Unholy unholy unholy
is the Parasite of Hosts
who comes to drain her cult of glory
them girl now woke an’
broke the pen that tried to write her story
her an’ homies be blushin’ and gushin’
gone from raining to pourin’
with hearts soaring, dino digga ROARIN’
the joy of love takin’ em higher now SOARIN’
tonight they gonna be explorin’
JoyJoe and pals ain’t never borin’
I think he feels like he’s pushed Joyce’s development too quickly, and is worried that she’s secretly uncomfortable with the idea of sex and is just saying this because she thinks it’s what Joe wants.
I remember reading the comments on this strip during my first read-through and being absolutely baffled as to why the comments section was siding with Joe on Danny not feeling comfortable about sleeping with Billie.
The worry is not about “ruining” Joyce. The worry is that all of this is a performative act that Joyce herself isn’t going to realize until too late, and that by the time she reverses course, if they’ve already done things that can’t be taken back, Joyce is going to FEEL ruined and it’ll implode the relationship.
I don’t know… the last time we saw him try sexytime with someone (with Liz), that’s exactly what she said, that she almost “ruined” herself… out loud with him right there. And it clearly hurt him. So that’s certainly weighing on him… so HE may not be ready for it again.
There are two wolves in his head, one which thinks this is hot af and the other one which is worried this will lead to a Liz Part II and it’s only a matter of time before Joyce realizes he’d be the worst mistake of her life too.
These two wolves fight ferociously and then a third wolf comes in seriously confused and concerned about why nobody knows what a keg is.
DING DING DING! You’ve nailed it. He’s actually been worried about Not Being Enough for Joyce for a long time – and fearing he’s Dad Rosenthal, The Sequel, for even longer. Being an ethical slut didn’t even work: The Do List is proof.
And he does want it. He wants her so much it’s insane. Like he’s hoping SHE will rail him in a frenzy of passion, no prisoners taken, just so he can absolve himself from the guilt. It’s delicious. Becky and him should exchange pointers.
For a long time Joe thought his dad’s only sin was cheating. When Mr Rosenthal hits on Sarah at freshman family weekend, the only problem he sees is that his dad was like this while married to his mother. He figured if he never entered a relationship, no one could get hurt. When Joyce opens up to him about almost being raped, and when Liz regrets her decision to have sex with him, he started to realize it was more complicated.
I think he’s concerned now that Joyce isn’t interested in him for him, but because she’s so devoted to being “New Joyce” (or perhaps an Anti-Joyce, if you will!) that she’s just with him because it’s something “Old Joyce” would never do. He’s been concerned for a long time about wanting to take things slow with her and not just be the horndog and to be a better person for her, and now from his POV, she’s just trying to be a worse person for him.
He wants to be an actual boyfriend, not part of a delayed teenage rebellion.
If he is worried about that, I really wish he would look into the enemies-to-lovers trope. He’s been solidly in it since she started texting him about his being angry. The potential for things to turn that way has been there since the second he spotted her in hopes of asking her out. And likely the chemistry was there since roomies, but Joe is not aware of the multiverse (and I’m glad he doesn’t know Roomies Joyce).
I think it’s an internal conflict. On one hand: hot gf wants sex and that is a pretty obvious appeal. On the other hand: he genuinely cares about her and even Joe can see Joyce’s current “let’s speed run from sheltered Christian to drinking, swearing, sex having adult” is probably going to be too much change too fast and end poorly
I remember me and my friends watching South Park for the first time in the 7th grade, and then using swear words three times a sentence minimum for like two weeks before we settled down.
Joyce tends not to do things by halves. She’ll level off eventually, but she’s 100% going to be what the youngsters call “cringe” for a while first.
I think Joe is also afraid of doing sex things with Joyce, given what happened with Liz. He adores Joyce, things are going well, he doesn’t want to hurt or ‘ruin’ her.
It’s a bank that was bought by another bank that was then bought by another bank, after it had bought the bank that bought my bank. Welcome to America.
No Big Deal; Not Gonna Lie, is what that means, that’s her speaking two different acronyms *as* acronyms. Just instead of the letters only, it was written how it sounds.
Does she want to have sex with him because of her feelings (romantic or erotic) for him, or does she want to have sex with him to prove how non-longer-old-repressed-Joyce she is?
Honestly, I suspect it’s a bit of both, but it’s an open question as to which one will win out over the other. It’ll either be, “I don’t need to prove anything, I’m doing it because I want to” or “I want to do this, and when I do it will prove I’m New Joyce.”
It could also be “I’m doing this because I’M FUCKING HORNY!!! Oh, hi, Joe, yes, you’re the broad-chested type I like, you’ll do.”
Or possibly that would be Joe’s worst nightmare: that they have sex and then Joyce discovers that 1) she likes it and 2) other guys seem like even more fun, so thanks, Joe, but I’m gonna go bone EthanJacob — hmm, you’re actually the only one left I know, aren’t you? Oh, fine, I guess I’ll settle for you for now.
I agree, that is the horniest expression I’ve ever seen him make. I’m getting used to the fact that some people in the comments section here is just determined to read unhappiness into every situation no matter how blatant the signs are that it will go well.
It’s exhausting to see it every day, but the other (less anxious) comments make it worth combing through.
Every single character could be grinning directly into the camera and explicitly detailing their positive emotions in very unambiguous terms, and some of these people would still find a way to make it a bad thing.
I think it’s quite possible that Joyce saying he’s going to be doing sex things to her very soon is both turning him on and making him concerned at the same time.
