This month’s Dumbing of Age Patreon bonus strip features RILEY DeSANTO.
And there are merely TWO DAYS left in the Dumbing of Age Book 5 Kickstarter! Yikes! But hey, at least you can pledge for a Roz DeSanto magnet now, in these final moments.
Big day for the DeSantoses, sort of.
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“REMINDER IN CASE YOU FORGOT”
She should wear a sign, so I can remember.
Just wait til she gets her hands on some rainbow tshirts and jewelry. Maybe a Pride flag to wear as a cape. It’ll be great.
gotta be careful not to be confused with the Christians who try to ‘reclaim’ the rainbow as a symbol of god’s promise not to drown 99% of the planet again
reclaim the rainbow, taste the rainbow
And for us Gay Christians, it’s a symbol that we can look fabulous while the rednecks try to drown us!
Rainbow cape, you say?
…By the end of DoA every single character will be Amazi-Girl’s sidekick, won’t they?
DoA is a documentary of Willis’ life.
…so yeah, most likely.
I was under the impression that Roomies was the documentary of Willis’ life.
They’re differently watered down versions. We couldn’t handle the unfiltered truth of the Epic of Wilgamesh.
Does Willis have an excessively long title that must be said every time he’s mentioned?
No. Just the ritual damning at every mention of his name.
Damn you, Willisssssssssss!
I believe his title is internet pornmonger (or is it pornlord? I can’t quite remember).
lord
She could borrow Larry David’s cape!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDbN9TZqFcg
I’m picturing a sandwich sign of the book 5 cover.
I may need to keep the book by my computer, so the title will remind me.
Kinda surprised she hasn’t just scrawled “I dig GIRLS” onto a white t-shirt yet. Would totally buy that shirt by the way.
I would flirt with a girl who wore that shirt.
Have a friend who frequently wears a t-shirt that says “I’d do me!” Of course, being in the rural South, it goes flying over most people’s heads.
That must sting. But nothing a nice basket of lotion won’t fix
WHO IS SHE TEXTING
I MUST KNOW
(Probably Joe, though.)
Probably Dorothy
That’s what we all said last time, but the fact that this strip fails to confirm that, despite prominently featuring the Joyce avatar throws this into doubt. If it was Dorothy, there would be no reason to hide it.
If it were Joe there’d be no reason to either, since Joyce’s final descent into utter madness would have been long finished.
I mean is “fucking with the audience” not sufficient reason for Willis to do something?
I’ll officially say Dorothy (she did tell Joyce to text her if Joyce needed to) but I won’t be surprised if, as a twist, it’s Joe.
Could be Ethan.
I’ll bet it’s Mike.
What if it’s Walky?
It’s clearly her Roomies!
*claps* I did not even catch that.
Maybe Joyce and Walky are texting eathother.
The horrible reveal will be that she’s talking to Mary.
DUN DUN DUN
Faz
She’s talking about a sibling trying to eat her, as if responding to a question about that. My bet’s on Dina.
My thoughts, too.
“I am just saying, some dinosaurs devoured their relatives when-”
“Gosh darn it, Dina, my family isn’t dinosaurs! I mean, my dad is pretty old, but still!”
If she’s still naive (more line in denial. Seriously, when was the last time Mary did a good job of masking her problems?!) enough to confine in *that* ogress, even she would agree any upcoming misfortune as a result of such misplaced trust would be something she brought on herself and everyone else.
My guess is Ethan.
Wondering why no one else considered Ethan? Comes a lot closer to the same world Joyce is from, for starters.
Yeah — I get that hints were dropped earlier for Dorothy or (dark horse candidate) Joe, but that makes me think it’s neither. Ethan makes sense — he’s acted as her confidant in the past, and homophobic parents is a problem he can relate to.
I will throw out a wildcard guess and say it’s possibly her heretofore unseen brother Jordan. (although Joe is also a more likely bet)
There’s no way it’s Joe. Dorothy is a solid guess but the lack of confirmation does leave me expecting the surprise reveal that it’s Jordan. It’d be an efficient way to work him into this storyline and get all the Brown kids involved.
95% certain it is Joe. Makes the earlier texting plot relevant and fits with the Walkyverse history.
Jordan would know that John was the oldest, and that Joyce hadn’t seen much of him.
Hannelore.
I lol’ed. Albeit quietly, in my head.
“also, it was crying”
I don’t think it’s Dorothy. If it was, Willis would be more straight-forward about the textees identity.
It’s Choochoobear.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess Sarah.
So is Joe now her confidante?
Dorothy said that Joyce could text if she needed an outlet. Seems unlikely that Joe would like Feelingstalk, but it’d be kind of a great surprise if it was him after all, as Willis has scrupulously avoided showing that it is indeed Dorothy.
that’s what I was wondering, there’s half a conversation there. Maybe to save space, or maybe to save up for the big reveal?
I vote Big Reveal, please!
Maybe we’ll see the other half of this conversation later in the strip.
I think it would be really interesting if that’s the case. Joyce and Joe have a good dynamic that makes for a lot of really good character development and story threads.
What dynamic? Up til that very last bit in class, they both seemed to consider each other unpredictable and dangerous (not without justification on both sides). Not trying to be snarky, genuinely curious.
The dynamic is that they have different personalities that just sort of bounce off each other; they disagree in a lot of ways but never descend into total unpleasantness. I guess I just like seeing them interact.
Disagree, every time they’ve interacted has been pretty unpleasant (except that last one). Joe saw her as a target whose boundaries he could safely ignore, and Joyce straight up had a dude punch him for it.
Wouldn’t be the first relationship that started with the two people hating each other. Each has their rough edges, but they’re wearing those down. Joyce is discovering that there’s a decent guy underneath the horndog facade, and Joe is discovering the rewards of a long-tern platonic relationship with a woman, rather than just a quick hook-up.
It would be possible, I suppose, but I don’t think the ground work has been laid yet. There have been few signs of the “decent guy underneath the horndog facade” and even few Joyce would have seen. Nor has Joe given any indication of wanting anything beyond the quick hook-up, much less “the rewards of a long-tern platonic relationship”. They weren’t quite as nasty to each other in their last exchange. That’s about it.
If Willis is going to go that route, I’d like to see a little more examination of Joe and the problems with his current approach before anything actually starts between him and Joyce. Someone who drunkenly hooks up with him and regrets it perhaps. Or someone he talks into bed who is misled into thinking it’s a relationship, not just a hookup. That kind of thing.
Or at least a closer look at how his game works, when it does.
Like the US & USSR during the Cold War!
And, uh, now …
No, now there is no USSR anymore. Ended 1991.
There is CIS and, of course, Russia itself.
Say wuh?
Likelihood that Joyce hasn’t been texting Dorothy is rising.
cuz she hasn’t quite told everyone. now the hitler youth must know.
…wait, how young is ‘youth’ again?
There aren’t as many Nazis as there used to be. They had to widen the parameters.
I’m assuming it’s the difference between the ones that murder people and the ones that tell the first group to murder people these days.
The HJ was the compulsory male youth organisation of Nazi Germany. I think they started out as young as 6 or 8 and at the end of ww2 directly went into the army at 17.
To a German, the American ways of bandying words like that around is totally shocking.
As Becky usually does things that are inappropriate, how much over the
Line is she here?
Well, its pretty inappropriate! Everyone who completed a high school level history class in a US public school definitely learned about hitler youth during the WWII lessons. We learned that it was basically like mandatory brainwashing in support of the regime and hitler specifically, propaganda for a very young and impressionable age group.
Its definitely offensive in the US to imply that a person is a part of the hitler youth, but not nearly as offensive as it would be to imply such a thing in Germany, I’m sure. Its really an absurd thing to say (especially in this context), which takes away from how offensive it would be if she were serious.
Becky is clearly trying to use absurd humor to diffuse an awkward situation (possibly she is trying to set herself up as the target for the Brown siblings’ annoyance instead of Joyce, if need be), so its likely they won’t be as offended as if she were serious. If she were serious, it would be about as offensive as calling them “a racist piece of shit” to their faces. People in America reference nazis, hitler, and the holocaust in some shockingly flippant ways, often as hyperbole and for comedic effect (“a grammar nazi” etc) so it is generally assumed that comparisons like this are not serious.
I know my answer is very long and not very clear, but there is a lot of cultural nuance. A normal response to Becky’s statement would be an annoyed look, an eye roll, and ignoring it. How far over the line would her statement be in Germany?
Note: that would only be a normal response if the Brown siblings are already familiar with way that Becky jokes. Regardless, if John actually gets mad at her over it, he’s being a stick in the mud. (Unless he is annoyed that she is making a joke out of a serious subject, then it would be perfectly normal to correct her)
If you shouted what Becky shouted in a fast-food place in Germany, you would, at the very least, kill every conversation in the room and everyone would be looking at you with a “WTF?”-expression. Chances are you’d be asked to leave the premises.
The last two sentences would defuse the situation somewhat since they make it clear that it’s some sort of joke between people who know each other, but it would be considered in extremely bad taste. I’d say it’s a little further across the line than a white person walking up to a table of black people and shouting that he found the cotton plantation.
You can joke about the nazis in Germany, but impromptu stand-up comedy in public where call someone the hitler youth… is frowned upon.
Well, it also greatly depends on who says it, where it is said, and in what context.
In this scene, I guess I would be quiet annoyed, but not insulted.
America’s Nazi references are at best awkward up here in Canada. I was in the States on a work trip a couple months back and the two things I really noticed were 1, how much Christianity dominates political discourse (up here in Canada, being too blatant about your religion is a good way to make yourself unelectable in most regions – not that we’re not a religious society, but rather that we have a very strong culture of your religion doesn’t belong in our government, by which I mean that government leaders area allowed to have religion and be devout in it but they will very likely get punted from office if they make their religion everyone’s business. It’s seen as something you should observe privately and not shove down the throats of your constituents here), and 2, how much the Conservative talking heads and pundits in particular tend to toss out a Nazi reference every time they’re even mildly displeased. I’m not allowed to refuse housing to a trans person because they’re trans? Just like Nazis! etc.
I had the very uncomfortable experience of looking around the room when someone had a conservative talk radio station on as the hosts are going all Nazi this and Nazi that and whatever and realizing that none of the Americans even noticed it. Like their talk radio does Nazi references so much they’ve become completely desensitized to the impact of it. And when they shut it off, it was because it’d be hard to have a productive meeting with it playing in the background, not because anyone was uncomfortable with the constant Nazi references or anything.
(and the topic under discussion was a new tax law for that state which would put a stop to certain tax loopholes allowing certain businesses to pay almost no property tax. You want to tax my property? The Nazis raised property taxes! I was sitting there just thinking, “what the fuck, America?”)
The reason I’m not a vegetarian: Hitler was a vegetarian!
This. The horror of what the nazis were has mostly been sanded off by their usage as a stand-in for a universal idea of “bad”. So Nazi comparisons tend to be super common in conservative circles and nazi jokes tend to be pretty ubiquitous in youth cultures… made somewhat more awkward by the rise of literal neo-nazis.
In my experience with conservative talk radio, you drown the whole thing out no matter what they’re saying, because that’s preferable to asking to turn it off and getting an earful of bigotry from whoever decided to turn it on in the first place. They could be literally suggesting we drown infants in the blood of puppies, they could be talking about how the Queen of England and Obama are alien lizardpeople (that one’s actually NOT much exaggeration), there’s no goddamn point in trying to argue with the people who listen to that junk…
Nazi Germany will always hold a special place in America’s heart – they’re THE enemy, to us, the one we can unabashedly hate on. The British were our first, but they’re our buds, now, we can’t hate them. The Confederacy is our worst enemy, the ones that came closest to destroying us, but they’re US, we can’t really hate them, either, not without causing a LOT of pain and disruption. We can be proud of hating the Nazis, though – they’re not us, they’re clearly evil, and we beat them.
More than a little. Beyond provoking United States American’s trademark knee-jerk reactions (you know it’s true, my fellow Americans) Becky’s evoking of a Nazi reference goes much further as obnoxious, internet troll-style tomfoolery based on both ignorance and a lack of any real snark material. I think there is a term in English-language internet culture for throwing in anything Hitler-related into a conversation as a cop-out from using another comparison that took at least a split-second of thought. Sal’s nickname for Danny-wanny, ‘Wonderbread,’ would be much more relevant to Joyce’s brothers.
‘Or two members of the Loyal Order of The White Flight’ or ‘Or the Ku Klux Klan’s Pleasantville Branch’ would both be what she was going for and a much better fit.
‘A better fit’ would make it an actual insult rather than an attempt at wacky humor.
I guess you are thinking of Godwin’s Law: the first person to bring Hitler/Nazis into an argument has lost. (How long have you been on the Internet?)
And there must be living Americans who think that Nazis are sorta kinda about soup.
Well, this conversation should be great. I mean, John’s probably gonna turn out to be a jerk, but there’s a chance he’s not awful!
I’m actually kinda curious to learn about Jordan.
Agreed. I’m pretty confident he’ll turn up, when we’re least expecting it.
I’m curious about not only Joyce’s brothers, but their history with Mom and Dad Brown, the fine details of Jordan’s bad rep, and John’s wife and kids.
We know Josh is their parents’ favorite due to them knowing the least about him (or at least he thinks so,) Joyce knows John has a family of his own but barely knows anything about him since he fled the nest so early in her life, Jordan might be more than a little estranged from the family, and John seems to be doing this without his wife and kids (are they with Ma and Pa Brown or have the flu or something?) But next to nothing beyond that. Joyce has only seen past the bubble she was raised in recently, and it’s possible her brothers may have a much greater idea of what she’s going through.
Okay but can we not misgender Jocelyn thanks. Seriously, what the fuck?
That’s the spirit!
Give Willis a week or so to crush it.
To be fair, Nazis is a PRETTY bad springboard.
John: “Hey, that was one time and I thought it was just going to be a regular concert!”
I’m assuming Becky would have the sense not to yell that in a restaurant out of the blue unless it’s a running joke she and the Brown brothers have about how they all look. I’m probably wrong, but I’d expect them to react more to it if I am.
Well, Joyce’s parents know the deal with Becky, so presumably the rest of the family heard too.
Plus, Becky’s not exactly in the business of trying to be in the closet these days. I mean, she was shouting it across campus earlier.
I meant the Hitler Youth crack. The metaphorical closet is radioactive ash that may or may not sparkle.
What closet? You mean that smoking radioactive crater?
“What happened there?”
“You mean the giant void over there? That used to be the closet of one Becky MacIntyre. We believe she used some antimatter to destroy it when she came out as a lesbian.”
I get the feeling that Becky cranks up the wacky factor when she’s nervous and that she also has a lot of resentment of her home town. I mean, she’s been making digs about how white and oppressive it is. I’m going to guess being back here is way more painful than she’s willing to let on.
For what it’s worth, that reference doesn’t seem to work with other racist organizations.
(looking at you, Confederate Campaigners Club)
Indiana nazis. I hate Indiana nazis.
There’s got to be an Indiana Jones joke in there somewhere.
Fun fact: in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy did nothing to stop the Nazis from opening the Ark. What if: http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3323567/indiana-jones-joke-never-dies/ .Anyway, still one of the greatest movies.
I LOVED when the Ark. melted their Nazi faces!
Well, considering he was tied up at the time…
True, but he could have shouted, “NO YOU FOOLS YOU’LL KILL US ALL!!” but he didn’t.
OTOH, what if they had opened it in the middle of Berlin? Casualty rate MIGHT have been a bit higher.
It also could have taken out more of the Nazis’ top brass. WWII might have ended earlier, if not for that meddling archaeologist.
the joke certainly would be insulting to him if he actually was a nazi
Are you sure you’re not actually Sokka?
Oh man. Poor Joyce is even more nervous than I thought. I hope her Ryanphobia of unfamiliar men isn’t making her wary of her own brother – not that there aren’t plenty of valid reasons for her to be afraid of him. Hopefully he turns out to be a nice guy who’s overcome bigotry.
Yeek, I hadn’t thought of that. Luckily she has a mental zone for “people who are men, but they’re not threatening, because they aren’t sexually into me”. (Walky and Ethan come to mind.)
My guess is: Joe or Dorothy. Joe would be the juicier plot-twist, so that’s my bet.
In other news: if you want to break the ice with someone- Call ’em Nazis! Works every time.
Love the alt (title) text.
Who is she texting?
We don’t know for sure!
At this point it’s a point of heated debate. The guesses run from Dorothy to Joe to Fax.
I’m betting on Joe. He’s a prick, but he has family issues too. He probably wanted to get away from his womanizer father, but got stuck in the same route of incidents.
Plus Joe never really had it out for Joyce, tbh. That first date of theirs showed her that not every male is a proper, well-mannered gentleman who only focuses on one person at a time, and she’s learned to judge people by their actions and not their looks as time went on.
And besides, Joe giving her his number? Y’ello, why did she keep it?
