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Oh no, he has peripheral vision!

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Ria

JOINK DORPY

Megh

Yes.

Kelly (they-them)

Damn, Tony is the straight man to end all straight men. I love him for that

Megh

joynk n dorpy!

C.T. Phipps

I'm still one of the people who thinks Joyce agreed with Joe's plan and has no plans not to sleep with him later but I want horrible drama and confusion of boundaries.

C.T. Phipps

I wonder if Dorothy is having worries about how being queer will affect her prospects (along with being an atheist, not wanting to be a war criminal, refusing to accept gifts like her Yale admittance for surviving a kidnapping, being absolutely terrible at networking, and other things that will prevent her being a politician) . I think she won't claim she'll care but it will be in the back of her mind. She wanted to blow up her future but I don't think she REALLY wanted to.

Reverend Jundas

Joyce really needs to slow it down just a tity bit...

Railway Series Book Club

only vaguely related to the strip but its really funny that tony's not on the main characters page anymore now that asma's on there, get fucked nepobaby lmao

Megh

i think she should speed it up

Laura

i think i say this on every sarah/tony strip but i just love this for her. i get it sarah, i too would thirst to spend every night with a hot football player boyfriend who regards me with the utmost respect and admiration

Logibear

I wanna say "ah, the dominos finally start to fall" but this is like Domino number 387 that has been set up over the past 10ish years. Très magnifique

Harold

Counterpoint: Dorpy and Joynk

DiDi-chan

Oh! Oh... will this be a concern? I... I did not think the risk of their choices included their academic progress.

DustyMarie53

I think she should think about Dorpy a tity bit more

Astariel

Own it, Joyce! Dorothy, you need to cut back on the shame.

Maybeeus

Worth remembering that Tony's dad is probably one of the most liberal deans at the college and he himself has no problem with gay people. I think he probably understands the Yes-No bit and won't cause a stink over knowing who they are (but Joyce and Dorothy don't know this). I'm still dying to figure out more of what his deal is. I have a few guesses, mostly that he might he Rachel's Ex... He also hangs out with Beef still and i've got the feeling that dude's probably bad news still considering he hung out with Paul and his gang earlier in the semester before most of them probably got arrested for kidnapping and being accessory to murder.

Logibear

Probably not, unless someone who is an aggressive ladder climber has developed a grudge against them for some reason.

Fart Captor

Joyce's lack of shame is wonderful, but her lack of opsec is less so

darklion

That's not shame, it's caution.

Fart Captor

I think it might be less shame and more "we know almost nothing about this white college football player aside from him having an influential dad, it feels wise to play it safe and be discreet around him"

Astariel

Caution about what? That Tony's going to run and tell his dad that two freshmen are having sex? And the Dean's going to care about this?

Logibear

I'm also currently still on Team "Yay Tony" but when someone starts using "unseemly" in their vocabulary like a Bloodborne NPC, I move into high alert.

Fart Captor

It might be a progressive town but they're still in Indiana. Raidah wasn't wrong that they may regret being gay on the front page of the paper

Packy Anderson

And there's absolutely nobody like that is DoA, I assure you.

GundamBradley

Oh, had Dorothy not met Tony earlier? I had forgotten if she was part of that.

Jesse

If he starts laughing for no reason, there really is something wrong.

Logibear

Well, he won't tonight.... Because its unseemly.

GundamBradley

I feel like the issue would be less bigotry and more them having been so front-and-center at the protest to begin with, that would likely be a bigger concern for the potentially pissing off the dean.

Jesse

Maybe if they hold still he'll lose sight of them.

Lia

Don't get all judgy deanson youre the deans son which is still less cool in whatever way you're thinking they are

Populuxe

Does Sarah seem to be having second thoughts about Tony and his strictness?

Logibear

More that he knows two people who were 100% for certain at the protest that the faculty opposed. In fact, thanks to Daisy they are the face of that protest.

Logibear

This reads as "horny but patient" to me.

C

In Joyce and Dorothy's defense (not that they NEED a defense), things are awkward at Dorothy's dorm, this is probably the least awkward route.

