Dumbing of Age

A mistery is afoot in this land...

Yes, it can literally kill you.

Yeah. Nightmares, shakes, and a lot of other nasty things are really common, but never mentioned.

It’s weird, and imo pretty bad, that the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal aren’t talked about more. We talk about heroin withdrawal, but never alcohol. I think if people were more aware, then they’d be more willing to help addicts deal with it.

And usually, when alcohol withdrawal is brought up in media, it's all Pink Elephants.

"I have made a terrible mistake, but there's no turning back now"

Honestly, only part of this plotline I'm looking forward too is the inadvertent Laser-Guided Karma Raidah will get from all this. For once, she gets to suffer.

Don't enable her, Jacob. It's your life she's lying about, and this will only encourage her.

Well, it looks like he was only with Raidah to meet her and her brothers non existent standards, but it still kinda sucks big toes all around.

Raidah's a jerk but let's not act like Joyce is being a good person here either. What she's doing is creepy at best and emotionally manipulative at worst.

Besides, if Raidah perceives this as cheating (which, I mean, Jacob is lying about Joyce being his girlfriend) she's already made clear that she views that as grounds for retroactively dismissing the relationship outright.

Edited by RodimusMinor on Sep 29th 2019 at 12:57:25 PM

Okay that last line was pretty funny

The alt text is even funnier XD

That pun was amazing Points for Jacob.

... I really hope next page has someone do the "ba dum tsh." gag after Jacob's line.

Still waiting for that other foot

I wonder if Jacob assumes this is a big misunderstanding on his brother's part and that Joyce is in the same situation he's in.

Brcauae he's taking this really well.

Joyce clearly tried to run away right after she said something stupid, and she didn't want it to go this far, but then Harrison had to go all super-supportive brother and it got too awkward to break the bubble now. There was no nefarious scheme to push Jacob into a pretend-date, just a momentarily lapse in judgement that they are both dealing with right now. She will owe Jacob bigtime after this, and profusely apologise again.

Seriously, people are acting like Joyce is friggin' Skeletor over this. Yes, the way this started was not cool, but even good people do not-cool things all the time. The important bit is that she realises that she acted not-cool and will be making up for it.

Also, Jacob may very well be going along with it because he wants to impress his brother.

Edited by Kayeka on Oct 1st 2019 at 10:10:13 AM

Right now, all I want is for this to not end with the two of them getting together, for the simple reason that if it works then Joyce will have basically learned that lying like that is a good way of getting what she wants.

She'll have a promising career in politics thats for sure.

Honestly, this is a microcosm of Joyce's character. She's honestly still a kid, she has good intentions a lot of times and is still transitioning into adulthood. The problem however is that she goes about it in the worst way possible. Whether is be due to her upbringing like her believing she could change Ethan, or her wanting to engage in a bit of wish fulfillment by saying she was Jacob's girlfriend only for it to spiral out of control.

Joyce may legally be an adult, but she's emotionally stunted to the point she's practically a child, and as Becky put it, Joyce is horny. She's emotionally stunted and sexually repressed, and as a result, she goes about this in the worst way possible.

That little confession of hers could even be seen as charming in a way, since she just outlined why she admires Jacob and that she really does like him. It's just its come about because of her making an extremely boneheaded move.

It's stuff like this that honestly makes me pity Joyce. We talk about how her faith and worldview is constantly crushed thanks to seeing things like how Ross and Carol act, or how her upbringing was painful to Becky, but really, everything about Joyce's life is being broken just by coming to college. It's been only a month or so since she joined and look at all the crap she's been through and all her worldview has been broken.

She's already on the way, but I wouldn't be shocked if by time she graduated, she became jaded and cynical. I just pity her now.

Maybe Nega-Joyce will become a phase in the very far distant future...

Eh, honestly, I don't see this as a breaking point for Joyce, at least as things as going right now. Jacob is such a relentless nice guy that I think he will buy the "He assumed you were my girlfriend and I kind of ran with it... and then got stuck with it" excuse. He will be disappointed, but not mad.

Things might be a bit different if Raidah decides this can't be tolerated... but I see Jacob more likely to blame himself than anyone else.

Edited by FuzzyBoots on Oct 1st 2019 at 12:54:09 PM

I take SA’s point as being, not that this specific action is terribly evil, but that it’s a symptom of her emotional immaturity and hormone-addled confusion — which may lead her to do something worse at a later date.

SA?

^_^ I think they read your title(?) of "Sleeping Asshole" as your name.

Edited by FuzzyBoots on Oct 1st 2019 at 4:19:41 AM

I'll just point out that the current plot requires Jacob to have not told his brother anything about Raidah to work. Which says something about either his relationship with his brother or his relationship with Raidah.

(What it might say is simply that Jacob and Raidah have only been together for a couple weeks in comic and it's not that strong of a relationship; this is a storyline that suffers a little bit from Webcomic Time.)