I mean, I’m autistic, so I’m probably wrong, but I read that expression as “slightly embarassed and maybe a bit concerned”. But as far as the concern goes, I don’t agree with the interpretation that it’s “Oh, no, it turns out Joyce only loves me for my body after all!” as much as “I don’t know if Joyce is actually ready for this or if she just thinks she should be, and I can’t bring that up right now because I don’t want to step on her New Joyce thing, but hopefully we can have a proper discussion about it later and sort everything out.”
well joyce also had to ‘change pants’ once in i think one of their makeout sessions? or something earlier so i imagine they might just build up to it instead of joyce like maybe making a move on joe if they get drunk again (tho if becky and dina are drunk i’d hope they’d also try to slow down/have her stop rather than egg her on)
but i think yeah the expressino is him more worried/hesitant about being intimate together versus “oh no i’m just being used/objectified” like how jacob would feel during sarah’s convo with them during the gym day
I don’t think Joe has ever had a serious relationship before, or at least not someone that he actually had feelings for on a deeper level than just sexual attraction. I can see him being worried about Joyce swinging wildly into this “New Joyce” mode & their relationship devolving into just being about sex.
Oh thank God it’s not just me. And as for everyone saying Joyce is trying too hard or wants to prove something, to me this feels like an extension of topless boob holding cuddles. Something she wants to do because shes an adult and she can, and she’s not letting herself be shackled by shame from two decades of brainwashing for something she doesn’t even believe in anymore. Like I only read this whole thing as a positive
Weren’t a lot of people saying that about Liz before she panicked in the middle?
This definitely feels performative and over the top on Joyce’s part. She definitely wants to, but that doesn’t mean years of brainwashing vanish overnight, even when you don’t believe anymore.
Huh? “Tabs are not bookmarks.” What foreign language is this? Or is that some kind of cryptography? I’m sorry, but English’s grammar doesn’t work that way.
I use bookmarks for things I’ll want to find again regularly or after a significant time. Semi-permanent records.
Tabs are for things I’m going to work my way through once in the near future.
i get the feeling there’s gonna be a scene later where joyce is Peak(TM) horny and joe turns her down or if not “im not sure about this/not ready” despite prolly never doing so before in his life lol
I pruned mine down to about 22 last time I had to update iOS. (I was still running 14, and a version of Chrome from 2022, and things were starting to break.)
This comic strip prompted me to start trying to cut down my browser tabs- at least on my PC. Through a combination of actually bookmarking things and being realistic about what I’d look at again I managed to get it from around 450 to 222 before losing steam (literally every tab I looked at before I stopped ended up closed).
I feel better! Sort of. I do want to cut the rest down to just the ones I’m actively using right now… ADHD caused the problem and ADHD stops me from sorting it out, though.
Betting old Joe is also dead. As in, he’s going to tell Joyce that as much as he likes her, he wants to wait until the time is right to have sex with her.
Either that or he’s afraid of being taken for a wild ride once he and Joyce get in bed sans undies.
I almost feel like that’s a given, considering Liz. Not that he thinks he’s going to “ruin” Joyce, at least not that way.
But I think that moment made him realize that there’s -more- to sex than just a fun thing you do with someone else. Joyce is the first time Joe has had an actual relationship with a girlfriend, and not just someone he hooked up with. He’s always kept himself unconnected to women, mostly for fear of becoming like his father, who hurt his mother from constant cheating.
I think that Joe wants to wait, because he’s seen how he’s hurt people before, and knows how easily he could fall into old habits.
I also feel like he’s experiencing a little bit of relationshipl vertigo by how quickly Joyce is rushing ahead.
Eh, Joyce is reveling in her newfound freedom. Speaking from experience, it’s kind of intoxicating, especially if you’ve known nothing but repressed feelings and urges before. You want to do everything, swear every other word, drink all the not-kegs, and get all sexed up (maybe). I think Joyce does want something with Joe, but she’s still working through her freedom high.
When Becky went “GUESS WHAT? I’M A LESBIAN” and made it her calling card, as us queers are won’t to do, for… Ok, she still does it but at the beginning it was literally the second thing she said after her name.
It’s the adorable “trying hard” of someone who’s repressed a thing for too long and has discovered they won’t be smitten on the spot by some higher power. I’m glad she’s finding such joy in it. I hope that when she inevitably goes “am I trying too hard??” at some point it’s followed by a “hell no, I’m finding out who I am, THE TRIP IS THE WHOLE POINT BABEY!” and carries on.
I feel like there’s a little bit of a difference there, though. Becky dove headfirst into “I’M A LESBIAN!” because she was finally accepting who she was and refusing to hide anymore. Joyce, on the other hand, is mostly just rebelling against her upbringing. She isn’t fundamentally someone who drinks and does sex things and says fuck a lot, she’s just going full-on into “not Old Joyce.”
Well, she’s doesn’t know yet whether she’s those things. Apparently she could be someone who casually says “fuck”, but now that it’s been brought to her attention that she did so, it will be deliberate rather than casual, which… isn’t helping. If the others hadn’t reacted quite so strongly, it could have been a much more natural progression for her. Shades of “I can’t wear anything other than sweatervests without people gasping”. Or, for that matter, of Dina kissing Becky that first time to tell everyone to stop thinking of her as a child.
So yes, she’s probably plunging a bit too far into being… well, Anti-Joyce. When the whole point is that the two should be integrated. But saying she isn’t “fundamentally” that sort of person seems like it’s falling into the same trap she may be. And just just because of the irresistible pun that she’s always been a fundamental(ist) sort of person. Sure, to date she’s not been someone who does sex things, but she’S fundamentally been someone who wants to do them (see, e.g., the rub-your-thing-on-my-belly dream, the fantasizing about Ethan in the shower and not daring to touch herself even though Sarah just mocked her for not doing so).
