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happy birthday willis
Welp, I’m not sleeping tonight.
Can’t sleep, Joyce will eat me…
It belongs in a museum!
Yeah, we have top men working on that.
Top. Men.
Some reader playing New Horizons will get it done hopefully.
Art.
Thank you, that is wonderful.
Who deserves it more? (Ana’s art, not the social distancing.)
Also, congratulations on surviving another exciting trip around the sun.
Maybe the next one can be less exciting? Please.
Fucking knew “may you live in interesting times” was a curse!
I do not want a scene change now, unless it is to Ruth calling the cops.
That’s brilliant1 Does the new Animal Crossing give you enough room to plant that as a garden? Or maybe a topiary or something?
I hear there’s a Ditch museum with a recently opened-up spot, have you thought about submitting?
DUTCH. Dutch museum, of course.
Ditch, Dutch, it’s all the same really. Lots of our country is ditches…
Aren’t levees the opposite of ditches?
I intensely relate to Joyce in the last panel.
I do in general, but she put the emphasis in the wrong place.
Her foot isn’t damned by god – his face is. So it should be “when I put my foot through your god-damned face.”
Craaaaaaaaaaap you’re right. HEY WILLIS! Can you fix that in post?
Instructions unclear. Joyce now says “when I put my god through your damned foot-face.”
Well, Ross is a sentient toe…
Are we sure he’s even sentient?
Oh, he’s definitely sentient. You can see him reacting to external stimulus due to his senses.
Whether or not he’s sapient is another question entirely.
I think the point is “hey, I might be a damned unbeliever now, but I guess I could still be doing God’s work.”
No, Ross isn’t shook in his place at all, he’s saying the imperfect agent is Blaine. Even now Ross believes he hasn’t fucked up.
Right, that paraphrase was on Joyce’s behalf.
Ross might be shaken, but Joyce will never be able to get through to him to capitalize on that. Toe-dad will just ignore her in favor of his comforting rationalizations. Why? Easy: 1} Comforting rationalizations generally win; 2} Joyce is still a ‘child’ to him, and therefore unworthy to argue with him. There are a bunch of other factors of course, but it would take someone Ross respects to get him to change course — his Pastor, for example — and everyone else will get tuned out.
“…Joyce is still a ‘child’ to him, and therefore unworthy to argue with him.”
She’s also female. Don’t forget his cult’s misogyny.
By “my goddamned foot”, she means specifically the one with the loose toenail.
The toenail is no longer loose – it’s gone.
That said, your proposition is logical. Missing-toenail foot could be considered god-damned.
I still think it works better the other way because it implies that Ross is literally damned by god, but being kicked with icky toe might carry a higher level of threat.
I think she is saying her foot is imperfect and will be doing God’s work.
Well, she is now.
Don’t kick people with injured feet. Equal and opposite reaction, and all that.
If she kicks him enough with it, eventually her toe and his Toe will match.
Aaaaaaabsolutely. ..and yet, I can’t help but wonder if it exists as is as a factor of her human capacity for insecurity or rather doubt, despite faith.
It kind of fits: her foot would be the “imperfect agent” enacting “god’s perfect will”. The foot could be damned in that case.
She’s still working out the grammar of profanity
Hey, be nice. Joyce is just learning swears.
I think in this case Joyce is acknowledging that according to the way she was brought up, she is working against God’s Perfect Will™ thus making her foot, which is also working against God’s Perfect Will™, god-damned.
“All right then, I’ll go to hell”
She could threaten to break his neck, but how would that even work?
Kick him in the ass hard enough, and the neck pops up like a Rock ’em Sock ’em Robot.
Or maybe he’s built more like a PEZ dispenser and you can push back his head to dispense a bible.
If you kick him in the ass hard enough, you might give him brain damage. After all, that is where his head is firmly placed.
But such a small target!
Wreck his shit, Joyce. I believe in you.
I hope she destroys him both physically AND emotionally!
Now that’s a rage face!
Good old “mysterious ways, his wonders to perform”.
Yup.
Ross is GONE.
I mean, that was pretty obvious from the get-go. He just is more hypocritical than before.
At this point, I have to wonder if Ross thinks he’s being truly righteous or if he’s hanging on to that belief because he’s otherwise worse than the people he was trying to “rescue” Becky from.
I think he’s going along with it because “the ends justify the means”, and he’s too blind (or stupid) to realize he’s Blaine’s patsy. Hopefully he reaches his acceptable collateral damage threshold before something else extremely terrible happens…
When faced with new facts, people don’t change their beliefs, they disbelieve the facts. Also people are much less motivated by religious beliefs than they think they are. Changing your mind is a difficult task. That’s one reason people like the music of their teen years forever and think recent sports stars are the best ever.
Your recommended reading: Mistakes were made but not by me and The structure of scientific revolutions (a classic and short)
She’s got him by the bible! If anybody could make him crack, I think its Joyce.
…disagree.
