I kind of think that Willis has consistently drawn many characters cuter in the last few years, I assume as their style/skills continue to evolve? Joyce especially, but I can see what you mean here….
It’s clear what you mean, it’s just funmy how it sounds. “art evolution hit them pretty hard” sounds like the “hit every branch in the ugly tree on the way down” of the art world.
Physically she’s always been this cute but here her expressions are engaging & intriguing, and this conversation doesn’t bring out the more annoying parts of her personality.
I think its clear Joe /WANTS/ to talk to Joyce about it, but doesn’t know how to bring it up & is genuinely scared to mention it to her for the exact reason he said above.
Nothing Joe has done recently, & honestly for awhile, would make me believe he’s being malicious about it & despite the other person being YOUR PARTNER, sometimes its just hard to talk in general.
It is funny Roz has ended up being probably the best person to talk to about this, considering she
– knows the friend group
– is very sexually active herself
– isn’t a BAD person, perse… more-so self-serving.
It also helps that while she KNOWS the friend group, she isn’t directly PART of it, which allows for a bit more objectivity than if he went to, say, Dorothy. It also helps that these are the sort of issues that Roz is specifically interested in, like relationship dynamics involving issues of sex, commitment, consent, interest, etc. She’s probably not an “expert” per se, but she’s probably the closest that Joe has available to him, especially as someone with an established rapport built.
A lot might depend on how many details she got, and how it was phrased. Joe did a hard full stop as soon as she started showing signs of unsureness. That absolutely would likely surprise Sarah.
“Late at night she threw herself at me and honestly I was into it but before much of anything happened she changed her mind and we stopped immediately and she left.”
Sarah might not be happy about it, but I don’t see her spending the energy on getting truly mad at Joe.
Joe: “What if that’s ALL THERE IS between us? What if that’s the END of it?”
Professor Broc: “It is, and it is. Sex is a primitive biological instinct there solely to force us into fulfilling our functions as genetic machines, and love is a lie papered over that to make it sound meaningful. If you don’t like that, I suggest you try abstinence.”
Gary died, Zii went to prison for cattle theft, Didi got hooked on hallucinogens, Matt and Yuki moved to Peru, Dillon opened a lesbian bar, Kiley works at Nintendo, Peggy stole Fizzy Lifting Drinks, and Sonya kills people now.
I really think that chicken would be the one meat that I would agree to if I had to limit my variety to only one kind of meat. I feel like I would get tired of the others really fast, but that might be due to most beef products being more expensive than I can afford.
It also helps that chicken offers more variety in the kind of dishes and ways it can be prepared, with the exception of steak pretty much everything you can do with beef, you can also do with chicken, and in my opinion chicken is usually rather more flavorful. On the other hand, while I’d bet “beef nuggets” would be good, I sincerely doubt they’d ever be as good as chicken nuggets. I also feel it’s better in sandwich form and can be done in more varieties of ways, like beef is pretty much only sandwiched as a burger, but chicken can be a deli meat, have breaded patties, parmesian sandwiches, etc. Chicken is just generally more versatile and IMO usually better tasting, so it’s harder to get bored with.
I do wonder how much of that is price. There is roast beef as deli meat, but most of the better cuts of meat you wouldn’t waste grinding up into a nugget. There are chicken fried steaks out there too. Most people aren’t going to waste money to try something more “experimental” with an expensive steak compared to a cheaper chicken breast. I also remember when we used to be able to select a piece of beef in the grocery store and ask them them to grind it into hamburger for us (so you would know what you were getting). They stopped doing that due to having to clean it after each time (possible spread of bacteria joys).
I do think that chicken can me more versatile with different spices due to its more mild flavor. It is also a lot less fickle than fish, which I have heard that people commonly overcook from a daughter of a chef. I also can’t recall chicken being tough too often, in comparison to beef. The most common complaint for all meat is normally that they are too dry (fyi I have found that searing pork chops on a skillet makes them VERY juicy, and using an injector on turkeys to pump liquid in while cooking). We are also rather limited in our meat options in the US, as for the most part the main choices are beef, pork, chicken, many types of fish or a variety of seafood (both fish and seafood are often frozen I have found). You do find some mutton, buffalo, or other unique meats in certain locations or during certain times of the year. I do sometimes wish that we had more variety, especially with buffalo, since it is native and I have heard that it can be easier for some people to digest.
The only real complaint I’ve ever had with chicken has been getting a sandwich or tenders where the piece had woody breast, which will put me off eating entirely for the day.
spots in the chicken’s breasts where, due to all the selective breeding we’ve done, there isn’t enough proper blood flow. the tissue changes what it is, so you get these spots in the meat that are harder, chewier, a different texture, a different bite.
You are correct that chicken has a variety of preparations, but you’re also grossly underselling the variety of beef preparations, even in sandwich form.
As well, our neighbors to the south have Philadelphia which is world famous for many things including their Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches.
There is of course also the Reuben, and the traditional roast beef sandwich, which can also be done on a hoagie roll, paired au jus, and you have a beef-dip.
There is a whole world of cow cuisine for the curious carnivore.
Yeah, I feel Joe falls into the general trap of equating having bedded lots of women with skill at sex. I like to use the analogy of arcade machines, who’s probably better at arcade games, the guy who goes to the arcade monthly and plays every machine once or twice, or the guy who goes to the arcade weekly and plays the same machine over and over and over again until he’s run the leader board five times? Sure, the guy who plays every machine is probably not bad as there are surely transferable skills, and he might even have a high score or two, but he’s not likely to approach mastery any time soon.
Joe has played on a lot of arcade machines, but he probably hasn’t gotten a lot of high scores because he’s never taken the time to get any good at any one game in particular. Now that he’s chosen a favorite game to focus on, I’d bet he’ll be surprised at the scope of what he still has left to learn. Sure, picking up the game will be easier for him than somebody who’s never used a joystick, likely by a considerable margin, but he still has a long way to go to truly master the game.
Different women are like different arcade machines, there’s a lot of similarities to the general mechanics and transferable skills for using the inputs most effectively, but if you don’t know the combos or have the maps and patterns memorized for this game in particular you aren’t likely to get very far until you put in the work to learn that stuff and knowing a couple combos from street fighter, a couple combos from tekken, a couple patterns from frogger and cubert, etc. won’t help you very much to run the leader board on galaga.
Equating human relationships (and really any complex higher level concept) to various activities is a very common practice. It helps people relate to the topic better.
That guy who plays one game is really good at that one game. So he guy who comes in once a month and plays a couple different games is likely better than the specialist at the games that are not like the specialists favorite despite only coming in once a month.
I would liken Joe more to a chef. He’s fairly good at making the food look appealing, but how many of his customers are repeat customers?
Even if one is only good at one game because that’s all they play, I will generally consider the world champion at one game in particular to be a better gamer than someone who is kinda okay at a lot of different games. Besides, as noted there are a lot of transferable skills, and having the dedication to master one game means you’re more likely to be able to master another if you are so inclined. I’d rather be the best at one game than mediocre at a lot.
