on my screen it’s clearly an xbox controller. the dpad is on the same level as the right stick, and the overall shape is the Xbox shape, including the color layout of the face buttons
Goddammit I flagged this by accident. Why does this keep happening to me? Like, my brain just…expects the reply link to be on the right for some reason, and I don’t know why. It feels like a kind off mental disorder at this point.
(sigh) Anyway, I was going to say appropriate gravitar is appropriate.
I think I’ve only done it once here but I do it frequently on another site I frequent. The flag and reply buttons aren’t right next to each other but the comments are typically overrun with spambots. I’m so used to flagging them that I sometimes forget there are other ways to respond to comments.
Also, kind of a sign of Joyce’s growth in a way that she used to be pretty hesitant to be in any state of undress in front of the others, but she’s gone to t-shirt and panties as jammies instead of shorts like in the past. Not like she *has* to show skin any more than anyone else, just this is something she would not have done in the past.
Funnily, Walky of all people got her to do it first, but that was just her walking back to her room when he was basically getting her to relax properly. Bur yeah, Dorothy sealed it.
I’d guess hypnopompia, you can partially wake, have a limited awareness of your surroundings, and those get incorporated into your dream. Dorothy picks the lock is watching Joyce sleep, and Joyce wakes up a little and Dorothy tells her why she’s there as Joyce falls back asleep.
How’d she creep in without waking Sarah / Sarah’s baseball bat?
I mean, I like the theory. It’s just not a bedroom I’d want to sneak into uninvited, is all I’m saying.
One time I fell asleep on the couch and my mom started to play ‘Red Neck Comedy Tour’ on the TV, and it got incorporated into my dream. I dreamt I was at the grocery store but every customer around me kept repeating Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck”/”here’s your sign” jokes. It was the strangest dream I’d ever had.
I fell asleep while my SO was playing war board games with his buddies. They were talking about Wild Weasels, but in my dream they were the mammalian kind.
Can’t have a mental breakdown! That would make you unfit to be a president, so let’s not tell the therapist! Can’t be queer! That would make you unfit to be a president so let’s not even think about it!
(In a more serious note, yeahhh, let’s hope a newer, freer self arises from the ashes – because homegirl is 10000% burning herself out here TwT)
Ok, I went back to check, and the most I can find are a couple of throwaway lines where Anti-Joyce suggests certain ladies “join in” while she’s mackin’ on dudes (e.g. https://www.itswalky.com/comic/wheres-joyce-imposter/). Which seems more performatively/jokingly ‘dirty’ than actually queer to me, but I can totally see how others might take that differently.
Who actually remembers their dreams? I’m a little envious. Sometimes I wake up feeling some sort of emotion like I had a dream or interesting idea, but I rarely recognize anything more substantial than just the feeling.
I frequently remember them. Sometimes I have to close them down. As in, “welp, I’ve hit the snooze button I guess, so everyone in the world is going to have to be annihilated in the next 9 minutes if I don’t want to rush breakfast.”
I can recall a few scant seconds when I wake up, but then fade immediately. Mostly, the dreams I recall are the ones that my dad is in, talking and acting like just a normal day. But then when I wake up I remember he’s been dead for 20+ years. I asked one of my sisters and she confirmed that she experiences the same thing.
I used to remember mine well enough to write them down soon after I woke up, but nowadays, I’ve found I (1) get a good handle on the narrative of the dream shortly before I wake up, and then (2) promptly forget it within seconds.
I’ve done a little bit of lucid dreaming and dream control, too, but I don’t really get anything out of it, so I don’t actually put effort in.
I remember the bad ones in relative detail but the ones where I’m actually invested in the plot I forget when I wake up. Other ones that I remember vaguely are a weird subgenre I started having a few months ago that I can only describe as gaslighting myself about things that don’t exist. I’d dream up these iconic cultural shared experiences; a historical required reading book that disturbed me as a kid, a favorite book, an old video game with an iconic song in it on the levels of something like “this is Halloween”, a musical that the 2015 musical tumblr girlies were obsessed with, in the same vein as like a “dear Evan Hansen” or “be more chill” or heathers. And every time I woke up and realized those things werent real I’d feel so devastated and confused like what else in my life is a lie????
I often remember my dreams, which I put down to often waking up a bunch of times during the night (boooo!) and writing down what I do remember as soon as I wake up. I used to be better about the latter, but it did seem to increase my ability to remember dreams with practice.
Sarah probably doesn’t lie to her therapist and has thus probably been taught proper coping methods and possibly even prescribed medication and treatment if required. Or maybe she just built different.
Sarah assumedly has loving parents capable of providing access to proper medical care for her. Why would we assume she didn’t see a therapist even if only briefly after such a traumatic event?
I wonder if African-Americans have any feelings of their own about the medical system’s role in their lives or if it’s just unbridled enthusiasm all the way down.
