Joyce has the dubiousgreat honor of having the best facial expressions in the comic.
And I don’t know, but goddamn Walky is into it. His expression doesn’t budge an inch and I have the feeling that line hit Dorothy hard. I just have so many emotions about these kids.
“Joyce…I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe…uncircumcised penes in the dorm showers of IU…I watched Dexter and Monkey Master in the dark when the power transformer blew out…all those moments will be lost in time…like last night’s pizza…time for class.”
*Soggies-Apocalypse-Shortpacked versions of Galasso, Becky, Dina, and Ultra-Car fall out of one tear, take one look in her direction, then nope right out through a different tear*
When I was a freshman at the now-demolished Basser College I had the room next to the bathroom. Basser was a real dump with thin walls, and there was a couple who used to bang in shower about in the small hours of the morning about two or three times per week.
I’d say it was a low blow by Walky, and it is, but then again, she kinda walked herself right into that one. There’s a friend tone and a girlfriend tone, and she’s lost access to the latter.
She obviously uses “you’re better than this” with friends, too, because she told Joyce that a few strips ago.
What I don’t get is why she’s saying it to him at all, she knows that’s just how the two of them are together. Despite it all, they care about each other in a kind of “annoying sibling” way. At least in this universe.
It’s understandable that Walky would feel a bit testy about her scolding him so soon after they broke up, but saying “she’s lost access to that” is absurd. We’ve literally JUST watched her use that tone with Joyce.
The dynamic between them will no doubt change a bit before all the dust settles, but right now the issue is that there’s still hurt from the break up that needs time and space to heal
If you chose to break up with me because of time management, gave me false hope, then you don’t get the pass to tell me to do anything. You sure as hell don’t get to decide “just being friends” shouldn’t be lesser
“She dumped him for reasons I don’t like” is a shitty thing to hold against her. “Not doing anything wrong” does not entitle you to a relationship, even if you’re already in one. If either person feels that ending the relationship is best for them for any reason, then they have absolutely every right to do that, even though it may be painful for the other person. A relationship does not grant you ownership of a person.
She didn’t give him false hope. She believed that just taking a break would be enough, but unfortunately it wasn’t. Blaming her for trying to find away around breaking up with him because she failed is childish.
He has every right to feel hurt or even a bit angry regardless of Dorothy’s attempts to soften the blow, and for him to be irritable with Dorothy for a while.
She’s still 100% right that being friends should not be seen as something lesser. Sure, that sounds a bit like she’s saying Walky shouldn’t feel hurt about being dumped, but she’s directing that AT JOYCE. It just happens to also apply to Walky.
And finally, Walky jumped into her conversation with Joyce and started teasing her. She may have chosen the worst tone for it, but she has every right to ask Walky to stop, regardless of their current relationship status. Or do you think that if Joe or some complete stranger was teasing Joyce, Dorothy has no right to say anything?
And again, of course Walky has every right to feel hurt, and to establish some new boundaries (temporary or permanent) for this new phase of their relationship, but Dorothy didn’t wrong him. She doesn’t deserve his animosity for this any more than Joyce does.
dorothy has demonstrated that she has, generously, a pretty inexact command of how she should be managing her own shit. a little less you talk, a little more you listen, dot.
Fart Captor: If I remember correctly, Dorothy “took a break” from dating Walky–meaning “I’m not dating you now, but if you put your life on hold and wait for me I might date you again later”, then continued sleeping with him a few times, then broke up with him because she needed more time for her extra-credit projects.
I don’t think any of us were suggesting that Walky is “owed” a relationship by Dorothy or that he “owns” her. It’s clear to me that they in fact should not be together.
However, I posit the following:
* Dorothy does not get to decide for Walky whether friendship is a lesser relationship than romantic partnership
* My personal veiw is that friendship is lesser than romantic partnership, so I can understand if Walky feels that way, although it’s not yet clear whether he does
* “Taking a break” is a super shitty way to treat someone
* Continuing to sleep with them while “on a break” is even shittier
* Extra-credit projects should not be more important than a relationship
* A perfect GPA should not be more important than a relationship
* If they are, then you have told your partner how much you value them, and that is not very much
* Although you have the right to break up with a partner at any time, time management IS a shitty reason to do so, particularly without discussing alternatives with your partner first
* Once you break up with someone, you do not get to police their behaviour
* If you decide to do so anyway, you should probably accept the risk that they are not going to like that
Yeah, sure, if a stranger were “teasing” Joyce (and I think what Walky is doing here is more like “criticising” or “sniping at”), Dorothy would have the right to say something. She has the right to say something here. That is how conversations work.
Walky has an equal right to tell her he doesn’t accept her standing to criticise him and that he is going to continue to behave toward Joyce however he wants. Joyce is the one who ultimately has to make the decision about whether she’s willing to accept that from Walky.
– People in relationships taking a break is a thing that happens. Sometimes it’s a precursor to a breakup, but not always. There’s nothing inherently shitty about it.
– She acknowledged after they had sex that it wasn’t fair to him. That’s WHY SHE BROKE IT OFF.
I will say this again and again until I stop needing to say:
– YOUR PRIORITIES REGARDING RELATIONSHIPS ARE NOT UNIVERSAL, OR SOME KIND OF OBJECTIVE MORAL ABSOLUTE. There is absolutely nothing morally wrong with Dorothy prioritizing her long-term ambitions.
-More importantly, if someone no longer wants to be in relationship, that is reason enough to end the relationship. There is no morally wrong reason to end it. Insisting that certain reasons are wrong is the kind of harmful bullshit that helps make people feel trapped in relationships they’re no longer happy in because the none of “approved” escape conditions have been met.
– She is deciding NOTHING for Walky about whether friendships shouldn’t be lesser than romantic relationships. She’s making a general fucking statement, and she’s goddamn right about it. It’s more directly relevant to Joyce’s current situation (which is who she addressed the statement to anyway), but it’s still true in general.
Romantic relationships are great. So are friendships. If you go looking for love and find friendship instead, that’s a pretty fucking awesome consolation prize. Dwelling on how it’s not the thing you wanted isn’t doing yourself any favors.
Finding a friendship where love used to be is hard (which is why I would hope she would’ve worded it differently if she’d actually been addressing Walky), and sometimes the heartbreak makes it too hard, but the principal stands. If friendship with your ex is possible, that’s not something to sneer at.
Whoah there, Captain Boldtext, if you’d read my reply a little more carefully instead of formatting your html for maximum consdescension, you would have noticed that I was careful to say “My personal veiw [sic] is that friendship is lesser than romantic partnership”, and I phrased it that way because I’m aware that this is neither a universal nor objective. I know lots of people who feel the same way you do. I know lots of people who feel the same way I do. I don’t think we’ve been given enough information about Walky’s view, if any, on the subject to know where he stands.
And yes, Dorothy was making a “general fucking statement”. Claiming that “she is goddamn right about it”, however, is hypocritically imposing your (subjective and non-absolute) opinion about relationships on everyone. If that is what you and Dorothy think, that’s fine. But your priorities regarding relationships are not universal, or some kind of objective moral absolute.
Whether Dorothy was aiming that comment at Walky is unclear, and although she definitely had him in mind when she said it, it reads to me more as though she is trying to convince herself of it more than anyone else. Regardless, saying it in Walky’s hearing was tactless and tasteless, and if Walky feels that his behaviour or outlook are being dictated to him by the time she gets around to “You’re better than that”, I could understand that, even if he is not correct.
I continue to disagree that taking a break from relationships is not inherently shitty. I continue to disagree–again, on an entirely personal level–that friendship is not “less” than romantic partnership.
Finally, while there is no morally wrong reason to end a relationship (there doesn’t have to be a reason, per se, at all), the absolute and unassailable right to make decisions about how your life is going to go does not guarantee that you’re not going to totally screw the pooch sometimes. I continue to think Dorothy’s decision to break up with Walky–given that she a) did not discuss her academic “problems” with him and approach the situation as a team; b) seems to be concerned about extra credit and a perfect GPA, neither of which will necessarily affect her long-term priorities anyway; and c) seems genuinely to love Walky and love being in a relationship with him–was a poor choice based on stupid reasons. A stranger yelling at me on the Internet about these topics has done little to change my views.
Not to address most of that, but Dorothy and Walky very much did discuss her academic problems and had started to try to approach them together. Which had led Walky, on his own, to think he was going to have to break up with her, so she wouldn’t be distracted.
That’s the thing. Dorothy and Walky are not friends right now. Walky’s feelings are so messed up that he doesn’t even want to be in the same room as her.
So she can’t use her girlfriend tone or he friend tone with him because she’s neither.
Maybe once things have settled, but right now she can’t use a reasonable tone of voice to talk Walky down from doing something he wants to do, which is pick with Joyce.
She kinda did lose access to it, though. In regards to him, at least. A not insignificant part of their relationship was her holding him to a higher standard than he held himself with the implicit (and possibly explicit? I dont remember for sure) threat of breakup if he didn’t meet those standards. So for her to try saying “Hey, hold yourself to a higher standard” is kinda similar to her booty calling him. It’s a relationship perk she’s trying to hold onto despite being the one to say they can’t have a relationship.
The point was that she didn’t have the time or emotional energy for a relationship. Breaking up was obviously going to mean they’d spend less time together, but it’s not going to magically change their class schedules or disentangle their social circles. So even if she didn’t still want to be friends, they’d still HAVE to see each other.
Her tone may have been wrong, but she had every right to scold him for teasing her friend
Sorry but (from my perspective) you’re straining too hard in identifying with Dorothy. She’s been so wrapped up in her relationship and everything else I don’t think she and by extension, you actually noticed the adversarial friendship between Joyce and Walky. Otherwise you might have noticed this is business as usual with a new subject, Joyce confusing “true love” with old fashioned freshman horniness. This is how they are.
And seriously you can’t rule out the possibility of this being the Walky version of calling her out on shitty behavior that we already know Dot isn’t the only one to notice.
I don’t know. There’s something really nasty about replying to “Hey, quit picking on my friend,” with, “Nah, I’m only invested in your opinion when you’re dating me.” …Ugh, I’m not wording this right. I mean, on one level, yes, after a breakup, it’s perfectly okay (and usually healthy!) to stop investing in your ex’s opinion. But making a point of flaunting your newfound lack of regard for your ex *to their face*, especially when all they’re asking is for you to stop antagonizing their friend, is… less so.
I think it’s kind of fair at this point, honestly. Dorothy is pretty clearly trying to throw her weight around here and tell Walky what to do; he’s not being cruel to Joyce, he’s not saying anything that’s hurtful to her except insofar as it’s puncturing her convenient fiction. Which is also the same fiction that Dorothy herself is trying to puncture, because she’s pretty exasperated by the way Joyce is acting around Jacob and Raidah.
Remember, earlier in the same day we saw Dorothy calling him David and him calling her out on that, too. And let’s not forget Mike’s last exchange with her; Mike’s an asshole, but he doesn’t say something without an actual bit of meat to what he’s saying, and his last point to her was (essentially) “you think you’ve made the right choice but you’re actually really scared that you didn’t.”
Let’s also not forget Walky’s whole “garbage roof” thing. He’s chafing against a lot of things going down here.
So what he’s saying isn’t “you have no value to me now that we aren’t dating.” What he’s saying – at least from my perspective – is that Dorothy doesn’t get to simultaneously unilaterally cut off their relationship and still dictate his behavior. She doesn’t get to have everything be on her terms, and she doesn’t get to use “you’re better” as a bludgeon.
I don’t have any feelings one way or the other about Walky’s behaviour in this strip, so I’m not defending it when I say this, but Joyce’s current sexuality is also pretty crappy, and she should feel uncomfortable about it–whether she gets there on her own or it has to be pointed out to her. Walky may not have the personal standing to mock it, but it could use a good mocking by someone, for sure.