Also, while this is taking the metaphor a bit too far because now I’m just talking about games and not a metaphor for sex, but I used to play yugioh competitively, and later Legend of the Five Rings, and the skills I picked up in general deck building, resource management, and cost curves meant that the first time I ever picked up a magic the gathering deck I borrowed from a friend to fill in for a game of five headed dragon I was able to tell him how to improve the deck (it was truly poorly built), and when he didn’t listen because he had been playing for 15 years and I “didn’t know magic” I built a better version of the deck myself, researching ONLY the cards that could fit into the deck itself and not any other colors or archetypes or anything, and proceeded to destroy every last one of his decks. In order to master a game you need to understand the underlying mechanics and how to use them to your advantage, and other games that use the same basic mechanics will be easier to reach basic proficiency at because the basic mechanics are the same, as far as CCGs go yugioh and magic are about as different as they come, but nine years of sitting on top of the local competitive scene in one leads to the other being fairly intuitive to pick up.
other than her getting political about “true leftists” or whatever she said, i don’t think she was meant to be too unlikeable compared to say, mary lol
but she’s hardly as malicious or meant to be grating like jen/billie gets sometimes
People still complain about “SJW stuff”? I thought the hot newness was to gripe about how ‘woke’ a person was these days. What was the difference again?
i’m sure she believes in most of what she says, but i imagine she wouldn’t be as ‘gungho’ about certain things if her own sister never became a politician lol
Can happily tell you that it is NOT before her time, as I’ve worked with many students younger than her (and was working with them within the past two year) who are big fans of the show. And it is superfun to interject Avatar facts into debates about the show tat pop up between 5th graders.
(It IS before her time in that she wouldn’t have watched as it aired due to being maybe two when it ended, but it’s not in that it has enough staying power for lots of young people to know it.)
Rewatching Steven Universe is way more enjoyable now minus the noise and admittedly very bad airing schedule. If you can watch it that is. It might be inching ever closer to lost media now.
Your comment reminded me to look at Hulu, because it seemed like for the longest time they didn’t have season 5 (could have sworn I checked a month or two ago and season 5 still wasn’t on Hulu), although they’ve had the movie and ‘Future’ for quite a whiile. Season 5 is finally on there! I can finally finish watching Steven Universe!
They why is because Warner Bros Discovery. For the last few years they’ve been essentially purging any way to legally watch most of their animation catalog from the last 20-30 years. This somehow saves them money. It really makes an argument for piracy as a preservation of media because in today’s climate a greedy execs whim could mean your favorite show is gone forever.
Yup, but in the interest of accuracy Steven Universe is still available to watch on Max..for now. Not so much for shows like Infinity Train or Vlose Enough if you enjoyed those. Also remember to try and buy physical media when you can folks. Blu-rays/dvds may seem like dinosaur media now but you never know. At least download (totally legally obtained) video files onto a drive or something.
Steven Universe became explicitly queerer as it went on– the end of the first season, which aired a few months after the end of Korra, had things increase, but it was definitely in following seasons.
Korra also has advantages like the couple include the MAIN character (which is part of the progress– there were other same-sex couples in kids’ animation, but as background characters). I also loved how it got to develop and was not endgame from the start and that it got to be part of shipping wars just like other ships from the franchise.
I also love it because I WAS NOT EXPECTING THAT AND STARTED CRYING watching it alone in my dorm room in the middle of the night when it was released (Nickelodeon really screwed them on airing it). Honestly shipped the hell out of them, but I thought the best I could hope for was Korra ending the series single and them becoming a couple in later comics.
I remember when I first got clued into Korrasami It was the episode where Korra returns from her walkabout and Asami compliments her new short hairstyle. I looked at Korra’s reaction to the compliment and was like “Wair, that’s wasn’t ‘Thanks, girl’: That was ‘Sempai noticed me!'”
True, but even so. Legend of Korra ended December 2014, Ruby and Sapphire weren’t revealed to exist until March 2015, and their relationship being romantic was confirmed January 2016. Korra was first.
To be clear, I’m not anti SU. I just think the timeline is crucial. Korra hinted at and implied a queer couple in the series finale over exec objections and got massive praise for it. A year later, Rebecca Sugar fights through massive exec meddling to get a canon lesbian couple on-screen and got massive praise for it. Then She-Ra. Then Owl House. All in less than a decade, each one making the relationship more visible, each one facing less(but not 0) interference from homophobic execs over daring to be queer.
The steps to get to where we are now were a fight at each stage, and I think it’s worth remembering that each of those fights made it easier for the ones that followed, even if some of the steps forward look deceptively small right now.
Was hinted at in 2011, but so subtly I don’t think it counts as rep(may not have even been deliberate). Not confirmed until the series finale, Sept 2018. Which was when She-Ra launched, roughly.
Subtly? Marcelline singing a song accusing Bubblegum to have breakup with her because their relationship was embarrassing is subtle?Adventure Time not only did that first, it did that way better. The story of Bubblegum and Marcelline’s past relationship was already unequivocal in the third season in 2011 and throughout the rest of the series it was periodically revived and expanded. It was clear for them and for the others that they loved each other long before the final episode. In Korra it was really too hidden during the series, it was put in a finale that seemed decided at the last minute and needed a tweet of confirmations of the authors to make many understand that the two were together. Also, if we really have to talk about the first character to have a homosexual relationship in a series for children or teenagers, that’s Arnold’s teacher in “Hey Arnold”. Who is revealed to be living with a “best friend” already in the 1998 Thanksgiving special.
Since the Adventure Time has had a number of mini series that show Bubblegum and Marceline as a couple including one where their romantic history is essentially the entire focus. I’m am a little bitter Korrasami hasn’t had their moment in animation yet, but their day is coming I hope. I also think Kipo should be mentioned. It’s a Netflix show that has a major character, that is openly gay and says he’s gay verbatim, on screen. That’s a big deal. Kipo was groundbreaking for many reasons. It deserves some flowers but might be kind of niche now.
I’m not anti-Korra either, but I do also think there’s quite a difference between it dropping the ‘oh yeah they’re dating now’ as a mic drop in the very last scene of the finale and walking away vs SU doing it mid-run and battling censorship and execs continuously.
(For the record, putting Ruby in a dress for the wedding in a fantastic middle finger to all the countries who would refer to Ruby as a boy in their own dubs.)
Both series are very good but Korra only explored the sexuality angle in post-show content.
I feel like the Avatar reincarnation is just inherently bisexual. Aang just happened to end up with the first person he really fell for, so it didn’t come up.
Definitely. Like I said, each step matters. LoK was first, and LoK was subtle as hell with it, because they were first. I’m sure Rebecca Sugar referenced how well it was received in her debates with execs, because that’s how you make arguments to money people. And she made the Gems clearly, blatantly, no-fixing-the-redubs lesbians, and SU suffered for that at the hands of scared execs. And then we get She-Ra, which developed it’s lesbian relationship in later seasons and added a bunch of queer chars, but was subtle early on. And then the Owl House, which was about as clearly gay as it could be from the beginning.
I don’t think it’s about being better, it’s about each entry building on the ones that came before it and making things slightly easier for the ones that came after it.
And who knows, maybe at some point they’ll actually add gay men and trans chars, something that IIRC only She-Ra has done and was only with tertiary chars. Execs seem to have accepted sapphic women but are still paranoid about the rest of the queer umbrella.
Owl House has a significant nonbinary character in the form of Eda’s love interest. Some other queerness given less screen time (Willow’s dads, pronouns of Edric’s date).
She-Ra was subtle early on in a way that had my cishet friend, who did not see any buildup to Korrasami, if Adora and Catra were going to end up together within the first episode, but definitely gave more later on.
Some shows can stretch across any age group, even with the “cartoons ate only for kids” bias. I have heard of a lot of adults that like watching Bluey. I watched ATLA even though I was in high school when it came out, and had friends that did too.
