Oh, for heaven’s sake Dorothy, quit being so domineering. If you weren’t so far up your butt, you’d see Joyce needed very little help with this, and you’d know that this absolutely will not go down the way you think it will. I’m eagerly awaiting Dorothy being served a nice big slice of humble pie.
In Dorothy’s defense, she knows Joe from high school, during which time he was a MASSIVE rake (the old-timey term), so she’s understandably worried that Joyce will get her heart broken. She also, near as I can tell, hasn’t spent any time with Joe since breaking up with Danny, outside of coursework, so she doesn’t know about his character development.
Let’s also remember that the last major thing she properly heard about Joe since then would be his big sex video with Roz or him barely able to make it through gender studies. Which probably didn’t earn him many points.
Takes over the hacked Muzak and plays “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band. (as an aside, were you aware they were nominated for three Grammies – and won one, as well as took home “Best New Artist” honors – for that song?)
I don’t know how to take over the Muzak, or do that thing where you make the text your link. So I’ll just play this on my beat box; https://youtu.be/VlrKETxwRvM
Not being familiar with that brand, my first thought was of Flipside’s main protagonist and that would be a really weird crossover, but totally in character for Flipside’s Maytag.
If Dorothy’s goal is to emulate Dio Brando, she has missed several crucial steps like kicking Joe’s dog, and tweaking his ear while telling him that she must be number one in all things.
Also I don’t want to know what the Joyce equivalent to Erina washing her mouth out with puddle water would be 😫
If Joyce is still into Joe when she is no longer horny, THAT’S OK. It’s the whole making-bad-decisions-while-horny thing that Dorothy was worried about.
I don’t think it’s quite that simple, but maybe if Joyce isn’t quite so horny, she’ll be able to talk about why she likes Joe without going straight to denying she wants him to knead her face with his butt.
Which might be useful.
Absolutely true – and for very good reasons.
I do think she’ll come around if she gets a better idea of why Joyce is crushing on him. And what she knows of his changes.
i’m not really convinced that masturbating is going to solve the problem of horny-for-Joe…. to me, being horny in general is a different thing than being horny for a specific person. Two different kind of itches.
Yeah, it makes sense, I guess I’m just used to much longer scenes and going ages before circling back to each arc so when we cut away I thought we’d have to wait longer to see the aftermath.
Walky might be into it but a little suspicious that Joyce has been replaced by an opposite-universe version. Like Bizarro Joyce, or Un-Joyce, or some kind of… Anti… Joyce.
She brings up the church mouse thing during the afterglow. He can’t decide whether this is evidence for or against the doppelganger hypothesis.
And anyway, who cares if it did turn out to be a mistake? Let her date Joe. Hell, long as they use condoms, they can bang it out on every flat surface in Dorothy’s dorm room for all I care. Even if it ends badly, she’s at a stage in her life where she will never have fewer repercussions for this.
well, sometimes those are more for extreme addictions/cutting down on porn
tho i remember reading an anecdote about how a guy would take a masturbation break like a week before he had some wrestling match schedule and the buildup would help him win lol.
According to Michael Reeves who was in creator clash it genuinely can have an impact on your boxing. His coach told him no jerking it for 2 weeks and he caved, and his coach could immediately tell. He was off his game after
From what I remember there’s some evidence it has a short term effect, but that long term abstinence doesn’t have any. Of course, there’s no difference here between masturbation and sex. And unlikely there’s any difference between either and a wet dream.
So the coach might well notice a change immediately after, but how long until it went away and he was back to the baseline.
Lot’s of really non-scientific beliefs about these things. Often reinforced by confirmation bias.
And/or what the coach noticed was that he looked guilty.
Or it’s just a coincidence that his coach suspected diddling that time, and was right.
Or his coach actually heard him doing it.
Or his coach had wrongly suspected him of wanking off multiple times but Reeves only remembers that one time he was right.
Or his coach said something a lot more generic which Reeves interpreted as coach having guessed about the wank.
Our brains are just extremely good at inferring causality, but they’re often wrong.
Or because he’d been told repeatedly that it would affect him, he believed it would affect him, and that affected him. I think that’s called the nocebo effect, when it’s something negative? Something like that, anyway.
[Holding back a deluge of severely NSFW remarks]
Okay Joyce, the first session was free, but after this you’re gonna have to pay. I’m sure Dorothy’s rates are more than reasonable.
@The Wellerman: I MEAN. What’s that line again, “ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars”? Except with dinosaurs, and in this case it’s “ask not the Gallimimus how the Utahraptor hunts.”
That part of the body is meant to handle squishy, yielding stuff rather than something as hard as an egg. If memory serves, the fact that the plumbing is kept in a vacuum means the egg can also be yanked out of your hands and up the tubes. Getting it in through the sphincter is one thing, since the vacuum “helps.” Getting it out through the sphincter means fighting the pressure difference, and an egg doesn’t squish like a turd does.
See, uh, and cancel me if this is TMI, my (admittedly crude) jest referred to the idea of putting the egg into one’s vagina.
Which, well, a younger Sajuuk may have had a fun sexual time with a lady involving the misuse of a hard-boiled egg that became suddenly not fun when the egg got…stuck, and activity abandoned the bedroom for like thirty minutes of panicked pushing on the toilet while both of us tried to calm the other down as we mutually became more and more afraid we would end up local ER urban legends.
Thankfully, this didn’t happen; the egg came out. BUT YEAH. TL;DR: if you have that kink, use something artificial! It’s all the fun and less of the risk!!
What did I start here? I am sorry. The egg is for eating. And my comment was a Terry Pratchett quote. Cause when you get the chance to quote Sir Terry, you got to quote Sir Terry. Those are the rules. For the Glorious Revolution!
I worry that Joyce will never repeat this, mostly since she doesn’t want to admit that she needs it. Not that you can’t go without it, but it certainly helps; Especially when it comes to crushes and not jumping into a relationship just because you are horny.
Unrelated to that, damn Joyce looks cute post-orgasm. Her face is awash with her sudden hotness and a post masturbation high.
I concur, and am also unpleasantly reminded of growing up with an incredibly controlling parent. While I think Dorothy is more genuine and well-meaning than my mom, her idea that “good decisions are only the ones I think are good” is pretty familiar. Might be to Joyce too, though with a more religious flavor since that’s Carol’s drug of choice. I don’t think Dorothy is evil, but she’s doing some stuff here that is ringing not-great bells for me.
Well, you know what they say about “Turning Saints Into the Sea”?
You can’t get there without “Jealousy”.
Or without “It was only a kiss; How did it end up like this??”
Or without “And they’re going to bed, and my stomach is sick, but it’s all in my head, but she’s touching his
Chest, now
He takes off her dress, now
Let
Me
Go”
I am eagerly awaiting the realization that Dotty just gave Joyce the equivalent of her first bong rip.
There is no way Joyce is not going to go full horn dog, chasing the orgasm dragon after alllllll the nonsense and stress she’s been under for the last… entire life.
lol idk how many other ppl will come across her in the lobby but it’d just might look like she’s in her jammies to other ppl
tho they prolly should go back and gather their laundry as well if it ever finished (wonder what the likelihood is of their stuff getting stolen, i can totally imagine being tempted to take a really nice shirt [or weirdly abandoned, there is a laundry mat in some business park i’ve been to but i also occasionally see abandoned socks/shirts. a loose sock i can understand not noticing but feels like a whole shirt would stick out lol])
Dorothy does have a “mothering” attitude. Directing Joyce’s sex life might have been outside her wheelhouse at one point but it does seem to fit in with other events in recent days (Roz’s taunting, Joyce’s interest in joe)
Joyce used to be repressed, but she is quite close to Dorothy (so following her lead on this isn’t that out of character.) And she did just hear of Becky and Dina having sex. So that might motivate her to try experimenting sexually.
Joyce’s character is changing / growing. She has done many previously “out of character” things as the story goes on.
Dorothy… has done stuff like this before, and people were upset in the comments then, too. Take the time Walky broke up with her over her demanding he not wear his pajama jeans; Joyce forced him to recant, and as soon as she was out of the room, Dorothy demanded Walky strip naked, gave him an Ocular Pat-down, said “I don’t remember why I was mad, do you?” and walked out. (Responding more to shylar now.) Some readers found this cute / endearing, some were quite upset by it.
I feel like this would be better said: It worked out (both in ‘successful’ masturbation and Joyce seeming untraumatized), but Dorothy took the wrong way to get there; a lot of things could have gone wrong, and they could have pretty easily been avoided.
like if they were driving somewhere, and there were two options: a road with lots of twists and turns, but plenty of room, and no other drivers on it, or a road that usually had cars speeding along it, with barely two lanes and no shoulder and a sheer dropoff, and potholes to shit and blind corners.
Dorothy took the latter, and they got there safely. But she could have just taken the safer road to begin with, and chose not to.
I don’t know. For comparison, would it be more or less fucked up if they just had sex? Is there some fear that Joyce has no agency in this situation where she’s in the room all by herself with explicit permission to do or not do whatever she wants or something?
Now, Joyce’s church and especially her mom spending 18 years teaching her that fear and pain is love and pleasure and relief is sin to make her terrified of touching herself because it will anger the invisible sky daddy even though she doesn’t want to believe in him anymore, that was fucked up.
Amalie, my read on this story is basically that Dorothy is “helping” Joyce for the wrong reasons. Additionally, the way Dorothy has been talking to and handling Joyce strongly signifies a controlling, parent-child relationship, which is really not healthy.
I think if they’d had sex this would’ve been even worse.
As far as Joyce’s agency; Dorothy’s motivations are basically to stop Joyce from wanting Joe. This is obviously not going to work. I think once Joyce realizes this, there will be a breakdown between them that hinges on this moment.
To elaborate on the agency thing, Joyce has gone along with this because she wants to JO and she implicitly trusts Dorothy. Within that context she is acting autonomously. But Dorothy is doing this as an exchange (don’t fuck Joe), which it doesn’t seem like Joyce really understands. Once the terms of that exchange are violated and Dorothy jerks her leash, that autonomy suddenly vanishes.
I mean, Dorothy said it was about Joyce considering Joe as a romantic prospect, so if you think Joyce doesn’t understand that’s part of it, not sure what that says about your opinion of Joyce.
Nor do I get at all what you mean by “exchange” here. Dorothy thinks Joyce’ll make better decisions this way. That’s not about an exchange. Joyce doesn’t owe her anything for this. There’s no indication Dorothy’s thinking like that at all.
Joyce hasn’t been shown to respond to this aspect of Dorothy’s stated intentions at all, really, so we don’t actually know whether she agrees or disagrees with that part of it. Joyce has only been shown nervously consenting.
By exchange, I mean this: Dorothy says I’m going to teach you to JO… so that you don’t get with Joe, which I perceive to be a mistake. Joyce has gone along with this so far, because she wanted to JO. But when Dorothy sees that Joyce still wants Joe, how do you think she will react?
We don’t know yet, but I strongly believe she’ll feel like Joyce fucked her over. “I taught you to JO so you wouldn’t want Joe.”
Exchange might not be the right word, but it’s trying to fence her in.
Sure, but that’s nothing like an exchange. There are no terms to violate and Dorothy doesn’t have a leash to jerk to make Joyce’s autonomy vanish.
I don’t see Dorothy as trying to fence her in with some kind of implicit agreement, just as trying to break her from the horny crush she thinks Joyce has. Will she be upset when it doesn’t work? Probably. So what. That happens. It doesn’t mean she somehow takes control of Joyce.