TL;DR: It’s too early in Joyce’s life to say what she fundamentally is in those respects, because her upbringing was so twisted that she’s only just starting to figure it out. Maybe she is someone who drinks and does sex things and says fuck a lot, maybe she isn’t; but she won’t know until she’s tried. (And if her upbringing hadn’t been so fucked up, she wouldn’t have to figure it out so so … all-at-once-ly, for lack of a better term.)
Funny we have this discussion after strip with class about being only proteins. Becky knew she didn’t like the road and knew which exit to take.Joyce also knows that she doesn’t like the road but she doesn’t know her exit, trying to turn around isn’t that bad at the beginning
It’s fun because, yeah, Becky got off that road because YAY SHE’S FREE NOW AND SHE KNOWS WHO SHE IS!!
Meanwhile Joyce is like YAY SHE’S FREE NOW AND SHE… HAS TO DISCOVER?? WHO SHE IS??? and she’s got a right to be loud about it too. And make mistakes and maybe lean in too hard about things. Joyce is a good kid! May she discover things about herself with the minimum amount of guilt.
Oh yeah, we never did get a resolution to the whole “Joe is terrified of ruining Joyce with sex before she’s ready” thing did we? I imagine the end of the arc is going to bring this up again. Possibly with a sweet little note where Joe’s like “I don’t…want you to do this yet” and she’s climbing on his lap, smiling, going, “But I do.”
I wonder if we get scene like from Danny and Billie, when Danny refuse quick sex because “respect women” and get “if you respect women respect they decision”
Honestly if we’re talking about personal wishes, I think a 2-3 comic stretch of her climbing into bed with him showing every drop (lol) of enthusiastic consent she can muster is a great way to button it off. Sometimes you don’t need a big conversation — you just need Joyce to look him in the eye and say, “I’m ready.”
Plus we can have it be like Dina and Becky — after sex, they talk about it, and she’s got zero regrets but a little bit of nerves. Which he can help her through.
A conversation about her nerves where Joe is very concerned and Joyce is very introspective but at the end Joe is like “do you regret it” and Joyce is like “no I wanna do it again” and Joe is like “when” and Joyce is like “right now”
If you have enough time and interest to type the question into a comment field, and also have access to Google? Then, not going to lie, yes you should. But if you prefer to ask here for the social engagement, that’s fine, no big deal.
“NBD” stands for “Not BD Wong” who is, of course, a big deal, thus the youths say “NBD” as a shorthand for indicating that something is *not* a big deal.
Ah the delightful part of our lives where we learn we can drop f bombs everywhere and we turn into the AVGN for a few weeks/months until we fuck up in a formal situation.
Leaving browser tabs open?!
1. In this economy??
2. Is that Firefox or Chrome? (Chrome wastes so much memory, it’s just scandalous! Firefox is erotica; Chrome is flat-out porn. Yeah, I know it when I see it.)
3. Poor Joe! His girlfriend is outrageously flirting with him about open browser tabs!
I don’t know if Joyce is exagerating, but I prefer she is doing all of these things right now, with her loved ones, than being too afraid to get rid your fears and to get in yours 40’s with regret. Like me.
Thank you! Everyone in here all worried about Joyce when this is like one of the healthiest ways she can find herself and also do normal young adult rebelling 🙌🙌
DUDE YEAH, I’m here like. Girlie is 18. Do y’all remember being 18? I’m pretty certain she’ll be way more ok I was, she has friends who love her and will take of her, in a pretty damn safe environment, and really low self-destructive tendencies all things considered.
Let her rebel. Let her get drunk for fun and not because she’s sad, and have sex with the dude she’s very in love with, and all the things she’s been forbidden to do and feared for so long. And if she messes up, well, that’s part of the journey and not the end of the world.
There’s a middle ground though. And there definitely seems to be some level of the “I need to do this to prove I’m not the old Joyce”, even if it’s only proving it too herself.
Which is a parallel to what we saw from Liz earlier.
So what? What’s so bad about proving that to herself? She is finally embracing all these new changes and she also wants to change. Let the new Joyce be born in this very loving and safe environment!
Joyce has unlocked the infix tab in English grammar!
A linguistics professor told the class that English doesn’t have infixes and I replied that it absofuckinglutely does. I lived dangerously as an undergrad.
Not a very good linguistic professor then, the one linguistic class I took the professor specifically pointed out the one example of infixes in English
Do people* worries that much when they are going to having sex, first time, with someone that are romantically attracted?
*people that used to having sex, but not having romantic attraction, and here I don’t know if I can just call Joe aromantic, or he’s just used to slept around, so I don’t know exactly how people could name it.
given joyce’s upbringing, joe being a good bf after all his growth is more ideal, but i imagine he’d prolly be a bit more hesitant after knowing all of joyce’s issues , but i don’t think joe ever rly ‘dated’ anyone for longer than a week
as opposed to what Ruth said about joyce having her first orgasming and then proceeding to run off and ‘bang half the town’
Joe isn’t likely to be aromantic given his current romantic relationship and feelings about that relationship, but I do think it would be nice to get some good explicit aromantic rep in the comic if possible.
So one end of the pendulum to (apparently) the other? While hyper-religious Joyce was bad, given that the morality she valued led to the deaths of at least two people (Mike and Toedad, the latter who held the extreme version of her morality) becoming a “godless hedonist” also has some practical dangers, and Joe seems to realize that swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other is a very bad idea. If only Joyce could find a “middle path” where she believes in SOMETHING and seduces Joe not because she believes that’s what every college girl does but because she actually WANTS to.