Ross knows he’s in the wrong here. You can tell by his expression, and the words he’s saying (and, more importantly, not saying). The problem is that he’s so far down the rabbit hole, he’s scrambling for reasons to justify why he’s still in the right.
He’s lying to himself, basically. Entirely possible he’ll keep doing so going forward, of course, but the point is that he’s not like Blaine, who’s fully committed to doing what he knows is evil and selfish, because he doesn’t give a fuck.
Ross gives a fuck. He wants to do the right thing. He wants to “save his daughter”.
There’s nothing like a good cause to bring out the worst in people.
It’s so weird when the BEST case scenario is the Sunken Cost Fallacy, isn’t it?
I read that as ‘Sunken COAST Fallacy’ and just spend 30 minutes trying to find out what that was…
Anything relying on Atlantean shores?
……….if you had asked me that a month ago, I’d wholehearted agree.
It’s been a fucked-up month.
An agent so imperfect it doesn’t even have a neck.
I think he means Blaine.
Yeah, I know.
But in this stupid metaphor of his, he is (willingly or not) ALSO an “agent of god”, and that being so, a very imperfect one at that.
I liked you better when you didn’t talk Toedad.
You’re simultaneously screwing up my bet and driving up the odds for payout.
They say it’s your Birthday…
You’re the Birthday,
You’re the Birthday,
You’re the Birthday Boy or Girl…
Wait, where are my italics?
Well, it’s time to celebrate your birthday, it happens every year
We’ll eat a lot of broccoli and drink a lot of beer
You should be good and happy that there’s something you can eat
A million people every day are starving in the street
Your daddy’s in the gutter with the wretched and the poor
Your mama’s in the kitchen with a can of Cycle Four
There’s garbage in the water
There’s poison in the sky
I guess it won’t be long before we’re all gonna die
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
What’s that? You don’t know the source??
*revokes your geek cred*
Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday!
Now that you’re the age you are
death cannot be very far
Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday!
May the candles on your cake
Burn like cities in your wake.
Why God does that?
There’s no challenge if they make it easy.
Happy birthday!! May it be as wonderful and full of life, love and laughter as this strip is!!
Why do you hate DYW so?
The strip as a whole, not today’s, is what I meant
Ah. My mistake.
Toe that dad!
Panel 6 translation: “I don’t have to worry about morality because
reasonsGod.”In his weird fundie usage of the concept at least, yes definitely
It’s not just fundies. Goes back to the anathema against Donatism. Fourth century.
“God wants Becky and me to be together. That’s why he made me put a child in the hospital and threaten to kill seven others.”
There is no redemption here.
Yep! Nice to see it once again confirmed, because seriously every time people go ‘well maybe this will be the point’ I have to go ‘remember how he literally threatened a mass school shooting to kidnap his daughter with?’ Once that’s your point you’ve gone so far past no return it’s somewhere over the horizon.
It’s not that people are irredeemable. However, until such time that a person sees
____FOR THEMSELVES___
that they need to make amends, there is absolutely no point in seeking to redeem them. As much as I’m not a fan of Oprah, she was absolutely right when she said, “when somebody /shows/ you who they really are, BELIEVE THEM.”
Toe Dad is a life-threatening, endangering, enabling, self-serving asshole. Unless -and not before it happens- he actually /does something/ to help, he remains such. In this situation words are meaningless, action is required.
Nobody ever accused Ross of being original.
Yeah, f*** Ross and any real people like him. God would not work through monsters. If you have so much faith, you would believe that God could work his voodoo without tainting his message by associating with such people.
Or con men JosephSmith
gah that was supposed to be [cough]josephsmith[cough]
damn my lack of html skillz!
Or L. Ron Hubbard.
More like Elrond’s Cupboard
There is some basis in what he is saying, though it is incredibly warped and has no relevance to what is happening. The church believes that anyone can be saved, and that people’s past crimes may not prevent them from executing God’s will through good actions. Several saints are clear examples of these “imperfect agents”, where they started out as real assholes, but supposedly God still chose them to be a force of goodness. As we can see here, this is absolutely not the situation here. This is not about God choosing an asshole to do good things, this is about God condoning people doing horrible actions to bring about “good things”, which goes against everything Christianity stands for.
Tl:Dr, Toedad’s warping a good truism of Christianity into a horrible “the ends justify the means” argument.
There’s also plenty of Biblical history (mostly old testament) of bad people doing bad things that eventually led to good outcomes. Likely just comes from trying to reconcile a good, activist God with the horrible things that happen in life. There must be some kind of plan or God wouldn’t let it happen, right?
Joyce’s church doesn’t believe in saints iirc, but that principle could be shown in several biblical figures.
Oh shit, Joyce is activating Hulk-mode.
So it seems that Amber is remembering things but I have a question. If she was there when Mike fell off and was injured, what happened? Did she grab Mike and run away? While unlikely, did she leave him there thinking he was dead?
