My first thought as well; 90 minutes, 90 hours, the turn of the century? And what church service is that fast? The few I am familiar with is a good two hours.
I’m so glad that she’s my little girl. She’s so glad, she’s telling all the world, that her baby buys her things, you know, he buys her diamond rings, you know, she said so. She’s in love with me and I feel fine.
You do realize that what you are saying is that there probably is at least one supernatural being who cares about your presence or absence in certain specified locales?
Oh wait, no, you’re that little girl from Firestarter.
You can’t just “hump” the church. You’ll never get results like that. We’re talking’ some major hip work, here. Really show that architecture a good time. If you want fire, you need to bring some serious heat.
On the other hand, Billie’s general nastiness in this relationship makes me want to root for Lucy.
But on the other hand, I feel obliged to root for lapsing from the faith and against persistent and undesired invitations to join someone at church. I know it’s meant to be nice, but that’s still obnoxious.
…. Ima just walk away from this one, and when I come back it’ll be a bit later and Lucy will be scoring insightful burns on some other topic instead.
Church sounds like a means of addressing an actual problem i this instance, and we can’t call a single invitation from one Christian to another pestering.
And if the problem is “I’m angsting about fighting with my same-sex unmarried-yet-still-fucking possibly-ex-girlfriend,” very few churches are the right place to address that. Granted, Lucy’s nice, and I’d guess she’s the liberal sort of Christian, but it’s not really safe assuming that a church is a good place to take that sort of issue if you don’t know anything about that church.
But if the problem is “I drink like a fish most nights, and some mornings too,” there are some churches that might help with addressing that. Not all of them, and I certainly wouldn’t expect some roomate’s random church to be one of them, and Lucy kinda overstepped bounds bringing it up in the first place.
Did she? “Hey, I sleep a few feet away from you and you drag your drama around like a disregarded jacket with pockets full of things that jingle so I can’t not notice. And then you pretend that your jacket isn’t in the dirt. I perhaps know of a washing machine…? Of which you also know…?”
But Billie and Lucy ARE both Christians, and Billie didn’t say anything about not believing. Inviting a coreligionist to services with you is a pretty normal and reasonable act.
But it’s also pretty obvious that Billie’s saying no. Not just “not this week”, but a solid no. Inviting once is okay, but to keep on doing it (this is obviously not the first time) in the face of that is uck.
I don’t think it is wrong to offer someone a reminder that they have an open invitation to go with you in the future if they want to. If Billie doesn’t want her to ever ask/remind her again, it’s on Billie to say so, not on Lucy to magically know and Billie doesn’t seem to mind in the way that you do so I’d say you are kind of overreacting in Billie’s stead.
If you don’t want someone to ask you/invite you to something again, it is on you to let someone know, because people have different tolerances for reminders.
Technically this is the first time, though she may have mentioned the open invitation early. Billie moved in last Sunday, so this is the first opportunity for her to actually take her up on it.
At some point, repeated refused invitations become intrusive, but I don’t think there’s any reason to think she’s there yet.
I like Lucy, she’s a sweet cinnamon roll, but I’d find it annoying if an otherwise pretty nice college roommate kept asking me to go to church with them every week after I’d already turned them down.
It is likely she has only asked once before and is reminding her this week ‘by the way, if you want to come to church with me, you are always free to!’ If you don’t want invited again/reminded that you are free to come, you have to tell people that because they can’t guess your tolerance for invitations/reminders of things. Some people might like to be asked every week just because it feels like an attempt to include them, even if they say no every single time, while others like yourself would get annoyed. Billie herself doesn’t seem annoyed though.
Whatever the first mention of the open invite was, it was amidst all the I’m Your New Roommate Stuff(tm) reviewed offscreen; perhaps in the roommate agreement that Billie almost certainly barely glanced at before signing. It is not at all unreasonable to not know if it was lost in the shuffle of that and to offer a reminder the first time that it’s actually relevant, especially if she did not get a clear answer from Billie at the time (likely).
If Lucy brings it up again after this, that would certainly be imposing, but this is hardly monstrous.
Let me tell you about my journey with this exchange.
I have never seen the acronym before. However, both contextually and visually it is similar enough to OTOH to be related, I am familiar with the phrase “on the gripping hand” (as the natural progression of the one hand, the other hand, then the gripping hand), and it fit. With that decided, I nonetheless googled. And then I found out the phrase “on the gripping hand” is actually a sci-fi novel reference with actual meaning, and my mind was slightly blown
Looking back, I think I most likely picked up the phrase from my father and/or my high school science/chess club/knowledge bowl teacher, both of whom were avid sci-fi readers, so it makes perfect sense in retrospect.
Get wrecked, Billie, you high-school-bully-ass nerd.