Joyce may not agree with Dorothy’s intention of this making her change her mind about Joe, but it’s been openly stated. She should be aware of it. Given her own internal struggles and denial of her physical attraction to him, I could even see her going along with it in hopes that would fade back and she could think about it more clearly.
I have to insist that there are in fact informal terms being set up here: don’t get with Joe, just masturbate instead.
She’s “just trying to break Joyce’s crush” by inserting herself directly, without prompting, into a rushed situation that should require a lot of care, patience and understanding, and not have any weird motivations behind it? She’s doing this not only because she doesn’t trust Joe, but she apparently doesn’t trust Joyce to take care of her own shit!
And when she gets upset that it doesn’t work: this could shake their very close friendship very badly. It’s not very “so what” to me. These two are trauma bonded. It’s quite a serious thing.
You can insist all you want. I don’t agree.
I think hopes that masturbation will make her less horny and that will make her not fall for Joe’s ploys, but that’s not the same as even informal terms.
I went back to the strip where Dorothy says she’s doing this to stop her considering Joe as a romantic prospect, and what I’m seeing is that Joyce, by comic logic, doesn’t really register anything Dorothy is saying after “sexually relieve yourself.”
Sorry for the triple post but if Joyce KNEW that this was Dorothy’s intention and still went along with it, I’d be even more surprised and weirded out!
as entitled to your own opinion and feelings as you are, probably ain’t a great idea to tell other people, who are different than you with different viewpoints and life experiences, how they ought to feel about this arc.
It would be real fucking cool if we could avoid direct personal attacks on other commenters, as has been stated before, like, five hundred times
I mean, we won’t, and I’m just waiting for this to become another session of thinly veiled “if you like this you are a rape apologist”-type shit, but wouldn’t that be a nice dream?
In fairness, this isn’t a direct attack. It’s an implied, easily deniable one that can be defended as just asking a question, even though the obvious implication is that if you don’t think this is fucked up, something is wrong with you.
That’s true, I should’ve just said “if we could avoid personal attacks” because that’s what I mean, they’re shitty and they don’t add anything to the discussion and they’re the thing in this comments section that actually pisses me off.
And I know I get snarky as fuck, which is a part of myself that comes From Circumstances and I’m trying to rein it in and work on myself, but I would like to believe I haven’t personally attacked anyone in the comments of this storyline. I’ve been in awe of a couple doctrines, but like, it’s not my place to judge and I mean that genuinely.
If I *have* made people feel personally crappy, I’m sorry. Real people matter more than fucking Joyce or Dorothy, who are actually made of ink and don’t feel anything.
So that being said: personal attacks can fuck off. If you don’t like what someone is saying about the storyline and you can’t say something without pissing on them personally, keep scrolling. It’s the right thing to do.
Dorothy is trying to prevent this, and sincerely, and this is mostly on the wacky hijinks category (together with Walky forgetting his pajamas open fly) not “fucked up”.
It’s completely adorable. It’s also massively fucked up. There’s a serious chance that once Joyce comes back to her room and has some time to reflect on what happened, from blurting out “we’re not going to hanky-panky” in front of Carla while blushing to walking through the dorm half-naked and with presumably visible wet stains on her underwear, she’s going to start avoiding Dorothy. Even just as the person who was around while this happened. Moreso as the person who MADE this happen to her.
Like, Joyce has stated her boundaries around sex talk. Dorothy ignored those boundaries and pushed her into a public humiliation.
Oh sure, she enjoyed herself in the process. She might even actually learn a useful life skill out of it.
It’d just be very reasonable for her to enjoy the life skill but not enjoy Dorothy’s company anymore, just out of the embarrassment coming up every single time.
“massively fucked up” — has masturbated in semi-public place and may have forgotten to conceal stains before heading the dorm.
God, if this is “massively fucking up” what you would call getting pregnant from an one-night stand or driving drunk and crashing the car against another person? This is some ridiculously inoffensive shit.
Also, since Joyce has been “diagnosed” it seems like people treat her like a child incapable of asserting herself. If she was that uncomfortable, she would not followed with it, Dorothy did not force her at any moment and even questioned if she did not want to stop in the middle. When she became uncomfortable with walking in public places she simply did not go alone anymore, she has no problem pushing the brake when she is uncomfortable with something. Which public humiliation? No public humiliation has happened yet, and it is not like Joyce do not embarrass herself in front of others frequently (with much worser things like the internalized racism of the first times she did meet Jacob).
Yeah, Dorothy’s really only done half the job here. A real bestie would follow this up leaning into a vibrator discussion or breaking the shame of self touching, but baby steps I guess?
To be honest, I’m kind of surprised Dorothy didn’t lead with a lecture about how self-touching is perfectly normal and nothing to be ashamed of or a vibrator and instructions on use, because that seems like a Dorothy approach.
IMO, this worked better than anything like that would have. It was all about the shame of self-touch, but through support and encouragement, which is why it worked as well as it did.
Uhh, the clock tower? You get a way better view AND if you time it right you get the full chime effect, plus it’s got WAY less foot traffic. Checkmate, laundryists.
Based on how this unfolded, I think Joyce already knew that pressing her thighs together with rhythmic movement felt good; she just hadn’t gone “all the way” thanks to her rigid upbringing. So really, Dorothy taught her nothing, she just pressured Joyce into ignoring her inhibitions.
Normally I’m all for teaching repressed religious kids sexual freedom as a former repressed religious kid myself, but mutual masturbation is not how I’d go about it.
Yeah it makes Dorothy’s smug order for a thank you extra patronizing. Still think the build up to this scene was very problematic and can only hope Dorothy will have some later realization about how she has no say in her friends dating life.
Well Dorothy did help teach her the usefulness of vibrations/warmth in sexual stimulation from using the dryer. Granted an actual vibrator might have worked faster but Joyce probably would have felt even less comfortable with one of those. So there is that. (Not sure if Joyce would have thought of it herself)
My understanding is that Joyce has had orgasms before, but they were more like happy accidents. Not deliberately induced, which would have been sinful. (It’s not sinful if a friend is coaxing you.)
My hope is she goes right to Joe all horny and stuff and Joe’s like “hey let’s take this slow and is a super gentleman and when Joyce tells Dorothy all about it Dorothy’s like “oh no. I’m the creep in this situation”.
Seem to have been quite a few thinking Joyce is being coerced and isn’t actually making choices here. So people being pissed about what Dorothy has done to Joyce kind of translates to being pissed about what Joyce is doing, if she’s actually doing it of her own free will.
By definition, Joyce is either consenting or a victim, and in either case she’s not doing anything wrong.
The person who’s doing shitty things and whom we are annoyed at is Dorothy, and those things are shitty REGARDLESS of whether Joyce is ultimately okay with things or not, in the same way it’s still a stupid idea to light a cigarette at a gas station even when you DON’T start a fire.
Joyce can be getting coerced AND making choices. These things are entirely not mutually exclusive.
Remember when Joyce asked if she could leave if she said it was stupid? Because she felt like she was being coerced and like Dorothy might say that she couldn’t? And then she didn’t leave because she made a choice not to?
That’s an oddly literal reading. Do you actually believe Joyce did not feel free to leave? Maybe she was just conveying that she wasn’t sure and might chance her mind at some point. I’m a non-confrontational person so i dance around disagreeing outright with people, even friends, in just this sort of way, all the time.
Honestly I’m a little mad at this comic. I JUST finished drawing A cute Joyce for no particular reason. And NOW I got a completely opposite Joyce I REALLY wanna draw. https://imgur.com/a/xaQaAKs
that’d def makes things more awkward if that’s how she does things, instead of impulse kissing him and just like “excuse me i have to go into a private room to rub one out” or so.
wonder how becky would react “i just had my first orgasm with dorothy” lol
Speaking having to go rub one out in a private room. Where does Joyce go from here she can’t or shouldn’t goto the laundry room everytime she wants to masturbate given its a public area and she refused to use her fingers or an aid. She just used friction and the vibrations of the washing machine. Hopefully be more open to other methods.
It seemed pretty clear to me that she used her fingers in the end. Dorothy suggested it and said she’d leave the room to keep watch. Joyce rejected, but moments later told Dorothy to leave.
Seems obvious to me.
Future Joyce self-pleasuring will have higher and higher chance that Joe will be the subject of sexual desire rather than Amber’s smutfics.
Calling it now.
Or just both go trouserless as sense of solidarity. If you’re both doing it confidently everyone who sees you is gonna be embarrassed that THEY’RE wearing pants.
Seriously, that was so patronizing. And the little lecture about “I did this so now you will make what I consider to be good decisions” is just…ick. After Joyce told everyone to butt out of her sex life, too. There’s been something so infantilizing- not for the first time- about Dorothy’s whole attitude toward Joyce lately and this was just too much.
Honestly I think it the way the story is paced is contributing a lot to the kind of odd tone of this arc. Enough time has passed that I think it feels pretty clear that pretty much everything that’s happened since Joyce and Joe went to art class is happening very quickly both in universe and out, mostly to stoke the flames of tension between Dorothy and JoJo.
I think the part that makes it feel odd is that the intentionally quick pace has also extended to Dorothy’s impulsive choice to do this with Joyce, specifically RIGHT after the story even slows down a little to highlight the tension between Dorothy and Joyce. Dorothy feels like she’s losing control and is trying more desperately to feel in control, and Joyce is feeling suffocated by people’s expectations of her actions and life.
This is the big dramatic tension underlying not just the Joe/Joyce storyline, but it feels like it’s been there since the semester started and only gets more and more explosive. The specific ways that Dorothy talks both to and about Joyce, already a very prominent sign of their dynamic, is spelled out and highlighted in detail to the audience
… And then *because* this is an impulsive choice, the comic immediately goes into the washroom jerk off. And it’s really fun and funny and cute and hot and all that good stuff! It’s paced and written like a more first semester style whacky hijinks adventure, and I always love those and I love getting a change of pace from the very semester 2 style intense relationship tension.
But..it IS specifically about the thing Joyce reacted the most to, and is the main thing the audience had their attention drawn to as The Emotional Core To Take Seriously. It’s been kind of hard to enjoy the arc when everything about it is very genuinely fun and funny but I feel like its coming at the worst possible time in the comic….which is the ONLY time it could have happened?
Honestly yeah. Narratively I think this should’ve happened before Joyce’s outburst outside the quad. That would’ve contextualized this as “yet another aspect of Joyce’s life that Dorothy is controlling” and not “Dorothy vehemently not respecting her wishes and meddling in spite of them”. Which if that’s what the narrative is going for, then Kudos. But if that is the case, Joyce sure hasn’t made those feelings known.
I mean, Joyce doesn’t have an easy time making her feelings on those thigns known. She was kind of brought up to go along with things she’s uncomfortable with.
I expect she was left emotionally exhausted after her previous attempts to assert her boundaries, so now she doesn’t have it in her to even remember that boundaries exist and Dorothy might be doing something objectively wrong anymore.
Y’know, I think you’re into something with this analysis…but I also think that, yeah, this is kinda the only time it could’ve happened? Because it’s clearly a spur-of-the-moment dumb fucking idea that Dorothy wouldn’t normally let herself follow through on?