I know you probably meant Faz, but now I’m imagining all of Joyce’s texts anticlimactically going to a fax machine that can’t process them.
Joyce’s phone has a crossdimensional linkage to the Questionable Content universe. She’s texting with Faxy the fax machine, one of the few AI fax machines around.
MY LOYALTY TO AN OBSOLETE FORM OF COMMUNICATION IS A METAPHOR FOR THE AI CONDITION
Hey, you’re back! Time to unpack the Bagge.
I LIKE that.
“The Bagge iiiiis…” *puts on sunglasses* “UNPACKED!”
(My user name is actually the Swedish word for ram (male sheep) because of reasons).
Baggins! Filthy little hobbitses! They stole it from usss!
+1
There is so much stuff in this Bagge, one wonders if the laws of physics and possibly the space-time continuum were altered to fit it all.
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
She was trying to contact the Sensitive Scanner from Dexter and Monkey Master.
It’s hard to sympathize with Becky when she’s making no effort to be likable or understandable with people who she know’s probably won’t understand her
Yeah, no.
No way she’s gorgeous look at her revelling in her identity like a puppy in green green grass ah that beautiful child
No shut up I’m gonna call these people nazis even though one of them is trans. whoops! bad snap judgment is inappropriate and awkward
if ppl she has known her whole life arent offended by her already (ignoring the gay bit) i think shell be fine. also ref the above point, i doubt this is the first time she has made this joke
If JOYCE says she barely knows her oldest brother, Joyce’sbestfriendwho’salesbianyouknow, Becky probably knows jack about him, too.
It’s possible to support someone because they need support, but still acknowledge when they’re being an ass. Becky’s being an ass.
yeah, being called a nazi as a joke is the most horrible insult, especially for trans people who probably have 0 connection to the people who died in the holocaust
Becky doesn’t know about Jocelyne. From Becky’s point of view, Jocelyne is as “gay are eeeevil” as the rest of the Browns.
Which is one of many reasons not to make that joke.
A reason she is unaware of. Are we going to blame and shame people for saying something that is clearly a joke but that MIGHT have offended somebody for reasons the joke-teller has no way of knowing or being suspicious of?
Yes, actually, if someone might be insulted or triggered by your joke, that’s a very good reason not to make the joke until you’re sure it will be fine. Offensive jokes are an opt-in thing.
No it’s not.
Frankly, at this point, I wonder why anyone is reading the comic if they don’t like Becky or Carla. It’s very clear that they are being portrayed as decent people.
If you can’t stand these types of jokes, and keep taking them literally, why would this comic remotely appeal to you?
What if you like Carla but not Becky? Or vice versa? Or if you like Billie and Ruth but not Danny and Ethan? Or if you like Amber but not Amazi-girl? What if you don’t like Joyce, the closest thing we have to a main character, but like everyone else?
Honestly, with an ensemble cast this large, it’s inevitable that a couple of characters are going to rub you the wrong way. And if you like the rest of them, the best thing to do is shut up and keep reading.
I can like characters and still dislike things they do or a chain of events. I don’t just find myself liking every aspect of a narrative and quit reading when something I don’t like comes up.
There’s a threshold of in-universe acceptance. You can have decent people do horrible things, either because of ignorance, stupidity or that they’re revealing a side of themselves you might not have known before. People can like Becky while still thinking that she’s going too far.
I’m not fond of the Becky/Carla/Ruth/Mike archetype myself but I’m not gonna let one character impede my reading of a webcomic unless I genuinely dislike the direction the story is going or they’re triggering something. Worst case is I lose interest in the story for a while.
Carla’s character bio itself says we’re meant to hate her.
Becky has always rubbed me the wrong way. I’d attribute it to knowing someone just like her in appearance and personality whose dedication to the flighty, “quirky” character-type actually caused quite some emotional turmoil for me and mine.
Frankly, I wonder why anyone would have to LIKE a character in order to enjoy a story, the most important thing is that they are INTERESTING, not necessarily likeable.
For instance, I enjoyed Seinfeld, but none of the characters there could be described as “likeable” in any way, they were all obnoxious sociopaths, but they were INTERESTING obnoxious sociopaths.
To me it’s important to distinguish the characteristics of a a character from the characteristics of a real life person.
I pretty much presume that Becky and Carla will always receive disproportionate hate. And that’s because they are “bad victims”. They are sassy, they find ways to survive the untenable and they don’t fall into a ball and suffer like other media depictions of people who’ve suffered.
People are not used to dealing with real survivors and the shit they’re actually like and deal with. And people respond to discomfort and unfamiliarity by trying to find a reason to justify feeling off about the character.
Doesn’t mean that no one is allowed to hate the characters for no reason. But it’s the reason that it’s always at the weirdest times and is so over-the-top universal.
Isn’t falling into a ball and suffering what Carla did when Mary misgendered her? She needed Ruth to come along to try and sort it out for her.
And yet, she still got a shitstorm dumped on her head. People dislike victims. It’s why I tend to minimize the shit that happens to me.
I dislike people who kick a rabid dog and don’t expect it to bite. Then need somebody else to fend it off. Then guilt-trip the person for not doing it properly.
Besides that, she’s an asshole. A *self-described* asshole. Her defense that “everyone else is an asshole so I should get to be one too” doesn’t resound with me because nobody should be an asshole. That she was trans, I didn’t realize until somebody pointed it out after Mary’s comment; an interesting tidbit, but in regards to my dislike for her, irrelevant.
Those definitely are the actions that Carla took and a fair way of categorizing deliberately letting Ruth off the hook on multiple occasions, changing the subject when others bring it up, and saying that she’ll handle it herself. Just a whiny guilt-tripping asshole who needs others to solve her problems.
Eh, whatever, people have lots of reasons for hating characters, but I’m not going to go deaf and dumb and stop noticing that the reasons picked frequently fail to reflect the actual characters and their actions, erase their good moments, and jump disproportionately on their asshole moments exactly at the moment where the character is a loud, proud, queer victim.
And I’m not saying it’s because people are bigots. It’s about culture and what we are used to in our entertainment and depictions of certain types of characters.
The problem I have is that Carla wasn’t loud, proud, and a queer victim. She was just loud, then completely shut down, “fell into a ball and suffered”, and had to rely on somebody else to come to her defense when the person she was harassing snapped at her.
Doesn’t strike me as a strong, “sassy” character at all. At best, it was the response of a poor fragile trans girl, unable to stand up to ignorance, needs others to step in and hold her hand through it. Probably not what Willis intended. Definitely what people saw, though.
Not what I saw. She was briefly in shock which coincided with Ruth storming up and then being shut down. By the time Ruth and Mary had gone their ways, which was a minute or two, her defenses were back up and she’d rejected Ruth’s offer to let her beat Mary up and was telling Ruth she never expected help.
And we’ve all been through the discussion of how Carla was just harassing Mary until Mary snapped, so I don’t see the point of doing that one again.
They also specifically responded to trauma by doing things that piss people off…
I think people are misinterpreting both of them in part because they aren’t reading things like you are. You keep coming up with these really in-depth analyses of their characters which, frankly, I don’t think most people are seeing in most characters. You seem to be correct for the most part, especially for Carla, but a lot of this nuance really is not obvious when it firsts comes up. And not just “not obvious to cis/het people who haven’t been through trauma”, either.
Becky, well, there’s really nothing wrong with 90% of what she’s doing. People are putting themselves in the place of Joyce-or-whoever without really understanding the relationship between them, and without that relationship a lot of this stuff would be more annoying. Carla… Carla goes out of her damn way to not only come off as a jerk, but to specifically put up the image of being a jerk who will see your weaknesses and tear you down. She hasn’t done it to anybody who’s actually been hurt by it onscreen (the best example I can think of is Sal), but in real life I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near her the same way I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near Mike. It’s really hard to trust people like that, especially if you have interacted with them before. Thankfully, she’s not real, and she’s not just being a jerk for jerk’s sake.
So I guess what I’m saying is, you’re not wrong, and that’s certainly one reason some people keep going after them, especially the more vile ones. And the reason I’m responding to you instead of them is mostly that you seem like a decent person. It’s just kind of… personally grating? That the two major interpretations of these characters in the comments are either “horrible irredeemable asshole” or “woobies who need snuggles”. Carla especially… Carla pushes every damn “run away, predator” button I have, as someone who’s also a trauma survivor. I don’t think that makes her a horrible person, especially now, but… y’know?
I actually like Carla just fine, I find her to be funny despite having similar traits to Becky. I don’t like Becky, which I’m well within my rights not to. If I don’t like her, and she does something shitty, sometimes I’ll leave a comment on it. Then people get angry that I’m criticizing a character who’s gay, and sometimes state that I should stop reading. Why? I like the comic for the most part. it doesn’t do everything right, and I don’t like every character, but that doesn’t mean I don’t gain enjoyment from reading it, or that I should stop.
Y’know Becky, It’s probably in bad taste to joke about your friends relatives being Nazi or Hitler-esque. For…MANY reasons. One of which being, You HARDLY know John (unless somehow Becky spent more time with him than Joyce has) and secondly because you’re in the world.
I likewise prefer when people don’t yell things about Hitler when I’m chilling in a restaurant.
I think this is just Becky trying to go full on Wacky Butthole mode so she can preemptively armor herself for what she’s assuming is going to be a painful experience, because deflecting pain with humour is how Becky rolls; see how she tried to be lolsassy with Dorothy and Ethan mostly by being terrible to them.
Having said that, while I don’t agree and do think of this as a pretty solid and in-character moment for her, I sympathize with some of the frustrated reactions to Becky right now.
Oh, it’s absolutely what Becky’s doing. She tends to go the most overboard when she’s nervous, too (much to everyone’s chagrin). It’s fully in character for her, and from one booth over it’d make me choke on my tasty matzah-ball soup.
Agreed!
It’s Very Stupid of Becky to make a Nazi-joke.
It’s Very Much In Character for Becky to do something Very Stupid at this point.
For me personally, it doesn’t affect my love for the character.
Springtime for Hitler ….
at least with Jocelyn.
… and Germany …
What if you’re in Goering’s house of Luftwaffles?
🙂
We’re forgetting that she DOES know something about him–whether or not Joyce told her about that side of the conversation, she knows from Joyce’s reaction that he protested the idea of Becky coming to lunch. And given the straight up shitty reaction from Joyce’s mom, she can guess why. While the Hitler thing might be overboard, that’s Becky’s defense mechanism to a T–making extremely, aggressively inappropriate comments when she feels threatened or potentially unsafe.
The kid is like 18 and has been through a lot. She’s only just starting to explore her identity as not-mainstream-Indiana and the ride has been terrible so far. So no, it wasn’t wise… but it’s 100% in character.
You can explain it. And i can accept your explanation. But it doesn’t mean I’ll approve of it. Being understandable and being justified are different things.
This. All she knows is that Joyce very angrily defended her to him. And that upset Joyce and meant very scary and tense interaction. She’s already had one awful interaction with Joyce’s family. She’s scared that something bad happened that Joyce isn’t talking about.
She is feeling its her job to be a lightning rod for hate to distract from Joyce and her primary response to fear and pain is to pump up the wackiness to 11.
On the scale of things, nazi jokes is pretty minor, but it is very telling that as soon as there is something she has done that is rude or socially inappropriate, it’s suddenly the biggest deal, much worse than out and out homophobia or transphobia.
Woah, who is saying that Becky’s Hitler-comment is worse than homophobia or transphobia? Deleted comments?
A suggestion: Becky isn’t referencing their character, she’s refering to their appearance. I used to joke that my bro-in-law looked like a Hitler Youth poster, and thats what I was doing. AND as for declaring that she’s a leslibean, Jocelyn egged her on to do it (as if anyone in the Brown’s part of La Porte doesn’t know by now)
Becky’s proud declarations of “I’m a LESBIAN!” have reached the ears of every human being in the world, past, present and future. Becky’s homosexuality is the only thing Man is sure of.
“We’re here in the remote Australian outback, in the tiny, primitive village of Glomp, whose inhabitants are so mind-bogglingly ignorant they are not even aware that Becky McIntyre is a lesbian.”
“However, further research reveals that their ignorance is only due to their language lacking a word to adequately translate the term ‘lesbian’. To them, Becky McIntyre is ‘Beckysaurus, the red-headed girlfriend of Dina the Destroyer’.”
She’s just mentioning their appearance and not their character. That’s fine, I guess. The only reason we’re going to pretend that’s a not issue is because she’s doing it to white people. If they were ANY other race and she made a weird generalization like that it’d be frowned upon.
Yes, because then it would be racism.
But this isn’t racism, because it’s to white people. Because white people do not have a history of being criticized by their appearance, treated negatively because of their skin color, and so on.
Hell, if they were actual neo-nazis, they’d probably receive better service at this restaurant than a black family or a visibly queer couple.
Well I don’t approve of that logic. You certainly can. I’ll continue to find it fucked up.
So do I.
Take it up with the entire field of sociology:
http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/papers/caleb/racism.html
I’ll tell you this. Nothing anyone can say to me based on my race can carry social consequences. Because I’m white.
Other aspects of myself? Sure. There’s history, there’s social oppressions.
But based on my race, based on my whiteness? Nope, not a damn thing to disempower or evoke public policy used against me based on my skin color.
You know Consequences go either way. Everything has consequences, good or bad. And yes, it CAN affect you. Just not where you currently are. If I’m in the inner city, sorrounded by black people, Being called out for being black means little. A Cerberus in the same environment would probably feel the weight of everyone in the community being spiteful. You may feel a distance in community. People will shaft you at every opportunity. You might even get your ass kicked. In the grand scheme of things, you’d have a point. But don’t think that the US is all just white people with Black people sprinkled in. You simply thrive in a community where this is not the case. You might get assistance/advantages on a state level,Hell even a city level, but if you’re the odd one out, you’re gonna feel those Social Consequences.
I spent the beginning of elementary school in a majority black town. Being “cream puff” there carried no social consequences compared to when I moved some place majority white and saw how the non-white students were treated there. My it’s complicated spent considerably longer in that majority black town, finishing out high school there. The social consequences she described were far less and far less penetrating than what I observed in the non-white students in a white neighborhood, nor even my cousins who grew up non-white in a majority non-white school district.
“carried no social consequences compared to” – I think this is the thing. ‘no consequences compared to’ isn’t the same as no consequences. I grew up in a similar neighborhood, and I’ve seen what happens to some ‘cream puffs’, and I have a hard time dismissing that. Does it carry as much societal consequence as being non-white – absolutely not. But I think, especially in your formative years – it can still have huge debilitating effects, ones that even work on a systemic level within the context of your school or neighborhood.
And some people would take this argument as ‘racism’ towards whites is a srs prblm!!! And I don’t think it serious on a comparative level – when we SHOULD be focusing on providing resources for POC. But whether you call it ‘racism’ or not, I think making generalisations and enforcing stereotypes about people based on their race/appearance of race is a shitty thing to do, even if they’re white. It certainly doesn’t carry the weight of ‘real’ racism, but my own experiences leave me discomforted at seeing people okay this behaviour – I’ve seen people get hurt by it and, on a larger level, I think it promotes the same type of thinking that has led to the oppression of other minority groups.
I like the idea that Joyce is texting Joe. Also, poor Jocelyne. Being referred to as a brother, being called Josh, and now a Holocaust joke. Not that Joyce, Becky or John KNOW about Jocelyne being trans, of course, but that’s still gotta sting.
Which would be why she willingly participated in Becky’s joke?
The smile she’s putting on there looks awfully wobbly to me.
To me, Jocelyne looks pleased as punch. Which admittedly is not a common reaction to being compared to nazis, but presumably Jocelyne knows Becky well enough to take it as intended. Perhaps this is even a running joke amongst them. Either way, it feels like Jocelyne is responding positively to Becky’s energy of being cheerfully Out with a capital O.
Take a closer look. Her mouth is smiling, mostly, but her eyes aren’t.
Yeah, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s mortified that Becky referred to them as Hitler Youth. She’s understandably uncomfortable about the whole situation but might totally be #TeamBecky. (Also, we have no idea what John might have been talking about before they got there–she might be like “oh crap, Becky just threw a lit match into a powder keg.”)
you do know that human expressions are limited, especially in art, which is why you have to pair f.ex angry eyes with a happy mouth to show that the person is being playful?
To me, Jocelyn looks scared.
From experience: When I was closeted, being around someone who’s out can be a bit nerve-wracking because I’d want to be all *queer fist bump* with them (in my life, there’s nothing quite like finding another queer person in a heavily bigoted community – emotionally it’s like being thrown a life preserver while your overboard in a gale) but at the same time I was worried I’d accidentally out myself. So I’d spend much of the time agonizing over what I’d do if the thing went wrong.
I am not so sure that Jocelyn’s apprehensive expression has anything to do with Becky’s conduct aside from her being there while out and queer.