… Do you mean in connection to things like The Tuskegee Syphilis Study; and the fact that medical professionals apparently anticipate Black people will experience lower pain and therefore provide lower/less/later pain relief (there is also a disparate treatment between men and women) and are more likely to treat them as drug-seeking when they are in pain and need of medical attention? In the US I’m sure I read that there was a disparately high death toll among the Black population from COVID. Their maternal death rate is also higher. So if you mean “is Sarah aware that systemic racism including within the medical system is an issue that she or her family members have faced or likely will face in her lifetime?” then I’m guessing yes..?
Otherwise I’m not quite sure I understand the question? A non-sarcastic “are all African-Americans thrilled and enthusiastic about healthcare and happy to be passive recipients of it as their doctors dictate?” just doesn’t make any sense to me. And I’m neither Black nor American…
But just because a system isn’t perfect, and people know that they may at least sometimes need to perform in a certain way to bypass gate-keeping and actually access services they should be able to use – that doesn’t mean that they would choose to shun them entirely. If you need just about any medication to literally stay alive and with it you can live a full, active life – you wouldn’t not take it just because your diagnosis, access to it etc are controlled by an imperfect system. That would be practically the definition of cutting your nose off to spite your face!
Well, I’m not black or American either, but with this context, it’s a bit off the wall to speculate that Sarah would have seen a therapist like as the go-to in every situation. Maybe she doesn’t want to because they do bad stuff to people.
As Jamie pointed out, Sarah’s parents are divorced and we have no idea how amicable that is, other than ‘probably not too much’, plus Sarah also has a half-sister who’s a freshman in college, rather than being an only child who would get the lion’s share of affection.
Plus, there’s historically been a societal view that only ‘crazy’ people go see a therapist. Obviously that isn’t the case, but loving parents or not, most people get kinda iffy to involve a therapist in anything. For example, when I told my grandma I wanted to see a therapist to help cope with the very sudden death of my mom to cancer, her response was “well… are you sure you NEED to see a therapist?”.
Plus, Dorothy, who is actively seeing a therapist, isn’t immune to the view that therapy is bad/will reflect badly on her. It shouldn’t reflect badly on her, but terrible people could see that she’s been to a therapist, and call her mental acuity into question.
Plus, Sarah is very dependent on scholarship money to attend (hence the Dana debacle…) so I don’t think her parents would have extra ‘Therapist’ money lying around.
I feel like this assumes a lot about Sarah’s parents and their financial situation we don’t know. Maybe her parents are more than capable of paying her tuition but she got scholarships because she’s smart and you don’t want to pay for college if you don’t have to. Doesn’t mean they couldn’t or that they don’t have medical coverage to see a therapist. It’s just a little weird to me to assume one thing over the other.
Frankly, I think assuming Sarah already has a therapist on stand by is a much bigger assumption than figuring that the child of divorced parents who is attending college through her scholarship might not be in the best of situations financially. Plus, even if her parents did have a good medical insurance or money to pay for therapy, that also depends on Sarah wanting to see a therapist. I think if Sarah were already seeing a therapist, she wouldn’t be as misanthropic as she clearly is, as seen in her interactions with Lucy.
Ah, I see that point. I still don’t think not being capable of affording college tuition which is notoriously expensive quite equates to not affording to see a therapist a few times over winter break. Like we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars vs a few hundred bucks an hour as needed if you don’t have insurance.
Now it the arguments is that Sarah probably doesn’t want to see a therapist I would totally buy that, even if that’s also just more assumptions.
Truth be told I didn’t meant to fall into a rabbit hole about this. Sarah’s trauma probably just isn’t very relevant. Dina seems to have shrugged off the kidnapping event too.
Most colleges in the US offer students healthcare insurance and have an internal system of therapists. I can almost guarantee that their university at least *offered* them free access to therapy after they literally got kidnapped on campus.
@Sirksome: I’m sorry, did you mean to write “a few hundred bucks an hour”
Like, i’m not sure if that’s a couple words that got left behind an edit or if i’m about to learn some fresh horror about the US health system (an expensive therapist in europe is like 100 euro an hour, though 50 or so is more typical)
Milu, my girlfriend’s therapy costs $200. Insurance almost never covers therapy. We’ve been in talks about negotiating it down to $150, though, since this therapist is extremely kind. I had to cancel my therapy so she could get therapy, which seems selfless until you consider that it’s really just deciding who has to deal with a therapyless partner. 😛
To be clear, most colleges do not charge “hundreds of thousands of dollars”. They charge tens of thousands, which is still, to be clear, extremely bad. If you want a “good college”, or an art school, that’s where it gets ugly. Indiana ranges from around $25k to $40k, depending on out-of-stateness.