Eh, even if she hadn’t seen it or it’s too old via sliding timescale logic, TLA’s recent live-action Netflix version (and their simultaneous pushing of the original) would put it on anyone’s radar in 2024
Altho i wonder if this means, that joyce would probably hold onto a relationship/friendship for longer outta ‘familiarity’ even if it’d be better not to (although at this point i imagine it’d be hard for her (and walky to an extent) to legally cut ties with their parents)
She’s not a ‘master’ til she makes enough profit of it to drop out/not ‘need’ a college degree anymore (tho still good to have as a backup, no disrespect towards only fans models but i imagine that’s not something you could do for too long unless you’re willing to aim towards the ‘granny’ crowd when you start going grey/wrinkly)
I can’t shake the nightmare of Joe.
Joyce gets up and puts on pants “well, that was nice, thanks for the introduction, it’s time to get on the dick carousel”
That is a terrible nightmare. Mostly for emotional reasons, but also because, it invites one to imagine what a dick carousel might look like – and all of the images I have conjured thus far are nothing but abject horror.
She doesn’t really have much of reason to dislike her now that she is breaking away from her fundamentalist views. Someone said she even follows her food review videos.
For her food reviews, is she trying new things that she has never had before? It can be really fun seeing someone try something new, especially if it is something you are quite familiar with.
Roz has no reason to dislike Joyce now that she’s watched her from a distance evolve and detach herself from her puritan roots. If anything she probably pats herself on the back for being a part of the process.
when I started reading DoA I was 14 and thought Roz was very cool and mature but now I’m 24 and I’m like I can’t believe I thought that she’s just a Dork Tm
I always see people like “if you wanted a doctor you should want House” or “Why don’t they just automatically listen to House?” and I’m like… no? Really when you get down to it, he has like a 30% accurate diagnosis rate depending on the episode and how many red herrings there are. Man’s malpractice insurance’d out the ass.
And his protégés are no better, with their constant kicking-out of lab techs to complete lab tests/work which they have NO IDEA how to do. My mom (a lab tech) used to reeeeally get annoyed about that.
My city recently closed the restaurant that made the best chicken tenders (and various other foods) I have ever eaten, not because the restaurant was doing poorly, but because the landlord wanted to make way for another bank. Which is madness! I loved that place, I went there since I was a small child. Meanwhile, my city already has way way too many banks – the market is so saturated that banks probably comprise half our economy and they all do the exact same thing, but those chicken tenders were one of a kind.
maybe you could try to get in contact and ask for teh recipe, tho i imagine stuff like that might be hard to part with, although it would be nice if it was a neighborhood place you could stop by once a week casually or so rather than ppl depending on money
Unfortunately, they will likely be holding on to that recipe as they still have one last location – it is just hours away from where I live. It was a good suggestion though. Thank you.
My mom and I are weird in that we liked going to a fresh seafood place because they had the best chicken tenders. Neither she nor I are really a fan of fish, but man were thise tenders good.
It does say in the comment that the landlord wouldn’t renew the lease and instead wanted a bank in the space, though. Where are you getting health code reasons from?
I mean not really, we haven’t see them interact much beyond the sex tape thing. So now would be when they start being friends unless other stuff happened off screen.
In just the last strip, Roz says it’s been a while and assumes he’s there for sex, which I very much agree points to not having a current friendship. Would like to see it! Would also be interesting to see how Joyce handles “my boyfriend is friends with someone he has had sex with,” which is an issue for a lot of people.
i imagine sex would take a lot more stamina and mental energy than consistently eating your fave food, although it would be quite fun if joyce had a separate convo with roz and telling her “dorothy taught me how to masturbate/use the washing machine”
Precisely, he’s projecting fears based on his own patterns. Cutting straight to sex was his way of avoiding emotional connections and the pain that comes when they break down. But his fears may not be unfounded, it seems like every time Joyce has talked about what interests her in Joe, it’s about his body, his smell, his muscles, his weight pressing down on her etc always something physical. She’s certainly capable of wanting more than that, but how she feels after she got a chance to scratch the itch, its still a threshold to cross and see.
Ahhhhh yeah there’s the problem. All of his relationships have BEEN…. pretty much one night stands. So the pattern for intimacy has been set: We sleep together, thats kind of the end of it (fuckbuddy situations aside).
Also for those wondering why he doesn’t talk to joyce: yeah man it’s really easy to make yourself say to someone”hey due to my own emotional hangups I assume once we fuck you’ll dump me.” an awesome thing that doesn’t make you feel like you’re accusing your datefriend of being a shitty person at all.
“why isnt this college aged young adult doing the most direct thing to solve their emotional problem” for the love of pete.
Undiagnosed autism and a raging libido means Joyce is almost certainly going to want to throw herself at Joe the second they’ve fucked for real and Joe better get comfy with the idea that he’s not ‘corrupting’ her with his dick. Sorry dude that’s just the autism and hormones.
Her brain has discovered a new stimulation and it’s called ‘human touch’ and she’s going to be fixating on it for the next sixty years.
Sometimes you just fit a box. (AYY) As someone only recently diagnosed, though, my experience has been more, “Thank you, that has been enough touch for the foreseeable future. Please forget my face, as I have taken the courtesy of already forgetting yours.”
When my wife got diagnosed for me it was a real “oh. ….OHHHHHH. Oh wow.” because suddenly years and years of always needing physical touch and a high sex drive clicked into place.
I’m quite sure that Joe’s issue is that he’s unsure how to reconcile actual feelings of love/tenderness with sexual desire, but the situation here does actually bring to mind a related but different situation, which is where two people care for (even love) each other, but there is no physical attraction between them (or one is asexual but the other is not). There’s a number of ways couples in such situations could overcome the issues, but some of them require lots of discussion (and possible sacrifices), and it may not always work out.
Again, I don’t think this is Joe’s situation here, but it would be pretty interesting if Willis brought up the storyline one day. 🙂
I think what I appreciate most about this strip is that when Roz was under the assumption that Joyce still wanted to wait to have sex, she seems to completely understand that to be a fine choice for Joyce. She offers a ‘that’s rough’ condolence to Joe, as she’s well aware of his appetite, but she otherwise accepts this choice of Joyce’s (in so far as she is aware).
It’s just very nice of her. I’m happy to see a character be completely fine with a choice like that. As a sex-repulsed ace person, I just really appreciate it.
I imagined in that last panel that Joe went “Bwoah” like Nijika did in “I want my sister” scene. Just complete emotional breakdown and wanting to cry out of stress.
I *love* this character depth we’re getting for Joe; it’s so engaging to see how he sees himself and his past, knowing that part of him is looking through the lens of everyone who called him out for being a pig, and part of him is looking through the lens of his father and all of that guy’s disastrous mistakes, and part of him is looking through the lens of his girlfriend who sometimes seems to see him as a sexy meat mountain ~
I think there was a Will and Grace episode like this, where Grace realized that she had a lot of partners but only slept with them a few times at most before the relationship ended, and her boyfriend only had a few partners previously but all they really did was have sex for like 2 or 3 years then move on. So she was afraid she was bad at sex and he was afraid sex was all he was good at.
Enjoying seeing Roz in a role outside of extreme leftist or stuck suffering through Robin’s presence. I’d love to see her get more time in the comic and get fleshed out.
