This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Countdown to Countdown
Velinxi
Iris Black is a self-proclaimed inventor with the curious ability to bring his drawings to life, and yearns to find a space where he can use his powers freely.
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Slightly Damned
Chu
Rhea Snaketail returns from the dead, befriending a Demon who falls in love with an Angel. The afterlife ain't what it used to be!
Mac Hall
Matt Boyd
The legendary early-aughts webcomic that inspired a wave of webcomic creators.
2 Slices
RJ Morel
After a case of mistaken identity, will awkward Daisuke find help from excitable Mamo, or will his love life be thrown completely off track?
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Paint the Town Red
Windy, Winter Jay Kiakas
Winona runs a werewolf shelter with partner in crime, Odile in the Gothic city of Merlot. One day they take in an injured vampire, and soon unravels many of the dark secrets of Merlot.
Fantomestein
Beka Duke
Desperate for companionship, Frankenstein's Monster pretends to be the Opera Ghost. A grave mistake.
The Otherknown
Lorian Merriman
Chandra is a 12-year-old accidental time traveler with a reluctant new dad, who happens to be a member of a feared galactic crime syndicate.
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Between exhibiting him nude, depicting him drowning, and now trying to display him in coitus with Satan, I am 150% convinced that this is all some weird scheme by Mary to explore her various kinks with her boyfriend without his knowledge.
Peter: But WHY do I need to wear a Japanese school girl uniform and splash around in a kiddie pool filled with sauerkraut?
Mary: It’s a statement about…evolution being taught in schools. Now shut up and look kawaii!
Daniel here. According to some versions of the Bible (which has been altered & twisted many, many times…) “butt stuff” is OK before marriage, but in others it’s completely on the naughty list…
Speaking of Bible versions: there’s one – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible – which left the word “not” out of “Thou shalt not commit adultery”.
This was probably a mistake, but I don’t like to assume.
If you hadn’t already come to that conclusion… her face in the first panel must have helped you along the way. That’s – I mean – yeah. Yeah she is DEFINITELY into this.
Just look at the dedication these Gal Pals put into showing the evils of queer debauchery, applaud their sacrifice and the amount of tongue they are putting into it!
It does make a lot of sense for this moment to be in a montage of significant “Billie” memories. This is going to be one of the last positive memories of them as a couple before the relationship disintegrates.
The page is in the web archive between April when it posted (literally — there were 3 comments in the first snapshot) and June. None of those snapshots have mary in the tags, but the current page does.
Very sneaky.
(Changes to the tags in the web archive can also be seen for other pages/characters)
I don’t know … just expand it to include Ruth and Billie doin’ the nasty, and you’ve got title and cover all in one.
And it reverses the trend to excessively long titles. Book nine’s title was like an entire freaking paragraph, and book eleven’s title wasn’t all that much shorter.
Well, the speaker of the quote—whether it’s a long one or not—also gets top billing on the book covers. I can understand not wanting Mary to be the most prominent character on the cover (in point of fact, she hasn’t appeared on any covers to date to my knowledge—not even Book 6’s “The Machinations of My Revenge Will Be Cold, Swift, and Absolutely Ridiculous”, which directly involved a Mary-featuring plotline).
So is Becky basically immune to Mary’s awfulness? Like the other exhibits were bad but this one was by Mary’s own admission blatantly intended to shame Becky and homosexual people in general and Becky kind of just took it all on the chin.
Well, for one, she was going in fully expecting this sort of bullshit, so she had time to brace for it, and it’s frankly hard to effectively shame someone if they have no respect for your opinion or judgement. Also, watching Mary flail around trying to maintain control of her own shitty project is hilarious.
Becky’s passive aggression masked with a friendly attitude is the perfect foil to Mary whose looking to get a reaction that she can use to escalate conflict. Becky’s not giving her anything to work with.
Dina is probably too confused to be angry. Mary’s whole belief structure is entirely alien to her, to the point she probably thinks that Mary is either mentally ill or making a joke she can’t quite understand.
I don’t know why your mad Marry they’re giving you exactly what you asked for.
