kind of thing. Maybe birth control, though we know Joyce doesn’t keep hers there.
It would be a weird place to keep condoms and vibrators
I fucking love Joe.
It’s weird but on the other hand apparently a good handful of people in the comments have agreed this week
Now you’ve jinxed it.
GIDWF. No way with that one.
GWCFO
Ah yeah Joe’s gone through his parents not being together before so he knows what Joyce needed in the moment…
…Nah but seriously, money on Carol snooping.
Oh, absolutely.
At least with the shared bathroom, Joyce can blame anything Carol finds on three other people. It’s harder to deflect the birth control when it’s sitting on her personal desk.
Your Honor, I love them.
Anyone else think , hmm ‘whats a gilf”
“girlfriend I’d like to French”
FANTASTIC username
*bangs side of the hull* we’re going slow but we’re enjoying the ride!
Think MILF but substitute “Granny” for “Mom”.
Ahh,Joe at his finest! Loving and Gross.
Mister “how do I be a good boyfriend” being a good boyfriend and not even realising it. :’)
I met a guy in New York back in ’67 who referred to girls as “gilkens.” If he was being nice. Otherwise it was “ginch.” Never heard either word anywhere else. I think I can figure out “ginch,” but “gilken” has me beat.
Do you happen to know where his family originally came from? If you do I might be able to suss it out.
No idea, but his accent was American.
-ken is dimuntive in germanic languages (examples in standard English: lambkin, pumpkin, munchkin, mannequin). Gill sounds like a non-rhotic version of girl, like “gal” or the british “gel”.
Man, 60…. she had Joyce near 40.
not an unreasonable age if you’ve already had kids
amusing if she ended up having another kid to be like “hopefully this daughter will turn out better” or so, i mean it’d be a lot of effort but i can totally imagine a person having another kid outta spite
I’ll confess it: Carol has been looking good and should show up in the Patreon
I was gonna protest but. Well. Willis made it happen once with Mary. May as well.
The kids are doing alright
joe’s doing so well I almost wonder if he’s going to burn himself out from trying too hard
I HOPE NOT
BC IT’S VERY CUTE
New goal for aging: Keep enough stuff in the right places.
Become the Marie Kondo of aging!
One gray hair? This does not spark joy.
♫ I’ve still got my sexy parts
Still I’ve got two out of five
I’ve still got two out of five ♪
Not bad for having three (or four) kids!
Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Joe. What a pendulum of statements, tho.
Exhibit B of Joe acting as an oversized teddy bear:
Joe should really just except his fate 😌
She’d give him a dope-slap if she could reach.
(Hoping to start a running gag where he bends over to Joyce-dope-slap height when he thinks he deserves it.)
I approve of this.
Interesting. I wonder if it’s significant to the plot somehow that Carol is 60. My parents were also in their early 40’s when they had me but most parents are not. Was it a Quiverfull thing, where more kids = better, so she continued having them as long as she safely could? Or was her oldest already showing signs of not following her wishes and she wanted an additional “clean slate”? I’m curious to learn more.
Considering how religious they are, I’m thinking it’s Quiverfull/”be fruitful and multiply” in which case we’re lucky they only had 4 kids, rather than 7. Also, since they did stop with Joyce, it’s possible they were subconsciously trying until they finally had a girl, as I’ve seen many people do. Granted, they do have a daughter in Jocelyne, they just don’t know/wouldn’t accept her.
Maybe they only started having kids after Hank finished medical school.
There were six Brown siblings in the old Walkyverse continuity, but there’s only four here.
So reading this for a second time and thinking about that final panel, it strikes me that this is not only a joke, but Joe’s way of saying “this is me. I’m not going to hide anything from you. You’ll know exactly how bad I am, so you can always make the choice to walk away when you want.”
Joyce absolutely needs someone without pretense. She has had a lot of traumatic experiences involving pretense – I’d say Becky kissing her counts, even if things ended up okay between the two of them. And yeah, thinking back on Ryan, Ethan, and Jacob, pretense was a major part of all those relationships.
Yeah, Joe doesn’t believe in springing stuff on Joyce, and vice versa. It’s been a recurring thing with these two in some of their previous heart to hears.
Paraphrasing, but at least one or two “This is what you’re signing up for” “Do you see me running?” kinds of exchanges.
Joe, the boyfriend Joyce needs and deserves.
Maybe? Look, that hug at least brings him to par.
Sad to say I can see Joe’s vision. The Brown’s have some pretty good genetics. Carol’s not bad for sixty.