I love Lucy. I didn’t read all of Shortpacked, but I saw most of Lucy’s run and her rant on how amazing Starfire is in Teen Titans 2003 and how shallow and terrible her character was in the comics the years following the show spoke to me.
Ooh, are Becky and Lucy going to meet? I wonder if they’d get along any better than Joyce and Lucy. Maybe not. Becky’s peppy best friend quota is pretty solidly filled, after all.
People talk about how unrealistic it is to have so many lgbt characters in one comic, but what about all these college-age practicing Christians? Where I go, you assume everyone is an atheist by default.
Hell, even Caltech, a school where Dina would not be particularly unusual, had multiple Bible study groups when I was there. One for each of the North Houses, one Blacker-Fleming one, and I assume anyone interested from the last two techno-hippie houses also joined that one. (Rickets had an inverted pentagram dominating its dining room, and Dabney had a druggie-hippie reputation; I suspect it was just more openly tolerant about the drugs, but anyway.)
Since the story centers on Joyce, it’s actually surprising there aren’t more Christians. She hasn’t looked for a Bible study group or Christian fellowship on campus. I have been on many many college campuses and I can’t think of a single one where I personally have not known multiple practicing Christians in addition to myself. I tend to seek out Christian student organizations, but even without that, when it’s something that you’re open about, it’s an important shared interest with other Christians that you meet and you tend to feel safe sharing that important thing together and become friends. Even wherever you are, I bet a few of those people you assume are agnostic are actually practicing Christians who don’t feel comfortable sharing that part of themselves with you.
That’s because Joyce initially only liked her one exact brand of Christianity most likely. Because if you remember, she did go to church with some other people before (including Mary) and her reaction to people being in different branches of Christianity was pretty much internal screaming while trying not to externally scream.
She didn’t seem to have a problem with Sierra. Other than the lack of shoes. 🙂
Agatha being Mormon was a bit of a stretch and she definitely overreacted to the Jacob’s Catholic style church. And she didn’t react well to Mary, but that wasn’t really over denomination.
I can’t think of any other cases where she reacted badly in person, even to the internal screaming part.
But yeah, Becky went to a university associated with Church of God, initially, so Joyce probably grew up being taught that they were ‘acceptably’ different Christians.
“I bet a few of those people you assume are agnostic are actually practicing Christians who don’t feel comfortable sharing that part of themselves with you.”
I have never met a Christian who was uncomfortable sharing that label of their identity with everyone, and I find that harder to believe for one in the USA.
Not discussing religion mind you, just identifying themselves as Christians
There is a broad assumption that Christians are or will oppressed and discriminated against. It’s nonsense as far as I can tell, but it’s commonplace. See Carol’s little bit about how the government will come for any of them just for trying to raise their children right.
I’m sure there are some who aren’t paranoid about it who just don’t want to bring up that they go to church regularly because it doesn’t seem cool or whatever. Probably a lot more in college who did go regularly with their parents, but let it drop when they got to school just because they didn’t have someone pushing them anymore.
I got really quiet about my Christianity in college because of the sneering disgust and loudly flourished ignorance of my hallmates.
“Oh I bet you’re shocked that we’re having SEX.” (No.)
“Oh I bet you’re just here to find a man and settle down and pop out babies.” (No.)
“Oh I bet you obey your pastor like a robot.” (No.)
“Oh I bet I can get you to be shocked and upset. Let’s all gather around Jenny and try to shock and upset her.” (And that was when I realized that college was just high school but more.)
Maybe? Of course I went to college in a very different part of the country decades ago, but I can’t remember many practicing Christians. Probably many nominal Christians, but the only one who went to Church regularly was a girl I dated for a couple of years and she really only went because her parents lived in town and would check up on her. (Irish Catholic.)
Obviously I wouldn’t have known in all cases, but none of my roommates did – or if they did, they were committed to hiding it.
Panel 4: “All too real” in a mere 3 words.
Also: NINETY?! MINUTES?!!!
Jeez! I was raised in the south. My granny DRAGGED me to church every Sunday, and it lasted for HOURS!
Christmas and Easter? Bring snacks and extra clothes, ’cause you are leaving at the butt-crack o’ dawn and you’re NOT getting back home that day!
Damn, right? Even the sermons are usually longer than that among my relatives, not counting any “youth sermons” or volunteer work beforehand or right after and of course doesn’t the whole church expect you’re gonna go to some bougie sitdown chain restaurant right after or you’re being insufficiently sociable?
I’m sure that 90 includes the walk to and from the church.
On a similar note, my parents are still practicing Catholics, But I know that my father doesn’t have a tolerance for a long mass, so they’re usually up at the crack of dawn to go to the earliest mass available. In and out in 45 minutes.