Roz is uncharacteristically trying to be nice and comforting but she doesn’t realise that what Joe fears is himself. That once he’s had her, she becomes another conquest in his book and then he loses interest to go seek a new thing.
To me, this proves that Joe was never a bad person. Joyce and He we friends. Sex wasn’t something he did with friends. Now they’re transitioning to something else.
Joe was absolutely a bad person early in the comic. It’s okay to acknowledge that he has changed and grown without wiping out the very real gross behavior he engaged in before.
Bad people sometimes change into good people, and he’s had very good reasons to.
She did, though that doesn’t seem to be the angle he’s talking about here.
This doesn’t seem like he’s worried about her feeling like she’s ruined, but that she’ll be like he used to be – uninterested after the sex. Or possibly still that he’ll lose interest after the “conquest”, like his dad.
Or that he’s (also) feeling an attraction orthogonal to sex, but Joyce’s behavior has him wondering if he’s the only one feeling it, which would be disappointing.
… I understand Joe’s concern, of course, but I don’t understand why he’s going to Roz for advice. I know Joe doesn’t have a lot of people he’s close to, but I can think of plenty of people who are better able to help.
I mean, that’s like asking the Hamburglar looking for tips about going vegan. This has never been a concern for Roz.
On second thought. Never mind. Roz considers herself a bit of a *relationship* expert. And if she’s had long-term relationships in the past or present, this is ground she’s already covered.
Plus, I guess Amber really isn’t the best person to ask if you’re looking for advice on “There’s this part of me that has urges that I’m afraid of and want to make sure doesn’t hurt me; what do I do?”
Technically, I think he’d be much better off looking for advice from Danny, but this would NEVER occur to Joe himself, for…a lot of different reasons, actually.
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“what if I break the cutie?!”
Speaking of cuties, has Roz always been this cute? Or is Willis drawing her cuter?
Personally I think she’s always been a cutie
I never noticed. Maybe looking like Robin put me off.
unfortunately Robin is also kind of cute
A new alpha cutie arises.
I kind of think that Willis has consistently drawn many characters cuter in the last few years, I assume as their style/skills continue to evolve? Joyce especially, but I can see what you mean here….
I think art evolution has been steering everyone that way, a little bit.
(Or maybe my brain just likes the “crop top under unzipped hoodie” bit.)
I think we haven’t seen her in a while so the art evolution hit her particularly hard.
It’s clear what you mean, it’s just funmy how it sounds. “art evolution hit them pretty hard” sounds like the “hit every branch in the ugly tree on the way down” of the art world.
Lol yeah XD An unfortunate choice of words
Physically she’s always been this cute but here her expressions are engaging & intriguing, and this conversation doesn’t bring out the more annoying parts of her personality.
Yeah, it’s 100% her expressions. Nobody was saying it yesterday, and then she started smiling.
funny you should mention that, the last panel gives me the happy butterflies
‘happy butterflies in my pants’ sounds like something Dina might say.
Always, but this outfit reallllly brings it out. <3 <3
God forbid you talk to her about it
I know, right?
God forbid he talk to someone else about it first to get his actual problem straight and sort his feelings out before he takes it to Joyce.
Every single issue doesn’t need to be immediately brought to your partner. It’s okay to lean on friends too.
Yeah, exactly this.
I think its clear Joe /WANTS/ to talk to Joyce about it, but doesn’t know how to bring it up & is genuinely scared to mention it to her for the exact reason he said above.
Nothing Joe has done recently, & honestly for awhile, would make me believe he’s being malicious about it & despite the other person being YOUR PARTNER, sometimes its just hard to talk in general.
It is funny Roz has ended up being probably the best person to talk to about this, considering she
– knows the friend group
– is very sexually active herself
– isn’t a BAD person, perse… more-so self-serving.
It also helps that while she KNOWS the friend group, she isn’t directly PART of it, which allows for a bit more objectivity than if he went to, say, Dorothy. It also helps that these are the sort of issues that Roz is specifically interested in, like relationship dynamics involving issues of sex, commitment, consent, interest, etc. She’s probably not an “expert” per se, but she’s probably the closest that Joe has available to him, especially as someone with an established rapport built.
“I had a traumatizing experience with Sarah’s sister.”
“What?”
imagine how quick sarah’s…friendly? demeanor would drop if she found out about that lol
A lot might depend on how many details she got, and how it was phrased. Joe did a hard full stop as soon as she started showing signs of unsureness. That absolutely would likely surprise Sarah.
“Late at night she threw herself at me and honestly I was into it but before much of anything happened she changed her mind and we stopped immediately and she left.”
Sarah might not be happy about it, but I don’t see her spending the energy on getting truly mad at Joe.
She might just maim him a little, instead of burying him in the woods. Just a little life-altering injury as a reminder.
He might get a bat to the arm, not the head.
does iu really over sexual arts as a major? /j
offer* im cooked
Weirdly, that’s the other course Professor Broc teaches.
that sounds very threatening
An old, cranky, nihilistic man teaching sexual arts? Where would I sign up, that sounds amazing.
Honestly? Same.
Joe: “What if that’s ALL THERE IS between us? What if that’s the END of it?”
Professor Broc: “It is, and it is. Sex is a primitive biological instinct there solely to force us into fulfilling our functions as genetic machines, and love is a lie papered over that to make it sound meaningful. If you don’t like that, I suggest you try abstinence.”
maybe not a major for undergrads, but it is where the Kinsey Institute is.
Dang, I didn’t know that. TIL!
For those familiar with meanagea3, it just makes me think of kiley’s ‘sex therapist’ phase XD
(; 😀
Now there’s a comic I haven’t read in a long time. A long time.
I wonder how Kiley, Gary, and the gang are doing.
They’re doing fine. They’re semi-retired; there’s a whole new gang taking up the spotlight now.
right now it’s ‘pixie trix comix’ with a new storyline tho occasional cameos from the og gang lol
Gary died, Zii went to prison for cattle theft, Didi got hooked on hallucinogens, Matt and Yuki moved to Peru, Dillon opened a lesbian bar, Kiley works at Nintendo, Peggy stole Fizzy Lifting Drinks, and Sonya kills people now.
The IU Department of Sex has a statue out front of Dr Ruth holding a pair of Shake Weights.
Hit it and quit it Joyce Brown! Let’s ride!
lol makes me think of ruth’s comment of her ‘banging half the town’
Does “banging the same half of the town by proxy of her boyfriend” count?
I mean…
If it’s real chicken, that’s honestly hard to beat.
I really think that chicken would be the one meat that I would agree to if I had to limit my variety to only one kind of meat. I feel like I would get tired of the others really fast, but that might be due to most beef products being more expensive than I can afford.
Hey, I’ve been happily reading the same comic strip since (consults calendar)
It also helps that chicken offers more variety in the kind of dishes and ways it can be prepared, with the exception of steak pretty much everything you can do with beef, you can also do with chicken, and in my opinion chicken is usually rather more flavorful. On the other hand, while I’d bet “beef nuggets” would be good, I sincerely doubt they’d ever be as good as chicken nuggets. I also feel it’s better in sandwich form and can be done in more varieties of ways, like beef is pretty much only sandwiched as a burger, but chicken can be a deli meat, have breaded patties, parmesian sandwiches, etc. Chicken is just generally more versatile and IMO usually better tasting, so it’s harder to get bored with.