I think Joyce might cause Joe to become a Buddhist.
It’s pretty clear that she actually does want to, but that doesn’t mean she’s actually as ready as she’s pretending to be or that she’s not performatively playing it up like she’s doing with the swearing or drinking or the tabs.
…Just in case anyone is, unlike Joyce and Becky, trying to focus on academics or work rather than getting drunk midmorning on a Tuesday, Laura is playing some ADHD Relief Music on the hacked brainwave frequencies…
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awe damn she crankin it up to level ELEVEN now!!!!
>:D
*plays “Apocalypshit” by Molotov on hacked muzak*
Joyce is dead. Long live the Anti-Joyce.
Unholy unholy unholy
is the Parasite of Hosts
who comes to drain her cult of glory
them girl now woke an’
broke the pen that tried to write her story
her an’ homies be blushin’ and gushin’
gone from raining to pourin’
with hearts soaring, dino digga ROARIN’
the joy of love takin’ em higher now SOARIN’
tonight they gonna be explorin’
JoyJoe and pals ain’t never borin’
<3
Wow!
Should have said “en-bee-eff-dee, en-eff-gee-eff-el.”
Where eff stands for F-word.
The look Joe is giving, seems like he’s not sure about the new Joyce. 😑
I think he feels like he’s pushed Joyce’s development too quickly, and is worried that she’s secretly uncomfortable with the idea of sex and is just saying this because she thinks it’s what Joe wants.
I think you’re right on the money. I imagine we’re gonna get a callback to this comic from 12 years ago: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/02-choosing-my-religion/casualbang/
I remember reading the comments on this strip during my first read-through and being absolutely baffled as to why the comments section was siding with Joe on Danny not feeling comfortable about sleeping with Billie.
I think that face mean something very different.
I can’t quite read it either.
I wanna say… horny? 🤔
I think it’s horny but scared, myself. Horny because hot girlfriend Joyce, scared because Liz and how he ‘almost ruined her’.
And I ask to Joe, what of Dorothy and Joyce doing laundry? And drinking?
Joe don’t gotta worry about “ruining” her. Thanks to Dotty and company helpin Joyce break them chains, she’s pre-“ruined”
XD
The worry is not about “ruining” Joyce. The worry is that all of this is a performative act that Joyce herself isn’t going to realize until too late, and that by the time she reverses course, if they’ve already done things that can’t be taken back, Joyce is going to FEEL ruined and it’ll implode the relationship.
You mean a performative act as indicated be the last panel?
I don’t know… the last time we saw him try sexytime with someone (with Liz), that’s exactly what she said, that she almost “ruined” herself… out loud with him right there. And it clearly hurt him. So that’s certainly weighing on him… so HE may not be ready for it again.
Yes, that is exactly the point. That Joyce is going to have that reversal of course like Liz, particularly if it’s after instead of before.
Since Joyce hasn’t in *any* way dealt with her sexual assault trauma… Or … ANY of her trauma… It bodes ill for their maiden voyage sexy times attempt.
Joe is DEFINITELY scaroused.
That’s not exactly horniness on Joe’s face, it the pain of blue balls
Is that myth ever gonna go away? 🙄
Sadly, probably not.
I’m sorry, what?
Blue balls. It’s not real.
For some people, yes it is.
Those people are experiencing testicular torsion and have more important things to worry about.
https://www.healthline.com/health/mens-health/blue-balls#:~:text=Blue%20balls%20occurs%20when%20an,affect%20people%20with%20male%20genitals.
Blue balls is absolutely real and you don’t even need to have balls to experience it.
Joe wants to wait for marriage
He’s so traditional. Such a good boy!
There are two wolves in his head, one which thinks this is hot af and the other one which is worried this will lead to a Liz Part II and it’s only a matter of time before Joyce realizes he’d be the worst mistake of her life too.
These two wolves fight ferociously and then a third wolf comes in seriously confused and concerned about why nobody knows what a keg is.
DING DING DING! You’ve nailed it. He’s actually been worried about Not Being Enough for Joyce for a long time – and fearing he’s Dad Rosenthal, The Sequel, for even longer. Being an ethical slut didn’t even work: The Do List is proof.
And he does want it. He wants her so much it’s insane. Like he’s hoping SHE will rail him in a frenzy of passion, no prisoners taken, just so he can absolve himself from the guilt. It’s delicious. Becky and him should exchange pointers.
For a long time Joe thought his dad’s only sin was cheating. When Mr Rosenthal hits on Sarah at freshman family weekend, the only problem he sees is that his dad was like this while married to his mother. He figured if he never entered a relationship, no one could get hurt. When Joyce opens up to him about almost being raped, and when Liz regrets her decision to have sex with him, he started to realize it was more complicated.
I think he’s concerned now that Joyce isn’t interested in him for him, but because she’s so devoted to being “New Joyce” (or perhaps an Anti-Joyce, if you will!) that she’s just with him because it’s something “Old Joyce” would never do. He’s been concerned for a long time about wanting to take things slow with her and not just be the horndog and to be a better person for her, and now from his POV, she’s just trying to be a worse person for him.
He wants to be an actual boyfriend, not part of a delayed teenage rebellion.
If he is worried about that, I really wish he would look into the enemies-to-lovers trope. He’s been solidly in it since she started texting him about his being angry. The potential for things to turn that way has been there since the second he spotted her in hopes of asking her out. And likely the chemistry was there since roomies, but Joe is not aware of the multiverse (and I’m glad he doesn’t know Roomies Joyce).