I do see her eyes, but I don’t read displeasure/hurt there of the joke hitting her. What I read there is something more like… Sentimentality. Like ‘oh you sweet baby girl, don’t let this world break you, I wish I could be as me as you are being you.’
Maybe I’m just completely off, projecting what I want to see.
I see that too. I think from the sudden increase in more femme clothing and starting to grow out the hair, that Jocelyne might be being inspired by Becky’s risky decision to come out and more by Joyce’s unconditional support for her.
I know I was from similarly super out and proud people back when I was nervous about coming out.
Especially with that last moment participating in the joke, I see that very much as Jocelyne taking a BIG risk and signalling her approval of that sort of thing in the way that she’d be afraid of normally.
honestly being jokingly compared to nazis once is just fun or doesnt feel at all
The problem isn’t just being compared to nazis, which isn’t great. The problem is that Becky is pointing out that she’d be killed by nazis for being gay. Jocelyne is trans and nazis wouldn’t EXACTLY be very welcoming to her either so…
aha, so joycelyne is upset cause she really wants to yell out “we’re not hitler youth cause then id already be dead!” but cant
Actually, the Nazis only murdered men for being homosexual, so Becky would be fine. Joycelyne on the other hand… 🙁
Of course Becky would be fine. Lesbian or not, she can still be used to mother strong Aryan sons.
Hmmm, what does that remind me of?
Don’t get me wrong or anything, I love Becky. I don’t have a problem with her. It’s just a dark joke. Like John said, Jocelyne’s smile is a bit wobbly, like she’s a biiit uncomfortable with the joke. I’m focused a bit less on the joke and more on her being called ‘brother’ and ‘Josh’ when she’s home anyway. One dark joke is a breeze compared to that.
Texting Sarah I think.
I like this idea – of course, I like pretty much anything that rounds sarah’s character out a bit.
I was thinking if Joyce isn’t texting Dorothy, she’s texting Sarah.
No, John can’t be the worst, please. Jocelyne’s a girl and he was their favorite…. Please.
Also, Becky never stepped off the gas.
Sorry, she* gotta get it right
BECAUSE!
JESUS, becky.
Also yay more Jocelyne!!
Jocelyn looks so pleased that Becky is a lesbian. I love it.
She might be thinking that Becky will serve to loosen up some of her family’s views.
Probably gives her hope of acceptance, if her parents tolerated Becky’s… Exuberance. I imagine Carol making her feelings on the mstter clear is going to sting.
I was hoping that wasn’t my wishful thinking! 😀
She won’t be when her mother tries to fix her up with Becky as a way to “fix” both of them in nice, heteronormative bliss.
I wonder if there was a “That nice so and so girl’ for Jocelyne, one that Mrs. Brown thought might be an appropriate choice of future wife.
Trans people can be same gender attracted. Tbh if it wasn’t for Dina I think it would be a perfect pairing as long as Jocelyn is also lesbian.
Yeah, but Jocelyn was flirting pretty heavily with Ethan. While it’s possible that she’s bi, we don’t have any indication of her being into girls so far.
When she was talking with Ethan she said she wasn’t gay.
Yeah, because as a woman she likes Ethan in a straight way.
Yeah, but not gay != not bisexual and there’s a reasonable chance she doesn’t know what bisexuality is anyway.
I wasn’t thinking about it from Jocelyne’s perspective, but Mrs. Brown’s. Whether Jocelyne showed any direct interest or not in “That nice so and so girl” wouldn’t automatically effect whether Mrs. Brown considered her a possible daughter in law.
Hey. We know Jocelyn isn’t gay, but she might be bi. Or she may consider lesbian different from gay. So maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
Or, just saying, she may have said she wasn’t gay because She knew Ethan still thought of her as a boy at that point and was just trying to get across the message of “I’m not into boys.”
Word of Willis is that Jocelyne is het.
So Jocelyne is into… Men? I’ve never been able to keep track of sexuality and gender-identity at the same time and it make sense. Then again I’ve never had to.
Ehh… Look at the eyebrows. I think that was her intuitive interpretation, and she’s somewhat concerned about just how uncomfortable she’s going to make things.
And then she makes things probably more uncomfortable than she could ever have dreamt.
I LOVE that Jocelyne’s got the same big blue eyes as Joyce. Just, it makes me happy.
Me too. Willis also mentioned that he generally has his characters have the same eyes as their opposite-gender parent, and the rest of their features from their same-gender parent. So that makes it even better, because it’s an Easter Egg that Jocelyn is a girl. 🙂
Ohh, good point about that. +1 to you on that Easter egg find.
*tries to avoid pop music references to WW2*
*looks over the diner’s jukebox*
Okay, who replaced all the Olivia Newton-John with Miley Cyrus?
Is that better or worse than replacing her with Billy Ray Cyrus? (You ain’t lived til you’ve heard the achey-breaky heart through in spanish through mexican bus station speakers.
Sorry, the only American singer whose Spanish language output I care about is David Lee Roth.
*finally pulls out The Police’s “Hungry For You” from Ghost In The Machine and smuggles it into the jukebox’s playlist*
“Rock Around The Clock”, duh!
Ooh getting around to Awkward Sibling Lunch. Revelations are already aboundin’.
Well, here’s hoping that Joyce’s last name wasn’t originally “Braun” but her grandfather (or great grandfather) changed it after the war for…reasons.
Von Braun.
They made rockets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
Werner was a von and made rockets. Eva wasn’t and didn’t. Sanford wasn’t but threw them (under the name Sandy Koufax).
Ha, I love this one. It’s so joyous. I looooove Jocelyne’s face here. And I always love Becky.
I mean, minus the yelling about Aryans in a restaurant. Which is so awkward. But at the same time, kinda a very Becky thing to do.
Ditto!
The tone of this one seems a little off compared to all the other strips we’ve seen of Becky’s recent interactions with the Brown family… unless we find out that Becky’s purposefully being obnoxious to make Joyce seem beatific by comparison. Oh well, I trust Willis.
That sounds like a very Becky-ish martyrdom ploy.
Lesbianism triggers a 1 6d penalty roll when confronted by a pack of wild bigots.
Don’t aryans and eloi usually have blond hair?
Joyce and the rest have dirty blond hair, I guess?
The difference between dirty blonde and brown is pretty subtle sometimes. Speaking as a dirty blond dude.
They’re dirty blond Browns.
Also, much less than 20% chance eloi will try to eat you. That’s their underground kin.
Iiiiiii fucking love Jocelyne and Becky and this page is full of so much love ♥
My vote is that she’s texting either Sal (who’s shown herself to be supportive of Joyce) or Mike (because he has helped her before with the date with Joe, and doesn’t seem to be quite as dickish as his Shortpacked counterpart. Plus, possible blackmail for future use). Or, y’know, whoever.
Or Dorothy, because Dorothy offered her support through text?
Problem is, Dorothy’s too obvious because of that reason; if it was her, there would be no reason to keep the identity a secret? If that makes sense? 🙂
I’m all for a genuine friendship between Joyce and Mike. I’m much more interested in a Mike who constantly defies others’ expectations of him than a Mike who’s just constantly mean.
Yeah, I second the Sal idea. She really seems to be creeping up as the most sane and reasonable person in the comic.
She’s texting Jesus.
Historical Jesus or Portuguese Jesus?
So I know that some people are giving Becky shit for that joke in the last panel but it just reminded me why I love her.
A joke that says “you bear a great physical resemblance to an infamous group of war criminals!” Also says “your religion has contributed to the mistreatment of my people for centuries!” And also “I’M A LEEEEESBIAAAAAAAÀAAAAN”
A joke that involves shouting about Hitler in a public space is a joke that you should be punched for making. Not to mention that neither of the guys she’s calling Nazis here have done anything to deserve it that we know of. Becky is WAY THE FUCK over the line here, and someone needs to remind her that being a member of a marginalized group is not a get-out-of-jail free card for being an ass.
She’s very young and very newly out. Does she need to be reminded or to learn it in the first place?
She is way the fuck out of line here.
She is also, what, a week from being kidnapped at gunpoint by her father for reasons her culture 100% supports, and has stepped right back into that culture to try to defend her best friend/childhood crush.
This was not a good idea. But it was the idea she had, and this is Dumbing of Age. Right now, she’s flipping the fuck out, and turning everything up to 200% in order to try to cope with it.
(Also, making sure everybody knows you’re there – even if they think you’re a total asshole – isn’t an entirely bad way to make sure you aren’t quietly kidnapped, and that calculatino is going to be informing everything she does for about, oh, the next four decades or so.)
Is that good coping? No. Is that punch in the face time? Also no.
Agreed.
All of this. Becky has been shown to be inches from breaking and is encountering more stress. This is the equivalent of a cry from help from her.
You know what, you just invalidated everything you ever say again because you advocated for violence.
See how much fun it is when people do this shit to you?
It’s somewhat awkward seeing people hope for violence against a character who a week ago in comic was facing extreme physical violence for being how she is.
Like, do the people wishing for her to get punched not get flashbacks to the scene where Toedad backhanded her? Cause I sure do.
It’s a joke. I think the more pertinent issue is why anyone has such an issue with others having a differing sense of humour than their own – I would make the same joke, albeit at a lower volume. In fact, the volume is pretty much the only thing with which I take umbrage in the entire panel. You don’t *shout* deliberately-offensive jokes. You state them, and with proper comedic timing for the best reaction from your typically small audience.
Point is, jokes of the sort are a play on how offensive things are. By taking *actual* offence to them, and reacting to them as though someone was shouting “SIEG HEIL” in public, one is merely ignoring that the comment was made in jest.
I’ve seen how Hitler jokes affect a Jewish friend of mine. I consider the joke to be violence against everyone who hears it. Humor isn’t an immunity from people taking you seriously, especially when they’re concerned for their safety.
Same.
Becky’s flounting her lesbianism is all nice and fine, but she’s forgetting that she doesn’t exactly represent all groups that were targeted, nor the ones that were hurt most
So, just out of curiosity: Is The Producers some kind of violence against Jews?
Or am I missing something?
Well, The Producers has caused many Jews to laugh so hard that they’ve hurt their sides, so, maybe?
…Well one thing you’re missing is that that’s a Mel Brooks play/movie so that’s not really a great analogy.
(Mel Brooks being Jewish himself.)
Viktoria, I appreciate your care for your friend, and others, AND I agree that people should be considerate of others re ‘humor’ (I’ve called people out re “jokes” about rape, race), but I do believe that there are jokes which use the name Hitler which neither are pro-Nazi or anti- But I do not want to dismiss the concert that you’ve raised.
Agreed–and I believe that Jocelyn is into it (I don’t see the uneasiness which a few folks have seen in her eyes). Bet: the joke is one they’ve shared before.
I’m with Mel Brooks: the best revenge on Hitler is to laugh at him.
Or go to Germany and have a beer.
Perhaps someone could remind Becky that “being a member of a marginalized group is not a get-out-of-jail free card for being an ass” by kicking her out of school and kidnapping her at gunpoint? By having her only living family reject her? By having her best friend’s mom, probably the closest thing to a mother figure she has left, reject her?
Sure, the Hitler Youth thing goes to far for me, but how can anyone think that she thinks being a lesbian is anything like a get-out-of-jail-free card? More like a screw-up-your-life card, in her experience.
Nonsense, that’s all been a barrel of fun. Really, her showing levity and imperfection is a sign that life hasn’t been miserable nearly enough as a marginalized group member and thus justifies more violence onto her.
Because bad victims must be punished for “tricking” our empathy.
IMO, your comment is far more unacceptable than Becky’s joke, which is not a great joke and it’s kinda rude because they’re in public, but is far less bad than advocating for committing physical assault.
It’s ok. I like asshole characters too. Especially when they’re self aware.
and the twist is that Joyce has been talking to *spins roulette* … ROZ?!
the real shocking twist would be if her correspondent is mary.
I don’t know Becky super well, but calling Joyce’s brothers the Hitler Youth seems a high degree of mockery for guys who seemingly have done nothing wrong.
I’m a reasonably tall blond guy, and I get called Aryan from time to time. It’s just how it is.
The Bonus Comic has Riley!? I wish I had enough money to support paetron.
Only a buck a month. If that really is too much pretend I was saying that for the benefit of lurkers.
She’s thinks there’s an 80% chance that John will try to eat her? Then what’s her plan if this presumably probable event comes to pass? Get her other sibling to hold him off while she and Becky make a run for it? Make sure he fills up on mozzarella sticks and onion rings and fries?
Or did she actually mean “I think there’s only a 20% chance that John will try to eat me”?
Oh shoot I had forgotten Becky was a lesbian
Psych that is extremely unlikely to ever happen
What’s with Becky making all these Hitler jokes? And the “joke” doesn’t even make sense? “I found Hitler Youth but you’re going to be okay because I’m a lesbian” what does that even mean?
I am so confused
Becky implies that she wouldn’t be okay in the line “Well, YOU’LL be okay.” There’s an implicit “but I wouldn’t be”
So the joke is “I’m comparing your siblings to genocidal racists, oh boy let’s hope they don’t actually try to exterminate ME as a sexual minority, eh?”?
Because that’s a shitty joke on many levels….
Yep. They can’t all be gems, evidently.
You’re going to be okay. I’m not because I am a lesbian. Joke explained
They’re Hitler Youth because they’re blond and blue-eyed, which is the physical ideal of that party. Hitler Youth hate gay people (and also pretty much everyone else). Joyce will be okay because she’s straight.
Well, the crux of the “joke” is that, if they were Hitler Youth they’d ignore Joyce and attack Becky.
The reason she’s making Hitler jokes is that she’s super-uncomfortable right now and trying to mask it with extremely inappropriate humor. I don’t know why, exactly, she has chosen the exact worst thing to joke about right now, but I just ascribed that to Becky lacking a sense of propriety because she’s in the process of questioning everything she has been told is inappropriate. Sort of a delayed teenager-hood
All of this.
Right down to the questioning of propriety thing.
Also, she grew up in a culture where everything but white, racist, sexist Christian zealots who want to see Jews die or be “perfected” were nazis, so flipping that back to people who actually are like nazis is probably a delicious bit of “fuck you world” truth telling to her.
Dumbing of Triangle: DAY 13
http://imgur.com/8tya5pO
So the big event is starting…. Seems Becky is being a bit of a… thing? What is it, nuancescene? Something?
Old strips now being ported: http://imgur.com/a/7FHYX
This is the first I’ve seen this and it is fantastic; I laughed so hard. Keep up the good work!
Anything for Jontron’s sidekick.
Do you wanna get thrown out of a restaurant? Because this is how you get thrown out of a restaurant.
Maybe she wants to get thrown out so Joyce can have that “family talk” with John and Jocelyn?
that could be accomplished by “i’m going to go find the ladies room and get some air afterward” but i don’t think discretion is what becky’s going for here.
Freaking the fuck out is what Becky is going for here.
SHE IS A LESBIAN!
DID YOU SAY, LESBIAN?
YES, A LESBIAN!!
My guess is that John’s gonna be a fence-sitter of sorts. Privately, he’ll agree with Joyce and Becky (or at the very very least support Becky the way Hank does), but he’ll try his best to keep them from causing a ruckus in the family and please his parents.
Jocelyne told Ethan on Freshman Family Weekend that “he” was “his” parents’ favourite because “they know the least about me”. My take on that is that John isn’t as fundie as his parents.
Also, I figure Becky’s pestering here is her way of testing Joyce’s siblings. Look at it from Becky’s point of view. These people, pretty much her family, are still Fundamentalist Christians.
If the Gunman taught her anything, it’s that sometimes, family doesn’t care about you at all, no matter what they say. She’s trying to figure out who in her new family is to be trusted or not, given her recently discovered sexuality.
Or that their definitions of “care” are wildly different to yours and honestly kind of horrifying.
Yup. She doesn’t know who in her “last family left” are enemies or friends. And enemy can mean a lot of unsafe shit, either endless sniping at her weakest points or literally kidnapping her and dragging her off to “get fixed”. It gets really terrifying when that’s your situation and there’s a lot of initial defensiveness as you try and guard against the next betrayal.
I was already wincing when I saw the description of Joyce’s family as a “patch of Aryans”, but the reference to the Hitler Youth was, to me anyway, over the top.
Even for a character like Becky.
Well this is just really uncomfortable to read. Like I can’t even think all that hard about the story in this strip, the jokey Nazi references are just pulling me right out of it with sheer discomfort.
I guess to get into some of my thoughts here: I’m a blue-eyed blonde Jewish girl who lost a huge amount family to the Nazis. But thanks to recessive genes I guess I’m just like the Hitler Youth.
It’s jokes like this that makes me feel like I don’t belong anywhere because I “don’t look Jewish” or whatever.
I’m sorry that this strip made you feel uncomfortable, and Im sorry for your loss.
reminds me of the observation i saw on tumblr that “_____-passing privilege” is not much of a privilege since it erases part of your identity.