I do wonder how much of that is price. There is roast beef as deli meat, but most of the better cuts of meat you wouldn’t waste grinding up into a nugget. There are chicken fried steaks out there too. Most people aren’t going to waste money to try something more “experimental” with an expensive steak compared to a cheaper chicken breast. I also remember when we used to be able to select a piece of beef in the grocery store and ask them them to grind it into hamburger for us (so you would know what you were getting). They stopped doing that due to having to clean it after each time (possible spread of bacteria joys).
I do think that chicken can me more versatile with different spices due to its more mild flavor. It is also a lot less fickle than fish, which I have heard that people commonly overcook from a daughter of a chef. I also can’t recall chicken being tough too often, in comparison to beef. The most common complaint for all meat is normally that they are too dry (fyi I have found that searing pork chops on a skillet makes them VERY juicy, and using an injector on turkeys to pump liquid in while cooking). We are also rather limited in our meat options in the US, as for the most part the main choices are beef, pork, chicken, many types of fish or a variety of seafood (both fish and seafood are often frozen I have found). You do find some mutton, buffalo, or other unique meats in certain locations or during certain times of the year. I do sometimes wish that we had more variety, especially with buffalo, since it is native and I have heard that it can be easier for some people to digest.
The only real complaint I’ve ever had with chicken has been getting a sandwich or tenders where the piece had woody breast, which will put me off eating entirely for the day.
I’m curious what “woody breast” is, but I don’t need Toy Story porn in my search results today.
spots in the chicken’s breasts where, due to all the selective breeding we’ve done, there isn’t enough proper blood flow. the tissue changes what it is, so you get these spots in the meat that are harder, chewier, a different texture, a different bite.
You are correct that chicken has a variety of preparations, but you’re also grossly underselling the variety of beef preparations, even in sandwich form.
As a canuck I’m obliged to inform you of Montreal smoked meat (sandwiches) and direct you to The World Famous Schwartz’s Deli.
As well, our neighbors to the south have Philadelphia which is world famous for many things including their Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches.
There is of course also the Reuben, and the traditional roast beef sandwich, which can also be done on a hoagie roll, paired au jus, and you have a beef-dip.
There is a whole world of cow cuisine for the curious carnivore.
No Joe, don’t unstudent yourself. You don’t need to go into this as a blank slate, use your knowledge to find out what Joyce likes.
Yeah, I feel Joe falls into the general trap of equating having bedded lots of women with skill at sex. I like to use the analogy of arcade machines, who’s probably better at arcade games, the guy who goes to the arcade monthly and plays every machine once or twice, or the guy who goes to the arcade weekly and plays the same machine over and over and over again until he’s run the leader board five times? Sure, the guy who plays every machine is probably not bad as there are surely transferable skills, and he might even have a high score or two, but he’s not likely to approach mastery any time soon.
Joe has played on a lot of arcade machines, but he probably hasn’t gotten a lot of high scores because he’s never taken the time to get any good at any one game in particular. Now that he’s chosen a favorite game to focus on, I’d bet he’ll be surprised at the scope of what he still has left to learn. Sure, picking up the game will be easier for him than somebody who’s never used a joystick, likely by a considerable margin, but he still has a long way to go to truly master the game.
Different women are like different arcade machines, there’s a lot of similarities to the general mechanics and transferable skills for using the inputs most effectively, but if you don’t know the combos or have the maps and patterns memorized for this game in particular you aren’t likely to get very far until you put in the work to learn that stuff and knowing a couple combos from street fighter, a couple combos from tekken, a couple patterns from frogger and cubert, etc. won’t help you very much to run the leader board on galaga.
Are you seriously equating women to arcade machines? Damn that’s so dehumanizing. Women are not objects, bro. /s
Equating human relationships (and really any complex higher level concept) to various activities is a very common practice. It helps people relate to the topic better.
I’d say the “/sarcasm” tag has stopped working, but I’m honestly not sure it ever did.
Now I’m hearing “Pinball Wizard” in my brain….
That guy who plays one game is really good at that one game. So he guy who comes in once a month and plays a couple different games is likely better than the specialist at the games that are not like the specialists favorite despite only coming in once a month.
I would liken Joe more to a chef. He’s fairly good at making the food look appealing, but how many of his customers are repeat customers?
Even if one is only good at one game because that’s all they play, I will generally consider the world champion at one game in particular to be a better gamer than someone who is kinda okay at a lot of different games. Besides, as noted there are a lot of transferable skills, and having the dedication to master one game means you’re more likely to be able to master another if you are so inclined. I’d rather be the best at one game than mediocre at a lot.
Also, while this is taking the metaphor a bit too far because now I’m just talking about games and not a metaphor for sex, but I used to play yugioh competitively, and later Legend of the Five Rings, and the skills I picked up in general deck building, resource management, and cost curves meant that the first time I ever picked up a magic the gathering deck I borrowed from a friend to fill in for a game of five headed dragon I was able to tell him how to improve the deck (it was truly poorly built), and when he didn’t listen because he had been playing for 15 years and I “didn’t know magic” I built a better version of the deck myself, researching ONLY the cards that could fit into the deck itself and not any other colors or archetypes or anything, and proceeded to destroy every last one of his decks. In order to master a game you need to understand the underlying mechanics and how to use them to your advantage, and other games that use the same basic mechanics will be easier to reach basic proficiency at because the basic mechanics are the same, as far as CCGs go yugioh and magic are about as different as they come, but nine years of sitting on top of the local competitive scene in one leads to the other being fairly intuitive to pick up.
There you go, Joseph. Bone her.
I forgot that Roz follows joyce’s food reviews
I forgot that Joyce did food reviews
oh dang that’s right
“I’m scared of being my dad” is probably the best way he could put it, tbh
Joe has lost his Joementum.
“Love is like your favorite food, every day.”
So basically, autism XD ^^
Preeeetty much
Y’know Roz, you border on quite likable at times.
Seriously, that was both insightful and sweet. I’m impressed.
other than her getting political about “true leftists” or whatever she said, i don’t think she was meant to be too unlikeable compared to say, mary lol
but she’s hardly as malicious or meant to be grating like jen/billie gets sometimes
I like her a lot, tbh.
She’s the kind of person who would be just a delight if she dropped the SJW stuff.
People still complain about “SJW stuff”? I thought the hot newness was to gripe about how ‘woke’ a person was these days. What was the difference again?
The difference is how current, and how right-wing, the complainant is.
Mostly the current. The anti-SJW people back when that was hot were pretty damn right wing.
Just like the anti-PC people back a few decades before.
i’m sure she believes in most of what she says, but i imagine she wouldn’t be as ‘gungho’ about certain things if her own sister never became a politician lol
Yeah. How dare she want social justice. What a problem to be interested in fighting for people to have equal rights. 🙄
what are ya gonna do if she doesn’t? boycott her? XD
You guys are totally on board with anyone who drops the buzzwords “your side” likes, huh?
lmao buddy, just because you don’t put any thought into your positions doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t either.
There shouldn’t be “sides” on the question of whether everyone deserves the same rights. Get real.
What the hell are you talking about?
I wonder if Roz is an Avatar the Last Airbender/Korra fan? I’m not sure if that show is before her time now. I guess there’s always Netflix.
Can happily tell you that it is NOT before her time, as I’ve worked with many students younger than her (and was working with them within the past two year) who are big fans of the show. And it is superfun to interject Avatar facts into debates about the show tat pop up between 5th graders.