I don’t know that I completely agree that there’s supposed to be as much focus on the dynamic of Dorothy as controlling VS. Joyce as controlled explicitly—I think it’s more a case of Joyce is cracking open all her old boundaries, all the old mechanisms of control, and discovering what it means to be a butterfly vs. a metaphorical caterpillar. It’s messy, as we saw with the Faith-Off, but it’s ultimately for the best.
ON THE OTHER HAND, in stark contrast, we have Dorothy, who seems to be undergoing a slow-motion internal breakdown and it’s definitely not for the best…but because of who she is, she’s incredible at masking it. And she’s good enough at masking it that it’s kind of a problem for the audience, because honestly, I don’t know what Dotty is thinking right now. I’m on Patreon and it doesn’t help, Dorothy’s whole…deal is very opaque at the moment and it’s kind of key to this storyline. We can kind of presume she’s falling apart, but how is that manifesting? What the hell is she thinking? Is this driven by a plan to go to Yale? To stay at IU? Does she have sexual/romantic feelings for Joyce? Does she know she does if so? Is there a jealousy element to her feelings about Joe or is it all a warped form of genuine concern?
Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll see until we hit the end of this storyline, which is maddening.
WITH OUR CURRENT KNOWLEDGE, Yoto, I’d have to personally disagree that it’d be narratively better to have Joyce’s outburst after this, because to me it’d feel…IDK, stale? Forced? It’d be very “oh, look, here’s this very obvious conflict”. The impulsivity and the downright weird quality of this whole arc has been part of the appeal, because it’s a sexy train wreck.
But it might be that Dorothy’s motivations really can’t live up to the hype, at which point I think maybe that narrative swap would’ve been the better idea.
I want to respond to this post more in the morning, but I wanted to thank you for your really fun analysis!! Talking about DoA in the comments can be really emotionally charged for some people. Its a nice change of pace to talk about it in more of a big picture, story structure kind of way and the way that may affect why some emotional beats hit differently than others.
Hey, you’re welcome, this was fun! I agree, it’s a much nicer change of pace to step back and like, talk about the narrative and theories of where it’s going and all.
1. I was going to say not having pants on isn’t a huge deal, but doing that in the hallway is less atypical than in the lobby, so yeah, put your pants on.
“Joyce, I’ve taught you to strip down and masturbate in semi-public. I’ve done this to prevent you from hooking up with a guy who is very open about his womanizing ways, and also to prove my superiority over your other female friends. This will definitely never show up in a tell-all book when I’m running for public office.”
Dorothy, just freaking stop. You don’t understand Joyce’s life choices, and while I agree that the ability to masturbate is a useful life skill, this is not the way anybody should learn.
I pretty sure people fighting her battles and arguing on her behalf is what pissed her off before. She’s an adult, she has free will, and that *does* matter.
I want to clarify that I was responding seriously because I thought you were being serious. I was reading through comments on the previous strips and saw your position on this whole saga through a couple of your comments. I now understand you were being sarcastic.
Joyce very much minded it. She also did want to expand her sexual horizons and didn’t go all the way in saying no, but she did very much mind it and I expect she’s going to mind it even more when she’s no longer caught up in the moment and in Dorothy’s presence and realizes what the FUCK just happened. (Starting from blurting out sexual things in front of Carla. Oh boy. And that happened explicitly because of Dorothy pushing her past her comfort zone)
A petard is an old-fashioned grenade, and “hoist” referred to being thrown into the air when it exploded in one’s face.
This has not done that juuuust yet.
If I was completely oblivious to the ways I was hurting and hindering myself in some way akin to Joyce, I sure would be happy if I had a friend like Dororthy. As much as I’d give her shit for being smug about it, later, when we’re laughing at the memories.
I see your point, but having been bullrushed by “friends” into things that were not good for me that they thought were what I needed, I can’t say I think it’s universal.
Dorothy had better hope that Joyce’s thoughts tomorrow morning are “I’m sure glad she helped me through that” and not “In retrospect, what the fuck did I do?”
I stand by that episode as being fun and weird and adequate. I was so happy when they recanonized it. Just as a reminder, it was two people who got turned into salamanders, and they had hot salamander sex. Actually, I think it would have to be Dorothy as Paris, breaking rules and going too fast, and Joyce as Janeway, kind of pulled along for the pleasurable ride.
You could have started and stopped at “hot salamander sex” and I’d have been sold. I’ve never watched any Star Trek except the old “half black/half white” episode, which I haven’t seen since I was a preteen.
To be fair, when Voyager’s good it’s really good. The two-parters Year of Hell and Equinox are the high water mark in my opinion.
When Voyager’s bad, it’s BAAAAD. The problematic relationship between Kes and Neelix. The abuse of the magic reset button. Seven’s catsuits that Jeri Ryan could hardly breathe in. Pretty much anything Rick Berman had a heavy hand in.
Threshold (the Warp 10 salamander episode) is widely panned as one of the worst episodes of any Trek series, if not the worst. But Voyager fans are PROUD of that! “Hell yeah! That awful thing is OUR shitty episode! Nobody can beat that!”
You don’t hear TOS fans shouting to the heavens about how wonderful it is that they have Spock’s Brain as their shitty episode. Ask TNG fans about Up The Long Ladder and they’ll look down at their shoes and mumble. DS9 fans will roll their eyes if you say “Allamaraine”. Enterprise fans start making excuses about their finale.
Maybe it’s because we’re used to being the franchise’s punching bag, but as a whole Voyager isn’t as bad as everyone claims it is.
Enterprise is great, except for the parts where they tried to *headdesk* process 9/11 in real time. Why anyone ever thought that’d be a good idea is beyond me. Oh, and the plan for how to continue the series was awful, but fortunately it didn’t get to happen.
@BOOSTER SHOT: Now I’m imagining Dorothy screaming “PEPPERONI PIZZA!” while chunks of her face fall off! Damn it! I hate days like today!
@Taffy: Voyager is very weird and experimental, I think you’d like it, but you know what you might like even more is Deep Space Nine, the Star Trek that has:
-the Irishman union boy who is the avatar of suffering
-space capitalist idiots
-sexy bisexual doctor twinks
-Jadzia Dax
-Space Jesus Dad, the captain who loves baseball and fucking HATES Picard
-scathing indictments of colonialism
-the goo men
Everyone hates Dotty’s smug little grin and mommy-dom “say thank you” and I’m just over here like “Dorothy, you have to cup her chin when you say that. Where are your elbow-length leather gloves. It’s like you don’t know anything about this role.”
Joyce panel 4 would make a great Gravatar. Also, now I totally feel silly for overreacting to Dorothy’s plan. It’s not how I would have done it, but no trauma or strife came from it, so I got no complaint.
I was much more ok with it when Joyce revealed she already used friction before to do this. It felt like either she was forcing herself to do it because trusting Dorothy or that she was out of character due to the multiple incidents in that school year until she revealed she was no stranger to it
I agree, it’s a good grav. Now, I’m not saying I’m the fastest Grav maker in the comments (that’s for y’all to say, about me), but I forgot what I was saying halfway through this sentence.
This is the beginning of Joyce’s slippery slope into debauchery that will inevitably lead to the most highly anticipated Slipshine of all time: “Joyce Snaps And Sucks, Like, A Billion Dicks”.
Okay, so while I’m broadly okay with this arc (no one in it is acting perfectly, but it’s within the bounds of acceptable behavior — barely) I’m now firmly on team “what the fuck Dorothy, the laundry room?” If it leads directly out into the lobby, that means it’s both a co-ed facility and *way* more likely to get sudden traffic than if it was a single-wing laundry room, and her precautions were inadequate. Yeah, if anyone had walked in before she stood guard it would have ‘just’ been two girls sitting on the laundry machines with nothing strictly inappropriate to see… but that’s still just playing with fire.
I’m assuming it doesn’t lead directly into the lobby, but the direction Joyce is heading will take her straight to the lobby where the elevator up to her floor is.
Oh would you looky here, a clear description of Dorothy’s motivations topped with even more incredibly patronizing dialogue where Dorothy talks down to her like a child.
Telling your friend who was raised in a cult, trusts you implicitly and obeys you like a child that you’re going to teach them to JO so they don’t fuck someone you don’t like is not giving them autonomy.
I’m seriously going to try and pretend this arc just…didn’t happen. It’s so radically out of character for Dorothy to make this absurd suggestion and Joyce to go along with it meekly that I think we’d all be better off erasing this chapter from our brains.
Honestly one can hope, leading to Joyce finally telling Dorothy to screw off, leading to the ticking emotional time bomb that is Dorothy to FINALLY explode!
Now I want Roz to convince Joyce into a new kink that ends up with Dorothy bound spread-eagle to a wall rack, with a ball gag, in a situation she herself consented to, but would be surprised by a twist when she suddenly observes Joyce aggressively screwing Joe on top, so Dorothy can have her Humble Pie and see how powerless she is to control Joyce. She will scream against the gag, trying to correct Joyce, but Roz has White Noise playing in Stereo. Roz wins. Sexuality. Perfect Victory.
Love the panel of that bonus strip. Joe is doing an Obi Wan after Alderaan. “It’s as if a million Joyces cried out in ecstasy and we’re suddenly silenced.”
Honestly, I think we would have been better off leaving “repressed female character masturbates with a dryer machine” in the late 90s/early 2000s sitcoms where it originated. Not sure it ever had much basis in reality, and the public washroom/specific characters in play each add their own element of awkwardness and unreality. I haven’t been jerked this hard out of the story (no pun intended) since the league of evil dads kidnapping.
To be sure, there’s no guaranteed way to avoid bad decisions. In fact, following any plan that is intended to make you immune to making bad decisions is probably itself a bad decision. This is not to say that you can’t avoid bad decisions, but I think you need to go into it with the understanding that a bad decision is always possible. While you can attempt eternal vigilance, mistakes will happen.
Dorothy is being a smarmy ass here but every time i read one of *those* comments it just makes me want to dig my heels in and call her a saint out of spite
So many comments wishing this never happened. Why? Some people need to be taught to masturbate! Just because you weren’t taught doesn’t mean it’s that bizarre.
It’s a good thing to learn for sure, but there’s still several elements of it here that make it feel off. It happening in a public space is the biggest one, but Dorothy’s claim that it’ll prevent bad decisions is also iffy. I guess that’s the point though, a sporadic plan from the usually over-prepared Dorothy, that will likely come back to bite her.
I’m glad Joyce learned. I’m not glad she learned because her friend decided she needs to do it to “not make mistakes,” and then achieved it by springing it on Joyce and leading her into a public space to get off.
The problem doesn’t lie in the masturbation, nor in the fact that what happened was a kind of sex, and not in the fact that it was a homosexual experience (unlike what a commenter said a few pages ago).
The problem lies in Dorothy’s specific behaviour during this whole mini-arc, which is forceful and pays lip service to consent while directing Joyce and repeatedly ignoring her discomfort.
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idk, it’s college, and also at least Joyce doesn’t have a “li’l Joyce” hanging out
Oh, for heaven’s sake Dorothy, quit being so domineering. If you weren’t so far up your butt, you’d see Joyce needed very little help with this, and you’d know that this absolutely will not go down the way you think it will. I’m eagerly awaiting Dorothy being served a nice big slice of humble pie.
In Dorothy’s defense, she knows Joe from high school, during which time he was a MASSIVE rake (the old-timey term), so she’s understandably worried that Joyce will get her heart broken. She also, near as I can tell, hasn’t spent any time with Joe since breaking up with Danny, outside of coursework, so she doesn’t know about his character development.