While I do not want to invalidate your experience, I think you are taking a joke to mean something it doesn’t.
And don’t think I’m talking from a position of privilege. I have OCD. I live at home with my parents at an age where that is unusual. People make all sorts of jokes that could make me feel like I don’t belong if I let them. But I don’t.
I’m not in any way saying you have to find said jokes funny. I’m not even saying you can’t ask people not to make such jokes around you. But you also can’t let other people control how you feel about yourself.
Did you just seriously compare having OCD and living with your parents to losing family in the holocaust?
Did you just take a vague comparison of circumstance meant to make a point entirely unrelated ot the subjects of comparison as a statement of equivalent severity?
Analogies and anecdotes are rarely meant to serve as mirror-images between two ideas. They’re often used with the same intention as a metaphor, which is to say that they take something seemingly unrelated and use it to prove a point about the initial concept. I can technically compare the crucifixion of Jesus to the hardship of making the perfect potato salad for a family get-together, if it makes a deeper point about hardship and suffering for the greater good in general.
In this case, the person is attempting to, by relating their own experiences, make a point about not letting “cruel” jokes made at your expense, intentionally or otherwise, get too deep under your skin.
I’ll just say, while I take a stance that I don’t let anything bother me because I don’t take life very seriously, I at least try to avoid telling jokes in incredibly bad taste. Joking about Nazis is on the same tier as joking about Furgoson or Columbine. Sure, you can do it. But you’ll look like a right asshole, unless you’re telling the joke to another group of assholes, or someone who you know well enough that they’re over it. And I just want to point out the implication of this line of reasoning may come later down the line, and you don’t want to have ammo that someone can post to make you seem like a hypocrite.
Well yeah, like I said, the issue is with circumstance. You can make the jokes, and as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing at all wrong with doing so, more power to you.
Becky’s problem is that she’s not gauging her environment at all when doing so. She’s burying herself. Deep and fast. These jokes are to be made exclusively in the company of those you have already established can take them at an socially acceptable volume. Joyce’s family??? No way in hell can you assume they can handle them, not at any volume.
To me it came off as “You should get over it and have thicker skin, and I can totally say that because I have OCD so I’m not privileged! Like you!”, which is more than a little messed up and insensitive.
“While I do not want to invalidate your experience,”
Well you did a pretty damn good job doing that in only three short paragraphs. I’m not going to get into my life story here, but I’ve been pushed by circumstance into a “too Jewish for the gentiles, too gentile-looking for the Jews” box that’s been a significant source of pain for my whole life. This isn’t just not belonging as in “I don’t fit in with my friends,” this is not belonging as in “I have a hole where my sense of identity should be.”
“But you also can’t let other people control how you feel about yourself.” Yeah, like how I just let myself feel pain if someone steps on my foot.
What does this joke mean according to you? What I’m seeing is “haha, this family is all blond and blue-eyed, just like those Nazis!” but apparently I’m just choosing to read it the wrong way by your standards.
(Oh, and by the way – your having OCD does NOT mean you’re not privileged. It only means you’re not privileged on the specific axis of mental health, and it does not speak at all to antisemitism or Jewish experience.)
““But you also can’t let other people control how you feel about yourself.” Yeah, like how I just let myself feel pain if someone steps on my foot.”
I know this is nit-picking, but you DO actually “let yourself” feel physical pain, and it is possible to ignore that just as much as mental pain.
Fakirs train themselves to ignore pain and are able to insert spikes through their skin, etc.
FWIW, there are secretly a LOT of blonde Jewish people out there. I’m related to two of them, and one of my oldest friends is a third. Anyone who questions the validity of that is an asshole. I’m half-Jewish on my dad’s side, I get how much it sucks to have one foot in the circle and still be considered firmly outside of it. :/
Hey, don’t. Don’t do that.
I’m sorry for your feelings of alienation. But from the perspective of someone whose family also can’t easily be identified as Jewish by outsiders, I’m frankly more bothered by the idea that blond hair would in any way invalidate who you are than anything in this comic. If your community’s played a role in making you feel that way, I hope you’re able to find somewhere more welcoming should you want it.
I’m sorry for that. *hugs*
Oh oh oh! What if Joyce is talking to several people at once?
God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost.
It’d be kinda like if I went up to some of my friends and said “It’s either your brothers, or the cast of “Straight outta Compton”.” Except at least that wouldn’t imply they want to kill all the gays and Jews and I guess brown people in general.
I mean, that’d be way more racist, but I hear what you’re saying. It’d be uncomfortable for everyone involved lol
It’d be about equally as racist.
Nope. The only thing the Straight Out of Compton people had is being black. That makes it racist.
You can be offended if you like about the Hitler thing, but it’s not a racist joke. The thing about Hitler is that he was crazy: there is no Aryan race.
It’s racist against white people. Especially white people with blonde hair and blue eyes. And you could then argue “But racism only applies to people of a discriminated race, but then I’d point out that I believe a white person making a racial leap about white people would be equally as racist as a black guy making a racial leap about black people. The only difference is the cast, nor the actual rap group that created “Straight Outta Compton” tried to commit Genocide, so at the very least I’m not likening them to history’s greatest monsters based on their appearance.
As far as I see, a notable part of US people just love to throw words like “communism” or “Hitler” around without having a deep understanding of what it mean and imply. It doesn’t really connect to anything strong to them, seeing it’s all stuff from several thousands kilometers away.
“it’s racist against white people” yyyyeah no
it’s actually kind of antisemitic because HITLER IS NOT A FUNNY JOKE and phenotype didn’t actually have much bearing on whether you got killed back then
but it’s not racist against white people and Joyce’s siblings are not the ones being hurt by it
They’re being likened to Nazis by their appearance. I dunno, that’s something I’d be sensitive about. I wouldn’t walk up to Muslims and liken the to Al Quaeda. Or Walk up to Christians and liken them to cross burners and the Westboro Baptist Church. Or just likening all men to rapists. Just because you’re born with privilege doesn’t mean your feelings are any more invalidated.
What Lillet said.
Racism against white people doesn’t exist, because there’s no power structure backing any attempt at prejudice. Being compared to terrorists as a muslim comes with a stark reminder that people see you as something dangerous that is to be eliminated and people with power to lock you away in camps are getting majority Republican Party support.
Being compared to “thugs” as a black person or rapper stereotypes carries with it the reminder of Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin and the number of black men who the nation cheered the death of because their being black was a call for death.
For white people? There’s not the same shit. Not even close.
The literal worst you can “evoke” against a white man is that they were so powerful that they literally got away with murder (nazis, KKK, etc…). People who history let murder other people because they had the cultural power to.
Not the same thing.
It’s like your argument about Christians. Oh, you could compare them to people who are only mildly socially disapprove of as they call for the literal deaths of others. Gosh, that’s a reminder of HOW FUCKING POWERFUL THEY ARE rather than anything disempowering.
Or your argument with men. A) That never happens. And B) oh, rapists, those people who consistently get away with their crime as society blames their victims for being imperfect? Gosh, again, what a terrible life ending and threatening “accusation” to make.
With power, any attempt at prejudice or joke that takes the piss out of them is toothless and powerful groups know this. There is no concurrent social threat.
And that’s the fucking difference. So, sorry Yotomoe, but you’re wrong.
So, because of something they have no control over, they deserve to be likened to genocidal murderers. I just want to get that clear. You’re saying these people, because of their privilege, have to accept that they’re no better than those who killed all the Jews, Gays, Blacks, and many other things. By that logic, I am not innocent either. There are many crimes perpetuated by African people, African Americans and Black people in general. I am going to take the brunt of all of those actions of power, force and the deaths of anyone who has died by the hands of someone who looks like me to heart. So go on. Call me Kony. Call me a Black Panther. Call me the names of the many black people over time that have committed genocide. I deserve it. White people deserve it. Asians deserve it. Because there is no place on earth where there is a group of people who don’t have privilege based on their genetics. And the only difference is that they just haven’t happened to YOU. I’m not gonna argue that things aren’t REALLY shitty for Africans and people of Afro-american heritage. That’d be awfully hypocritical. But no one deserves to be condemned for their race’s transgressions. Especially if it’s based on their appearance! IT’S FUCKED UP AND UNCONTROLLABLE. I CAN’T STAND IT SO MUCH THAT IT MAKES ME ANGRY. YOU DON’T DESERVE THAT. NO ONE DOES. THAT’S NOT PROGRESS. THAT’S FUCKING BIGOTRY.
So, Sorry Ceberus. I Disagree. You’re entitled to your opinion but I will not accept it as truth.
Not really. I’ve gotten shit for fundamental aspects of myself that are disempowered. It’s really not the same as someone calling me cracker. Even if someone called me a Klansman, which they don’t. Because unless you’re being an absolute shithead as a privileged member of society, the marginalized tend to be terrified of even light teasing on that sort of score, it would carry nothing of the punch of other forms of dehumanization.
There would be no cultural weight to the insult and it would be easy to dismiss than say, arguing that all trans people are child molesters its okay to kill in restrooms. Because that one, that carries social consequences that put me and mine in much more direct line for violence and dehumanization in legal treatment.
That’s the fucking difference.
I’m not going to pretend that being fucking white carries the same discriminatory experiences as being not-white, because I cannot be blind to how dramatically differently I am treated based on race and my cousins are treated based on race.
They fundamentally are not the same. Sorry. But that is true.
It’s not that you deserve it. Or that it’s justified or right or a good idea or whatever else you want to say.
It’s that it’s not a threat. At the worst, in some situations it’s a personal threat, but not one backed up by centuries of institutional power.
The point is. THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT RIGHT. It doesn’t matter if maybe it doesn’t have the same amount of power. Maybe it doesn’t. That doesn’t mean it’s an okay thing to do. I’m not going to at all defend this mindset. Don’t. FUCKING. DO. IT. It doesn’t matter if it’s worse for some than others. DON’T. FUCKING. DO. IT. And Don’t defend it. It’s not a good thing to do. It’s dehumanizing, irresponsible, and negligent. And if you think this behavior is ok then I think you’re kind of an ass. I won’t pretend I ain’t said stuff worse than this before. But I also admit that I’m definitely shitty sometimes. I’m not gonna hide behind some excuse that it doesn’t mean as much because of my experiences or that the party I’m criticizing has enough power that it shouldn’t hurt them as much. That doesn’t excuse it. Don’t defend it. Change it. Make sure it doesn’t happen again. Or if you allow it to happen again, just make sure you recognize that you’re a bit of an asshole and that people might not like you because of that. I absolutely won’t budge on that.
The other point is that not only does it carry nothing, as toothless as a wet fart even if it is “rude”.
It also does not happen. How many times I’m called the f-slur or the t-slur? And then how many times am I called anything anti-white despite living somewhere majority POC? You’re making it seem like it’s at all proportionate the number of times someone faces racism compared to white people facing “anti-white prejudice” and it isn’t. People are extremely slow to compare white people to nazis or the KKK and usually requires people to be very vocally and publicly bigoted to even draw the comparison.
Hell, even with Trump openly recruiting the Klan and neo-nazis and supporting literal concentration camp, he STILL gets a lower volume of people calling him a nazi than called Obama a nazi. For… existing and being liberal and black.
It’s not just weight of impact, it’s frequency.
+1. As a blonde/blue eyed white, calling me aryan definitely isn’t offensive to me as someone of that demographic (it is offensive because it is a holocaust joke). White, blonde, blue eyed people don’t face discrimination based on those traits, and most importantly it is not widely believed (if it’s really believed at all) that we are nazis. This is the big difference between it and pretty much any other racial slurs.
There is actually an Aryan race, they just don’t look anything like what Hitler thought they did. They are basically Indians from a particular region of India. No idea how that got mixed up with what is basically “Nordic”.
And yes, the joke was racist/geneticsist(?) since the only thing they had in common with the Hitler Youth was their genetic makeup, and also offensive towards all the people the Nazis targeted, essentially hitting in all directions.
At some point “Aryan” was used for all the Indo-European language speakers, I think because back then Sanskrit was the oldest known. That those languages spread so far means speakers had some sort of edge over other people, probably starting with horses.
That got viewed in a racist light as these Aryans being better than other people. Then even-more-racists started using “Aryans” to mean the Indo-European speakers they thought were the very best of all, even though they had lost all connection to Sanskrit.
Nazis were, among other things, not very good at history.
This is a little out there, but I don’t think that the elder Browns are coming to lunch.
My reasons? When you go to any restaurant that you don’t order at the counter, you tell the front desk the maximum possible members of the party, especially if you arrive in different vehicles. The host said “Brown, party of four”.
Since we know that Joyce insisted that Becky be included, that makes four people, Joyce, Jocelyn, Becky, and John.
Not ‘out there’ at all; I think that was the intention. Breakfast is gonna be the four of them. The real fireworks are set for hanging out all together with the parents at the Brown house, probably supper.
Jocelyne is quick on the uptake. I think she and Becky will get along wonderfully.
Since they’ve known each other for 18 years, it’s not really surprising that Joc knows how Becky ticks…
w o w that was a really tasteless joke. There’s a way to write characters being offensive and flawed without relying on this sort of thing. Fail, Willis
no it’s ok bc becky is gay don’t be racist
(I’m joking, of course, but I’m pretty pissed about the strip so I’m making fun of the idea of passing it off as OK or trying to defend Becky)
That final panel could probably use a more “are you shitting me Becky” expression on John’s face.
idk, something tells me that growing up in the brown household has given john world-class training for his poker face when it comes to “wow, that sure is a thing you just said” moments.
also, given that joyce and becky are childhood bffs, he’s probably accustomed to becky just saying whatever. for all we know, her calling the brown family aryans etc is a favorite joke of hers.
…not that frequency makes it any more ok, exactly…but it does lessen the visible reactions of those around her if they’re exposed to it more.
If you go back to panel literally before the final panel Joyce mentions that He’s been out of the house for as long as she can remember. I doubt he knows Becky as anything older than maybe an 8 year old at most.
Still neeks is right, I think, about John becoming VERY adept at hiding his true reactions.
Ha ha! It’s funny because she loudly accused two people of being Nazis based on literally nothing and for no reason!
Joyce’s family aren’t even the most “Aryan” people in this strip, the counter girl is blond.
Comedy!
Not very blonde tho.
Man, I want Jocelyn to come out to some siblings in this scene, because they’re together face-to-face without their parents, but I imagine Jocelyn would look a lot more nervous if she had decided to do that right now.
Agreed. I would think that even if she’d planned to come out, she’d walk that back after getting called Hitler Youth (aka horrifying monster) by practically a sister, even in jest and even after participating in the jest. Especially since it’s the first thing she hears, and also especially on top of the (unknowing) misnaming and misgendering she experiences all the time from everyone.
And yet, she’s the one playing along. She’s the one who gets it and feeds Becky the “because you’re a lesbian” punchline.
Feeling like she’s surrounded by Hitler Youth is probably her default state.
I dunno, it is still pretty fucked up to say that line in front of Jocelyne, even if Becky has no idea why it would hurt her. Unintentionally being a dick when she’s trying to be Wacky Fun Becky is something she’s done before to Dorothy and Ethan.
I feel like the “wtf becky” reaction is pretty well earned here.
Yeah, I guess. I’m sort of “wtf becky” myself, though mostly because this seems to come out of nowhere. Still, the reaction here seems really extreme to me. The idea that Nazi jokes are somehow the worst thing ever – someone even compared defending this to defending her murdering someone?
People have been making Nazi jokes all my life (and before, back to the war itself) and I’ve rarely seen this kind of reaction. Nor is it all, or even mostly driven by anti-Semitism, near as I can tell.
I’m putting it down to cultural differences.
Again, I’ve got no problem with seeing it as Becky being a jerk, which I suspect is the intent, but the vehemence of some of the response seems overboard to me.
Wait, who is Joyce texting?
As someone who has dual citizenship with Germany and grew up in the US… Hitler Youth jokes really aren’t that funny. Nor are the dead Jew jokes. Or ‘purity, ja?’ jokes. And yes, I know I’m not blonde. My Dad, who came from Germany, wasn’t blonde either. Not all German people are blonde. Seriously, the Holocaust was horrible, wtf?
Let’s get ready to rumbleeeeeeeeeee
…AND I’M PROUD OF IT!
Jocelyne’s joy at finding potential sex weirdo solidarity is super cute.
. . . this strip made me really uncomfortable.
Like I think what Willis was going for is that Becky feels awkward and out of place so she’s making up for it by hiding her discomfort by being loud and obnoxious but it’s in really poor taste??? idk maybe the next strip will be someone telling her that these “jokes” are really awful and it’ll be ok.
It’s interesting that everyone is assuming that the reader is supposed to think Becky’s jokes are funny. I suspect this is one of those kind of strips that are always a bit of bother for a webcomic writer, because in context they work, but before that context is established they can confuse or upset the regular reader.