(It IS before her time in that she wouldn’t have watched as it aired due to being maybe two when it ended, but it’s not in that it has enough staying power for lots of young people to know it.)
Honestly one of the better shows to still be popular.
I’d say that and Steven Universe but gosh does that show still attract a divisive fandom at the best of times.
Rewatching Steven Universe is way more enjoyable now minus the noise and admittedly very bad airing schedule. If you can watch it that is. It might be inching ever closer to lost media now.
Basically any show is more enjoyable if you disconnect from the toxic and negative parts of a fanbase. (Looking at you RWBY Hatedom).
Your comment reminded me to look at Hulu, because it seemed like for the longest time they didn’t have season 5 (could have sworn I checked a month or two ago and season 5 still wasn’t on Hulu), although they’ve had the movie and ‘Future’ for quite a whiile. Season 5 is finally on there! I can finally finish watching Steven Universe!
Thank you for reminding me to look!
Seasons 4 and 5 are on netflix. But not the rest and I don’t know whyyyyy. It’s fine, I can resort to piracy.
They why is because Warner Bros Discovery. For the last few years they’ve been essentially purging any way to legally watch most of their animation catalog from the last 20-30 years. This somehow saves them money. It really makes an argument for piracy as a preservation of media because in today’s climate a greedy execs whim could mean your favorite show is gone forever.
For fucking real? That’s what happened to Tiny Toons and Animaniacs? I was wondering…
Yup, but in the interest of accuracy Steven Universe is still available to watch on Max..for now. Not so much for shows like Infinity Train or Vlose Enough if you enjoyed those. Also remember to try and buy physical media when you can folks. Blu-rays/dvds may seem like dinosaur media now but you never know. At least download (totally legally obtained) video files onto a drive or something.
Legend of Korra was the first canon same-sex relationship in kids’ animation. Roz has probably seen it just out of respect for that moment in history.
Very close time to Steven Universe; Korra came out first but its same sex relationship was only revealed in the finale.
Steven Universe became explicitly queerer as it went on– the end of the first season, which aired a few months after the end of Korra, had things increase, but it was definitely in following seasons.
Korra also has advantages like the couple include the MAIN character (which is part of the progress– there were other same-sex couples in kids’ animation, but as background characters). I also loved how it got to develop and was not endgame from the start and that it got to be part of shipping wars just like other ships from the franchise.
I also love it because I WAS NOT EXPECTING THAT AND STARTED CRYING watching it alone in my dorm room in the middle of the night when it was released (Nickelodeon really screwed them on airing it). Honestly shipped the hell out of them, but I thought the best I could hope for was Korra ending the series single and them becoming a couple in later comics.
I remember when I first got clued into Korrasami It was the episode where Korra returns from her walkabout and Asami compliments her new short hairstyle. I looked at Korra’s reaction to the compliment and was like “Wair, that’s wasn’t ‘Thanks, girl’: That was ‘Sempai noticed me!'”
True, but even so. Legend of Korra ended December 2014, Ruby and Sapphire weren’t revealed to exist until March 2015, and their relationship being romantic was confirmed January 2016. Korra was first.
To be clear, I’m not anti SU. I just think the timeline is crucial. Korra hinted at and implied a queer couple in the series finale over exec objections and got massive praise for it. A year later, Rebecca Sugar fights through massive exec meddling to get a canon lesbian couple on-screen and got massive praise for it. Then She-Ra. Then Owl House. All in less than a decade, each one making the relationship more visible, each one facing less(but not 0) interference from homophobic execs over daring to be queer.
The steps to get to where we are now were a fight at each stage, and I think it’s worth remembering that each of those fights made it easier for the ones that followed, even if some of the steps forward look deceptively small right now.
Where does Adventure time / princess bubblegum relationship
fit into this?
Was hinted at in 2011, but so subtly I don’t think it counts as rep(may not have even been deliberate). Not confirmed until the series finale, Sept 2018. Which was when She-Ra launched, roughly.
Subtly? Marcelline singing a song accusing Bubblegum to have breakup with her because their relationship was embarrassing is subtle?Adventure Time not only did that first, it did that way better. The story of Bubblegum and Marcelline’s past relationship was already unequivocal in the third season in 2011 and throughout the rest of the series it was periodically revived and expanded. It was clear for them and for the others that they loved each other long before the final episode. In Korra it was really too hidden during the series, it was put in a finale that seemed decided at the last minute and needed a tweet of confirmations of the authors to make many understand that the two were together. Also, if we really have to talk about the first character to have a homosexual relationship in a series for children or teenagers, that’s Arnold’s teacher in “Hey Arnold”. Who is revealed to be living with a “best friend” already in the 1998 Thanksgiving special.
Since the Adventure Time has had a number of mini series that show Bubblegum and Marceline as a couple including one where their romantic history is essentially the entire focus. I’m am a little bitter Korrasami hasn’t had their moment in animation yet, but their day is coming I hope. I also think Kipo should be mentioned. It’s a Netflix show that has a major character, that is openly gay and says he’s gay verbatim, on screen. That’s a big deal. Kipo was groundbreaking for many reasons. It deserves some flowers but might be kind of niche now.
Oh yeah, Kipo is great. Haven’t seen much fandom around it, even when it was ongoing.
I’m not anti-Korra either, but I do also think there’s quite a difference between it dropping the ‘oh yeah they’re dating now’ as a mic drop in the very last scene of the finale and walking away vs SU doing it mid-run and battling censorship and execs continuously.
(For the record, putting Ruby in a dress for the wedding in a fantastic middle finger to all the countries who would refer to Ruby as a boy in their own dubs.)
Both series are very good but Korra only explored the sexuality angle in post-show content.
Where we find out that the Avatar line is just all full of Teh Ghey.
I feel like the Avatar reincarnation is just inherently bisexual. Aang just happened to end up with the first person he really fell for, so it didn’t come up.
Definitely. Like I said, each step matters. LoK was first, and LoK was subtle as hell with it, because they were first. I’m sure Rebecca Sugar referenced how well it was received in her debates with execs, because that’s how you make arguments to money people. And she made the Gems clearly, blatantly, no-fixing-the-redubs lesbians, and SU suffered for that at the hands of scared execs. And then we get She-Ra, which developed it’s lesbian relationship in later seasons and added a bunch of queer chars, but was subtle early on. And then the Owl House, which was about as clearly gay as it could be from the beginning.
I don’t think it’s about being better, it’s about each entry building on the ones that came before it and making things slightly easier for the ones that came after it.
And who knows, maybe at some point they’ll actually add gay men and trans chars, something that IIRC only She-Ra has done and was only with tertiary chars. Execs seem to have accepted sapphic women but are still paranoid about the rest of the queer umbrella.
Owl House has a significant nonbinary character in the form of Eda’s love interest. Some other queerness given less screen time (Willow’s dads, pronouns of Edric’s date).
She-Ra was subtle early on in a way that had my cishet friend, who did not see any buildup to Korrasami, if Adora and Catra were going to end up together within the first episode, but definitely gave more later on.
Wait, why did you bring that up though, did she drop some sly reference I missed?
“That’s rough, buddy.”
It can’t just be me that thinks of ATLA every time that phrase comes up.
I like to use a screenshot from that moment as a shorthand.
Ok now the memories are coming back
when riley was visiting/staying over, she seemed to be playing animal crossing on the ds, if that helps with the timeline
The comic is set in the vague present, not a certain year.