Let’s also remember that the last major thing she properly heard about Joe since then would be his big sex video with Roz or him barely able to make it through gender studies. Which probably didn’t earn him many points.
Do you think you could put another double entendre in that comment? Not that it’s a contest. Hey! Let’s have a contest!
Sexually awakened Joyce face!!! So beautiful!!! 🥹😭😍
*plays “Starlight Festival” from Super Mario Galaxy on hacked muzak*
Wahoo, let’s-a-go!
Takes over the hacked Muzak and plays “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band.
(as an aside, were you aware they were nominated for three Grammies – and won one, as well as took home “Best New Artist” honors – for that song?)
Okay, now THIS should be playing when she does it with Joe! 🥲😍
I don’t know how to take over the Muzak, or do that thing where you make the text your link. So I’ll just play this on my beat box; https://youtu.be/VlrKETxwRvM
Did not know, but it’s well deserved.
Obligatory response
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7ynZYlQ8bpA
Not quite, but getting there.
Yes, Willis does a good “just shagged” face, even if the shagging was only virtual.
OMG that face! 😀
I’m gonna laugh very hard once Dotty realize that this has zero adverse effect on his relationship with Joe
this*
I feel like safe money is on it having the opposite effect than the one Dorothy wants
Dorothy: See, orgasms feel *great* don’t they?
Joyce: Yeah. I’m curious about other ways to get them, now.
Dorothy: D=
She didn’t account for the fact that Joe has fingers too, and I’m inclined to believe knows how to use them.
But does he have a dryer?
Yup
What if her true objective was to, when Joe inevitably brags about giving Joyce her first orgasm, be like “haha no, that was me”
Joyce [from the background]: Unless your name is “Maytag”, no you didn’t!
Not being familiar with that brand, my first thought was of Flipside’s main protagonist and that would be a really weird crossover, but totally in character for Flipside’s Maytag.
I was thinking the same thing when someone mentioned that brand, the other night.
HAHAHA yes! ~<3
If Dorothy’s goal is to emulate Dio Brando, she has missed several crucial steps like kicking Joe’s dog, and tweaking his ear while telling him that she must be number one in all things.
Also I don’t want to know what the Joyce equivalent to Erina washing her mouth out with puddle water would be 😫
Totally. This plotline is one you can see coming a mile away.
Can’t wait for Dorothy to have a mini-meltdown when Joyce is STILL into Joe.
Oh who are we kidding, Dorothy never has mini anythings.
Dorothy is going to have a very organized and very rational prompt critical meltdown.
And look up ‘prompt critical’ if you don’t get it.
If Joyce is still into Joe when she is no longer horny, THAT’S OK. It’s the whole making-bad-decisions-while-horny thing that Dorothy was worried about.
I will gladly eat a plate of humble pie (with crow) if that’s the case.
I will not be saving room for it.
I don’t think it’s quite that simple, but maybe if Joyce isn’t quite so horny, she’ll be able to talk about why she likes Joe without going straight to denying she wants him to knead her face with his butt.
Which might be useful.
Dorothy is very firmly anti-Joe. I don’t think she would mind as much if Joyce was crushing on another (non-gay) (non-attached) boy.
Absolutely true – and for very good reasons.
I do think she’ll come around if she gets a better idea of why Joyce is crushing on him. And what she knows of his changes.
This doesn’t account for the fact that Dorothy clearly thinks being into Joe is a bad decision
i’m not really convinced that masturbating is going to solve the problem of horny-for-Joe…. to me, being horny in general is a different thing than being horny for a specific person. Two different kind of itches.
Well, that was a short interlude! Was not expecting to be back here so soon :O
Ethan and Booster need some time to get to the theater. [And a non-abrupt transition]
Yeah, it makes sense, I guess I’m just used to much longer scenes and going ages before circling back to each arc so when we cut away I thought we’d have to wait longer to see the aftermath.
Dumbing of Age Book 13: No Pants in the Lobby Is a Bad Decision
Ooh, that’s a good one.
It is.
ENDORSE
Well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions.
“We meet again.”
No God, no pants, no (more) fucks to give
😆 is this some reference I don’t understand?
“No shirt, no shoes, no service” perhaps…?
Some excelent suggestions in the notes 🙂 I did not have any specific reference in mind, rather the general sentiment.
Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We wilna wear troosers agin!
No gods, no masters!
Or as my late partner used to shout in Philly protest marches: “¡No, no, no! ¡No más pantalones!”
OK, but be fair – have the Wee Free Men ever been relied on to wear troosers?
No, that’s where their name comes from: they’re men, and their wee is free.
That checks out
Interesting, Dorothy, the ability to masturbate didn’t keep you from making the decision to have sex with Walky when you two were supposed to be ‘on pause’. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/03-faz-is-great/wellrested/
I hope Joyce does end up dating Joe, just to rub it in Dorothy’s face that Joyce’s decision to date him isn’t a “bad decision”.
Walky’s not as toned as I thought he was. I was out here believing dude was rocking some abs. Also, yeah this plan was flawed from the start.
He’s been steadily gaining his freshman fifteen, so it’s not surprising.
Well considering his diet and lack of exercise it was only a matter of time
He was all hunched over in bed, not flexing! Dudes with abs still don’t have to look like a turtle’s shell 24/7.
Yeah, that’s normal.
Is it wrong I kind of want Joe to NOT date Joyce, at least not yet?
The sheer mood whiplash of Dotty wondering why Joe would not just *turn down sex* but turn down sex… with Joyce!
I want them to date and just not have sex for a while. Just a really cute above the clothes kinda couple…for a while anyway.
And then a sexually liberated Joyce has a random hookup with Walky and causes a Crisis of Infinite Walkys.
Walky might be into it but a little suspicious that Joyce has been replaced by an opposite-universe version. Like Bizarro Joyce, or Un-Joyce, or some kind of… Anti… Joyce.
She brings up the church mouse thing during the afterglow. He can’t decide whether this is evidence for or against the doppelganger hypothesis.
And anyway, who cares if it did turn out to be a mistake? Let her date Joe. Hell, long as they use condoms, they can bang it out on every flat surface in Dorothy’s dorm room for all I care. Even if it ends badly, she’s at a stage in her life where she will never have fewer repercussions for this.
I’d forgotten all about Walky being casually nude in front of Sierra.
Joyce gave herself Just Been Fucked hair and it looks GREAT
Totes.
it really, really does xD
I don’t think this will workout like Dotty wants but I admire the effort.
her hairstyle in this arc still confuses me
Did Joyce accidentally electrocute herself with the dryer? Her hair and brain looks fried.
Her hair is fried, her brain is percolating in endorphins, and her eyeglasses are crooked.
Oh no human, that’s not electrical energy that’s done this. Even better, it’s horny energy! 😆
So she is riding the lightning.
Is this that “orgone” stuff I keep reading about in pseudoscience writings?
I have no idea what that is.
Comedic effect also this a very visual medium
Sex hair, the hair you get from sex
“You got sex hair! You got it from me girl!”
https://youtu.be/4NHPJnaY_pY
Look, Dorothy, if you wanted to talk about when it’s a good time to be pants less, you gotta do that pre-orgasm.
Really, that’s Dotty’s primary mistake in all this.
I just knew someone around here was gonna use that Joyce face as their avatar! 😂👏
I didn’t know emoji could be italicized. 🤔
Neither did I! 🫠
Squished and melted like a smore! 😂
I don’t even know how you’re managing to get those little pictures in there in the first place! There isn’t anything like that on the html list.
I’m on mobile, but on PC I just cut and paste emojis from this — https://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html
Hold windows key and press period. That pulls up the emoji list on windows 10 at least.
The platform apparently knows a few of the typographic versions and substitutes an image. Colon hyphen slash :-/
Aaaand of course that’s not one of them. 🙂
Naturally, if you didn’t get it wrong the first time, it wouldn’t be funny! 😉
Oh please. If masturbating kept you from making bad decisions I’d have ascended to the rank of enlightened all wise guru by now.
If masturbating kept you from making bad decisions that would presuppose that nobody in this entire comic has ever masturbated.
there’s even a whole ‘no fap’ community and NNN as well, wonder if there’s been scientific studies but i imagine it varies from person to person lol
I mean the fact that most of those guys are cranks is a point in favour of the “keeps you from making bad decisions” theory
well, sometimes those are more for extreme addictions/cutting down on porn
tho i remember reading an anecdote about how a guy would take a masturbation break like a week before he had some wrestling match schedule and the buildup would help him win lol.
I’ve heard something similar from several sportsy people. I have a feeling a lot of that is in their head, but hey … whatever works.
According to Michael Reeves who was in creator clash it genuinely can have an impact on your boxing. His coach told him no jerking it for 2 weeks and he caved, and his coach could immediately tell. He was off his game after
From what I remember there’s some evidence it has a short term effect, but that long term abstinence doesn’t have any. Of course, there’s no difference here between masturbation and sex. And unlikely there’s any difference between either and a wet dream.
So the coach might well notice a change immediately after, but how long until it went away and he was back to the baseline.
Lot’s of really non-scientific beliefs about these things. Often reinforced by confirmation bias.
And/or what the coach noticed was that he looked guilty.
Or it’s just a coincidence that his coach suspected diddling that time, and was right.
Or his coach actually heard him doing it.
Or his coach had wrongly suspected him of wanking off multiple times but Reeves only remembers that one time he was right.
Or his coach said something a lot more generic which Reeves interpreted as coach having guessed about the wank.
Our brains are just extremely good at inferring causality, but they’re often wrong.
Or because he’d been told repeatedly that it would affect him, he believed it would affect him, and that affected him. I think that’s called the nocebo effect, when it’s something negative? Something like that, anyway.
I had assumed that a core part of the NNN thing was that December 1st was The Fappening.
If mastrubating kept people from making bad decisions, I wouldn’t have been married for eighteen years.
I, uh, hope you’re okay!!
[Holding back a deluge of severely NSFW remarks]
Okay Joyce, the first session was free, but after this you’re gonna have to pay. I’m sure Dorothy’s rates are more than reasonable.
They have to be if Walky could afford them.
Something something mommy domme something something
Excuse me? Sorry. Dotty? Sorry. Dotty? Sorry.
If anything Dina is a million times the dommy mommy Dotty is. 😤
@The Wellerman: I MEAN. What’s that line again, “ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars”? Except with dinosaurs, and in this case it’s “ask not the Gallimimus how the Utahraptor hunts.”
Dommy Mini. Mini Dommy Dina? Dina, the Tiny Dommy?
Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg!
No! No! Hard-boiled eggs are NOT the right tool for that job! Buy one made of silicone, for God’s sake!!
…Is this that thing I’ve heard about people melting silicone eggs in their asses?
Wait, is that a thing? I was just joking about not putting a hard-boiled egg anywhere you might uhhhhh regret, it isn’t safe.
Not to be gross, but wouldn’t you be able to get the egg out the old-fashioned way? That’s kinda what that section of the body is for.
That part of the body is meant to handle squishy, yielding stuff rather than something as hard as an egg. If memory serves, the fact that the plumbing is kept in a vacuum means the egg can also be yanked out of your hands and up the tubes. Getting it in through the sphincter is one thing, since the vacuum “helps.” Getting it out through the sphincter means fighting the pressure difference, and an egg doesn’t squish like a turd does.
What the hell is this thread?