Billie’s awake, dressed, and showing no visible signs of hangover, before church on a Sunday morning. Pretty easy for her to be in denial, this one particular moment. Those other moments aren’t happening right now.
Something’s wrong, sure, but honestly, not really sure how God could help her out with this one. Her and Ruth have a whole lot of baggage, but their issue is with faith in themselves and other people, not faith in the man upstairs.
I don’t think the point was that God could fix it. I think Lucy was just pointing out that something actually is wrong and Billie’s going like ‘how dare you not let me be in denial >:/’.
that’s her biggest problem, true, but I think her issues run deeper. Like, consider her and Alice, and her realizing she doesn’t want the old her back, and how being moved to this wing effectively brought the old her back when she got the cheerleader validation again. She needs to work on who she wants the real Billie to be, and what’s important to her, and the booze problem only gets worse because of this.
**sigh**
I can’t reup my Slipshine account until someone buys a commission from me, thus providing me with surplus spending money.
Here’s hoping I get one soon.
I don’t think you know what the word snoop means as this is not that – it requires 0 investigation to know something is up with Billie. And Lucy hasn’t offered her any advice or help here. She just pointed out the obvious that something is wrong and then exited out before Billie could throw a fit for her daring to not pretend her life is 100% perfect with precisely 0 problems in it.
She literally just offered an invitation to go to church with her and pointed out the obvious (that something is wrong) in response to what Billie said (that nothing is wrong). Lucy doesn’t have to pretend that things are perfect in Billie’s life just because Billie is and if Billie doesn’t want her to invite her to things, she’s the one who has to say so but unlike people here in the comments, Billie doesn’t seem to actually care about that part at all, just that Lucy dares to not accept her denial outright as the truth.
Billies been pretty clear on the “leave me alone” front since they became roomies. Knowing the track record this isn’t going to be the only time (nor has it been the first probably)
“hey I know you’re going through some stuff, you can come to church with me if you want”
Yeah totally what a fuckin Snoop mind your own business
/Sarcasm, if you can’t tell.
Let people deal with their shit. it’s THEIR shit. I hate people that offer to help when nothing was asked, if the world ain’t ending and you weren’t asked or gone to for help, mind your own that’s my view on it.
So Billie’s ex-GF has confided to Lucy that she’s worried about her. Everyone Lucy has talked to takes it as fact that Billie has a drinking problem. Now, if you ask me, church is not the best place to go to resolve something like this. The better option would be the therapy that Ruth invited Billie to, that she refused to go to. It’s a fair assumption that a fellow Christian might want to go to church.
Of course, in Billie’s defense, we haven’t seen her drink since moving in with Lucy. Despite the breakup over Ruth’s decision to quit drinking, it’s possible that Billie has been responsibly drinking since changing dorms. Who knows?
Church is unlikely to solve the problem but perhaps the atmosphere or what the priest says might motivate Billie to change and try to solve it. She already rejected the idea of therapy when offered, you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped so the first step is to make her Want that help.
Even if the act of going to church is unlikely to help, doing a social thing (a step towards building a friendship) with someone who isn’t causing or worsening the problem is unlikely to hurt.
We know for a fact Billie has not been drinking responsibly since changing dorms – she has skipped classes to go to bars and recently had an all out binge on alcohol.
But I don’t think Lucy was inviting Billie to go to church for healing reasons. I think she was just doing that to be friendly like you would invite someone to go to a party or to breakfast at a diner if you were already planning to go.
Of course, the concern here isn’t the efficacy of Lucy’s proposed course but the fact that Billie clearly doesn’t think anything is wrong, even though Ruth does to the point where Billie and her are on a pause and, indeed, Ruth may even be moving on to Carla.
I figured out what bothered me about Lucy’s interaction with Billie. The invite from Lucy was fine and Billie’s response was a decent no indicating which two days she does go.
Even the assertion that everything isn’t wrong was to be expected with what Lucy has seen and heard recently.
It was the still looking to the side comment that bugged me. It avoids, dismisses Billie’s reaction. Lucy seems to do these little pushes, sometimes big ones with people from time to time. It feels familiar me in not a good way.
Honestly a minor thing but it grates.
Lucy’s been a tough character for me. I think she is a nice person and her interaction with Carl was quite fun. But she does this push, push thing that leaves me looking at her side eyed.
I dunno. I mean I genuinely don’t know what the correct reaction is. You say dismissing it is wrong, and I respect that. But acknowledging it also seems wrong to me. Lucy’s being glared at for asking if things are wrong. The correct response is to pretend things aren’t wrong, surely?