I’m not talking about the fact that her sexuality is repressed. I’m talking about the fact that part of her sexuality is belief in True Love making a relationship Meant to Be and therefore representing an end that justifies means such as behaving badly toward another person and trying to manipulate someone in a relationship into either cheating on his partner or leaving the partner for Joyce. That’s shitty.
She’s not trying to shame anyone else here. She’s LONG since accepted that other people can have sex outside of marriage and still be good people. She’s expressing HER personal discomfort about the idea of HER engaging in sexual activities. That is absolutely not something she deserves to be mocked or shamed for.
When I said it wasn’t the problem, I meant that having a repressed sexuality you’re uncomfortable with isn’t crappy behaviour. Trying to break up an established relationship is, but as I said, that’s not what Walky’s making fun of her for, and so yes this is a dick move.
It’s making fun of her sexuality to say she’s sexually attracted to someone and that she’s lying when she claims to not think of that sexual attraction?
Because that’s all I’m getting from Walky here and that doesn’t equal making fun of sexuality to me.
It personally strikes me as less “making fun of Joyce’s sexuality” and more “making fun of Joyce’s easily-punctured view of her own sexuality.” The whole point here is that it wouldn’t have affected basically anyone else; put Sarah in Joyce’s place and she would have just rolled her eyes and said “duh.”
Okay and she wouldn’t have let the conversation last that long to start with, but the point is that Joyce totally wants that weenus and Walky’s honestly stating that yes, she does. He’s not making fun of her wanting it, he’s making fun of her trying to pretend she doesn’t.
I think there’s totally space for this to move in the direction of him being a jerkwad, but we aren’t there yet. Other readings may vary!
What happened to Walky being nice and supportive of Dorothy because he loves her? That’s a lot of snark from someone who was told to stop being so crazy devoted only an hour ago.
He’s supportive of her career ambitions, he thinks Joyce is crazy brainwashed and repressed and likes to be a dick about that. And as he’s not Dorothy’s boyfriend anymore he has no reason to not pursue his natural inclinations anymore.
What even was Billie’s advice I don’t remember. Anyways I’m more inclined to believe Walky is getting advice from Amber right now since last we saw, they were tweeting each other.
Yeah,pretty much that. I mean, I have opinions about the exact intent of Billie’s advice myself, but it’s very fair to read her advice as excessively adversarial.
To clarify, I think (hope?) Walky’s just doing the “take care of yourself” part (focused more on texting w/presumably Amber, not worrying about what Dorothy thinks right this second)-I certainly hope this isn’t the start of he and Dorothy sniping at each other or something!
Nah. When your friend get’s broken up with, your main goal is to get them to feel better about themselves and back to their usual state. You don’t get them there by saying “Yeah, you know what, your ex was more perfect than you deserve, Just accept that you’ lost your one chance of happiness” Certainly, you don’t say “You’re young, and this was only puppy love. Something about fish and sea, tree’s and forests”. You go straight to “They don’t deserve you, you deserve better, they sure lost out”. @MatthewTheLucky is right, and I don’t think Billy was entirely wrong. I think most people are throwing stones in glass houses.
Teasing Joyce doesn’t equal not supporting Dorothy.
Besides, he can’t have his relationship anymore, you can’t take away his only other source of pleasure/distraction in the class.
Yeah, a bit. But Walky is living in that post-breakup zone where you still have strong feelings that can directly clash with other feelings. The fresher the breakup, the more the feelings clash and alternate. In VERY GENERAL terms, this zone gets shorter or longer depending on the level of friendly feeling. Age plays a part, too, but not a decisive one. More important is the sense of mutual decision – agreeing to do something together, even breaking up, can make the decision easier to live with and reduce the level of anger or bitterness.
Dorothy may control her feelings better in public than Walky, almost certainly does. But public interactions at this point are always kind of tense and unpredictable.
Yeah to rehash a point Dorothy made earlier “we’re not a thing anymore, you can’t tell me what to do.”
Besides ribbing Joyce is fun and kind of necessary at times when she needs to get knocked down a peg. I mean let’s be fair she’s been shit talking him behind his back all day.
she’s been shit talking him behind his back for a long while now. Usually trying to convince Dotty to break up with him, especially if it gives her more time with dotty. It was kind of my least favorite part of her character. I could never stay friends with someone who constantly shit talks someone I care about, let alone someone I love and am dating.
To be fair, that’s kind of their dynamic. He shit talks her too. And it was only incidentally behind his back – she was perfectly capable of doing it when he was there too.
The partition is there so Johnny Dickwatcher can’t watch your dick. It doesn’t matter if he shouldn’t be doing it, he can’t be trusted with the honor system. Plus, I don’t necessarily want to accidentally spot Reggie Horseknob’s massive dangler in my periphery, so the solution is to build a big, beautiful wall between urinals.
The partition may also be there to make sure people coming into the bathroom don’t immediately see your penis, if the urinals are on the wall to the right or left of the door.
In my dorm, there were individual stalls, with doors that latched like bathroom stalls, with hooks and benches, then a show curtain and shower stall. Then at some point, I switched to using the single-occupancy unisex bathroom that had a shower in it anyway because gender.
This was 23 years ago, and my dorm at Purdue was one of the crappier ones, but we still had about four separate shower stalls per bathroom. And a communal bench just outside of them.
Of course we didn’t have the weird shared private bathroom thing that IU apparently has.
In my dorms, back some 30 years now, we had a shower room with 4 or 5 nozzles and no stalls or dividers of any kind. The girls’ bathrooms may have been different? Maybe curtain dividers? Can’t remember. Didn’t spend a lot of time in the girls’ shower.
Norah, are you say you had two shower stalls per suite? How many people That sounds like luxury.:)
That’s what I want to know myself. What do Episcopalians think of male circumcision?
I did some internet research and was shocked about Catholic views, indicating circumcision as violating the fifth commandment because it kills off a part of the person. Does this apply to hair waxing as well?
Do you cut off a part of you for waxing? A part that never grows back?
I’m neither pro or contra circumcision, I think that should be a decision everyone should make for themselves (not for their infant sons though). But comparing it to waxing underestimates the impact a circumcision can have.
I know the significance of circumcision and I’m not deriding it. But just finding out about this rule just makes me shake my head as a semi-lapsed Catholic.
The non-religious cultural reasons in question are essentially commercial reasons. Doctors talk parents into ordering circumcisions in order to collect fat fees, mostly from insurers and the public health.
By the way, the rate of routine neonatal circumcisions performed by medical personnel in Australia is 4%. Ten years ago it was 14%.
Catholics don’t really care much one way or another. I went to an all boys Catholic high school. Almost all circumcised. Just what you would find at a US public school. It’s a US thing, with not much religious about it.
But on the Internet you can find all kinds of people speaking authoritatively about things.
I went to a Catholic all-boys school (in Australia) in the late 1970s, where I was the only non-Catholic and the only uncircumcised boy in my year.
But that had very little to do with religion. There were three obstetricians in town, one Catholic, one Protestant, and one atheist. The Catholic and the Protestant doctors recommended circumcision to parents, the atheist recommended against it.
It is weird how much the culture has changed in my lifetime: when I was a kid there was one Catholic and one non-Catholic medical practice in my home town, and marriages between Catholics and Protestants were still noteworthy.
Interesting that Walky hasn’t *once* looked up from his phone in this conversation. As someone above noted, preeeeetty likely talking to Amber at the moment.
I’m torn between wondering whether that was intentionally a low blow by Walky or whether he is just unhappy and letting his full smartass out in force. I also don’t know which would cause more problems, because Dorothy is going to react no matter what. Granted she chose this but he was trying to be supportive, I doubt he suddenly adopted Billie’s advice, at least I hope not.
It’s a far cry from acknowledging that she no longer has the influence of a girlfriend to hating her. All he’s doing is pointing out that their dynamic has changed.
She can’t use girlfriend powers or even friend powers on him right now as his feelings are too messed up for them to even hang out as friends.
Probably the only one who could make Walky stop (without bringing up trauma Joyce has faced) is Sal, and maybe not even her.
Depending on how you feel he internalized his conversation with Billie, trying to convince Dotty that he is okay with them being apart could easily take the form of alienating her on purpose so she doesn’t worry about him anymore.
Then again, he has been spending the day socializing with Amber and maybe he’s just becoming content with the idea that “this is the shitpile. I live here. Deal with it.”
Except a big part of their relationship was Walky forcing himself to be “better” than he was, or than he was comfortable being, simply to maintain the relationship.
Considering all the mixed signals she was giving through their relationship, his first real relationship I might add so he’s got no real clue what is and isn’t normal or how to handle it, followed by that fumble of a break up, im not so sure about that, woobie
wait, I clearly didn’t read your comment all the way through lol I thought you were just calling her the best thing didn’t see the worst part ignore me haha
Well given that Dorothy is using what is cleary a girlfriend tone to ask Walky to stop when she broke up with him, you can see why he’d say something like that. Also she shouldn’t say he’s better than this because he isn’t, this has always been how he’s interacted with Joyce.
Even if it’s a mom tone, Dorothy has no right to keep telling Walky what to do. You wouldn’t want your ex telling you to not eat eggs because it’s bad for your cholesterol like she used to tell you when you were still dating would you? It’s the same principle here. She’s using a tone that she was allowed to use when they were dating even though they aren’t anymore. It’s like she’s trying to keep her girlfriend benefits without being his girlfriend anymore.
And most of the time (unless the conversation was about sex) she’s snarked right back at him. And she’s always telling Dorothy that Walky isn’t good enough for her and she should break up with him. She’s never said it to Walky, but he can probably feel her contempt for him.
And at the same time, she’s described him as family, talked about missing him when she was at home, trusted him when she couldn’t walk alone. He’s looked out for her and checked in on her as well.
It’s a more complex relationship than the snarking at or about each other might suggest.
s no obligation to be friendly to Dorothy right now considering the way she broke up with him and the fact that she basically lead him on. She has no leverage of any kind with him at this point, she’s not his girlfriend and she’s not his friend. She doesn’t get to tell him how to act anymore at all. She can use that tone with Joyce because they’re friends and she can’t with Walky because they aren’t friends.
Walky has no obligation to be friendly to Dorothy right now considering the way she broke up with him and the fact that she basically lead him on. She has no leverage of any kind with him at this point, she’s not his girlfriend and she’s not his friend. She doesn’t get to tell him how to act anymore at all. She can use that tone with Joyce because they’re friends and she can’t with Walky because they aren’t friends.
“The way she broke up with him” was as gentle as possible, and “leading him on” would have required that Dorothy herself knew that going on pause wouldn’t work. She didn’t. It sucks but acting like she did something sinister there is just absurd
But most importantly, they ARE still friends, or at least they were the last time they talked. I agree that at least for near future she should avoid that kind of tone, but she doesn’t need some specific relationship level to ask him to stop teasing Joyce
Also relationships and friendships aren’t “leverage”, that’s a gross way to describe them even in passing
It’s the fact that she kept sleeping with him while “on break” and that she told him she loved him after telling him the relationship was “for fun” that is, as far as I’m concerned, leading him on. Yeah, she can say something to him, but since she just broke his heart and he’s hurt, he doesn’t have to listen to her, in fact, he doesn’t have to listen to her at all ever if he doesn’t choose to unless he was harming her in some way or infringing on her rights. She came and sat by him, when she didn’t have to, if you think she had to look at how Amber changed seats to avoid Danny after he and AG broke up.
He’s way to messed up right now to be friends with her, what evidence do you have that says otherwise? I see him having “garbage roof” and crying fits as good evidence he isn’t up to that yet.
Spare me the outrage, I’m not saying relationships ARE leverage, I’m saying they give you a type of social leverage, or pull if you will, that a stranger doesn’t have and since he’s hurting right now, she doesn’t have the pull with him she has with Joyce and so can’t pressure him into being nicer and the fact that she’s trying is not cool. Heck the fact that she pulled it with Joyce isn’t cool because it’s more of a guilt trip than anything else imo. If she wants Joyce to know how she feels about what she’s doing, being straight forward would be a much better approach.
