Dumbing of Age Book Eleven

Dumbing of Age

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August 1, 2023

Troopers

by David M Willis on October 16, 2015 at 12:01 am
  • 01 - To Those Who'd Ground Me

└ Tags: becky, joyce, ross

Discussion (956) ¬

[ Comments RSS ]
  1. Ana Chronistic
    Ana Chronistic
    October 16, 2015 at 12:01 am | #

    well, you can’t be like Fox News and call him a killer without a cause

    (he just has a completely shitty one, like all of those fuckers)

    alt: “WE’RE CATHOLIC! DON’T YOU KNOW THAT BEING HAPPY IS A SIN???”

    (idk if they’re actually Catholic or just Puritan)

    • DarkoNeko
      DarkoNeko
      October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

      Aren’t they protestant ?

      • Twilightomens
        Twilightomens
        October 16, 2015 at 12:05 am | #

        Yeah, Joyce was against Catholicism, I assume that’s because everyone in her church is too

        • Ana Chronistic
          Ana Chronistic
          October 16, 2015 at 12:20 am | #

          …I don’t even remember what I was going for with that

          time for bed I guess

          *goes to see if Patreon decides to load or not*

          • Ana Chronistic
            Ana Chronistic
            October 16, 2015 at 12:25 am | #

            CHURCH OF ST. BASTARD

            • efes
              efes
              October 16, 2015 at 6:17 am | #

              I think you’ll find it’s a boarding schoo (specifically, England’s most vicious one).

              • evilmidnightlurker
                evilmidnightlurker
                October 16, 2015 at 11:20 am | #

                St. Trinians has that distinction sewn up.

                • TheEighthShader
                  TheEighthShader
                  October 16, 2015 at 12:07 pm | #

                  RAINBOWSSSS

                • David
                  David
                  October 16, 2015 at 8:29 pm | #

                  St Trinians <3

                • TheEighthShader
                  TheEighthShader
                  October 16, 2015 at 11:54 pm | #

                  Tru tru

        • The Biggest Tom
          The Biggest Tom
          October 16, 2015 at 9:46 am | #

          I’m Catholic. You would be…surprised. You may be thinking, “Wouldn’t Christians like other Christians?” And you’d be right! However, to many Protestants, Catholics aren’t Christian. Apparently we worship the Pope, not Jesus, like good normal folks should.

          • Freemage
            Freemage
            October 16, 2015 at 10:18 am | #

            In fairness, it’s only relatively recently that Catholics have admitted that non-Catholic Christians might qualify for heaven, too.

          • AdmiralChucK
            AdmiralChucK
            October 16, 2015 at 10:54 am | #

            Honestly, I think the bitterness between the different sects of Christianity stems from the awful 30 years war that took place during the Reformation. Still hasn’t healed properly.

            • Jerden
              Jerden
              October 16, 2015 at 11:07 am | #

              And, you know, everything since then mostly made it worse.

              • Joseph Cartwright
                Joseph Cartwright
                October 16, 2015 at 11:53 am | #

                And some are bitter for the Catholic Church changing the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday.

                • drnuncheon
                  drnuncheon
                  October 17, 2015 at 12:05 pm | #

                  Hell, some of the Catholics hate the Catholics. One of the protesters outside of our local Planned Parenthood is still upset that the Mass is no longer in Latin.

                • Nerd Patrol
                  Nerd Patrol
                  October 17, 2015 at 11:09 pm | #

                  Just wait’ll you discover the world of sedevacantism.

      • EmbraceEvil
        EmbraceEvil
        October 16, 2015 at 4:47 am | #

        according to the about page, Willis was and Joyce is “nondenominational fundamentalist (nonaligned Protestant)”

        • Jenny Islander
          Jenny Islander
          October 16, 2015 at 2:09 pm | #

          “Non-denominational” all too often means “One preacher + N people he’s buffaloed into thinking that he’s All That + zero oversight = reality-divergent super-sheltered bubble at best and destructive cult at worst.”

          • Willinwoods
            Willinwoods
            October 16, 2015 at 2:19 pm | #

            That just got me thinking ‘Buffalo preachers buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo…’

      • QD
        QD
        October 16, 2015 at 5:08 am | #

        Yeah I’m pretty sure Toedad’s version of Christianity thinks Catholicism in general and the Pope in particular are agents of the antiChrist.

        • WeirderThanWeird
          WeirderThanWeird
          October 16, 2015 at 8:17 am | #

          But this pope is so awesome. I love this pope and I’m agnostic-very-much-not-Christian.

          • gwalla
            gwalla
            October 16, 2015 at 12:22 pm | #

            Yeah, and they think this pope is extra antichristy for the same reasons you like him.

          • murderbridd
            murderbridd
            October 16, 2015 at 12:59 pm | #

            He really isn’t, though. Just the same old shit with a new veneer.

            • stevecharb
              stevecharb
              October 16, 2015 at 9:43 pm | #

              Francis came in and made drastic reforms, in policy and in attitude, to a powerful and rigid institution over a short period of time.
              The Catholic Church is no longer the active crusader against same-sex marriage and abortion it was just a few years ago. The social conservatism has been put on the back burner; the roar reduced to grumbles.
              Instead Francis has pivoted the Church for its original purposes: to teach love and tolerance and to fight global poverty. He has spoken in favor of evolution.

              If you’re dissatisfied with Francis for not making enough changes, you have unrealistic expectations.

      • Justin
        Justin
        October 16, 2015 at 2:58 pm | #

        Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh so this is how Willis will break becky. not through romantic subplot, but through the trauma of seeing her father killed in front of her. well played willis. I Approve~

    • Inkblot
      Inkblot
      October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

      Toedad why

      This is a bad idea on all fronts

      • EdHead
        EdHead
        October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

        Toedad, just went full “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

        • Jimmy
          Jimmy
          October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

          Except he’s already the villan

        • BL
          BL
          October 16, 2015 at 12:17 am | #

          w-wait when was he ever considered a hero in this story

          • podian
            podian
            October 16, 2015 at 12:28 am | #

            He considered himself a hero all the time.

            • Darwin
              Darwin
              October 16, 2015 at 2:46 am | #

              Before he went all Toedad, it might have been possible that he was Becky’s hero. We’re seeing him at his absolute worst, but it’s possible he was not always a religion-crazed abusive a-hole. Well… he was probably religion-crazed, but Becky’s basically a good kid. The two of ’em might have been very close before he flipped out.

              • Deanatay
                Deanatay
                October 16, 2015 at 8:12 am | #

                Even abused kids love their parents, and look up to them. As a child, Becky may have seen Ross as her hero. Ross definitely sees himself as a champion of Becky’s soul.

          • Shake and Bake
            Shake and Bake
            October 16, 2015 at 10:23 am | #

            Way back before college when he drove them to Six Flags. That was his hero moment.

        • evilmidnightlurker
          evilmidnightlurker
          October 16, 2015 at 2:34 am | #

          I’m thinking more Falling Down.

          “I’m the bad guy?”

          • Halloween Jack
            Halloween Jack
            October 16, 2015 at 7:31 am | #

            Yeah, very definitely a D-FENS thing going on here, I think.

          • DarkVeghetta
            DarkVeghetta
            October 16, 2015 at 7:45 am | #

            Indeed.
            We’re sadly missing the retirement-day cop that learns to stand up to his wife though.

      • Screwball
        Screwball
        October 16, 2015 at 6:26 pm | #

        It’s official, Toedad is now emulating this guy…

    • LeslieBean4Shizzle
      LeslieBean4Shizzle
      October 16, 2015 at 12:03 am | #

      They are fundamentalist – that way WAY different than Catholics.

      • John
        John
        October 16, 2015 at 12:05 am | #

        Yeah, they probably teach that Catholics are the pawns of Satan.

        • Magoo Comma Mister
          Magoo Comma Mister
          October 16, 2015 at 10:57 pm | #

          Shrimp are the prawns of Satan.

      • LeslieBean4Shizzle
        LeslieBean4Shizzle
        October 16, 2015 at 12:06 am | #

        Hell, I’m a pagan lesbian (well, bi leaning lesbian, but I digress) and one of my best friends is a very devout Catholic. She has zero problem with me or my wife.

        • Myth
          Myth
          October 16, 2015 at 12:55 am | #

          To be fair, that has nothing to do with being Catholic, and everything to do with “not being a horrible person.” Plenty of Catholics might take issue with a pagan lesbian (plenty of Catholics DO take issue).

          • Yu'Karaya
            Yu'Karaya
            October 16, 2015 at 1:03 am | #

            From what I can tell, fundamentalists and evangelist churches are much more likely to preach intolerance for specific groups of people. They try to make visible enemies out of actual groups in society, and have a weird psuedo militant way of teaching kids that they actually have enemies out to get them in the form of gays or whatever

            • stormbeta
              stormbeta
              October 16, 2015 at 1:28 am | #

              Sure, but Catholicism seems to push the love and tolerance angle a lot more strongly than protestants in my experience, and the result is that even though *officially* the Church has some pretty ugly ideas about gay people, a lot of actual Catholics are pretty open-minded and tolerant.

              • No Name
                No Name
                October 16, 2015 at 1:33 am | #

                Especially since Pope Francis took the throne.

                • masterofbones
                  masterofbones
                  October 16, 2015 at 3:36 am | #

                  Francis really isnt teaching anything new. He is just focusing on the positive

                • LiamAldam
                  LiamAldam
                  October 16, 2015 at 5:57 am | #

                  Dude, Pope Francis took the throne and put it in a museum. The guy now sits on just a white chair.

                • DarkVeghetta
                  DarkVeghetta
                  October 16, 2015 at 7:40 am | #

                  ^ He does? Very humble of him. Still not quite as badass as John Paul II was, but he’s getting there.

                • No Name
                  No Name
                  October 16, 2015 at 10:08 am | #

                  At master of bones: Yes, but being Pope has its privileges and one of them is being able to steer the church however you please.
                  At LiamAldam: Really? I can’t say I’m surprised. Good on him! Has he given up absolute power over the Vatican?

                • murderbridd
                  murderbridd
                  October 16, 2015 at 1:02 pm | #

                  That really isn’t true. The Pope is only the head of an entire college of cardinals and without the adjudication of the whole magisterium he can’t change doctrine willy-nilly, and he hasn’t. Girls like me are as dangerous as nuclear bombs to him and that’s not acceptable.

                  And he can’t give up absolute power over the Vatican.

              • Parkrndl
                Parkrndl
                October 16, 2015 at 10:43 am | #

                < open-minded and tolerant Catholic

              • Spiny Creature
                Spiny Creature
                October 16, 2015 at 11:35 am | #

                Yu’Karaya wasn’t talking about the Catholic Church, she’s not disagreeing with you. “Fundamentalist and evangelical churches” refers to (some types of) Protestant churches, not the Catholic Church. The Church is not fundamentalist.

              • Amazi-Stool
                Amazi-Stool
                October 16, 2015 at 1:34 pm | #

                Oh, look how open-minded and tolerant the vatican has become:
                A senior priest at the Vatican has revealed he is gay, on the eve of a major meeting that will define the Catholic Church’s teaching on family.
                (…)
                The Vatican called his actions “very serious and irresponsible” and stripped him of doctrinal responsibilities.

                • Gand
                  Gand
                  October 16, 2015 at 3:51 pm | #

                  Being gay is not the reason he got stripped of responsibilities.
                  The main reason is that he had a partner, breaking the rules of celibacy for priests. And the fact that he did the announcement the day prior of the meeting, trying to put pressure on the discussions.

                • Weyland
                  Weyland
                  October 16, 2015 at 4:33 pm | #

                  @Gand – True though that may be, it still doesn’t make the fact that they continue to maintain the celibacy rules any less silly. And the fact that breaking celibacy was likely only the given reason.

                • TessHM
                  TessHM
                  October 17, 2015 at 2:18 pm | #

                  “Breaking News — Pope is Actually Catholic!!”

              • Myth
                Myth
                October 16, 2015 at 10:57 pm | #

                Again I wholeheartedly disagree that love-and-tolerance level has anything to do with what sect of Christianity is being practiced. My best friend is a devout Latter-Day Saint (Mormon). Her husband-to-be is openly atheist, genderqueer (prefers male nouns and pronouns though) and way into BDSM. Another of my friends is a Baptist from the Deep South and he is a strong activist against sexism in comic books (comic books are his passion, he has written some indie ones).

                Any person from any religion, or any branch of a religion, can be open-minded and tolerant. The frequency of openmindedness and tolerance among specific religions/sects is a pointless debate. Decent people are decent, and bigots are bigots, regardless of what their religion may be. No religion can truly be said to have a greater number of decent people/bigots.

            • Bruceski
              Bruceski
              October 16, 2015 at 5:49 am | #

              I’ve found it really depends on the community mix/size. My synagogue was small enough that our denomination was “if anybody gets mad we lose a minyan” and so taught general Jewish spirituality while leaving it up to the people to choose their own flavor of how observant they wanted to be. The town was small as well so we all knew folks of different faiths, heck most of my friends were Mormon and it wasn’t until I left town that I learned those guys had a bad rep elsewhere, they were just people.

              Meanwhile if you get an isolated town of all one faith, or a city big enough for people to segregate themselves, that’s when it can start getting ugly. Up in Chicago, my grandma’s family disowned my grandpa when the “wrong” rabbi oversaw her funeral.

            • murderbridd
              murderbridd
              October 16, 2015 at 1:04 pm | #

              Wrong. Go stand guard for a Planned Parenthood. Maybe deal with a rally sometime. See how lax and tolerant Catholics can be.

          • de Combys
            de Combys
            October 16, 2015 at 1:43 am | #

            Just saying, my nation is 80-90% catholic and we have gay marriage since 2006. We also have laws to protect laicism, and we accomodate religious minorities.

            This may or may not be directly linked.

            • JonRich
              JonRich
              October 16, 2015 at 3:00 am | #

              What is laicism?

              • Dandi Andi
                Dandi Andi
                October 16, 2015 at 3:11 am | #

                The short version: French secularism.

                • Deanatay
                  Deanatay
                  October 16, 2015 at 8:21 am | #

                  It looks like a misspelling of ‘racism’, but it’s apparently derived from ‘laity’, a word used in Catholicism to refer to secular authorities. Laicism is a principle of government that specifically excludes religious authority. It’s a simpler way of saying ‘separation of church and state’.

                • No Name
                  No Name
                  October 16, 2015 at 10:10 am | #

                  I don’t know about “simpler”. Shorter, yes, but not simpler.

                • Spiny Creature
                  Spiny Creature
                  October 16, 2015 at 11:43 am | #

                  How is it not simpler? It’s a general concept shared and understood among all Catholic European countries (and Latin America), and it’s the same in a bunch of languages (laicism, laicismo, laïcisme, laicità). Separation of church and state is a specifically American concept based on specific wording in the US Constitution.

          • Swissaboo
            Swissaboo
            October 16, 2015 at 2:39 am | #

            Having been raised catholic, the joke I like to make is that everyone who felt like they needed a church they actually agreed with left during the reformation, leaving catholicism as 90% people who don’t give a single shit what the catholic church actually says. And that includes the catholic fundamentalists, who have a surprising tendency towards literal heresy.

            • Ashflake
              Ashflake
              October 16, 2015 at 3:13 am | #

              I think that is basically true.

              The thing about catholicism is that while doctrine can be strict, it also has a long history of “off course you don’t practice what you preach”. I mean, you think most of our priests (yeah, i was raised catholic in the sense described below) really live celibate? Right. In fact, celibacy has been described as a sort of funtional medieval “safe harbor” for male homosexuals, because they didn’t have to explain why they weren’t married.
              Catholicism has many adherents over the world, most of them don’t really know what’s in the bible either. In parts of europe, catholicism is really more about rituals and, “well, we’ve always been catholic” than about “giving yourself to jesus”. Which to me, also goes a long way to explain why catholics are often about as liberal as the general society they live in .

              This is also why catholicism is despised as next to satanic by evangelicals. It may also be what triggered the reformation.

              That is not to say that “don’t practice what you preach” isn’t a big problem in and of itself, especially if you are an actual gay catholic believer if e.g.:
              a) You want/need official recognition by the church
              b) Against all odds, you are a DEVOUT catholic and question yourself because of doctrine
              And that can be a big problem, because doctrine changes really slowly in catholic church, if at all.

              So, basically, the way i see catholicism is that it’s basic mode has traditionally been hypocrisy. I admit i have a sofft spot for catholicism because to me it’s ultimately human, i prefer hypocrisy over religious fervor. But then again, i’m not directly concerned by a) or b)

              • murderbridd
                murderbridd
                October 16, 2015 at 1:13 pm | #

                Don’t describe the priesthood as a safe haven. It wasn’t.

                • Ashflake
                  Ashflake
                  October 17, 2015 at 12:45 pm | #

                  Ok. It’s just i’ve heard this before, and thought it was an interesting twist, but i don’t have any sources to back it up. Do you know where the notion comes from?

              • Amazi-Stool
                Amazi-Stool
                October 16, 2015 at 1:45 pm | #

                It may also be what triggered the reformation.

                No that was not what triggered the reformation.

                The roman catholic church turning the franchise into a money source was what triggered the reformation.
                Martin Luther could have been a character straight from Shortpacked!

                • Luther, Martin
                  Luther, Martin
                  October 16, 2015 at 3:14 pm | #

                  Martin Luther had 93 points that he made about the Catholic Church to trigger the Reformation. Only like four of them were about the blatant greed of the church at the time. It’s like saying “Rosa Parks caused the civil rights movement!” when it was actually the rallying cry to vent decades or centuries of frustrations about a broken system.

        • Lasenna
          Lasenna
          October 16, 2015 at 5:34 am | #

          If you’re a bi-leaning lesbian, it’s probably clearer to just say you’re sexually fluid.

          • DarkVeghetta
            DarkVeghetta
            October 16, 2015 at 7:25 am | #

            Actually, I find it clearer the way she sed it.

          • timemonkey
            timemonkey
            October 16, 2015 at 10:34 am | #

            In my experience, it’s best not to tell people how to identify themselves unless specifically asked for advice on the matter.

            • de Combys
              de Combys
              October 16, 2015 at 3:01 pm | #

              This ^

          • ranthog
            ranthog
            October 16, 2015 at 1:34 pm | #

            It makes perfect sense, since bisexuality doesn’t mean equal levels attraction to all genders, but that one is attracted to genders besides the opposite sex. (Trying to keep this as gender inclusive as possible.) This may mean that someone is often attracted to men, but occasionally women as well.

            I’m not surehow sexually fluid would fit in there.

            That and its kindof rude to tell someone they’re identifying wrong. I personally don’t find there to be any significant difference between bisexual and pansexual (besides being explicit instead of implicit about other gender expressions), but I’m not going to substitute one label for the other if one gives a preference

            • de Combys
              de Combys
              October 16, 2015 at 3:09 pm | #

              I’m what I would call “homoflexible”, which I gather to be the same as bi-leaning homosexual. Meaning perhaps 90% homo (in my frame of reference anyway).

              My boyfriend labels huimself pansexual and one of my male friends labels himself bisexual. The difference between them two is this : my boyfriend feels that gender is secondary attraction-wise (the feeling of sexiness isn’t linked to the feeling of gender), and my friend feels that gender plays a primary role in his attraction (he is attracted to different genders in different ways). I think why they interpret those words that way is because the prefix bi- suggests a distinction and the prefix pan- suggests an encompassment. But other people see it differently.

              • Li
                Li
                October 16, 2015 at 6:01 pm | #

                The thing about the word “bisexual” is that it was reclaimed. Originally it, just like “homosexual”, was a clinical term that attempted to pathologize non-straight orientations. The difference is that the bi community reclaimed it, while the gay community largely rejected “homosexual”.

                My point is that bi’s etymology is irrelevant, because it was created by bigots. So what the prefix bi “suggests” doesn’t so much matter.

                The bi community has been defining the term since the 70s as attraction to one or more genders, which can of course encompass anything from “just two” to “all”.

                I personally identify as pan, but I just wanted to further hammer home your last point: that the labels are personal, and the distinction depends on the person.