Fart Captor

White kids with powerful dads have the capability to get away with more shit than the average dude. If it turned out he was shitty and homophobic they might have no recourse that doesn't result in THEM being expelled Hell, a lot of white boys in college get away with sexual assault (or get a tiny slap on the wrist and allowed to stay in their school) even WITHOUT being related to the dean. It's alarmingly common

Fart Captor

Sarah's frequently said she doesn't want a relationship, just sex. So his immediate, sincere commitment is probably worrying her

Alexis Smith

I feel like it may be more consequential for Joyce and Dorothy due to 2 students of his father's school being publicly shown at a protest on the newspaper. But also I've barely gotten an idea of who he is, but I feel like Sarah has a good enough read of him at this point that if she thought he could imperil our braincell sharing duo than she would have kept him away.

Dan Rabin

After the initial scene-setting tableau (with Joyce having just finished replacing the mattress on the bed) this strip becomes a strong sequence of similar alternating shots. The camera excludes Sarah after her remark in panel 2, but the Tony, Joyce, and Dorothy continue on in similar framings. Joyce actually moves a bit in front of Monkey Master as she asserts being on the cover of IDS before failing into line behind Dorothy's denial. But Tony's forefinger sees all, knows all. I think Tony is reflecting that his dad has to represent the IU administration's hostility to the protest, of which his girlfriend's friends are the best-publicized members. Dorothy has probably deduced Tony situation, but Joyce doesn't have such a wide-angle view of events.

Sajuuk-Khar

BUFFOONERY SENSE: TINGLING!

Sajuuk-Khar

Tony: Additionally, one must not expect one’s new girlfriend to remain with one on a night of the hunt. After all…it is for her sake that one is receiving the ministration…

Sajuuk-Khar

I doubt very much he has any problem with Joyce and Dotty vis-a-vis their identity and it does seem like his personal values are mostly positive, buuut in his shoes I *might* feel comfortable broaching the fact (weeks later, alone with Sarah) that these do not seem to be serious people, here.

Tessea

It's like asking Kirk and Spock if they like Italian food.

NinjaZaku

I was going to ask why him being the dean's son is relevant, but then i remembered that fuckin in the dorms is probably discouraged.

Shane Wegner

Decorum, opsec, not freely admitting to someone adjacent to a publicly-watched authority figured they were present at a protest (corrupt) cops were detaining people at. _Protecting the identity of someone who was physically fighting the cops and was involved in a cop battle involving lethal force where she was injured in a way that would be very easy to identify if discovered by anyone in the know before it heals_. Well, Dorothy knows that and hasn’t shared it yet for…reasons. Reasons Joyce’s blabbermouth are increasingly justifying. Of course, that could cut both ways in the “you pulled a knife on one of my students?! We agreed on maximum restraint” angle.

Dan Rabin

Probably not. The dean was seen to object to Roz and Joe's sex tape being filmed in the dorms, but we've never seen the IU administration attempt to discourage mere sex.

Shane Wegner

“HEY COME CHECK OUT MY FRIEND’S SWEET STAB WOUND SHE GOT FROM FIGHTING THE COPS BECAUSE SHE’S SECRETLY AMAZIGIRL” -No-opsec-having Joyce, probably 🤫

Logibear

"Mere Sex! Fie upon thee, mine and Dorothy's sex was Grande Sex! No! Crunch Wrap Supreme Sex! Mere sex, I shudder at the thought"

Shane Wegner

How about caution in not outing Amazigirl.

Annie

That 'huh' speaks volumes. Tony being a dean's son likely knows he has to be aware of the annoying politics (I wonder if he would prefer to never be involved) to come and has to tread carefully. He just stated he wants to be serious with his relationship with Sarah. I for one just love the Sarah x Tony pairing!! I feel politics is going to rear its ugly head and aim at itself at a dean's son dating someone who is friends with the now 'publicized' protestors. Will Tony's dad implore him to distance himself from Sarah thus away from the protest topic? Ripples upon ripples of how one moment slapped on the front page of university newspaper ends up affecting so many people.

Empress of Robots

I did not have “Tony is the consequences because he’s a NARC” on my DoA bingo card

Girlycore

Not a good fix for Sarah. She's on a scholarship and needs a dorm she can study and focus in, not a dorm where her new roomie is severely depressed and needs help (again). On the positive side, she'd get Becky some help, on the negative side, Sarah shouldn't have to upend her life because Joyce and Dorothy upset someone.