We never saw how the fight ended, but given that the three of them are still free, i assume someone saw it going on and called the cops. At which point they all ran, and apparently escaped. But apparently Blaine stuck around long enough (or changed into street clothes) and checked back to see Mike being taken away in an ambulance.
He would have had to steal Mike’s wallet and phone before the ambulance got to him. Otherwise Mike would have been identified at the hospital and police would have interviewed Walky etc.
Eh – lots of people don’t carry their ID around. It’s kinda crazy. I once served a woman who brought her kid to the pharmacy to get a prescription and she didn’t bring shit. I was still able to help her, but that pissed me off. Fortunately, showing your ID now when getting a prescription is a college directive and every pharmacy displays signs to that effect at drop off we can point to.
She seemed to have a flash of Amazi-memory few strips ago, I’m guessing that is what Amber is talking about. We still have nothing to tell us what happened to Mike, other than Blaine’s word. Which has very little credibility…
This. Amber knows a subset of what we know happened on the fire escape.
We just don’t know at this point. The author could be holding the image back for greater effect later, or he may have decided that showing it is just not necessary.
Look at the BETRAYAL in her eyes. The ANGER. The STRENGTH.
Thank you for this, Willis. This… helps.
Don’t listen to anyone who says her anger makes this invalid.
**raise eyebrow**
Why would anyone say that anger invalidates any of this? This seems like a pretty legit situation for her to be angry about.
I feel like I might be missing something here.
Mr. Willis tweeted a response to someone who said Joyce must be fact-checked “more thoroughly,” because “anger has little relationship to a well thought out moral code or even a rational thought process.” -_-
Yep, what mrnoidea said. You can still see the original comment under yesterday’s strip.
That sounds like the kind of gaslight-y shit an abuser would say to dismiss their victims’ grievances.
… Wait, did Blaine steal Mike’s phone, with its VPN through the fourth wall?
It seemed like a more general and basically valid comment on anger that just didn’t apply to the situation.
Possibly from someone who’s had bad experiences with angry people.
I mean, that might be correct is Joyce was sitting in class discussing moral philosophy.
But she isn’t.
Being angry at someone who kidnapped you is a perfectly rational response. Not to mention a very human response. The person who said that seems to be confusing “good writing” with “proper discourse”. Willis is not writing a debate about philosophy – he’s writing a young woman who has been kidnapped and has had her life threatened. If she was pontificating in a calm and rational fashion, that would be bad writing, even if her points were valid.
The OP (of the tweet, not this comment thread) needs to consider context a bit more, me thinks.
Also, offhandedly, Joyce’s jagoff brother John imply Joyce’s anger invalidated her concerns about Becky.
(Narrator: It didn’t.)
I b’lieve that the first literary reference to “Flipping Tables” is Jesus in the New Testament. Don’t know of any Greek stories. Or Egyptian for that matter. Did Thoth ever flip any tables? … I think not.
It’s BEAUTIFUL. So much rage and it’s so, so justified and he KNOWS he’s in for an ass-kicking the moment she’s unbound.
Who are you trying to convince, Ross?
Because I don’t think they, be it Joyce or Ross himself, are buying it.
Man, that’s some hardcore (if expected) deflection from Ross. Considering he at this point has a permanently troubled, I-know-I-fucked-up face, I feel like that’s pretty much just what he’s telling himself to pretend the “ends justify the means,” as it were.
Or maybe he’s just so used to guilt that he assumes it’s normal and he’s just not praying hard enough. He’d better start praying Joyce doesn’t hurt him too badly, instead, though.
“God does not hear the prayer of the cheese bag.”
I wonder what the Cheese thinks—oh wait, wrong universe.
Stay fresh, cheese bags!
Ross’ problem is that all he has, at this point, is his belief that he is Justifiably Righteous. He clings to the faith/hope/delusion that he will ultimately be wholly & completely vindicated for his beliefs & actions, through the end-result of re-claiming Becky and turning her away from her “heathen” path.
Anything else would mean he is Wrong, and has been Wrong this entire time, and Ross cannot bear that thought.
Honestly, that seems like a textbook case of sunk cost fallacy, doesn’t it?
I guarantee you that Ross does not know what that is, though.
I think Ross knows. He just denies it.
He seems to be having more of a second thought than Joyce’s mother ever did.
Sadly, the very fact that Joyce, someone who he looks down upon, as a younger and likely “less Christian” person is the one chiding him, might be what is making him dig his heels in now, in spite of his previous doubts. What does she know? If somebody like her finds a problem with it, then he must definitely be in the right. The alternative would be that she’s a better Christian/person than him which is, obviously, a laughable idea.
Amber’s probably making the right call here, but I do find it interesting that she seems to have lost her desire to convince them that she’s Amazi-Girl. I think she’s determined that it’s really not going to do anything to improve the situation, which is probably true.
Well, it might also be a matter of the dissociation too.
Amber: “I’m Spartacus.” Joyce: “I’m Death incarnate.”