So how is the reader supposed to feel? Are they supposed to just be offended by the punchline? That seems like an odd reaction to try to invoke.
I think its pretty classic cringe comedy. A good deal of the humor come from how much of an uncomfortable situation it is.
It’s gallows humor. Becky is making a dark joke about her own extermination which is probably something that haunts her nightmares given literally everything about Toedad’s attack on campus.
I dunno, I’m not as bothered as others, but that’s because I am not Jewish and thus have that privilege and because me and my friends use gallows humor all the time to cope with the world wanting to kill us.
I was under the impression more people were assuming the joke was supposed to be overboard and tasteless but that Willis could have reigned it in a little bit and have better achieved that effect.
Some anvils need to be dropped. (Warning: TV tropes will eat your life.)
Wow, Becky must be REALLY nervous to pull a Gowdwin. She’ll start blabbing about school shootings within a minute.
I like how Jocelyne sees where the joke is going and joins in, and how John looks more confused than anything. Remember that Joyce and Becky have been a double act for as long as they can remember – there have probably been quite few times when they have seen Joyce without Becky being there. This is not Becky butting in on the Brown Sibling Time – this is Becky making an ass of herself in the meeting with what is almost her OWN siblings.
Since this is her Public Coming out in her home town…. I wonder if Becky just didn’t start to shout about Hitler to distract from the Lesbian.
It’s not really Godwin, because she didn’t compare the Brown’s to Hitler, she compared their appearance to the Hitler Youth ideal/poster inage.
I thought the whole family would be there… her parents as well.
Maybe this *isn’t* an intervention…
Why did anyone think it was?
All the talk about aryans yesterday and then this.
What.
It is weird how alike all the Brown kids look. Particularly strong genes, I’m guessing.
Given that blonde hair and blue eyes are the recessive traits, lack of strong genes is more like it.
I’m seeing a lot of people justifying Becky’s Nazi joke (myself included).
What I’d like to see is people defending Willis’s Nazi joke.
This. I think I see what he was aiming for but he missed the mark.
Yeah. This is how I feel too. I can understand Becky being inappropriate and crossing a line given the uncomfortable situation she’s in.
Willis? Not so much.
Since Willis is writing Becky, if you can understand Becky saying it then you should be able to understand Willis writing Becky saying it.
For me, my reaction was basically “Wow, that’s a weird joke for Becky to make. But I trust Willis enough to see where he’s going.”
Also, with the US primaries going on I’ve heard an awful lot of Nazi comparisons recently.
I think it’s all around bad, and that any criticism is certainly warranted. It’s also a prime example of my theory that Becky can do no wrong. If you can defend this, then Becky could do nigh anything short of stabbing an innocent person and people would pray it away as her as acting out because of her fucked up life.
The defence is that it is a joke, and should be taken as a joke. Horrible things happened. Let them ruin your life or your mood now at your own peril, especially if you are not among those personally and contemporarily impacted by those things. Vicarious offence is not an excuse to censure or censor.
I say making light of things of that sort is among humour’s finer practical uses. Draconian dictatorships can suffer no greater insult than being mocked and ridiculed as though they never mattered. It’s not as though one is disrespecting the dead by cracking jokes about their oppressors.
Besides, the problem at hand is far more circumstantial than “Willis’ Nazi joke.” It’s that Becky made a joke that people might perceive as controversial. In a public place. With her outside voice. To the face of the people with whom she is about to eat. The point here is that she’s digging her own grave. Her “offensive” joke emphasises this point.
(Also this is a webcomic and these people are caricatures, calm down).
I’m not sure what baffles me more, to be honest: the number of people who have apparently never seen The Producers or Fawlty Towers, or the outrage on behalf of blue eyed blondes. Maybe that discomfort at being “othered” is supposed to be part of the point? (Especially for the subset of Willis’s audience who are quick to deny the microagressions against Sal?)
What baffles me is people claiming Becky called John and Joc nazis.
I was waiting for tomorrow to make that point, but yeah. Willis has Jewish, LGBTQ, and non-neurotypical readers. Hitler jokes can be very scary, and I really wish he’d done something else for this strip.
Yeah.
The potential discomfort of the Brown siblings (who probably aren’t even going to be that uncomfortable…) is not the reason this joke is in very poor taste.
It’s actually not even as bad in-universe as it is out-of-universe, given that the number of restaurant patrons who hear it is probably a little bit smaller than the number of Willis’ readers
…yeah
Cephalon the Pod: gonna take a shot at justifying Willis’ Hitler Youth joke. Ahem…. Willis thought about having Becky say she’d found Joyces brothers OR The Church Choir (Youth Group?), but he’s taken So. Much. SHIP. for being Anti-Christian that he decided to go with something else in this strip.
That’s a fair point.
I’m gonna guess that this is one of those side effects of writing while sleep deprived in early parenthood, but given that I’m not Jewish, I can’t speak for readers who were more shaken up by the joke nor should I minimize the impact they feel.
I dunno why no one caught on that it was Sarah. She also seems to be having a convo on her smartphone the whole time that she is talking with Dina in the student lounge. Could be joyce is trying to get some roomie advice.
Joyce is blonde?
Yeah, that’s what I thought too. To me, Joyce and her siblings’ hair is mousy brown, not blonde.
It might be ranked as ‘dishwater’ or ‘dirty’ blonde.
I’m about as blond as Joyce, and I get called Aryan sometimes. For some people, it’s a go-to way of making fun when someone looks even a bit northern European.
Yeah, this strip seems weird and kinda in poor taste. I’ll admit the “BECAUSE I’M A LESBIAN” part did make me smile, but yeah, I think we probably could have made me smile without nazi jokes.
Everyone’s nerves are shot, Becky’s more than most. She’s just been through the emotional RINGER, and is now attempting to retain her best friendship. Off-color humor is her defense mechanism. I say we allow a few Third Reich references in light of recent events, hmm?
Naw. I’ve had friends that’ve had negative reactions to coming out. I still don’t let him say the n-word. (there was an extended period of time when he did it).
This is honestly why I don’t understand this: Whenever I’ve unfortunately been sent through the wringer, I have never been grateful to the people who’ve allowed or made light of my shitty behaviour – only resentful. Comparatively, I very much respect the people who told me firmly and calmly that I was out of line.
Well, yeah, that would be racist as fuck. Becky is not being racist.
Just Racist Adjacent.
Not even. Anti-semitic? Maybe. But not racist.
Saying something rude about a person based on their appearance certainly is bad to the people. No one wants to be compared to murderers. Unless I guess you’re a murderer.
I am white. I am also a member of several groups whose most prominent media depictions are of an inhuman creature who loves to murder people because of our inherent “pervertedness” or “craziness”.
Please believe me when I say I know which carries more fear and cultural impact. And which has a more direct impact on how I am culturally treated and how at risk I am for being killed myself.
Please believe me when I note this despite the fact that many of those who share my skin color have gotten away scott free with murdering people who share my cousins’ skin color. And almost none who share my other traits have committed murder.
Anti-Semitic? I am, seriously, curious how her joke is anti-Semitic, because it’s not transparent to me
How about antisemitic because A. blonde blue-eyed Jews exist (like me) that don’t like being lumped in with the people that exterminated all but one of my ancestors and B. loudly shouting terms like “aryan” and “Hitler youth” in public areas would be absolutely terrifying to any Jews and Romani in the area. Also, making light of Nazis in general is really iffy – it has to be done right, and this was absolutely not done right.
Sig: fair enough–I’m seeing how Becky’s joke is no joke for you and really does deny your identity. Dang. I hope that you find the healing you deserve (as I do for myself).
And for what it’s worth, I did once call a guy out for ignorance when he questioned the existence of blonde, blue-eyed Jews. BUT then I didn’t recognize how Becky’s joke did the same thing by playing on the Nazi’s own “racial” profiling.
Referencing the Third Reich is not equatable to using the N word.
I have less of a problem with what Becky is saying than with what Willis is writing here… they have a slightly different assumed audience :>
I didn’t even mention Becky. Becky is a fictional character, not an actual person. Whether it’s in character for her to say it or not is irrelevant to me, it’s whether Willis should have written it. And all I said was this strip was uncomfortable.
Becky has somehow managed to go from a character I found profoundly annoying to my favorite character in the comic, without altering her behaviour in any way whatsoever. She don’t give a fuck
wow, people are actually upset about that joke? come on. shes not joking on someone elses behalf, unless literally every time she sees a blonde person she calls them a nazi cause then it would be really annoying. this isnt a racist joke, this isnt a joke that makes anyone in the comic feel bad. shes just joking that everyone in joyces family is blonde and have blue eyes. did any of you complain about racist towards blonde people? cause thats the only reason i see that it could be offensive
Yeah, well, if someone, even someone I know well, yells in public he found the Nazi Youths while pointing at me…. guess what, I’ll take it really badly.
To be correct, it’s the Hitler Youth.
Also, I don’t see the two brothers taking it that badly …
well its got hitler in it!
me neither
They probably did natzi that coming.
Stop.
Yeah, Neko, what the heil do you think you’re doing??
🙂 (trying not to lol)
Not “racist against blonde people”, more “making jokes about Hitler and Holocaust” aka “kind of really really antisemitic”
It can be both. There’s no reason to deny that it’s also obviously offensive toward the Browns. They seem to be taking it as harmless trash talk among friends, though.
Maybe it’s a cultural thing, maybe I’m just desensitized, but “jokes about Hitler/Holocause” == “antisemitic”?
The Producers? Antisemitic?
Seinfeld’s soup nazi? Antisemitic?
Do NOT see how Becky’s joke is anti-semitic.
It’s a joke about the Brown’s looking like the Nazi Ideal of Aryan Beauty. IT does seem to be a holocaust joke, in context, since Jocelyn set Becky up for a spike (volley ball style), with her line that if The Brown’s are the Hitler Youth then Becky is F’d because BECKY IS A LESBIAN!!! and the HJ was not very inclusive.
Which, it seems to me, is an appropriate joke because Mama Brown is not very inclusive either AND/BUT she doesn’t know about the brothers yet.
EXCEPT that I believe that Jocelyn just declared herself publicly as being on Becky’s side. Jocelyn told Joyce to pick her battles.
And I’m hoping she’s taking a stand here because there is hella battle coming.
Either way, though, Becky is declaring Loud and Proud who she is and that she won’t be shamed or cowed AND she’s willing to IMPOLITE. And I say, good on her.
…beckyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
i just read through all the comments and wow, americans are so sensitive about hitler. yes, hitler did reqlly bad things and was an evil person. but guess what: hes freaking dead! hes been dead for a long time, and the holocaust happened also a long time ago. and didnt you know humans use jokes as a coping mechanism? people even joked about hitler *in america* during the wars. humans joke about thinga that scare them, and thats okay.
jewish families that lost people because of hitler and the holocaust will probably not enjoy jokes about hitler until after a few more generations though
You think Americans are sensitive about Nazi jokes? Try yelling that here in Germany.
ive never been in germany so i dont know what theyre like, sadly. oh and i wasnt saying americans are more sensitive than germans, i was just saying americans are more sensitive than i expected them to be, if that wasnt clear
It’s cute you assume all/most the reader live in the US.
thanks, youre also cute. most readers probably are from usa though
{{citation needed}}
The United States is the source of 68.23% of this website’s traffic.
Thank you.
Which means that 31.77% — or almost A FULL ONE-THIRD — of the traffic is from outside the USA. Granted, Canada probably provides a large share of that, but even so that is still impressive.
honestly there are less americans than i thought, but still majority though
68.23% is very close to 15 out of 22. So I wonder where those other seven dudes are from.
That last point alone might be worth avoiding the Hitler jokes for.
honestly the joke being told here is a joke being told by a character, not by the author. a comic thats supposed to show more or less “real” interactions are bound to sometimes make readers uncomfortable unintentionally
Yes?
so avoiding certain jokes isnt a necessity for comic authors?
Ah, I thought you still argued for not enjoying Hitler jokes would be “so sensitive”
There is a world of difference between “this is an OK thing to do and “this is not an OK thing to do, but this character does it anyway because of in comic reasons.”, which is what Becky does here.
oh, no no. people arent sensitive for not enjoying a joke. obviously people dont always have to enjoy everything. i just found the amount of people who were actually angry at willis or becky because of the joke too much which is my conclusion that they are so sensitive about jokes they dont enjoy (that actually arent that offensive to that particular person), they get angry instead of just going on with their lives and accept that they just read a bad joke
nazi jokes are okay and not okay in different circumstances and depending on the joke itself. if becky has told this joke 100 times to the same people, theyre bound to feel tired of it or even upset about it cause it could be classified as bullying. but i dont think becky has done that, and because of my experiences with similar jokes towards myself i dont find this joke offensive at all
I’m sorry for the picture.
SKDK, I’m agreeing with most of what you said, except, don’t assume that all folks who lost family to the Nazi War, Jewish or otherwise, can’t enjoy a joke about it.
are you one of them? in that case, im sorry (i wouldnt be able to logically apologize to you unless youre one of them), of course jews and others can enjoy nazi jokes. and they should! mocking ones opressors by making them into a joke is a fun thing to do. unless it brings up bad memories which it might for the older generation, which is why im assuming when there arent many people left who experienced it or experienced their parenrs/grandparents grief and sadness, most of them will be able to joke about it. i just wanted to bring up that im not a totally insensitive asshole and that i do understand if someone feels bad about this kind of joke before i posted
No worries, YOU are NOT a totes insensitive a-hole, by any means. I meant that you dont need to wait a few more generations for there to be SOME people whose families suffered to make/appreciate such jokes.
To be fair, it depends on the person. Reportedly one guy walked out of The Producers when it first came out, but a lot of Jewish people really love it. And Mel Brooks is a WWII vet himself.
Just don’t mention the war …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfl6Lu3xQW0
FWIW, I suspect that the ‘Hitler Youth’ crack is direct revenge on Becky’s part for the slight John inflicted on her (intentionally or not) for implying that Becky should be excluded from the family get-together (despite the fact that I get the impression she was around the Browns’ house so often as to be virtually Joyce’s sister). Jocelyn at least gets it.
What I’m interested to find out is to what degree this is John’s own feeling about interacting with Becky and to what degree this is him doing what Jocelyn told Ethan she does: Namely walking on eggshells around their mother and avoiding doing anything to annoy her because life is just so much more pain-free that way.
My impression at this point is that John is the Brown family’s answer to Percy Weasley: Almost painfully straight-laced and incapable of doing or thinking anything that falls outside the box of ‘acceptable behaviour’.
P.S.: My call is that Joyce is either texting Dorothy or Sarah. Dorothy is more likely; I can’t see Joyce initiating the conversation with her the way I can see her doing so with Dorothy. If, on the other hand, Sarah called Joyce to see how she was doing, I could see it going in this direction.
As a Canadian, my gut reaction here is “what the fuck, Becky?!” Cuz up here, that is not a joke you’d make in public. (In private, maybe, with the right audience and only if Nazism is the thing being mocked but even then odds are a good portion of the room is going to at best be uncomfortable)
Buuut then I remember she’s American from a conservative region in the US, and it makes a lot more sense.
Let’s not forget she was brought up in the same subculture that made Glenn Beck relevant on the national stage – that particular subset of the US makes Hitler references like they’re going out of style.
Not that the joke is okay to make (it’s really, really, really not and I sincerely hope someone calls Becky on it in the next few strips), but to be fair to Becky, she was probably brought up in a culture where Hitler was less perpetrator of atrocity and more a cartoonish villain to be brought up whenever something you slightly disapprove of is going on.
And I suspect this is foreshadowing for Hitler comments that won’t be made in jest when Carol and Hank are back. Stuff of the “Hitler wasn’t wrong about everything” variety, which I can say from first-hand experience that straight bigots will say to the face of just-out queer kids in so many words.
I’d like to think Hank knows better.
Maybe. But I have negative confidence in Carol – or in Hank’s willingness to seriously challenge her on the Becky front, for that matter. He’s picking his battles… but it’s no coincidence that the battles he chooses to pick are the ones that don’t involve directly defending a lesbian. He’s not as obvious with his bigotry as Carol, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t in large part agree with her.
I hat to be the one to tell you, but….
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/moral/
That was funny!
IE, Good on Willis, he gets It.
Yeah, I don’t really get the extreme reactions some people are having in the comments. Sure, the Hitler Youth thing seems to come out of nowhere and it’s not even particularly funny, but the idea that jokes about Nazis and Hitler should somehow be completely verboten is just weird to me.
And it’s not just the Glen Beck fans, but throughout American popular culture – someone mentioned The Producers above and grammar nazis and the soup nazi. Like it or not, at least in US culture jokes about Nazis aren’t rare at all.
And for your bit about foreshadowing “You know who else was maybe partly Jewish? Hitler!
Antisemitism is not rare in global US pop culture, more news at eleven
The Producers was made by Mel Brooks. Who happens to be Jewish. Seinfeld – who was the source of the soup nazi meme – Jewish.