Then only time the Bible seemed to have mentioned any negative direction against gay intimacy was in a verse that said “one most not lay with a man as one would a woman” which in it of itself is unclear. So does that mean one a woman can lay with a woman as they would another woman or man. And how does a one lay with a man as they would a woman it’s not like guys naturally have a vage of their own.
I mean no one who uses the Bible as an excuse to hurt others actual cares about most of what’s in that book. It’s more about using cherry picked lines to enable your own prejudices and occasionally quoting passages when you have nothing original to say at a wedding.
I have come to the conclusion that this is the most accurate way to describe American evangelicals. I keep seeing Atheist and former Christians be better read up on the book so many base the foundation of their entire world view on.
It’s a big book, hugely complex, open to many interpretations, and even sometimes self-contradictory. Plus, it was written many centuries ago, mostly in ancient Aramaic and Greek. Both languages have changed over the centuries. (Most English speakers have trouble understanding Shakespeare with a glossary and liberal footnotes, and that was only about 400 years ago.) Most modern texts are the result of multiple translations, often based on documents reconstructed from fragments. Oh, and various sects don’t even agree on exactly which books are even canon!
Therefore, there’s absolutely no way to base any coherent philosophy on a “literal” reading of the text. So, you can either regard it simply as a general guide rather than a clear and explicit rule book, or you can just emphasize the parts that can be interpreted to promote the beliefs and biases you already have.
Mostly Hebrew and Greek. Part of Daniel and some other little OT book were written in Aramaic. Bart Ehrman said whole books in the Bible were written to contradict other books in the Bible. He didn’t say which ones.
Ezra presents the post-exilic decision to send away non-Jewish wives (and their children) as a major triumph of righteousness, while Ruth (set much earlier but written around the same time) is all about how faithful David’s Moabite great-grandmother was. While the latter doesn’t directly cite Ezra, reading the two together kind of invites the reader to draw their own conclusions about whether somebody was maybe talking out of his arse.
(the theological argument is about the Deuteronomic injunction against intermarriage. Ezra is saying “look how righteous we are for following the letter of the law”, Ruth is retorting with “if they convert to the faith then it’s not intermarriage, and by the way you’re a massive dick for breaking families up.”)
The existence of said sects and which texts are cannon is simply another version of the cherry picking lines to enable your own prejudices, except with even bloodier methods of enforcement. That’s not really a modern phenomenon by any means…
This description gives the impression of far more scholarly confusion than actually exists. Yeah, it’s certainly a complex text, but the differences in canons are fairly minor, with the vast majority of canonical text being common. Modern translations go back to the oldest texts we have and are thus the result of multiple translations. None are reconstructed only from fragments, though ancient fragments are used to consider differences from the earliest complete copies.
Modern sects aren’t really cherry picking canons. It’s not even clear how much that kind of approach was ever used to set canonical texts. It doesn’t seem to be a significant factor in any of the different canons we currently have. Possibly more so in the original disputes over canon.
I’ve actually just read an essay analysing that line the other day! The conclusion there was that it wasn’t intended as forbidding male/male sexual acts in general, but specifically about the idea that the penetrating partner is a role reserved for (adult, free) men and the penetrated partner – for women (or slaves and boys). Therefore, while oral sex or ‘between the thighs’ sex (yeah I didn’t know that had a word for it either) is okay, and so is a free man topping an enslaved man, a free adult man being penetrated anally is forbidden because it amounts to a confusion of the natural order of things, or a mixing of what should be kept separate (rigid gender roles).
It was an interesting read! The essay is “Against Rabbinic Sexuality” by Daniel boyarin. The first half at least, the second is about Sodom.
I was checking to see if anyone else had mentioned this! Yep, there’s context!
(Aaaand there’s me accidentally flagging yet again. Maybe commenting more often would break the muscle memory/Farthest Right Means Reply habit, but uh. That sleep thing.)
Willis insists accidental flaggings are a non-issue, they set a threshold so that only a concerted, deliberate effort to yeet a comment will result in it getting removed. So, not to worry ^^
He said 5 then 10 and then he raised it again apparently, and now no one knows. Honestly I’m skeptical as to how useful this flag feature will prove (has proven???) to be. But surely its a crisis tool, so, TBD.