Riley Aurelia

Look, Raidah might not be justified for her hate of Sarah, and she wouldn't be justified for destroying Joyce's life/career before it starts, but if there was some girl who started hitting on my boyfriend KNOWING he was with me, posed as my boyfriends girlfriend to his family, and got him to cheat on me, I would absolutely be justified in hating that girl for at least a few months.

Harold

@Empress of Robots: We don't *know* that Tony is a narc yet. Best-case scenario (assuming he knows Dorothy's lying through her teeth, which is a pretty safe bet especially considering Joyce's initial enthusiastic owning-up response) is that he decides, "On the one hand, my dad is the dean, and I'm sure he'd like to know the identities of The Good-Bi Girls who've become the face of the protest. On the other hand, they're two of my girlfriend's best friends - two of her *only* friends - and although she seems a bit pissed off at them right now I think she'd be even *more* PO'd if I say anything. This one time - *just this one time* - I shall err on the side of buffoonery."

Empress of Robots

On the other other hand, just about every leader of protests at campuses the last 2 years have been expelled or faced some sort of academic discipline. I've always worried the university would try to take action against Dorothy & Joyce (at least) if they could be identified. Tony isn't necessarily a NARC, but he is the son of the Dean AND the quarterback of the football team. Daisy REALLY fucked them. (although it would be HILARIOUS if Dorothy had to beg Walky to get his mom to save her and Joyce from the Dean)

Harold

@Shane Wegner: Joyce and Dorothy Agree on Maximum Restraint: A Dumbing of Age Pornographique

Zesstra

"She had friends who were... socialists." *Right wing gasps* "Well... we all make mistakes."

Seth Aaron Hershman has they/she pronouns

yeah tony's dorm room is ALLLLLLL indiana university merch. dude's loyalties seem pretty clear, and i've been screaming about this since he turned up!

tifani

Okay, still looking at all this through Joyce is having a trauma response goggles: what’s happening here isn’t freedom, it’s denial in costume. Joyce’s insistence on acting like she needs to brag about behavior she already knows Sarah doesn’t approve of is her doubling down to cope—a way of performing control to suppress the guilt she can’t process. Dorothy, meanwhile, immediately abandons the bit the second someone as institutional as the Dean’s son enters the room. She recognizes the kind of external judgment she values—the approval of authority, decorum, “good student” energy—and switches gears to protect her own image. Joyce doesn’t. She keeps the front up, loud and unfiltered, at exactly the wrong moment. In doing so, she’s risking further alienating Sarah by making a poor impression on Tony, and she’s risking embarrassing Dorothy, who (to be fair to Joyce) only minutes ago was perfectly willing to enable this behavior until institutional authority Jr. walked through the door. The contrast is sharp: Dorothy folds to preserve her standing; Joyce doubles down to preserve her delusion. It’s not liberation—it’s compulsion. Joyce’s “freedom” relies on pretending she’s fine even as her choices isolate her further, alienating the people she most wants approval from and exposing the cracks in the identity she’s trying to hold together.

tifani

But also Sarah clearly would not mind seeing Tony on the daily. Girl is hornt.

Dmitri0240

On the other hand, if Joyce and Dorothy are expelled and have their entire career plans permanently derailed, maybe a vocal subset of the fandom will finally feel that they've been appropriately punished for cheating on their week-long boyfriends in the midst of a huge personal epiphany and crisis. Or maybe I'm being naive, and it will never be enough until they're written off the comic with "Joyce and Dorothy died on the way to their home planet" as alt-text.

tifani

Joe is noticeably absent. This makes me wonder if he opted NOT to fight for Joyce and maybe Joyce’s procrastination might have worked out in a “congratulations you played yourself way.” The good news is Joyce doesn’t have to bring up the fact that she’s still dating/wants to also date Joe because Joe himself has decided to end it after being a non priority to her for hours because realistically who would put up with this for the amount of time he has? Joyce’s fantasy of control dissolving even more when the person she assumed would wait for her opts out. So then we get Joyce reacting to having been just (potentially) dumped by Joe and Dorothy has to be like, “Excuse me?”