See, uh, and cancel me if this is TMI, my (admittedly crude) jest referred to the idea of putting the egg into one’s vagina.
Which, well, a younger Sajuuk may have had a fun sexual time with a lady involving the misuse of a hard-boiled egg that became suddenly not fun when the egg got…stuck, and activity abandoned the bedroom for like thirty minutes of panicked pushing on the toilet while both of us tried to calm the other down as we mutually became more and more afraid we would end up local ER urban legends.
Thankfully, this didn’t happen; the egg came out. BUT YEAH. TL;DR: if you have that kink, use something artificial! It’s all the fun and less of the risk!!
I had an asthma attack laughing at this
Moral of the story: the ‘flared base’ rule isn’t just for your ass
Yeah, artificial eggs wouldn’t actually be much better. Flared base or cord or something.
Or a pull chain like the light in my closet. Complete with clicking noises.
Congratulations on not becoming some medical professional’s favourite ER story
What did I start here? I am sorry. The egg is for eating. And my comment was a Terry Pratchett quote. Cause when you get the chance to quote Sir Terry, you got to quote Sir Terry. Those are the rules. For the Glorious Revolution!
https://wiki.lspace.org/Glorious_Revolution
Nah, nah, I decided to take it to the pervert joke zone, you aren’t at fault.
I read your comment and the following ones and was like
Reg would be spinning in his grave. If he stayed in it, that is.
(Nightwatch was the book that made me fall in love with the Disc properly.)
It is a fantastic book. It made me laugh it made me cry. I love it so much-
In hindsight, a strange way to get introduced to The Watch, but then again it was also kinda perfect.
Where’s the old lady saying “I’ll have what she’s having.”?
**raises hand**
Ahem. I’ll have what –
**wife beckons**
Never mind. Goodnight dorks!
**departs with wife**
Apparently Dorothy needs to get herself off more.
I worry that Joyce will never repeat this, mostly since she doesn’t want to admit that she needs it. Not that you can’t go without it, but it certainly helps; Especially when it comes to crushes and not jumping into a relationship just because you are horny.
Unrelated to that, damn Joyce looks cute post-orgasm. Her face is awash with her sudden hotness and a post masturbation high.
and sex is BETTER than this?!? JOE! JOOOE!!
That’s what I’m expecting too.
Clearly, Dorothy has a poor understanding of the power of the O.
well she’s had her fun with walky and i assume danny before, but it makes sense someone like her would view it in a more logical way
I have so many feels about how Dotty chooses partners right now, and none of them are good.
Dorothy, I don’t think you have a good grasp of what are and what aren’t good decisions
I concur, and am also unpleasantly reminded of growing up with an incredibly controlling parent. While I think Dorothy is more genuine and well-meaning than my mom, her idea that “good decisions are only the ones I think are good” is pretty familiar. Might be to Joyce too, though with a more religious flavor since that’s Carol’s drug of choice. I don’t think Dorothy is evil, but she’s doing some stuff here that is ringing not-great bells for me.
Any joy I feel for Joyce learning about herself is marred by Dorothy’s smugness in the face of it.
Same
Yeah. Getting strong “Worst person you know has a good point” vibes. Glad Joyce had fun but fuck Dotty right now.
That and the say thank you bit really rubbed me up the wrong way (as opposed to Joyce rubbing herself the right way)
not just the say thank you but the ‘now you won’t make bad decisions’ ugh
Yeah. “Thank you”? Skin. Crawl. Gross.
Of course, I do always thank my partner after sex. But I don’t think Dorothy meant that.
Oh believe me, Dotty ain’t gonna be so smug once she realizes she was the catalyst for Joe and Joyce’s copulation! 😈
On that day, Dorothy will realize she just fucked up
Joe and Joyce, however, will have just fucked
Well, you know what they say about “Turning Saints Into the Sea”?
You can’t get there without “Jealousy”.
Or without “It was only a kiss; How did it end up like this??”
Or without “And they’re going to bed, and my stomach is sick, but it’s all in my head, but she’s touching his
Chest, now
He takes off her dress, now
Let
Me
Go”
Dorothy is being insufferable imo.
I am eagerly awaiting the realization that Dotty just gave Joyce the equivalent of her first bong rip.
There is no way Joyce is not going to go full horn dog, chasing the orgasm dragon after alllllll the nonsense and stress she’s been under for the last… entire life.
Oh my God, please let Sarah have been right about what happens after Joyce pratfalls into her first orgasm. :’D
If she is Joe needs to find a place to hide, probably Danny and Walky, too. And everyone on the male and of the floor. And probably Jason and Doc too.
She goes Full Out Yandere akin to Shimoneta’s Anna where she pelvic thrusts the knob off a locked door to get at her intended.
I think it’s a fantastic idea Dorothy. You don’t know what you’re talking about!
Also you don’t get to say “no pants in the lobby is a bad idea” after saying “Masturbating in the laundry room is a good idea”
lol idk how many other ppl will come across her in the lobby but it’d just might look like she’s in her jammies to other ppl
tho they prolly should go back and gather their laundry as well if it ever finished (wonder what the likelihood is of their stuff getting stolen, i can totally imagine being tempted to take a really nice shirt [or weirdly abandoned, there is a laundry mat in some business park i’ve been to but i also occasionally see abandoned socks/shirts. a loose sock i can understand not noticing but feels like a whole shirt would stick out lol])
I’d say that a dormitory hallway is one thing but the lobby is quite another.
I was grinning from ear to ear with that “thankies”, but then Ruth reminded me
Eyyy what pants? They’re being laundered as we speak!
This reminded me, not Sierra
It’s always nice to be reminded that Sierra sometimes has to leave.
Let’s…. try that again.
https://dumbingofage.com/need-2
Hey wait a sec… You still have laundry to fold Joyce.
I think she’s folded enough laundry already, amiright? Hehe.
That’s not really a euphemism but if I say it with a wink and a nudge it sounds like one right?
https://oddstuffmagazine.com/funny-pictures-august-15-2016.html/i-like-my-women-like-i-like-my-laundry
Do you realize this is fucked up, or you think this is cute or heartwarming in some way? The whole arc is just completely abnormal.
Thank you!
Its certainly weird and completely out of character for both of them
Is it really that far out of character?
Dorothy does have a “mothering” attitude. Directing Joyce’s sex life might have been outside her wheelhouse at one point but it does seem to fit in with other events in recent days (Roz’s taunting, Joyce’s interest in joe)
Joyce used to be repressed, but she is quite close to Dorothy (so following her lead on this isn’t that out of character.) And she did just hear of Becky and Dina having sex. So that might motivate her to try experimenting sexually.
In the sense of ‘I can see a character behaving this way and it making sense, even if its unusual’
…Yes?
Joyce’s character is changing / growing. She has done many previously “out of character” things as the story goes on.
Dorothy… has done stuff like this before, and people were upset in the comments then, too. Take the time Walky broke up with her over her demanding he not wear his pajama jeans; Joyce forced him to recant, and as soon as she was out of the room, Dorothy demanded Walky strip naked, gave him an Ocular Pat-down, said “I don’t remember why I was mad, do you?” and walked out. (Responding more to shylar now.) Some readers found this cute / endearing, some were quite upset by it.
People have different boundaries.
Yes out of character and weird. I guess they can’t all be home runs.
yeah even if one likes this development, you have to admit that it’s been… developed in an upsetting way
I feel like this would be better said: It worked out (both in ‘successful’ masturbation and Joyce seeming untraumatized), but Dorothy took the wrong way to get there; a lot of things could have gone wrong, and they could have pretty easily been avoided.
like if they were driving somewhere, and there were two options: a road with lots of twists and turns, but plenty of room, and no other drivers on it, or a road that usually had cars speeding along it, with barely two lanes and no shoulder and a sheer dropoff, and potholes to shit and blind corners.
Dorothy took the latter, and they got there safely. But she could have just taken the safer road to begin with, and chose not to.
I think it’s cute. Cope.
I’ve literally never seen that term used outside of greentext screenshots.
Okay?
I don’t know what that is.
It’s an image of a screen with text on it! It’s green.
… I definitely know what I’m talking about because I am hip with what the kids do, honest. YOU’RE THE WEIRD ONE HERE, NOT ME.
You’ve never been on twitch then, cool.
I agree with taffy this is cute. Cope, seethe, mald
I don’t know. For comparison, would it be more or less fucked up if they just had sex? Is there some fear that Joyce has no agency in this situation where she’s in the room all by herself with explicit permission to do or not do whatever she wants or something?
Now, Joyce’s church and especially her mom spending 18 years teaching her that fear and pain is love and pleasure and relief is sin to make her terrified of touching herself because it will anger the invisible sky daddy even though she doesn’t want to believe in him anymore, that was fucked up.
This.
Like I almost feel like the comment section would somehow be less irritable if Dorothy just straight out had sex with Joyce. It’s really weird.
Amalie, my read on this story is basically that Dorothy is “helping” Joyce for the wrong reasons. Additionally, the way Dorothy has been talking to and handling Joyce strongly signifies a controlling, parent-child relationship, which is really not healthy.
I think if they’d had sex this would’ve been even worse.
As far as Joyce’s agency; Dorothy’s motivations are basically to stop Joyce from wanting Joe. This is obviously not going to work. I think once Joyce realizes this, there will be a breakdown between them that hinges on this moment.
To elaborate on the agency thing, Joyce has gone along with this because she wants to JO and she implicitly trusts Dorothy. Within that context she is acting autonomously. But Dorothy is doing this as an exchange (don’t fuck Joe), which it doesn’t seem like Joyce really understands. Once the terms of that exchange are violated and Dorothy jerks her leash, that autonomy suddenly vanishes.
I mean, Dorothy said it was about Joyce considering Joe as a romantic prospect, so if you think Joyce doesn’t understand that’s part of it, not sure what that says about your opinion of Joyce.
Nor do I get at all what you mean by “exchange” here. Dorothy thinks Joyce’ll make better decisions this way. That’s not about an exchange. Joyce doesn’t owe her anything for this. There’s no indication Dorothy’s thinking like that at all.
Joyce hasn’t been shown to respond to this aspect of Dorothy’s stated intentions at all, really, so we don’t actually know whether she agrees or disagrees with that part of it. Joyce has only been shown nervously consenting.
By exchange, I mean this: Dorothy says I’m going to teach you to JO… so that you don’t get with Joe, which I perceive to be a mistake. Joyce has gone along with this so far, because she wanted to JO. But when Dorothy sees that Joyce still wants Joe, how do you think she will react?
We don’t know yet, but I strongly believe she’ll feel like Joyce fucked her over. “I taught you to JO so you wouldn’t want Joe.”
Exchange might not be the right word, but it’s trying to fence her in.
Sure, but that’s nothing like an exchange. There are no terms to violate and Dorothy doesn’t have a leash to jerk to make Joyce’s autonomy vanish.
I don’t see Dorothy as trying to fence her in with some kind of implicit agreement, just as trying to break her from the horny crush she thinks Joyce has. Will she be upset when it doesn’t work? Probably. So what. That happens. It doesn’t mean she somehow takes control of Joyce.
Joyce may not agree with Dorothy’s intention of this making her change her mind about Joe, but it’s been openly stated. She should be aware of it. Given her own internal struggles and denial of her physical attraction to him, I could even see her going along with it in hopes that would fade back and she could think about it more clearly.
I have to insist that there are in fact informal terms being set up here: don’t get with Joe, just masturbate instead.