@Imogen
shit, that’s scary. yeah i was unsure if Sirksome meant 100’s of $ to cover the totaly of a, let’s say run of therapy sessions, cuz any specific problem you want addressed in therapy, if you’re actually budgeting it out, you will have to set aside several 100 bucks because it’ll take a few sessions at best.
but yeah..$200 an hour does feel wild though. sorry you even had to make that choice. i hope you’re ok.
Also, another point in the ‘Sarah and her parents likely don’t have a lot of money’ pile, Sarah is a sophomore and yet still in the dorms that are USUALLY used by freshmen, most likely because the student affiliated apartments are more expensive than the dorms.
I don’t want to get sucked into another rabbit hole of ‘actually’s and whatever else in this comment section so I will only say we have seen two other sophomores, AKA Carla and Rachel, who live in the on-campus dorms. Ruth doesn’t count because she’s an RA. Carla is trans and likely feels safest in her current dorm and despite having money to afford an apartment, wants to stay where she feels safest. We don’t know Rachel’s financial situation.
I was a college student, but not at IU, but typically at Universities, dorms have a limited amount of space available and they like to put as many freshmen in them as they can because living on campus is an easy transition into college life, as well as helps keep them involved in college activities (and away from crazy parties and drugs and whatever else). Also, while people might not mind having a roommate their first year of college, some students may desire their own living space for the rest of their schooling and move on to apartments nearby that offer more individual space. Not saying sophomores can’t live there too, but if they linger around they either A) just really like the area/place/don’t wanna move all their shit or B) perhaps cannot afford to go somewhere else.
Also at some colleges, either you cannot have a car OR, like in the case with my college, parking is a nightmare and so if you own a car you really need to use or would like to have a guarantied parking space for, that’d be another motivator.
The school likely covers therapy through the health center. It may be luck of the draw as to whether the school therapists are any good, but still, Sarah can probably access therapy if she wants it. She wouldn’t even need to tell her parents unless she wants to.
That said, different people are traumatized by different things. Sarah seems more upset about the Dana debacle than the violent kidnapping, and sometimes, that’s just how it goes.
It’s been established Dorothy withholds trauma from her therapist as to not create an incriminating trail of mental struggle that could theoretically be dug up and sabotage her presidential aspirations. Probably ironic now that she’s abandoned those goals.
Aside from the fact that we’re currently in a dire shortage of mental health professionals – and this was the case *before* the pandemic? Or the fact that if you’re a minority in even one way you’d be well-advised to choose your therapist carefully so you don’t have to deal with ismist garbage during your own sessions?
iirc, Sarah displayed solid levels of agency and coolheadedness during the kidnapping; she also got to physically, violently fight her captors (and win until they pulled a hostage on her)…
I think Sarah came out of there with an ‘I even survived a kidnapping! I can handle myself anywhere!’ Mindset… Literally the representation of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. (That’s nonsense, by the way… But occasionally it does work out)
I would argue she came out of the incident feeling a little bit too confident, honestly. She doesn’t seem traumatized, but I feel like most of the panels where she’s been a bit too much for me lately have been because of exactly this mindset you’re describing.
I’m not sure it’s deliberate, but I do wonder if Sarah is leaning more into her “my meannness is good because it kept my loved ones safe” mindset as a cope lately.
Two people can experience the same events and only one comes out traumatized. Dorothy is already more high strung to begin with, couple that with the stress from her overworking herself and also witnessing Amber slice up whats-his-face and it makes sense she’s the one more likely to be traumatized.
Also Sarah literally just doesn’t empathize with people as much, which helps wrt traumatization. (she’s very caring but doesn’t empathize a lot which I actually appreciate a lot.)
“How DARE you put LESBIAN THOUGHTS in my HEAD via DREAMS, you witch!”
“Mary, what-”
“Are you TIRED, witch?! Tired of running through my dreams all night, inciting LEWD THOUGHTS?!”
“This is the worst come on I’ve ever experienced, and that’s saying something.”
“Listen, EVERYONE has very vivid dreams about their same-sex friends who they masturbated with being very protective and crawling into bed with them, that doesn’t make me GAY.”
“You are currently dating a man, so that is TECHNICALLY correct, but only technically.”
There’s a trope/stereotype about lesbians loving horses, or horse girls being lesbians (along the lines of cottagecore lesbians). I once saw a review of the book called “The Big Book Of Lesbian Horse Stories” and it was a riot 🙂
My assumption is that women are supposed to get some “pleasure” from the act of riding a horse (with the friction and vibration that comes from riding).
I have no idea if there is any truth to it, but Family Guy made a joke about it once… Meg was fantasizing about riding a horse with a boy she had a crush on. She tells him something like “let’s stop now so I can save one for you” (paraphrasing), suggesting riding the horse lead to an orgasm, but she was going to also have sex with the boy.
If Joyce is feeling especially impish, well, she’s got an example of “straighter” behavior from her readily available.
(Not that dating Joe makes Joyce straight, there’s plenty of evidence she is bi or pan, between Dorothy and Joyce’s acknowledged fascination with Billie/Jennifer’s breasts.)