To defend Dorothy here: She slept with him once while on pause and that was the trigger for turning the pause into an actual break up – she couldn’t keep her intention, so she’s trying a harder boundary. (Which she’s already been tempted to break.)
But I don’t think any of it is intentional in the way that “leading him on” implies. It’s more that she thinks she needs those limits, but she doesn’t have the self control to keep to them.
And if he’s way to messed up to be friends yet, I suspect the same is true of her. Differently, perhaps, but no less affected. No less still in love with him either.
I didn’t say it was intentional, but her actions do send a very different message than her words and she contradicts herself often, so it leads to a different message than she intends, which qualifies as leading him on, even if she didn’t mean to. Her lack of self control is not an excuse for confusing the boundaries of their relationship and muddying them. Especially, since she has dictated the terms of their relationship, with Walky acquiescing because he thinks she’s better than him, for the whole of their relationship. She has dictated how he should dress and how he should act and she doesn’t get to keep doing so now, not that she should have to begin with. My view is you can ask an SO to change problematic behavior that hurts you or damages your relationship, but you can’t ask them to change who they are to please you.
I never said she wasn’t messed up too, I was simply addressing fart captors assertion that they are still friends so Dorothy can use that tone.
Walky’s pushed back on some of that too. The great Pajama Jeans incident among others. I think he was less of a doormat than Danny and it took her by surprise sometimes.
But you’re basically right about her problems with boundaries, which she did recognize at the end. I just wouldn’t describe it in quite the same terms.
Why?
The only way in life not to hurt people is not to exist. If you exist, you will hurt people because you are yourself with your own desires, feelings and limitations and they are themselves with their own desires, feelings and limitations and the moments where these things clash are inevitable.
You can try to not hurt people on purspose, but even if you are very good at it you will hurt people. Believing you don’t is an illusion.
So the important point is to learn to deal with the hurts you get and the responsibility or not for the hurts you dish out, to know when someone is intentionally hurting you and when that’s not the case and when it’s time end a relationship (any kind, not restricted to love relationships) because the hurt you get exceeds the good you get and it’s unlikely this will change.
In case of Dorothy and Walky, he’s been hurt as a result of her desires and limitations that don’t match with his. That’s a good reason not to be lovers but no impediment to friendship or being polite in public.
It’s not that friendship is impossible it’s that expecting to go back to friendship as if none of the hurting happened in the first place literally like the next day is wildly unreasonable.
Theres a difference between “I have thought long and hard on this so I don’t mind being friends” to “You literally broke up with me yesterday and are acting like nothing happened”
I don’t think anyone was implying they can’t still be friends and they likely will be eventually, but at the moment he’s hurt and is perfectly understandable why he currently doesn’t care what she thinks of him.
Except – in defense of Dorothy, she hasn’t been acting like nothing happened. She just seems to have an odd idea of what did happen. Remember, earlier in the day she was calling him “David” specifically because of the breakup; he called her out on it.
Dorothy’s issue here isn’t that she’s acting like nothing changed, it’s that she’s trying to dictate what has changed and what hasn’t. “Okay, so I don’t call you Walky any more, but I still get moral veto power.” Walky’s snark at her is just a reminded that it doesn’t work that way.
It’s the next day. They’re trying to renegotiate the terms of their new relationship. It’s going to be awkward and there will be missteps, probably on both sides.
This is a hard thing to do.
Also, Dorothy only called him David once and when Walky told her that no, calling him Walky wouldn’t seem overly-familiar, she said ‘Okay, sorry’ and admitted that she liked the emotional distance and then he told her to call him whatever she wanted.
Sitting down next to your ex you just broke up with less than a week ago while having a conversation about ‘being just friends’ doesn’t have to tolerated either.
That’s her seat in class, and it’s one thing to expect someone to stop talking about a person when that person is there, but do you honestly expect them to stop conversations Walky may remotely relate to just because he’s there? Especially when “just friends” wasn’t a cornerstone theme of the break-up–I don’t think continuing friendship was ever even mentioned, and it seems like if they didn’t have mutual friends of classes, they would have spent the rest of forever avoiding each other
Last I checked, universities don’t tend to have assigned seating. Walky was there first, and there was nothing stopping Dorothy and Joyce from not sitting next to him
Yes, they could’ve sat way in back, as far away from him as possible, like Amber did in that class she has with Danny, after she broke up with him. There’s no reason they should have sat next to Walky.
Dorothy didn’t sit down next to Walky. Joyce did. We don’t even know where Dorothy sat down, but even if it’s the chair next to Joyce, there’s an aisle in between.
And while it might be fine for Walky to join their conversation, the fact that HE JOINED IN means it’s absolutely bullshit to suggest Walky was putting up with bullshit from Joyce
He’s the one being a dick to her. Joyce wasn’t even talking to him until he interrupted.
But Joyce also knows they broke up. She really doesn’t need to sit next to him. Even she’s not blind enough to not realize having two people who just broke up sitting near each other will be really awkward. Also this has always been Joyce and Walky’s relationship: she says something, Walky makes a snarky response.
They don’t have assigned seating, but the seat-in-class dynamic still seems to crop up strongly within a few days, and taking someone else’s seat is a bit of a faux pas.
It’s about the suggestion that somehow Walky was being wronged by “Joyce’s bullshit” and that she somehow deserves to be teased like this.
Even if he’d been part of the conversation from the start, just how the fuck would anything she’s said to him constitute something he “shouldn’t have to put up with”?
Today, right now in the start of this class? Not at all.
Overall, she’s said plenty of bullshit he shouldn’t have to put up. As he has to her. It’s how their relationship works.
Not sure why it’s blownup into such a thing today. This isn’t really all that much by their standards.
Usually he teases Joyce as a response to Joyce’s behavior, not because he’s upset with someone else
People are acting as if she somehow wronged him because HER FRIEND dumped him and it’s gross.
YES, it’s understandable that he’s cranky, YES Dorothy should have used asked him to stop instead of pulling out that “you’re better than this” line again. It’s great that he’s not ignoring his own emotional needs for her sake anymore.
None of that is a reason to be shitty to Joyce. She doesn’t “deserve” this.
Nor is Dorothy crossing some weird boundary by sitting near him (assuming she actually sat next to Joyce) or trying to get him to stop teasing Joyce. It would have been better if she’d asked differently, and it wouldn’t have hurt to check in with Walky to see if he might prefer that they sit further away for now, but Joyce still hasn’t done a damn thing to him, and Dorothy has every right to try to intervene.
I don’t even really mind Walky teasing her here. It feels more hostile than is called for, but I get it. But the idea that she deserves it skeeves me out, as does this idea some people seem to have that Dorothy has defied Break-Up Law simply by speaking to him
I think there needs to be another tag. Just as amber and amazi-girl tags refer to different personas of the same person, Joyce should have a “joyceface” tag (or just “face”, maybe?) for moments like these.
Didn’t check the 70 some other comments, but mine is about whether this is a call back. It’s about how Walky’s attitude and comment to Dorothy seems too harsh, cold, and out of character, including in light of recent strips (he was ignoring Billie’s advice after all).
Walky is not better than this. This is pretty standard behavior for him regarding Joyce. And on balance, I think it’s fair if for no other reason then how she’s been regarding him and his feelings “today”, as well as some of the remarks she made regarding him. Especially since all he’s said is that she’s sexually attracted to Jacob, which she admitted to in a less crass way.
I think this is another reminder for Dorothy that Walky is stronger/harder/meaner/can’t think of the right word+er than she’s used to or realized.
He’s been very accommodating. She probably hasen’t seen this side of him since the pajama jeans incident. And this situation between them has a lot more weight than that did.
It isn’t exactly fair for Walky to say this to her since she’s not a “or else” kind of person, but I can’t pretend I didn’t like it when I read it.
A lot of people are focusing on Joyce and Walky, but I feel like this is more about Dorothy realizing she can’t be in control. She’s always tried to be den mother in the group, whether she’s aware of it or not, and now the others are going their own ways. It’s the natural result of her pushing them away and a harsh reality she needs to face. They’re going to have different viewpoints, opinions, and will make mistakes. She can’t make them behave like she wants to or thinks they should behave and that bothers her.
It’s Dorothy’s second use of “you’re better than this” with a few strips. She sees two people she cares about stumbling in the direction of hurting others, but she has recently hurt Walky. Is she better than this?
What does “is she better than this” has to do with anything?
She’s not trowing stones.
I dislike her phrasing “you are better than this” when she tries to set boundaries to other people’s behavior. Because it basicly is a guilt trip.
She doesn’t say “I don’t like what I’m seeing”, or anything that makes it clear that she is owning her point of view, but falls back to false absolutes.
I think it’s a sign of the bad place she is in, we have seen her act differently before.
@ Brian: I don’t quite get how you connect pushing people away and trying to control with her. You have to keep people close to control then, so it obviously can’t be her aim to do so. Even Dorothy is a better tactician than that. Though tactics is not her strong point.
Dorothy is projecting a need to be in control, because she has repeatedly shown negative reactions towards people not being who she thinks they should be rather than who they actually are. She was set-up from the beginning as being more than a little bit controlling, which isn’t uncommon when dealing with an overachiever. My point was that she wants to keep people at an arm’s reach now but also isn’t ready to acknowledge that it means not being able to exert as large an influence. I’m not saying anyone is in the right, just that Dorothy is wanting her cake and still expects to eat it too.
I mean, Dotty makes a POINT, but still it’s like…girl you can’t go one moment criticizing Joyce and then defend her when Walky calls her bluff…and blush.
That panel 3 though. There’s some meaning in there.
As long as each panel has her physical reaction to each panel in the corner, and every so often she snaps back to reality and the daydream bubble pops before regenerating after a brief pause.
in Snipped walky is surprised to see an uncircumcised peen implying that he is. joe and ethan may seem like a given but some jewish parents decide not to circumcise, and do a alternative ritual for bris. i know this is true for my family, but circumcision is not the norm where i live like in the US. in this ted talk i will
In NZ, of my generation anyway, circumcision is pretty common. I was told it might have had something to do with the kiwi soldiers returning from the desert campaigns of WW2 and deciding it was cleaner to not have foreskins
This is not Dorothy being a hypocrite for telling Walky to lay off as a couple of people have suggested – Walky has derailed their entire argument onto a sexual tangent just to make Joyce uncomfortable for literally no reason other than that he could when he didn’t have to get involved at all.
“Hey good point Walky, how about I just slap your stupid mouth instead for harassing my friend about her sexual hangups when she was literally almost raped you colossal fucking idiot????”
Hes not harassing her at all, Dorothy needs to walk that particular wording back especially given the class and the current climate
Remember Joyce had spent pretty much the entirety of Dorothy and Walkys relationship openly saying Walky wasn’t good enough and that he and Dorothy should break up so if Walky wants to throw some sark back at Joyce, well given how much flak Joyce has given him and considering he’d walk her to classes when she couldn’t I’d say he’s earned the right to give her some back
I don’t know if its that Dorothy can process things quicker or maybe lacks a little empathy but shes shown with Walky and Danny to sometimes not realize or understand the effect her actions have
She’d just broken up with Danny and told him to maybe not see anyone for a while (not bad advice at the time) and then what does she do, goes to his room to borrow some shoes for her new boyfriend
Then we have her and Walky, her choice to keep it light but then she lays I love you on him, decides for both of them that they should go on a break/pause then she decides to sleep with him, then breaks up with him yet it still sounds like she wants to have some sort of control over him
Shes not a bad person, in fact shes one of my favorites but shes got some blind spots so I’m pleased to see Walky grow a pair and give her some flak back
Though to be fair to Joyce there, it’s not like Walky didn’t throw snark before. He’s pretty much given as good as he’s gotten all along. It’s pretty much how their friendship works.
1. Threats with violence wont work. She could report him to the dean, or to Ruth and she’d break him.
2. I do hope Dorothy doesn’t mention the rape thing since it could trigger Joyce.
3. Colossal idiot, agreed.
Report him to the dean? For what?