Someone needs to introduce Joyce to Susan Ivanova.
“I am the right hand of vengeance and the boot that is going to kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart. I am death incarnate, and the last living thing that you are ever going to see. God sent me.”
Now I want to see Joyce and Ivanova hang out.
Come on Joyce… Hulk out.
She definitely looks to be getting close to hulking out.
Ross, I hate your gut and you are doing bad things to people for selfish, horrible reasons, but I still want to give you a piece of good advice.
Run.
Now.
It’s really his only chance for survival now. May I recommend moving to some other country, far, far away, changing his name, and living out the rest of his life as a cordwainer? He’s already a toe, may as well make shoes.
Oh look its literally the excuse my family gave for voting for Trump.
Your family and every other “good Christian” who voted for him. Except by now they think he’s perfect.
I hope Ross gets the scheisse beat out of him, if only so I can imagine its happening to sole people IRL.
*some*
That was also my thought. Well, not “my family,” because I was raised by liberals from Massachusetts, but “evangelicals.” I thought “that’s why evangelicals voted for Trump.”
So they expect him to bring about the end of the world sooner? That at least makes a smithereen of sense – if you think the end of the world is a good thing, that is.
You may be stunned by how many people do.
You cannot expect anything else from people whose beliefs ultimately mean that they crave and welcome the destruction of the world as it represents the realization of their dreams.
If it turned out that Trump is the antichrist and that their voting for him gave him the power to enact all the apocalyptic stuff that will bring down God’s wrath (and the Rapture to spare Christians from it), they’d still think that voting for him was a good thing regardless of how many millions could suffer (“it’s their fault for not accepting Christ!”)
And I always wanted to ask people who say that, how they knew Hillary Clinton wasn’t the imperfect agent God preferred?
Because God doesn’t want a woman to run things.
But mostly because she doesn’t hate the right people.
It’s interesting how the previous strip and this one rhyme visually—they both end in four frames alternating Ross/Joyce/Ross/Joyce, with Joyce getting the borderless frames yesterday and Ross today.
Yeah, that’s gonna look pretty in a book.
Ross is gonna look like Joyce’s toe when she’s done with him, and it will be better than he deserves
Just a soft, lumpy expanse of blank skin where his
nailface was?Ross, you are an idiot. You have broken many of the commandments just to get back your child, who has done nothing wrong since homosexuality isn’t mentioned in the Bible. If there’s a good God, they are ashame of people like you using their name for your own agenda. Every person that uses something like “Deus Vult” is full of shit.
And if God agrees with you because they are probably a creation of the collective will of believers, then it is time to become devils and destroy the vile works of believers.
Joyce is really close to getting a Persona.
Happy Birthday, Willis.
Heh. I would really love if someone would do a fanart of Joyce summoning her Persona.
Anyway, fun tidbit I love to share – back in college, I dated a lady from Israel who pointed out that, at least for lesbians, there are interpretations that support the idea that God is pro-lesbian sex. As she related it to me, the female orgasm is a “mitzvah” which is “a good deed done from religious duty” (thanks Google!). Thus, lesbians are not only non-sinful, they are in fact blessed for committing good deeds.
I am going to correct you there for a second. Homosexuality is in the Bible multiple times. It’s in the Old Testament in the parts where the Jewish faith needed to drive up their numbers and funds so rules were put in place, so anything that reduced the number of Jewish babies (such as homosexuals being in a committed, homosexual relationship as opposed to being forced to be in the closet) was deemed an abomination. That also is the same for working on the Sabbath (and therefore not being present to donate at the service) and eating foods that could be more dangerous (shellfish and “unclean” meats).
Mind you, those rules were BS and had nothing to do with previous scriptures. They were bigoted rules written by religious leaders trying to rebuild their religion. Feel free to ignore them. I do.
Homosexuality also appears in the New Testament. Most notably, it was in the story of the Centurion’s beloved servant. It was such a noteworthy incident that ran counter to the existing scriptures that it appeared in two Gospels, which only happened for extremely important stories. In that story, a rich military officer approached Jesus for help healing his beloved servant, a term that meant exactly what you think it meant in those days. Jesus offered to go to his home to heal the sick man, but the Centurion had been raised on the BS in the Old Testament and thought himself unworthy to have a holy man enter his home and stated as much. He simply said he would take it on faith that if Jesus said his beloved servant would be healed that it would come to be, a statement that Jesus praised. He did not scold the Centurion for the relationship. He did not offer to heal the man if they promised to stop. He simply told the man to return home and his beloved servant would be waiting for him, healthy.
Never has WWJD meant more than in that story. Long story short, Ross only adheres to the parts of the Bible that embraces his bigotry and does not embrace the parts where Jesus himself teaches that those other parts are BS. How very Christian of him indeed.