Probably to a degree, like I think she’s becoming less personally flustered by it, but it’s also probably because she’s the one weaponizing it here for the joke.
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“Just joshin’! There’s only this red herring here”
“Is that why the room smells like fish?”
Mmm.
“You know, I never thought about it, but you might be onto something…”
Does Joe know Joyce is seeing Red Herring? Did he read about it in the National Exaggerator?
Wow… just wow. I get the reference and still…
Shared dream world?!?!?!
YEEEAH!!!!! 😍🎮
An x-box controller? So you have chosen sides in the Great Console War?
PS.
I was sorry to read that you have not been sleeping well and such. I hope things improve.
Awe thanks 🥲
Also, shared dreams make for epic DoA game material 🌈🌙
Joysticks are next to each other, that’s a PlayStation controller
Whatever it is, I though we learned our lesson about steering ships with video game controllers.
on my screen it’s clearly an xbox controller. the dpad is on the same level as the right stick, and the overall shape is the Xbox shape, including the color layout of the face buttons
I mean it sounds like Dorothy had an early morning freakout and actually came into check on her.
That’s how I’m interpreting it too
Dumbing of Age Book 14: Dumbing of Age Has Dreams That Are Totally Gay
*plays “Break My Stride” on the hacked Muzak*
Not “A Horse With No Name”?
But it has the name Horse. With tags and everything.
PTSD? Nah, just totally unrelated horse dreams
Dorothy: And I’m on a horse.
Now I’m in a canoe, wearing a bucket hat.
I am a dryer, horse-mimicking, dream-vibrating
“With the man your man could smell like!”
“Swan dive!”
Ladies, is it gay to dream about your best friend while that friend also had a really gay dream about you?
I mean… it’d make me happy, but to each their own.
Goddammit I flagged this by accident. Why does this keep happening to me? Like, my brain just…expects the reply link to be on the right for some reason, and I don’t know why. It feels like a kind off mental disorder at this point.
(sigh) Anyway, I was going to say appropriate gravitar is appropriate.
The reply link was on the right before the ability to flag was added because it was the only thing there.
Well, that doesn’t make me feel *much* better, but I do appreciate it anyway. ;p
I think I’ve only done it once here but I do it frequently on another site I frequent. The flag and reply buttons aren’t right next to each other but the comments are typically overrun with spambots. I’m so used to flagging them that I sometimes forget there are other ways to respond to comments.
IDK but apparently it’s gay to dream about being on a horse together
Amazing, I love everything about this.
Also, kind of a sign of Joyce’s growth in a way that she used to be pretty hesitant to be in any state of undress in front of the others, but she’s gone to t-shirt and panties as jammies instead of shorts like in the past. Not like she *has* to show skin any more than anyone else, just this is something she would not have done in the past.
Easier access, you know, just in case she has Dorothy dreams.
Good to know somebody is acknowledged that. And Joyce didn’t repent to get no pants from the laundry moment with Dorothy.
Funnily, Walky of all people got her to do it first, but that was just her walking back to her room when he was basically getting her to relax properly. Bur yeah, Dorothy sealed it.
Is Joyce having… THOSE feelings??
le gasp
le shock
le scandal
Dunno about everyone else but I’m like 99% sure Joyce wasn’t dreaming.
Yeah, I lowkey think Dorothy just either refused or left before Joyce woke up. Of course, Sarah would presumably know, right?
I’m not quite at 99%, but definitely not at 0%. At least not the first part.
I’d guess hypnopompia, you can partially wake, have a limited awareness of your surroundings, and those get incorporated into your dream. Dorothy picks the lock is watching Joyce sleep, and Joyce wakes up a little and Dorothy tells her why she’s there as Joyce falls back asleep.
Oh, you’re ABSOLUTELY right. She knows how to jimmy a door open O_O
Yeah… She def came for real.
How’d she creep in without waking Sarah / Sarah’s baseball bat?
I mean, I like the theory. It’s just not a bedroom I’d want to sneak into uninvited, is all I’m saying.
I think it’s a pretty common thing that the girls often leave their doors unlocked. At least it explains why people just waltz into others’ rooms.
Oh no. The baseball bat was aware. It just didn’t want to wake Sarah.
Hey, Sara can sleep deeply once in a while. She doesn’t have to be on alert all the time.
… If she hears someone crept into her room and watched Joyce sleep, she might work on changing that, though.
One time I fell asleep on the couch and my mom started to play ‘Red Neck Comedy Tour’ on the TV, and it got incorporated into my dream. I dreamt I was at the grocery store but every customer around me kept repeating Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck”/”here’s your sign” jokes. It was the strangest dream I’d ever had.
I get that completely.
I fell asleep while my SO was playing war board games with his buddies. They were talking about Wild Weasels, but in my dream they were the mammalian kind.