She’s “just trying to break Joyce’s crush” by inserting herself directly, without prompting, into a rushed situation that should require a lot of care, patience and understanding, and not have any weird motivations behind it? She’s doing this not only because she doesn’t trust Joe, but she apparently doesn’t trust Joyce to take care of her own shit!
And when she gets upset that it doesn’t work: this could shake their very close friendship very badly. It’s not very “so what” to me. These two are trauma bonded. It’s quite a serious thing.
You can insist all you want. I don’t agree.
I think hopes that masturbation will make her less horny and that will make her not fall for Joe’s ploys, but that’s not the same as even informal terms.
I went back to the strip where Dorothy says she’s doing this to stop her considering Joe as a romantic prospect, and what I’m seeing is that Joyce, by comic logic, doesn’t really register anything Dorothy is saying after “sexually relieve yourself.”
Sorry for the triple post but if Joyce KNEW that this was Dorothy’s intention and still went along with it, I’d be even more surprised and weirded out!
as entitled to your own opinion and feelings as you are, probably ain’t a great idea to tell other people, who are different than you with different viewpoints and life experiences, how they ought to feel about this arc.
I think it’s cute and funny, lmao
Yeah I’m kinda on both sides with this one. It bounced between cute and weird and weirdly cute like some kind of crazed hormonal bouncy ball.
It would be real fucking cool if we could avoid direct personal attacks on other commenters, as has been stated before, like, five hundred times
I mean, we won’t, and I’m just waiting for this to become another session of thinly veiled “if you like this you are a rape apologist”-type shit, but wouldn’t that be a nice dream?
In fairness, this isn’t a direct attack. It’s an implied, easily deniable one that can be defended as just asking a question, even though the obvious implication is that if you don’t think this is fucked up, something is wrong with you.
So yeah, not direct. Just snakey.
That’s true, I should’ve just said “if we could avoid personal attacks” because that’s what I mean, they’re shitty and they don’t add anything to the discussion and they’re the thing in this comments section that actually pisses me off.
And I know I get snarky as fuck, which is a part of myself that comes From Circumstances and I’m trying to rein it in and work on myself, but I would like to believe I haven’t personally attacked anyone in the comments of this storyline. I’ve been in awe of a couple doctrines, but like, it’s not my place to judge and I mean that genuinely.
If I *have* made people feel personally crappy, I’m sorry. Real people matter more than fucking Joyce or Dorothy, who are actually made of ink and don’t feel anything.
So that being said: personal attacks can fuck off. If you don’t like what someone is saying about the storyline and you can’t say something without pissing on them personally, keep scrolling. It’s the right thing to do.
Aaaand there’s my drama fix! Tyvm ^^
Enlighten me. Why this is fucked up and not cute and heart-warming? The only problem I can see is Dorothy’s motivations.
Er, Joyce walking to her room in stained underwear because Dorothy pushed her to masturbate in public?
Dorothy is trying to prevent this, and sincerely, and this is mostly on the wacky hijinks category (together with Walky forgetting his pajamas open fly) not “fucked up”.
It’s completely adorable. It’s also massively fucked up. There’s a serious chance that once Joyce comes back to her room and has some time to reflect on what happened, from blurting out “we’re not going to hanky-panky” in front of Carla while blushing to walking through the dorm half-naked and with presumably visible wet stains on her underwear, she’s going to start avoiding Dorothy. Even just as the person who was around while this happened. Moreso as the person who MADE this happen to her.
Like, Joyce has stated her boundaries around sex talk. Dorothy ignored those boundaries and pushed her into a public humiliation.
Oh sure, she enjoyed herself in the process. She might even actually learn a useful life skill out of it.
It’d just be very reasonable for her to enjoy the life skill but not enjoy Dorothy’s company anymore, just out of the embarrassment coming up every single time.
“massively fucked up” — has masturbated in semi-public place and may have forgotten to conceal stains before heading the dorm.
God, if this is “massively fucking up” what you would call getting pregnant from an one-night stand or driving drunk and crashing the car against another person? This is some ridiculously inoffensive shit.
Also, since Joyce has been “diagnosed” it seems like people treat her like a child incapable of asserting herself. If she was that uncomfortable, she would not followed with it, Dorothy did not force her at any moment and even questioned if she did not want to stop in the middle. When she became uncomfortable with walking in public places she simply did not go alone anymore, she has no problem pushing the brake when she is uncomfortable with something. Which public humiliation? No public humiliation has happened yet, and it is not like Joyce do not embarrass herself in front of others frequently (with much worser things like the internalized racism of the first times she did meet Jacob).
This is being blown completely out of proportion.
I’ll go with creepy cute and sweetly weird.
. . . and masturbating in the laundry room is a GOOD decision?
Fully agreed.
Yeah, Dorothy’s really only done half the job here. A real bestie would follow this up leaning into a vibrator discussion or breaking the shame of self touching, but baby steps I guess?
I don’t feel like this is the right baby strep toward doing that
To be fair, any baby strep would be met with disapproval. And antibiotics.
To be honest, I’m kind of surprised Dorothy didn’t lead with a lecture about how self-touching is perfectly normal and nothing to be ashamed of or a vibrator and instructions on use, because that seems like a Dorothy approach.
IMO, this worked better than anything like that would have. It was all about the shame of self-touch, but through support and encouragement, which is why it worked as well as it did.
Its was Dorothys idea to masturbate in the laundry so its a good idea
Name one better place. I’ll wait all day if I have to.
Uhh, the clock tower? You get a way better view AND if you time it right you get the full chime effect, plus it’s got WAY less foot traffic. Checkmate, laundryists.
Why would you masturbate next to a symbol of nonexistence? That’s oppressive.
It’s all about sticking it to the void!
but beware lest the void starts to stick it to you.
Upper floors of the library. More isolated, better chance of elevators. Drawback: The good chance someone(s) has beat you to the best nooks.
Actually, I like this one. They can read Earthsea while they do it.
On top of a giant plush velociraptor.
Dorothy knows better than to encroach on the territory of the Lady Saruyama.
Hey. Nothing’s stopping her from getting her own.
I assume she hasn’t got a spare $1500 laying around somewhere. That seems like a decent obstacle.
Literally anywhere with a lock on the door.
Sure, and then the lock gets stuck and she gets stuck during a fire. Come on, be practical.
OK Dwight.
….D. Eisenhower? 🤨
That’s what windows are for. Who even uses doors, anyway?
i’m turning panel four into another discord emote
Dorothy is being entirely normal about this.
Yes.
strange way to go about it, but the results are Good Joyce Faces
Take my non-existent upvote.
The Best Joyce faces.
Based on how this unfolded, I think Joyce already knew that pressing her thighs together with rhythmic movement felt good; she just hadn’t gone “all the way” thanks to her rigid upbringing. So really, Dorothy taught her nothing, she just pressured Joyce into ignoring her inhibitions.
Normally I’m all for teaching repressed religious kids sexual freedom as a former repressed religious kid myself, but mutual masturbation is not how I’d go about it.
Yeah it makes Dorothy’s smug order for a thank you extra patronizing. Still think the build up to this scene was very problematic and can only hope Dorothy will have some later realization about how she has no say in her friends dating life.
I mean, that’s a lesson in and of itself. This just is some deprogramming.
Wasn’t even mutual! More like “enforced.”
Well Dorothy did help teach her the usefulness of vibrations/warmth in sexual stimulation from using the dryer. Granted an actual vibrator might have worked faster but Joyce probably would have felt even less comfortable with one of those. So there is that. (Not sure if Joyce would have thought of it herself)
You’re right on the money.
That’s not what she taught her though.
It was the encouragement and support to get past the shame, not the mechanics.
My understanding is that Joyce has had orgasms before, but they were more like happy accidents. Not deliberately induced, which would have been sinful. (It’s not sinful if a friend is coaxing you.)
Dorothy, you’re doing creepy-ass shit for bad-faith reasons and I really really hope I get to watch it all blow up in your face, you terrible friend.
My hope is she goes right to Joe all horny and stuff and Joe’s like “hey let’s take this slow and is a super gentleman and when Joyce tells Dorothy all about it Dorothy’s like “oh no. I’m the creep in this situation”.
That would be great, I agree!
Yes
This is what I want at this point. I’m praying this arc is over with and done for now.
I hope we get a “second coming”!
For Joyce’s sake, yes, can’t stop with just one.
That’s how it should go.
Joyce, you’re making choices of your own free will and it’s pissing people off, keep doing you girl!
There is absolutely 0 contradiction between “Dorothy is doing creepy-ass shit for bad-faith reasons” and “Joyce made choices of her own free will”.
I’d go so far as to say that I haven’t seen a single person pissed off by Joyce’s choices, but feel free to enlighten me.
Seem to have been quite a few thinking Joyce is being coerced and isn’t actually making choices here. So people being pissed about what Dorothy has done to Joyce kind of translates to being pissed about what Joyce is doing, if she’s actually doing it of her own free will.
I don’t think that follows at all.
By definition, Joyce is either consenting or a victim, and in either case she’s not doing anything wrong.
The person who’s doing shitty things and whom we are annoyed at is Dorothy, and those things are shitty REGARDLESS of whether Joyce is ultimately okay with things or not, in the same way it’s still a stupid idea to light a cigarette at a gas station even when you DON’T start a fire.
Joyce can be getting coerced AND making choices. These things are entirely not mutually exclusive.
Remember when Joyce asked if she could leave if she said it was stupid? Because she felt like she was being coerced and like Dorothy might say that she couldn’t? And then she didn’t leave because she made a choice not to?
Both. Things.
That’s an oddly literal reading. Do you actually believe Joyce did not feel free to leave? Maybe she was just conveying that she wasn’t sure and might chance her mind at some point. I’m a non-confrontational person so i dance around disagreeing outright with people, even friends, in just this sort of way, all the time.
Yup, this exactly.
Honestly I’m a little mad at this comic. I JUST finished drawing A cute Joyce for no particular reason. And NOW I got a completely opposite Joyce I REALLY wanna draw.
https://imgur.com/a/xaQaAKs
it’s a black screen for me, dude
I dunno if that’s necessarily opposite. Looks like she’s trying to seduce Joe in that outfit! 😍
I wouldn’t be so sure. Unless perhaps she had some ulterior motives back then.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/dress/
messed up the link.
Like that night Joe saw her ☺️
With the obvious change, of course
Yo, that’s a great drawing!!! She looks super cute!
it’s simple: a before/after draw
You’ve did the before. Now, draw the after, that will be look like today’s Joyce.
got it?
I like her in the faux corseted top, but I don’t see her as comfortable in a faux corseted top, because it emphasizes her bust too much.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/dress/
It’s literally just her dress from her first date with Joe.
Take a moment to enjoy what you’ve done first. This is adorable.
That IS cute
Not going to stop her from having sex with Joe. Dorothy may have actually provided the catalyst for chain reaction that leads to the two having sex.
that’d def makes things more awkward if that’s how she does things, instead of impulse kissing him and just like “excuse me i have to go into a private room to rub one out” or so.
wonder how becky would react “i just had my first orgasm with dorothy” lol
Speaking having to go rub one out in a private room. Where does Joyce go from here she can’t or shouldn’t goto the laundry room everytime she wants to masturbate given its a public area and she refused to use her fingers or an aid. She just used friction and the vibrations of the washing machine. Hopefully be more open to other methods.