Some shows can stretch across any age group, even with the “cartoons ate only for kids” bias. I have heard of a lot of adults that like watching Bluey. I watched ATLA even though I was in high school when it came out, and had friends that did too.
Our whole family watched and enjoyed ATLA during covid lockdowns. That’s adults and teens.
Eh, even if she hadn’t seen it or it’s too old via sliding timescale logic, TLA’s recent live-action Netflix version (and their simultaneous pushing of the original) would put it on anyone’s radar in 2024
Roz has a solid point holy fuck
She is also being kind of nice and supportive. Weird.
She always had a soft spot for Joe pun intended
“Soft spot” is my new favorite euphemism for female genitalia.
Oh hey my comments are no longer permanently awaiting moderation
joe just needs to crush more burgers for her 8D;
Altho i wonder if this means, that joyce would probably hold onto a relationship/friendship for longer outta ‘familiarity’ even if it’d be better not to (although at this point i imagine it’d be hard for her (and walky to an extent) to legally cut ties with their parents)
Honestly surprised Roz called herself a student of the sexual arts and not a master.
Apparently she’s wise enough to know there’s always more to learn.
As Joe himself put it, life is an endless tapestry.
She’s not a ‘master’ til she makes enough profit of it to drop out/not ‘need’ a college degree anymore (tho still good to have as a backup, no disrespect towards only fans models but i imagine that’s not something you could do for too long unless you’re willing to aim towards the ‘granny’ crowd when you start going grey/wrinkly)
I can’t shake the nightmare of Joe.
Joyce gets up and puts on pants “well, that was nice, thanks for the introduction, it’s time to get on the dick carousel”
That is a terrible nightmare. Mostly for emotional reasons, but also because, it invites one to imagine what a dick carousel might look like – and all of the images I have conjured thus far are nothing but abject horror.
*slowed, off-key circus music begins to play…*
Somehow you made it worse. Good job lol
The nightmare of Entry if the Gladiators played off key and half time.
I literally LOLed.
Clive Barker needs to be involved in set design
Joe should know that his only competition is Dorothy… though that might be a was… now that she knows about Carla. Best of both worlds.
This is a terrible metaphor because you dont randomly swap horses of the carosel.
Maybe you don’t.
It’s honestly better if you do.
No, but next time you want a ride, you don’t usually go back to the same horse.
Sweet of Joe to be worried about this.
Coincidentally I’m reading this while on my way to eat one of the same handful of foods I’ve had every day since I got to uni myself.
This is…the nicest thing Roz has ever said about Joyce? Is that right??
She doesn’t really have much of reason to dislike her now that she is breaking away from her fundamentalist views. Someone said she even follows her food review videos.
For her food reviews, is she trying new things that she has never had before? It can be really fun seeing someone try something new, especially if it is something you are quite familiar with.
She very much does not and that’s why we love her.
Her “food review” probably consists of her poking at the new food, declaring it looks weird, and then eating mcnuggets every episode :p
This is the nicest thing Roz has ever said ever.
Roz has no reason to dislike Joyce now that she’s watched her from a distance evolve and detach herself from her puritan roots. If anything she probably pats herself on the back for being a part of the process.
when I started reading DoA I was 14 and thought Roz was very cool and mature but now I’m 24 and I’m like I can’t believe I thought that she’s just a Dork Tm
ppl can have aspects of dorkiness and coolness , depending on the scenario lol
Or 14 year olds can be bad judges of character. When I was 14 I thought Gregory House was a great guy.
I always see people like “if you wanted a doctor you should want House” or “Why don’t they just automatically listen to House?” and I’m like… no? Really when you get down to it, he has like a 30% accurate diagnosis rate depending on the episode and how many red herrings there are. Man’s malpractice insurance’d out the ass.
And his protégés are no better, with their constant kicking-out of lab techs to complete lab tests/work which they have NO IDEA how to do. My mom (a lab tech) used to reeeeally get annoyed about that.
Nah Roz IS kind of cool and also kind of a dork.
That’s one of the funniest consequences of the comic’s long-running nature that I’ve ever heard, honestly.
My city recently closed the restaurant that made the best chicken tenders (and various other foods) I have ever eaten, not because the restaurant was doing poorly, but because the landlord wanted to make way for another bank. Which is madness! I loved that place, I went there since I was a small child. Meanwhile, my city already has way way too many banks – the market is so saturated that banks probably comprise half our economy and they all do the exact same thing, but those chicken tenders were one of a kind.
maybe you could try to get in contact and ask for teh recipe, tho i imagine stuff like that might be hard to part with, although it would be nice if it was a neighborhood place you could stop by once a week casually or so rather than ppl depending on money
Unfortunately, they will likely be holding on to that recipe as they still have one last location – it is just hours away from where I live. It was a good suggestion though. Thank you.
My mom and I are weird in that we liked going to a fresh seafood place because they had the best chicken tenders. Neither she nor I are really a fan of fish, but man were thise tenders good.
“My city closed”, as in “For health reasons”? You may have dodged a bullet there.
It does say in the comment that the landlord wouldn’t renew the lease and instead wanted a bank in the space, though. Where are you getting health code reasons from?
I phrased that poorly. I should have said, the restaurant closed in my city. I was far too tired when commenting last night. Sorry for the confusion.
Actually loving these two interacting, I kind of want to see them become friends.
Look at the intimacy. They look like friends to me.
I agree with Zach, they already read as friends to me.
I mean not really, we haven’t see them interact much beyond the sex tape thing. So now would be when they start being friends unless other stuff happened off screen.
In just the last strip, Roz says it’s been a while and assumes he’s there for sex, which I very much agree points to not having a current friendship. Would like to see it! Would also be interesting to see how Joyce handles “my boyfriend is friends with someone he has had sex with,” which is an issue for a lot of people.
They read as friends ~to me~.
So yes really.
She has a point, dude.
i imagine sex would take a lot more stamina and mental energy than consistently eating your fave food, although it would be quite fun if joyce had a separate convo with roz and telling her “dorothy taught me how to masturbate/use the washing machine”
She does have a point. And for once its not the fleshy kind that gets jammed inside her and then put up on pornhub.
Did I read it wrong or did Joe finger her once already?
I’m not sure what happened after she put his hand on her breasts.
No fingering has occurred.
Joe might have a point… Is Joyce’s main interest in him just physical? Is sexual tension the only thread binding them together?
No, to both questions.
Is Joe afraid Joyce’s interest in him is as sex-based and ephemeral as Joe’s interest in all other women? And he wants more than that with her?
Precisely, he’s projecting fears based on his own patterns. Cutting straight to sex was his way of avoiding emotional connections and the pain that comes when they break down. But his fears may not be unfounded, it seems like every time Joyce has talked about what interests her in Joe, it’s about his body, his smell, his muscles, his weight pressing down on her etc always something physical. She’s certainly capable of wanting more than that, but how she feels after she got a chance to scratch the itch, its still a threshold to cross and see.
Ahhhhh yeah there’s the problem. All of his relationships have BEEN…. pretty much one night stands. So the pattern for intimacy has been set: We sleep together, thats kind of the end of it (fuckbuddy situations aside).
Also for those wondering why he doesn’t talk to joyce: yeah man it’s really easy to make yourself say to someone”hey due to my own emotional hangups I assume once we fuck you’ll dump me.” an awesome thing that doesn’t make you feel like you’re accusing your datefriend of being a shitty person at all.
“why isnt this college aged young adult doing the most direct thing to solve their emotional problem” for the love of pete.