Ok, that’s starting to get creep. And even creepier, thinking on how much it’s plausible.
Let’s be honest, Dorothy was having a murder dream. She has dark urges that must be fulfilled.
[Tinfoil Hat] Yeahhhh, no. Willis is lampshading this one, maybe Joyce (who’s bi as per It’s Walky’s canon) has eyes only for Joe right now…
But Dorothy is up for an, ah, awakening very soon – if it hasn’t happened yet. [/Tinfoil Hat]
(Why yes, I mostly come here when there’s something queer happening, why are you asking?)
I can’t imagine who here would find that a problem… xD
Ahahah, me neither, I just realized recently :’DD
Hee hee
Same pretty much 🥰
Nuuuuu sorry buddy, but the only feelings Dotty’s experiencing stem from her own self-imposed adherence to a totally arbitrary self-imposed standard…
Can’t have a mental breakdown! That would make you unfit to be a president, so let’s not tell the therapist! Can’t be queer! That would make you unfit to be a president so let’s not even think about it!
(In a more serious note, yeahhh, let’s hope a newer, freer self arises from the ashes – because homegirl is 10000% burning herself out here TwT)
And that self imposed standard…
… Is heteronormativity to get elected president.
Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup. She’d be so much happier if only she learned not to frame her goal too tightly. 😢
Where in It’s Walky canon was Joyce bi? In the walkyverse the fact she wasn’t a lesbian was a source of a whole character arc for her mom.
Anti-Joyce was bi :33
Ok, I went back to check, and the most I can find are a couple of throwaway lines where Anti-Joyce suggests certain ladies “join in” while she’s mackin’ on dudes (e.g. https://www.itswalky.com/comic/wheres-joyce-imposter/). Which seems more performatively/jokingly ‘dirty’ than actually queer to me, but I can totally see how others might take that differently.
Anti-Joyce specifically suggests Sal joins in. That seems telling, since we know how DoA Joyce behaved around Sal. So yeah, Joyce is bi.
lampshading is like a hint from of writer, right?
Lampshading is the practice of characters acknowledging “just like in the movies” type events to blunt the audience’s reaction to fictional tropes.
I.E. a character saying: “That was lucky” after the bad guy trying to get away gets a flat tire.
Or a character saying “wow what an inspired plan” in response to another character’s wacky cartoon hijink laden plan.
Basically the idea is that weird events stop being immersion breaking as long as someone in the universe acknowledges that they are weird.
I read all of It’s Walky and for the life of me I don’t remember her being bi. Anybody got a comic link for me to see the source?
Oh em effin GEE I’m really here!?
Thanks Dee Dub!! <3
Welcome!
Who actually remembers their dreams? I’m a little envious. Sometimes I wake up feeling some sort of emotion like I had a dream or interesting idea, but I rarely recognize anything more substantial than just the feeling.
I frequently remember them. Sometimes I have to close them down. As in, “welp, I’ve hit the snooze button I guess, so everyone in the world is going to have to be annihilated in the next 9 minutes if I don’t want to rush breakfast.”
I can usually remember them in the moments after waking up, I usually forget them within an hour or so afterwards though
I almost never remember them. The closest I get is after sleeping for a few more hours on weekend mornings so I recall some details more clearly.
I can recall a few scant seconds when I wake up, but then fade immediately. Mostly, the dreams I recall are the ones that my dad is in, talking and acting like just a normal day. But then when I wake up I remember he’s been dead for 20+ years. I asked one of my sisters and she confirmed that she experiences the same thing.
I used to remember mine well enough to write them down soon after I woke up, but nowadays, I’ve found I (1) get a good handle on the narrative of the dream shortly before I wake up, and then (2) promptly forget it within seconds.
I’ve done a little bit of lucid dreaming and dream control, too, but I don’t really get anything out of it, so I don’t actually put effort in.
Lucid dreaming is super worth it. I fly around whenever I get the chance.
I am terrible at flying. Most of the time I just hover like a foot off the ground. It does clue me into it being a dream a lot of the time.
I super rarely remember them – but sometimes in a dream I feel like I remember another dream, and that feeling is strange enough to remember.
Last night i dreamed i saw a pretty big snake!
It was a very happy dream.
I remember the bad ones in relative detail but the ones where I’m actually invested in the plot I forget when I wake up. Other ones that I remember vaguely are a weird subgenre I started having a few months ago that I can only describe as gaslighting myself about things that don’t exist. I’d dream up these iconic cultural shared experiences; a historical required reading book that disturbed me as a kid, a favorite book, an old video game with an iconic song in it on the levels of something like “this is Halloween”, a musical that the 2015 musical tumblr girlies were obsessed with, in the same vein as like a “dear Evan Hansen” or “be more chill” or heathers. And every time I woke up and realized those things werent real I’d feel so devastated and confused like what else in my life is a lie????