And it’s not like Walky’s comments here are triggering her. Scarface has nothing to do with it. She’s just embarrassed because she is thinking about his weenus, even more explicitly than she was before.
And I meant Dorothy triggering Joyce by talking about her close call.
But yeah, I also think that whats going on is just mild shennanigans. Heck, maybe it could even help Joyce to admit to herself that she thinks about weenuses.
So Walky can’t say she’s sexual,y attracted to Jacob?
And when she lies about it, he can’t say she’s lying?
Because that’s basically all he’s done, albeit in a crass way.
It would be no different than if he said she wanted to Jump Jacob’s bones or make sweet love or have his babies.
She herself admitted to finding Jacob sexually attractive to Dorothy a couple minutes ago.
I agree with thejeff and cbwroses, he’s not banned from ever mentioning sex at all because she was traumatized, especially when she obviously is embarrassed but not triggered by this.
You think she’s going to be half as smooth as she has been next time she sees him?
I think she’s going to react similarly to when she saw Ethan after the sex dream-turned-nightmare, personally. And I can’t wait to see it.
I also hope she genuinely realised what she’s doing is shitty and pulls back, because that’s the only way I can see her moving back towards a place where she deserves a relationship with Jacob. And they have great chemistry and could be wonderful together, but if she’s being underhanded and trying to ruin his current relationship there’s no way that won’t backfire, which at that point will be what she deserves.
Walky is performing a… valuable service to Joyce right now. She’ll have a much better chance of doing right by everybody including herself if she can get out of denial.
Well, ShinyNeen – you apparently ARE better than telling me to not tell people they are better than telling people they are better than telling people they are better than this – so I tip my hat.
I never said it’s EASY to be a team mom… (Also, I appreciate your running with the gag. That’s clearly exactly how good you are.)
But more seriously, Dorothy’s mom-ing of Walky has been a very significant part of their relationship, for good (possibly) and bad (absolutely). Her trying to keep that up, and him refusing to play his part, is significant for the current state of their breakup.
Maybe telling people and countries “you’re better than this” is her presidential style.
“Russia, you don’t want to destabilize other countries. You’re better than this.”
“The .1% doesn’t need another tax cut. You’re better than this.”
“Don’t you think it’s time to stop all this fighting and finally have peace in the Middle East? You’re better than this.”
I wonder if “you’re better than this” is what Dorothy tells herself subconsciously all the time, and those standards which emphasize what she wants to be without acknowledging who she is now lead to her overwork.
Walky was a mess, but he took some time for introspection. I don’t think Dorothy has given herself any time for that.
I think it’s pretty definite that she tells herself this all the time, all things considered. And Walk no longer feels obligated to meet those standards; as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, he’s busy talking with his fellow partner on Garbage Roof.
I’m surprised there isn’t more Walky hate. He’s being an asshole, and I doubt he’s doing it for any reason beyond the fact that he finds teasing Joyce funny.
Yeah I’ve never warmed to Walky as to me he just comes off as a lazy, spoilt rich kid but here hes shown something, not sure what it is, wanting to stand out from Dorothys shadow maybe? Not willing to put up with Joyces self-delusions possibly
But it looks like the beginning (small acorns and all) of some self-respect, of not immediately doing exactly what Dorothy says, and some self-respect is what Walky desperately needs
Once he respects himself he’ll be able to step away from his parents expectations and, hopefully, start to think about what he wants to do, what he wants to study and get the help needed to do so
Whenever Walky’s brain is engaged and he’s not tempering himself he’s very sarcastic, and it’s interesting to see it out again. I’m looking forward to seeing how the three of them play together as a group now.
Walky is becoming jaded and grim, but he is far away from being a self hating mess like Amber, or a misanthrope like Mike. Also, he has a point. He is right about feeling angry at Dorothy, even if he isn’t being a jerk like Billie suggested.
Aaah. Initially I thought it might’ve been the one with Ethan stepping out of the shower in front of Danny (since both strips’ punchline is a character being horny), but this one makes a lot of sense.
I feel like Walky is repressing a lot of negative feelings about the breakup as he thinks All About Dorothy. I thought it was refreshing to see him finally let some of it out, even in a passive aggressive way. Not necessarily healthy in and of itself, but healthy forward movement.
The only dynamic in this situation that has changed is Dorothy’s and Walky’s. W’s and J’s friendship has always been this type of teasing. That’s par for the course and some friendships are build like that. Nothing wrong with that. Though J’s loyalty a squarely in camp D, Walky can still be considered her friend.
What’s changed is that he doesn’t feel an obligation to make moral/personality concessions to Dorothy. Their relationship dynamic was for the most part, Dorothy trying to make Walky a better person, and Walky agreeing that her judgment was correct. Nothing wrong with that.
But she broke up with him.
So the part of his brain that says “Dorothy is probably right and I should listen to her” is significantly smaller, and that’s a good thing. Doesn’t matter how good they were, don’t put your ex on a pedestal. Yeah, I think half his was response was to sting and the other half was to double down on what happened when she called him David.
Also, breakups in friend groups are rough ad you gotta fight things that became instinct. Walky jumping into Dorothy’s and Joyce convo’s are instinct to him. Dorothy reprimanding Walky is instinct to her. Joyce sitting next to Walky in class i instinct.
Granted though, I would be the Billy to the D/W situation and the Becky to the Jo/Ja situation.
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“yeah, his epidermis was showing”
*sexy shower elbows*
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/snipped-2/ btw
Thank you, I think
btw it’s impressive how much the art has improved in the past 8 years!
Doing the lords work
He couldn’t help but note his shade of melanin.
Oh, hey, I understand that reference. I. . .listened to that tape a lot as a child.
10% Anger
20% Shock
30% Embarrassment
40% Jealousy
100% Joyce
And 100% reason to remember the name
You forgot 30% aroused.
I wonder what Walky and Amber are texting about right now.
And, yay! Panel 4 Joyce is juuust high enough resolution to look crisp as an avatar on this website! Was worried she would be too tiny.
Joyce has the
dubiousgreat honor of having the best facial expressions in the comic.And I don’t know, but goddamn Walky is into it. His expression doesn’t budge an inch and I have the feeling that line hit Dorothy hard. I just have so many emotions about these kids.
They’re doing so good and they’re doing so bad but also good and also bad aaaargh yes I know what you mean
Yeah. This.
So…. uh…. college?
Didn’t that dude have a torso or something we could check against?
I’m probably thinking of one of the Joyce shower scripts but Walky’s put on four or five inches since 2010.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/snipped-2/
More like all the characters’ heads were a lot bigger back then.
Seriously Joyce repressing this shit Is Not Working and you know it.
Nah. This is peak flustered-Joyce™.
She’s not completely red yet.
Not yet. She still has conscious motor control over her mouth.
Dumbing of Age, Book 8: I’ve Seen His Weenus
“Joyce…I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe…uncircumcised penes in the dorm showers of IU…I watched Dexter and Monkey Master in the dark when the power transformer blew out…all those moments will be lost in time…like last night’s pizza…time for class.”
Applause.
Dumbing of Age, Book 8: Walky, C’mon, You’re Better Than This
*smoke erupts out of Joyce’s ears*
*high pitched sound like a tea kettle*
*Dorothy’s glasses shatter*
*Walky’s phone screen cracks*
*The fabric of the space-time continuum begins to tear*
*Soggies-Apocalypse-Shortpacked versions of Galasso, Becky, Dina, and Ultra-Car fall out of one tear, take one look in her direction, then nope right out through a different tear*
*class is five minutes late today*
*a strange, silent pause. And everything goes back in time to the moment of Joyce’s smoking ear.*
Anyone else you want to try “you’re better than this” on today, Dorothy? How about Mike?
Okay but least her two previous targets are fundamentally decent people.
If she’s gonna go at Mike, she might as well just track down Toe Dad and try him.
“Galasso serves no man!”
“C’mon Galasso, you’re better than this”
Galasso serves pizzas, and looks on this strange new cookbook with confusion and rage.
doesn’t Becky serve the pizzas tho
“I am no man!”
“…. what?”
“I’m a woman.”
“….. Galasso absolutely understands that word you just used.”
Mike is objectively NOT better than this or most things
Every day
Every night time I find
Mystery Achievement, you’re on my mind (On my mind!)
On my mind!
BTW, my ads for this page are for a maker of “industrial elastomers”. You know. To limit the “wear and tear”.
A 3M Company
Y’know, in retrospect, it is weird how many people were having sex in the shower stalls next to me my Freshman years.
Idk, if you need an inspiration for the Walky x Jacob pornocomic of 2029.
2029? So, in-universe, about six to eight weeks from now?
When I was a freshman at the now-demolished Basser College I had the room next to the bathroom. Basser was a real dump with thin walls, and there was a couple who used to bang in shower about in the small hours of the morning about two or three times per week.
So… who needs the aloe vera for that burn? Because Joyce looks a LOT more red than Dorothy does.
Don’t tease, Walky! Give us a review.
I’d say it was a low blow by Walky, and it is, but then again, she kinda walked herself right into that one. There’s a friend tone and a girlfriend tone, and she’s lost access to the latter.
She obviously uses “you’re better than this” with friends, too, because she told Joyce that a few strips ago.
What I don’t get is why she’s saying it to him at all, she knows that’s just how the two of them are together. Despite it all, they care about each other in a kind of “annoying sibling” way. At least in this universe.
I think Dorothy might be stuck in “mom mode” at the moment, or something.
It’s understandable that Walky would feel a bit testy about her scolding him so soon after they broke up, but saying “she’s lost access to that” is absurd. We’ve literally JUST watched her use that tone with Joyce.
The dynamic between them will no doubt change a bit before all the dust settles, but right now the issue is that there’s still hurt from the break up that needs time and space to heal
If you chose to break up with me because of time management, gave me false hope, then you don’t get the pass to tell me to do anything. You sure as hell don’t get to decide “just being friends” shouldn’t be lesser
Preach.
Amen to that!
Exactly.
That’s a fucked up attitude, man.
“She dumped him for reasons I don’t like” is a shitty thing to hold against her. “Not doing anything wrong” does not entitle you to a relationship, even if you’re already in one. If either person feels that ending the relationship is best for them for any reason, then they have absolutely every right to do that, even though it may be painful for the other person. A relationship does not grant you ownership of a person.
She didn’t give him false hope. She believed that just taking a break would be enough, but unfortunately it wasn’t. Blaming her for trying to find away around breaking up with him because she failed is childish.
He has every right to feel hurt or even a bit angry regardless of Dorothy’s attempts to soften the blow, and for him to be irritable with Dorothy for a while.
She’s still 100% right that being friends should not be seen as something lesser. Sure, that sounds a bit like she’s saying Walky shouldn’t feel hurt about being dumped, but she’s directing that AT JOYCE. It just happens to also apply to Walky.
And finally, Walky jumped into her conversation with Joyce and started teasing her. She may have chosen the worst tone for it, but she has every right to ask Walky to stop, regardless of their current relationship status. Or do you think that if Joe or some complete stranger was teasing Joyce, Dorothy has no right to say anything?
And again, of course Walky has every right to feel hurt, and to establish some new boundaries (temporary or permanent) for this new phase of their relationship, but Dorothy didn’t wrong him. She doesn’t deserve his animosity for this any more than Joyce does.
no, i think you’ve missed it.
dorothy has demonstrated that she has, generously, a pretty inexact command of how she should be managing her own shit. a little less you talk, a little more you listen, dot.
What does this even mean
Fart Captor: If I remember correctly, Dorothy “took a break” from dating Walky–meaning “I’m not dating you now, but if you put your life on hold and wait for me I might date you again later”, then continued sleeping with him a few times, then broke up with him because she needed more time for her extra-credit projects.
I don’t think any of us were suggesting that Walky is “owed” a relationship by Dorothy or that he “owns” her. It’s clear to me that they in fact should not be together.