This is one of those situations where I’d just say “Um, right” and leave, and worry incessantly that this was wrong for the rest of the day. Mind you, now I think about it, that’s most situations.
The correct answer is to accept someones answer and leave well enough alone. It’s simple, if someone isn’t asking for help or reaching out in any way, don’t provide it?
I think that while at first glance her explanation is just standard Let’s Be Flippant and Witty Instead of Being Honest bumf, it’s really honest.
Church is (to some people at least) where problems get fixed. If I go to church outside my usual pattern, I may be admitting that there’s a problem. If I just pretend as hard as I can that there is no problem, there will be no problem. Therefore, no church today. (And also, CHANGE BAD. NO CHANGE. ONLY SUBMARINE CHURCH.)
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…2090
I know, right?!
She’s obviously not Southern Baptist!
My first thought as well; 90 minutes, 90 hours, the turn of the century? And what church service is that fast? The few I am familiar with is a good two hours.
We had a youth-led service once. Everyone liked it because it was like half an hour 😬👍
I seem to remember a one hour service at my church. Then we went downstairs for coffee and donuts.
Catholic Masses average a maximum of an hour if you go on a standard non-holiday Sunday, less if there’s no music…
There’s about to be something wrong with your FAAAAAACE
“The only thing that’s wrong is that there’s no place selling beer before noon today.”
(Yes, Indiana has blue laws.)
Pabst only or is it an across the board ban.
Across the board, any kind of alcohol. Until 2018 apparently, it was for the entire Sunday (2018 reduced it to “just” before noon on Sundays).
Yes, but she’s not talking about that right now, Lucy. 😛
She’s fine.
Yeah, well, that’s what Ruth said too.
She’s gonna fuck her eyes up like that.
Which one?
The left one.
Woot!
Billie: how dare you confront me with the consequences of my own actions
…I’m in love with her and I Feel FINE
I’m so glad that she’s my little girl. She’s so glad, she’s telling all the world, that her baby buys her things, you know, he buys her diamond rings, you know, she said so. She’s in love with me and I feel fine.
(Plays air guitar to that awesome hook)
…And my Muzak work is done. 🙂
It’s FINE. Everything’s FINE.
Also keep making that face and it’s gonna stay stuck that way Billie.
Yea same, except I only go to church on Christmas and thats for the choir. I dont think God would even remember me (agnostic/atheist)
Anime Face Billie wants you to know that everything’s okay and nothing is wrong!
If I tried going into a church at this point, I’d probably burst into flames.
Or my presence would make the church burst into flames.
I keep hoping for that second one, but for some reason it’s never panned out when people drag me to churches for events.
You do realize that what you are saying is that there probably is at least one supernatural being who cares about your presence or absence in certain specified locales?
Oh wait, no, you’re that little girl from Firestarter.
In my case (I’m also in the flaming category) it would be the result of immense friction with the church.
> immense friction with the church
That sounds like you’re humping the church.
You can’t just “hump” the church. You’ll never get results like that. We’re talking’ some major hip work, here. Really show that architecture a good time. If you want fire, you need to bring some serious heat.
But don’t forget the lube, otherwise too much friction when bringing the heat just might start a fire, and probably splinters
I prefer to phrase it as “screw the church” or “fuck the church”.
Always make sure you lubricate your church thoroughly before beginning intercourse.
And always practice safe sects.
You should go to Joyce’s church. Problem solved. (Play the Roundabout song)
Hey, if a church bursts into flames when you enter it, that’s when you know God is paying attention to you. Most people, he’d just ignore.
aw man if that happened i’d go to church EVERY week
Probably a different one each week, however.
Fuck you and your correct assumptions!
Yes! Somebody tell her the truth, dammit!
On the other hand, Billie’s general nastiness in this relationship makes me want to root for Lucy.
But on the other hand, I feel obliged to root for lapsing from the faith and against persistent and undesired invitations to join someone at church. I know it’s meant to be nice, but that’s still obnoxious.
…. Ima just walk away from this one, and when I come back it’ll be a bit later and Lucy will be scoring insightful burns on some other topic instead.
Church sounds like a means of addressing an actual problem i this instance, and we can’t call a single invitation from one Christian to another pestering.
OPEN invitation. Not the first time.
And if the problem is “I’m angsting about fighting with my same-sex unmarried-yet-still-fucking possibly-ex-girlfriend,” very few churches are the right place to address that. Granted, Lucy’s nice, and I’d guess she’s the liberal sort of Christian, but it’s not really safe assuming that a church is a good place to take that sort of issue if you don’t know anything about that church.
Also, Billie doesn’t have a problem. She’s fine.
But if the problem is “I drink like a fish most nights, and some mornings too,” there are some churches that might help with addressing that. Not all of them, and I certainly wouldn’t expect some roomate’s random church to be one of them, and Lucy kinda overstepped bounds bringing it up in the first place.