I think maybe he’s wondering if there’s any of the old Joyce left, the Joyce he unexpectedly fell for.
I think it’s an internal conflict. On one hand: hot gf wants sex and that is a pretty obvious appeal. On the other hand: he genuinely cares about her and even Joe can see Joyce’s current “let’s speed run from sheltered Christian to drinking, swearing, sex having adult” is probably going to be too much change too fast and end poorly
yes, Joyce, you’re so very cool and grown-up now. :eyeroll:
I remember me and my friends watching South Park for the first time in the 7th grade, and then using swear words three times a sentence minimum for like two weeks before we settled down.
Joyce tends not to do things by halves. She’ll level off eventually, but she’s 100% going to be what the youngsters call “cringe” for a while first.
Yep, remember only a month or two ago she was all in ‘yeah atheism is awesome, samesie-knucks!’
I thought cringe was Joyce’s natural habitat.
It takes her a bit but she’s got the spirit.
What are you talking about? Becky is the one who clearly has the spirits.
😀
She is! Thanks you for noticing!
Bro she didn’t get to go through this phase in 8th grade like the rest of us, let her have this
Pee your pants about it some more, that’ll help.
It’s not going to get up for Joe, is it?
He’s having flashbacks to the incident with Sarah’s sister.
Oh shit
Exactly what I was gonna comment other than to note that her name is Liz
I, like Joe seems to be, am worried she’s trying too hard. For understandable reasons (both the trying and the worrying) but still
I think Joe is also afraid of doing sex things with Joyce, given what happened with Liz. He adores Joyce, things are going well, he doesn’t want to hurt or ‘ruin’ her.
Or even worse, have her run away, never to speak to him again.
What is en-bee-dee en-gee-el??
“No Big Deal” and “Not Gonna Lie”.
Oh, I was reading it as like words, not letters and was like wtf is an en-bee-dee? Is that an American thing?
It’s a Joyce thing I think. Like Grandma saying “El oh el, dub tea eff!” To look cool for the grandkids.
“How do you do, fellow kids?”
My oldest brother, as a college-aged person used to phonetically say “jklol” as “jik-lawl”. I texted him when Ayo in QC showed up.
It’s a bank that was bought by another bank that was then bought by another bank, after it had bought the bank that bought my bank. Welcome to America.
I think it’s just a normal human behavior thing, not exclusive to or emblematic of Americans.
No Big Deal; Not Gonna Lie, is what that means, that’s her speaking two different acronyms *as* acronyms. Just instead of the letters only, it was written how it sounds.
It’s a mispronounciation of “Ein Bidet Engels”, the nickname Friedrich Engels got after he said it was really bourgioise to have more than one bidet.
And here I thought it was because he invented the Bidet app for the Eye-phone.
They had to recall it because the icon was confusingly similar to the camera app and people kept using the wrong one.
That is not the face of someone looking forward to sex.
Does she want to have sex with him because of her feelings (romantic or erotic) for him, or does she want to have sex with him to prove how non-longer-old-repressed-Joyce she is?
Honestly, I suspect it’s a bit of both, but it’s an open question as to which one will win out over the other. It’ll either be, “I don’t need to prove anything, I’m doing it because I want to” or “I want to do this, and when I do it will prove I’m New Joyce.”
It could also be “I’m doing this because I’M FUCKING HORNY!!! Oh, hi, Joe, yes, you’re the broad-chested type I like, you’ll do.”
Or possibly that would be Joe’s worst nightmare: that they have sex and then Joyce discovers that 1) she likes it and 2) other guys seem like even more fun, so thanks, Joe, but I’m gonna go bone
EthanJacob— hmm, you’re actually the only one left I know, aren’t you? Oh, fine, I guess I’ll settle for you for now.Yep, that absolutely sounds like something Joyce would do, or that Joe would think Joyce would do.
You know they started dating before New Joyce decided she was almost maybe ready to have sex with someone, right?
I don’t agree with the comments that Joe look worried or concerned in panel 3. He honestly looks pretty into the idea to me.
He’s got sad eyebrows.
I agree, that is the horniest expression I’ve ever seen him make. I’m getting used to the fact that some people in the comments section here is just determined to read unhappiness into every situation no matter how blatant the signs are that it will go well.
It’s exhausting to see it every day, but the other (less anxious) comments make it worth combing through.
this is why I shouldn’t edit after I write:
“some people in the comments section here are just determined…”
Every single character could be grinning directly into the camera and explicitly detailing their positive emotions in very unambiguous terms, and some of these people would still find a way to make it a bad thing.
h o n e s t l y tho
I think it’s quite possible that Joyce saying he’s going to be doing sex things to her very soon is both turning him on and making him concerned at the same time.
I mean, I’m autistic, so I’m probably wrong, but I read that expression as “slightly embarassed and maybe a bit concerned”. But as far as the concern goes, I don’t agree with the interpretation that it’s “Oh, no, it turns out Joyce only loves me for my body after all!” as much as “I don’t know if Joyce is actually ready for this or if she just thinks she should be, and I can’t bring that up right now because I don’t want to step on her New Joyce thing, but hopefully we can have a proper discussion about it later and sort everything out.”
well joyce also had to ‘change pants’ once in i think one of their makeout sessions? or something earlier so i imagine they might just build up to it instead of joyce like maybe making a move on joe if they get drunk again (tho if becky and dina are drunk i’d hope they’d also try to slow down/have her stop rather than egg her on)
but i think yeah the expressino is him more worried/hesitant about being intimate together versus “oh no i’m just being used/objectified” like how jacob would feel during sarah’s convo with them during the gym day
I’d hope Joe would stop them if she was drunk, even if she was the one making the moves.