However, I posit the following:
* Dorothy does not get to decide for Walky whether friendship is a lesser relationship than romantic partnership
* My personal veiw is that friendship is lesser than romantic partnership, so I can understand if Walky feels that way, although it’s not yet clear whether he does
* “Taking a break” is a super shitty way to treat someone
* Continuing to sleep with them while “on a break” is even shittier
* Extra-credit projects should not be more important than a relationship
* A perfect GPA should not be more important than a relationship
* If they are, then you have told your partner how much you value them, and that is not very much
* Although you have the right to break up with a partner at any time, time management IS a shitty reason to do so, particularly without discussing alternatives with your partner first
* Once you break up with someone, you do not get to police their behaviour
* If you decide to do so anyway, you should probably accept the risk that they are not going to like that
Yeah, sure, if a stranger were “teasing” Joyce (and I think what Walky is doing here is more like “criticising” or “sniping at”), Dorothy would have the right to say something. She has the right to say something here. That is how conversations work.
Walky has an equal right to tell her he doesn’t accept her standing to criticise him and that he is going to continue to behave toward Joyce however he wants. Joyce is the one who ultimately has to make the decision about whether she’s willing to accept that from Walky.
– People in relationships taking a break is a thing that happens. Sometimes it’s a precursor to a breakup, but not always. There’s nothing inherently shitty about it.
– She acknowledged after they had sex that it wasn’t fair to him. That’s WHY SHE BROKE IT OFF.
I will say this again and again until I stop needing to say:
– YOUR PRIORITIES REGARDING RELATIONSHIPS ARE NOT UNIVERSAL, OR SOME KIND OF OBJECTIVE MORAL ABSOLUTE. There is absolutely nothing morally wrong with Dorothy prioritizing her long-term ambitions.
-More importantly, if someone no longer wants to be in relationship, that is reason enough to end the relationship. There is no morally wrong reason to end it. Insisting that certain reasons are wrong is the kind of harmful bullshit that helps make people feel trapped in relationships they’re no longer happy in because the none of “approved” escape conditions have been met.
– She is deciding NOTHING for Walky about whether friendships shouldn’t be lesser than romantic relationships. She’s making a general fucking statement, and she’s goddamn right about it. It’s more directly relevant to Joyce’s current situation (which is who she addressed the statement to anyway), but it’s still true in general.
Romantic relationships are great. So are friendships. If you go looking for love and find friendship instead, that’s a pretty fucking awesome consolation prize. Dwelling on how it’s not the thing you wanted isn’t doing yourself any favors.
Finding a friendship where love used to be is hard (which is why I would hope she would’ve worded it differently if she’d actually been addressing Walky), and sometimes the heartbreak makes it too hard, but the principal stands. If friendship with your ex is possible, that’s not something to sneer at.
Whoah there, Captain Boldtext, if you’d read my reply a little more carefully instead of formatting your html for maximum consdescension, you would have noticed that I was careful to say “My personal veiw [sic] is that friendship is lesser than romantic partnership”, and I phrased it that way because I’m aware that this is neither a universal nor objective. I know lots of people who feel the same way you do. I know lots of people who feel the same way I do. I don’t think we’ve been given enough information about Walky’s view, if any, on the subject to know where he stands.
And yes, Dorothy was making a “general fucking statement”. Claiming that “she is goddamn right about it”, however, is hypocritically imposing your (subjective and non-absolute) opinion about relationships on everyone. If that is what you and Dorothy think, that’s fine. But your priorities regarding relationships are not universal, or some kind of objective moral absolute.
Whether Dorothy was aiming that comment at Walky is unclear, and although she definitely had him in mind when she said it, it reads to me more as though she is trying to convince herself of it more than anyone else. Regardless, saying it in Walky’s hearing was tactless and tasteless, and if Walky feels that his behaviour or outlook are being dictated to him by the time she gets around to “You’re better than that”, I could understand that, even if he is not correct.
I continue to disagree that taking a break from relationships is not inherently shitty. I continue to disagree–again, on an entirely personal level–that friendship is not “less” than romantic partnership.
Finally, while there is no morally wrong reason to end a relationship (there doesn’t have to be a reason, per se, at all), the absolute and unassailable right to make decisions about how your life is going to go does not guarantee that you’re not going to totally screw the pooch sometimes. I continue to think Dorothy’s decision to break up with Walky–given that she a) did not discuss her academic “problems” with him and approach the situation as a team; b) seems to be concerned about extra credit and a perfect GPA, neither of which will necessarily affect her long-term priorities anyway; and c) seems genuinely to love Walky and love being in a relationship with him–was a poor choice based on stupid reasons. A stranger yelling at me on the Internet about these topics has done little to change my views.
Not to address most of that, but Dorothy and Walky very much did discuss her academic problems and had started to try to approach them together. Which had led Walky, on his own, to think he was going to have to break up with her, so she wouldn’t be distracted.
That’s the thing. Dorothy and Walky are not friends right now. Walky’s feelings are so messed up that he doesn’t even want to be in the same room as her.
So she can’t use her girlfriend tone or he friend tone with him because she’s neither.
Maybe once things have settled, but right now she can’t use a reasonable tone of voice to talk Walky down from doing something he wants to do, which is pick with Joyce.
She kinda did lose access to it, though. In regards to him, at least. A not insignificant part of their relationship was her holding him to a higher standard than he held himself with the implicit (and possibly explicit? I dont remember for sure) threat of breakup if he didn’t meet those standards. So for her to try saying “Hey, hold yourself to a higher standard” is kinda similar to her booty calling him. It’s a relationship perk she’s trying to hold onto despite being the one to say they can’t have a relationship.
Ayuupp. After that stunt she pulled with his pajama pants, she kinda had this coming.
And also, the whole point of the breakup was because Dorothy thought it would be best to limit access.
The point was that she didn’t have the time or emotional energy for a relationship. Breaking up was obviously going to mean they’d spend less time together, but it’s not going to magically change their class schedules or disentangle their social circles. So even if she didn’t still want to be friends, they’d still HAVE to see each other.
Her tone may have been wrong, but she had every right to scold him for teasing her friend
And he’s got every right to respond.
Sorry but (from my perspective) you’re straining too hard in identifying with Dorothy. She’s been so wrapped up in her relationship and everything else I don’t think she and by extension, you actually noticed the adversarial friendship between Joyce and Walky. Otherwise you might have noticed this is business as usual with a new subject, Joyce confusing “true love” with old fashioned freshman horniness. This is how they are.
And seriously you can’t rule out the possibility of this being the Walky version of calling her out on shitty behavior that we already know Dot isn’t the only one to notice.
I don’t know. There’s something really nasty about replying to “Hey, quit picking on my friend,” with, “Nah, I’m only invested in your opinion when you’re dating me.” …Ugh, I’m not wording this right. I mean, on one level, yes, after a breakup, it’s perfectly okay (and usually healthy!) to stop investing in your ex’s opinion. But making a point of flaunting your newfound lack of regard for your ex *to their face*, especially when all they’re asking is for you to stop antagonizing their friend, is… less so.
I think it’s kind of fair at this point, honestly. Dorothy is pretty clearly trying to throw her weight around here and tell Walky what to do; he’s not being cruel to Joyce, he’s not saying anything that’s hurtful to her except insofar as it’s puncturing her convenient fiction. Which is also the same fiction that Dorothy herself is trying to puncture, because she’s pretty exasperated by the way Joyce is acting around Jacob and Raidah.
Remember, earlier in the same day we saw Dorothy calling him David and him calling her out on that, too. And let’s not forget Mike’s last exchange with her; Mike’s an asshole, but he doesn’t say something without an actual bit of meat to what he’s saying, and his last point to her was (essentially) “you think you’ve made the right choice but you’re actually really scared that you didn’t.”
Let’s also not forget Walky’s whole “garbage roof” thing. He’s chafing against a lot of things going down here.
So what he’s saying isn’t “you have no value to me now that we aren’t dating.” What he’s saying – at least from my perspective – is that Dorothy doesn’t get to simultaneously unilaterally cut off their relationship and still dictate his behavior. She doesn’t get to have everything be on her terms, and she doesn’t get to use “you’re better” as a bludgeon.
Making fun of Joyce’s sexuality is kinda crappy especially since it makes Joyce uncomfortable, and Mike says things just to hurt people all the time.
I don’t have any feelings one way or the other about Walky’s behaviour in this strip, so I’m not defending it when I say this, but Joyce’s current sexuality is also pretty crappy, and she should feel uncomfortable about it–whether she gets there on her own or it has to be pointed out to her. Walky may not have the personal standing to mock it, but it could use a good mocking by someone, for sure.
Joyce’s repressed sexuality isn’t the problem here, it’s trying to break up an established relationship. Mocking one isn’t helping the other.
I’m not talking about the fact that her sexuality is repressed. I’m talking about the fact that part of her sexuality is belief in True Love making a relationship Meant to Be and therefore representing an end that justifies means such as behaving badly toward another person and trying to manipulate someone in a relationship into either cheating on his partner or leaving the partner for Joyce. That’s shitty.
…and if Walky was actually mocking her True Love Is Meant To Be nonsense, that’d be justified. That’s not what he’s doing though
The problem with Joyce’s sexuality right IS that she’s uncomfortable with it.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/afraid/
She’s not trying to shame anyone else here. She’s LONG since accepted that other people can have sex outside of marriage and still be good people. She’s expressing HER personal discomfort about the idea of HER engaging in sexual activities. That is absolutely not something she deserves to be mocked or shamed for.
When I said it wasn’t the problem, I meant that having a repressed sexuality you’re uncomfortable with isn’t crappy behaviour. Trying to break up an established relationship is, but as I said, that’s not what Walky’s making fun of her for, and so yes this is a dick move.
It’s making fun of her sexuality to say she’s sexually attracted to someone and that she’s lying when she claims to not think of that sexual attraction?
Because that’s all I’m getting from Walky here and that doesn’t equal making fun of sexuality to me.
But maybe I need to expand my vocabulary.
It’s more because he’s doing it to embarrass her and annoy her.
It personally strikes me as less “making fun of Joyce’s sexuality” and more “making fun of Joyce’s easily-punctured view of her own sexuality.” The whole point here is that it wouldn’t have affected basically anyone else; put Sarah in Joyce’s place and she would have just rolled her eyes and said “duh.”
Okay and she wouldn’t have let the conversation last that long to start with, but the point is that Joyce totally wants that weenus and Walky’s honestly stating that yes, she does. He’s not making fun of her wanting it, he’s making fun of her trying to pretend she doesn’t.
I think there’s totally space for this to move in the direction of him being a jerkwad, but we aren’t there yet. Other readings may vary!
Making fun of her being repressed isn’t much better for me, but ymmv.
she gets made fun of for being repressed, which you’re right, isn’t too cool
but here? shes getting made fun of for telling really transparent lies.
…about something that is none of Walky’s business, and which Joyce is VERY uncomfortable admitting to BECAUSE she is sexually repressed
He has no right to get pissy that she won’t be honest about something she clearly didn’t want to talk about in the first place
I agree with you 100% on all points.
^This is to Snippy Harold
Pretty much any interaction between them is going to be risky at this point. They’re less than a day from the breakup.
And Walky did have a lot invested in making himself better for her, so asking something like this of him does hit a weak spot.
What happened to Walky being nice and supportive of Dorothy because he loves her? That’s a lot of snark from someone who was told to stop being so crazy devoted only an hour ago.
Dude he’s always snarky.
He’s supportive of her career ambitions, he thinks Joyce is crazy brainwashed and repressed and likes to be a dick about that. And as he’s not Dorothy’s boyfriend anymore he has no reason to not pursue his natural inclinations anymore.
I think maybe Billie’s advice from earlier sunk in, at least a tiny bit.
Walky’s just gonna take care of Walky today.
What even was Billie’s advice I don’t remember. Anyways I’m more inclined to believe Walky is getting advice from Amber right now since last we saw, they were tweeting each other.