Anyway Billie doesn’t see that as a problem.
I wish there were an edit button. Lucy definitely overstepped bounds with that “Isn’t something wrong?” comment.
Did she? “Hey, I sleep a few feet away from you and you drag your drama around like a disregarded jacket with pockets full of things that jingle so I can’t not notice. And then you pretend that your jacket isn’t in the dirt. I perhaps know of a washing machine…? Of which you also know…?”
But Billie and Lucy ARE both Christians, and Billie didn’t say anything about not believing. Inviting a coreligionist to services with you is a pretty normal and reasonable act.
But it’s also pretty obvious that Billie’s saying no. Not just “not this week”, but a solid no. Inviting once is okay, but to keep on doing it (this is obviously not the first time) in the face of that is uck.
I don’t think it is wrong to offer someone a reminder that they have an open invitation to go with you in the future if they want to. If Billie doesn’t want her to ever ask/remind her again, it’s on Billie to say so, not on Lucy to magically know and Billie doesn’t seem to mind in the way that you do so I’d say you are kind of overreacting in Billie’s stead.
If you don’t want someone to ask you/invite you to something again, it is on you to let someone know, because people have different tolerances for reminders.
Technically this is the first time, though she may have mentioned the open invitation early. Billie moved in last Sunday, so this is the first opportunity for her to actually take her up on it.
At some point, repeated refused invitations become intrusive, but I don’t think there’s any reason to think she’s there yet.
I like Lucy, she’s a sweet cinnamon roll, but I’d find it annoying if an otherwise pretty nice college roommate kept asking me to go to church with them every week after I’d already turned them down.
It is likely she has only asked once before and is reminding her this week ‘by the way, if you want to come to church with me, you are always free to!’ If you don’t want invited again/reminded that you are free to come, you have to tell people that because they can’t guess your tolerance for invitations/reminders of things. Some people might like to be asked every week just because it feels like an attempt to include them, even if they say no every single time, while others like yourself would get annoyed. Billie herself doesn’t seem annoyed though.
Billie moved in last Sunday. They met after Lucy came back from church.
See for reference: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/01-face-the-strange/lucy-glenn/
Whatever the first mention of the open invite was, it was amidst all the I’m Your New Roommate Stuff(tm) reviewed offscreen; perhaps in the roommate agreement that Billie almost certainly barely glanced at before signing. It is not at all unreasonable to not know if it was lost in the shuffle of that and to offer a reminder the first time that it’s actually relevant, especially if she did not get a clear answer from Billie at the time (likely).
If Lucy brings it up again after this, that would certainly be imposing, but this is hardly monstrous.
Wait, it’s only been a week?
…. yeah, okay, that’s within the lines, I guess. My mistake.
OTGH, maybe it’s Ruth we should be rooting for.
OTGH? Wow, there is an obscure reference, which I totally got right away and didn’t have to look up.
Let me tell you about my journey with this exchange.
I have never seen the acronym before. However, both contextually and visually it is similar enough to OTOH to be related, I am familiar with the phrase “on the gripping hand” (as the natural progression of the one hand, the other hand, then the gripping hand), and it fit. With that decided, I nonetheless googled. And then I found out the phrase “on the gripping hand” is actually a sci-fi novel reference with actual meaning, and my mind was slightly blown
Looking back, I think I most likely picked up the phrase from my father and/or my high school science/chess club/knowledge bowl teacher, both of whom were avid sci-fi readers, so it makes perfect sense in retrospect.
Never seen the acronym before (somehow), but quite familiar with the source, to the point that I “got it” pretty much instantly.
Same 🙂
Get wrecked, Billie, you high-school-bully-ass nerd.
I love Lucy. I didn’t read all of Shortpacked, but I saw most of Lucy’s run and her rant on how amazing Starfire is in Teen Titans 2003 and how shallow and terrible her character was in the comics the years following the show spoke to me.
Get wrecked? She’s planning on it.
Wrecked? No, no, c’mon! No car crashes!
Alas, Billie never acts with integrity.
And plenty of regrets.
But, to circle around, getting wrecked takes care of them.
Ooh, are Becky and Lucy going to meet? I wonder if they’d get along any better than Joyce and Lucy. Maybe not. Becky’s peppy best friend quota is pretty solidly filled, after all.
People talk about how unrealistic it is to have so many lgbt characters in one comic, but what about all these college-age practicing Christians? Where I go, you assume everyone is an atheist by default.
Indiana.