I quote Pogo. “Org” is something he’d say when he was disconcerted in a weird or creepy way. (Not at the idea of two men making out, but the idea of Peter making out with anyone.)
Mary is, by far, the most fun antagonist in Dumbing of Age (admittedly the second most fun is, like, Toedad, so it’s not a hard title to claim). Even when she’s at her most villainous, there’s like twenty percent of her that’s just Joyce.
She was left relatively toothless after her blackmail leverage got taken away, so the only weapon she has left is annoyance that backfires on her. (Start going off on a holier-than-thou tirade, get HOMPK’d.)
It would be… interesting to see an alternate reality where Joyce was less open-minded and befriended Mary instead of Dorothy. The entire course of the story would’ve been completely different.
Well if there’s no temptation, whats the point in it being a sin? Its like, does god tell you partaking of the Celery is a sin? No, cos celery is boring. God only punishes you for the fun stuff, like being gay and wearing shimmying disco clothes (aka “mixed fabrics”).
Expulsion seems just a little harsh, under the circumstances. It’s not like the occasional bit of inappropriate nudity is unheard of in this environment. They’re free to leave at any time, and it’s not like Peter has even the tiniest bit of power or authority over them. I think a little counseling to maybe not expose himself too anyone who hasn’t clearly indicated they’re okay with it should be sufficient.
My nearly-5 year old nephew’s reaction to my 7 year old trying to explain you don’t show people your pants regions when she wanted some privacy was to flash her.
In his defence, nearly-5 is in fact 4; she didn’t explain why; as his big sister has checked/asserted a few times before changing in front of people, they are all family; and it probably seemed pretty funny to him. (I let my brother know and left the fun of thinking up age-appropriate wording that doesn’t sound like a challenge or skew towards body-shaming so he can explain gently why that isn’t very nice up to him.)
> It’s not like the occasional bit of inappropriate nudity is unheard of in this environment.
It’s also not like this is his personal room, the shower area, a bathroom, or any other place he could reasonably be expected to be naked without it being A Problem. Hell, I’d be more inclined to give him a pass if he were blatantly walking out of Mary’s room post-fuck and, in his dazed state, forgot he was naked still. But this is the girls’ dorm hall, where I think it’s perfectly reasonable for them to expect a lack of exposed cocks. Art doesn’t justify everything, and all that.
It wouldn’t fly in review I don’t think, he was part of an officially registered art exhibition. Nudity in artistic contexts isn’t considered pornographic. You don’t need a disclaimer for Peter’s nudity in the same way you don’t need one for the statue of David.
Nudity isn’t inherently sexual. This wasn’t about sex or about power (at least- the nudity ITSELF was not supposed to include a transference of power, although Mary is trying to… make people afraid in order to gain a level of power, I think?)
This is played up as a form of performance. It is not the same as being flashed. A word of “your intent doesn’t change the fact that some people would be deeply discomforted (or worse) by seeing that”, sure, but expulsion…? As much as he seems to be Mary Lite, that particular “crime”, to me, isn’t the thing to be punished for, imo.
(This whole display- which is clearly more Mary’s work- on the other hand…)
But its not bad because it aims at ticking people off, or because its horny.
Those are fine motivations for creating stuff.
It IS bad, because of the hate speech though.
I think it’s less about trying to make Becky mad and more about doing kink stuff with Peter.
Sort of similar to Joyce, Mary isn’t actually that religious when you dig a little, she just uses it as an excuse to do want she wants, which is to demand people respect her.
I feel like, maybe not within the timespan at the comic but at some point in a hypothetical future, Mary is going to digivolve into Ricky Gervais, where she becomes Athiest and it somehow makes her worse.
Mary is doing the “Lucy Van Pelt’s mischievous smile” in the first panel. Good! But this Hell House is really disappointing. She had months to prepare it and there’s not even a single drawing, just Peter in different positions doing weird things, probably against his will, in ridiculous sets. This is the proof that Mary is not an artist at all. Kinda sad.