I often remember my dreams, which I put down to often waking up a bunch of times during the night (boooo!) and writing down what I do remember as soon as I wake up. I used to be better about the latter, but it did seem to increase my ability to remember dreams with practice.
Which reminds me…
Why does it matter that it is a horse and not a dragon?
That’s what i wanna know 😮 confusedPikachu.gif
I seem to remember Willis showing us some childhood drawings he did with himself and his bestie riding a dragon together. Adorable.
Yeah that got translated to Danny and Joe.
Horses are for girls, dragons are for boys.
Both sound pretty nice though. What does that mean?
dragorse
Nonbinary people are issued one among a varied menagerie of griffons, cosmic horrors, and very large dogs.
Always be a dragon.
Unless you can be Cthulu. Then be Cthulu.
Eggs get steamboats. It’s part of their grace period.
I get the feeling we are going to have a one sided dream sharing soon. Assuming that Dorothy hasn’t already gone off the deep end.
I really hope Dorothy is actually there, hidden by perspective.
Haha: right behind the door like Dina!
Not gonna happen, Sarah.
Why would you even want that, Sarah.
So, how long until we get to Sarah’s trauma about the kidnapping?
Sarah probably doesn’t lie to her therapist and has thus probably been taught proper coping methods and possibly even prescribed medication and treatment if required. Or maybe she just built different.
I’m not sure if Sarah has a therapist.
Sarah assumedly has loving parents capable of providing access to proper medical care for her. Why would we assume she didn’t see a therapist even if only briefly after such a traumatic event?
Well, specifically, Sarah has divorced parents who separately “swooped in” to share their concern for her after the kidnapping.
I wonder if African-Americans have any feelings of their own about the medical system’s role in their lives or if it’s just unbridled enthusiasm all the way down.
What a strange thing to wonder.
… Do you mean in connection to things like The Tuskegee Syphilis Study; and the fact that medical professionals apparently anticipate Black people will experience lower pain and therefore provide lower/less/later pain relief (there is also a disparate treatment between men and women) and are more likely to treat them as drug-seeking when they are in pain and need of medical attention? In the US I’m sure I read that there was a disparately high death toll among the Black population from COVID. Their maternal death rate is also higher. So if you mean “is Sarah aware that systemic racism including within the medical system is an issue that she or her family members have faced or likely will face in her lifetime?” then I’m guessing yes..?
Otherwise I’m not quite sure I understand the question? A non-sarcastic “are all African-Americans thrilled and enthusiastic about healthcare and happy to be passive recipients of it as their doctors dictate?” just doesn’t make any sense to me. And I’m neither Black nor American…
But just because a system isn’t perfect, and people know that they may at least sometimes need to perform in a certain way to bypass gate-keeping and actually access services they should be able to use – that doesn’t mean that they would choose to shun them entirely. If you need just about any medication to literally stay alive and with it you can live a full, active life – you wouldn’t not take it just because your diagnosis, access to it etc are controlled by an imperfect system. That would be practically the definition of cutting your nose off to spite your face!
Well, I’m not black or American either, but with this context, it’s a bit off the wall to speculate that Sarah would have seen a therapist like as the go-to in every situation. Maybe she doesn’t want to because they do bad stuff to people.
As Jamie pointed out, Sarah’s parents are divorced and we have no idea how amicable that is, other than ‘probably not too much’, plus Sarah also has a half-sister who’s a freshman in college, rather than being an only child who would get the lion’s share of affection.
Plus, there’s historically been a societal view that only ‘crazy’ people go see a therapist. Obviously that isn’t the case, but loving parents or not, most people get kinda iffy to involve a therapist in anything. For example, when I told my grandma I wanted to see a therapist to help cope with the very sudden death of my mom to cancer, her response was “well… are you sure you NEED to see a therapist?”.
Plus, Dorothy, who is actively seeing a therapist, isn’t immune to the view that therapy is bad/will reflect badly on her. It shouldn’t reflect badly on her, but terrible people could see that she’s been to a therapist, and call her mental acuity into question.
Plus, Sarah is very dependent on scholarship money to attend (hence the Dana debacle…) so I don’t think her parents would have extra ‘Therapist’ money lying around.
I feel like this assumes a lot about Sarah’s parents and their financial situation we don’t know. Maybe her parents are more than capable of paying her tuition but she got scholarships because she’s smart and you don’t want to pay for college if you don’t have to. Doesn’t mean they couldn’t or that they don’t have medical coverage to see a therapist. It’s just a little weird to me to assume one thing over the other.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/03-trial-and-sarah/quit/
Frankly, I think assuming Sarah already has a therapist on stand by is a much bigger assumption than figuring that the child of divorced parents who is attending college through her scholarship might not be in the best of situations financially. Plus, even if her parents did have a good medical insurance or money to pay for therapy, that also depends on Sarah wanting to see a therapist. I think if Sarah were already seeing a therapist, she wouldn’t be as misanthropic as she clearly is, as seen in her interactions with Lucy.