                • Li
                  Li
                  October 16, 2015 at 6:03 pm | #

                  Ugh. TWO or more genders. (Alternately, “my own and other genders”, which is a neat way of working two back in there.)

                • Tunasammich
                  Tunasammich
                  October 16, 2015 at 8:48 pm | #

                  Sometimes I wish I could upvote a comment on here, thank

                • de Combys
                  de Combys
                  October 17, 2015 at 1:09 am | #

                  What the prefix suggests doesn’t so much matter… except if it does to the person using it. I said what my friend said. He’s the judge.

                  Nice infos, though.

              • Ranthog
                Ranthog
                October 16, 2015 at 6:33 pm | #

                The distinction that gender plays a secondary versus primary role in attraction isn’t a meaningful difference in all cases, since it is something that can vary for someone depending on circumstances.

                Also, consider that bisexual comes from a time before there was really language for anything beside the two genders, so the implication fit the language of the time rather than in practice. Truthfully the difference between bisexual and pansexual, if any, is very fuzzy. There doesn’t seem to be any consensus.

                • de Combys
                  de Combys
                  October 17, 2015 at 1:12 am | #

                  And here I am wondering why you people only answered my comment to tell me stuff like that. I’m just sharing what my friend and boyfriend told me about themselves. Of course it’s different for everybody. I’m so, so tired of label policing.

            • Lasenna
              Lasenna
              October 17, 2015 at 5:59 pm | #

              1) I never said she was identifying wrong.
              2) I only addressed the issue because it was literally the very first sentence of her comment, not something plucked out of the blue sky.
              3) By the comments I think a lot of people here don’t really understand what sexually fluid means. It doesn’t mean equally bi, it doesn’t mean mostly straight or gay, it means you can find people attractive even if you lean more towards gay/straight. In a way, it’s one of the most all encompassing descriptions there is. If you want to understand what sexually fluid means, you should read this:
              http://everydayfeminism.com/2012/10/fluid-sexuality-lgbtq-spectrum/

              And a lot of you really need to read this article because this is clearly a term that is still not well understood.

          • Roborat
            Roborat
            October 16, 2015 at 3:03 pm | #

            But pretty much all sex involves fluids.

            • de Combys
              de Combys
              October 16, 2015 at 3:10 pm | #

              Be safe.

      • Idon'tcarenomore
        Idon'tcarenomore
        October 16, 2015 at 12:09 am | #

        And different than a lot of Christians too.

      • Reltzik
        Reltzik
        October 16, 2015 at 1:04 am | #

        There are fundamentalist Catholics, but yes, they’re generic fundamentalist Protestant. (Probably evangelical.)

    • Lord Stoneheart
      Lord Stoneheart
      October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

      They’re non denominational Protestant.

    • No Name
      No Name
      October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

      There whatever breed of American nondenominational fundamentalism Willis was born into. As far from Catholicism as possible while still being considered Christian.

      • I Write Monsters
        I Write Monsters
        October 16, 2015 at 12:06 am | #

        They’re close to the breed my friend grew up in, and he was told at age 11 that the Catholic Church was so satanic, he would one day fight a beast with seven pope-heads barehanded.

        • Rycan
          Rycan
          October 16, 2015 at 12:11 am | #

          Seriously? Fighting a geriatric monster? Have they no shame?

        • Blue
          Blue
          October 16, 2015 at 12:18 am | #

          Your friend sounds like the chosen one.

          • I Write Monsters
            I Write Monsters
            October 16, 2015 at 12:26 am | #

            He actually kinda misses being the Chosen One.

            • Vincent
              Vincent
              October 16, 2015 at 7:23 am | #

              Did… Did he end up getting dismembered and left on the slopes of a volcano?

              • Deanatay
                Deanatay
                October 16, 2015 at 8:31 am | #

                Nah, probably just has younger siblings now.

        • gwalla
          gwalla
          October 16, 2015 at 12:30 pm | #

          Pope Ghidorah

      • Dr. T
        Dr. T
        October 16, 2015 at 12:22 am | #

        So……Mormon?

        I’m kidding. The farthest from Catholicism you can get and still have a Christian flavor is Unitarian Universalism. Pretty sure they aren’t that.

        • fizzywafflezsuperstore
          fizzywafflezsuperstore
          October 16, 2015 at 7:20 pm | #

          We taste like Christians?

          This I never knew.

          • Dr. T
            Dr. T
            October 16, 2015 at 8:24 pm | #

            Technically, you taste like chicken, but so do Christians.

            • fizzywafflezsuperstore
              fizzywafflezsuperstore
              October 17, 2015 at 2:06 pm | #

              Oh, people tasted like pigs last time I checked–though I may be wrong on that.

    • QF
      QF
      October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

      Go check the About page, because I’m pretty sure they’re from the same religion as Joyce.

      • Doctor_Who
        Doctor_Who
        October 16, 2015 at 12:06 am | #

        Dexter and Monkey Masterism?

    • Kamino Neko
      Kamino Neko
      October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

      They’re not Catholic…also…that makes no sense from a Catholic POV.

    • Ana Chronistic
      Ana Chronistic
      October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

      I should delete any posts I start with idk =p

    • Rheinman
      Rheinman
      October 16, 2015 at 12:39 am | #

      Puritanism – the desperate fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time

      • Kryss LaBryn
        Kryss LaBryn
        October 16, 2015 at 7:00 am | #

        “Two spikes would be an extravagance!”

        The Whiteadders’ visit: Best Blackadder episode ever. 😀 Which is saying a lot.

      • Arkantos
        Arkantos
        October 16, 2015 at 11:23 am | #

        Eh, Puritans weren’t really just eliminating everything fun, they just wanted to make absolutely sure no one was putting something else before God. Still kinda shitty, but ya know, it was the 15th century.

        • kelticat
          kelticat
          October 16, 2015 at 2:43 pm | #

          Given that the Puritans did their best to eliminate Christmas, are you so sure about that.

          • fogel
            fogel
            October 16, 2015 at 10:47 pm | #

            And closed the theaters a few decades after Shakespeare.

        • Ana Chronistic
          Ana Chronistic
          October 17, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

          you wouldn’t know it from the names they chose

    • barefootbiker
      barefootbiker
      October 16, 2015 at 12:47 am | #

      Having been raised Catholic (though not religious anymore) I’ve actually found it to be one of the least fire-and-brimstoney of common American Christian denominations. Obviously there are plenty of people who don’t exemplify that, but the churches I went to were mostly of the “judge not lest ye be judged” variety. Contrast that with some of the evangelical types on my dad’s side (born-again Assembly of God *shudder*) and Catholicism looks like flowers and butterflies and pleasant wine-drunkenness.

      • Rukduk
        Rukduk
        October 16, 2015 at 1:08 am | #

        As someone who has had a similar experience with the Catholic Church it’s even better if you hang out with anyone from quite a few of the orders. Particularly Jesuits and Lassalians. So liberal, we (the orders and those educated by them) are sometimes called commies. Good times.

        • de Combys
          de Combys
          October 16, 2015 at 1:49 am | #

          Jesuits… *shudder*

      • MrZombieScordo
        MrZombieScordo
        October 16, 2015 at 1:23 am | #

        I was raised evangelical presbyterian. Not really sure what that means, but the result was be nice to everybody so that you know that you are better than them.

        • Anomylous
          Anomylous
          October 16, 2015 at 2:36 pm | #

          Ha. My family is Presbyterian and that’s pretty spot on. I’ll take it over the Baptist “everybody except us is going to hell, oh well, humanity is evil anyway” attitude any day, though.

      • Tacos
        Tacos
        October 16, 2015 at 8:00 pm | #

        I’m Catholic myself though from my experience, every religion ends up with different sects regardless of claiming to all be unified so invariably you end up with some real asshole groups. I will say that the churches we’ve gone to teach what basically boiled down to, “Be nice to people and don’t be an asshat.”

    • EvolutionistX
      EvolutionistX
      October 16, 2015 at 2:43 am | #

      Neither Catholic nor Puritan. Modern Puritans are, like, Unitarians and totally mellow.

      • Spiny Creature
        Spiny Creature
        October 16, 2015 at 11:48 am | #

        Yeah, the modern-day descendants of those New England Puritan churches are… well… in New England. So they’re actually some of the most liberal and hippie-ish churches in the whole country. I grew up in a Massachusetts church like that.

    • LiamAldam
      LiamAldam
      October 16, 2015 at 6:02 am | #

      Just wanted to stop by to say a religious Catholic reads and enjoys this strip. Is that an argument for tolerance?

      • Deanatay
        Deanatay
        October 16, 2015 at 8:34 am | #

        If you want it to be, sure. Welcome!

      • Ana Chronistic
        Ana Chronistic
        October 17, 2015 at 12:14 am | #

        yeah, tolerance is awesome!

        *periodic reminder to self that religion isn’t necessarily any more a valid target than other things*

        **that is I do apologize for the alt: part of the first post if anyone wanted it**

    • Cody B
      Cody B
      October 16, 2015 at 9:24 pm | #

      It’s not really a bad cause: saving his daughter from eternal damnation.

      Really it comes down to the interplay of three separate positions

      Position 1) Nonchristians burn forever in a fiery damnation. It is therefor your moral responsibility to save your loved ones from eternal torture.

      Position 2) Nonchristians burn forever in a fiery damnation but it’s your right to choose for yourself, even if your choice directly leads you to eternal torture.

      Position 3) Nonchristians do not burn forever in a fiery damnation.

      If you are a father, even if you mostly fall in position 2, you are likely to have special considerations for your daughter, which push you closer to position 1. And if you are already position 1 to begin with, like Toedad, then your sole responsibility is to keep your daughter’s soul safe. Even her physical safety is less important.

      Personally, I fall into position 3, but I have a hard time just writing off people who are indoctrinated into faith-based beliefs and follow those beliefs to their logical ends as “jerks.” Misguided? Maybe. Probably. Jerks… maybe not.

      As for the whole lesbian equals going to hell thing… I don’t even know where it comes from, but I know that many churches teach it. And if your church teaches it, and that is your primary source of biblical interpretation… well, faith-based is not evidence-based.

  2. Nightsbridge
    Nightsbridge
    October 16, 2015 at 12:01 am | #

    Aw, look guys, everything’s going to be alright! He cares! /sarcasm

    . . .

    Fudge you Ross.

    • No Name
      No Name
      October 16, 2015 at 12:05 am | #

      He does care actually, just in all the wrong ways.

      • Cholma
        Cholma
        October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

        “Good teacher. He really seems to care. About *what* I have no idea.” ~Thornton Melon

    • Inkblot
      Inkblot
      October 16, 2015 at 12:14 am | #

      I never thought that I would feel sorry for the guy. I really didn’t. I’m against what Ross is doing, and I’m against what he stands for and why he’s doing this.

      Looking at panels four and six, however, actually managed to accomplish what I thought was impossible.

      I don’t know where the feeling comes from, and the more I think about it, the more I don’t like it. But goddammit, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that for a brief few moments, the look on Ross’s face in those last few panels made me feel a brief moment of sadness for the man.

      And then I think about what he’s doing and the sadness goes away. Even if this is something he believes in with all his heart and earnestly believes he’s trying to do good, that doesn’t change in the least what he’s doing.

      I felt momentarily sorry for him, but it speaks volumes that I could only do it out of context.

      • TheLurkerAbove
        TheLurkerAbove
        October 16, 2015 at 12:31 am | #

        Me too. It’s totally wrong, and he’s a shitty parent, but damn Willis, that was well-played, again. This is some top notch writing and artwork.

      • Orion Fury
        Orion Fury
        October 16, 2015 at 12:36 am | #

        The way it seems to lean is that his wife is gay, and left him, but not on pleasant terms. It left him broken, and in his grief he erroneously latched onto the wrong cause of the pain. Now he’s afraid that he’ll lose his daughter. He just doesn’t seem to be capable of understanding throughout all of this that he won’t.

        Perhaps a mental substitution would be needed. In his mind you could say his likening Homosexuality to a severe heroin addiction. Would anyone consider his actions to be wrong if he tried to put her into rehab, she broke out, and was being enabled by her friend and her dealer, possibly one hit away from death? A willingness to die so that she can live her life to it’s fullest makes more sense there.

        I’m not excusing his actions, but stating that they seeming come from misinformation, old doctrine, and pain. What he’s doing is wrong, but also sad.

        • Anothis
          Anothis
          October 16, 2015 at 12:52 am | #

          I think the wife is dead. I’m almost certain Becky or Joyce mentioned this at we point.

          • Rando
            Rando
            October 16, 2015 at 5:13 am | #

            Actually I went to exactly the same place as Orion Fury on this one. Toedad didn’t say his wife was taken away or taken by God, she was taken by the Devil. That’s a horribly specific way of saying it.

            Joyce and Becky have said that Becky’s mother is dead, but we’ve established that they belong to a pretty fundamentalist community. It doesn’t seem a stretch of the imagination that if she came out to her husband, rejected the church or did anything else seen as a betrayal of the faith that she would be ‘cast out’ (think of the Last Temptation of Leslie Bean) and ‘written out’ of their lives as dead. Its all a bit Moses but fits the community.

            It may also explain why both toedad and Becky’s room-mate’s family both seemed to separately behave like the room-mate was and innocent lead astray by Becky who ‘had the devil in her’. If Mrs toedad was gay it would be easy to assume the ‘evil’ passed down to the daughter.

            Heck, at a stretch it may explain why Joyce’s uber religious parents allowed her to go to their alma mater instead of ‘god college’ with the gay woman’s daughter who was close to their daughter.

            • Amazi-Stool
              Amazi-Stool
              October 16, 2015 at 1:57 pm | #

              Does not really make sense.

              If his wife is still alive, why would Becky have claimed “i have no where else to go”?

              • Screwball
                Screwball
                October 16, 2015 at 7:38 pm | #

                Because as far as she knows, her Mum IS dead?

                Daniel here. I get what Orion & Rando are saying. Becky & Joyce believe Becky’s Mum is dead because that’s what she’s been told repeatedly ever since she vanished, but what is that was a lie maintained by toedad/their Church/the local community? What if her “death” was in fact her being banished/fleeing the family home, with the “death” story used to cover the fact she’s never allowed/going to return?

                That said, there IS another situation where a person can die, but still “taken by Satan”.

                Suicide.

                Suicide is considered a Sin by most versions of the Church I’ve heard of. To many versions, it doesn’t matter WHY they killed themselves (chemical imbalance in the brain? Doesn’t matter. Terminally ill? Nope), they kill themselves, they’re going to Hell. I’ve seen a TV show reporting the late great Robin Williams had undiagnosed Lewy Body Dementia, which slowly shuts down neural pathways 1 connection at a time, changing behavior. They loose control over themselves. And yet, some Churches don’t care.

                The last option that crosses my mind for the “Satan took your Mother from me” line, though the least likely (hopefully), she did something like Orion & Rando said (came out as Bi/Lesbian/hating Church ideals) so in order to prevent his beloved Daughter being “contaminated”, Toedad killed Mrs Toedad…

                I doubt it’s the last option, but it’s a possibility, he has proven himself potentially Fanatical enough…

              • fizzywafflezsuperstore
                fizzywafflezsuperstore
                October 16, 2015 at 7:38 pm | #

                Because everyone told her her mom was dead.

          • Steve
            Steve
            October 16, 2015 at 6:43 am | #

            I can’t find that reference but when a Christian’s loved one dies, it’s; usually ‘God took them’. “Satan took them’ usually means they either decided to leave to do something awful for the good Christians or they left because of not being able to take their loved ones’ lunacy to the bad Christians…

            • Toby
              Toby
              October 16, 2015 at 3:47 pm | #

              Or that they committed suicide rather than live a lie…

      • No Name
        No Name
        October 16, 2015 at 12:47 am | #

        Pity is a perfectly natural emotion to feel for those you despise. Especially if those you despise are also human.

      • otusasio451
        otusasio451
        October 16, 2015 at 1:01 am | #

        Honestly…I dunno. I get where you’re coming from. On the other hand, what he’s doing, whether it’s out of love or not, is INSANE. It’s also just…despicable. I mean…it’s your daughter, and her best friend, and you’re holding a GUN on her. I DO feel bad for Ross. But at the same time, I hate him WAY more than I did before for doing this. Seriously. Unless Willis pulls a Charles Whitman and reveals that Ross has a brain tumor on his amygdala, there is NO EXCUSE, and NO forgiving his actions.

        • SUGauthor
          SUGauthor
          October 16, 2015 at 4:36 am | #

          If I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my daughter would be eternally damned and subjected too horrendous torture for literally all of time if I didn’t save her from the path she was on, I’d pull a gun on her too.

          • SDGlyph
            SDGlyph
            October 16, 2015 at 4:46 am | #

            …

          • Joolie
            Joolie
            October 16, 2015 at 4:50 am | #

            If you knew those things beyond a shadow of a doubt, then you would not be a member of a faith based organization.

            The cornerstone of faith is not knowing for certain but believing regardless.

            I think there are a lot of people who somehow lose the meaningful distinctions and flip it around to “whatever I believe is fact, not faith”. Or just, my faith is fact. Which, oh /honey/.

            But having been raised in nearly exactly the same circumstances as Joyce, not a single person I knew would have ever thought it appropriate to pull a gun on their child even if their very soul were on the line.

            Also and mostly irrelevant, but it always bothered me how Christians gloss over their usual “power of prayer” attitude when it comes to situations like these. Getting out a gun is basically telling god, “Yeah I know I’ve been praying for her, but you’re doing jack shit. Let go of the fucking wheel. I don’t think you’re handling this right. I’m taking over from here, you fuck up.”

            Also it’s really late. I shuddup.

            • Blob Blobberman
              Blob Blobberman
              October 16, 2015 at 9:08 am | #

              I went to a a nondenominational fundamentalist christian high school myself. They taught us that real faith was the belief in things unseen based on the evidence of things seen. They taught us that blind faith wasn’t real faith, that you should have evidence.

              Of course.. the evidence that they provided to get to their conclusions was full of problems that I could go on all day about.. But of course it wasn’t presented that way. They believe there is real tangible evidence for their beliefs. In their minds they don’t just choose to believe these things, they know them to be fact.

          • Spencer
            Spencer
            October 16, 2015 at 11:55 am | #

            I’m guessing what you meant to say was “if I subscribed to these beliefs”, right?

            • SUGauthor
              SUGauthor
              October 16, 2015 at 2:06 pm | #

              If I was going to do something that drastic just subscribing to the belief wouldn’t be enough, I’d need to know for sure. But if we do assume for a moment that Ross’s horrible view of the world is true, then I think scaring Becky with a gun is definitely preferable to eternal torture don’t you think?

              • Spencer
                Spencer
                October 16, 2015 at 3:17 pm | #

                If what the worst elements of Christianity espoused was objective fact, then yes. Fortunately we live in a better world than that and such questions aren’t really worth asking.

                • SUGauthor
                  SUGauthor
                  October 16, 2015 at 4:55 pm | #

                  I think it’s important to consider how Ross views the situation when discussing whether or not his actions are forgivable. He is kind insane right now, but he’s still genuinely looking out for Becky’s best interest, so much so that he’s willing to lay down his life for her. Compare that to Blaine, who’s just an evil jackass in general and doesn’t give a shit about his daughter.

              • Cerberus
                Cerberus
                October 16, 2015 at 3:23 pm | #

                Not really, but then I’m of the mind that any God who would torture someone forever because of what I believed or who I loved is an awful tyrant who must be stopped by any means necessary, rather than a man who must be appeased with whatever horrible actions will keep one in His good graces.

                And that was pretty much a choice I came to when I was a kid and pondering about what I would believe if I was a part of the religion that surrounded me, if their view of the afterlife was real. And yeah, in that case, send me to Hell, conscript me to Lucifer’s army, because if God is that terrible of a person that he would demand such abusive action from his followers, then he’s probably lying about how bad Satan really is.

                • Spencer
                  Spencer
                  October 16, 2015 at 3:38 pm | #

                  That’s honestly what pushed me away from Christianity in my youth. I saw a play at my church, put together by the sweetest people ever, and it scared the absolute shit out of me. The moral was “literally everybody except for the devout are going to Hell, it doesn’t matter how good they are.”