“Hate your ex” with a side order of “Take care of yourself”.
Yeah, pretty much that. I mean, I have opinions about the exact intent of Billie’s advice myself, but it’s very fair to read her advice as excessively adversarial.
To clarify, I think (hope?) Walky’s just doing the “take care of yourself” part (focused more on texting w/presumably Amber, not worrying about what Dorothy thinks right this second)-I certainly hope this isn’t the start of he and Dorothy sniping at each other or something!
Oh yeah, that’s right. Seriously, Billie?
Billie is Walky’s friend, not Dorothy’s. She doesn’t have a reason to make things easy on Dotty.
It’s bad advice in terms of Walky’s well being too though.
It’s a good thing this comic is titled Dumbing of Age and not Font of Unparalleled Wisdom, then. =D
It’s bad advice but honestly better than what he WAS doing
Nah. When your friend get’s broken up with, your main goal is to get them to feel better about themselves and back to their usual state. You don’t get them there by saying “Yeah, you know what, your ex was more perfect than you deserve, Just accept that you’ lost your one chance of happiness” Certainly, you don’t say “You’re young, and this was only puppy love. Something about fish and sea, tree’s and forests”. You go straight to “They don’t deserve you, you deserve better, they sure lost out”. @MatthewTheLucky is right, and I don’t think Billy was entirely wrong. I think most people are throwing stones in glass houses.
Teasing Joyce doesn’t equal not supporting Dorothy.
Besides, he can’t have his relationship anymore, you can’t take away his only other source of pleasure/distraction in the class.
The snark is light. Dorothy knows why it stings.
Damn, Walky, cold.
Yeah, a bit. But Walky is living in that post-breakup zone where you still have strong feelings that can directly clash with other feelings. The fresher the breakup, the more the feelings clash and alternate. In VERY GENERAL terms, this zone gets shorter or longer depending on the level of friendly feeling. Age plays a part, too, but not a decisive one. More important is the sense of mutual decision – agreeing to do something together, even breaking up, can make the decision easier to live with and reduce the level of anger or bitterness.
Dorothy may control her feelings better in public than Walky, almost certainly does. But public interactions at this point are always kind of tense and unpredictable.
She may. OTOH, it was just before lunch that she announced “one more quickie to make him feel better”.
So maybe not so much.
Yeah to rehash a point Dorothy made earlier “we’re not a thing anymore, you can’t tell me what to do.”
Besides ribbing Joyce is fun and kind of necessary at times when she needs to get knocked down a peg. I mean let’s be fair she’s been shit talking him behind his back all day.
she’s been shit talking him behind his back for a long while now. Usually trying to convince Dotty to break up with him, especially if it gives her more time with dotty. It was kind of my least favorite part of her character. I could never stay friends with someone who constantly shit talks someone I care about, let alone someone I love and am dating.
Ah man I forgot about that. Ugh yeah that was super shitty of Joyce
To be fair, that’s kind of their dynamic. He shit talks her too. And it was only incidentally behind his back – she was perfectly capable of doing it when he was there too.
There’s more or less my point though.
Joyce has track for trying to break up other people’s relationships.
Huh, the way the showers in my dorm were set up, you didn’t see anyone’s genitals.
For the girls dorm.
Any time the DOA showers come up I start remembering how as a freshman I kept to a strict shower schedule because of the amazing ass this one guy had.
ah, youth.
The way my dorm’s showers were set up, you couldn’t see anyone’s genitals if they STAYED IN THEIR OWN SHOWER STALL, LAURA.
Does the mens’ shower room also have urinals with less-than-perfect privacy partitions?
Urinals don’t need partitions because you’re not supposed to be looking at the person next to you in any way in the first place.
And yet they do.
Pretty much any bathroom function you’re not supposed to be looking at the person next to you. And yet we often divide them up anyways.
Englishmen always try and make sure there’s one empty urinal between them and the next person.
i think that’s just a general rule for urinals
The partition is there so Johnny Dickwatcher can’t watch your dick. It doesn’t matter if he shouldn’t be doing it, he can’t be trusted with the honor system. Plus, I don’t necessarily want to accidentally spot Reggie Horseknob’s massive dangler in my periphery, so the solution is to build a big, beautiful wall between urinals.
The partition may also be there to make sure people coming into the bathroom don’t immediately see your penis, if the urinals are on the wall to the right or left of the door.
This made my night.
We had suites. IIRC (this was 40 years ago) we had two separate shower stalls in the bathroom.
In my dorm, there were individual stalls, with doors that latched like bathroom stalls, with hooks and benches, then a show curtain and shower stall. Then at some point, I switched to using the single-occupancy unisex bathroom that had a shower in it anyway because gender.
This was 23 years ago, and my dorm at Purdue was one of the crappier ones, but we still had about four separate shower stalls per bathroom. And a communal bench just outside of them.
Of course we didn’t have the weird shared private bathroom thing that IU apparently has.
In my dorms, back some 30 years now, we had a shower room with 4 or 5 nozzles and no stalls or dividers of any kind. The girls’ bathrooms may have been different? Maybe curtain dividers? Can’t remember. Didn’t spend a lot of time in the girls’ shower.
Norah, are you say you had two shower stalls per suite? How many people That sounds like luxury.:)
Next time Joyce sees Jacob, she asks him about Episcopal views on circumcision.
That’s what I want to know myself. What do Episcopalians think of male circumcision?
I did some internet research and was shocked about Catholic views, indicating circumcision as violating the fifth commandment because it kills off a part of the person. Does this apply to hair waxing as well?
Do you cut off a part of you for waxing? A part that never grows back?
I’m neither pro or contra circumcision, I think that should be a decision everyone should make for themselves (not for their infant sons though). But comparing it to waxing underestimates the impact a circumcision can have.
I know the significance of circumcision and I’m not deriding it. But just finding out about this rule just makes me shake my head as a semi-lapsed Catholic.
Generally in favor.
Source: raised Episcopalian, showered at church camps
Could it have been a cultural thing?
Some places like the US, Australia, and South Korea circumcise for
non-religious cultural reasons.
The non-religious cultural reasons in question are essentially commercial reasons. Doctors talk parents into ordering circumcisions in order to collect fat fees, mostly from insurers and the public health.
By the way, the rate of routine neonatal circumcisions performed by medical personnel in Australia is 4%. Ten years ago it was 14%.
I’m aware of the capitalist nature of neonatal circumcision in these places, I was just pointing out that there are other reasons besides religion.
Didn’t know Australia had come that far, I could swear I’d read somewhere that it was 50/50.
Catholics don’t really care much one way or another. I went to an all boys Catholic high school. Almost all circumcised. Just what you would find at a US public school. It’s a US thing, with not much religious about it.
But on the Internet you can find all kinds of people speaking authoritatively about things.
I went to a Catholic all-boys school (in Australia) in the late 1970s, where I was the only non-Catholic and the only uncircumcised boy in my year.
But that had very little to do with religion. There were three obstetricians in town, one Catholic, one Protestant, and one atheist. The Catholic and the Protestant doctors recommended circumcision to parents, the atheist recommended against it.
It is weird how much the culture has changed in my lifetime: when I was a kid there was one Catholic and one non-Catholic medical practice in my home town, and marriages between Catholics and Protestants were still noteworthy.
Interesting that Walky hasn’t *once* looked up from his phone in this conversation. As someone above noted, preeeeetty likely talking to Amber at the moment.
It’s his way of coping after the breakup. After all the classes, five course taco dinner.
I’m torn between wondering whether that was intentionally a low blow by Walky or whether he is just unhappy and letting his full smartass out in force. I also don’t know which would cause more problems, because Dorothy is going to react no matter what. Granted she chose this but he was trying to be supportive, I doubt he suddenly adopted Billie’s advice, at least I hope not.
It’s a far cry from acknowledging that she no longer has the influence of a girlfriend to hating her. All he’s doing is pointing out that their dynamic has changed.
She can’t use girlfriend powers or even friend powers on him right now as his feelings are too messed up for them to even hang out as friends.
Probably the only one who could make Walky stop (without bringing up trauma Joyce has faced) is Sal, and maybe not even her.
Depending on how you feel he internalized his conversation with Billie, trying to convince Dotty that he is okay with them being apart could easily take the form of alienating her on purpose so she doesn’t worry about him anymore.
Then again, he has been spending the day socializing with Amber and maybe he’s just becoming content with the idea that “this is the shitpile. I live here. Deal with it.”
Actually, he makes a clumsy “stop behaving like an asshole” that has no relation to their relationship to something that’s about their relationship.
Except a big part of their relationship was Walky forcing himself to be “better” than he was, or than he was comfortable being, simply to maintain the relationship.
The day after you break up, there’s no interaction that “has no relation to their relationship.”
Truth.
Well looks like Walky has moved on a little bit. He’s no longer moping about Dorothy being the best thing that ever happened to him.
Dorothy is the best and worst thing that happened to him.
Considering all the mixed signals she was giving through their relationship, his first real relationship I might add so he’s got no real clue what is and isn’t normal or how to handle it, followed by that fumble of a break up, im not so sure about that, woobie
wait, I clearly didn’t read your comment all the way through lol I thought you were just calling her the best thing didn’t see the worst part ignore me haha
Walky, stop being an ass
Seriously, in this one he’s reminding me of my first ex, and there’s a reason that one’s an ex
Well given that Dorothy is using what is cleary a girlfriend tone to ask Walky to stop when she broke up with him, you can see why he’d say something like that. Also she shouldn’t say he’s better than this because he isn’t, this has always been how he’s interacted with Joyce.
This is literally the tone she just used with Joyce. If anything it’s a mom tone. She’s trying to mom him into being less of an ass.
Even if it’s a mom tone, Dorothy has no right to keep telling Walky what to do. You wouldn’t want your ex telling you to not eat eggs because it’s bad for your cholesterol like she used to tell you when you were still dating would you? It’s the same principle here. She’s using a tone that she was allowed to use when they were dating even though they aren’t anymore. It’s like she’s trying to keep her girlfriend benefits without being his girlfriend anymore.
And most of the time (unless the conversation was about sex) she’s snarked right back at him. And she’s always telling Dorothy that Walky isn’t good enough for her and she should break up with him. She’s never said it to Walky, but he can probably feel her contempt for him.
And at the same time, she’s described him as family, talked about missing him when she was at home, trusted him when she couldn’t walk alone. He’s looked out for her and checked in on her as well.
It’s a more complex relationship than the snarking at or about each other might suggest.
They literally broke up this morning
Yes, I too read this comic.
They broke up yesterday.
s no obligation to be friendly to Dorothy right now considering the way she broke up with him and the fact that she basically lead him on. She has no leverage of any kind with him at this point, she’s not his girlfriend and she’s not his friend. She doesn’t get to tell him how to act anymore at all. She can use that tone with Joyce because they’re friends and she can’t with Walky because they aren’t friends.
Walky has no obligation to be friendly to Dorothy right now considering the way she broke up with him and the fact that she basically lead him on. She has no leverage of any kind with him at this point, she’s not his girlfriend and she’s not his friend. She doesn’t get to tell him how to act anymore at all. She can use that tone with Joyce because they’re friends and she can’t with Walky because they aren’t friends.
this so much this ^
Why thank you.
“The way she broke up with him” was as gentle as possible, and “leading him on” would have required that Dorothy herself knew that going on pause wouldn’t work. She didn’t. It sucks but acting like she did something sinister there is just absurd
But most importantly, they ARE still friends, or at least they were the last time they talked. I agree that at least for near future she should avoid that kind of tone, but she doesn’t need some specific relationship level to ask him to stop teasing Joyce
Also relationships and friendships aren’t “leverage”, that’s a gross way to describe them even in passing
It’s the fact that she kept sleeping with him while “on break” and that she told him she loved him after telling him the relationship was “for fun” that is, as far as I’m concerned, leading him on. Yeah, she can say something to him, but since she just broke his heart and he’s hurt, he doesn’t have to listen to her, in fact, he doesn’t have to listen to her at all ever if he doesn’t choose to unless he was harming her in some way or infringing on her rights. She came and sat by him, when she didn’t have to, if you think she had to look at how Amber changed seats to avoid Danny after he and AG broke up.