At what point do we discover that Ruth quickly and efficiently tied/handcuffed Peter to something to reserve the sex altar for her and Billie? (I assume as she is tagged as Billie this is the best way to refer to her here?)
I doubt it took much to convince him to let them have it. He goes along with Mary’s plans, and both Billiefer and Ruth are each about 50 times as intimidating as she is.
That’d require A. Someone to have told Mary gossip that would destroy Billie/Ruth’s relationship, and B. Mary to have sat on it instead of using it immediately, neither of which seem very plausible.
Also, IMO, Mary’s kind of a Team Rocket-tier evil, where she’s clearly a bad person but also it’s kind of fun when she’s around and other characters can plausibly hang out with her like this. But if she gets any more evil than she’ll be interchangeable with any of the other DoA villains except characters can ignore her, so there’d be no point having her in the comic anymore and you might as well just kill her off.
Yeah but she’s not a congressperson’s relative getting naked or a douchebag rating women, and nobody’s recording this, so nobody’s gonna care. Ryan went around drugging girls all day and night and the only consequences he ever faced were a cup to the head and a mild case of spaghettification, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he still gets to come back if he recovers from being pasta.
OK so full disclosure I’m pretty stoned, rn, but I think this is one of those rare ones where that makes it the right state to post random stuff publicly, at least… I think so now.
I’m losing my shit over this one piece by Chris Clark from his album Iradelphic:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=92I_q0ZwlKY (not attempting HTML embedding in this state)
The tones are as gnarly and textured as anything by Autechre, but the deconstructed rhythm feels obscenely organic, while the filters slowly, inexorably bring these cold, glassy chords to the fore and they’re kind of suffocatingly unembodied, but also sublime and… cleansing maybe, its like a different philosophy of sensuality.
Interesting that this is the last “Billie?” From the Billie montage panels. At the time there was a lot of theory the wrong person had walked in on them kicking off the Billie/Ruth disaster, but seems it’s whatever goes down when Ruth breaks up with her that kicks off her new era. The thing I’m most intrigued about is not Asher or the name change even but her totally going back on being bi. I guess it’s probably a “old me = Billie, bi, sucks” and “new me = Jennifer, straight, cool” but still sort of waiting to see how this goes down given she’s doing fine at the moment….
I don’t recall anything suggesting that Jennifer went back to her given first name as a rejection of being bi, nor that she has repudiated that she was attracted to Ruth.
OK, so I went back and checked and that is what she says — but she doesn’t say she was never attracted to Ruth.
I think “weird phase” is ambiguous enough that it might just mean the whole dysfunctional aspect of her relationship to Ruth — the codependency, the aggressive rages, the cycles of self-destructiveness and the descents into depression, the switching dom-sub aspect, and most of all, the alcoholism — everything that made their time together a doomed mess regardless of their queerness.
But I guess that it can also be interpreted to include the queer aspect itself.
Of course, she only barely accepted that she was queer at all. I don’t think she’s ever used the term “bi” or any variant for herself. The closest she came was before that date with Ruth, when Becky confronted her.
So even if she’s calling herself straight now – which I don’t think she’s actually done either, that’s not necessarily a change.
Oh no you’re right! It wasn’t a scary memory of getting caught, it was a sad memory of when she was happy with Ruth before everything blew up. She loved Ruth and when Ruth rejected her she felt foolish, that’s why she ran off to Asher and Ruth was just “a stupid phase I was going through”.
An evil thought that I had was that Billie and Ruth would enter and see the first exhibit with naked Peter (which probably wouldn’t “work” because Mary probably has to be there to make sure that the lighting is directed properly), and Billie would say. “Huh. Naked dude. . . Wanna see if we can give him a boner?”, and start making out with Ruth there.
In the current scenario, it might be that things worked out that way in reverse: Ruth and Billie walked in, found the queer sex altar, didn’t even notice Peter nearby, and started petting right there. And Peter is hiding out after seeing them because he has a boner he is either trying to kill or to choke.
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Who called “Hell YEAH House“??
(Also, they’re adding to the AUTHENTICITY)
Dum ing of Age Book 666
: Neat!