I don’t think Joe has ever had a serious relationship before, or at least not someone that he actually had feelings for on a deeper level than just sexual attraction. I can see him being worried about Joyce swinging wildly into this “New Joyce” mode & their relationship devolving into just being about sex.
Oh thank God it’s not just me. And as for everyone saying Joyce is trying too hard or wants to prove something, to me this feels like an extension of topless boob holding cuddles. Something she wants to do because shes an adult and she can, and she’s not letting herself be shackled by shame from two decades of brainwashing for something she doesn’t even believe in anymore. Like I only read this whole thing as a positive
Weren’t a lot of people saying that about Liz before she panicked in the middle?
This definitely feels performative and over the top on Joyce’s part. She definitely wants to, but that doesn’t mean years of brainwashing vanish overnight, even when you don’t believe anymore.
Joyce, that browser tab thing might be a step too far.
Did you know that the mobile versions of Chrome turn the open tab counter into a smiley face after you pass 100 open tabs?
M record is somewhere around 240. It’s easy to do when you fall down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and read everything in Incognito tabs.
I’ve usually got at least three windows open in my desktop browser, each with a dozen or two tabs open. It’s fine.
*Goes back to writing “tabs are not bookmarks” on the chalkboard over and over*
But I might want to get back to reading that thing article about public transport in LA that I started reading in 2023!
Also what about all these guide pages for a game I finished 3 months ago?
Huh? “Tabs are not bookmarks.” What foreign language is this? Or is that some kind of cryptography? I’m sorry, but English’s grammar doesn’t work that way.
Using a web browser tab to leave a website open as opposed to bookmarking the page and revisiting later.
I use bookmarks for things I’ll want to find again regularly or after a significant time. Semi-permanent records.
Tabs are for things I’m going to work my way through once in the near future.
It’s plain fucking English, you melt.
Bookmarks are where tabs go to die
No having only one tab open at a time is psychopathic. I need at least 34 spread across 3 different opera gx work spaces
Weirdly more adorable.
This strip have some chaotic energy I adore
Joe if you play your cards right you can make this orgy happen
Yeah! Believe in the Heart of the Cards!!!!
– Dina would do it For Science.
– Becky would do it because she gets Dina AND Joyce? Hell, as long as Joe doesn’t touch her…
– Joyce would do it because she’s bisexual. She just hasn’t gotten the “Oh? Oh” of canonization… Yet.
Joyce isn’t interested in Becky like that, Becky isn’t interested in men like that, Dina and Becky appear to be monogamous…
I think an orgy is unlikely no matter how Joe plays his cards, but I’m sure there’s fanfic somewhere that makes your dreams come true.
You are now my favorite commenter in the comment section. You really are a voice of reason 😊 Here’s a cookie 🍪
Wait. I thought Taffy was the voice of reason.
I don’t think I ever agreed with Taffy before or if so not very often 🤔
i get the feeling there’s gonna be a scene later where joyce is Peak(TM) horny and joe turns her down or if not “im not sure about this/not ready” despite prolly never doing so before in his life lol
2nd panel: Bad idea Joe’s giving his jacket to Joyce: he’s freezing.
Joyce don’t go down this road, it’s a hard habit to break and it begins chipping away at your life faster than you would ever expect it to.
You gotta close those browser tabs, Joyce. Don’t be like me who recently found out that the max amount of browser tabs on my iPhone is 500. Be better.
I start shaking when i have more than 4
I pruned mine down to about 22 last time I had to update iOS. (I was still running 14, and a version of Chrome from 2022, and things were starting to break.)
This comic strip prompted me to start trying to cut down my browser tabs- at least on my PC. Through a combination of actually bookmarking things and being realistic about what I’d look at again I managed to get it from around 450 to 222 before losing steam (literally every tab I looked at before I stopped ended up closed).
I feel better! Sort of. I do want to cut the rest down to just the ones I’m actively using right now… ADHD caused the problem and ADHD stops me from sorting it out, though.
The first recognized “infix” in English.
See e.g. Lord Peter Wimsey for numerous examples of prior art.
I am made of cringe. 100% of my being is curling up into a ball of cringe
Joyce might be overcompensating for her past.
Betting old Joe is also dead. As in, he’s going to tell Joyce that as much as he likes her, he wants to wait until the time is right to have sex with her.
Either that or he’s afraid of being taken for a wild ride once he and Joyce get in bed sans undies.
I almost feel like that’s a given, considering Liz. Not that he thinks he’s going to “ruin” Joyce, at least not that way.
But I think that moment made him realize that there’s -more- to sex than just a fun thing you do with someone else. Joyce is the first time Joe has had an actual relationship with a girlfriend, and not just someone he hooked up with. He’s always kept himself unconnected to women, mostly for fear of becoming like his father, who hurt his mother from constant cheating.
I think that Joe wants to wait, because he’s seen how he’s hurt people before, and knows how easily he could fall into old habits.
I also feel like he’s experiencing a little bit of relationshipl vertigo by how quickly Joyce is rushing ahead.
Or is he perhaps worrying that he is feeling connected this time and Joyce isn’t?
Sometimes I wish I could step into the comic and just ask the characters what’s eating them.
Eh, Joyce is reveling in her newfound freedom. Speaking from experience, it’s kind of intoxicating, especially if you’ve known nothing but repressed feelings and urges before. You want to do everything, swear every other word, drink all the not-kegs, and get all sexed up (maybe). I think Joyce does want something with Joe, but she’s still working through her freedom high.
oooooh yeah!