Maybe hope for something natural like an earthquake? 8D; https://youtu.be/lKXL7InZqxY
Reminds me of those Earth Chan memes LOL 🤣
It seemed pretty clear to me that she used her fingers in the end. Dorothy suggested it and said she’d leave the room to keep watch. Joyce rejected, but moments later told Dorothy to leave.
Seems obvious to me.
Future Joyce self-pleasuring will have higher and higher chance that Joe will be the subject of sexual desire rather than Amber’s smutfics.
Calling it now.
Me too! I mean Joe being the subject of the bonus strip is but one part of a very obvious breadcrumb trail.
Hell, I wouldn’t rule out Joyce having switched from “whatever Dorothy queued up” to “Joe’s Instagram” at some point in the interlude there.
Or that Joe/Roz sex tape. She’s found it before.
You should give Joyce your pants, Dottie.
Or just both go trouserless as sense of solidarity. If you’re both doing it confidently everyone who sees you is gonna be embarrassed that THEY’RE wearing pants.
I won’t work, because Dorothy’s pants … are smaller than Joyce’s omgImsorrry😳🙈
Joyce got that honky-tonk badonkadonk
Honky-tonk honky-tonk bada bonk badonkadonk! 😛
Joyce is thicker than a bowl of oatmeal, certainly.
Did it get some relation with Joyce “getting” a new model?
(The alt comment Willis has made in this day)
Willis was talkin about Carla, Amos.
tbh i’m surprised she didn’t have any backup pants/pajama bottoms for her to borrow afterwards
but “say thank you”, like, really. You sure you don’t wanna be a primary school teacher instead of president, Dotty ?
‘something something topical joke about how the average voter’ is as/less mature than elementary school students
“Computers may be twice as fast as they were in 1973, but the average voter is as drunk and stupid as ever!”
– Richard Nixon’s Head, Futurama
Could she be any more smug and self-assured?
No! No! I was reading sexy undertones into that interaction and now it’s all BING’D UP! What have you done?! D:
You see sexy, I just saw silly humor, but either way, you aren’t alone in seeing that positively, and now neither am I!
It’s not just you two either.
Seriously, that was so patronizing. And the little lecture about “I did this so now you will make what I consider to be good decisions” is just…ick. After Joyce told everyone to butt out of her sex life, too. There’s been something so infantilizing- not for the first time- about Dorothy’s whole attitude toward Joyce lately and this was just too much.
Honestly I think it the way the story is paced is contributing a lot to the kind of odd tone of this arc. Enough time has passed that I think it feels pretty clear that pretty much everything that’s happened since Joyce and Joe went to art class is happening very quickly both in universe and out, mostly to stoke the flames of tension between Dorothy and JoJo.
I think the part that makes it feel odd is that the intentionally quick pace has also extended to Dorothy’s impulsive choice to do this with Joyce, specifically RIGHT after the story even slows down a little to highlight the tension between Dorothy and Joyce. Dorothy feels like she’s losing control and is trying more desperately to feel in control, and Joyce is feeling suffocated by people’s expectations of her actions and life.
This is the big dramatic tension underlying not just the Joe/Joyce storyline, but it feels like it’s been there since the semester started and only gets more and more explosive. The specific ways that Dorothy talks both to and about Joyce, already a very prominent sign of their dynamic, is spelled out and highlighted in detail to the audience
… And then *because* this is an impulsive choice, the comic immediately goes into the washroom jerk off. And it’s really fun and funny and cute and hot and all that good stuff! It’s paced and written like a more first semester style whacky hijinks adventure, and I always love those and I love getting a change of pace from the very semester 2 style intense relationship tension.
But..it IS specifically about the thing Joyce reacted the most to, and is the main thing the audience had their attention drawn to as The Emotional Core To Take Seriously. It’s been kind of hard to enjoy the arc when everything about it is very genuinely fun and funny but I feel like its coming at the worst possible time in the comic….which is the ONLY time it could have happened?
Honestly yeah. Narratively I think this should’ve happened before Joyce’s outburst outside the quad. That would’ve contextualized this as “yet another aspect of Joyce’s life that Dorothy is controlling” and not “Dorothy vehemently not respecting her wishes and meddling in spite of them”. Which if that’s what the narrative is going for, then Kudos. But if that is the case, Joyce sure hasn’t made those feelings known.
That’s a hell of a good point, right there.
I mean, Joyce doesn’t have an easy time making her feelings on those thigns known. She was kind of brought up to go along with things she’s uncomfortable with.
I expect she was left emotionally exhausted after her previous attempts to assert her boundaries, so now she doesn’t have it in her to even remember that boundaries exist and Dorothy might be doing something objectively wrong anymore.
Y’know, I think you’re into something with this analysis…but I also think that, yeah, this is kinda the only time it could’ve happened? Because it’s clearly a spur-of-the-moment dumb fucking idea that Dorothy wouldn’t normally let herself follow through on?
I don’t know that I completely agree that there’s supposed to be as much focus on the dynamic of Dorothy as controlling VS. Joyce as controlled explicitly—I think it’s more a case of Joyce is cracking open all her old boundaries, all the old mechanisms of control, and discovering what it means to be a butterfly vs. a metaphorical caterpillar. It’s messy, as we saw with the Faith-Off, but it’s ultimately for the best.
ON THE OTHER HAND, in stark contrast, we have Dorothy, who seems to be undergoing a slow-motion internal breakdown and it’s definitely not for the best…but because of who she is, she’s incredible at masking it. And she’s good enough at masking it that it’s kind of a problem for the audience, because honestly, I don’t know what Dotty is thinking right now. I’m on Patreon and it doesn’t help, Dorothy’s whole…deal is very opaque at the moment and it’s kind of key to this storyline. We can kind of presume she’s falling apart, but how is that manifesting? What the hell is she thinking? Is this driven by a plan to go to Yale? To stay at IU? Does she have sexual/romantic feelings for Joyce? Does she know she does if so? Is there a jealousy element to her feelings about Joe or is it all a warped form of genuine concern?
Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll see until we hit the end of this storyline, which is maddening.
WITH OUR CURRENT KNOWLEDGE, Yoto, I’d have to personally disagree that it’d be narratively better to have Joyce’s outburst after this, because to me it’d feel…IDK, stale? Forced? It’d be very “oh, look, here’s this very obvious conflict”. The impulsivity and the downright weird quality of this whole arc has been part of the appeal, because it’s a sexy train wreck.
But it might be that Dorothy’s motivations really can’t live up to the hype, at which point I think maybe that narrative swap would’ve been the better idea.
I hope this makes sense.
I want to respond to this post more in the morning, but I wanted to thank you for your really fun analysis!! Talking about DoA in the comments can be really emotionally charged for some people. Its a nice change of pace to talk about it in more of a big picture, story structure kind of way and the way that may affect why some emotional beats hit differently than others.
Hey, you’re welcome, this was fun! I agree, it’s a much nicer change of pace to step back and like, talk about the narrative and theories of where it’s going and all.
1. I was going to say not having pants on isn’t a huge deal, but doing that in the hallway is less atypical than in the lobby, so yeah, put your pants on.
2. Nice undies! It’s a good color.
Purple is really growing on me ever since I started that one comic.
Purple is the perfect color for underoos when time traveling
Joyce’s underwear likely has visible wet stains on it from her… activity.
Dorothy feels so wrong in this entire mini-arc. Thankfully it’s over I guess.
Now for the hilarious times where Joyce’s newfound arousal will lead her directly into Joe’s arms.
“Joyce, I’ve taught you to strip down and masturbate in semi-public. I’ve done this to prevent you from hooking up with a guy who is very open about his womanizing ways, and also to prove my superiority over your other female friends. This will definitely never show up in a tell-all book when I’m running for public office.”
Dorothy, just freaking stop. You don’t understand Joyce’s life choices, and while I agree that the ability to masturbate is a useful life skill, this is not the way anybody should learn.
Joyce didn’t seem to mind it.
That doesn’t matter.
I pretty sure people fighting her battles and arguing on her behalf is what pissed her off before. She’s an adult, she has free will, and that *does* matter.
Naaaaah, people’s decisions about their own emotional states and their reactions to things don’t matter.
I want to clarify that I was responding seriously because I thought you were being serious. I was reading through comments on the previous strips and saw your position on this whole saga through a couple of your comments. I now understand you were being sarcastic.
I thought that might be a possibility, and decided it would be funnier to keep up the sarcasm whether you were serious or not.
She might change her mind about that when Dorothy gets in her face for continuing her thing with Joe.
Enjoying something in the moment and then wishing you’d never done it afterwords is a very real thing.
Or she might be fine with this and still be upset when Dorothy gets in her face about Joe.
Countdown until Joyce realizes she walked through the dorm in underwear visibly stained from masturbation.
Joyce very much minded it. She also did want to expand her sexual horizons and didn’t go all the way in saying no, but she did very much mind it and I expect she’s going to mind it even more when she’s no longer caught up in the moment and in Dorothy’s presence and realizes what the FUCK just happened. (Starting from blurting out sexual things in front of Carla. Oh boy. And that happened explicitly because of Dorothy pushing her past her comfort zone)
Dorothy, you can’t leave until you’ve cleaned up the wet spot(s).
I was waiting for someone to point this out. Also, her panties would probably be soaked. They kinda look like it in the last panel.
Dorothy’s petard is the fancy new kind that starts hoisting you right from the word go, I see!
A petard is an old-fashioned grenade, and “hoist” referred to being thrown into the air when it exploded in one’s face.
This has not done that juuuust yet.
If I was completely oblivious to the ways I was hurting and hindering myself in some way akin to Joyce, I sure would be happy if I had a friend like Dororthy. As much as I’d give her shit for being smug about it, later, when we’re laughing at the memories.
(I mean, maybe I am.)
I see your point, but having been bullrushed by “friends” into things that were not good for me that they thought were what I needed, I can’t say I think it’s universal.
Dorothy had better hope that Joyce’s thoughts tomorrow morning are “I’m sure glad she helped me through that” and not “In retrospect, what the fuck did I do?”
This arc rules. It’s very Star Trek: Voyager
Wait, who broke the warp 10 barrier and got turned into a giant salamander?
Is that what happens in that show?
I stand by that episode as being fun and weird and adequate. I was so happy when they recanonized it. Just as a reminder, it was two people who got turned into salamanders, and they had hot salamander sex. Actually, I think it would have to be Dorothy as Paris, breaking rules and going too fast, and Joyce as Janeway, kind of pulled along for the pleasurable ride.
You could have started and stopped at “hot salamander sex” and I’d have been sold. I’ve never watched any Star Trek except the old “half black/half white” episode, which I haven’t seen since I was a preteen.
Voyager is much maligned by a lot of fans, but the people who like Voyager, tend to REALLY like Voyager. It’s very all over the place.
To be fair, when Voyager’s good it’s really good. The two-parters Year of Hell and Equinox are the high water mark in my opinion.
When Voyager’s bad, it’s BAAAAD. The problematic relationship between Kes and Neelix. The abuse of the magic reset button. Seven’s catsuits that Jeri Ryan could hardly breathe in. Pretty much anything Rick Berman had a heavy hand in.
Threshold (the Warp 10 salamander episode) is widely panned as one of the worst episodes of any Trek series, if not the worst. But Voyager fans are PROUD of that! “Hell yeah! That awful thing is OUR shitty episode! Nobody can beat that!”