I get that the “self-hating Jew” is a thing, but I really don’t think it applies here.
I would agree that antisemitism isn’t rare in US pop culture, but I don’t think this is it at all.
When interviewed about The Producers, Brooks has always said that he believes that the best way to defang a demon is to make it a source of laughter rather than fear.
Both Seinfeld (soup nazi) and Brooks (The Producers and To Be or Not To Be) are Jewish.
Oh the irony!
To Be Or Not To Be was not originally Brooks’ – it’s a remake of an earlier, more subversive film by the same name, produced by the well-known anti-Nazi film producer Ernst Lubitsch, and starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard. If you’re a fan of Brooks’ version, you really should see the earlier one.
“So they call me Concentration Camp Erhardt, eh?”
https://youtu.be/Ls9-kwtJXfc
The complete film on Youtube!
Thankyou. I’d forgotten that existed. Ernst Lubitsch is v.good
And thanks for catalyzing me to hunt it up: I am going to enjoy seeing it again. 🙂
Right, it’s not a conservative thing. Personally, it’s always been liberal Jewish friends who get a little amusement out of calling me Aryan, because I’m reasonably tall and blond.
The idea that they shouldn’t be shouted in public is a perfectly good one – that shit’s going to upset people.
But what she’s doing is shouting a bad taste joke in public. She isn’t calling John and Joc Nazis.
I think it’s a cultural thing – as I said, USAians are by and large desensitized to Hitler/Nazi jokes. In my region, it’s still very much a taboo and not something you’d do in public (especially not in a “haha you’re so Aryan” sense. Where the punchline is Nazism being bad or made fun of, it’s less taboo up here, but jokes of the sort Becky made would likely get the entire restaurant staring at you – and, depending on the region and owner, might get you ejected if you make a habit of it).
I really think it’s a culture difference. Up here, it’s not so much that talking about Nazis is verboten so much as our culture treats the Holocaust as a topic that should be handled with gravity and solemnity – if you’re taking the piss out if it, it’s a faux pas in the same sort of way that cracking jokes at a funeral would be.
As a person who takes the piss out of stuff as my default anxiety/upset reaction, I can see where Becky’s coming from and I might do something similar (in fact, I have been that asshole cracking jokes and/or getting a case of the anxiety giggles at a funeral, and have since stopped going to funerals as a result because if my way of coping makes everyone feel worse, I shouldn’t be there).
Yesssss. Jocelyn/Becky interaction awesome as expected!
I am really, really still hoping that this was intended to be the Jocelyn coming out to siblings/Joyce meeting and that’s why the first reaction was “we want it to be family only”, not because of anti-Becky sentiment
I have the feel v that it was. Hence lunch being younger generation only.
Some peoples humor is not to everyone’s taste I find some peoples humor/speech distasteful and offensive, I have zero expectation that the fact i consider something offensive obligates any change of behavior on the person who doesn’t. Life will contain speech which offends you in my opinion I consider peoples intent more important than the content. I’m in a mixed race relationship my partners grandparents are lovely and really like me they just haven’t really got the hang of vocabulary that bothers me not at all because I know their intent is not to hurt me. I think people get offended way way to easily and expect other people to care much more than is reasonable when they don’t agree.
This is probably my Canadian culture talking but: I think a speaker has an obligation to be mindful of their audience. Some things are okay to joke about in private because everyone in the group understands the context of the joke, but they are not okay to joke about in public. Frex, because my own sense of humor tends toward gallows humor and morbid jokes, I reign in my jokey side in public – my friends get that I am a chemist and work a dangerous job and joke about very nasty morbid stuff to ease tension – and most of them know I’m bi and understand that I joke about homophobia for the same reason, and that I have two disabilities and joke about shit abled people do for the same reason (like telling me they “don’t like taking medicine,” with a vaguely accusatory and disapproving tone. Like, okay? You think I like meds? Well, you’re right because they let me breathe but I don’t see what that’s a bad thing).
That said, some random stranger on the street doesn’t have that context and might be hurt or horrified by what I’m joking about. If my joke references the fact that, frex, having a German surname got me bullied for “being a Nazi” as a kid (it really did. Also got me beat up and asked in an accusing tone if I was “sorry” for what “my people” did and so on and so forth – some regions of Canada are so white they they have to discriminate against the “wrong” kind of white, it’s like getting thrown back to 1940. There are reasons this is even more ridiculous than it sounds currently but I like privacy and it’s unique enough that it’d be identifying), that could very easily come off as anti-Semitic depending on the my joke’s phrasing. I won’t make that kind of a joke in public or around Jewish people who don’t understand the context – not just because I don’t want to come off as a bigot, but also because I’d feel fucking terrible if I made someone scared for their safety just to let off some steam.
Jocelyne understands.
Yeah, all in all a pretty tasteless joke. I understand that Becky isn’t Willis, but,
idk, the way the strip is constructed it’s most definitely to leave the punchline hinging on that Becky would get killed during the holocaust for being a lesbian…
?
She would, if found out. I’ll discuss this more in-depth in my own comment below, once it’s finished.
This also makes me wonder if maaaaaybe Becky also heard Hank and Carol’s argument at the beginning of the storyline.
OK, reading through the comment field, I notice that, as usual, the mostly American audience (68%, according to Willis himself above) discusses Holocaust pretty much the same way that Americans almost always discusses Holocaust: By focusing on the Jews and Jews alone.
And that is a big pet peeve of mine. Because the Holocaust was not only targeting the Jews. It systematically slaughtered Ten Million People. The Jews were the biggest group, yes, with their almost six millions lost, but there were other groups systematically targeted, hunted down, and sent to the gas chambers, to the tune of four millions. Most of them tend to not be talked about much, if at all. Hell, I’ve sometimes (thankfully not in today’s comment field) seen people describe Holocaust as “killing six million people”. Gods, how infuriating mustn’t that be for the remaining families of the other four million victims???
And here is the really, really important thing: Gay people WERE AMONG THOSE OTHER GROUPS targeted for genocide by Hitler. And even more importantly: He used pretty much the same arguments for slaughtering them that today’s religious fundies use to throw them out of their house, harass them, attack them, sending them do those extremely horrible “conversion camps”, and so on… And of course a million other, smaller things that together adds up to robbing them of their humanity.
The aftermath of the Holocaust is something that I generally find to be one of the biggest pieces of shitstain hypocricy in humanity’s recent history: To forget practically all but one of the targeted groups of Nazi Germany’s genocide plans, and keeping on carrying out the oppression and dehumanisation of the rest of them. Heck, the Venn diagram overlap of the two groups “Christians that support Israel at all costs” and “Denying human rights to the gays” will have a severe overlap. How charmingly disgusting, no?
From today’s strip, it’s obvious that Becky knows this context. She knows that Nazi Germany would want her -dead-. Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
And now think of how her own community, her own family’s been treating her. They too want her dead. OK, so they’re not going to physically kill her (mostly because they’d get in trouble for that rather than because they think it’s wrong), they “only” want to kill her identity. But guess what, that doesn’t really seem to make much of a difference, does it? What sort of life is a life where you have to spend every waking moment denying who you are? What sort of life is a life where you are supposed to f.ex. submit to a proper husband (i.e. getting domestically raped for years and years)?
In short, from Becky’s point of view, just how different are those people that wants to do these things to her from the Nazis?
The answer: Not very much.
And such fundie communities also tend to (note: “Tend to” does not mean “always”) have some other traits too, such as a rather low level of mixed race relationships. And trust me when I say that that’s not really a coincidence. That is how they are built up. After all, the families are meant to be Perfect; with a Leader father, a Domestic mother, and Obedient children. Which also just happen to look pleasing in the eyes of the Lord, you know. And we all know what colour the Lord finds most pleasing, don’t we? After all, didn’t He turn black the disobedient son of Noah that laughed at his father’s ding-dong, while the obedient sons remained white and pure?
I could go on and on about this even more than I’ve had, but I think my main point has come across: That Becky knows what the Nazis would do to her; that she knows what her own community (including her own father) wants to do her; and that the difference between those two groups is hard to spot with the naked eye.
One last thing I will say, though, is that it is somewhat premature of her to assume that John and (especially) Jocelyne are in fact a part of this community. Then again, based on what Joyce had to tell John over the phone, I guess it would be easy for her to guess what his end of the conversation was like, and make her conclusions about that. Oh well, she’ll hopefully find out that she’s at least 50% wrong.
Pretty much. Where do people think pink triangles came from anyway?
I thought it was one of the types of Marshmallows in a box of Lucky Charms.
Guess I was wrong about that.
The pink triangle denoted gay men in concentration camps. It was practically never used on lesbians. If they ended up in CCs, it was for being ‘antisocial’ and they got a black one.
Actually, the real-life german neo-nazis – too much of them around – still target gay men much more then lesbians. More so, since their 1980ties iconic leader died of AIDS. As long a he was there, they left off so not to get him by mistake. They target trans folk more than lesbians.
And right now, they target refugees part of whom would happily join in bashing gay men and Jews.
Haters will hate, for the same stupid reasons that have been used to stir up hate for ages, AND IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE!!!!
Oh, it gets better: people often use the Holocaust to sweep earlier genocides, pogroms, and hecatombs under the rug, often with words to the effect of, “well, gee, at least the slaughter of the [Romany|Native Americans|Irish|Highland Scots|Poles|Hindu subjects of the British Empire|Boers|Armenians|Tutsi|Bosnians|Carthaginians|Melians|anyone else] wasn’t as awful as what those nasty Nazis did”. And yes, this applies to people executing, persecuting, hunting for sport, and disowning gays. I wish I were kidding. The real Holocaust deniers are those who deny that their own crimes were terrible just because they weren’t as terrible as the act of processing humans like cattle for slaughter.
I’m bisexual, genderqueer (or possibly transgendered, I’m still working it out), and have both Polish and Scottish ancestry. This shit doesn’t fly with me, and shouldn’t fly with anyone else.
I didn’t mean to pick on the Brits and My Fellow Murkins, it’s just that those massacres are better documented than those of societies who didn’t decide to start feeling guilty about them long afterwards.
I’m tempted to respond with some gallow’s humour to this (I don’t know you, but somehow I feel that you seem like the person to appreciate some of that when it’s good), but instead I’ll just say that I hope your journey as well as the end destination of your gender, wherever that may be, will be a pleasant one.
With as few meetings with Mary/Carol types as possible (preferably 0), of course.
The first camps were for the disabled and the insane.
The Jews got first priority but also gypsies, spies and *anyone* else the Nazis didn’t like were added later.
Actually the first in the camps were political opponents: particularly Communists and Social Democrats.
Obviously it scaled up later with Jews and “asocials” (which included the mentally ill and homosexuals and at first the Roma, among others) and other groups.
And the leaders of other far right nationalist groups who wouldn’t play ball when the Nazis tried to coopt them, as well as most of the SA after Hitler decided that Röhm had outlived their usefulness – which I suppose brings us back to the topic of gays and Naziism, indirectly at least.
They also wanted black people dead, but I still probably wouldn’t say that. And I love me some Degenerate music. *Blows his horn*
Yeah. I interpreted it as an “ain’t killed me yet!” joke as a way of blowing off stress…granted, she could’ve chosen her audience waaaaaaay better, but.
https://youtu.be/aIlJ8ZCs4jY
Tom Lehrer, “National Brotherhood Week” — Lord Help Us, as topical as ever.
The holocaust is bigger than /that/. Which really just drives home the point. It was /huge/.
I realize that Becky’s filters are a bit out of kilter, but that’s a pretty rude way to refer to your best friend’s family. Are we about to see Becky slip off the deep end?
Jocelyne is loving this.
On the one hand, Beckers is being a total douche.
OTOH, she being a douche to people who totally deserve it.
OTGH, being out and proud in that town may not be the healthiest thing to do if she wants to avoid people who would try to shoot her for it (in addition to her father, I mean).
I’m so conflicted right now.
5 points for “OTGH”. 🙂
Jocelyne doesn’t deserve it, though Becky doesn’t know the details. OTOH, Jocelyne gets it and plays along.
True.
However, it also occurs to me that Becky is, intentionally or not, trying to provoke exactly the sort of reaction she got from her father. I know how it feels when you finally get to let out all the bile and frustration that has built up over the years, but being angry and confrontational is just as bad as being a Stepford Smiler hiding in the closet., psychologically speaking. The release feels great at the time, but later when that emotional high wears off, you come to realize that revenge is a petty thing, and the guilt can be pretty rough.
Pot, meet kettle.
Jocelyne has a lot of experience with “getting it” and “playing along” when people accidentally say horrible things about her, it’s part of being in the closet. Doesn’t make it right or okay, though.
I wouldn’t conflate everything that “Josh” says or does with Jocelyne’s actual feelings.
fo riz
What Becky is saying here is especially awful to Jocelyne.
Maybe? I’m not sure.
Attacks on the persona, that she could openly take offense to, can’t be as bad as the usual casual slurs on trans or other LGBTQ folk that she has to let pass for fear of outing herself, right?
It’s got to just be a more extreme version of what she thinks about that culture herself.
Becky’s joke here is entirely based in how Jocelyne is part of this majority that would kill her. It’s a line that works because Becky thinks Jocelyne is Joshua.
Like, I know it’s unintentional on Becky’s part, but it reminds me of the way trans people get shit on by some circles for passing.
It’s not the first time Becky’s said something shitty without realizing it:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/hint/
She’s got a bit of a complex about it and I suspect we’ll see a similar overcorrection in behavior once she finds out.
Ehhhh, personally attacking a persona doesn’t phase me, personally. I might not laugh, but whatever, it’s not like you’re saying anything about /me/. Like, it’s stressful still, but only in the generic way that the persona already is. It’s not more stressful than being friendly-like with it.
Far worse are the people who are shitty to ME. Most of whom are out of my life now. But, that’s just me, Jocelyn’s probably different.
I take that back, partly; Jocelyn doesn’t deserve it, and I’m not sure if Joyce’s father does or not. We only have what Joyce and Becky have said about the older brothers, too.
Mrs. Brown is fair game, though.
Becky? Being socially awkward? Say it ain’t so. TBH I could see this exact same thing going down with people I know, complete with cringe-worthy joke for compensation.
Having been that person at times, I expect Becky to realize what a dick move this is sometime around 3 AM the next morning.
I was gonna reply to someone specific but tbh this probably works better as a general comment.
Sometimes humor can be used to deal with terrible things. But that doesn’t mean 100% of it is appropriate or non-hurtful – and saying that a member of an oppressed group made a joke and therefore it should be okay for everyone to is uh, kind of super, super incorrect. And it’s up to creators of humor to understand and be accountable for harm they might cause, even if they didn’t mean to. I don’t think Willis set out to hurt people like me (blond, blue-eyed Jewish lady), but that doesn’t mean this wasn’t painful to read, especially since it opened up a forum for some awful comments in this thread.
It’s a little bit scary/uncomfortable to read multiple comments of “wow I didn’t like Becky that much before but I love her/love her more now that she’s making Nazi jokes!”
If you’d asked me yesterday what comic I’d expect sudden, inappropriate Nazi jokes from, DoA would have been at the bottom of the list. Yes, I get that there’s a reason Becky might say this, but in the end, it’s up to the creator to decide what characters say. It doesn’t matter what Becky’s reasons are when the final say goes to the writer.
Just a quick reminder as Emperor Norton II said at more length above, when it comes to the Holocaust, as a homosexual, Becky is basically in the same class of victim as Jews.
Ok, as someone that’s bisexual and Jewish… no. Not the same class. The Jews and Romani were the primary targets and received, by far, the worst treatment and fallout. Yes, other groups were targeted too, but it’s just not correct to claim it was equal all around. I absolutely do not have the same experience looking at the Holocaust as a member of the LGBT community as I do as a Jewish person.
Becky did not grow up being told about how her great-grandfather’s entire family was violently murdered by the Nazis. She did not grow up having people immediately jump to Nazi jokes upon those people finding out about her background. She did not grow up seeing pictures of Holocaust victims and thinking “that emaciated body could be my great-grandmother.” She did not grow up knowing that 60% of people like her were exterminated, and that number doesn’t include those that survived the torture, experiments, forced labor, and starvation.
I feel more scared telling LGBT people that I’m Jewish than I have ever, ever felt telling a Jewish person I’m bisexual by the way, and every single LGBT Jewish person I’ve talked to about this has felt the same way. I am absolutely not denying that gay people (primarily gay men) were targets of the Nazis, but no, it was not on the same level as Jews and Romani.
A large part of the difference there is that there wasn’t continuity. There weren’t entire families of homosexuals murdered because homosexuality doesn’t come in families. Nor was the memory passed down through generations of homosexuals, for much the same reasons.
And because homosexuality remained illegal throughout much of Europe and the US for decades afterwards, there was much less public acknowledgement until long after.
The numbers were of course much smaller.