Happy Summer Solstice!!!!! <3
She’s fitting years’ worth of rebellious adolescence into mere minutes.
Heh. You know what this reminds me of?
When Becky went “GUESS WHAT? I’M A LESBIAN” and made it her calling card, as us queers are won’t to do, for… Ok, she still does it but at the beginning it was literally the second thing she said after her name.
It’s the adorable “trying hard” of someone who’s repressed a thing for too long and has discovered they won’t be smitten on the spot by some higher power. I’m glad she’s finding such joy in it. I hope that when she inevitably goes “am I trying too hard??” at some point it’s followed by a “hell no, I’m finding out who I am, THE TRIP IS THE WHOLE POINT BABEY!” and carries on.
I feel like there’s a little bit of a difference there, though. Becky dove headfirst into “I’M A LESBIAN!” because she was finally accepting who she was and refusing to hide anymore. Joyce, on the other hand, is mostly just rebelling against her upbringing. She isn’t fundamentally someone who drinks and does sex things and says fuck a lot, she’s just going full-on into “not Old Joyce.”
Well, she’s doesn’t know yet whether she’s those things. Apparently she could be someone who casually says “fuck”, but now that it’s been brought to her attention that she did so, it will be deliberate rather than casual, which… isn’t helping. If the others hadn’t reacted quite so strongly, it could have been a much more natural progression for her. Shades of “I can’t wear anything other than sweatervests without people gasping”. Or, for that matter, of Dina kissing Becky that first time to tell everyone to stop thinking of her as a child.
So yes, she’s probably plunging a bit too far into being… well, Anti-Joyce. When the whole point is that the two should be integrated. But saying she isn’t “fundamentally” that sort of person seems like it’s falling into the same trap she may be. And just just because of the irresistible pun that she’s always been a fundamental(ist) sort of person. Sure, to date she’s not been someone who does sex things, but she’S fundamentally been someone who wants to do them (see, e.g., the rub-your-thing-on-my-belly dream, the fantasizing about Ethan in the shower and not daring to touch herself even though Sarah just mocked her for not doing so).
TL;DR: It’s too early in Joyce’s life to say what she fundamentally is in those respects, because her upbringing was so twisted that she’s only just starting to figure it out. Maybe she is someone who drinks and does sex things and says fuck a lot, maybe she isn’t; but she won’t know until she’s tried. (And if her upbringing hadn’t been so fucked up, she wouldn’t have to figure it out so so … all-at-once-ly, for lack of a better term.)
Funny we have this discussion after strip with class about being only proteins. Becky knew she didn’t like the road and knew which exit to take.Joyce also knows that she doesn’t like the road but she doesn’t know her exit, trying to turn around isn’t that bad at the beginning
The faster we’re falling,
why are we stalling?
We’re driving in circles again…
It’s fun because, yeah, Becky got off that road because YAY SHE’S FREE NOW AND SHE KNOWS WHO SHE IS!!
Meanwhile Joyce is like YAY SHE’S FREE NOW AND SHE… HAS TO DISCOVER?? WHO SHE IS??? and she’s got a right to be loud about it too. And make mistakes and maybe lean in too hard about things. Joyce is a good kid! May she discover things about herself with the minimum amount of guilt.
Joe’s face suggests he wants to do sex things WITH her, not TO her!
That’s an important distinction!
A point I had not considered.
Prepositions are important! Always check with your partner(s) about their preferred prepositions before you start prepositioning them.
Because prepositioning your partner correctly can lead to better stimulation and less joint stress/pain !
Honestly should’ve just stopped this comic at panel 3. Just repeat it for the rest of the strip.
Made three versions
Nice, but the final two panels in the middle version should have CENSORED in red letters across the diagonal.
Weirdly, I am distracted from the Cool Joyceness by worrying about Dina’s feelings, tbh.
I have to ask what you could possibly think Dina has worrying feelings about in this strip?
Oh yeah, we never did get a resolution to the whole “Joe is terrified of ruining Joyce with sex before she’s ready” thing did we? I imagine the end of the arc is going to bring this up again. Possibly with a sweet little note where Joe’s like “I don’t…want you to do this yet” and she’s climbing on his lap, smiling, going, “But I do.”
I wonder if we get scene like from Danny and Billie, when Danny refuse quick sex because “respect women” and get “if you respect women respect they decision”
Gosh, out of all the possible outcomes of this, “Joyce sexually assaults Joe” is not one that occured to me.
I think we’re going to get a bit of it. Hopefully an actual discussion, not short-circuited by her climbing into his lap.
I don’t think it’s going to be a big fight or anything. More of an “are you sure? Not just overcorrecting from your past ideas?”
Honestly if we’re talking about personal wishes, I think a 2-3 comic stretch of her climbing into bed with him showing every drop (lol) of enthusiastic consent she can muster is a great way to button it off. Sometimes you don’t need a big conversation — you just need Joyce to look him in the eye and say, “I’m ready.”
Plus we can have it be like Dina and Becky — after sex, they talk about it, and she’s got zero regrets but a little bit of nerves. Which he can help her through.
A conversation about her nerves where Joe is very concerned and Joyce is very introspective but at the end Joe is like “do you regret it” and Joyce is like “no I wanna do it again” and Joe is like “when” and Joyce is like “right now”
NBD, NGL?
Should I know what that stands for?
If you have enough time and interest to type the question into a comment field, and also have access to Google? Then, not going to lie, yes you should. But if you prefer to ask here for the social engagement, that’s fine, no big deal.