One thing I would like to add — the prohibitions against homosexuality in the bible are phrased as ‘A man shall not lay with another man.’ Of course the rule was BS, and it was written this way for sexist reasons — but if Becky wants to ‘lay with another woman’, there is no rule against it. I chuckle when I get to throw that at folks who love the claim that ‘the bible is inerrant and literal’.
Be ready for one of them to cite Romans 1:24-27 at you.
HTML link: “This time for sure!”
The prohibition in the Bible is actually phrased, in Hebrew, “You shall not have the lyings of a man in the lyings of a woman.” If you can tell me what that means I’ll give you a dollar. All the “prohibitions” of homosexuality are questionable, especially considering the concept of homosexuality didn’t exist until around 1875.
I’d particularly like to question the one about the Centurion and his beloved servant. I’ve read that passage closely, and it’s reading into it to make that “the servant he was in love with.” That isn’t in there.
The…concept of homosexuality didn’t exist until 1875? Gotta say, I actually tilted my head a little at that.
Yeah, I’m going to have to re-read Plato’s The Symposium.
People were certainly having gay sex long before them, but our modern take on it is fairly new. Much of our current approach to sex, relationships and love is very different than in the ancient world.
In The Symposium, which was written about 390 BC and is about love, the characters discuss why some people love members of their own sex and others love members of the other sex. In at least one character’s account that is a personal characteristic and part of a person’s nature from before birth. Plato recognised that there are men naturally inclined to love men, men naturally inclined to love women, women naturally inclined to love women, and women naturally inclined to love men. (Aces and bis were erased, of course.)
I also have a dim recollection of a statement in Plato that men who are attracted to women are unfit for public office, but I can’t remember which dialogue it was in.
Now it’s possible that there is some cogent analysis that I’m not familiar with that shows that in some compelling sense “homosexuals” denotes something more specific than men who desire men and women who desire women. But if so, I suggest, it might be generally unfamiliar enough that using it without explanation leads to misunderstandings.
Also the verse of the OT that says “don’t be gay” is in the same chapter as “no milk with meat, no pork or shellfish”, and “no mixed fabrics”. In most sects of Christianity, that was the entire POINT of Him dying for our sins, to remove the Old Laws by making a New Covenant where bacon cheeseburgers, lobster, and poly/cotton shirts are allowed. The preachers that harp on about the “no gays” rule typically violate at least a few of the other three.
Also, full disclosure, I’m an atheist but also spend a lot of time in hotels and forget to bring a book to read and sometimes the internet is crap, so I’ve read more of the Bible (the funny parts, anyway) than most people who claim to be Christian.
God Hates Shrimp
Its funny how Fundamentalists are all about that rule but, say, don’t have any problem with divorce or eating shellfish.
Heck, that’s the whole point of the COE is that Henry VIII made his own Protestant religion so he could get a divorce!
Isn’t there something about not remarrying after divorce while the ex is still alive?
According to the sermon at the well or whatever that part is called, you can’t remarry ever, regardless if you got divorced (which isn’t recognised) or widowed*. It’s one of the EXCEEDINGLY FEW parts where Jesus is abundantly clear about something. Another one is, of course, rich people are bad when there’s poor people around their money could help. Funny how Christians ignore all those parts, isn’t it?
*Or maybe that just applies to women and a book written by dudes lets dudes do whatever the fuck they want, I dunno and I don’t care.
Jesus is clear about a lot of things. Ironically, his divorce opinion is also a bit iffier because he says Moses made the law and God cannot have those he brought together torn apart. However, he doesn’t say what is brought together.
And he also says that divorce is an Earthly thing that doesn’t matter in heaven because marriage is unimportant post-death.
– Random Bible stuff
What else is he clear about? Blessed are the cheesemakers.
I look forward to whatever other, mostly unrelated storyline we’re going to spontaneously cut to in the imminent future, to the frustration of the audience… What will it be, I wonder? Personally, I’m hoping for Malaya and Mary bickering.
There is no “b-plot” in this storyline.
You can’t fool me, Willis… Okay you can fool me and you have fooled me many times.
…I still wouldn’t be shocked if we got a strip of QC’s Steve enjoying some cereal >_>.
Sierra hanging out near Blowjob Cat, or Billie editing a Star Wars wikia.
Pretty sure Ethan knows about your dad, Amber.
She doesn’t have to remind her dad of that.
Didn’t necessarily recognize him though. Shown no sign of it (though we haven’t seen much of his reaction.) Remember masks work.
Of course, he might well put it together from what Amber said here – what other adulterous, abusive mobsters does Amber know?
“I’m A Good Christian Person, Just Doing What’s Right” for $1000, Alex.
Welp, I either misread the foreshadowing, it was a red herring, or THIS is a red herring and Ross is still going to come through.
So Mike is doing God’s will?!
With your mom for Nickel.
“Justifying evil acts, does not make those actions Just.”
~ Tenzin Gyatso
Everyone predicting an upcoming F-bomb from Joyce was on the right track but I actually think this quote is much more impactful in this context.