                  Kind of heavy for a 9-year old.

                • SUGauthor
                  SUGauthor
                  October 16, 2015 at 5:04 pm | #

                  I personally think the concept of ANYONE going to Hell, regardless of what crimes they committed is seriously fucked up. That said the idea that we would be capable of defeating God if that was true seems unrealistic to me, I don’t blame someone for knuckling under instead of rebelling.

      • fogel
        fogel
        October 16, 2015 at 4:37 am | #

        More important story wise than what any of us think about him is that Becky cares about him (pretty obviously I think).

      • fogel
        fogel
        October 16, 2015 at 5:10 am | #

        Couldnt you be sad that he’s in the grip of his hateful religion? I think that’s at the core of what I’m feeling. Which, I think, is in context.

      • thomas wrobel
        thomas wrobel
        October 16, 2015 at 7:40 am | #

        “I don’t know where the feeling comes from, and the more I think about it, the more I don’t like it”

        There is nothing remotely wrong with having empathy or even sympathy for someone you strongly disagree with. In fact, Id say having empathy for your “enemy’s” is a trait all too often lacking in people.

      • The Biggest Tom
        The Biggest Tom
        October 16, 2015 at 9:57 am | #

        I’m pretty sad and moved. The more I read over this, the more I see that Ross is really, really fucking desperate. He knew that he was risking his own life to get his daughter back. :c

        Some people are still angry at Ross for what he did. That’s justifiable. I think a lot of them may just be riding on negative feelings like Ross = Bad Guy Forever, but there’s really no defending what he did.

        Still…i can’t help but feel like he heard about this and felt so alone for a little while. At least for Becky things turned out okay. For Ross, this whole situation must have been a living nightmare.

      • Cerberus
        Cerberus
        October 16, 2015 at 3:14 pm | #

        This. His actions are monstrous and demonstrably harmful, but he is also a human being with working emotions. It’s just his empathy is short-circuited by his commitment to dogma. And it’s awesome when people recognize that seeing the pain and worldview that has led someone to hurt someone else deeply does not justify their actions or make them more sympathetic. It just emphasizes how human even the horrible people are.

        • fogel
          fogel
          October 16, 2015 at 11:12 pm | #

          This. Except for not making them more sympathetic? Definition says sympathy = “feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune”. And I have those feelings about Ross’ “misfortune at becoming who he is and having his love for Becky so, so twisted to the dark side. Perhaps not sympathy FOR Ross, himself?. Certainly not sympathy for what he is doing. ZERO sympathy for his actions. And I see ZERO justification for what he is doing. But sorrow and pity for the situation he is in and what’s brought him to it. NOT that I think that that does anyone any good.

      • Z
        Z
        October 16, 2015 at 8:35 pm | #

        The way it reads makes me worry that he may have killed his wife, so I’m not getting the “sympathetic” vibe.

        If she just left him for another woman, then:
        1. Unless he got a kick-ass lawyer, Becky would’ve been raised by a lesbian, and, well….
        2. Becky wouldn’t be asking Dad to do it for mom’s sake.

        Oh- unless mom had a psychotic break or something and ended up in the hospital. 🙁 Then I would feel bad.

    • Meebo
      Meebo
      October 16, 2015 at 12:42 am | #

      I don’t get the sympathy angle that’s popping up in the comments.

      After we lost my mom, my dad gave everything for me and my sister. Literally. The stress of the circumstances killed him. I’ve seen what it is to lose a wife, and I’ve seen what it is to desperately love your family so much you’re willing to do anything for them.

      This is not it.

      He drew a weapon on his own daughter. It doesn’t matter who he lost, or believes he lost, or what he feels inside. That is utterly unforgivable.

      Turning a gun on something means you are willing to see it destroyed. What kind of monster is willing to watch their child die?

      • No Name
        No Name
        October 16, 2015 at 12:53 am | #

        What has happened to Ross Babies McIntyre is designed to explain, not excuse, his actions. As you have no doubt experienced, there are plenty of people who have gone through what Ross has and haven’t gone off the deep end in response. Also, all I feel for him is Pity. Pity that he couldn’t have held on to his sanity just a little longer. He still deserves whatever the cops dish out to him (if they come).

        • Meebo
          Meebo
          October 16, 2015 at 1:36 am | #

          Yeah. Yeah, that is definitely a good point.

          Really feel for poor Becky, Jesus. I want to reach in and give her a hug. Well, I want to reach in and get the gun away from Toedad and call 911, but then I want to give her a hug.

        • thomas wrobel
          thomas wrobel
          October 16, 2015 at 7:47 am | #

          ” He still deserves whatever the cops dish out to him”

          Depends on the cops really.
          He has drawn a gun and deserves to be arrested, not gunned down, for example.
          He hasn’t actually harmed anyone at this point (physically), and while he
          is being irresponsible in the extreme, it doesn’t look like he intends to use
          that gun for anything but cowards show of power.

          • No Name
            No Name
            October 16, 2015 at 10:15 am | #

            Two strips ago, he threw Dina to the ground. Sure it was self defense, but he still physically hurt her.

        • Cerberus
          Cerberus
          October 16, 2015 at 3:24 pm | #

          This and *appropriate gesture of sympathy* to Meebo for what you’ve been through.

      • Pylgrim
        Pylgrim
        October 16, 2015 at 1:26 am | #

        He clearly belongs to the kind of people that sincerely believe that weapons are not meant to destroy but to dissuade evildoers. A very sincere, but very mistaken belief that every other month allows a shooting to happen at schools or cinemas or whatnot as people employ weapons to destroy without being dissuaded at all.

        • Blob Blobberman
          Blob Blobberman
          October 16, 2015 at 9:17 am | #

          I can think of two times in my life where my father showing a gun caused people who meant to rob and possibly harm my family to peacefully leave. A third time the appearance of having a gun (which I didn’t actually have) did the same for myself.

          I have never pointed a gun at another human being. I have no desire to ever do so. My father may have done so as part of his duties as a Marine. I don’t know for sure. If so I am confident it has only happened as a Marine, not as a civilian. If you ask him he will only answer that killing is a horrible thing that does great psychological harm to the killer and you should hope never to have to do it.

      • bearpelt
        bearpelt
        October 16, 2015 at 4:46 am | #

        I think it’s more of a sadness rather than a forgiveness of his actions, if that makes sense? Like I feel sad for him. But I also have very high emotional empathy and feel sad when pretty much anybody feels sad, no matter how much I hate them. But that doesn’t make me stop hating them.

        I guess I just hate seeing suffering in general. But I definitely can’t excuse or forgive or condone his actions at all and find what he’s doing repugnant.

        It’s also heartbreaking for me to see how this affects Becky.

      • WaytoomanyUIDs
        WaytoomanyUIDs
        October 16, 2015 at 5:35 am | #

        Exactly

    • otusasio451
      otusasio451
      October 16, 2015 at 12:58 am | #

      No, no, you’re doing it all wrong! It’s “FUCK you, Ross.” Because that’s what he deserves.

      • Jacknoir
        Jacknoir
        October 16, 2015 at 3:20 am | #

        kinky, I’m sure he’d like that quite a bit.

        • TheEighthShader
          TheEighthShader
          October 16, 2015 at 12:06 pm | #

          RAINNNBOWWSSS

    • Reltzik
      Reltzik
      October 16, 2015 at 1:11 am | #

      Honestly, I’m a bit with the sympathizers at this point. The guy needs to be stopped, hard, before he hurts anyone or kidnaps Becky, and he needs to be restrained and perhaps incarcerated to keep from doing it in the future. But he’s also clearly redeemable if he can just be pulled out of the religious nutjob mindset. He’s not a hardcore inexcusable asshole like Blaine or Ryan.

      • de Combys
        de Combys
        October 16, 2015 at 1:55 am | #

        Yeah but he’s so deep in it that it might be impossible for him to get out… he clearly isn’t intelligent enough to sort things out by himself, and being in jail would probably not be the greatest help on that aspect.

        • No Name
          No Name
          October 16, 2015 at 10:18 am | #

          That’s what “not guilty by virtue of insanity” is for. Also, mental institutions.

          • de Combys
            de Combys
            October 16, 2015 at 3:13 pm | #

            Yeah, he would need one of the latter. It would be wonderful if they could teach him the simple “live and let live” principle.

          • Reltzik
            Reltzik
            October 16, 2015 at 3:39 pm | #

            IIRC, the current psychological DSM explicitly exempts religious thinking and beliefs from the big catalog of crazy, even in instances when a strict reading of the literature might file it under other categories of delusion or schizophrenia. (Tried to google to confirm, but google is down atm.) So no, no insanity defense.

            • de Combys
              de Combys
              October 17, 2015 at 1:14 am | #

              Whaaaattt

      • Jacknoir
        Jacknoir
        October 16, 2015 at 3:25 am | #

        he’s trying to protect his daughter he just has a fucked up idea about what she needs to be protected from.
        if he were trying to save her from human traffickers rather than Vagina and the “gay agenda” they’d make a movie with him played by Liam Neeson.

        • EmbraceEvil
          EmbraceEvil
          October 16, 2015 at 4:52 am | #

          I tried to think of a parody of a taken quote, but i couldn’t think of anything that didn’t make me nauseous.

        • Deanatay
          Deanatay
          October 16, 2015 at 8:47 am | #

          Here, let me help:

          “I don’t know what you want. If you want money, I can tell you I don’t have any. What I do have are a certain set of beliefs, beliefs that make me a nightmare to atheist lesbians like you. If you come back now, I won’t come looking for you. But if you don’t, I will come looking for you. I will find you. And I will kill you.”

          • TheGrammarLegionary
            TheGrammarLegionary
            October 16, 2015 at 9:52 am | #

            Good lord… I see the humour in this, but it’s still more unnerving than anything else.

            • TheEighthShader
              TheEighthShader
              October 16, 2015 at 12:06 pm | #

              Do you see the humor in… RAINBOWWSSSS

              • fizzywafflezsuperstore
                fizzywafflezsuperstore
                October 16, 2015 at 7:49 pm | #

                Honestly-no, not really.

        • qman
          qman
          October 16, 2015 at 12:46 pm | #

          This, exactly. It’s painfully obvious he cares about her immensely, but he’s taking all the wrong actions. Unfortunately I don’t think that can really be fixed at this point, he’s in too deep, and he doesn’t know any other way to deal with it. Things aren’t so black and white, and just because he’s behaving this way now doesn’t mean he was a bad father or a bad person before.

    • fogel
      fogel
      October 16, 2015 at 10:51 pm | #

      Who said everything is going to turn out alright?

  3. DarkoNeko
    DarkoNeko
    October 16, 2015 at 12:01 am | #

    oh fuck.

  4. EdHead
    EdHead
    October 16, 2015 at 12:01 am | #

    It has hit the fan and now spinning around.

  5. liahansen
    liahansen
    October 16, 2015 at 12:01 am | #

    UH WHAT DOES HE MEAN BY THAT

    • Doctor_Who
      Doctor_Who
      October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

      Nothing sane. Dude’s cuckoo for cocoa puffs.

      • Plasma Mongoose
        Plasma Mongoose
        October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

        If only he liked Rice Bubbles instead, he wouldn’t be in this mess.

      • Charles Phipps
        Charles Phipps
        October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

        I think Toedad’s actions are motivated by either getting Becky back or suicide by cop. Which, weirdly, means he’s far more rationale than he first appeared.

        • Cerberus
          Cerberus
          October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

          He’s fighting Satan. Either he dies fighting a great evil that has stolen his daughter, martyring himself to be greeted in Heaven by his wife (unless the reason he claims Satan took her is because she killed herself or was taken out by him for failing to “live up to Godly standards”) or his show of sacrifice and conviction is enough to pierce the lying veil of Satan and remind his wayward daughter of the path back to the light.

          In his twisted view, it’s win-win as he doesn’t have the humility to admit he might not actually know best about what his idea of his God would want or what is actually best for Becky.

          Sadly, a major liability for Becky here is she cares if he lives or dies. He doesn’t. Nor does he care if she lives or dies, so long as she does either free of “the sin that has consumed her”.

          • Reltzik
            Reltzik
            October 16, 2015 at 1:13 am | #

            Exactly what you said about liability. I’m worried that Becky will go along with him now so that his brain doesn’t get ka-spewed by state troopers.

            • WaytoomanyUIDs
              WaytoomanyUIDs
              October 16, 2015 at 5:42 am | #

              That’s what he’s hoping

          • fogel
            fogel
            October 16, 2015 at 4:57 am | #

            Perhaps it doesn’t matter for the way this unfolds, but it seems to me that he does care if she dies. He’s willing to kill her to “save” her (maybe?) but he does care. I suspect when asked for God to give him strength, it was because he doesn’t WANT to kill her, it’s because he was afraid that he wouldn’t have the determination to go through with whatever he has planned.

            • Cerberus
              Cerberus
              October 16, 2015 at 3:30 pm | #

              Yup. He’s mistaking his empathy for the deceptions of Satan trying to dissuade him from his Holy Crusade. And he’s believing that his anger and selfish stubborn bigotry are God granting him the strength to work through and remain resolute no matter what the accursed one says to try and dissuade him from his task.

              His brain is screaming at him that this is wrong and he’s doing harm, but he’s trusting God and his desire to control to keep him on “the right path” and do “whatever is necessary” so that he, personally, can have a victory over Satan.

              • SDGlyph
                SDGlyph
                October 16, 2015 at 6:14 pm | #

                Good rule of thumb for believers: if you ever find that you have to overrule your God-given conscience to do what you think God wants, stop immediately. You’re doing it wrong.

                • fogel
                  fogel
                  October 16, 2015 at 11:34 pm | #

                  That is a VERY good rule of thumb.

              • fogel
                fogel
                October 16, 2015 at 11:31 pm | #

                Lord, he IS very badly messed up, ‘tricked’ into horrific, unjustifiable, unforgivable actions, by his hateful dogma and his determination not to be “tricked” into shirking his “duty”. That’s what evokes my sorrow and pity — and horror.

        • WaytoomanyUIDs
          WaytoomanyUIDs
          October 16, 2015 at 5:41 am | #

          Yeah, I reckon both. He’s hoping to guilt Becky straight, and if it has to be by suicide by cop then so be it. he is not exactly rational

      • liahansen
        liahansen
        October 16, 2015 at 12:05 am | #

        but what about Becky’s mom? Did she like leave him or like did he… do something…? yknow?

        • Arianod
          Arianod
          October 16, 2015 at 12:33 am | #

          He didn’t. No way Becky wouldn’t have mentioned it at some point if he had.

          • Deanatay
            Deanatay
            October 16, 2015 at 8:53 am | #

            Er, actually, when a parent dies in a bad way, it tends to be something the kids DON’T like to talk about. Even to their friends. ESPECIALLY to their friends.

          • merbrat
            merbrat
            October 16, 2015 at 1:20 pm | #

            Word of Willis is she died of cancer, last year. But, this is disturbing, Ross is saying Satan took her. Isn’t the usual (when someone beloved dies) God took her early/before her time/etc?

            • Lucy
              Lucy
              October 16, 2015 at 1:57 pm | #

              My personal theory is that she admitted to not believing/losing her faith before she died. I remember hearing a lot of prayers as a child for elderly relatives and acquaintances to resist the “last temptation”–basically, letting the devil use your fear of death to destroy your faith in your last moments.

              • Cerberus
                Cerberus
                October 16, 2015 at 3:34 pm | #

                It could also be that they believe in prayer as the best medicine, so part of her “betrayal” could be her seeking medical intervention instead of trusting to his prayers.

                • merbrat
                  merbrat
                  October 17, 2015 at 12:54 am | #

                  I thought that was just Christian Science (my grandmother was very big with that. I went to Sunday School, but still went to doctors) We didn’t believe in the devil, though.

        • neeks
          neeks
          October 16, 2015 at 2:15 am | #

          She’s dead. Precisely how she died has yet to be explained. Beyond, uh, Satan, I guess.

          Which doesn’t really clarify it.

      • John
        John
        October 16, 2015 at 12:26 am | #

        No, that would be better, because then he could bond with Dina over their shared love of Cocoa Puffs.

    • Gangler
      Gangler
      October 16, 2015 at 12:06 am | #

      I’m hoping he means that Becky’s mother ran off with her new wife so he told Becky she was dead to shield Becky from the harsh reality of the situation.

      • Mkvenner
        Mkvenner
        October 16, 2015 at 12:13 am | #

        That sounds like something Willis would do.

      • LeslieBean4Shizzle
        LeslieBean4Shizzle
        October 16, 2015 at 12:13 am | #

        That’s my guess.

      • Lord Stoneheart
        Lord Stoneheart
        October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

        The main reason I wouldn’t guess that is that Willis has referred to her as being dead. (And Ross has referred to her as dead to people other than Becky)

        • Gangler
          Gangler
          October 16, 2015 at 12:26 am | #

          If his ex-wife isn’t straight he’s probably not too eager to talk about that to every stranger he meets in Joyce’s college campus.

          • No Name
            No Name
            October 16, 2015 at 12:56 am | #

            You seem to forget that Willis, the literal God of the DoA-verse, said she was dead. For over a year, so the grief isn’t going to be to much of drag in either case.

            • fizzywafflezsuperstore
              fizzywafflezsuperstore
              October 16, 2015 at 7:54 pm | #

              He could just be saying that so we don’t spoil the twist ending for ourselves

      • timemonkey
        timemonkey
        October 16, 2015 at 12:47 am | #

        Willis already said she was dead.

        • EmbraceEvil
          EmbraceEvil
          October 16, 2015 at 4:54 am | #

          but if she was “taken by Satan” doesn’t that mean that her death involved something Ross views as sin?

          • fogel
            fogel
            October 16, 2015 at 5:00 am | #

            Well, what does his religion say about suucide, for one thing? That’s some pretty serious sin according to the Roman Catholic Church.

            • EmbraceEvil
              EmbraceEvil
              October 16, 2015 at 5:18 am | #

              wouldn’t be surprised. kind of makes Becky even better if this is true, considering how cheerful/perky she is

              • thejeff
                thejeff
                October 16, 2015 at 7:06 am | #

                But Becky isn’t necessarily “cheerful/perky”. Becky puts on a huge “cheerful/perky” front because she thinks no one will like her if she doesn’t. .
                She was also “cheerful/perky” when she first showed up on the run and desperate. She’s very good at seeming perky when she’s actually on the verge of a breakdown.
                This is not actually a sign of mental health and a good loving upbringing.

                • fogel
                  fogel
                  October 16, 2015 at 9:13 am | #

                  Yes. Also her reaction when Joyce told her that she didn’t reciprocate her amorous & physical attraction/desire.

            • WaytoomanyUIDs
              WaytoomanyUIDs
              October 16, 2015 at 5:45 am | #

              The are not Roman Catholic, they are evangelical protestants. Do you have some special breed of nutjob Catholics over there or something?

              • EmbraceEvil
                EmbraceEvil
                October 16, 2015 at 6:01 am | #

                from my experience (through my best friend who is catholic mostly) there is a lot of disagreement in the catholic churches to the point even people in the same church has disagreements.

                • Reepunzel
                  Reepunzel
                  October 16, 2015 at 7:31 am | #

                  That sounds like every church everywhere.

              • fogel
                fogel
                October 16, 2015 at 9:16 am | #

                Suicide is a super sin in the RCC. I don’t know how it is in Toedads religion, which is a variety of protestant I’m not very familiar with.

                • Trolldrool
                  Trolldrool
                  October 16, 2015 at 12:36 pm | #

                  Last I checked, most protestant denominations don’t have a problem with suicide. As in, they of course don’t want people to kill themselves, but it’s not considered an unforgivable sin that lands you straight in Hell.

                • Kamino Neko
                  Kamino Neko
                  October 16, 2015 at 2:17 pm | #

                  Suicide is a super sin in the RCC.

                  No, it really isn’t. It is a sin, yes, but not ‘a super sin’.