But that’s the thing, Jewish people were directly targeted and easily traceable due to the paper trail they were forced to leave during the years before the holocaust when things were getting bad. The hatred for Jewish people is what spring boarded Nazi Germany into being what it was, and they were the first to be put into ghettos before any murders started. Gay people, black people, and other minorities were also later targeted and killed, and that’s tragic, but Jewish people were on the top of the list. It is not any gay person’s right to act like they have that same level of connection with the holocaust as Jewish people do. It’s just not the same.I’m not saying that Jewish oppression is ultimately greater than LGBT oppression, as I’m in no real position to compare the two on a grand scale, but the holocaust is more of a Jewish tragedy than anything else, which is why it’s focused on more in books and media.
Interesting fact, apparently Hitler primarily based his anti-Jew sentiments off of the then widely proclaimed beliefs of Henry Ford, who later was known for directly supporting and approving of the Nazi regime.
Huh, I did not know that! I double checked and apparently he even kept a life-sized portrait of Ford near his desk. What an interestingly-morbid fact.
which – at the risk of making another offensive joke – made for some very grim irony some years back, when Ford (the company) sponsored an otherwise commercial-free broadcast of Schindler’s List.
“Brought to you by Ford” … well, yes, actually…
I really do hope that this is not TOO ranty; im not very good at this sort of thing, for reasons. But i want to share my perspective because i dont see it so often
ALL of the people-cides down through the ahttps://youtu.be/aIlJ8ZCs4jYges, they’re all equivalent because they are all absolute tragedies. That X% of group A escaped/survived, but only Y% of group B did, that doesn’t change that — it’s a reason to be glad for all who escaped and mourn all who didn’t. Every individual whose been oppressed, abused, beaten, disposessed, raped, murdered. NOT GONNA PLAY WHOSE TRAGEDY IS THE WORST. Give each its due, please, but no awards for being best/worst. NO RELATIVITY. ABSOLUTE EVIL IS ABSOLUTE.
And in case anyone wants me to establish my cred, I inherited, through my father, so of my Grandfather’s PTSD from surviving the murder of his frst wife and 3 sons, and trying to figure out what to do with the fact that I only exist because those 3 little boys died; and as a young man I held the hand of a cousin who was then an old lady as shE told me, crying, how when she was a little girl They murdered her parents in front of her, etc. So, yes, this is personal.
If everyone cared as much about what has been done to others including what they themselves have done or contenanced, as they care about what has been done to them, I think that the world might be a better place. I hope that is possible some day
Sorry for the eddress I accidentally pasted. I meant to say “down thru the ages”
Maybe I’m misreading the situation, but when a blonde, blue eyed ladies expresses concern with how a joke erases her identity as a Jewish woman and overwrites it with the identity of the people who tried to commit genocide upon them, responding with “yes, but this fictional lesbian would also have been targeted” seems really very insulting. Not only do I think that we should prioritize the feelings of a real human being like Sig over that of a fictional character like Becky, but there’s also the fact that the joke was written by a straight man who would not have been targeted by the Nazis, and I think that’s really who Sig is taking to task here, not the fictional lesbian Becky.
Thank you. You nailed exactly why this strip, and frankly the comments section, are painful – people are saying “well have you considered this is making a fictional lesbian feel better?” when I tried to explain why I felt hurt by the strip (not to mention all the “you’re being oversensitive” comments…). There’s a thousand directions this strip could have gone to get the same point across (lesbian uses dark humor to ease anxiety) and yet Willis chose Nazi jokes.
This site is not exactly the best when responding to criticism of the comic. I think that the people here tend to relate so strongly to certain characters that they orient their language to a Watsonian approach so that any criticisms from a Doylist perspective are misinterpreted.
Honesty, I was going to say something about how I think te joke had to be not just dark but wildly inappropriate as well, but I’m not so sure that was the intent after seeing he next comic.
Here’s Willis’ response: http://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/141942653372/willis-youre-usually-so-good-about-things-was
Personally, as a bi dude (granted, not a bi dude who got KIDNAPPED BY A GUNMAN or anything, but…yeah), I’m uncomfortable with the notion that my previous experiences with marginalization give me license to just be a dick to people whenever I want as a coping mechanism.
Like…this is not cool behavior. This isn’t Becky snarking back at Joyce’s victim-blaming mom, this is Becky out of nowhere shouting Hitler Youth jokes at the expense of Joyce’s visibly uncomfortable siblings in the middle of a restaurant. And I get a sinking feeling that nobody’s going to call her out on it, or if they do, they’ll be treated like jerks for saying “Becky, please don’t insult us on sight when we meet you for lunch at a restaurant.”
OTOH, those same siblings just tried to exclude Becky from lunch, provoking Joyce to yet another impassioned defense apparently pushing her farther from her family. And that “visibly uncomfortable” could easily be read as “visibly uncomfortable” with the lesbian. So it’s not quite out of nowhere.
OTGH, yeah. Not cool and not helping. And unless I’m misreading, it’s not intended to be.
Lesbians make everything better, right?
Jesus Christ, Becky, you are seriously testing the patience of any decent human being right now. I mean…what the fuckity fuck? Where are these Nazi jokes coming from, why is she insulting Joyce’s siblings before she even says hello to them, there is indeed a point where wackiness stops being wacky and starts being outright assholery.
It’s a line Becky’s crossed before. This really isn’t anything new.
This isn’t really directed at you specifically but more just the response, as I feel the events of this strip perfectly deserve the “wtf becky” reaction, but Becky’s gonna act like a jackass sometimes. She’d act like a jackass even if there weren’t extraneous circumstances that put her on edge, and that doesn’t make it less any crappy of her, but I feel like some of the reaction comes from us expecting Becky to never screw up or be awful sometimes.
For me, the issue isn’t that she acts like a jackass. I’m fine with characters being dicks from time to time, especially when they’ve been through some bad stuff and are using dickishness as a defense mechanism. But I get the feeling Becky will never get criticized for this behavior in-universe, unless it’s by a Bad Guy like Toedad or Mrs. Brown. Joyce, despite being mortified by Becky yelling Hitler jokes, will not say anything to the effect of “dude please don’t do that.” Joyces’s siblings will not react in a negative way. She won’t even have to defend her behavior the way Carla did, because she’s just Being Wacky.
I mean, a lot of the characters are awful sometimes, and they don’t get called out for it. That’s just how it is. People can be dicks and they aren’t always called out for it and learn a lesson.
Walky basically outright stated that the reason he knew Ethan was gay was because he wasn’t being Real Man enough, and Dorothy kind of got into that too when she decided that the reason the guy Joyce was hanging out with “was different” from other guys had to be because he was gay.
Dorothy tried to steal a pair of shoes from Danny to get herself out of a problem she helped cause.
Danny dropped some racism on Walky by describing him as “that kid from the Jungle Book” and felt Billie being mixed race was code for her being extra attractive to him.
Joe acts like a boorish jerk and at most gets some eye rolling from Danny or Joyce.
Ruth is a power mad jackass and tossed Joyce’s gloves out a window, but she’s still the nice RA who watched over everyone at the party to her.
Dina basically goes all r/atheist on Joyce sometimes.
Mike.
Also Joyce is in a state of mind where she absolutely has to protect Becky. I don’t think she can bring herself to even get mad at her right now for anything.
TBF, I think that much of this is deliberate on Willis’ part, and well done for it. Most of the characters are college students, and are only just getting a grip on who they are; the awkwardness is entirely plausible, even if it makes us as readers cringe. These are things even ‘mature adults’ (which have never been common in any age group) get wrong at times, never mind teens and twentysomethings on their own for the first time.
Also to bring up a counter example, there was that one point where Becky was being a jackass to Ethan and when Joyce told her that they broke up, Becky immediately assumed it was her fault, tried to explain she was just trying to be funny and encourage Ethan to make a move on Joyce, feverishly apologized, guilted herself basically for coming into her life, and got mad at Joyce for never getting mad at her.
There’s also her current story arc, where Becky’s lingering feelings for Joyce are causing pain to Dina.
So, yeah, Becky is definitely being a jerkass right now, but it’s par for the course. Everyone’s a dick sometimes.
It’s been far, far, far too long without Mike. 🙁
Honestly, I think Mike’s shtick wouldn’t make much of an impact at this point. So many people act like assholes so often, his assholery is practically the norm.
Maybe she’s a closeted Jew. Some Jews like jokes that play on Nazi tropes. It’s a thing. As has been suggested, check out Mel Brooks, Ernst Lubitsch, Jack Benny, Jerry Seinfeld (more for making out during Schindler’s list than Soup Nazi), etc. But I guess they aren’t decent humans?
There are various ways to write minority characters.
Poor authors write minority characters as one-dimensional negative stereotypes who always say and do bad things. This makes their fans (if they have any) comfortable and everyone else uncomfortable (as it should).
Mediocre authors do one of two things. Some write zero-dimensional minority characters who, for all intents and purposes, lack agency, whose only role is to have bad things said and done to them. Others write one-dimensional minority characters who always say and do good things. In both cases, this makes their fans comfortable.
Great authors write three-dimensional minority characters who sometimes say and do good things, and sometimes say and do bad things. This makes some fans uncomfortable and call “bad character” or “bad writing,” while other fans realize that hey, guess what, that’s how people (minorities and otherwise) are in real life.
And kinda alright authors write minority characters as– Oh wait… Nevermind. Yeah, the ability to write minorities isnt exactly telling of everything. But all those short of great Id put as piss poor anyhow.
And shitty authors write minority characters who do any random crap they want no matter how antisocial, offensive, or even downright sociopathic, but play it off as ”Haha, that’s just how they are” , ”People like that really exist” or ”They are just lovable jerks, that doesn’t make them bad.” But when some majority character does or says something offensive or sociopathic, then it is SERIOUS BUSINESS. They crossed the line and they must suffer the consequences, NO EXCUSES GIVEN.
Eh, can’t punish everyone, right? But for real, I can overlook when the story doesn’t punish characters for doing shitty things, fine, whatever, I guess. But the issue is that when you leave it open to interpretation like this, some people will adamantly defend their favorite characters without thinking about how what they’re doing is wrong. THAT shit makes me boil.
Personally I think a good narative is one where everything is subjective. When you hold a very firm ground on what your comic to be and who’s good and bad it comes off as preachy. Even Boondocks, perhaps one of the preachier comics I’m into takes the time to take potshots at both white people and black people, as well as go out of its way to show that Huey, usually the voice of reason and wealth of knowledge on afro-american culture, is often wrong and his perspective is incredibly skewed. You should certainly tell your story how you want, but I’m not a fan of when it seems you’re telling the reader “This is right. This is what you should believe”. At least not from a social commentary level. It’s the kind of thing that’s more fitting for a movie in which the antagonist’s motivations have to be simplified and contradictory to the protagonist, so we can feel a need to spur them on.
You don’t need to spell everything out explicitly, no, but in terms of Becky we’re not given a whole lot of in-universe opposition to who she is and what she does. Toedad is the only one who comes to mind, but he’s so evil that no one can sympathize with him and so anything he says about his daughter is pretty much moot. If one member of the main cast just didn’t like Becky, and didn’t agree with what they were about, I’d be happier. But Becky goes mostly unchallenged by everyone else, UNLESS it’s someone who hates her for being gay. I don’t want the moon, but if at least Sarah or someone else just said “becky, I don’t like you or some of your behaviors because I don’t think they’re right” then I’d be happy. No need to make THAT character be absolutely right or wrong, but a lot of characters in the main cast find opposition in each other (especially, oddly enough, DINA, who gets called out for being weird in half of the strips she’s in). My main beef is seeing a character who can be obnoxious or rude existing without anyone in the comic acknowledging it or really making a fuss. The closet example is Dorothy, who kinds just takes it when Becky pushed her around.
Walky literally said he wanted to punch Becky in the face after she insulted Dorothy.
Danny also said she was obnoxious.
And Sarah certainly was no fan of Becky when she first showed up. (Has she changed?)
Very very true, Becky doesn’t get enough shit on how she is:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/pit/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/fix/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/deceptress/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/open-field/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/disagreement/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/facetoface/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/restore/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/alive/
Especially not from herself or people whose issues with her are not that she’s gay:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/aftermath/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/originalsin/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/beard/
And definitely never takes an opportunity to apologize for behavior, even behavior that isn’t her fault or sacrifices as an automatic response:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/established/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/sushi/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/noodle/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/angry-2/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/lob/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/fault/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/cuddlin/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/librarian/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/hint/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/bubbling/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/safe-2/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/payup/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/downer/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/aspirations/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/sticks/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/troopers/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/risk/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/let/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/fought/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/elsewhere/
Also? Carol? Carol seems like a big name to be forgetting:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/icebreaker/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/mortgage/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/complain/
Interestingly? By raw count, no one seems to be harder on Becky in terms of comics than herself. Especially if you discount the people hating on her for being gay, which is a big discounting.
Becky really has internalized the idea that she is worth less because of who she is and that comes out a lot, especially when she’s realizing her wacky Becky affectation is hurting people.
I’ve said before that Becky must be a really hard character to write. The surface is all facade and armor. How do you show that, letting it take center stage and be how she mostly relates to other people, while still giving enough glimpses inside that the audience can see what she’s really like.
Obviously, it’s not working with some people.
I get the feeling that Willis deliberately sought out to challenge himself a lot in this comic. From creating elaborate backgrounds, to writing characters from very different backgrounds from him, to writing a number of characters who hold a mask over their true selves.
I appreciate it and the effort he’s made to do it right, but I imagine it must require a lot of research before each comic and a lot of annoyance.
So, all of the examples provided either depicted Becky berating herself for her mistakes, or someone attacking her for being gay. In one of the strips you cited Sarah confronted her with suspicions that ended up being invalid, since she had a legitimate reason to want to duck into Joyce’s dorm. Everyone else attacked her for her sexuality, which isn’t a criticism of who she is, it’s raw bigotry.
Walky and Danny (never saw a source for Dan, but I believe it) make off-handed comments that she rubs them the wrong way, but don’t confront.
Then, Becky is hard on herself, often for being gay or putting Joyce out by coming, which is something that is out of her hands, and is honestly not what she should be sorry about. She’s doing what she has to to survive.
I don’t want to see Becky get called out for being gay in order for me to feel like she’s being criticized by the narrative and the people around her, because she doesn’t deserve that kind of abuse (not that I’m saying her arc shouldn’t exist, but that it doesn’t file under “character is confronted with misdoings in order to better themselves as people” since being gay isn’t a character flaw).
Becky is just self-aware enough to apologize for things that happen because of her being near, but isnt always aware enough to be sorry for things that are actually her fault. Basically, she usually feels guilt for things that she shouldn’t feel guilty for, then doesn’t say sorry for things she actually does wrong. And the characters don’t confront her about this either. No one has walked up to Becky and said, “you can be obnoxious and inconsiderate, and got jealous/manipulative around your best friend because she found another girl to be platonic friends with.”
And it seems she’s the only person who doesn’t get shit on for their behavior. Walky, Danny, Amber, Sarah, Dorothy, Sal, Ethan, all get panned for what they do. Becky gets abused for what she is, and that’s not the same thing. So, no, I don’t find satisfaction or fairness in how she’s treated in the world, because she’s punished for what she can’t control and absolved for what she can. People in the comics pick on DANNY more despite being a bi abuse victim, but Becky gets a pass. It’s frustrating, and I just dont like Becky. That’s all there is to it.
(Aside: despite there being similarities, I like Carla much more than Becky. She can be mean, and is persecuted for being trans, yet for some reason I just find her meaner behavior to be more acceptable and light-hearted, comic hijincks, rather than real-life problem behavior. The comic sometimes suffers from tonal-dissonance, so maybe that’s it.)
Thank you so much for your response. And I think I see where you are coming from.
“Becky is just self-aware enough to apologize for things that happen because of her being near, but isnt always aware enough to be sorry for things that are actually her fault.”
Indeed, she’s 18 and coming from as fucked up of a background as Joyce. She’s got a lot of growing up, but much like Joyce, her heart is in the right place. When she’s aware that something she’s doing has the potential to hurt someone, she’s very quick to adapt her behavior.
I’m thinking specifically of how early on, she was very much of the “surprise romantic overture and kiss” school, complete with coy flirting to make someone jealous high school stuff, but when she learned that Joyce had been assaulted and worried about her evoking that with her behavior, she became the single best character in the comic on consent, never initiating, being very cautious around boundaries, etc…
But YMMV and all that on how much that grates on you, especially if Joyce or Walky grates on you.
“No one has walked up to Becky and said, “you can be obnoxious and inconsiderate, and got jealous/manipulative around your best friend because she found another girl to be platonic friends with.””
That is true. Several have said it off screen, but none have confronted her to her face. That being said, how many characters have been directly confronted with their actual flaws (rather than the flaws they are scared they have)?
Though given that Sal and Sarah tend to be the ones to call people to the carpet on their shit, maybe she just needs to keep hanging out with them.