Joyce cannot deliver her first F-bomb until Joe is present. If he was willing to give her $20 for saying “damn”, the F-word must be worth at least a C-note.
Happy Birthday, Willis!
Odd how similar Toedad’s rationalization is to everything the Trumpanzee evangelicals say about that impeached President of theirs.
Oh Please Joyce, KICK. HIS. ASS!
Happy birthday, Willis!
Hulk out. Huuuuuulk OUT!
…This is a stupid plan.
No, I get it, of course it is, but I mean even in comparison to the usual.
They are just going to send the cops on them. At best. What’re they gonna threaten to do as a deterrent, kill the captives? Hurt the captives? That’s just racking up the charges. The cops are still coming. It doesn’t matter how Dumb anyone involved is, Someone is going to report multiple high school students disappearing into thin air during a suspicious fire warning. And US law enforcement isn’t exactly what you’d call gentle when it comes to felonies.
This isn’t going to do anything. It’s just suffering and distress for no practical benefit to anyone.
College students, but yes. That fire alarm would have campus security and emergency responders from the local fire department there, and when a bunch of students turned up missing during the headcount attempts would be made to reach their phones, followed by the police getting involved post haste. This campus has already had an attempted kidnapping of an individual associated with several of the missing persons, and there’s enough of them that this would be treated as a top priority case. Add to that the fact that campuses have cameras all over th eplace and whatever vehicles the kidnappees were loaded in are going to be traced, and Ross is out on bail and would be an immediate person of interest and the plot’s jumped the shark for me at this point.
Just because the police are going to be involved and called once it’s apparent they didn’t leave the fire alarm as a group (and remember Ruth did see them before they disappeared so she may have figured they just left) doesn’t mean stuff can’t happen before they get there.
I think Blaine explicitly intends to kill them all.
How serendipitous God’s Will always matches your base desires MacIntyre.
Also, given how every human is, by definition, an “imperfect vessel” that statement is cometely vacuous.
But, fine. Let’s take a look at what Biblical features match that statement as you meant it.
Off the top of my head I have… Pharoah, Pontius Pilate, Judas, (the second mentioned) Herod and every heathen king whoever conquered Israel.
You know what most Christians would say they all have in common? They were all villains who are currently burning in Hell. Along with whoever followed them (excepting the odd convert).
Or let’s be more generous. Certainly, even God’s favorite people had massive character flaws. Off the top of my head:
King David had a man killed to cover up his own adultery.
King Saul jealously spent some time trying to kill David, turns to witchcraft, and ultimately committed suicide.
And guess what? These are all presented as crimes and sins of which God disapproves.
You’re going to Hell MacIntyre because you believe whatever you decide must be righteous. You lack the will to be able to look at yourself, recognize your sin, and ask God for forgiveness. Much less the will to repent your sins.
The long and short of it MacIntyre is that you don’t worship Christ. You worship an Anti-Christ. You just call him “God”.
also Lot was cool with letting a crowd rape his daughters.
I had honestly forgotten that one (I did remember the other story involving Lot and his daughters).
Yeah. Lot is a pretty controversial figure He was righteous enough for God to save, but he was personally fine living in a city where literally everyone else was deserving of immediate Divine Judgement. He personally went out to protect his guests under his protection from virtually the entire city, but he did so by offering up his daughters instead to placate the mob. Which is all sorts of fucked up honestly even taking into consideration cultural drift and the fact his guests were literal Angels.
His daughters were fine pieces of work themselves. Would have done Cersei Lannister proud.
Most of the Bible seems to go “Women? Meh, who cares?”
I actually think that’s wrong. The Bible had female Judges after all and several books about them. People INTERPRETING the Bible seem to ignore the women, though.
(And yes, I’m not dismissing the sexism in it, just making a note some women drove stakes into the eye of invading kings)
Joyce, honey, I’m throwing up the horns for you right now.
I am sorry but… That reasoning is just too illogical.
I mean you could vote for Robin or some real estate developer with that logic.
Happy birthday!
You best hope those stubby legs of yours can run fast, Toedad.
Nice. What Ross said in panel 6 has been repeated by so many fundamentalists about why they support such an evil man as Donald Trump. I’m glad Willis made that reference.
And what, Ross, is the will of God here?
Can you say anything other than hatred of your daughter?
“I hate my daughter’s sins, not her.” would be the standard Fundie response, usually followed by explaining how it’s all for her own good.
Yep. It cost Leo his friendship (troubled as it was) with Leslie in Shortpacked.
Ross, do you really need to be reminded of who God sided with last time push came to shove?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/strength-2/
You know.
I completely forgot that Ross was perfectly willing to kill in his initial storyline. I forgot that he even said that all of Becky’s friends belong in hell.
I forgot that he hit Becky, and he implied to Joyce’s face that God made it okay for him to hurt her.
I take back everything I said about Ross acting on impulse only.
He also tried to kill amazi-girl in the car chase
Because she tried to stop him. Same with his threat about “putting [Becky’s] friends in hell where they belong”.