He’s way to messed up right now to be friends with her, what evidence do you have that says otherwise? I see him having “garbage roof” and crying fits as good evidence he isn’t up to that yet.
Spare me the outrage, I’m not saying relationships ARE leverage, I’m saying they give you a type of social leverage, or pull if you will, that a stranger doesn’t have and since he’s hurting right now, she doesn’t have the pull with him she has with Joyce and so can’t pressure him into being nicer and the fact that she’s trying is not cool. Heck the fact that she pulled it with Joyce isn’t cool because it’s more of a guilt trip than anything else imo. If she wants Joyce to know how she feels about what she’s doing, being straight forward would be a much better approach.
To defend Dorothy here: She slept with him once while on pause and that was the trigger for turning the pause into an actual break up – she couldn’t keep her intention, so she’s trying a harder boundary. (Which she’s already been tempted to break.)
But I don’t think any of it is intentional in the way that “leading him on” implies. It’s more that she thinks she needs those limits, but she doesn’t have the self control to keep to them.
And if he’s way to messed up to be friends yet, I suspect the same is true of her. Differently, perhaps, but no less affected. No less still in love with him either.
I didn’t say it was intentional, but her actions do send a very different message than her words and she contradicts herself often, so it leads to a different message than she intends, which qualifies as leading him on, even if she didn’t mean to. Her lack of self control is not an excuse for confusing the boundaries of their relationship and muddying them. Especially, since she has dictated the terms of their relationship, with Walky acquiescing because he thinks she’s better than him, for the whole of their relationship. She has dictated how he should dress and how he should act and she doesn’t get to keep doing so now, not that she should have to begin with. My view is you can ask an SO to change problematic behavior that hurts you or damages your relationship, but you can’t ask them to change who they are to please you.
I never said she wasn’t messed up too, I was simply addressing fart captors assertion that they are still friends so Dorothy can use that tone.
Walky’s pushed back on some of that too. The great Pajama Jeans incident among others. I think he was less of a doormat than Danny and it took her by surprise sometimes.
But you’re basically right about her problems with boundaries, which she did recognize at the end. I just wouldn’t describe it in quite the same terms.
That’s fair, different perceptions and all.
Get ’em Walky!
Maybe the real Jacob’s weenus was the friends we made along the way.
I think all 3 of these people need to get away from each other for a while.
To be fair, Walky did! But, well, they have class together.
Joyce’s reaction faces will never stop being hilarious.
You can’t just walk back into friendship like nothing happened. You hurt someone and then try to be familiar with them is inappropriate.
Why?
The only way in life not to hurt people is not to exist. If you exist, you will hurt people because you are yourself with your own desires, feelings and limitations and they are themselves with their own desires, feelings and limitations and the moments where these things clash are inevitable.
You can try to not hurt people on purspose, but even if you are very good at it you will hurt people. Believing you don’t is an illusion.
So the important point is to learn to deal with the hurts you get and the responsibility or not for the hurts you dish out, to know when someone is intentionally hurting you and when that’s not the case and when it’s time end a relationship (any kind, not restricted to love relationships) because the hurt you get exceeds the good you get and it’s unlikely this will change.
In case of Dorothy and Walky, he’s been hurt as a result of her desires and limitations that don’t match with his. That’s a good reason not to be lovers but no impediment to friendship or being polite in public.
It’s not that friendship is impossible it’s that expecting to go back to friendship as if none of the hurting happened in the first place literally like the next day is wildly unreasonable.
Theres a difference between “I have thought long and hard on this so I don’t mind being friends” to “You literally broke up with me yesterday and are acting like nothing happened”
I don’t think anyone was implying they can’t still be friends and they likely will be eventually, but at the moment he’s hurt and is perfectly understandable why he currently doesn’t care what she thinks of him.
Except – in defense of Dorothy, she hasn’t been acting like nothing happened. She just seems to have an odd idea of what did happen. Remember, earlier in the day she was calling him “David” specifically because of the breakup; he called her out on it.
Dorothy’s issue here isn’t that she’s acting like nothing changed, it’s that she’s trying to dictate what has changed and what hasn’t. “Okay, so I don’t call you Walky any more, but I still get moral veto power.” Walky’s snark at her is just a reminded that it doesn’t work that way.
It’s the next day. They’re trying to renegotiate the terms of their new relationship. It’s going to be awkward and there will be missteps, probably on both sides.
This is a hard thing to do.
Also, Dorothy only called him David once and when Walky told her that no, calling him Walky wouldn’t seem overly-familiar, she said ‘Okay, sorry’ and admitted that she liked the emotional distance and then he told her to call him whatever she wanted.
Someone’s an Eva fan.
Walky is not obligated to put up with Joyce’s BS.
But she is right, logically, and must given all sympathy
What? Joyce is lying as blatently as she can.
Or did you mean Dorothy?
Because I don’t think he is better than this.
Walky jumped into a conversation Joyce and Dorothy were having. All he had to do was stay out of it
When you sit down with a friend while conversing, it isn’t a private conversation anymore.
I guess, but that doesn’t mean joining the conversation just to make fun of one of the participants has to be tolerated.
Sitting down next to your ex you just broke up with less than a week ago while having a conversation about ‘being just friends’ doesn’t have to tolerated either.
That’s her seat in class, and it’s one thing to expect someone to stop talking about a person when that person is there, but do you honestly expect them to stop conversations Walky may remotely relate to just because he’s there? Especially when “just friends” wasn’t a cornerstone theme of the break-up–I don’t think continuing friendship was ever even mentioned, and it seems like if they didn’t have mutual friends of classes, they would have spent the rest of forever avoiding each other
Last I checked, universities don’t tend to have assigned seating. Walky was there first, and there was nothing stopping Dorothy and Joyce from not sitting next to him
Yes, they could’ve sat way in back, as far away from him as possible, like Amber did in that class she has with Danny, after she broke up with him. There’s no reason they should have sat next to Walky.
Exactly, they chose to sit next to him so they can’t ask him to stay out of their conversation.
Dorothy didn’t sit down next to Walky. Joyce did. We don’t even know where Dorothy sat down, but even if it’s the chair next to Joyce, there’s an aisle in between.
And while it might be fine for Walky to join their conversation, the fact that HE JOINED IN means it’s absolutely bullshit to suggest Walky was putting up with bullshit from Joyce
He’s the one being a dick to her. Joyce wasn’t even talking to him until he interrupted.
But Joyce also knows they broke up. She really doesn’t need to sit next to him. Even she’s not blind enough to not realize having two people who just broke up sitting near each other will be really awkward. Also this has always been Joyce and Walky’s relationship: she says something, Walky makes a snarky response.
They don’t have assigned seating, but the seat-in-class dynamic still seems to crop up strongly within a few days, and taking someone else’s seat is a bit of a faux pas.
He is also free to stay silent or remove himself from the situation instead of being an asshole
and they could have not sat next to him the could have fucked off to different seats
Exactly, they chose to sit next to him when they don’t have to, so they chose to allow him to be privy to their conversation.
It is in no way about privacy.
It’s about the suggestion that somehow Walky was being wronged by “Joyce’s bullshit” and that she somehow deserves to be teased like this.
Even if he’d been part of the conversation from the start, just how the fuck would anything she’s said to him constitute something he “shouldn’t have to put up with”?
Today, right now in the start of this class? Not at all.
Overall, she’s said plenty of bullshit he shouldn’t have to put up. As he has to her. It’s how their relationship works.
Not sure why it’s blownup into such a thing today. This isn’t really all that much by their standards.
Usually he teases Joyce as a response to Joyce’s behavior, not because he’s upset with someone else
People are acting as if she somehow wronged him because HER FRIEND dumped him and it’s gross.
YES, it’s understandable that he’s cranky, YES Dorothy should have used asked him to stop instead of pulling out that “you’re better than this” line again. It’s great that he’s not ignoring his own emotional needs for her sake anymore.
None of that is a reason to be shitty to Joyce. She doesn’t “deserve” this.
Nor is Dorothy crossing some weird boundary by sitting near him (assuming she actually sat next to Joyce) or trying to get him to stop teasing Joyce. It would have been better if she’d asked differently, and it wouldn’t have hurt to check in with Walky to see if he might prefer that they sit further away for now, but Joyce still hasn’t done a damn thing to him, and Dorothy has every right to try to intervene.
I don’t even really mind Walky teasing her here. It feels more hostile than is called for, but I get it. But the idea that she deserves it skeeves me out, as does this idea some people seem to have that Dorothy has defied Break-Up Law simply by speaking to him
Now all we is for her nose to start to bleed.
She’s red enough already that it’d be hard to tell.
My, the demonically modulate voice in Joyce’s head, demanding DETAILS!
Worse, it’s her OWN voice!
I think there needs to be another tag. Just as amber and amazi-girl tags refer to different personas of the same person, Joyce should have a “joyceface” tag (or just “face”, maybe?) for moments like these.
That face has a personality all its own.
Didn’t check the 70 some other comments, but mine is about whether this is a call back. It’s about how Walky’s attitude and comment to Dorothy seems too harsh, cold, and out of character, including in light of recent strips (he was ignoring Billie’s advice after all).
I think the alt text was alluding to a previous strip where Walky walked out of the showers commenting on an uncircumcised penis
Walky is not better than this. This is pretty standard behavior for him regarding Joyce. And on balance, I think it’s fair if for no other reason then how she’s been regarding him and his feelings “today”, as well as some of the remarks she made regarding him. Especially since all he’s said is that she’s sexually attracted to Jacob, which she admitted to in a less crass way.
I think this is another reminder for Dorothy that Walky is stronger/harder/meaner/can’t think of the right word+er than she’s used to or realized.
He’s been very accommodating. She probably hasen’t seen this side of him since the pajama jeans incident. And this situation between them has a lot more weight than that did.
It isn’t exactly fair for Walky to say this to her since she’s not a “or else” kind of person, but I can’t pretend I didn’t like it when I read it.
A lot of people are focusing on Joyce and Walky, but I feel like this is more about Dorothy realizing she can’t be in control. She’s always tried to be den mother in the group, whether she’s aware of it or not, and now the others are going their own ways. It’s the natural result of her pushing them away and a harsh reality she needs to face. They’re going to have different viewpoints, opinions, and will make mistakes. She can’t make them behave like she wants to or thinks they should behave and that bothers her.
It’s Dorothy’s second use of “you’re better than this” with a few strips. She sees two people she cares about stumbling in the direction of hurting others, but she has recently hurt Walky. Is she better than this?
What does “is she better than this” has to do with anything?
She’s not trowing stones.
I dislike her phrasing “you are better than this” when she tries to set boundaries to other people’s behavior. Because it basicly is a guilt trip.
She doesn’t say “I don’t like what I’m seeing”, or anything that makes it clear that she is owning her point of view, but falls back to false absolutes.
I think it’s a sign of the bad place she is in, we have seen her act differently before.
@ Brian: I don’t quite get how you connect pushing people away and trying to control with her. You have to keep people close to control then, so it obviously can’t be her aim to do so. Even Dorothy is a better tactician than that. Though tactics is not her strong point.
Dorothy is projecting a need to be in control, because she has repeatedly shown negative reactions towards people not being who she thinks they should be rather than who they actually are. She was set-up from the beginning as being more than a little bit controlling, which isn’t uncommon when dealing with an overachiever. My point was that she wants to keep people at an arm’s reach now but also isn’t ready to acknowledge that it means not being able to exert as large an influence. I’m not saying anyone is in the right, just that Dorothy is wanting her cake and still expects to eat it too.
I mean, Dotty makes a POINT, but still it’s like…girl you can’t go one moment criticizing Joyce and then defend her when Walky calls her bluff…and blush.
That panel 3 though. There’s some meaning in there.