Lately I’ve been getting ads for “most romantic hotels in [random city]”, all with at least four women smiling and laughing. Pretty sure something about my browsing history seems to be making the adgorithm think I’m in a lesbian polycule, and I sorta wonder if this gay-ass comic might be skewing things.
What an odd thing to say under a strip that is 100% hetero affection
Do you get algorithms thinking you’re interested in transformers too?
Surprisingly, no. Mostly it’s insurance and cruises.
As professional cougar bait (ask my wife), I agree that Carol looks younger than her years.
But she will never have two things Joyce does: Those baby blues, and a smile that makes the flowers grow.
Officially Team Joe, now. He is so on point, even including the comments on her mom’s looks. I’m also on board the SS Joeyce, though I shudder to mention it for fear of what Willis may do to us later . . .
The Joe’s pain in 4th panel is so real. It’s like himself dealing with a divorce of his parents.
By another side, I wish he could stop to think with his penis for 5 minutes.
That’s just aesthetics. Nothing wrong with pursuing libido as a hobby, as it were. Besides, he’s serious enough about Joyce that he may be curious about what life might be like 40 years from now.
aesthetics
He didn’t say GILF. He just said she looks good for her age. I don’t think that implies he’s horny for her.
Alt text
I’m going to CRY the fourth panel DESTROYED ME
Awww.. Joe is self-sabotaging because he doesn’t love and trust himself to do the right thing if he actually tried.
I want him to get more confidence in himself. He’s such a scared teddy bear who blusters to hide his fear.
It just dawned on me that Carol may be way more on the spectrum than Dina, only for her it’s God instead of dinos. Also, dinos are statistically 50.000% less likely to make people sell their houses.
I think I know who should be the default doodle for Book 13 almost one year in advance.
Next book title! “IF I SAY ALL MY WORST THINGS OUT LOUD, YOU CAN TRUST THAT’S AS BAD AS I GET”, a Dumbing of Age Collection
In fairness, mom’s “I just assumed” comment was worse and is probably still far from the worst thoughts can come up with.
Compare and contrast with the QC version:
“OH MY GOD YOU ARE GOING TO BE SO HOT WHEN YOU GO GRAY”
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1515
Marten’s dad got this reaction from Claire, too, though she had not yet really properly acknowledged her attraction to Marten yet, guess that was an early clue.
Joyce has a way prettier face than her mom, so I mean, odds are she’ll look better at 60, so Joe’s probably more noticing curves.
Two thoughts on this:
1. Can relate to Joyce, I can remember sitting with my “boyfriend” when I was 13 on the front porch on the day my grandmother died. I was chatting with other people about something, then looked at him and saw he looked really stormy. “What’s wrong?” I asked. He looked back at me and said flatly “your grandmother just *died*.” I loved my grandmother and admired her a lot, just it took a long time for bad news to really internalise for me, and I would often forget it, probably as a defense mechanism? My emotions have always been too intense.
2. I think Joe’s been through similar actually? Didn’t his parents divorce? Or maybe he lost his mom entirely? So he probably gets it better than just about anybody Joyce knows.
Ooh yeah, Joe’s parents definitely divorced. In his case, it was because his father wasn’t loyal. It’s a big part of why Joe leans into just casual sex before dating Joyce (if he never actually dates anyone, he never has to worry about getting divorced/cheating), as well as why he had reservations about his dad actually starting a relationship with Amber’s mom, viewing the relationship as a ticking time bomb until his dad ‘inevitably’ cheats.
It definitely reminds me of my parents. Both of them came from divorced households, and so even though my parents were together for over 30 years, raised me together, and lived in the same home for all that time, the two didn’t never got married. Likely due to the divorces that happened in their childhoods.
It’s one thing to say you can forgive it because it’s self-sabotage or a backslide into old habits, but please y’all, this isn’t genuinely helpful by any stretch of the imagination
lot of folks talking about snooping but do people actually keep anything in their half-baths? seems like it’d be awkward as hell.
Bathroom stuff, anyway.
I mean, sure, but it’s a tiny-ass toilet for like four people? a full bathroom is bad enough for that
Aaand mom just found the birth control
Nope, Joyce covered it up, it’s on her desk.
It could be Malaya’s, Sal’s, or Sarah’s.
That won’t matter, but it could be!
Close association with such immoral women* will inevitably corrupt Joyce with their slatternly ways.
* And Malaya
Does Joe realize that Carol supported and helped fund the plot that got Joyce kidnapped and almost murdered
I don’t know if anyone’s really told him much about that or not. I think he’s making strictly a physical assessment, though, I seriously doubt he’d actually want to bang her.
He is being there and glad he is trying to be there for Joyce.