                  The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say on suicide:

                  Why it is bad:

                  2280 Everyone is responsible for his life before God who has given it to him. It is God who remains the sovereign Master of life. We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honor and the salvation of our souls. We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of.

                  2281 Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations. Suicide is contrary to love for the living God.

                  2282 If suicide is committed with the intention of setting an example, especially to the young, it also takes on the gravity of scandal. Voluntary co-operation in suicide is contrary to the moral law.

                  Why it is not ‘a super sin’:

                  Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.

                  2283 We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.

                • fogel
                  fogel
                  October 16, 2015 at 3:20 pm | #

                  K Neko, I see your point. (“Super sin” was deliberate and careless; I’d forgotten the actual sin rating. I figured that “super” covered it. Mostly based on what I know of the RCCs involvement against medical suicide.)

          • Steve
            Steve
            October 16, 2015 at 6:46 am | #

            Yep. Taken by God is the actual expression for when a loved one dies…

          • Trolldrool
            Trolldrool
            October 16, 2015 at 1:50 pm | #

            Could also imply that he had convinced himself that their relationship was so pure and righteous that Ross could see no conceivable way even God, with all his inscrutable ways, would separate them. And thus Satan is to blame.

          • Benwhoski
            Benwhoski
            October 16, 2015 at 6:50 pm | #

            There are some religious sects that literally believe that illness itself comes from and is spread by Satan. So, he could very well consider death by illness/disease being “taken away by Satan” as it would have been Satan that gave them the illness in the first place.

  6. TrueVCU
    TrueVCU
    October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

    JFC toedad just GO HOME

    • podian
      podian
      October 16, 2015 at 12:31 am | #

      James Fenimore Cooper?

      • Durandal_1707
        Durandal_1707
        October 16, 2015 at 12:37 am | #

        Jesus Fried Chicken.

        • EmbraceEvil
          EmbraceEvil
          October 16, 2015 at 4:56 am | #

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQf-EV8JXl0

          not sure how to feel about this.

  7. Stephen R. Bierce
    Stephen R. Bierce
    October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

    *plays the Purple One’s “I Would Die 4 U” on the hacked Muzak*

    • MeghanTheDreamCrusher
      MeghanTheDreamCrusher
      October 16, 2015 at 12:13 am | #

      Why has the muzak suddenly become hacked? It was always just muzak before.

    • Bicycle Bill
      Bicycle Bill
      October 16, 2015 at 12:41 am | #

      I hijacked it a couple days ago when I played the BeeGees.  Stephen hacked into it to regain control.

      • barefootbiker
        barefootbiker
        October 16, 2015 at 12:52 am | #

        So if I wanted to jam to “Sympathy for the Devil” for this strip, I would have to wipe it clean and re-install its infinite music collection?

  8. Hippienerd
    Hippienerd
    October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

    I hate it when my wife runs away with Satan

    • de Combys
      de Combys
      October 16, 2015 at 1:59 am | #

      She does that often?

      • gears
        gears
        October 16, 2015 at 2:56 am | #

        I wish I could simply like this comment. I actually laughed.

      • Jacknoir
        Jacknoir
        October 16, 2015 at 3:26 am | #

        about once a month

        • de Combys
          de Combys
          October 16, 2015 at 3:14 pm | #

          Hahaha!!!

    • Roborat
      Roborat
      October 16, 2015 at 3:07 pm | #

      What, she runs off with a washed up European hockey player?

  9. Marvelman
    Marvelman
    October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

    Um, what’s this about Becky’s mother being taken away? Did we already know this or is it new information?

    • Doctor_Who
      Doctor_Who
      October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

      She left him for a quiet dinosaur girl too.

    • QF
      QF
      October 16, 2015 at 12:05 am | #

      New info. We don’t know anything about how she died.

    • Opus the Poet
      Opus the Poet
      October 16, 2015 at 12:05 am | #

      Becky’s mom died from breast cancer a year before the comic started (so sometime around 1989 our time).

    • Benwhoski
      Benwhoski
      October 16, 2015 at 12:05 am | #

      I believe it was mentioned when ToeDad made his first appearance that Becky’s mother had passed away.

      • liahansen
        liahansen
        October 16, 2015 at 12:12 am | #

        ohhhhh ok

    • Catullus
      Catullus
      October 16, 2015 at 12:06 am | #

      Becky’s mother died about a year prior to the events of DoA.

    • kelticat
      kelticat
      October 16, 2015 at 12:06 am | #

      Unless he thinks cancer is caused by Satan, this is new information.

      • Tacos
        Tacos
        October 16, 2015 at 12:12 am | #

        He might actually think that.

      • Rycan
        Rycan
        October 16, 2015 at 12:13 am | #

        I wouldn’t put that past him.

      • Heatth
        Heatth
        October 16, 2015 at 12:14 am | #

        I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought cancer is caused by Satan, to be honest.

      • Cerberus
        Cerberus
        October 16, 2015 at 12:20 am | #

        Oh, forgot about the cancer.

        As to your question, it depends. Some evangelical group members see illness as a major test of faith and a reminder that death comes like “a thief in the night to righteous and villain both without warning or regard for goodness”. But others genuinely believe in things like the healing power of prayer, so when cancer fails to go into remission, that becomes either a sign that their faith was not strong enough or pure enough or that Satan has especially chosen their family to do violence upon.

        I’m going to guess Toedad is the latter type of dude.

        • de Combys
          de Combys
          October 16, 2015 at 2:01 am | #

          Ew wth people

        • SDGlyph
          SDGlyph
          October 16, 2015 at 2:54 am | #

          Hm, I’m not convinced it’s a direct “illness = Satan” link there. I think it’s more to do with Ross’ own need for control. He’s a full-blown authoritarian, evidently, and part of that mindset is that things don’t ‘just happen’. Someone has to be in control. That means either Ross, or a higher authority he defers to.

          Ross’ wife died, and his illusion of control was shaken. I’m pretty sure he’s also swallowed the fundamental attribution error (that bad things don’t happen to good people, or essentially that bad things happen because the person deserved it somehow) but can’t bring himself to believe that it was deserved, so he needs another reason. What do fundamentalist types call it when bad things happen outside their control? Satan.

          I think Ross has spent the last year twisting himself around this until he’s convinced that Satan is attacking him and his family and he has to fight back. This is his test; he and only he stands in Satan’s way and he must be prepared to do anything to regain control*. In other words, I read this as a breakdown.

          Guy needs therapy. Well, first he needs to put the gun down and be taken into custody so he’s no longer a danger to himself and others, but then he needs therapy.

          (Seriously, some of the people baying for blood in here scare me. Look in the mirror, people.)

          • SDGlyph
            SDGlyph
            October 16, 2015 at 3:07 am | #

            * There’s another ugly aspect here that I didn’t want to digress into above, and that’s that it seems to be all about Ross in his head. It’s common to the authoritarian mindset. Look at his phrasing: “Satan took your mother from me”, “How dare [Dina] try to steal my daughter away from me”. It’s not about his wife’s suffering, or his daughter trying to find her identity in life; it’s about Ross, as the authority figure in his family.

            I’m not sure to what extent I think this has been his mindset all along, as opposed to something that he’s built up as a coping mechanism since his wife died (I don’t think he’s always been this bad; the commenters saying they were surprised he’d take Becky and Joyce to Six Flags were probably on to something). I think it’s clear, though, that Becky discovering her orientation was the snapping point. It would be interesting to know, not that I ever expect an answer, how things would have gone if Becky came out while her mother was still alive.

            • Deanatay
              Deanatay
              October 16, 2015 at 9:01 am | #

              He probably feels very alone. His wife died, so he became very attached to his daughter. Unfortunately, he’s an authoritarian, so his way of expressing affection is to try to control (‘protect’) his daughter. Now she’s rebelling against that control, and he feels even lonelier, and its driven him to a pretty dark place.

            • Cerberus
              Cerberus
              October 16, 2015 at 3:40 pm | #

              Very much all of this. Things aren’t going on for his wife or for his daughter, it’s all about him and his role as moral protector and authority for his family. Bad things aren’t just bad things outside his control, they are Satan attacking him personally. Because as the man of the house, he’s the only one who really matters in the end.

              • fogel
                fogel
                October 16, 2015 at 11:47 pm | #

                You make this flavor of patriarchy extremely vivid and understandable.

    • Blue
      Blue
      October 16, 2015 at 12:06 am | #

      We know she died about a year (or maybe less) before the start of the comic. We don’t know exactly what she died of.

      Coming from Toedad, that could mean almost anything.

      • LeslieBean4Shizzle
        LeslieBean4Shizzle
        October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

        Gangler above suggested that the death-by-cancer thing may have been a fiction he told Becky to cover his wife running away with a woman. From context, I’m finding that theory fairly possible.

      • Blue
        Blue
        October 16, 2015 at 12:25 am | #

        Sooo, why is your name “blue”? I have blue hair. Just curious.

        • Blue
          Blue
          October 16, 2015 at 12:56 am | #

          Very random. The cast and I started college around the same time. When I took Japanese (only a semester, so I have naturally lost it all by now), a friend in the class nicknamed me the Japanese word for blue. I decided to go with that for the comments.

          I’m considering photoshopping the Dina grav so her hat looks like a TARDIS and changing my name on here to DinaWho (since I make an egregious number of references already), so this was a perfectly timed question.

          I had seen you commenting about here before, so nice to finally talk to my comment name twin!

          • saki
            saki
            October 16, 2015 at 1:12 am | #

            Fellow Whovian here, I look forward to seeing that TARDIS hat if you do photoshop it, sounds like an awesome idea! :3

    • Yotomoe
      Yotomoe
      October 16, 2015 at 12:23 am | #

      The story of Taken 2 is actually based on Ross. He didn’t make a dime off of the royalties however. He’s being a dramatic asshole now so he can gather more hype for the next Taken movie, Taken Tag Tournament.

      • evilmidnightlurker
        evilmidnightlurker
        October 16, 2015 at 2:43 am | #

        …go stand in the corner and think about what you’ve done.

      • OnyxIdol
        OnyxIdol
        October 16, 2015 at 11:48 am | #

        +1

  10. AnvilPro
    AnvilPro
    October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

    I swear guys, we’re one comic away from a happy ending

    • lejwocky
      lejwocky
      October 16, 2015 at 12:08 am | #

      All we need is for Dina to initiate instrumentality

      • Inkblot
        Inkblot
        October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

        I wish that I could turn back time~

      • Tacos
        Tacos
        October 16, 2015 at 12:39 am | #

        What would a Dina-led Instrumentality be like? Probably includes dinosaurs. Scientifically accurate ones.

    • Marie
      Marie
      October 16, 2015 at 12:52 am | #

      ka spew

      • Dana
        Dana
        October 16, 2015 at 2:43 am | #

        I’m hoping things turn out well enough for that to be okay to repeat later on. Intended to comment with such when i’d finished reading the comments.

    • Toad
      Toad
      October 16, 2015 at 1:36 am | #

      Ha, nope, this comic “day” is going to last at least until November 5th, according to Joyce’s outfit in the preview panels on Willis’ tumblr. I suspect it’ll end on or near the 10th, when he previewed a shot of a hospital…

      • Darwin
        Darwin
        October 16, 2015 at 2:56 am | #

        Dear god. That’s a horrible way to start a day of Fallout 4!

        • LiamKav
          LiamKav
          October 16, 2015 at 7:32 am | #

          Considering that a day of Fallout 4 will involve most of humanity being wiped out in a nuclear war, the comic will probably be fairly light in comparison.

  11. inqntrol
    inqntrol
    October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

    Satan took his wife? So will we get to know how Becky’s mother died?

    • Mada
      Mada
      October 16, 2015 at 12:03 am | #

      Satan took her, obviously.

      🙂

      • Someone
        Someone
        October 16, 2015 at 12:05 am | #

        Next story arc they travel to hell.

        • Rycan
          Rycan
          October 16, 2015 at 12:14 am | #

          In a handbasket!

          • m2iCodeJockey
            m2iCodeJockey
            October 16, 2015 at 1:30 am | #

            “If you’re goin’ to hell, take a limo!”
            (Louie Anderson)

        • fizzywafflezsuperstore
          fizzywafflezsuperstore
          October 16, 2015 at 8:09 pm | #

          Becky’s ride to hell is very hugglable.

    • Dean
      Dean
      October 16, 2015 at 12:06 am | #

      We don’t know that she died. Maybe she ran off.

      I feel kind of bad for Ross. Look at him, he has absolutely no idea how to handle the situation he’s in.

    • Annalabagaba
      Annalabagaba
      October 16, 2015 at 12:08 am | #

      Are you sure she died? If Satan is at works here according to toedad than its more likeley adultery, alcoholism, drug abuse…. hell maybe she discovered her own queerness or transgender self.

    • Yotomoe
      Yotomoe
      October 16, 2015 at 12:12 am | #

      Satan literally came up and just grabbed her and took her to hell. He’s kind of a dick like that.

      • Tacos
        Tacos
        October 16, 2015 at 12:18 am | #

        Isn’t that the story of Hades and Persephone?

        • podian
          podian
          October 16, 2015 at 12:33 am | #

          So does she come back to Toedad for six months every year?

          • Yotomoe
            Yotomoe
            October 16, 2015 at 12:39 am | #

            “So how’s satan”
            “Ah you know. Busy. Him and Jesus have been arguing a lot. Occupying himself by writing speeches for Donald Trump. That kinda thing”
            “That’s so like him”.

            • fizzywafflezsuperstore
              fizzywafflezsuperstore
              October 16, 2015 at 8:12 pm | #

              So Donald Trump is secretly a puppet being controlled by Satan, or Donald Trump is so evil that Satan’s just like “Hey, man, I wrote a speech for you! You don’t have to thank me, because you’re evil.”

              • stevecharb
                stevecharb
                October 16, 2015 at 10:36 pm | #

                You also don’t have to wash your hands. Because you’re evil.

        • chris73
          chris73
          October 16, 2015 at 2:14 am | #

          Or Persephone knowing that her Mom would be pissed deliberately ate the seeds knowing she’d have to stay because she didn’t want to leave…

        • Kintrex
          Kintrex
          October 16, 2015 at 5:19 pm | #

          Only if God encouraged Satan to do it because he deserved her.

    • Kai
      Kai
      October 16, 2015 at 1:46 am | #

      Satan took his wife?
      … From behind? Did he pay a nickel?

      • Dana
        Dana
        October 16, 2015 at 2:47 am | #

        You know Satan. The nickel was probably wooden

      • fizzywafflezsuperstore
        fizzywafflezsuperstore
        October 16, 2015 at 8:14 pm | #

        Wait, wait, wait. Do you mean to say that Mike is setting the example for Satan!?

        That’s quite an accomplishment, Mike–Conglaturation!

  12. SpoopyFox
    SpoopyFox
    October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

    jesus christ, he really believes he’s making the right choice here

    • Mkvenner
      Mkvenner
      October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

      Called it!

    • Cerberus
      Cerberus
      October 16, 2015 at 12:26 am | #

      Of course. To do otherwise would be moral relativism and moral relativism is the Devil trying to twist your mind and play off your empathy. The righteous stand firm even when it is hard and resist like Jesus when he underwent his temptation. After all demons will say anything to avoid being driven out by the righteous.

      And I wish that last paragraph was a joke, but that’s really the worldview. Think Bush back when he was selling his “Moral Clarity” garbage. To a disturbingly large number of people, morality is defined by never changing one’s stance or mind even in the face of new information. To a pre-millennial dispensationalist rapture-believing Christian type, there’s the added wrinkle that empathy itself is a sign of the Antichrist. After all, someone without God in their heart (as defined as belonging to the right Church and believing the right things), cannot be good by definition and as such there can not be good in them to see and empathize with. So any tug of the heart-strings is an attempt by a demon to corrupt your soul.

      • saki
        saki
        October 16, 2015 at 12:43 am | #

        Fundamentalism is some scary shit, man.

        • cynthash
          cynthash
          October 16, 2015 at 12:56 am | #

          That it is.

      • Gamaran Sepudomyn
        Gamaran Sepudomyn
        October 16, 2015 at 4:27 am | #

        By that logic, toedad is trying to be Satan toeday.

    • Smiling Cat
      Smiling Cat
      October 16, 2015 at 1:53 am | #

      As a rule, people generally don’t do something if they believe it to be the wrong choice.

    • andmangrewproud
      andmangrewproud
      October 16, 2015 at 3:33 am | #

      “The villain is the hero of his own story.”

  13. SpacemanSpiff85
    SpacemanSpiff85
    October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

    Maybe don’t make the guy feel like he has nothing to lose, Becky.

    • Alice Macher
      Alice Macher
      October 16, 2015 at 12:08 am | #

      I guess she was counting on him still having a glimmer of sanity in there somewhere.

      • SpacemanSpiff85
        SpacemanSpiff85
        October 16, 2015 at 12:11 am | #

        If he’s sane enough to realize she’s telling the truth, that’s the problem. If he thinks that he’s going to die anyway, so whatever he does doesn’t matter, that’s a big problem.

        • Mkvenner
          Mkvenner
          October 16, 2015 at 12:17 am | #

          Depends on when the SWAT team gets here.

      • Darwin
        Darwin
        October 16, 2015 at 3:00 am | #

        Toedad is sane. His behavior is horribly irrational to us, but he’s got his sanity. To him, and the religion he’s chosen, this requires a big gesture. He has to demonstrate that he will do and risk anything to save his beloved daughter. Now in a world that works basically like ours, we all know this is colloquially ‘nuts’, but it’s not any real mental illness or breakdown. These are all rational choices based on a magical worldview. They’re really -bad- choices, because the world isn’t magical, but they’re rational ones.

        • Cybersnark
          Cybersnark
          October 16, 2015 at 4:46 am | #

          His actions are internally consistent, he’s just Wrong Genre Savvy.

        • SpacemanSpiff85
          SpacemanSpiff85
          October 16, 2015 at 11:14 am | #

          This just seems like reading in a lot to a character who really hasn’t been developed at all beyond “jerk” and “claims to be Christian”.

          • Darwin
            Darwin
            October 16, 2015 at 7:08 pm | #

            I start with the idea that he has a life outside of his appearance in the comic. It’s not Toedad of Age, after all. We start with what we do know about him. He’s a jerk now, yes. His behavior is ‘nutty’ (not insane, just wrong for the society he and we live in). But Becky’s basically okay. She’s a charming lady. Sure, she’s good at hiding what’s really bothering her, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t get a basically good upbringing. So I base what I think about Toedad on his effect on characters we do know he has interacted with in the past.

  14. Mada
    Mada
    October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

    Oh come on, panel 2 dude there needs a tag.

    Also Ka-Spew is now the best face.

    • I Write Monsters
      I Write Monsters
      October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

      I will laugh my ass off if he becomes “Panel 2 Dude” and only ever appears in the second panel.

      • fizzywafflezsuperstore
        fizzywafflezsuperstore
        October 16, 2015 at 8:17 pm | #

        That would be great.

  15. EdHead
    EdHead
    October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

    If Ross leaves now, he can probably get away before the cops show up.

    • barefootbiker
      barefootbiker
      October 16, 2015 at 1:02 am | #

      Enough people have seen him, though, including people who saw his car, that he wouldn’t be able to stay hidden for long. Whether or not he actually shoots anybody, pulling out a gun on a college campus and threatening people (in this case, probably only Dina directly, although Becky definitely has a case) would be more than enough to constitute menace and possibly stalking. In Indiana, those can carry fines of up to $10,000 or 3 years in prison for the stalking charge, or up to $1,000 or 180 days in prison for the menace charge. If Becky, Dina or IU decided to call the police, Ross could wind up in some pretty deep shit– especially if he decides to keep his hands on that gun when the cops show up, which given his current emotional state is definitely plausible.

      • Darwin
        Darwin
        October 16, 2015 at 3:04 am | #

        Pretty sure that since he had the gun when he threw off Dina (whose actions could be construed as self-defense), he’s got felony battery on top of that. Given that he was acting because Becky was a homosexual and Dina was her girlfriend, that tacks on a hate crime rider, which would make anything else irrelevant.