That being said, it probably would help her if someone, ideally Dorothy, called her out on her jealousy… though Becky has been doing a lot better on just internalizing her jealousy and recognizing it herself, so it might not even be necessary.
“And it seems she’s the only person who doesn’t get shit on for their behavior. Walky, Danny, Amber, Sarah, Dorothy, Sal, Ethan, all get panned for what they do.”
To their face, though?
Like let’s see, Sal got called out to her face by Malaya, Sarah by Raidah… but mixed in with things that aren’t her flaws, Amber by Sal, Walky, kinda by Sal, but no one’s really called him to the carpet on his immaturity or his tendency to run from problems yet, Joyce by Sarah…
But Dorothy hasn’t really been called out on her main flaws yet except for maybe for being insensitive that one time by Danny, Danny’s been yelled at but rarely about his actual flaws except for that one time when Joe actually was right, and I don’t believe Ethan’s been yelled at for his actual flaws yet. He tends to mostly get shit on for daring to be scared by societal homophobia.
I agree strongly though that Danny gets way too much shit, both in comic and by the readers compared to what he actually does. And I think Willis has been playing with the running gag of shitting on Danny (because in Roomies he was kinda bleh and victim-blamey) to make things rapidly uncomfortable once the characters in comic were making those sorts of comments to his face.
I can’t reply to you anymore since the thread got too long, so I’m just gonna reply to myself again.This was a very well-put response, I’m glad my point came across better after that last comment.
One thing I should clarify though is that in my second to last paragraph, I was trying to say that all of these characters are criticized, either directly to their face to force progression, or by the comments, since we can recognize when a character does wrong and have a desire to write about it when no one calls them out in person.
Thing is, my frustration comes out when No one calls Becky out in-comic, and then those who do in the comments are shouted down for criticizing in the comic’s stead, which happens to other characters all the time. Dorothy, Danny and Ethan get criticized (or laughed at, if you’re danny) in the comments because the comic hasn’t gotten around to calling them out on their real flaws, but instead puts them in bad situations because of who they are. Becky often gets neither, and the amount of defense that arose around her making nazi jokes when REAL LIFE JEWISH PEOPLE in the comments were offended was really telling. It’s frustrating, is the main take away, I suppose.
On a side, I haven’t read Roomies and dont plan to, but I dont think it justifies the amount of victim-blaming that’s happening to him now.
IIRC Mike confronted Dorothy on treating Walky badly when he came to Gender Studies, and it actually catalyzed Dorothy to recognition and change (NOT that I’m saying that Mike did it to be helpful!).
Russ, Becky certainly does have defenders, even Becky can do no wrong defenders, but I have also seen many comment critical of her behavior.
To your other point, I do regret the hurt that Sig has experienced from this strip and comments section, notwithstanding that I have spoken up for Willis & Becky here, probably because my experiences have been different and my milage has clearly differed greatly. BUT there are also real life Jewish people who make “Nazi jokes” themselves.
Cerberus : sure, but aside from those few incidents?
I think you’re also forgetting some of Billie’s interactions with Becky. She makes her opinion of Becky’s behaviour quite clear. Still pissed off by her dismissive attitudes to bisexuality, she brushes her off with “Here’s twenty bucks to go away.”. When they meet again, her first reaction is “Oh. You. Still.” While they later coexist and she helps her out with the room – primarily because she knows of the issues Becky’s been facing and for Joyce’s sake as well – it certainly doesn’t seem to be the friendship that Becky actively hoped for.
True! I did forget those. Still, that more falls under, “Billie is being rude to this character because she’s annoying her” and not “she is criticizing Becky for her poor behavior towards others.” So, despite that, I still think the narrative isnt doing what I outlined in my previous comments
You know who else didn’t like Nazi-jokes?
Hitler!
That’s… yeah, that’s most likely correct. Cookie!
On that note…
http://www.bugmartini.com/comic/world-flame-war-ii/
🙂
Abomination Sen-pai: you might be a person who would appreciate To Be Or Not to Be (the original version, available on You-Tube.
Jocelyn: What is my life. Why is my life.
”Hey look, I found Hitler’s kids! HYUK HYUK!”
*SLOW CLAP*
Bravo Becky. Really classy joke that one, real funny too. And in a family restaurant too. But I guess that you (somehow?) reserve the right to not be criticized should anyone (Joyce’s family for example) call you out on your ignorant, racist, and blatantly offensive attempt at humor.
hitlers kids? hitler youth or hitler jugend does not refer to hitlers literal children. his kids would probably be darkhaired since he himself was
Oh, right. Sorry. That was my misunderstanding here. Well! Calling them members of the youth Nazi party based on their appearance is much better after all. My mistake.
I get the feeling Becky is trying to turn the (bad) attention all to herself so Joyce isn’t swarmed by horrible and awkward questions.
You know what the grossest thing about this comment section? Is how often people choose to, or feel forced to, use their own race/sexuality/gender etc. to justify their actions or opinions. I hate whenever I end up doing it, but sometimes I feel like I have to or no one will bother taking my words to heart. Such a suffocating environment.
Yeah, I can see why you think that’s stifling, and I’m sorry you feel that way.
I guess the only thing I can say is that when I do say that I’m bi, I do it because I want to contextualize how I feel and why the thing I’m talking about matters to me. I feel like a lot of times online, we kind of need to say it because otherwise we just get ignored as leftist pandering Ess Jay Dubs.
I always try to refuse to qualify my “oppression points” unless I really really have to, because I’m trying to be as unbiased and understanding as possible. My words shouldn’t lose weight because I’m cis, just like they shouldn’t gain weight because I’m mixed race. The only real reason to do it is because you want to give your opinion from a unique and related perspective. Otherwise, you do it so that way people take your words seriously, like you do, and thats always a shitty feeling.
Lived experiences are important, and your identity contributes to what experiences you’re likely to live.
I’m sorry you feel stifled when people have and express their life experiences in ways that are different to the norm.
My opinions shouldn’t be built on my “oppression” and I shouldn’t have to bring up my race in any context other than when it is ABSOLUTELY relevant to the situation. And not a way of getting out of being criticized for my opinions. I’m not a black guy. I’m Yotomoe! The artist who likes cute ladies, awesome fights and occasionally with very hard opinions on certain things. My race may be the window through which I view my world, but I refuse to use it as a way to justify my opinions. My opinions are mine. Yotomoe’s. I’m a person. I’m not a race. Using it as ammo is a disgusting habit that I certainly need to grow out of.
*appropriate gesture of support*
More thoroughly. I’m saddened that you think bringing up the aspects in which you are non-normative takes away from the awesomeness of your personality and humanity. Being black doesn’t make you any less the artist who likes cute ladies, awesome fights, and hard opinions on things. You are awesome as the person you are, thoroughly and completely in ever aspect of who you are.
Bringing up who you are and how that affects how you see the world is not ammo and is not disgusting and I’m so so sorry for a world that makes you feel that it is.
*giant hug*
Yeah, it makes me really uncomfortable too. It’s almost like people assume that if you have a dissenting opinion you must be white or straight or not have personal experience with the issues the characters are facing :/
Whether your logic is good, or whether it’s shit, it should stand on its own terms. If people want to talk about their personal experiences, that’s fine. But if you feel you /must/ pull out your pedigree to be credible, it’s probably time to stop – if only because it promotes the feeling that your labels are more important than your opinions and experiences.
You just totally nailed it.
Hell, that’s the big rub, ain’t it?
If you have any opinion, you’re presumed to be straight and white and cis and male until you out yourself as otherwise. Because that’s the cultural default in the US and on the internet.
Personally I find that stifling, when we are all asked to pretend we are cis and white and male because acknowledging our wide variety of humanity is “using it as a weapon” or “just brought out to win an argument” or so forth. I certainly avoid those aspects of the internet, because I spent way too much of my life pretending I was a dude to have much patience for those sorts of social climates.
But it does mean that spaces where diversity is celebrated feels… “off” compared to a lot of internet culture. People are not used to spaces where the marginalized are allowed to openly speak of how works resonate with them or how topics affect their day to day life.
It feels like an “attack” or like people are using their identities to win arguments when it’s just people who are sharing their experiences, even their experiences of not being bothered by something or being bothered in a different way.
But we’re all just people and our backgrounds inform our worldviews and that’s beautiful. Different things resonate and that’s beautiful. When the two of you disagree with things me or others think, that’s beautiful. You are all beautiful. We are all beautiful.
At least that’s how I see it even if I’m the sort that is quick with a long-winded overanalysis of stuff. Shameless academic, I know.
Very true, Cerberus. There is that kind of assumption everywhere – I just… expect it less in this space… for some reason…
I’m considering… People who belong to certain social groups may identify/want to be identified with that social group more or less – for whatever reasons. And, in addition, it’s often hard to understand that people can live through similar hardships and walk away with very different conclusions. And that those conclusions can all be valid, within reason.
And I have heard some people claim that if you’re cis/straight/white/male you’re not ‘allowed’ to have an opinion on [thing]. So I think there are people who use their identities as ammo – but a minority of people. And this kind of investment in ‘winning’ arguments is certainly not specific to this corner of the internet – it just takes a different appearance here based on the ability to freely identify yourself as a minority.
And, in my limited experience – I haven’t perceived you as that type that’s just trying to be right 24/7. You’ve been pretty upfront about the fact that your experiences are unique and personal and insightful, but still limited enough that you can’t speak for everyone. That’s pretty beautiful.
IDIC. (Even academics)
So obviously we need to start a betting pool on the text receiver.
As noted by a few others, Becky seems to be making more of a ‘cracker’ ‘you so white!’ joke with little thought to the broader implications, than trying to be deliberately bigoted.
Carelessness in thought is kinda her trademark, afterall, and certainly a character flaw, but poor judgement doesn’t directly equate to being ill-intentioned.
I think part of Becky’s problem is that she probably never had much of an outlet for humour. “Zany clown Becky” is probably not a persona Ross found acceptable. I doubt he has much taste or time for humour, even the kind of humour that most of his circle would have found easily acceptable. And this of course is on top of his apparent attitude that women should be seen and not heard.
Suddenly Becky is free of that, but she really doesn’t have the knowledge and experience of how to deal with that freedom. Especially if she’s been looking at things in popular culture without quite getting the context, that some things that were acceptable years ago aren’t acceptable anymore, or that certain current elements are strongly criticised.
Honestly, I suspect it’s almost the opposite: “Zany clown Becky” is her defense. Way back on move in day, she opened with a poop joke. Inappropriate humor has always been her thing. Trying to get Joyce to make that brain-freeze face.
I’m sure she kept the cruder bits from the parents, like any kid will, but the zany clown persona has always been there. As she said, No one likes a Debbie Downer.
That she’s kept up that persona under the worst stress suggests it’s either really how she is or that it’s her defense mechanism, her cover to keep anyone from realizing how miserable and terrified she really is. Remember when she showed up at school she kept the bubbly, clown persona up all day until she confessed to Joyce and completely broke down.
Hitlerella.
Becky, please check the facts!
The details are a bit different from what you suggest.
(Link goes to the US Holocaust memorial museum).
So the Nazis weren’t bothered enough about lesbians to send them to the extermination camps. Interesting. That’s gotta sting! It’s like being left off of Nixon’s Enemies List (and, no, I Am Not Saying That Nixon = Nazi).
With strong undertones of “even the lesbians can be married off and mother strong Aryan sons”, because that’s what women are for and who cares about their preferences.
Word
Comic reactions:
Holy shit is Becky nervous.
I mean, from her perspective, she’s back in the land she was going to be dragged back to and fixed at and she’s bristling with hatred at it because all it represents to her is a stifled abusive childhood where she was being raised to be some dude’s fuck slave.
She’s being dragged around town by a Joyce who isn’t telling her what is going on, but it must be bad for her to be defying her family like this. She’s been blamed for the most frightening part of her life by Carol repeatedly and treated like a dangerous invader to “other people’s” houses.
All she knows of this lunch meeting is that Joyce angrily defended her to the siblings on the phone. This is the first time she’s heard Joyce go full angry defending her to others mode and so assumes this meeting must be shaping up to be somehow worse than Carol.
And Becky thinks it’s her job to be happy wacky Becky who can never be brought down by anything. Which is also her default mode she goes extremely in when she’s nervous.
This is Becky when she’s shit-sprayingly terrified and her mask is cracking hard and will crack even harder with John and Jocelyne respond back to her opening salvo with pointed ignoring of her existence or back-handed comment s about her.
Also, oh man, last panel Jocelyne. She’s taking some big risks here, just peeking around her closet, being cordial with the “scary queer” and participating in her jokes. Jocelyne is a little less scared here and maybe some of that is borrowing strength from Becky’s fearlessness, but either way, it’s beautiful to see.
Jocelyne has such a hard row to hoe, but she is getting braver every day and that’s beautiful to see.
Also, eek on John. He’s the most likely to be awful of the Brown siblings, but Joyce so doesn’t need that. Let’s hope he turns out to be more Hank than Carol.
Yup. I mean, we have seen Becky nervous before (her first meeting with Dotty “Bony Poindexter” comes to mind) but these are the BIG guns. Joyce has really freaked her out, and yesterday’s dinner with Carol has not done anyone any favors.
Yeah, and it’s consistent with her character. The moments when she’s most wacky and zany are moments of extreme emotional turmoil for her. Like, when meeting the people she views as her romantic replacements or when fearing she’ll lose her last hope in the whole wide world.
This is the Becky equivalent of Amber going full “I only hear shapes” PTSD in the hallway.
Can’t sleep, John will eat me. Can’t sleep, John will eat me…
I’m looking forward to Mrs Brown doing the Downfall scene.
So.
Inaproppriate joke? Check.
Attacking people present? Check.
Yelled? Check.
In a public place? Check.
With children? Since it’s a family restaurant, probably check.
Well, that’s a “Becky wtf” bingo completed…
I’m honestly not remembering the other “with children” bit. Do you happen to remember when that was?
It’s also not really the kind of inappropriate joke that people would freak out about children hearing. Right over the kid’s heads.
Well, other than the Lesbian bit. That’ll probably have some of the locals covering their kid’s ears.
But that’s the kind of covering kids’ ears that’s absolutely not justified and on the parents for being homophobes, so I’m fine with that aspect of Becky’s zaniness.
i dont see why children should be protected from nazi jokes but then again, youre probably from usa where they censor all swear words that happen on any show ever
I’m not sure where that joke came from, but I’m not going to check the comments because I’m tired and also the comments probably contain people saying Becky is the horriblest and should stop being so open about her sexuality and I’m not in the mood for cringing, groaning or facepalming tonight.
Good call.
No one spat about Becky screaming about being gay, but people were pissed about the loud nazi joke, yes.
Indeed. Becks finally found a way to take the heat off of her shouting the L word at everyone. 😉
But if Tenn doesn’t enjoy folks piling on Becky, that probably wouldn’t make much dif.
true facts
So I haven’t read every comment on today’s strip, but I have read a fair number of them, and I feel like I’ve come to a different conclusion about Becky’s joke.
(or maybe everyone else implied this conclusion within their own conclusions… But I haven’t seen it stated explicitly)
sooo… as some people mentioned, Becky is probably rattled from the past week. A week that has involved her father trying to kidnap her at gunpoint for being gay. A week that involved Carol (presumably someone else Becky would have thought, at one point, as being someone who cared about her) being pretty much unacceptably awful at Becky.
Now she’s about to see some other ‘like family’ individuals from the Brown family, and she does not know if they are going to be hostile.
I think she invoked godwin’s law on purpose. I think she very much wanted to compare the idea that homophobic comments to a villainous group. I suspect that if they appeared differently, she may have tried to link them to a villainous homophobic group that matched whatever that appearance was.
I think she was saying… it is fine if you look like people who were villains. As in, she’s saying that the physical appearance of these people does not really matter. What she is saying is they sure as hell better not be thinking violence against homosexuals is acceptable.
I do not think she would have made the aryan/hitler youth jump to just anyone. I’m pretty sure she made it specifically at people she is really hoping are not homophobic, but that she really isn’t sure about. People that (as far as she knows) all belong to a religious group that seems to repeatedly turn people who she should be able to trust into people who think violence against her is okay.
She has seen that it can go both ways – Joyce has managed to be awesome for her, and Hank seems to be doing okay… But that Ross and Carol have not been so much. She wants these people to be like Joyce -> ie, their physical appearance does not really matter… but she has no way of knowing which way it will go. Thus saying that if they were hitler youth, that her being a lesbian would be doom for her,,, but that Joyce’s heteronormativity would mean Joyce would survive.
Invoking Godwin’s Law is not the best way to go about life (like, at all), but in this particular scenario… I think Becky’s zany ways probably do explain her wording it as a joke, but I think a very real fear of them being villains bent on killing her for being a lesbian definitely informed what sort of joke she’d be making.
Know who else has that haircut? Hitler!