Hell, even Caltech, a school where Dina would not be particularly unusual, had multiple Bible study groups when I was there. One for each of the North Houses, one Blacker-Fleming one, and I assume anyone interested from the last two techno-hippie houses also joined that one. (Rickets had an inverted pentagram dominating its dining room, and Dabney had a druggie-hippie reputation; I suspect it was just more openly tolerant about the drugs, but anyway.)
Since the story centers on Joyce, it’s actually surprising there aren’t more Christians. She hasn’t looked for a Bible study group or Christian fellowship on campus. I have been on many many college campuses and I can’t think of a single one where I personally have not known multiple practicing Christians in addition to myself. I tend to seek out Christian student organizations, but even without that, when it’s something that you’re open about, it’s an important shared interest with other Christians that you meet and you tend to feel safe sharing that important thing together and become friends. Even wherever you are, I bet a few of those people you assume are agnostic are actually practicing Christians who don’t feel comfortable sharing that part of themselves with you.
That’s because Joyce initially only liked her one exact brand of Christianity most likely. Because if you remember, she did go to church with some other people before (including Mary) and her reaction to people being in different branches of Christianity was pretty much internal screaming while trying not to externally scream.
She didn’t seem to have a problem with Sierra. Other than the lack of shoes. 🙂
Agatha being Mormon was a bit of a stretch and she definitely overreacted to the Jacob’s Catholic style church. And she didn’t react well to Mary, but that wasn’t really over denomination.
I can’t think of any other cases where she reacted badly in person, even to the internal screaming part.
Catholics.
But yeah, Becky went to a university associated with Church of God, initially, so Joyce probably grew up being taught that they were ‘acceptably’ different Christians.
“I bet a few of those people you assume are agnostic are actually practicing Christians who don’t feel comfortable sharing that part of themselves with you.”
I have never met a Christian who was uncomfortable sharing that label of their identity with everyone, and I find that harder to believe for one in the USA.
Not discussing religion mind you, just identifying themselves as Christians
There is a broad assumption that Christians are or will oppressed and discriminated against. It’s nonsense as far as I can tell, but it’s commonplace. See Carol’s little bit about how the government will come for any of them just for trying to raise their children right.
I’m sure there are some who aren’t paranoid about it who just don’t want to bring up that they go to church regularly because it doesn’t seem cool or whatever. Probably a lot more in college who did go regularly with their parents, but let it drop when they got to school just because they didn’t have someone pushing them anymore.
I got really quiet about my Christianity in college because of the sneering disgust and loudly flourished ignorance of my hallmates.
“Oh I bet you’re shocked that we’re having SEX.” (No.)
“Oh I bet you’re just here to find a man and settle down and pop out babies.” (No.)
“Oh I bet you obey your pastor like a robot.” (No.)
“Oh I bet I can get you to be shocked and upset. Let’s all gather around Jenny and try to shock and upset her.” (And that was when I realized that college was just high school but more.)
I had those worries in undergrad.
The actual reason I was quiet about was because of some poor choices in finding a group.
I had a much better time in grad school.
Maybe? Of course I went to college in a very different part of the country decades ago, but I can’t remember many practicing Christians. Probably many nominal Christians, but the only one who went to Church regularly was a girl I dated for a couple of years and she really only went because her parents lived in town and would check up on her. (Irish Catholic.)
Obviously I wouldn’t have known in all cases, but none of my roommates did – or if they did, they were committed to hiding it.
There are times to be a busy-body.
There are times to scamper off as quickly and silently ass possible.
Panel 4: “All too real” in a mere 3 words.
Also: NINETY?! MINUTES?!!!
Jeez! I was raised in the south. My granny DRAGGED me to church every Sunday, and it lasted for HOURS!
Christmas and Easter? Bring snacks and extra clothes, ’cause you are leaving at the butt-crack o’ dawn and you’re NOT getting back home that day!
Uphill both ways!
Whuppin’ bobcats the whole time!
Damn, right? Even the sermons are usually longer than that among my relatives, not counting any “youth sermons” or volunteer work beforehand or right after and of course doesn’t the whole church expect you’re gonna go to some bougie sitdown chain restaurant right after or you’re being insufficiently sociable?
I’m sure that 90 includes the walk to and from the church.
On a similar note, my parents are still practicing Catholics, But I know that my father doesn’t have a tolerance for a long mass, so they’re usually up at the crack of dawn to go to the earliest mass available. In and out in 45 minutes.
This strip reminds me that I wish we’d gotten to see more of Carla, Lucy, and Ruth hanging out.
And I already cast my vote for the Patreon bonus strip, dammit.
“Look, you just go to church and I’ll… just float down this Egyptian river, okay?”
Billie’s awake, dressed, and showing no visible signs of hangover, before church on a Sunday morning. Pretty easy for her to be in denial, this one particular moment. Those other moments aren’t happening right now.