        • Gamaran Sepudomyn
          Gamaran Sepudomyn
          October 16, 2015 at 4:29 am | #

          It’s Indiana. Indiana apparently has some very badly thought-out hate crime laws, which do not cover sexuality-related hate crime.

          • Silamy
            Silamy
            October 16, 2015 at 11:29 pm | #

            I’ve been wondering -how old are Dina, Becky and Joyce? If any of them is seventeen still, is Toedad also facing additional charges for assaulting/endangering the welfare of a minor?

  16. Plasma Mongoose
    Plasma Mongoose
    October 16, 2015 at 12:02 am | #

    “Better out than in?”

  17. thebatman22
    thebatman22
    October 16, 2015 at 12:03 am | #

    What happened to Beckys mom???

    • No Name
      No Name
      October 16, 2015 at 12:08 am | #

      Satan took her! Didn’t you Ross Babies McIntyre? He’s the authoritive source on everything!
      /sarcasm
      But seriously, she died. Breast cancer apparently.

      • Dellaran
        Dellaran
        October 16, 2015 at 1:33 pm | #

        Actually, Ross is dyslexic… it’s Santa who took Becky’s mom. She’s an elf now.

    • Smiling Cat
      Smiling Cat
      October 16, 2015 at 1:54 am | #

      I would guess we’ll find out soon.

    • Carolyn
      Carolyn
      October 16, 2015 at 3:10 pm | #

      They were just out on a walk when Satan jumped out from behind some bushes and shot her.

  18. Twilightomens
    Twilightomens
    October 16, 2015 at 12:03 am | #

    Oh my god OH MY GOD

  19. Jude Deluca
    Jude Deluca
    October 16, 2015 at 12:03 am | #

    What really happened to her mother. Is she really dead or did he just tell everyone that?

  20. Charles Phipps
    Charles Phipps
    October 16, 2015 at 12:03 am | #

    Well, it’s possible Becky’s mother is a lesbian or she’s recently been killed (probably not by Toedad).

    • tim gueguen
      tim gueguen
      October 16, 2015 at 12:07 am | #

      She died a year or so ago. There hasn’t been a cause given in comic.

      • LeslieBean4Shizzle
        LeslieBean4Shizzle
        October 16, 2015 at 12:18 am | #

        Of course the “cause of death” could be “Toedad made it up to cover his wife leaving him for a woman” – until told otherwise, this is what I choose to believe.

        • tim gueguen
          tim gueguen
          October 16, 2015 at 12:25 am | #

          Like I said below I can’t imagine Joyce’s parents not knowing if she simply ran off, and if they knew she ran off Joyce would know as well. It’s the kind of thing that would likely generate gossip amongst their group.

          • LeslieBean4Shizzle
            LeslieBean4Shizzle
            October 16, 2015 at 12:30 am | #

            It wouldn’t be that hard if Toeday said that to EVERYONE, not just Becky. I could see him having a funeral with an empty casket and everything.

            • Leorale
              Leorale
              October 16, 2015 at 12:48 am | #

              I don’t think the cancer story is fake. If Ross was faking a death, he’d want to say she had a sudden heart attack/stroke/aneurysm that killed her instantly. Breast cancer’s way too slow, she’d have to wait for the treatment, people would want to visit her in the hospital, etc.

            • Marie
              Marie
              October 16, 2015 at 1:03 am | #

              You don’t think she’d say anything to anyone at all? Also, the logistics of arranging such a funeral seem unlikely

              • LeslieBean4Shizzle
                LeslieBean4Shizzle
                October 16, 2015 at 1:45 am | #

                A) If she was going to run away from a fundamentalist community, where her only friends were likely to shame her or try to “fix” her? No. No I don’t.
                B) Others have said that cancer was never mentioned. Only dead somehow.
                C) If I’m proven wrong tomorrow, that’s fine. I just feel that the implication from the way Toedad said that she was “taken by Satan” and then implied that Becky was also in the process of being “taken by Satan” says a lot.

              • LeslieBean4Shizzle
                LeslieBean4Shizzle
                October 16, 2015 at 1:46 am | #

                Oh, and D) funerals with no body happen all the time for various reasons. It wouldn’t be that hard. Pointlessly expensive, yes, but possible. Alternatively, he could have claimed she was cremated and simply gotten some wood ashes.

    • Yotomoe
      Yotomoe
      October 16, 2015 at 12:13 am | #

      She died from being too gay. She got suffocated in lady crotch!

      • LeslieBean4Shizzle
        LeslieBean4Shizzle
        October 16, 2015 at 12:18 am | #

        I know that’s how I plan to go.

        • Yotomoe
          Yotomoe
          October 16, 2015 at 12:22 am | #

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zHvI3_fwQY
          And my headstone will be a handprint so you can walk by and give me a high five
          BUH-BAM!

          • LeslieBean4Shizzle
            LeslieBean4Shizzle
            October 16, 2015 at 12:29 am | #

            **watches video**
            Randy forgot the most important rule of hottub oral – have the person sit up on the edge.
            Although, I have to say, I went in to that video hoping for a story about someone dying by being too gay, that being the part of your original comment that I was replying to specifically.

      • Tandel
        Tandel
        October 16, 2015 at 12:19 am | #

        So what you’re saying is, is that she lived (died?) the dream?

  21. detective boomwolf
    detective boomwolf
    October 16, 2015 at 12:03 am | #

    ROSS, NO ONE NEEDS TO DIE HERE! RIGHT NOW, MANY OF US ARE OK WITH THE IDEA OF YOU DYING, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN ANYONE NEEDS TO! FOR BALLS SAKE YOU WALKING SACK OF CRAZY PUT THE FRIGGIN GUN DOWN!!!!!!

    • Someone
      Someone
      October 16, 2015 at 12:07 am | #

      As much as I hate him I don’t want him to die. Wanting people to die is fucked up no matter who they are

      • detective boomwolf
        detective boomwolf
        October 16, 2015 at 12:26 am | #

        I don’t want him to die either. I don’t want anyone here to die. But if anyone dies here and it happens to be him i honestly don’t think I’d be extremely torn up over it. I dunno about everyone else of course, I suppose I could’ve worded that better.

      • Gamaran Sepudomyn
        Gamaran Sepudomyn
        October 16, 2015 at 4:31 am | #

        I don’t want him to die. Death is too good for him.

    • Deanatay
      Deanatay
      October 16, 2015 at 9:10 am | #

      Thank you, Hostage Negotiator Boomwolf.

  22. DarkoNeko
    DarkoNeko
    October 16, 2015 at 12:03 am | #

    “Satan took your mom from me”

    …I *really* don’t like where this is going. She probably commited suicide.

    • DarkoNeko
      DarkoNeko
      October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

      I mean, if it was (physical) sickness, there’s no way he’d have formulated it that way.

      • saki
        saki
        October 16, 2015 at 12:46 am | #

        It was mentioned above that she died from cancer, which some religious groups may consider to be the work of Satan.

        • DarkoNeko
          DarkoNeko
          October 16, 2015 at 1:52 am | #

          hm, I didn’t remember that.

      • Agemegos
        Agemegos
        October 16, 2015 at 2:35 am | #

        Right. It wouldn’t make sense to say that Satan had taken her if she might have gone to Heaven. It’s God who takes away good people. “Satan took her” means she’s gone to Hell.

    • Safgaftsa
      Safgaftsa
      October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

      That was my guess. I wouldn’t be surprised if he abused her, either.

    • Marie
      Marie
      October 16, 2015 at 12:26 am | #

      I think physical sickness and stuff would still count. Satan made her sick, somehow (or made her get hit by a bus, or whatever).

      But it could also be something he sees more obviously as Satan’s influence, like suicide.

      Or she could have been murdered by a cult, idk.

      • No Name
        No Name
        October 16, 2015 at 1:04 am | #

        I’m thinking the cancer caused to much suffering and she went the easy way out.

  23. Dalrint
    Dalrint
    October 16, 2015 at 12:03 am | #

    Actually, depending on the state, he’s perfectly allowed to brandish his rifle at a school.

    Yeah. I wish that wasn’t true either…

    • Dr. T
      Dr. T
      October 16, 2015 at 12:12 am | #

      Not in Indiana. Legally he is allowed to have it secured away out of sight in his car when on school property, but waving it around like that is way, way, way out of bounds.

      • Deanatay
        Deanatay
        October 16, 2015 at 9:12 am | #

        Even if it were still technically legal, with the literal plague of school shootings going on, he’d probably be arrested or shot pretty quickly.

    • TheOthin
      TheOthin
      October 16, 2015 at 12:27 am | #

      Regardless of laws about what you can carry where, he’s clearly threatening people with a deadly weapon. I don’t think there’s any place in America where that’s legal.

    • Tacos
      Tacos
      October 16, 2015 at 12:27 am | #

      What? To my knowledge no state let’s you brandish a rifle at school. Or does open carry also apply to long guns?

      • John
        John
        October 16, 2015 at 12:38 am | #

        Carry laws are generally more lenient about long arms, which are hunting weapons (and I know folks for whom that’s still a survival necessity), than about handguns, which basically exist only for punching holes in targets and killing people. I haven’t actually looked it up, but someone else here said a few days ago that open carry of long arms is legal without a permit in Indiana.

        But like I said below, there’s a big difference between “carry” and “assault”.

    • John
      John
      October 16, 2015 at 12:34 am | #

      I’m pretty sure what he’s doing with it isn’t legal anywhere. I believe open carry of long arms is legal in Indiana, but what he’s doing isn’t “carry”, it has names like “brandishing”, “‘terrorizing”, “assault with a deadly weapon”, and “attempted kidnapping”, and those are crimes, at least a couple of them serious felonies.

      • John
        John
        October 16, 2015 at 12:41 am | #

        Oh, and while the carry might be legal, it is against IU rules on their campus.

    • Smiling Cat
      Smiling Cat
      October 16, 2015 at 1:56 am | #

      Even in open carry situations, you aren’t allowed to make threatening gestures with it unless in defense of yourself or a third party. He is aiming it at people.

    • Darwin
      Darwin
      October 16, 2015 at 3:07 am | #

      Carry in some states? Probably okay. But never ‘brandish’. That’s a crime in lots of places, and can be interpolated as a crime in all the rest. Nobody likes people who yell and hold guns in their hands ready for action.

  24. Cattleprod
    Cattleprod
    October 16, 2015 at 12:03 am | #

    My initial response: “That person diving for cover in panel two is awfully tall.” Statue. Right.

    • DarkoNeko
      DarkoNeko
      October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

      hahahahahahah XD

    • Yotomoe
      Yotomoe
      October 16, 2015 at 12:11 am | #

      Sculptor, could you sculpt me diving for cover. I just have a sneaking suspicion some shit is gonna go down right here at this spot years from now.

      • Dean
        Dean
        October 16, 2015 at 12:19 am | #

        Years ago, Toedad burst into the sculptor’s studio with a rifle while the sculpting was in progress. Dude gets around.

        • Blue
          Blue
          October 16, 2015 at 12:59 am | #

          My first thought when I read that comment was ‘Bootstrap paradox!’

      • Deanatay
        Deanatay
        October 16, 2015 at 9:17 am | #

        Well, from an artist’s perspective, all of the characters in this comic are still images – technically, none of them actually move. The illusion of movement is just that.

        Even images in movies are technically a fast-moving sequence of stills. In fact, the human eyeball perceives movement through a progression of still images – maybe ALL movement is illusion!

        *reasons himself into catatonia*

        • Blue
          Blue
          October 16, 2015 at 10:30 am | #

          Technically, what our eyes see is all still images and specialised neurons in the brain interpret movement from cues in the information coming from our eyes. It’s actually a (rare) medical condition where someone can’t perceive movement.

          So basically… you’re kind of right?

  25. Shanunu
    Shanunu
    October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

    I’m glad that Becky is trying to reason with him. Like I don’t know what Toedad thought would happen. You don’t bring a gun to a school. You just don’t.

  26. John
    John
    October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

    I think the hovertext is being optimistic about the contents of Ross’s head.

  27. Tacos
    Tacos
    October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

    Oh no Willis, don’t go trying to get us to feel sympathy for him. We ain’t falling for that… hopefully.

    • Yotomoe
      Yotomoe
      October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

      I have a huge capacity to feel sympathy for anything. Especially evil things. Because no one else will.

      • Tacos
        Tacos
        October 16, 2015 at 12:58 am | #

        Then I must commend you for your capacity to feel sympathy for him. I have none for him.

      • Gamaran Sepudomyn
        Gamaran Sepudomyn
        October 16, 2015 at 4:35 am | #

        I wouldn’t classify him as evil. Evil is actually knowing that what you’re doing is wrong and doing it precisely because of that. Jerkass is thinking that what you’re doing is right, without caring about others feelings. Within this framework, the spectrum goes: Galasso-Mike-Toedad.

    • Mkvenner
      Mkvenner
      October 16, 2015 at 12:21 am | #

      I’m not. I’m more worried about Dina.

      • DarkoNeko
        DarkoNeko
        October 16, 2015 at 2:08 am | #

        well, rest easy.

        Or, you know, don’t.

        • Gamaran Sepudomyn
          Gamaran Sepudomyn
          October 16, 2015 at 4:36 am | #

          Yay! She survives. But she could still have horrible injuries that we can’t actually see.

        • SDGlyph
          SDGlyph
          October 16, 2015 at 8:11 am | #

          Ah! Whew. Thanks, I hadn’t seen that one yet.
          So Dina looks pretty much unscathed and untraumatised there, only a day or two of comic time later.

          And good post title, Willis! 🙂

  28. Hogan
    Hogan
    October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

    Now, that was good to hear… now, will you please proceed to the front gate and wave that gun around a bit for good measure, then wait for the men in blue to show up and grant you your wish?

    • Mkvenner
      Mkvenner
      October 16, 2015 at 12:23 am | #

      Aren’t State Troopers usually in khaki?

      • Dr. T
        Dr. T
        October 16, 2015 at 12:51 am | #

        No, that’s the Sheriff’s Dept. Indiana State troopers wear dark blue.

        • Deanatay
          Deanatay
          October 16, 2015 at 9:20 am | #

          Ah, but what color do IU campus police wear?

          • Dean
            Dean
            October 16, 2015 at 7:31 pm | #

            Blue, according to Google Images.

            • Dr. T
              Dr. T
              October 16, 2015 at 8:27 pm | #

              Yeah, cream and crimson uniforms would look ridiculous, so blue it is.

  29. Mandy
    Mandy
    October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

    Poor Becky. On top of everything, now she has to be upset about and terrified that she’s going to see her own father killed.

    • Cerberus
      Cerberus
      October 16, 2015 at 12:29 am | #

      In front of her.

      Now matter how much one has hardened one’s heart against a toxic family member who is a direct threat to you, that’s a really hard thing to go through.

      • Leorale
        Leorale
        October 16, 2015 at 12:58 am | #

        and if he does indeed get SWATted, Becky will totally feel like her dad died before her eyes because she was gay. (It wouldn’t be true — his response was all his choice and not hers — but she couldn’t help but feel that it was her fault.)
        There is nothing good about this scenario.

        • Cerberus
          Cerberus
          October 16, 2015 at 1:11 am | #

          This. There’s a lot of guilt potentially at play here. Feeling like her gayness is going to get her dad killed. Feeling that her seeking out Joyce’s help may just get her shot at or further traumatized. Feeling that her allowing herself a bit of happiness with a new girlfriend may have just put said girlfriend in a potentially deadly situation.

          Even if Toedad is meekly arrested and no one is shot, Becky is not getting out of this without even more of a complex about how much she “imposes” on people and how much “damage” her presence is “causing”.

  30. Yotomoe
    Yotomoe
    October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

    Satan actually met her mother at a company picnic. They just hit it off. She spent a while trying to break it off with Ross and he took it really hard. Satan’s just a really charming gentleman with a very unfortunate name. Runs a puppy sanctuary. Occassionally bites the head off of a goat.

    • Rycan
      Rycan
      October 16, 2015 at 12:07 am | #

      Girls just love a bad angel, don’t they?

      • Yotomoe
        Yotomoe
        October 16, 2015 at 12:10 am | #

        You could say she’s really fallen for him.

      • saki
        saki
        October 16, 2015 at 12:51 am | #

        May bad, bad angel~ You put the devil in me~

        • DarkoNeko
          DarkoNeko
          October 16, 2015 at 2:09 am | #

          So to speak.

    • Rheinman
      Rheinman
      October 16, 2015 at 12:53 am | #

      Perhaps he is referring to former NHL goalie Miroslav Satan, who she tried to run away with until the tragic Zamboni incident…

      • WaytoomanyUIDs
        WaytoomanyUIDs
        October 16, 2015 at 5:54 am | #

        That is now my head canon

      • Deanatay
        Deanatay
        October 16, 2015 at 9:22 am | #

        SOOO many Zamboni-related deaths!

        WHEN WILL THEY FIND A CURE??

  31. Nat
    Nat
    October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

    Well… I hope this works….

  32. FriendlyNeighborhoodDave
    FriendlyNeighborhoodDave
    October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

    …Now i’m scared to ask how her mother died.

    • Opus the Poet
      Opus the Poet
      October 16, 2015 at 12:07 am | #

      breast cancer about a year ago in-comic.

      • Blue
        Blue
        October 16, 2015 at 1:03 am | #

        Can I have a source for the cause being breast cancer? Not that I don’t think it’s plausible, but I’m not sure if that might be confusing her with Dana’s mom, who I know for certain did. Either an in-comic reference or a Willis comment or Tumblr post works.

        • inqntrol
          inqntrol
          October 16, 2015 at 7:00 am | #

          Ross only said that his wife died without giving the reason.Dana’s mother is the one who died from breast cancer. Here.

        • FriendlyNeighborhoodDave
          FriendlyNeighborhoodDave
          October 16, 2015 at 10:50 am | #

          I remember Willis posting on Tumblr that she was dead, but I don’t think he’s ever revealed what the actual cause was. Ross’s comments here make me worried.

          • Blue
            Blue
            October 16, 2015 at 11:35 am | #

            I just recently looked at his tumblr, and he is still declining to give a cause of death, but hinted that it may end up being revealed in-comic.

  33. CommunistCanada
    CommunistCanada
    October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

    Damn it Willis. Do not make me feel sympathy for this guy because his wife is dead. I refuse.

    • Mr. Demiurge
      Mr. Demiurge
      October 16, 2015 at 12:32 am | #

      You shouldn’t feel sympathy for this guy because his wife is dead. You should feel sympathy for this guy because he is the product of a pretty warped subculture which teaches that everyone either accepts its ideas or spends the rest of eternity roasting and screaming and pleading for mercy that never comes in a lake of fire.

      I don’t know about you, but if I believed with all my heart and soul that some of the family members I love most were headed for such a fate, I could imagine doing some pretty drastic things to prevent it. Examined in that light, Toedad is a figure to be pitied as much or more than hated.

    • Mr. random
      Mr. random
      October 16, 2015 at 12:40 am | #

      Why not? You can sympathize with someone sometimes even if you hate him.

  34. JessWitt
    JessWitt
    October 16, 2015 at 12:04 am | #

    So, monochromatic flashback to Becky’s mom’s passing?

  35. Cody
    Cody
    October 16, 2015 at 12:05 am | #

    Ross has now punched the ticket for the Crazy Train.

    • cynthash
      cynthash
      October 16, 2015 at 1:19 am | #

      *epic guitar solo*

    • NinjaNick
      NinjaNick
      October 16, 2015 at 3:15 am | #

      Dumdum. Dumdum dumdum dumdum. Aye-ay-ay-ay.

  36. Charles Phipps
    Charles Phipps
    October 16, 2015 at 12:05 am | #

    I suspect we’ll find out the gun isn’t loaded and ToeDad actually wants to die.

    • Marie
      Marie
      October 16, 2015 at 12:19 am | #

      The gun being loaded isn’t going to prevent him from dying though, should they choose to fire.

      • DarkoNeko
        DarkoNeko
        October 16, 2015 at 2:10 am | #

        thatsthepoint.gif

        • Marie
          Marie
          October 16, 2015 at 3:35 am | #

          I may have worded it badly (a bit backward) but I don’t think it was that redundant. I meant that wanting to die doesn’t mean it isn’t loaded.