tifani

And whose fault is it that things got awkward? Why does Sarah have to now be put in this position? She’s made it very clear she doesn’t approve of this relationship. She’s not obligated to act like she is. This is her room too and Joyce doesn’t get to just decide Dorothy lives there now. She’s not even allowed to do that by the rules of the dorm. Sarah. Is on a scholarship and dating the Dean’s kid. She’s not in a position to play fast and loose with the rules . This is okay for a night maybe but Dorothy needs to be a fucking adult and go talk to Becky.

Empress of Robots

Dumbing of Age 2: Dumbing of Coffee Shop—Joyce and Dorothy open a queer coffee shop in Bloomington that serves as a hub for leftist activities for the lower Midwest

C

...Uh, it's not Joyce or Dorothy's fault. Joyce and Dorothy don't have to permanently play the role of straight friends to make Becky happy. That's incredibly unfair to place on them because Becky can't get over Joyce. And Sarah doesn't approve of the cheating that kicked things off, not of the relationship specifically. The former is absolutely a fair reason to be bothered (it's...mostly resolved, but Joyce does need to have a conversation with Dorothy and Joe sometime soon to resolve the last lingering thread of this whole scenario).

tifani

I think there’s a reason Joyce was like move in! Move in! And is now seeming to try and make that happen asap despite it being actually ridiculous: Everything in Joyce’s internal world is collapsing, so she’s rearranging the external one to match whatever story keeps her from falling apart. Dorothy has become the stabilizer — the one person who still makes this new “liberated” version of Joyce feel real — so Joyce is clinging hard. It’s proximity as self-preservation. But the fact that she’s willing to override Sarah’s boundaries in Sarah’s own room says everything about how detached she’s gotten from the normal calibration of empathy and consequence. She’s not being malicious. She’s disoriented.

tifani

Yeah also they aren’t really allowed to just switch dorm rooms. Dorothy isn’t really allowed to stay over every night either so if Sarah wanted to she could involve Ruth about it. But why even take it that far? When Becky and Billie switched rooms that was an extreme circumstance and it was also something that meant constant looking over their shoulders. Yeah Sarah’s got the benefit of also being enrolled but logistically this whole thing is asking way too much of Sarah just to cater to Joyce and Dorothy for a problem they created. So they need to just fix it as much as she can and go back to her room. But Becky also still has access to the apartment Robin gave her so she might just decide to make use of that. But should she have to? If she prefers living on campus?

HenryVolt

Oops, I mean dorm rooms with Dorothy.

HenryVolt

Edit: OK here's an good fix, Sarah and temporarily switch Dorm rooms with Dorothy...temporarily, just until things blow over and people are back on speaking terms.

tifani

This isn’t about staying closeted. This is about the situation they created by choosing to cheat. They don’t get to have the expectation that anyone in their immediate social circle is going to do something as extreme as alter their living arrangements to accommodate the ripple effects of the awkward fallout. No one owes them that. They handled this situation about as poorly as they possibly could have. So they have to deal.

Railway Series Book Club

not at all related to this strip but its now been exactly one year since i finished my first ever read-through of the comic, accomplished over the course of an entire weekend last year. and it fucked with my brain chemistry so hard that a year later i'm posting comic dubs and playboy bunny edits on tumblr. damn you willis for ruining my brain forever

KittyKai

I have done myself the displeasure of reading through Reddit comic edits, so can you please link your Tumblr so I can cleanse my brain of that awfulness?? 🥺

Astariel

@Shane - That would be a good idea, but no one is talking about Amazi-Girl here.

Astariel

Yes, this is what it reminded me of that I couldn't remember! Thank you, this was niggling at my brain all day.

Maude Reads Things

Ooooh, I never even considered they might be nervous around Tony because of his dad. Interesting wrinkle! I wonder how that'll shake out

Jayne Lindgren

Day late, but I think Joyce is in the honeymoon period of coming out where you're SO jazzed from not having to hide something so important to you anymore that you swing straight (heh) over into just wanting to be as out as possible, even when it doesn't make sense.