Ah, I see that point. I still don’t think not being capable of affording college tuition which is notoriously expensive quite equates to not affording to see a therapist a few times over winter break. Like we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars vs a few hundred bucks an hour as needed if you don’t have insurance.
Now it the arguments is that Sarah probably doesn’t want to see a therapist I would totally buy that, even if that’s also just more assumptions.
Truth be told I didn’t meant to fall into a rabbit hole about this. Sarah’s trauma probably just isn’t very relevant. Dina seems to have shrugged off the kidnapping event too.
Most colleges in the US offer students healthcare insurance and have an internal system of therapists. I can almost guarantee that their university at least *offered* them free access to therapy after they literally got kidnapped on campus.
@Sirksome: I’m sorry, did you mean to write “a few hundred bucks an hour”
Like, i’m not sure if that’s a couple words that got left behind an edit or if i’m about to learn some fresh horror about the US health system (an expensive therapist in europe is like 100 euro an hour, though 50 or so is more typical)
Sometimes therapists make your issues worse, or you become more likely to snap at people *because* you’re working through your issues…
Milu, my girlfriend’s therapy costs $200. Insurance almost never covers therapy. We’ve been in talks about negotiating it down to $150, though, since this therapist is extremely kind. I had to cancel my therapy so she could get therapy, which seems selfless until you consider that it’s really just deciding who has to deal with a therapyless partner. 😛
To be clear, most colleges do not charge “hundreds of thousands of dollars”. They charge tens of thousands, which is still, to be clear, extremely bad. If you want a “good college”, or an art school, that’s where it gets ugly. Indiana ranges from around $25k to $40k, depending on out-of-stateness.
@Imogen
shit, that’s scary. yeah i was unsure if Sirksome meant 100’s of $ to cover the totaly of a, let’s say run of therapy sessions, cuz any specific problem you want addressed in therapy, if you’re actually budgeting it out, you will have to set aside several 100 bucks because it’ll take a few sessions at best.
but yeah..$200 an hour does feel wild though. sorry you even had to make that choice. i hope you’re ok.
Also, another point in the ‘Sarah and her parents likely don’t have a lot of money’ pile, Sarah is a sophomore and yet still in the dorms that are USUALLY used by freshmen, most likely because the student affiliated apartments are more expensive than the dorms.
So are all the other sophomores (or older) that we know.
Does IU have a tradition of most non-freshmen moving to apartments?
I don’t want to get sucked into another rabbit hole of ‘actually’s and whatever else in this comment section so I will only say we have seen two other sophomores, AKA Carla and Rachel, who live in the on-campus dorms. Ruth doesn’t count because she’s an RA. Carla is trans and likely feels safest in her current dorm and despite having money to afford an apartment, wants to stay where she feels safest. We don’t know Rachel’s financial situation.
I was a college student, but not at IU, but typically at Universities, dorms have a limited amount of space available and they like to put as many freshmen in them as they can because living on campus is an easy transition into college life, as well as helps keep them involved in college activities (and away from crazy parties and drugs and whatever else). Also, while people might not mind having a roommate their first year of college, some students may desire their own living space for the rest of their schooling and move on to apartments nearby that offer more individual space. Not saying sophomores can’t live there too, but if they linger around they either A) just really like the area/place/don’t wanna move all their shit or B) perhaps cannot afford to go somewhere else.
Also at some colleges, either you cannot have a car OR, like in the case with my college, parking is a nightmare and so if you own a car you really need to use or would like to have a guarantied parking space for, that’d be another motivator.
The school likely covers therapy through the health center. It may be luck of the draw as to whether the school therapists are any good, but still, Sarah can probably access therapy if she wants it. She wouldn’t even need to tell her parents unless she wants to.
That said, different people are traumatized by different things. Sarah seems more upset about the Dana debacle than the violent kidnapping, and sometimes, that’s just how it goes.
Dorothy has loving parents capable of providing access to proper medical care for her. And yet.
It’s been established Dorothy withholds trauma from her therapist as to not create an incriminating trail of mental struggle that could theoretically be dug up and sabotage her presidential aspirations. Probably ironic now that she’s abandoned those goals.
Aside from the fact that we’re currently in a dire shortage of mental health professionals – and this was the case *before* the pandemic? Or the fact that if you’re a minority in even one way you’d be well-advised to choose your therapist carefully so you don’t have to deal with ismist garbage during your own sessions?
iirc, Sarah displayed solid levels of agency and coolheadedness during the kidnapping; she also got to physically, violently fight her captors (and win until they pulled a hostage on her)…
I think Sarah came out of there with an ‘I even survived a kidnapping! I can handle myself anywhere!’ Mindset… Literally the representation of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. (That’s nonsense, by the way… But occasionally it does work out)
I would argue she came out of the incident feeling a little bit too confident, honestly. She doesn’t seem traumatized, but I feel like most of the panels where she’s been a bit too much for me lately have been because of exactly this mindset you’re describing.