  37. otusasio451
    otusasio451
    October 16, 2015 at 12:05 am | #

    …Well, holy shit.

    Also, how the hell did Becky’s mom die?

  38. mo
    mo
    October 16, 2015 at 12:06 am | #

    KA SPEW

    I love how Becky can somehow stay so Becky-esque in situations like this.

  39. TheTJ
    TheTJ
    October 16, 2015 at 12:06 am | #

    Becky’s mom actually just shacked up with a guy named “Stan” and Toedad never could keep the name straight.

    • Yotomoe
      Yotomoe
      October 16, 2015 at 12:09 am | #

      He has similar issues with his coworkers Lucy Furrr and Muffy Stopholes.

      • Tenchan
        Tenchan
        October 16, 2015 at 12:17 am | #

        You two literally made me loled!

      • saki
        saki
        October 16, 2015 at 12:54 am | #

        You guys crack me up. XD Glad the comment section keeps its humour no matter how serious the strip gets.

    • segnosaur
      segnosaur
      October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

      Actually it was Miroslav Satan that she shacked up with…. former NHL player who played for the Penguins, Sabres, and several other teams.

      • John
        John
        October 16, 2015 at 12:44 am | #

        He took her to Hell. Michigan.

        • DarkoNeko
          DarkoNeko
          October 16, 2015 at 2:10 am | #

          And on this day, Hell was freezing over. I mean, of course it was, it’s Michigan.

          • Clif
            Clif
            October 16, 2015 at 11:06 pm | #

            Was unfamiliar with Hell, Michigan. Only knew about Hell, Texas whose main claim to fame are their “I danced in Hell” T-shirts.

  40. CommunistCanada
    CommunistCanada
    October 16, 2015 at 12:06 am | #

    Is there a way to view the hovertext on mobile? If not can somebody tel me what it is?

    • JessWitt
      JessWitt
      October 16, 2015 at 12:07 am | #

      Tap on either left or right space below comic strip

      • lejwocky
        lejwocky
        October 16, 2015 at 12:11 am | #

        Thank you kindly.

        • JessWitt
          JessWitt
          October 16, 2015 at 12:12 am | #

          Sure thing.

  41. Mr. random
    Mr. random
    October 16, 2015 at 12:06 am | #

    A broken man is scary. For he who has nothing to lose will do anything to get it back.

    • Mr. random
      Mr. random
      October 16, 2015 at 12:08 am | #

      Also, I’m doing this on a PHONE! How sweet is that?!

  42. poppaboo2electricboogaloo
    poppaboo2electricboogaloo
    October 16, 2015 at 12:06 am | #

    Oh hey it’s Background Bob.

    • Orion Fury
      Orion Fury
      October 16, 2015 at 12:47 am | #

      I nominate this name. Is there a second on that? Willis?

  43. Yotomoe
    Yotomoe
    October 16, 2015 at 12:07 am | #

    I have to wonder what his projected “Best Case Scenario” is. Like “I’ll get shot in the face and that’ll make my daughter stop eating taco.” I mean to be fair, I’d probably not be intimate with anyone if it gave me the mental image of my father’s brains getting blown out whenever I make out with a lady. Those’re some extreme measures there, Ross.

    • StClair
      StClair
      October 16, 2015 at 12:32 am | #

      In all seriousness? He shoots Becky before she can descend any further into sin, giving her at least some chance of eventually making it to heaven, and then gets martyred-by-cop.

      • StClair
        StClair
        October 16, 2015 at 12:36 am | #

        (Actually, really best-case for him would be that she caves, gets in the car, and they go back home and None Of This Ever Happened. But I think he’d be willing to “settle” for the above.

        Remember, this mortal world is but an ephemeral shadow; heaven and hell are eternal.)

        • Yotomoe
          Yotomoe
          October 16, 2015 at 12:41 am | #

          You know, assuming his stupid crazy religious shit is right, it’d almost be kind of a meaningful sacrifice since the last thing he did on earth is kill his daughter. That’s gotta be a huge gamble for going to hell. Like even if he believes the Lord will grant him amnesty I’m sure it’s not a 100% Guarantee God won’t forsake you for that shit. That’s a hell of a theoretical insane sacrifice.

          • Kamino Neko
            Kamino Neko
            October 16, 2015 at 1:32 am | #

            Except that it is 100% guaranteed in his world view. It is an act of pious devotion and self-sacrifice in the name of God. There’s nothing that gets you into heaven faster than that.

            • StClair
              StClair
              October 18, 2015 at 2:30 am | #

              yeah, just ask Abraham.

              LORD: “hahaha no, j/k, it’s okay, you don’t really have to kill your own son, dude. It’s enough that you would because I asked.”

  44. Cerberus
    Cerberus
    October 16, 2015 at 12:07 am | #

    I want to just take a moment to highlight how badass each of the main women of this arc have been.

    I mean, we had Dina attacking and trying to waylay an armed man who was at least double her weight just to try and protect her girlfriend.

    Last comic we had Joyce moving subtly in front of Becky in order to be a physical barrier and to try and talk him down from his “crusade” and trying genuinely hard to be the voice of wisdom.

    And this comic… I mean, her father has now just threatened both of them with a gun. That is a major escalation, but she makes sure to check in about her girlfriend, moves out of Joyce’s way so she won’t be shot if he chooses to fire and even though she’s scared and crying, she’s even trying to save her dad’s life and try and reason with him as best she can. Even though that action might get her shot by the man who raised her.

    That’s damn heroic.

    And this fucker can’t see beyond lesbians=Satan because pastor told me so.

    • Idon'tcarenomore
      Idon'tcarenomore
      October 16, 2015 at 12:15 am | #

      +1

      • liahansen
        liahansen
        October 16, 2015 at 12:22 am | #

        me also with the +1

        • saki
          saki
          October 16, 2015 at 12:57 am | #

          Seconded. (Or, technically, thirded?)

    • Bagge
      Bagge
      October 16, 2015 at 12:56 am | #

      They are so AWESOME. Brave and compassionate even in the face of this horror.

      Heh, in the midst of everything it’s just hilarious that Joyce and Becky do the same “no, me first”-shuffle they did with the beds.

      Fudge you, Ross

    • Darwin
      Darwin
      October 16, 2015 at 3:13 am | #

      I’m guessing Toedad is triple Dina’s weight. If she’s more than a hundred pounds in winter clothes and big heavy boots, I’ll eat a soda can (she’s built like my foster daughter, who is 60″ and 98#s). Toedad looks like he’s around three hundred. He’s very tall, heavily muscled, and it looks like he’s going to pot in the gut. My father was in similar shape and he was about 300.

  45. liahansen
    liahansen
    October 16, 2015 at 12:07 am | #

    jfc panel three is gonna make me cry

    • Rodimiss
      Rodimiss
      October 16, 2015 at 12:54 am | #

      I can’t deal with those tears.

  46. Julian
    Julian
    October 16, 2015 at 12:07 am | #

    Why isn’t this strip titled “Ka-spew”, that’s what I want to know.

    • JessWitt
      JessWitt
      October 16, 2015 at 12:11 am | #

      ‘Cause Willis wanted to mislead us with the title “Troopers” to expect the worst/best.

    • John
      John
      October 16, 2015 at 12:46 am | #

      He’s saving “Ka-spew” for when it actually happens?

  47. Selv
    Selv
    October 16, 2015 at 12:07 am | #

    Uggghhhh…”If you don’t come with me, they’ll kill me and you’ll feel guilty forever!” He’s forcing a lose/lose situation.

    • Chubsius
      Chubsius
      October 16, 2015 at 12:26 am | #

      Yup, he’s just made the classic suicide threat, making himself simultaneously the hostage-taker and hostage.

      • Cerberus
        Cerberus
        October 16, 2015 at 12:35 am | #

        It’s a common enough abuser ploy. Threaten killing yourself or threaten to kill a close loved one of the target to get them to play along and comply and do what you want. One of my ex’s abusive boyfriends pulled that card multiple times in order to prevent her from leaving him and to make her more compliant with regards to his regular sexual assaults.

  48. Idon'tcarenomore
    Idon'tcarenomore
    October 16, 2015 at 12:07 am | #

    Oh Crap!. So now are we supposed to ‘feel’ for Toedad? Well, I don’t. The man is a total psycho, who sees his daughter, not as a person, but as a possession.
    Blow him away, and get his threat to life off the planet.

    • Smiling Cat
      Smiling Cat
      October 16, 2015 at 12:14 am | #

      Since this is just another layer of abuse, no, I don’t think we’re supposed to feel bad for him.

      • Smiling Cat
        Smiling Cat
        October 16, 2015 at 12:15 am | #

        Also since he’s still aiming the gun in the direction of his daughter.

    • Marie
      Marie
      October 16, 2015 at 12:14 am | #

      I don’t think sympathy for toedad is what he’s going for so much as Becky being very heartbroken because she knows that’s where it’s going, and to show how far gone her dad is already.

      • Marie
        Marie
        October 16, 2015 at 12:15 am | #

        (and like smiling cat said, it is just another abuse, although one that has historically gotten sympathy)

    • Yotomoe
      Yotomoe
      October 16, 2015 at 12:18 am | #

      “It’s good to just kill people who are dangerous because life being valuable is actually a myth. I’m sure Becky can’t wait to see her dad fucking die. I know I’D be happy.”

      • No Name
        No Name
        October 16, 2015 at 12:27 am | #

        The world isn’t black and white. There’s a continuum of greys in between, as well as every color in the rainbow and a few that aren’t. Willis does a pretty good job of capturing that.

        Besides, just because a man is upset his wife is gone doesn’t mean we have to relate to him. All it means is he’s human. Nearly everyone has lost a loved one, and those who haven’t will soon enough.

        • No Name
          No Name
          October 16, 2015 at 12:28 am | #

          Darn it, wrong guy. One level up, guys.

        • Smiling Cat
          Smiling Cat
          October 16, 2015 at 12:31 am | #

          *nod* understanding isn’t condoning. He’s disturbed, unstable, grieving, and still wrong.

      • lime sheep
        lime sheep
        October 16, 2015 at 12:51 am | #

        the fact that becky still loves her dad doesnt mean we have to

        • Smiling Cat
          Smiling Cat
          October 16, 2015 at 2:00 am | #

          Hate only ends one way, though.

          • Rutee
            Rutee
            October 16, 2015 at 6:33 am | #

            lol no. Sometimes it ends with your safety and sanity with a better life.

            Fucking hell people, watch the damn platitudes.

            • Smiling Cat
              Smiling Cat
              October 16, 2015 at 4:53 pm | #

              Bullshit. Anger and hate doesn’t fix you, it eats you up. The person who’s safe, sane, and in a better life didn’t get there by hating someone, they got there by walking away.

              • Smiling Cat
                Smiling Cat
                October 16, 2015 at 5:35 pm | #

                Too provide further emphasis, President Donald Trump. This would have no chance of happening if our first response to something we don’t like or want wasn’t to hate it.

                • lime sheep
                  lime sheep
                  October 18, 2015 at 5:14 pm | #

                  ???????

    • Mr. Demiurge
      Mr. Demiurge
      October 16, 2015 at 12:50 am | #

      I find it sad that so many people here can’t. Toedad is simply an especially ugly product of an already ugly belief system. There is a distinction to be made between a first generation abuser and someone who has himself grown up abused and as such has developed in such a way where he can no longer understand what is acceptable behavior.

      • NakedDumblydore
        NakedDumblydore
        October 16, 2015 at 6:25 am | #

        Thank you for saying this. There’s a relevant (not equivalent, though) situation in my personal life, and no one’s been able to phrase this in a way that I could really wrap my head around. This makes sense, though.

  49. Lone Wolf
    Lone Wolf
    October 16, 2015 at 12:08 am | #

    I’d really, really rather this end without anyone’s brains getting blown out. Even toedad’s.

    • Smiling Cat
      Smiling Cat
      October 16, 2015 at 12:09 am | #

      Agreed.

    • liahansen
      liahansen
      October 16, 2015 at 12:41 am | #

      I don’t think thatll happen. Im sure the no-death policy extends to the main characters’ immediate family as well

  50. Ragnal
    Ragnal
    October 16, 2015 at 12:08 am | #

    YEAH. THAT’S NOT THE TALK OF A CRAZY GUY. AT ALL!

  51. Smiling Cat
    Smiling Cat
    October 16, 2015 at 12:08 am | #

    Soo… emotional blackmail as well. I’m… not sure why I didn’t expect that.

    • brumagem
      brumagem
      October 16, 2015 at 12:17 am | #

      All is fair in love and WHEN THE OTHER GUY HAS A FUCKING GUN.

      • Smiling Cat
        Smiling Cat
        October 16, 2015 at 12:21 am | #

        I’m referring to Toedad’s emotional blackmail of his daughter (he’s essentially threatening suicide unless she submits). Becky’s not doing anything wrong.

        • No Name
          No Name
          October 16, 2015 at 1:14 am | #

          brumagem’s point still stands.

          • Smiling Cat
            Smiling Cat
            October 16, 2015 at 1:44 am | #

            Maybe, but it’s completely unrelated to mine.

        • brumagem
          brumagem
          October 16, 2015 at 10:19 pm | #

          Ah, my mistake. I took you for one of those Toedad Defenders®

  52. newllend(henryvolt)
    newllend(henryvolt)
    October 16, 2015 at 12:09 am | #

    What happened to his wife anyway ? We were told she died but we get so back story on that?

  53. Spack
    Spack
    October 16, 2015 at 12:09 am | #

    Becky’s Mom pops into frame: “‘STAN’, Ross! His name is ‘Stan’! No horns or cloven hooves, no cosmic evil involved, just a guy who’s not a colossal toe-shaped asshole!”

    • Yotomoe
      Yotomoe
      October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

      He’s finger shaped. And Fingers are so much sexier. Especially in bed.

      • liahansen
        liahansen
        October 16, 2015 at 12:23 am | #

        pfff arguable

  54. Larkle
    Larkle
    October 16, 2015 at 12:09 am | #

    It’s nice that you’re willing to die for your daughter and all, but maybe you could rechannel that devotion to accepting her for who she is and loving her and maybe not making the news as a psycho shooter.

  55. Tenchan
    Tenchan
    October 16, 2015 at 12:10 am | #

    I suddenly have the following theme stuck on my head:

    https://youtu.be/SPFJ7LhQygw

  56. Mkvenner
    Mkvenner
    October 16, 2015 at 12:10 am | #

    That can be arranged. 🙂

  57. segnosaur
    segnosaur
    October 16, 2015 at 12:10 am | #

    Well, at least we know that Dina (probably) isn’t hurt. (Given all the worried comments over the past few days its probably a relief for some.)

    • brumagem
      brumagem
      October 16, 2015 at 12:14 am | #

      The flipside being there’s now about an 80% chance it will be Becky making a hospital visit.

      • segnosaur
        segnosaur
        October 16, 2015 at 12:28 am | #

        Not necessarily. Could be toedad if the police show up soon enough. Could be something unrelated to this story line. Heck, it could even be one of the main characters who went to the hospital not from physical injury but from emotional stress.

        • Darwin
          Darwin
          October 16, 2015 at 3:15 am | #

          Personally? I’m hoping it’s an establishing shot for a fakeout where we discover that Ruth has an appointment with her ENT doctor.

        • brumagem
          brumagem
          October 16, 2015 at 10:15 pm | #

          I doubt it. Students wouldn’t be going to the hospital to visit Ross, and it is EXCEEDINGLY rare that emotional duress would cause a physical reactions severe enough to warrant an ER visit (although I would not blame anyone who might be in shock after WHATEVER happens if they needed professional help).

    • Idon'tcarenomore
      Idon'tcarenomore
      October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

      We don’t know that, do we?

      • segnosaur
        segnosaur
        October 16, 2015 at 12:25 am | #

        Well when Becky said “Have you hurt anybody” he said no. Its certainly possible that he’s lying, but I think its unlikely. For one, he doesn’t seem smart enough, and given the fact that he’s willing to threaten his own daughter with a gun, he might think telling her “I hurt your friend… I’ll do the same for you” would help convince her to go with him.

      • saki
        saki
        October 16, 2015 at 1:18 am | #

        From the last strip we saw Dina in, I got the feeling that as soon as Ross spotted Becky he went straight for his car to follow her and totally forgot about Dina. At least that’s what I’m hoping.

      • Blue
        Blue
        October 16, 2015 at 2:43 pm | #

        Out of universe, we now have a preview panel from next chapter showing a reasonably unharmed Dina.

  58. Rideps1
    Rideps1
    October 16, 2015 at 12:10 am | #

    DAMN YOU WILLIS, MAKING ME FEEL BAD FOR A GUY WHO WAS BEATING UP DINA

  59. Cephalo the Pod
    Cephalo the Pod
    October 16, 2015 at 12:11 am | #

    So, this is good, right?
    I mean, relative to the possibility of him just shooting right away.

    For real though, I’m glad Ross was able to enter conversation. It stalls for time.

    • newllend(henryvolt)
      newllend(henryvolt)
      October 16, 2015 at 12:27 am | #

      The conversation sounds a lot like he’s planning to get himself killed.

  60. brumagem
    brumagem
    October 16, 2015 at 12:12 am | #

    BUT TOEDAD if you kill her now she can’t repent her sins and find Jesus again … again (just play along til the gun’s gone).

  61. Plume
    Plume
    October 16, 2015 at 12:12 am | #

    Satan? Whatever happened to ya know “All part of God’s plan”? Isn’t that the party line?

    • Rycan
      Rycan
      October 16, 2015 at 12:24 am | #

      Satan seems to be a convenient bogeyman for some people to pin all the problems of the world upon, so that they don’t have to believe that it’s the work of God. Or something like that.

      • No Name
        No Name
        October 16, 2015 at 12:31 am | #

        A theory that has popped up is that since Mrs. McIntyre was suffering from her illness (breast cancer), she had an assisted suicide. And as we know, suicide is a sin in Judeo-Christian ideology.

        • Leorale
          Leorale
          October 16, 2015 at 1:12 am | #

          There’s room for argument that subtly assisted suicide might be sometimes acceptable in the case of impending death. But Ross isn’t much of a grey-area thinker anyway.

          • No Name
            No Name
            October 16, 2015 at 1:17 am | #

            My point precisely. Obviously, the doctor or a nurse had to do the deed, because no one in the church circle would even think of such a thing.

        • bearpelt
          bearpelt
          October 16, 2015 at 4:58 am | #

          Ugh, please don’t say “Judeo-Christian.” It’s an inherently anti-Semitic term in that it assumes Judaism is ANYTHING like Christianity, and it’s also Islamiphobic but pretending the third Abrahamic religion is somehow radically different enough from the other two to be left out.

          People really need to stop fucking saying “Judeo-Christian” when they mean CHRISTIAN. I am so fucking tired of seeing goyim say that.

      • Rheinman
        Rheinman
        October 16, 2015 at 1:07 am | #

        Not so omnipotent after all.

    • Kamino Neko
      Kamino Neko
      October 16, 2015 at 12:29 am | #

      ‘All part of God’s plan’ is when something bad happens to someone else.

      ‘Satan’ is when it happens to you.

      • Cybersnark
        Cybersnark
        October 16, 2015 at 4:59 am | #

        And “Lawyers” is when it happens to everybody.

        • Plume
          Plume
          October 16, 2015 at 1:22 pm | #

          lolz nice 😀

      • Gamaran Sepudomyn
        Gamaran Sepudomyn
        October 16, 2015 at 5:43 am | #

        To quote Terry Pratchett, “Just because it’s not nice doesn’t mean it’s not miraculous.”

  62. Gangler
    Gangler
    October 16, 2015 at 12:13 am | #

    Joyce didn’t even know he had a gun. Becky may or may not have known.

    Has he secretly had a gun all along, or did he just buy the thing today? Does he have any idea how to use it properly?

    • Yotomoe
      Yotomoe
      October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

      Wait, why would Joyce know he had a gun over Becky? In this situation Becky should be more aware of how much possesion he has a gun, right? What are you talkin’ bout?