Maybe here he’s thinking “I don’t know why we kidnapped these innocent kids, but Blaine says this will get me Becky and I have no reason not to trust him”.
the best part of this is the number of other people in Joyce’s church/home circle that she cares about who would see he language and disrespect here as a far greater sin than anything Ross has done
Also, I’m putting it down now: the first F bomb we get from Joyce is going to be aimed at her mother.
I’m pretty sure that Carol is aware of all of this. Hence the earlier phone call.
I doubt she’s aware of all this. She knew Ross was getting out and would thus be likely to go reclaim Becky, but I doubt she knew anything of Blaine’s plans.
Agreed. First F bomb will be for mama.
Or the Birthday Boy (Bon Anniversaire!) could shock us all, skip that, and move right onto the C-Bomb!
An f-mom, if you will.
(For a nickel.)
How to make every damn line out of his pushbroom-covered mouth sound like a formal, polished preacher-man seems to be the only real skill Ross ever actually worked on…
But hey, the mere appearance of being vaguely smacking of someone capable of living up to whatever plan God *had* for him, rather than going the way of Cerebus smashing the Pigt Statue with it, is just as good as the real thing, right?
Man, I can understand a nervous breakdown, but it’s starting to look like Ross has a similar relationship with reality as your average drug addict. Yeesh.
i think Everyone is radically underestimating the danger of a violent joyce.
if there is a weapon here, there will be blood. ( she already sprained her wrist on this mans face ) .
this is going to be an explosion, if amazigirl and Sarah cant intervene .
This is her Fly to the red, Amazigirl styled creation moment.
( if anyone doubts this, Willis has established parallels between them multiple times. example. ambers social anxiety and Joyces ( due to Ryan ) . Everything she had faith in is being Publicly Violated and perverted into evil by Ross . This is where outrage takes over after insult being pilled on above injury.
What if the rule that’s broken isn’t Mike dying, but rather Ross dying?
No major injuries was also a rule, for the same reason as a death – it’s the kind of thing that lingers in a comic for way too long. So that was probably the broken rule referenced.
If that was a rule, then it was broken years ago when Amber gutted Ryan.
Ryan being injured long term is a benefit for the comic.
From the beginning the rules only applied to characters whom the main cast cared about and would grieve for.
At this point I don’t think any of our main cast would grieve for Ross or Blaine either, so it wouldn’t apply to them as well.
Becky would grieve for her dad, but since her method of handling stuff is to minimize and smother everything in comedy, her trying to come to terms with the whole thing could actually make for a pretty interesting arc.
Perhaps the most terrifying thing about this is how little Ross MacIntyre’s face responds to Joyce’s entirely righteous – his conviction in his own righteousness is, at least visibly, barely even dented by how contradictory his actions are in light of his purported faith.
His mouth just twitched again.
…what about his face makes you see conviction? I see guilt and fear all over it, his words just being the last, desperate efforts at self-delusion he can muster.
…Go to Hell, Ross.
Happy Birthday, Mr. Willis.
I’m wondering what will happen when she remembers that her mother had a hand in all this. That is going to be an inter conversation.
Happy birthday Mr. Willis. And Ross even after hearing all that realizes nothing. May God save him from Joyce then when she gets her hands free.
Happy B-day!
Ross, you should be so scared your pants will soil. Don’t mess with Joyce.
About to feel the wrath of god through Joyce’s imperfect foot, Ross.
You can feel the hand of redemption being slapped away.
Happy B-Damn You Willis day!
To David Willis: Happy Birthday, felicitations, and many happy returns of the stunt to your birthday. The Earth’s Orbit is eccentric, but that’s OK, so’s most of us. Damn fine comic, as usual.
Stunt. Ugh, Supposed to be Sun (which appears to go around the earth, but doesn’t really. It just looks that way, from here.
Well, the sun returns every Winter Solstice. It’s been moving pretty fast lately. It usually slows down as Summer nears.
One could almost get the idea that Joyce is Amazi-Girl.
What would Joyce as a costumed hero in this universe look like? And what would her name be?
When I say “one,” I mean Blaine or Ross.
The Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit?
Oh geez, now i can see Blaine coming to the conclusion that Joyce is Amazi-Girl.
Secretly i’m hoping for Sal having some contrived reason to cover up her face to come fight Blaine, and everyone starts making the assumption that she’s Amazi-Girl.
Like Billie wasn’t assuming Sal was Amazi-Girl already.
Ross definitely has earned at least one kick to the face by now.
Happy increment of earth orbits to our esteemed Author! Any many more to come! (I probably won’t live to see the end of this webcomic, but I want SOME of us to!).
We should all give Joyce our energy like Goku so she can uppercut him in the stratosphere!
Spirit Bomb Away !!
The argument from Christian moral relativism! Happy Birthday David Willis!
Happy birthday Willis.
Joyce’s mom might wanna watch out, because after this adventure I got the feeling Joyce is frikkin’ DONE with this version of the church.