“Or swim in it! Deep, deep in it…”
Billie’s face there is hilarious, but kinda cute.
Something’s wrong, sure, but honestly, not really sure how God could help her out with this one. Her and Ruth have a whole lot of baggage, but their issue is with faith in themselves and other people, not faith in the man upstairs.
I don’t think the point was that God could fix it. I think Lucy was just pointing out that something actually is wrong and Billie’s going like ‘how dare you not let me be in denial >:/’.
Billie’s issue is booze.
Some people find church programs helpful with this.
that’s her biggest problem, true, but I think her issues run deeper. Like, consider her and Alice, and her realizing she doesn’t want the old her back, and how being moved to this wing effectively brought the old her back when she got the cheerleader validation again. She needs to work on who she wants the real Billie to be, and what’s important to her, and the booze problem only gets worse because of this.
Wow, it’s been over two months since we last saw Billie.
*Blinks* Woah, it has! She wasn’t in the last storyline at all, huh.
Denial.
Such a happy state.
They have rainbows and puppies.
And no disease.
And no threat of constant annihilation!
I’m not going there until they have cookies. If they have cookies, I’ll be first in da Nile.
Thanks to denial, I’m immortal!
Seems to be working great so far.
That fifth panel face is about as cartoon a face as I’ve ever seen.
Yep. Like a cross between Lucy Van Pelt and Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy.
I’m thinking Pogo.
**sigh**
I can’t reup my Slipshine account until someone buys a commission from me, thus providing me with surplus spending money.
Here’s hoping I get one soon.
This is an official request to see your portfolio/webpage/information so you can share it without feeling weird. 😀
ninety whole minutes? what is this, holy week?
(so glad i got raised Catholic, where Mass can be an hour or less, depending on the line for communion, and the sermons are 15, 20 minutes tops)
She has to get to the church and back.
Presumably that includes time for travel, meet-and-greet, and coffee.
Well, she does have to walk there and back. If the service is one hour, that’s half an hour of walking (15 minutes each way).
Everything’s fine and that’s really all there is to say on the matter.
I’ll remember to use Lucy’s “look away” method when breaking uncomfortable truth-bombs to people.
Or just wear a blindfold; looking to the side for too long might strain the eyes.
Also saves you from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
Best. Billy face. Evar!
Actually, it kinda reminds me of some of those early 20th century black and white cartoon animal expressions.
Don’t test your luck with Billie, Lucy.
A bit too early, Lucy. It’s going to take another big event for Billie to be able to make that admission to herself.
Knew there was a reason why I put Lucy in my top three characters ^.^
Because she snoops in someone elses business who’s shown absolutely no interest in asking for any advice or help at all?
Maybe because she’s trying to help but knows when to back off?
Also, when Billie shows up drunk to peoples movie nights, she sorta makes it peoples business.
I don’t think you know what the word snoop means as this is not that – it requires 0 investigation to know something is up with Billie. And Lucy hasn’t offered her any advice or help here. She just pointed out the obvious that something is wrong and then exited out before Billie could throw a fit for her daring to not pretend her life is 100% perfect with precisely 0 problems in it.
Who, or what, is your avatar, she is terrifying.
http://www.avasdemon.com
Great comic! I just started reading it recently. Has some cool animations.
Already answered but yeah Avas demon great comic and this panel just spoke to me so I made her my avatar
Strange, I can’t get my computer to load any of the pages.
i see billie is taking robin lessons in ignoring problems
Eh, Billie could teach the class already, she don’ need no lessons.
Billie’s a second away from firing lasers from her own eyes.
Billie, there was something wrong with your life for years now.
It just crossed my mind… Lucy is into cartoons and anime and goes to Church… and so does Mary. I think we could do something with that?
Lucy needs to mind her own
She’s alt-Joyce, so offering spiritual remedies is automatically in-character.
She literally just offered an invitation to go to church with her and pointed out the obvious (that something is wrong) in response to what Billie said (that nothing is wrong). Lucy doesn’t have to pretend that things are perfect in Billie’s life just because Billie is and if Billie doesn’t want her to invite her to things, she’s the one who has to say so but unlike people here in the comments, Billie doesn’t seem to actually care about that part at all, just that Lucy dares to not accept her denial outright as the truth.
Just as long as Lucy doesn’t keep inviting her to church, this one time is ok. But she shouldn’t do it again.
Billies been pretty clear on the “leave me alone” front since they became roomies. Knowing the track record this isn’t going to be the only time (nor has it been the first probably)
Well it’s only been a week so, yeah it’s the first time
“hey I know you’re going through some stuff, you can come to church with me if you want”
Yeah totally what a fuckin Snoop mind your own business
/Sarcasm, if you can’t tell.