      • Gangler
        Gangler
        October 16, 2015 at 12:22 am | #

        Joyce in this strip expresses surprise that Ross owns a gun, pretty clearly indicating that she did not know this.

        Joyce then asks Becky if she knew that Ross owns a gun. Becky doesn’t answer, being pre-occupied with other aspects of this situation. It’s unclear whether or not Becky knew that Ross owns a gun since she neither expresses prior ignorance nor prior knowledge of this.

        • lime sheep
          lime sheep
          October 16, 2015 at 12:49 am | #

          earlier becky said “why did you bring that”, which implies that she already knew he owned it.

        • Blue
          Blue
          October 16, 2015 at 2:51 pm | #

          Joyce’s line here is a bit ambiguous. She could he asking Becky if she knew her dad owned a gun, or if she knew he had it with him when he confronted her on campus minutes ago.

    • Lone Wolf
      Lone Wolf
      October 16, 2015 at 12:18 am | #

      Some of the people in the comments for the “Clever girl” comic mentioned that he was practicing proper trigger discipline while he was in the woods, and I though I remembered someone mentioning he used to be in the military before he found Jesus, though I’m not 100% sure on that last point.

      • Kamino Neko
        Kamino Neko
        October 16, 2015 at 12:34 am | #

        Ross being ex-military has not been established. It may be canon over in the other universe, for all I know (but I don’t think he had more than a couple appearances there), but it hasn’t been shown for DoA.

      • Tacos
        Tacos
        October 16, 2015 at 12:49 am | #

        Willis has stated that he’s never been in the armed forces.

      • John
        John
        October 16, 2015 at 12:51 am | #

        Back when we got the first picture of butthole dad from the waist down, I asked if he was ex-military or just one of those guys, and didn’t get a direct answer, but something else Willis said led me to believe it was the latter.

        • David M Willis
          David M Willis
          October 16, 2015 at 12:56 am | #

          What I said was that he got his camo pants from Walmart.

          Which is a detail I wanted to drop in the strip, but never found a place to fit in. SPOILERS, I guess.

          • GhostWriterL
            GhostWriterL
            October 16, 2015 at 10:02 am | #

            I should say that I took a guess on Ross being more militia than military.

            I should also add that I concluded that because he looks like someone I met in a Walmart parking lot that I stopped at to buy some household necessities on the way home from work a few years ago. A someone who fumbling with a half-empty beer in said parking lot, by his “DON’T TREAD ON ME” and confederate flag adorned truck, and equally adorned with at least one large tattoo of a confederate flag with some kind of battle slogan below it on his arm, who decided to swagger over to where I was loading in my stuff into my car and make a comment about how I should go bar hopping with him and he’d totally show me a good time.

            Dude was also wearing camo pants, and a white shirt (though unlike Ross, it was stained with what I can only assume was beer dribblings, sweat, and maybe vomit.

            I declined his offer and had never stepped foot into a walmart again until about a week ago.

            • Smiling Cat
              Smiling Cat
              October 16, 2015 at 4:56 pm | #

              It could just be that he likes camo pants. Or they were on special. Or his other pants were in the laundry.

      • Xerxes93
        Xerxes93
        October 16, 2015 at 2:22 am | #

        he was practicing trigger discipline, but also he was pointing his gun with no intention to shoot which is also not something you’re supposed to do. so 1/2

      • Smiling Cat
        Smiling Cat
        October 16, 2015 at 4:59 pm | #

        I practice proper trigger discipline (and muzzle discipline). I’ve never had any affiliation with the military, militia groups, or any such thing (I also grew up in a rather fundamentalist household).

    • Julie
      Julie
      October 16, 2015 at 12:21 am | #

      Joyce could have meant “Did you know your dad brought his gun with him today?”

    • Arkantos
      Arkantos
      October 16, 2015 at 1:07 am | #

      There’s no way he bought it today. Waiting periods are a thing, unless he bought it from the stupidest private seller this side of the Mississippi.

      • Darwin
        Darwin
        October 16, 2015 at 3:18 am | #

        THere’s usually no waiting period on long arms. Almost all long arms are bought for the explicit purpose of hunting. People who want to commit crimes usually go with pistols, which is why in some jurisdictions, there are waiting periods on handguns.

        • GhostWriterL
          GhostWriterL
          October 16, 2015 at 10:17 am | #

          Depends on the firearm your buying, and if your background check comes back clear or not. If there’s a hit on your check, the gun owner will likely have to wait for a definitive yes or no from the ATF which may take a phone call, a few hours, or days to complete. Anything can really affect that check, such as unpaid parking/traffic fines.

          I think there is a more stringent process for something that qualifies as a defense weapon, such as an AR15 or a handgun, which unlike a hunting weapon, have the intention to some degree of putting holes in a human body.

          Also depends on the state you get the firearm in. California has 3 day waiting period no matter the firearm. A state like Texas has minimal to none. Of all the factors that go into whether someone commits a violent crime with a purchased firearm, this one matters the least. Waiting periods don’t deter someone from killing other people, it just forces them to PLAN to kill other people and wait a little longer before actually killing people. Last I checked, the time of which a shooting takes place is never a considered factor in how bad a shooting is… and all anyone really cares about is one happened at all.

          Or, at the very least, I can say I’ve never heard anyone (not even Fox News or CNN) say something like “5 people were killed at a school shooting in ____ at approximately 10AM, but at least it happened on a Thursday instead of a Monday!”.

          • qman
            qman
            October 16, 2015 at 1:34 pm | #

            Most states have no waiting periods and very little restriction on rifles, shotguns, and other long guns. California is the exception. Only pistols tend to be heavily regulated. I’ve bought rifles both private sale and in a store, neither required any sort of backgound check. In the store, I had to prove I was 18 and sign a card that had a few lines to the tune of “I am not a fugitive of the law”. (You don’t have to be 18 to buy a rifle, just to legally sign the card. If you’re not, you need a guardian present.) The private sale was like any other cash transaction, there were no legal requirements to report anything, sign anything, do background checks or whathaveyou.

            In most of the US, private sellers normally are not required to do anything. Their liability ends at knowingly selling a gun to someone who is prohibited, which usually amounts to asking to see ID. It is the buyer’s responsibility to be truthful and follow any state law that may apply, such as registering a handgun where required, disclose felonies that would disqualify them, disclose what state they reside in, etc.

          • thejeff
            thejeff
            October 16, 2015 at 5:21 pm | #

            Actually, one thing it does is deter impulse “acts of passion”. Sure, you can plan to kill and wait a few days and get a gun and carry out your plan, but you can’t get mad, run down to the corner store, come back with the gun and blow someone away. You’ve at least got a few days to cool down.

            That doesn’t show up on the evening news, since if the story is “Guy bought a gun with the intention of shooting up a school later in the week, but by the time the waiting period was up he’d changed his mind” no one ever finds out about it.

      • Eric
        Eric
        October 16, 2015 at 11:28 am | #

        I’ve never had any waiting period in five states.

  63. Lord Stoneheart
    Lord Stoneheart
    October 16, 2015 at 12:14 am | #

    I’m not sure what Ross is up to here. But it sounds like he knows that this is going to end poorly for him.

  64. Yotomoe
    Yotomoe
    October 16, 2015 at 12:14 am | #

    Dad, if you strike me down I promise I will become more Gay than you could possibly IMAGINE!

    • Tandel
      Tandel
      October 16, 2015 at 12:17 am | #

      Mmmm… THAT’S good levity. I tip my hat to you.

    • newllend(henryvolt)
      newllend(henryvolt)
      October 16, 2015 at 12:34 am | #

      I now longer think know he planning on killing anyone but himself…so I guess he’s not sure if it suicide or not if he gets someone else to shoot him.

      • GhostWriterL
        GhostWriterL
        October 16, 2015 at 10:21 am | #

        If you’re killed by someone else for a religious and righteous cause, it’s martyrdom.

        Some cases it’s also martyrdom if you kill yourself, but you kinda have to have the whole of your heart and dedication into offing yourself for the glory and victory of God.

    • saki
      saki
      October 16, 2015 at 1:07 am | #

      Also, if she doesn’t want her dad to get shot by troopers, “If you don’t put the gun away right this second, I will become so gay my hair will take on the colours of the rainbow!”.

  65. Mr. Mendo
    Mr. Mendo
    October 16, 2015 at 12:15 am | #

    Well…

    That escalated quickly…

    • Mkvenner
      Mkvenner
      October 16, 2015 at 12:33 am | #

      We’re well past that point already.

      • Mr. Mendo
        Mr. Mendo
        October 16, 2015 at 2:36 am | #

        The drama, I meant, not the events.

        An extra layer got added…

  66. Irune
    Irune
    October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

    where the hell is everyone on this flippin campus!!! Someone needs to do something!!!

    • No Name
      No Name
      October 16, 2015 at 12:35 am | #

      There’s that guy in panel two who almost walked into the line of fire. He looks like he might call 911.

  67. Tandel
    Tandel
    October 16, 2015 at 12:16 am | #

    Hey, I actually feel sympat- NOPE! I lied. Fuck you Toedad.

    Dude obviously needs help though. But probably not as much as the girls will as a result of this.

    • Rycan
      Rycan
      October 16, 2015 at 12:18 am | #

      Yeah, my sympathy for the deluded runs out the moment they pull out a gun.

  68. Rycan
    Rycan
    October 16, 2015 at 12:17 am | #

    I think he might actually be half right. Satan didn’t steal his wife, but he may have stolen his sanity.

  69. Reflex76
    Reflex76
    October 16, 2015 at 12:18 am | #

    Looks like Toedad is willing to go out in a blaze of glory.

  70. Idon'tcarenomore
    Idon'tcarenomore
    October 16, 2015 at 12:18 am | #

    Guess I’m just an unforgiving asshole. I wouldn’t mind a bit seeing him blown away. But…yeah not something I’d want Becky to have to witness.
    So, lock him up for the next 50 years, take that long to square him away.

  71. Strangeshapes
    Strangeshapes
    October 16, 2015 at 12:19 am | #

    I just had a very bad, sad thought. Ross knows, *really* knows, that Becky is a lesbian. That it’s bone deep, and no amount of prayer is going to change her. If he thought she could really be changed, he would be backing off, trying to convince her to go with him in some other way. A way that didn’t draw the attention of people who would stop him. I think he has given up, and the only question now is whether he wants a suicide-by-cop, or a murder-suicide-by-cop.
    I need to go sleep now. My head hurts all of a sudden.

    • Chubsius
      Chubsius
      October 16, 2015 at 12:37 am | #

      Alternatively, Ross knows Becky “irredeemable,” thus he has to kill her now before she can heap even more damnation upon her soul. Not saying he’s at that stage yet, but I worry that’ll be his eventual conclusion.

    • Cerberus
      Cerberus
      October 16, 2015 at 12:40 am | #

      It’s possible.

      At the very least, he thinks this “stand against Satan” is critical, either by martyring himself or blowing away the demon that has stolen his daughter (and I’ll leave it to the horrible bits of my brain to worry about whether that would be Becky, Joyce, Dina or all of the above).

    • Amazi-Stool
      Amazi-Stool
      October 16, 2015 at 3:17 pm | #

      Well at least on the previous day he said:
      I will not lose faith that she can be corrected.
      (…) I will rehabilitate her through any means necessary.”

  72. tim gueguen
    tim gueguen
    October 16, 2015 at 12:20 am | #

    I doubt the Becky’s mom ran away and Ross pretended she’s dead theory is viable. Surely Joyce’s parents would know if she simply disappeared, and hence Joyce would know as well. And although we don’t know anything about her it’s a reasonable guess that she wouldn’t have much more experience living by herself, if any, than Becky does. Ross doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d marry a woman who’d come from a less restrictive background than he finds acceptable.

    • Dr. T
      Dr. T
      October 16, 2015 at 12:39 am | #

      There is the little issue of the fact that Becky was 17 at the time and probably would have noticed the distinct lack of a funeral had Ross faked her death.

      • tim gueguen
        tim gueguen
        October 16, 2015 at 12:58 am | #

        Yeah. Unless of course Ross is a funeral director.

  73. Catullus
    Catullus
    October 16, 2015 at 12:20 am | #

    I don’t like Ross. I don’t agree with Ross. I absolutely don’t condone the shit he’s doing. But after reading this strip, I’m beginning to feel like I might understand Ross.

    It’s only been a year since his wife died, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t a whole lot. I doubt he’s coped in the healthiest ways. And so, when Ross finds out that Becky, his daughter, the last surviving piece of his immediate family, is (at least in Ross’ warped mind) betraying him…

    The straw breaks the camel’s back. Ross MacIntyre was probably an unpleasant guy even before any of this happened, but in his attempts to “repair” things, he took the plunge and went into gun-swinging, final-gambit mode. Because if he can’t fix this, what else does he have?

    Again, I don’t want any of this to seem like I’m trying to excuse Ross in any way. I mean, for God’s sake, he’s trying to take his daughter to conversion therapy by gunpoint. But I’m able to visualize where he’s coming from, and it’s an unsettling place.

    • Cerberus
      Cerberus
      October 16, 2015 at 12:46 am | #

      Yup. In his mind, he lost the fight against cancer because his faith was not strong enough, he did not pray enough, he was not righteous enough for God to intervene. And now, less than a year later, he has been handed another major test of faith, the last of his family stolen away by demons that are in the very process of recruiting her and stealing her soul. And this time he has no intention of showing the same weakness that cost him his wife.

      In short, it’s all about him in his head. His wife didn’t get an illness that was very hard for her. Instead, his wife was targeted to see if his faith was strong enough to save her. Similarly, his daughter is not just a gay person. It’s all another test by God or Satan to see how far he’d be willing to go to save his family.

      One among many of his major flaws is that he really does believe that he’s the center of his own universe and everything is tests of faith, righteous rewards, or punishments for not being firm enough. And that is sadly a worldview that is promoted a lot in that particular subset of Christian ideology. That tragedy to those close to you is really about you and is about a chance to show how righteous and pious you are.

      • saki
        saki
        October 16, 2015 at 1:25 am | #

        It makes me really sad to know that to this day, there are people raised in that manner of thinking. And that it has been hammered into their brains so strongly since childhood that for a lot of them, no amount of reasoning of new evidence can ever change their minds and heal them from that brainwashing. Truly a tragic reality.

        • Cerberus
          Cerberus
          October 16, 2015 at 1:39 am | #

          The positive side of this is that I can say having grown up in that culture that it isn’t taking in this generation as well as it has before. Things like the internet means it’s way harder to shield kids from knowledge of the world and interactions with diverse individuals. As such, a lot of fundie kids I knew ended up like Joyce or Willis, either adapting their faith to accommodate the world or who have fully broken with their former faith and become strident critics of how they were raised.

          The brainwashing is weakening and so more kids are being able to escape.

          • saki
            saki
            October 16, 2015 at 2:16 am | #

            I suspected as much, but wasn’t sure if it was just me trying to be optimistic. Glad you can confirm it. With some luck, fifty years from now, this way to raise someone will be practically unheard of in secular countries. (Not that I’m not hoping this won’t be the case in non-secular countries, I just highly doubt it’s feasible.)

          • Marie
            Marie
            October 16, 2015 at 3:07 am | #

            Especially because even innocent googling (that is, not trying to research to undermine your parents, but googling a question because you don’t feel like asking or it’s tangentially related to something) can bring up new information, I assume?

            • SDGlyph
              SDGlyph
              October 16, 2015 at 8:58 am | #

              Related: Becky made a comment about not having had unfettered internet access before, and getting lost in googling all the stuff Dina had been talking about…

            • Cerberus
              Cerberus
              October 16, 2015 at 4:58 pm | #

              Oh very much so, Willis has talked about being on Transformer message threads and simply noticing that the back and forth about bots being awfully similar to internal Church debate and I knew a number of kids growing up who started forming very heretical (by their Church’s viewpoint) views on the treatment of gay people in society because an internet personality they liked or a clan member in their MMORPG was gay and talked about their life experiences.

              None of them were intending to fall out of line with the faith they grew up with, but it’s hard to hold such cold viewpoints when you can actually see the full shape of those you’ve been trained to see as the enemy.

      • Marie
        Marie
        October 16, 2015 at 3:06 am | #

        Would you say, Cerberus, that this also is related to the paternal themes that were discussed elsewhere, such as the continued Victorian idea that the male sphere encompasses spirituality, and the expected roles of women as wives in such communities- in short, that because he is the man, this is all based around him (and his perceived strengths and faults)? Or is it more likely just a very self centered view of God and spirituality? (or most likely, a combination thereof)

        • Cerberus
          Cerberus
          October 16, 2015 at 4:54 pm | #

          Very much so. The idea of global events just being the setpiece for the personal battle for one’s soul is a broader and more universal facet of this worldview, but it definitely gets wrapped up in those patriarchal values. He’s the man, the protector against moral corruption and he failed… twice in his viewpoint. Thus its “on him” to set it right.

          So yeah, what you said with it being a combination thereof.

      • Willoughby Chase
        Willoughby Chase
        October 16, 2015 at 4:44 am | #

        This struck a chord with me, particularly the responsibility aspect. When I started my therapy, I discovered that I felt responsible for everything.

        I grew up in an atmosphere which was at once fundamentalist (in an English way, so no guns) but also turbulent in that my father married a Welsh Chapel-goer. My mother was not an easy mix with my grandparents. So I imbibed this sense of responsibility, even taking on a role so that my father could live vicariously through me.

        It did me no good.

        However, we now have a villain who is freighted with self-failure and grief. A slightly better villain than we first started with, more of a tragic figure self-figured for suicide-by-cop.

        It will hit Becky hard when that happens, and I’m not sure about Joyce’s reaction.

        BTW, Willis posted something on his twitter-feed about a bad father who was arrested on his way to his child’s college.

      • fogel
        fogel
        October 16, 2015 at 9:26 am | #

        In the Old Testament “God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son'” as a test of Abe. Is Ross’ view of this analagous? Does he believe that God has told him what to do OR that he’s being tested to come up with a solution, and God will be grading him? (If that makes sense….)

        • SDGlyph
          SDGlyph
          October 16, 2015 at 3:53 pm | #

          Of course, one strand of Jewish thinking on that one is that Abraham failed the test by not arguing with God about it. There’s also the interpretation that the story is meant as a contrast with other gods of the area, to show that Israel’s god is different: of course Abraham’s god demanded the sacrifice, that’s what gods do. But wait, this god stopped him and saved the son instead? Huh?

          … AFAIK, neither of these interpretations gets much traction in evangelical / fundamentalist circles.

  74. wynne
    wynne
    October 16, 2015 at 12:22 am | #

    Willis pulled the drama tag.

    Jesus, I don’t want to think about what might have happened to Becky’s mom.

    • No Name
      No Name
      October 16, 2015 at 12:40 am | #

      Willis pulled the Drama Tag on the first strip. Although it didn’t look like it what with Becky telling a poop joke.

  75. Just A. Thinker
    Just A. Thinker
    October 16, 2015 at 12:27 am | #

    Can we try to feel some sympathy for Becky’s father? I mean, the dude’s actions are horrible. His methods for achieving his goal of “reclaiming” Becky’s soul are horrible. But he honestly believes that he’s protecting Becky from Satan. He isn’t using it as an excuse; he honestly believes this is what he is doing. He is responsible for his horrible, horrible, actions, but the most tragic part is that he honestly believes he’s doing the right thing. He’s not just an unstoppable rage machine. There’s still hope that he’ll come to his senses, and that no one will get killed. Becky still loves him, and he still loves her. Fundamentalist Christianity is just as much as fault for Ross’s actions as Ross is. Ross doesn’t understand lesbians, and so it’s easy for him to hate them. We don’t understand Ross, so its easy for us to hate him. Ross’s actions are unequivocally wrong. I’m just asking that we try to understand him because only understanding can lead to reconciliation. Ross is fictional, but he’s representative of a few million of the most fundamentalist Christians in America. If we can’t understand the way they see the world, we’ll never be able to find the strength and love to convince them that all deep romantic relationships are expressions of love and care independent of the genders of the couple in the relationship, and thus that all people deserve equal rights to marry whomever they choose.
    Fundamentalists are defined by their hatred, and if we exhibit that hatred towards them we become what we claim to hate.