I held out some small hope that Toedad (who is irredeemably bad and horrible and not good at all) would bend a fraction and make himself less horrible than Blaine. Maybe… maybe he still will?
Am I the only one thats offput by how…utterly unconcerned toedad is with the fact that blaine is likely going to kill joyce? or that if he does joyce’s mom will probably make excuses for him, and won’t even feel bad for helping to bail him out?
it’s almost as if they’re bad people.
He’s of the mindset that, “God isn’t stopping this, so that means it’s the right thing to do.” Which then carries over to, “Blaine won’t hurt Joyce because that would be wrong, and God wouldn’t let him.” Which THEN carries over to, “Wow, Blaine hurt Joyce! That sucks, but God didn’t stop it, so that means she was a bad person and/or needed to be hurt to come back to the faith.”
Carol might take Joyce getting hurt as a much-needed boot to the rear and start to re-think her part in this. Ooooor, she might dive even farther off the deep end, and denounce her daughter as “spiritually dead” in order to maintain her own sense of identity as a “good christian”. Unfortunately, speaking from experience… It’s more likely to be the latter.
I love Joyce a lot.
Can feel the whole story – since the beginning – revolving around this point.
Happy Willday, Birthis
Ross, c’mon.
This isn’t really ambiguous at all.
What if he secretly hates himself? If he has no love for himself, then he doesn’t have to love his neighbors, right?
Pretty sure that’s not how it works.
it’s the DOA Universe, where things work differently
Love ya Joyce.
They always have a good excuse, eh ?
How d’ya know Joyce’s foot isn’t an instrument of God’s will, Ross? God’s will on your Faaaace!
This comic is actually very good catharsis in the middle of all the pandemic stuff. I understand if Joyce leaves this without her faith but I really hope she can come out of this with it intact because I could really a use a story with a Christian girl sticking up to her parents’ bigotry and recognizing her faith can actually be different from theirs and exist just as well too.
Thankfully, even if Joyce doesn’t keep her faith, she’s lived the spirit of it in the face of genuine evil.
There’s also Becky.
Joyce forgets that Ross is a monster too. Maybe even worse than Blaine.
She’s making an appeal to his better nature ala Return of the Jedi.
Now Becky’s father is truly dead.
It seems most of the commenters forget that as well.
Blaine is definitely worse. Ross is a violent ass, but thinks he is doing good. Blaine KNOWS he is a bad guy and just doesnt care. He knows Ross is violent and unstable, and Blaine is using Ross like a tool.
Actualmy even thats not enough, Blaine _enjoys_ what he is doing.
Soo…. Joyce is going to go the full Paladin I see.
He was sooooo close to having the bare minimum of a revelation there.
Happy Birthday, Willis!
Congrats on not dying this year!
given how mad joyce is getting i am surprised she said when i stick my foot in your face for i figured she would say when i put my gd foot through your ass for he better prey joyce doesn’t get free or he is going to be in world of pain
She’s new at swearing. But if this doesn’t put a chill in Ross’ spine, he isn’t paying attention.
Happy Birthday dearest Willis!
May the Soggies never get you!
So Blaine is an adulterer, spouse abuser, mob-connected a-hole, who kidnaps children and cheats on his financial arrangements. His cruelty is the point. And a bunch of uber-Christians are fine with that if they get what they want.
No parallel to contemporary America at all. Didn’t see the obvious connection of Blaine / Trump until today. Nicely done.
Child abuser too. His treatment of Amber in the past certainly qualifies. Doesn’t particularly help that parallel, though.
Hasn’t anybody ever told you that God takes responsibility for those who take responsibility for themselves?
Joyce’s church is one of those branches of evangelical Christianity where the central lesson is “faith” allows you to never take responsibility for anything whatsoever.
Oh and God will make you rich as well as protect you from brown people.
It doesn’t matter what universe you’re in. You don’t fuck with Joyce Brown.
Her foot is only an imperfect agent because her toe nail fell off
There she is. Joyce from It’s Walky! People gonna die now.
I will pile on, Happy Birthday Sir Willis. And I am really enjoying this storyline, great work.
Toedad looks depressed. I now dub him Toesad
Happy birthday, Mr. D.Y. Willis!
And when I have destroyed you
I’ll come picking at your bone
And you won’t have a single atom left
To call your own
As someone who doesn’t come from a Christian or white household at all, this comic is really interesting to me. Like, to actually see the arguments get pulled apart and how people think… Obviously I hear in the news, and I know from my friends’ tales of their parents’ behavior, how things like this play out on a surface level… but it’s really amazing to see it all pieced together. All the holey logic, if that makes sense. I really appreciate seeing this narrative told with such detail and care by someone who had once been on the inside of it.
God will use Joyce as His instrument. The Old Testament God.
BUT YOU,
YOU WILL BE WORSE
RIP AND TEAR, UNTIL IT IS DONE