I’m not sure it’s deliberate, but I do wonder if Sarah is leaning more into her “my meannness is good because it kept my loved ones safe” mindset as a cope lately.
Two people can experience the same events and only one comes out traumatized. Dorothy is already more high strung to begin with, couple that with the stress from her overworking herself and also witnessing Amber slice up whats-his-face and it makes sense she’s the one more likely to be traumatized.
Also Sarah literally just doesn’t empathize with people as much, which helps wrt traumatization. (she’s very caring but doesn’t empathize a lot which I actually appreciate a lot.)
It should have been a unicorn!
Joyce is slowly becoming the lesbomancer, fear her, for Mary’s her next victim.
Oh ye gods please
“How DARE you put LESBIAN THOUGHTS in my HEAD via DREAMS, you witch!”
“Mary, what-”
“Are you TIRED, witch?! Tired of running through my dreams all night, inciting LEWD THOUGHTS?!”
“This is the worst come on I’ve ever experienced, and that’s saying something.”
Dream or reality, some raison d’être this is turning out to be.
Okayyy, who invited JJ Abrams in?
That hand in your avatar? I’m outta guesses.
🤏🏻 The gravatar collection’s outta wack
Nah, it couldn’t be him. Not enough lens flare.
why are your feelings towards dragons so bad, Willis
https://twitter.com/MymdalinB/status/1693124056516595840?s=20
Made a sfw fanart for today….But someday I’ll post some real Joyce Dorothy art
OMG THIS IS SO CUTE, I love them ;www; I mean it, it’s already plenty Joyce/Dorothy. I’ll be delighted to see more of it~ ♥
Oh wow this looks beautiful! 😍🌈
Quite generous with Dotty’s bust I see, I ain’t complaining tho 😂🥰
OMG I FORGOT HER FRECKLES.
lovely
Cute!!! Yes more plssss
Horses sure means a lot of things in dreams, apparently
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
This isn’t one of those times
Just get together already!!
“Listen, EVERYONE has very vivid dreams about their same-sex friends who they masturbated with being very protective and crawling into bed with them, that doesn’t make me GAY.”
“You are currently dating a man, so that is TECHNICALLY correct, but only technically.”
“Who told you about Joe?”
“I can smell the Axe Body Spray on you.”
Plot twist: They are still in the horse’s dream.
The entirety of DoA so far has been Horse’s dream.
Dumbing of Age, Book 14: It’s Not Like We Were Riding A Horse Or Anything
I keep hearing Eugene Lee Yang cheerfully saying, “Gay Horse!”
“Pshaw”?
You’re now entering the Joyce Dialog Zone. Please set your watches back to 1866, dag nabbit.
Wait a minute… did Joyce just say “Phsaw” (F’-Saw) instead of “Pshaw” (p’-Shaw)?
Man, home schooling did nothing for her if it couldn’t properly teach her an expression from 150 years ago…
Joyce doing a bit – nice to see
Sarah, stop telling Joyce what to dream.
And stop being so heteronormative.
Dream gay, do dream crimes.
Damn, these young adults want each other so bad, huh
Wait, is a dream about riding a horse supposed to be a sex reference? Is this some Freudian garbage or what?
It could be an ‘Azumanga Daioh’ reference, Ms. Sakaki and Kaorin ride a white horse together in Kaorin’s New Years dream sequence.
And Kaorin is totally gay for Sakaki no matter how much she tries to deny it.
I mean Willis loves Azumanga Daioh, of course it’s a reference to it. XD
There’s a trope/stereotype about lesbians loving horses, or horse girls being lesbians (along the lines of cottagecore lesbians). I once saw a review of the book called “The Big Book Of Lesbian Horse Stories” and it was a riot 🙂
My assumption is that women are supposed to get some “pleasure” from the act of riding a horse (with the friction and vibration that comes from riding).
I have no idea if there is any truth to it, but Family Guy made a joke about it once… Meg was fantasizing about riding a horse with a boy she had a crush on. She tells him something like “let’s stop now so I can save one for you” (paraphrasing), suggesting riding the horse lead to an orgasm, but she was going to also have sex with the boy.
Or a dryer…
If Joyce is feeling especially impish, well, she’s got an example of “straighter” behavior from her readily available.
(Not that dating Joe makes Joyce straight, there’s plenty of evidence she is bi or pan, between Dorothy and Joyce’s acknowledged fascination with Billie/Jennifer’s breasts.)
I get the feeling that Joyce is intentionally playing up the gayness to mess with Sarah.
Probably to a degree, like I think she’s becoming less personally flustered by it, but it’s also probably because she’s the one weaponizing it here for the joke.
i’d think she’d be too groggy to play up anything with snark and such but it has been a decade or two since i was a teen lol