    • Yotomoe
      Yotomoe
      October 16, 2015 at 12:31 am | #

      A while back I said I didn’t like Ross because his character felt too flat and this comic kind of quells that. He’s not just a robotic monster with a gun SO I’m more fine with his character’s role in this story at least.

    • liahansen
      liahansen
      October 16, 2015 at 12:39 am | #

      ok im gonna need to disagree with your last sentence straight out bc that’s just not true. Hating an oppressor is not the same as hating the oppressed. That said, yeah, sure, he believes what he’s doing is right. That doesn’t mean we need to feel sympathy for a (grown-ass) man who THREATENS HIS DAUGHTER AND HER GIRLFRIEND WITH A GUN!!!! I say he and others like him have had plenty of fucking time in their lives to sort out their hate- at some point they don’t get to use the church as an excuse anymore. If he can get his shit together and somehow make amends for this (which will take YEARS, decades maybe), then yeah, fantastic. But right now, fuck him. fuck him fuck him fuck him fuck toedad

      • Just A. Thinker
        Just A. Thinker
        October 16, 2015 at 12:43 am | #

        We currently hold the power. We are the majority. They oppress members of their community and their family, and we need to halt that oppression. But hatred won’t help that situation AT ALL. It’ll only turn us into oppressors ourselves because, again, as a majority we currently hold the power.

        • Cerberus
          Cerberus
          October 16, 2015 at 12:57 am | #

          Really, we queerfolk hold all the power over Christian Dominism? Wow. That’s impressive. Cause it really has seemed that we only were just allowed to marry like people after a long and drawn out fight mostly involving the disproportionate amount of political power that particular sect has. And like we can still be fired in most states or refused housing or discriminated against simply because an employer/landlord/business decides that us existing is a violation of his moral code.

          And like the landscape for the T in LGBT is still frequently targeted for murder by those who follow those religious tenets. And like we’re not really allowed to piss in peace and are demonized as child molesters in order to enrich those who’ve built a career out of hassling queer individuals for decades.

          And like a huge chunk of our homeless population is queer or trans, mainly because of families like these who find disownment a casual thing and a necessary thing in order to “protect the spiritual health of the family” and the messages of hate give protection to other hateful people to see queer people as acceptable targets for abusive laws or ill treatment.

          I know what you are trying to say, but the oppressed do not hold the power. Not even now that gay marriage is legal in the States. Us recognizing harm perpetuated against us and being against that is not the same as perpetrating that harm in the first place. It’s the difference between raising one’s arms as a shield against strikes and striking someone.

          • Just A. Thinker
            Just A. Thinker
            October 16, 2015 at 1:03 am | #

            I was looking at this from the perspective of “A majority of americans support gay marriage, thus we’re the majority”, however I believe you offer a more nuanced view of the situation. You’re right.

            • Lena
              Lena
              October 16, 2015 at 4:24 am | #

              Marriage is just one small aspect, homophobia and transphobia
              are still bloody rampant. Repeat your statement when people
              stop getting kicked out, getting murdered, etc… just for not being
              cis-het.

        • liahansen
          liahansen
          October 16, 2015 at 1:02 am | #

          dunno who “we” are

      • Yotomoe
        Yotomoe
        October 16, 2015 at 12:44 am | #

        I don’t think that’s how brainwashing works, Liahansen. If you’re brainwashed to think you’re right you’re probably not gonna easily decide “Maybe I’m wrong”. That’s why it persists in our minds well into our adulthood. People are weird.

        • liahansen
          liahansen
          October 16, 2015 at 1:09 am | #

          “Brainwashing” isn’t a magical excuse that absolves people of blame. The point is, this is an adult with a gun threatening his child with kidnapping, murder, or suicide because she’s gay. To me, that’s not deserving of sympathy. I understand that he’s a human (well, a character who represents real humans) and more complex than his actions here alone, but these actions are seriously unforgivable. I can understand him without sympathizing with him

          • Yotomoe
            Yotomoe
            October 16, 2015 at 1:18 am | #

            I think he’s in need of therapy. This is probably the first time his mental disconnection has come this far to light because he’s been so sheltered his whole life. I want to see him get better. Not die or just be thrown in jail with no chance of redemption. He may be a lost cause and he may never change, but I’d rather him get help than just get rid of him.

            • liahansen
              liahansen
              October 16, 2015 at 1:20 am | #

              me too. I want him to be somebody I could sympathize with. Right now he isn’t

              • liahansen
                liahansen
                October 16, 2015 at 1:24 am | #

                If he doesn’t though, if he grows old and alone because of his own actions and never changes his beliefs, then I couldn’t give a care

          • fogel
            fogel
            October 16, 2015 at 9:41 am | #

            I don’t forgive him. What he’s doing is unforgivable. But, maybe I’ve absorbed “hate the sin, love the sinner” … not that I “love” Ross, and in my world he’s the sinner (NOT Becky). But I want to … pity him? (which is perhaps patronizing? ) rather than hate him. As i was taught about Greek Tragedy.

        • Gangler
          Gangler
          October 16, 2015 at 1:41 am | #

          Becky’s surely as brainwashed as he ever was and somehow she was able to come around on the subject.

    • Dr. T
      Dr. T
      October 16, 2015 at 12:42 am | #

      Nope. He is using emotional blackmail on his daughter in order to force her into letting him kidnap her and send her away to get “fixed”. If I knew of anyone IRL who did that I would tell that person to eat a never-ending bag of dicks.

      • Just A. Thinker
        Just A. Thinker
        October 16, 2015 at 12:45 am | #

        That is a logical theory. We should still make attempts to understand fundamentalists, though. Most parents do actually love their children, even if religion warps how they “show” their love.

        • liahansen
          liahansen
          October 16, 2015 at 12:52 am | #

          any kind of love that involves gunpoint negotiations is not a love i want to be a part of

          • Just A. Thinker
            Just A. Thinker
            October 16, 2015 at 12:56 am | #

            I’m not saying we should be accepting of the way they act, or that sort of “love”. I’m saying that we need to understand their motivations if we are to help them realize just how wrong their actions are.

        • Pat
          Pat
          October 19, 2015 at 2:30 am | #

          That’s not a theory, it’s a description of what’s happening.

          And that he does not love her is demonstrated.
          Yes yes, I’m sure he’d claim he does. But the word has a meaning, and he does not.

    • Kamino Neko
      Kamino Neko
      October 16, 2015 at 12:47 am | #

      But he honestly believes that he’s protecting Becky from Satan. [elaboration snipped] There’s still hope that he’ll come to his senses, and that no one will get killed.

      Conclusion doesn’t follow from premise.

      That he is willing to die for this shows that not only does he think he’s right, he’s not harboring any real doubts about it. Being that fully entrenched in a way of thought makes it less likely that he can be talked down.

      • Just A. Thinker
        Just A. Thinker
        October 16, 2015 at 12:51 am | #

        I meant that he’ll realize that if he murdered his daughter or anyone else, that would be an act of Satan. I don’t believe in Satan; I’m just trying to use Ross’s worldview to offer a justification for putting the gun away.

        • Kamino Neko
          Kamino Neko
          October 16, 2015 at 1:12 am | #

          But, again, his worldview does not offer such a justification.

          Shooting Becky would not be an act of Satan. To condone her sin would be.

      • fogel
        fogel
        October 16, 2015 at 9:47 am | #

        But he doesn’t “want” to do this, he believes it’s his duty. That’s why he asked God to give him strength to do what he believes he must, even though he doesn’t want to, and fears that he lacks the strength for. That’s why he looks so sad in todays strip. I think. This doesn’t excuse/mitigate his actions in any way. Nor do I forgive him. Maybe I should? But my sympathy (if that’s what it is), doesn’t extend to that.

    • bearpelt
      bearpelt
      October 16, 2015 at 5:02 am | #

      Yeah, no. Responding to hate with “love” or something gets you shot. Not playing.

      • Gamaran Sepudomyn
        Gamaran Sepudomyn
        October 16, 2015 at 5:58 am | #

        Unless you do it like this: http://www.nuklearpower.com/2004/11/27/8-bit-chronicles-3-of-3/

    • Pat
      Pat
      October 19, 2015 at 2:43 am | #

      “He’s evil, but we should have some sympathy due to his reasons for being evil, those being that he’s really bleeping evil.”

  76. Jezi
    Jezi
    October 16, 2015 at 12:28 am | #

    You know, even when I was Christian, one thing I always hated about the flavor of crazy fundie I grew up around (not my family, thankfully, but just in this area) was their belief that someone who was born, lived, and died without ever hearing of the existence of Christ would still go to hell for not being saved.

    That kind of goes the other way around here, too. I’ve always had a bit of sympathy for people who are born and live in such a walled-off religious environment that they’re never even exposed to reality, at least not without it being shouted down as Satan’s evil secular influence by everyone around them.

    It’s not enough to excuse anything Ross is doing, or not want him to get his just punishment for it. But it’s kept me softer than most towards Joyce and Becky (and to some degree the Browns).

    The fact that so many of us are feeling uncomfortable slight empathy towards Ross just means that, despite him being very clearly the villain, his motivations are meaningful and understandable, as opposed to just “because evil fundie raaar” — which is a mark of great writing. Hat tip to Willis for that.

    • saki
      saki
      October 16, 2015 at 1:51 am | #

      You put into words several things I’d been thinking about since this thing with Ross started.

      We remember how Joyce initially reacted when Dorothy told her she was an atheist. We also know that, soon enough, she sorta made peace with it. Joyce is much younger than Ross and I think she has a more open mind thanks to that. Younger minds are more malleable, less used to thinking “this is that, period”, and therefore more prone to doubt and to changing their minds when presented with evidence.
      What I’m getting at is that, as Jezi touched upon, Ross has probably spent his whole life in the same fundie bubble. He never had the opportunity to go through what Joyce is going through right now, which is to be confronted with non-believers, “sinners”, who are actually really nice people, and readjust your belief system consequently.
      As such, even though Ross’s actions are horrible and I really hate him, I find myself understanding where he is coming from, and hoping that he won’t die (which would cause Becky unnecessary pain), but instead, with time (probably spent in jail, for Becky and Dina’s safety), will see how wrong he had been, reconsider his beliefs, and redeem himself by fully accepting Becky as she is.

      I have very many doubts that Ross is capable of that, considering how far off the deep end he’s gone, but this is what I hope happens. For Becky’s sake as well.

      • fogel
        fogel
        October 16, 2015 at 9:51 am | #

        Jezi, Saki: I can’t find the up/+ button, but, yes.

    • bearpelt
      bearpelt
      October 16, 2015 at 5:04 am | #

      Recently discovered that my boyfriend’s mom apparently thinks people who don’t believe in Jesus will go to hell. There was some sort of discussion about whether or not pets went to heaven (which I tried to joke about the movie “All Dogs Go to Heaven about, but sadly was ignored) and then there was a debate about if infants would go to hell for not believing in Jesus and I was like……..

      you do realize

      that the women your son is dating is a non-religious jew right?

      standing right fucking here.

      wonderful.

    • Gamaran Sepudomyn
      Gamaran Sepudomyn
      October 16, 2015 at 6:02 am | #

      I understand why Ross is the way he is, but that still doesn’t make it any less assholish.

  77. I Write Monsters
    I Write Monsters
    October 16, 2015 at 12:28 am | #

    We are literally seconds away from a Toedad “Roy Batty” speech, comeplete with dumpy pigeons.

    • Darwin
      Darwin
      October 16, 2015 at 3:21 am | #

      It’s not raining. So it’ll look really dumb, since how will tears be lost without rain to wash them away? Though Roy’s last words…

      • David Alexander McDonald
        David Alexander McDonald
        October 16, 2015 at 4:39 am | #

        He could fall into the fountain.

  78. Sionyx
    Sionyx
    October 16, 2015 at 12:28 am | #

    Whelp, he’s nuts. Loves his daughter and is deeply worried about her, but still nuts. There’s something off about someone who just refuses to put down the gun in a situation like this.

    But damn panels four and six are well done. Becky’s gotten through to her dad and there’s a smidgen of sympathetic person there. Ross is teetering on the edge here. I may not like him, but he’s out of my “punch his teeth in” category.

  79. read all over
    read all over
    October 16, 2015 at 12:31 am | #

    In comment to the brains going everywhere it’s okay he’s not really using it from the looks of things.

  80. shoeboxjeddy
    shoeboxjeddy
    October 16, 2015 at 12:32 am | #

    Hey toe head, don’t pull the trigger. Maybe this day can end in court mandated therapy for you instead of… you know the whole head explosion thing.

    • fogel
      fogel
      October 16, 2015 at 9:53 am | #

      Which he should definitely NOT put Becky through.

  81. Dean
    Dean
    October 16, 2015 at 12:34 am | #

    I know that David Willis has said that he has no interest in bringing her back, but I wonder whether one of the cops who responds to this will be Guns from It’s Walky!.

    • Yotomoe
      Yotomoe
      October 16, 2015 at 12:36 am | #

      One of the cops will just be an actual gun.

  82. Someone
    Someone
    October 16, 2015 at 12:36 am | #

    crazy theory time

    Okay, we know that Becky’s mom died. But how did she die? My guess she was murdered. But who murdered her? That’s easy. Who haven’t we seen yet, who was evil as hell in the last universe, that would make sense as a drug cartel or gang member? Jason’s father! Think about it Dargon is a anagram of Dragon, Ross says that the devil took her away. A dragon is a popular portrayal of the devil. This all makes so much sense!

    • Yotomoe
      Yotomoe
      October 16, 2015 at 12:37 am | #

      0/10
      Didn’t involve aliens.
      Some Conspiracy theory!

    • m2iCodeJockey
      m2iCodeJockey
      October 16, 2015 at 12:51 am | #

      The audience cannot say “Becky’s mother is deceased.”
      The audience just knows they aren’t together.

      What the audience, and Beck, may like to find out some time is: “Does Ross color his hair?”

      • Lord Stoneheart
        Lord Stoneheart
        October 16, 2015 at 8:45 am | #

        We can say Becky’s mom is dead. Characters in the comic have stated she’s dead. The author has stated she’s dead. And red hair is a recessive gene. Even if neither of Becky’s parents had red hair, if they both have incidences of red hair in their family, it’s possible for Becky to have red hair.

    • GhostWriterL
      GhostWriterL
      October 16, 2015 at 10:45 am | #

      She’s dead. What killed her is speculation.

      Some think she died of something like cancer, which can kill you within weeks or months of it appearing, or take years.

      Which personally, I think she had some kind of illness like cancer, or something else chronic, but with the added component of it going ignored/untreated.

      Why? Because of something called “faith healing” where people abhor and avoid doctors, hospitals, and anything resembling modern medicine for themselves and their families, and think all illness and injury can be prayed away, and any lingering scarring, effects, or death is a direct result of “not praying and believing hard enough”.

      Considering Ross said he wanted to “have us lay our hands over you” in regards to Becky’s lesbian orientation, and being gay is considered a defect or a sickness to his brand of religious-stupid, either Ross came from a faith healer upbringing, or he bought into it at some point… I’ve heard of some people diving head first into practices like that when they or a loved one is diagnosed by doctors with a major illness or medical issue, or after seeing the after effects of treatments like chemo, where they then blame the doctors and medicines for making them or their loved one sick, so they opt to reject it entirely.

      Could be possible that Ross went faith healer and either convinced, or forced, his wife to not be treated for her sickness, under the promise of “praying hard and long enough will cure everything”. She dies, he assumes it’s because they didn’t try hard enough, or something else caused it.

      Then… he finds out about his daughter making out with her roommate.

      One can assume he blames Becky’s lesbian orientation for his wife’s death, though given his almost sympathetic representation here, he probably doesn’t blame Becky herself. She’s a target of evil forces, the same ones that foiled his intense praying to cure his wife, and he MUST save his daughter before they take her too. If it requires his death, then so be it.

  83. Arianod
    Arianod
    October 16, 2015 at 12:39 am | #

    Becky uses Reason and it… might be working??? Nah, it can’t be.

  84. Guairdean Beatha
    Guairdean Beatha
    October 16, 2015 at 12:40 am | #

    Yes, Fundie, you’ll die for her, but will you live for her? Will you do what is best for your daughter, or will you cling to your dogma and try to make her conform to some archaic vision?

    • Cerberus
      Cerberus
      October 16, 2015 at 1:00 am | #

      The latter. To change is to surrender to Satan in his worldview. And so even though that would be best for both of them. He refuses.

      In this, he’s the anti-Joyce.

      Joyce had a moment of either updating her faith or standing firm even though it would hurt herself and others and she went with the former, enriching both herself and those around her. Toedad has done the opposite and so has made everyone else’s life so much worse.

    • Toad
      Toad
      October 16, 2015 at 1:42 am | #

      “Dying is easy, young man. Living is harder.”

  85. caesaria82
    caesaria82
    October 16, 2015 at 12:41 am | #

    This is just… so heavy. Wow.

  86. cmd1095
    cmd1095
    October 16, 2015 at 12:44 am | #

    Well, he’s still a violent, abusive asshole of a dad, but at least his heart is in the right place… that gives him one place where he’s better than Amber’s dad… sort of… ugh damn it Willis why can’t you let us demonize Toedad? Now I feel almost bad for him despite his asshole personality… almost

    • Just A. Thinker
      Just A. Thinker
      October 16, 2015 at 12:54 am | #

      Becky obviously loves him… His actions in this arc seem to be an extreme unlike anything she’s ever seen; its perfectly plausible that he never once abused her or became violent with her prior to this (outside of religious brainwashing, which is abuse).

      • Cerberus
        Cerberus
        October 16, 2015 at 1:06 am | #

        Or that even when a parent is abusive, you still don’t want them to die. I mean, I’ve known enough people with abusive parents and I’ve spilled my own situation with my parents enough times. It’s one thing to recognize abuse and toxicity and try to move to a point where you can heal and another thing entirely to be unmoved by their illness or death.

        My gf’s dad is epically physically abusive and has been so her entire life, but she was still shaking in grief and worry when he had a heart attack recently and was willing to put herself in harm’s way to try and help him. And that’s not uncommon for a number of abuse survivors.

        Based on the depth of her survival strategies its very likely she put up with regular emotional abuse at least and he is currently threatening one hell of a big basket of all sorts of nasty abusive behavior. But that doesn’t mean that she’s in a place where she can sit by and watch her daddy get shot in front of her.

        • Marie
          Marie
          October 16, 2015 at 3:14 am | #

          Becky seems surprised enough that I feel as though she hasn’t experienced ongoing abuse, but +1 on that she wouldn’t necessarily want to see him die (and even if she did want it, wouldn’t necessarily be totally okay with watching it unfold, feeling like she could somehow prevent it).

          Also, because of her super confined upbringing, she might not until now be thinking of things as abuse, and therefor might not harbour the same resentment she might in a few days as she learns more about things he did not being okay (this is me, although not on a gun waving level- on a ‘mom was emotionally and verbally abusive but I didn’t resent it until I was ~17 and learned that wasn’t everyone’s family dynamic’ level).

      • Pat
        Pat
        October 19, 2015 at 2:41 am | #

        She ran away from him because he was abusive. He used the word “escaped.”

        Oh, and she went from defiant to “Run! Split up in the woods!” very suddenly, at about the same moment he went for the gun.
        She did not expect the gun itself, but she still expected to be physically chased down. She saw it coming and realized that Dina was also in danger.

    • BenRG
      BenRG
      October 16, 2015 at 2:06 am | #

      He’s a moron and I mean that in the old-fashioned sense of the word.

    • Gamaran Sepudomyn
      Gamaran Sepudomyn
      October 16, 2015 at 6:06 am | #

      Think about it for a second. This is what he does when he tries to help someone.

    • Pat
      Pat
      October 19, 2015 at 2:36 am | #

      His heart could not be less in the right place.

      Look at what you described. That is not “heart is in the right place.” That is “heart is two states away and partially melted.”

  87. lime sheep
    lime sheep
    October 16, 2015 at 12:45 am |