Let people deal with their shit. it’s THEIR shit. I hate people that offer to help when nothing was asked, if the world ain’t ending and you weren’t asked or gone to for help, mind your own that’s my view on it.
She’s going to church in a top like that? In October?
Cold weather is nothing when compared to the frigid animosity her room-mates exposed her to.
The hatred in Billie’s stare will keep her warm
So Billie’s ex-GF has confided to Lucy that she’s worried about her. Everyone Lucy has talked to takes it as fact that Billie has a drinking problem. Now, if you ask me, church is not the best place to go to resolve something like this. The better option would be the therapy that Ruth invited Billie to, that she refused to go to. It’s a fair assumption that a fellow Christian might want to go to church.
Of course, in Billie’s defense, we haven’t seen her drink since moving in with Lucy. Despite the breakup over Ruth’s decision to quit drinking, it’s possible that Billie has been responsibly drinking since changing dorms. Who knows?
Church is unlikely to solve the problem but perhaps the atmosphere or what the priest says might motivate Billie to change and try to solve it. She already rejected the idea of therapy when offered, you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped so the first step is to make her Want that help.
Didn’t she drink just recently and popped up into Lucy’s “date” with Walky? Ah found it
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/02-but-the-sun-still-shines/hurrah/
Even if the act of going to church is unlikely to help, doing a social thing (a step towards building a friendship) with someone who isn’t causing or worsening the problem is unlikely to hurt.
We know for a fact Billie has not been drinking responsibly since changing dorms – she has skipped classes to go to bars and recently had an all out binge on alcohol.
But I don’t think Lucy was inviting Billie to go to church for healing reasons. I think she was just doing that to be friendly like you would invite someone to go to a party or to breakfast at a diner if you were already planning to go.
Yup, this.
Of course, the concern here isn’t the efficacy of Lucy’s proposed course but the fact that Billie clearly doesn’t think anything is wrong, even though Ruth does to the point where Billie and her are on a pause and, indeed, Ruth may even be moving on to Carla.
Nothing “solves” alcoholism but it helps to be social and something that helps put you in a different state of mind.
Lucy learn denial !
It’s super effective
Man, Lucy is no match for Billie’s Drink-Denial stalling strategy. She’s just going to get ground down and finished off when Billie uses Selfdestruct.
She should be safe in the church, last time Billie entered one she caught on fire
(she breathed too close to one of the candles)
I figured out what bothered me about Lucy’s interaction with Billie. The invite from Lucy was fine and Billie’s response was a decent no indicating which two days she does go.
Even the assertion that everything isn’t wrong was to be expected with what Lucy has seen and heard recently.
It was the still looking to the side comment that bugged me. It avoids, dismisses Billie’s reaction. Lucy seems to do these little pushes, sometimes big ones with people from time to time. It feels familiar me in not a good way.
Honestly a minor thing but it grates.
Lucy’s been a tough character for me. I think she is a nice person and her interaction with Carl was quite fun. But she does this push, push thing that leaves me looking at her side eyed.
Carla*
I dunno. I mean I genuinely don’t know what the correct reaction is. You say dismissing it is wrong, and I respect that. But acknowledging it also seems wrong to me. Lucy’s being glared at for asking if things are wrong. The correct response is to pretend things aren’t wrong, surely?
This is one of those situations where I’d just say “Um, right” and leave, and worry incessantly that this was wrong for the rest of the day. Mind you, now I think about it, that’s most situations.
The correct answer is to accept someones answer and leave well enough alone. It’s simple, if someone isn’t asking for help or reaching out in any way, don’t provide it?
I love how these “going to church” strips are positioned above ads for a gay slipshine comic
So, how is Billie reading those books without her glasses? Izzat why her eyes look so weird?
She can probably read perfectly fine without them if she’s nearsighted.
She doesn’t wear her glasses in Forest Hall because this.
Do contacts not work for reading?
(sigh) God, I hope Billie wakes up.
That Billie face tho
I’m still on the team that the best thing for both Ruth and Billie is that they break up and stay far apart from one another.
Then again, I’m a Ruth/Carla shipper.
I think that while at first glance her explanation is just standard Let’s Be Flippant and Witty Instead of Being Honest bumf, it’s really honest.
Church is (to some people at least) where problems get fixed. If I go to church outside my usual pattern, I may be admitting that there’s a problem. If I just pretend as hard as I can that there is no problem, there will be no problem. Therefore, no church today. (And also, CHANGE BAD. NO CHANGE. ONLY SUBMARINE CHURCH.)
Okay, who will have a conversation about church in tomorrow’s strip?
Billie, if you are feeling sinister, go off and see a minister.