I mean under what circumstances does Walky have any reason to give either of these girls any sort of leeway?
Dotty I can kinda get but the dude needs some independence from her.
And Joyce has been nothing but rude with him since they met.
Walky is contributing.
Re Alt texdt: Not that I was just about to link that strip or anything…
Fucking CALLED it. And I want that last panel framed in a museum
Do I know the one?
Willis assumes my memory isn’t like Dory’s.
IMAGINE THE WEENUS, DORTHY. Not it’s, literal meaning. Either.
this whole time I thought Walky was uncouth. turns out he was actually savage
Oh, merciful god! She’s going supercritical! Clear the room! NOW!
I see we have the title of the next Slipshine
…. this is going to be the slipshine which is 100% Joyce’s thought-bubbles, isn’t it?
As long as each panel has her physical reaction to each panel in the corner, and every so often she snaps back to reality and the daydream bubble pops before regenerating after a brief pause.
Joyce is so unbelievably thirsty for Jacob, it’s almost scary.
Don’t give out the juicy details or Joyce’s head will explode.
Walky won’t do that! He’s going to instead let Joyce’s head explode under the pressure of forcing herself not to ask.
more like debates over who is circumcised or not, unfortunately now i am wondering
in Snipped walky is surprised to see an uncircumcised peen implying that he is. joe and ethan may seem like a given but some jewish parents decide not to circumcise, and do a alternative ritual for bris. i know this is true for my family, but circumcision is not the norm where i live like in the US. in this ted talk i will
In NZ, of my generation anyway, circumcision is pretty common. I was told it might have had something to do with the kiwi soldiers returning from the desert campaigns of WW2 and deciding it was cleaner to not have foreskins
Or might just be a good story…
Is Walky turning into Mike light or something O_o
This is not Dorothy being a hypocrite for telling Walky to lay off as a couple of people have suggested – Walky has derailed their entire argument onto a sexual tangent just to make Joyce uncomfortable for literally no reason other than that he could when he didn’t have to get involved at all.
Telling Walky to stop teasing her friend would not in any way be hypocritical
Wally’s taking the piss uh
“Hey good point Walky, how about I just slap your stupid mouth instead for harassing my friend about her sexual hangups when she was literally almost raped you colossal fucking idiot????”
is what I wish Dorothy would say, but she won’t.
Hes not harassing her at all, Dorothy needs to walk that particular wording back especially given the class and the current climate
Remember Joyce had spent pretty much the entirety of Dorothy and Walkys relationship openly saying Walky wasn’t good enough and that he and Dorothy should break up so if Walky wants to throw some sark back at Joyce, well given how much flak Joyce has given him and considering he’d walk her to classes when she couldn’t I’d say he’s earned the right to give her some back
I don’t know if its that Dorothy can process things quicker or maybe lacks a little empathy but shes shown with Walky and Danny to sometimes not realize or understand the effect her actions have
She’d just broken up with Danny and told him to maybe not see anyone for a while (not bad advice at the time) and then what does she do, goes to his room to borrow some shoes for her new boyfriend
Then we have her and Walky, her choice to keep it light but then she lays I love you on him, decides for both of them that they should go on a break/pause then she decides to sleep with him, then breaks up with him yet it still sounds like she wants to have some sort of control over him
Shes not a bad person, in fact shes one of my favorites but shes got some blind spots so I’m pleased to see Walky grow a pair and give her some flak back
Though to be fair to Joyce there, it’s not like Walky didn’t throw snark before. He’s pretty much given as good as he’s gotten all along. It’s pretty much how their friendship works.
But yeah, that’s pretty much how I see Dorothy.
1. Threats with violence wont work. She could report him to the dean, or to Ruth and she’d break him.
2. I do hope Dorothy doesn’t mention the rape thing since it could trigger Joyce.
3. Colossal idiot, agreed.
Report him to the dean? For what?
And it’s not like Walky’s comments here are triggering her. Scarface has nothing to do with it. She’s just embarrassed because she is thinking about his weenus, even more explicitly than she was before.
Report him for harassment, I suppose.
And I meant Dorothy triggering Joyce by talking about her close call.
But yeah, I also think that whats going on is just mild shennanigans. Heck, maybe it could even help Joyce to admit to herself that she thinks about weenuses.
So Walky can’t say she’s sexual,y attracted to Jacob?
And when she lies about it, he can’t say she’s lying?
Because that’s basically all he’s done, albeit in a crass way.
It would be no different than if he said she wanted to Jump Jacob’s bones or make sweet love or have his babies.
She herself admitted to finding Jacob sexually attractive to Dorothy a couple minutes ago.
I agree with thejeff and cbwroses, he’s not banned from ever mentioning sex at all because she was traumatized, especially when she obviously is embarrassed but not triggered by this.
yeah cause threatening assault is such a good idea
<y thoughts exactly, no need for the violence.
My, stupid typos.
Suddenly I have a lot more respect for Walky.
Yeah its good to see him do…something, anything other than thinking of putting Dorothy first
I’m not celebrating “be a dick to Dorothy” day or anything, but I do think Walky’s method for discouraging Joyce is more effective.
Wait. You think this is going to discourage Joyce?
You think she’s going to be half as smooth as she has been next time she sees him?
I think she’s going to react similarly to when she saw Ethan after the sex dream-turned-nightmare, personally. And I can’t wait to see it.
I also hope she genuinely realised what she’s doing is shitty and pulls back, because that’s the only way I can see her moving back towards a place where she deserves a relationship with Jacob. And they have great chemistry and could be wonderful together, but if she’s being underhanded and trying to ruin his current relationship there’s no way that won’t backfire, which at that point will be what she deserves.
This.
^This seconded
About as smooth as she was with the billion pickles and losing her fidget thing?
Interestingly, she was much smoother once Raidah showed up.
Walky is performing a… valuable service to Joyce right now. She’ll have a much better chance of doing right by everybody including herself if she can get out of denial.
Also Dorothy has said “You’re better than this!” to two people in the last hour. Kinda judgmental there, Dot.
Exactly on both counts.
C’mon, Dorothy, stop telling people theyre better than this. You’re better than this.
You are better than telling people they are better than telling people they are better than this, FacelessDeviant.
Bagge, I would tell you that you’re better than all that, but I’m hoping I’m better than this.
Well, ShinyNeen – you apparently ARE better than telling me to not tell people they are better than telling people they are better than telling people they are better than this – so I tip my hat.
A lot of tellings and a lot of people being better than this and that, I am having trouble keeping score.
It’s hard to be a team mom when your team kids rebel.
Wasn’t she banging one of the team kids just a while ago? Are you SURE this is the analogy you want to go with?
(I’m not better than this)
That’s on the list of problems with her status as team mom, yes.
Team mom problems: no one else agrees that we’re a team or that I’m a mom, also I banged one of them.
I never said it’s EASY to be a team mom… (Also, I appreciate your running with the gag. That’s clearly exactly how good you are.)
But more seriously, Dorothy’s mom-ing of Walky has been a very significant part of their relationship, for good (possibly) and bad (absolutely). Her trying to keep that up, and him refusing to play his part, is significant for the current state of their breakup.
Maybe telling people and countries “you’re better than this” is her presidential style.
“Russia, you don’t want to destabilize other countries. You’re better than this.”
“The .1% doesn’t need another tax cut. You’re better than this.”
“Don’t you think it’s time to stop all this fighting and finally have peace in the Middle East? You’re better than this.”
The issue with that is that none of those three are better than that, or than anything for that matter. You can’t shame the shameless.
In that case she will escalate to passive aggressiveness and possibly giving a diplomat the silent treatment.
Things will rapidly go downhill from there.
I wonder if “you’re better than this” is what Dorothy tells herself subconsciously all the time, and those standards which emphasize what she wants to be without acknowledging who she is now lead to her overwork.
Walky was a mess, but he took some time for introspection. I don’t think Dorothy has given herself any time for that.
I think it’s pretty definite that she tells herself this all the time, all things considered. And Walk no longer feels obligated to meet those standards; as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, he’s busy talking with his fellow partner on Garbage Roof.
For a moment there, I thought he was talking about a detachable, human-sized talking weenus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byDiILrNbM4
Although that one’s not human-sized or talking.
I have decided not to klick the link.
My curiosity will haunt me for the rest of my days, but I think I have made wise decision.
It’s just a fairly hilarious song*, not in any way explicit.
*Which, sadly, I was able to guess ahead of time. This might not say the best things about my taste.
Good shit, man.
and then Joyce was a tomato
I’m surprised there isn’t more Walky hate. He’s being an asshole, and I doubt he’s doing it for any reason beyond the fact that he finds teasing Joyce funny.
I like this Walky
Yeah I’ve never warmed to Walky as to me he just comes off as a lazy, spoilt rich kid but here hes shown something, not sure what it is, wanting to stand out from Dorothys shadow maybe? Not willing to put up with Joyces self-delusions possibly
But it looks like the beginning (small acorns and all) of some self-respect, of not immediately doing exactly what Dorothy says, and some self-respect is what Walky desperately needs
Once he respects himself he’ll be able to step away from his parents expectations and, hopefully, start to think about what he wants to do, what he wants to study and get the help needed to do so
Maybe
Whenever Walky’s brain is engaged and he’s not tempering himself he’s very sarcastic, and it’s interesting to see it out again. I’m looking forward to seeing how the three of them play together as a group now.
Ya know at first I thought she was doing this to break them up for Sarah but now I’m like maybe Joyce is falling for Jacob…..
Welcome to the past several weeks.
Walky is becoming jaded and grim, but he is far away from being a self hating mess like Amber, or a misanthrope like Mike. Also, he has a point. He is right about feeling angry at Dorothy, even if he isn’t being a jerk like Billie suggested.
What strip is the alt text talking about?
I think it’s this one that was linked earlier in the comments: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/snipped-2/
Aaah. Initially I thought it might’ve been the one with Ethan stepping out of the shower in front of Danny (since both strips’ punchline is a character being horny), but this one makes a lot of sense.
I can’t wait till joyce finds amber’s thinly disguised slashfic of ethan and jacob 😀
Idk, does kind of make it sound like Walky only respects Dorothy as a romantic object, and not a person. and we know he CAN be better than that.
I feel like Walky is repressing a lot of negative feelings about the breakup as he thinks All About Dorothy. I thought it was refreshing to see him finally let some of it out, even in a passive aggressive way. Not necessarily healthy in and of itself, but healthy forward movement.
The only dynamic in this situation that has changed is Dorothy’s and Walky’s. W’s and J’s friendship has always been this type of teasing. That’s par for the course and some friendships are build like that. Nothing wrong with that. Though J’s loyalty a squarely in camp D, Walky can still be considered her friend.
What’s changed is that he doesn’t feel an obligation to make moral/personality concessions to Dorothy. Their relationship dynamic was for the most part, Dorothy trying to make Walky a better person, and Walky agreeing that her judgment was correct. Nothing wrong with that.
But she broke up with him.
So the part of his brain that says “Dorothy is probably right and I should listen to her” is significantly smaller, and that’s a good thing. Doesn’t matter how good they were, don’t put your ex on a pedestal. Yeah, I think half his was response was to sting and the other half was to double down on what happened when she called him David.
Also, breakups in friend groups are rough ad you gotta fight things that became instinct. Walky jumping into Dorothy’s and Joyce convo’s are instinct to him. Dorothy reprimanding Walky is instinct to her. Joyce sitting next to Walky in class i instinct.
Granted though, I would be the Billy to the D/W situation and the Becky to the Jo/Ja situation.
Camp D. That’s what she said.
I wonder how Joyce’s toenail is doing
It’s probably going to be a brick joke at this point – falling off when she’s just about forgotten about it.
Maybe we’ve misjudged how she feels about Joyce…
walky seems to be channeling mike here.
Last panel Joyce is too funny. She either going to explode, or have an aneurism, it is 50-50 at this point.
HOW DID I MISS THIS ONE FARK