It’s no big deal if they want to come here and ask, not gonna lie.
Guessing it’s No Big Deal, Not Gonna Lie. 🙂
Thanks.
I mean assuming you read the comments above you yes you should
“NBD” stands for “Not BD Wong” who is, of course, a big deal, thus the youths say “NBD” as a shorthand for indicating that something is *not* a big deal.
Thanks.
Joe should point out that a XX bottle of moonshine is SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT in alcohol content from beer.
… maybe Dos Equis comes in jugs now?
“I don’t always go to keg parties, but when I do I drink jugs of Dos Equis”
Ah the delightful part of our lives where we learn we can drop f bombs everywhere and we turn into the AVGN for a few weeks/months until we fuck up in a formal situation.
Joe is being like “Oh you innocent little baby drinkers.”
…don’t catch a cold, Joe 😐
Leaving browser tabs open?!
1. In this economy??
2. Is that Firefox or Chrome? (Chrome wastes so much memory, it’s just scandalous! Firefox is erotica; Chrome is flat-out porn. Yeah, I know it when I see it.)
3. Poor Joe! His girlfriend is outrageously flirting with him about open browser tabs!
Return of the hoodie-dress-only-this-time-it’s-an-oversized-jacket?
Or maybe someone is going to tie the jacket arms together like in that one comic.
I abso-fucking-lutely have no idea what Joyce is saying. What the heck are those abbreviations/spelling?
“No big deal/not gonna lie”
I don’t know if Joyce is exagerating, but I prefer she is doing all of these things right now, with her loved ones, than being too afraid to get rid your fears and to get in yours 40’s with regret. Like me.
Thank you! Everyone in here all worried about Joyce when this is like one of the healthiest ways she can find herself and also do normal young adult rebelling 🙌🙌
She is high on that “I did something forbidden and Nothing bad happened!” it’s a temporary emotional high and she will level out soon.
DUDE YEAH, I’m here like. Girlie is 18. Do y’all remember being 18? I’m pretty certain she’ll be way more ok I was, she has friends who love her and will take of her, in a pretty damn safe environment, and really low self-destructive tendencies all things considered.
Let her rebel. Let her get drunk for fun and not because she’s sad, and have sex with the dude she’s very in love with, and all the things she’s been forbidden to do and feared for so long. And if she messes up, well, that’s part of the journey and not the end of the world.
There’s a middle ground though. And there definitely seems to be some level of the “I need to do this to prove I’m not the old Joyce”, even if it’s only proving it too herself.
Which is a parallel to what we saw from Liz earlier.
So what? What’s so bad about proving that to herself? She is finally embracing all these new changes and she also wants to change. Let the new Joyce be born in this very loving and safe environment!
NBD? NGL? what?
No idea what NBD is but NGL is Not Gonna Lie probably
No Big Deal
Joyce, character development is not spectrum development. Lol.
Anti-Joyce arc incoming?
Joyce has unlocked the infix tab in English grammar!
A linguistics professor told the class that English doesn’t have infixes and I replied that it absofuckinglutely does. I lived dangerously as an undergrad.
Not a very good linguistic professor then, the one linguistic class I took the professor specifically pointed out the one example of infixes in English
Joe’s panel 3 expression is because he is dressed for 60s + and it’s below 30 F.
Holy shit you’re right I just noticed that. How is he not freezing to death
Well that’s one use for it!
Do people* worries that much when they are going to having sex, first time, with someone that are romantically attracted?
*people that used to having sex, but not having romantic attraction, and here I don’t know if I can just call Joe aromantic, or he’s just used to slept around, so I don’t know exactly how people could name it.
given joyce’s upbringing, joe being a good bf after all his growth is more ideal, but i imagine he’d prolly be a bit more hesitant after knowing all of joyce’s issues , but i don’t think joe ever rly ‘dated’ anyone for longer than a week
as opposed to what Ruth said about joyce having her first orgasming and then proceeding to run off and ‘bang half the town’
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/need-2/
Joe isn’t likely to be aromantic given his current romantic relationship and feelings about that relationship, but I do think it would be nice to get some good explicit aromantic rep in the comic if possible.
it seems she was successfully keeping those tabs open because she had managed to forget about them
and now that she has remembered…
Supercool = anti?
So one end of the pendulum to (apparently) the other? While hyper-religious Joyce was bad, given that the morality she valued led to the deaths of at least two people (Mike and Toedad, the latter who held the extreme version of her morality) becoming a “godless hedonist” also has some practical dangers, and Joe seems to realize that swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other is a very bad idea. If only Joyce could find a “middle path” where she believes in SOMETHING and seduces Joe not because she believes that’s what every college girl does but because she actually WANTS to.
I think Joyce might cause Joe to become a Buddhist.
It’s pretty clear that she actually does want to, but that doesn’t mean she’s actually as ready as she’s pretending to be or that she’s not performatively playing it up like she’s doing with the swearing or drinking or the tabs.
…Just in case anyone is, unlike Joyce and Becky, trying to focus on academics or work rather than getting drunk midmorning on a Tuesday, Laura is playing some ADHD Relief Music on the hacked brainwave frequencies…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG2IK8oRZNA
Sending encouragement to all who could use it!!!
NBD, NGL?
Scroll up
Ah, Joyce, studying teen rebellion as if it were an academic, graded, subject.
Is it still yesterday’s strip for everyone else checking? Maybe my time stamp will tell me what time the server THINKS it is.
14 minutes off but still telling me that the strip should have been up six minutes ago.