Title is really troublesome tonight. Hell of a coincidence.
Undiagnosed autism and a raging libido means Joyce is almost certainly going to want to throw herself at Joe the second they’ve fucked for real and Joe better get comfy with the idea that he’s not ‘corrupting’ her with his dick. Sorry dude that’s just the autism and hormones.
Her brain has discovered a new stimulation and it’s called ‘human touch’ and she’s going to be fixating on it for the next sixty years.
I thought we were here psychoanalyzing Joyce, not calling out other readers.
Sometimes you just fit a box. (AYY) As someone only recently diagnosed, though, my experience has been more, “Thank you, that has been enough touch for the foreseeable future. Please forget my face, as I have taken the courtesy of already forgetting yours.”
When my wife got diagnosed for me it was a real “oh. ….OHHHHHH. Oh wow.” because suddenly years and years of always needing physical touch and a high sex drive clicked into place.
I’m quite sure that Joe’s issue is that he’s unsure how to reconcile actual feelings of love/tenderness with sexual desire, but the situation here does actually bring to mind a related but different situation, which is where two people care for (even love) each other, but there is no physical attraction between them (or one is asexual but the other is not). There’s a number of ways couples in such situations could overcome the issues, but some of them require lots of discussion (and possible sacrifices), and it may not always work out.
Again, I don’t think this is Joe’s situation here, but it would be pretty interesting if Willis brought up the storyline one day. 🙂
Lol dishevelled Joe trying to run away from Joyce’s room but he falls over and gets dragged back in XD
Alt text: He’s not chicken tenders. He’s Sir Loin.
I think this is a much more fun context for these two to be interacting than doing the sex was, haha. It’s almost…. Sweet.
I think what I appreciate most about this strip is that when Roz was under the assumption that Joyce still wanted to wait to have sex, she seems to completely understand that to be a fine choice for Joyce. She offers a ‘that’s rough’ condolence to Joe, as she’s well aware of his appetite, but she otherwise accepts this choice of Joyce’s (in so far as she is aware).
It’s just very nice of her. I’m happy to see a character be completely fine with a choice like that. As a sex-repulsed ace person, I just really appreciate it.
The last panel is actually really sweet.
Roz’s expression in that last panel is downright one of the sweetest expressions in this comic.
I imagined in that last panel that Joe went “Bwoah” like Nijika did in “I want my sister” scene. Just complete emotional breakdown and wanting to cry out of stress.
Dang, now I’m craving mac and cheese with chicken nuggets
Roz’s paid a surprisingly amount of attention to what Joyce eats
She has confirmed that she follow’s Joyce’s social media food posts specifically to eat anything that Joyce refuses to, if I remember correctly.
A rare case of Roz being nice
Panels 1-3: Ah, an acolyte of my wisdom as the Guru of Sex. Let me tell you what I think your problem should be.
Panels 4-5: Wow, your actual problem is not something I understand even slightly, therefore who cares, it’s probably fine, whatever.
Fairly typical Roz, IMO.
No. Behaibh yourself.
You know there is interpretation and then there is making shit up.
That’s… not at all what’s happening? Roz is being super sweet, supportive and a good friend.
Is Joe due for a haircut? Or is that the look for him?
I’m reading it as “distraught”.
If he cuts his hair Joyce will make grow back by sheer force of will so she can ruffle it.
Joe is traumatized by his father’s cheating. He believes his father was just a horndog who dumped every woman he slept with.
So Joe made a persona of a guy who is upfront about sex being meaningless.
I wonder if the fact his father HASN’T dumped Amber’s mom is screwing with his assumptions about his family and self.
And considering there is a pattern of behaviour, how badly will it mess him up if his Dad Does cheat on Amber’s mom.
I hope not. It would be the least interesting way the story could go.
His dad didn’t dump every woman he slept with. He cheated on them.
He presumably only married one and was having one night stands with the others.
I *love* this character depth we’re getting for Joe; it’s so engaging to see how he sees himself and his past, knowing that part of him is looking through the lens of everyone who called him out for being a pig, and part of him is looking through the lens of his father and all of that guy’s disastrous mistakes, and part of him is looking through the lens of his girlfriend who sometimes seems to see him as a sexy meat mountain ~
I think there was a Will and Grace episode like this, where Grace realized that she had a lot of partners but only slept with them a few times at most before the relationship ended, and her boyfriend only had a few partners previously but all they really did was have sex for like 2 or 3 years then move on. So she was afraid she was bad at sex and he was afraid sex was all he was good at.
Enjoying seeing Roz in a role outside of extreme leftist or stuck suffering through Robin’s presence. I’d love to see her get more time in the comic and get fleshed out.
Well, she’s gotten some flesh in, meanwhile
Heyooooooo
Roz is uncharacteristically trying to be nice and comforting but she doesn’t realise that what Joe fears is himself. That once he’s had her, she becomes another conquest in his book and then he loses interest to go seek a new thing.
Yeah, on second read I get this impression too.
Possibly. I’m not sure yet.
To me, this proves that Joe was never a bad person. Joyce and He we friends. Sex wasn’t something he did with friends. Now they’re transitioning to something else.
Joe was absolutely a bad person early in the comic. It’s okay to acknowledge that he has changed and grown without wiping out the very real gross behavior he engaged in before.
Bad people sometimes change into good people, and he’s had very good reasons to.
DYW told us that Joe was big on consent — but it was a loong time before he showed us.
That’s not the only barrier for being a good guy.
Liz sure left an impression on him, didn’t she.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/ruined/
She did, though that doesn’t seem to be the angle he’s talking about here.
This doesn’t seem like he’s worried about her feeling like she’s ruined, but that she’ll be like he used to be – uninterested after the sex. Or possibly still that he’ll lose interest after the “conquest”, like his dad.
Or that he’s (also) feeling an attraction orthogonal to sex, but Joyce’s behavior has him wondering if he’s the only one feeling it, which would be disappointing.
… I understand Joe’s concern, of course, but I don’t understand why he’s going to Roz for advice. I know Joe doesn’t have a lot of people he’s close to, but I can think of plenty of people who are better able to help.
I mean, that’s like asking the Hamburglar looking for tips about going vegan. This has never been a concern for Roz.
On second thought. Never mind. Roz considers herself a bit of a *relationship* expert. And if she’s had long-term relationships in the past or present, this is ground she’s already covered.
Plus, I guess Amber really isn’t the best person to ask if you’re looking for advice on “There’s this part of me that has urges that I’m afraid of and want to make sure doesn’t hurt me; what do I do?”
Technically, I think he’d be much better off looking for advice from Danny, but this would NEVER occur to Joe himself, for…a lot of different reasons, actually.
Aw jow
Joe will marry Joyce for sure. He’s even getting the Empty Scared Eyes from her…
Joyce Face: it’s catching!
I am unsure if I should read the last panel as Roz mocking Joyce or assuring Joe. Not mutually exclusive, granted….
I read this comic and thought it means Joe is afraid he’ll get bored of her after sex, not the other way around.
If that was the case then Roz comment wouldn’t make much sense.
That’s my take on Roz. For all she knows about sex she doesn’t understand emotions
Poor Joe is so insecure and vulnerable here.
The insight of Joyce never getting tired of the things she likes is very clever, I approve.
Roz makes a good point
It took awhile for me to get what Roz’s reference to Joyce’s Neurodivergent Diet had to do with Joe’s fears