You don’t hear TOS fans shouting to the heavens about how wonderful it is that they have Spock’s Brain as their shitty episode. Ask TNG fans about Up The Long Ladder and they’ll look down at their shoes and mumble. DS9 fans will roll their eyes if you say “Allamaraine”. Enterprise fans start making excuses about their finale.
Maybe it’s because we’re used to being the franchise’s punching bag, but as a whole Voyager isn’t as bad as everyone claims it is.
Enterprise fans have no excuses, and deserve no excuses. They can go take a long road out of here, for a long time, a time that is not near. D:<
Garak: “All of Voyager is worth watching.”
Bashir: “Even the bad episodes?”
Garak: “Especially the bad episodes.”
Enterprise is great, except for the parts where they tried to *headdesk* process 9/11 in real time. Why anyone ever thought that’d be a good idea is beyond me. Oh, and the plan for how to continue the series was awful, but fortunately it didn’t get to happen.
…and the title song is ridiculous, of course; but the tune to the end credits is beautiful.
@BOOSTER SHOT: Now I’m imagining Dorothy screaming “PEPPERONI PIZZA!” while chunks of her face fall off! Damn it! I hate days like today!
@Taffy: Voyager is very weird and experimental, I think you’d like it, but you know what you might like even more is Deep Space Nine, the Star Trek that has:
-the Irishman union boy who is the avatar of suffering
-space capitalist idiots
-sexy bisexual doctor twinks
-Jadzia Dax
-Space Jesus Dad, the captain who loves baseball and fucking HATES Picard
-scathing indictments of colonialism
-the goo men
I grew up watching Voyager and liked it, and having watched most of DS9 recently I love it too.
All the older Star Trek shows seemed to have at least a few weird episodes like that. Doesn’t make me enjoy those shows any less.
That episode won an Emmy, dang it! It deserves at least some respect!
(seriously, yes, Threshold won an Emmy, for Makeup. And it legit earned that Emmy, the makeup for pre-Salamander Tom Paris was absolutely amazing)
Honestly, Threshold was a huge goofy mess but at least things happened in it, so I give it way more respect than “Twisted”.
Congratulations, a new avatar to @butts.
I am wondering who is going to see Joyce and Immediately Know.
Please take my imaginary upvote.
damn she got that good post nut bliss huh?
First time’s always a doozy.
Dotty is putting WAAAAY too much faith in the power of a good shlick.
“say thank you” + that panel 3 face made me TOL (tutt out loud)
Everyone hates Dotty’s smug little grin and mommy-dom “say thank you” and I’m just over here like “Dorothy, you have to cup her chin when you say that. Where are your elbow-length leather gloves. It’s like you don’t know anything about this role.”
*Bonk*
Horny jail!
I’m already serving a life sentence! Strike me all you wish!!
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Joyce panel 4 would make a great Gravatar. Also, now I totally feel silly for overreacting to Dorothy’s plan. It’s not how I would have done it, but no trauma or strife came from it, so I got no complaint.
I was much more ok with it when Joyce revealed she already used friction before to do this. It felt like either she was forcing herself to do it because trusting Dorothy or that she was out of character due to the multiple incidents in that school year until she revealed she was no stranger to it
At that point I relaxed
I agree, it’s a good grav. Now, I’m not saying I’m the fastest Grav maker in the comments (that’s for y’all to say, about me), but I forgot what I was saying halfway through this sentence.
I’ve (checks notes)… Always said Taffy is the fastest Grav maker in the comments
Even if you’re not, I’m sure your Gravatar buff is, by far, the biggest among all readers here.
You can changes avatar like, one per hour.
Got curious and counted. Apparently I have 72 of them stocked.
Look, it’s not hoarding if I use them all.
Man. These pictures of skinny college girls in casual adorable PJs make me sad I never got to be a cute skinny college girl.
(Not here for argument about who is or isn’t “skinny,” none of them are fat, is the point)
Some of us will never be a cute skinny college girl, and that’s probably for the best. Nobody would get anything done otherwise.
Yeah it’d be pretty cool to be a skinny college girl right about now
(That’s what the Wellbutrins for, yay)
Yeah… Not many (any?) fat people in the dumbiverse. There’s decent diversity in the cast but the body type spectrum skews skinny
A happy ending! 🙂
But come on Dot.
Some energy was released…yes,
but Joyce will surely still fawn after Joe. <..> <.<
This is the beginning of Joyce’s slippery slope into debauchery that will inevitably lead to the most highly anticipated Slipshine of all time: “Joyce Snaps And Sucks, Like, A Billion Dicks”.
no no, it would have to be titled “Joyce Snaps and Sucks, Like, a Billion Wieners” because she would still say “wiener” ~<3
Okay, so while I’m broadly okay with this arc (no one in it is acting perfectly, but it’s within the bounds of acceptable behavior — barely) I’m now firmly on team “what the fuck Dorothy, the laundry room?” If it leads directly out into the lobby, that means it’s both a co-ed facility and *way* more likely to get sudden traffic than if it was a single-wing laundry room, and her precautions were inadequate. Yeah, if anyone had walked in before she stood guard it would have ‘just’ been two girls sitting on the laundry machines with nothing strictly inappropriate to see… but that’s still just playing with fire.
Fire is fun to play with, in fairness. 🎇
I’m assuming it doesn’t lead directly into the lobby, but the direction Joyce is heading will take her straight to the lobby where the elevator up to her floor is.
Because the vibration from the machines was a key part of the plan.
With them living there and us not, Dorothy likely knows better than us that it doesn’t get that much traffic, so the risk was low.
And as you say, before she was standing guard there really wasn’t anything inappropriate to see.
that’s well beyond post nut clarity lmao
Post nut enlightenment.
Post-nut unity with Yog-Sothoth.
Post nut journey to the 50th Dead World
*plays “Creeping Shadows” from Bleach OST on hacked muzak*
*kicks down door, brings megaphone up to mouth*
Oh would you looky here, a clear description of Dorothy’s motivations topped with even more incredibly patronizing dialogue where Dorothy talks down to her like a child.
Yes! That lovely face of who is happy, satisfied and ready to do a lot of bad decisions!
Back at it again at Krispy Kream baby.
Telling your friend who was raised in a cult, trusts you implicitly and obeys you like a child that you’re going to teach them to JO so they don’t fuck someone you don’t like is not giving them autonomy.
I’m seriously going to try and pretend this arc just…didn’t happen. It’s so radically out of character for Dorothy to make this absurd suggestion and Joyce to go along with it meekly that I think we’d all be better off erasing this chapter from our brains.
So who is it that wakes up saying “I just had the the most terrible wet dream!”?
Mary, of course!
Yotomoe!
Right so I’m gonna just pretend none of this happened.
Honestly one can hope, leading to Joyce finally telling Dorothy to screw off, leading to the ticking emotional time bomb that is Dorothy to FINALLY explode!
Now I want Roz to convince Joyce into a new kink that ends up with Dorothy bound spread-eagle to a wall rack, with a ball gag, in a situation she herself consented to, but would be surprised by a twist when she suddenly observes Joyce aggressively screwing Joe on top, so Dorothy can have her Humble Pie and see how powerless she is to control Joyce. She will scream against the gag, trying to correct Joyce, but Roz has White Noise playing in Stereo. Roz wins. Sexuality. Perfect Victory.
What-in-the-god-damn.gif
vader-filling-brita-while-standing-in-the-ocean-wat.jpg
I invoke Yotomo to cast a draw of this scene.
Seconded. We invoke thee, Yotomoe.
Haha, no. That sounds like a lot.
Also I just don’t wanna 😛
Alright so I think I’m officially going to never scroll down to these comments ever again.
Flattery will get you everywhere.
Love the panel of that bonus strip. Joe is doing an Obi Wan after Alderaan. “It’s as if a million Joyces cried out in ecstasy and we’re suddenly silenced.”
I really hope this turns into the plot of “Office Space” where Joyce has a Mental Breakthrough and suddenly doesn’t give a feck.
Honestly, I think we would have been better off leaving “repressed female character masturbates with a dryer machine” in the late 90s/early 2000s sitcoms where it originated. Not sure it ever had much basis in reality, and the public washroom/specific characters in play each add their own element of awkwardness and unreality. I haven’t been jerked this hard out of the story (no pun intended) since the league of evil dads kidnapping.
To be sure, there’s no guaranteed way to avoid bad decisions. In fact, following any plan that is intended to make you immune to making bad decisions is probably itself a bad decision. This is not to say that you can’t avoid bad decisions, but I think you need to go into it with the understanding that a bad decision is always possible. While you can attempt eternal vigilance, mistakes will happen.
Dorothy is being a smarmy ass here but every time i read one of *those* comments it just makes me want to dig my heels in and call her a saint out of spite
Anyway, this is hot right? Joyce is totally hot here? That’s not just me, it’s definitely hot right? Yoto?
It’s the hair. It’s the askew glasses. It’s the cronked out eyes. Girl’s glowing so hard she’s practically luminous.
The Oracle, I’d say we get to see her shape much more than usual. And yes, she does seem relaxed and happy, which is attractive in itself.
She does look very nice in this strip. If I was a co-ed and saw this, it would make an impression ^.^
Good God, get over yourself Dorothy.
Are you going to put that on your resume?
How would that even be worded on a resume? Not every action needs to be performed with the expectation of using it as leverage for a potential job.
Isn’t that why dorothy does anything? /j
Developed and oversaw the implementation of a program to teach critical life skills to disadvantaged youths.
Hahahahaha omg
Dorothy: “Now you’re protected from making bad decisions!”
Joyce: (Goes out with Joe probably)
Dorothy: “Not like that”
This. Literally just this lmao.
Yeah, but what the heart wants isn’t always want the genitals want. And vice-versa.
Joyce in bed that night: if hanky panky alone feels that good…. what would it feel like if i was holding hands with joe?
Or, even better yet, if he were to rub his butt on my face!?
other things aside, what pants is Joyce supposed to put on? The ones Dorothy told her to put in the wash
So many comments wishing this never happened. Why? Some people need to be taught to masturbate! Just because you weren’t taught doesn’t mean it’s that bizarre.
It’s a good thing to learn for sure, but there’s still several elements of it here that make it feel off. It happening in a public space is the biggest one, but Dorothy’s claim that it’ll prevent bad decisions is also iffy. I guess that’s the point though, a sporadic plan from the usually over-prepared Dorothy, that will likely come back to bite her.
I’m glad Joyce learned. I’m not glad she learned because her friend decided she needs to do it to “not make mistakes,” and then achieved it by springing it on Joyce and leading her into a public space to get off.
The problem doesn’t lie in the masturbation, nor in the fact that what happened was a kind of sex, and not in the fact that it was a homosexual experience (unlike what a commenter said a few pages ago).
The problem lies in Dorothy’s specific behaviour during this whole mini-arc, which is forceful and pays lip service to consent while directing Joyce and repeatedly ignoring her discomfort.
Next people to enter the laundry room
“… what’s with that smell ?”
I doubt this is the first time this has happened, everyone’s likely accustomed to the smell
ppl saying masturbating doesnt keep u from making bad decisions dont know any no sex of any kind until marriage married with 2 kids at 21 types
or any nofap jordan peterson carnivore diet practitioners for that matter
maybe masturbation is not actually the cause of whether our decisions are bad. ymmv.
looking forward to this backfiring spectacularly
i just can’t imagine not having experienced that until 18 years old.
Hmm what??
Haha, yeah that’s a mood 😀