Mary quote aside, “Bewitching Carnality of Queer Debauchery” *is* a good book title!
I was assuming “Stop Desecrating My Exhibit on Queer Debauchery!”
I’m fond of “In our defense, the sign on the sex altar says Don’t.”
It occurred to me that it is open to interpretation which of Mary’s lines DW was referring to.
All of them.
That is a **fantastic** book title.
Between exhibiting him nude, depicting him drowning, and now trying to display him in coitus with Satan, I am 150% convinced that this is all some weird scheme by Mary to explore her various kinks with her boyfriend without his knowledge.
Peter: But WHY do I need to wear a Japanese school girl uniform and splash around in a kiddie pool filled with sauerkraut?
Mary: It’s a statement about…evolution being taught in schools. Now shut up and look kawaii!
Ah, my hypothesis as well Doctor!
Great alien minds think alike i guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Great minds run in the same channel. Fools think alike.
He might have caught on at least partially but he’s convinced himself it’s increasing his chances of actually getting laid.
I assumed Mary was fucking him very early, she doesn’t have good impulse control.
I’m sure there’s some loophole in the rules she could find.
Daniel here. According to some versions of the Bible (which has been altered & twisted many, many times…) “butt stuff” is OK before marriage, but in others it’s completely on the naughty list…
Speaking of Bible versions: there’s one – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible – which left the word “not” out of “Thou shalt not commit adultery”.
This was probably a mistake, but I don’t like to assume.
There totally is a loophole…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ZF_R_j0OY
If you hadn’t already come to that conclusion… her face in the first panel must have helped you along the way. That’s – I mean – yeah. Yeah she is DEFINITELY into this.
I was going to suggest that Peter is still changing into his costume, but I’ll admit I like your explanation more.
I like the optimism of that “into”, there, and am desperately hoping it’s right.
Welp, my aim may have been a bit off, but it looks like my Horny Hypnosis actually worked this time!
And I am LOVING the result!
*plays “Closer” by 9 Inch Nails on hacked muzak*
Dude, what?
it was supposed to be for the party including Fuckface:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/alternative-3/#comment-1647995
Honestly them making out is probably better. Mary should just take the win. Perfectly acceptable hell house of sin 7/10. Would sin again.
Just look at the dedication these Gal Pals put into showing the evils of queer debauchery, applaud their sacrifice and the amount of tongue they are putting into it!
I remember that frame!
Oh damn! Thanks for pointing that out.
Dang, good eye!
Chekhov’s flashback!
It does make a lot of sense for this moment to be in a montage of significant “Billie” memories. This is going to be one of the last positive memories of them as a couple before the relationship disintegrates.
Possibly the last. We know from multiple sources that they’re breaking up tonight, and not in an amicable way.
Don’t think anyone guessed that the speaker was Mary
Huh! Was Mary always tagged or did Willis add her today?? I think the latter, seeing as a noone I’m that strip’s comment seksh seems to have noticed
Definitely the latter
The page is in the web archive between April when it posted (literally — there were 3 comments in the first snapshot) and June. None of those snapshots have mary in the tags, but the current page does.
Very sneaky.
(Changes to the tags in the web archive can also be seen for other pages/characters)
Yo, dog, we heard you like flashbacks, so we put…
Wow!
That’s why Willis should edited this page in the last minute (I’ve seen the page without the part with kiss).
You’re a detective!
I love you guys that remember everything
“Bewitching carnality of queer debauchery.” Well no wonder Billie and Ruth started making out there, with an invitation like that.
Indeed.
I feel like I’m back in the Ooku.
I never heard Ooku used like that before. I love it.
Forgot they bailed ASAP.
Yeah, I can’t let Panel 2 be a book title. Too… inglorious to be featured.
I don’t know … just expand it to include Ruth and Billie doin’ the nasty, and you’ve got title and cover all in one.
And it reverses the trend to excessively long titles. Book nine’s title was like an entire freaking paragraph, and book eleven’s title wasn’t all that much shorter.
Well, the speaker of the quote—whether it’s a long one or not—also gets top billing on the book covers. I can understand not wanting Mary to be the most prominent character on the cover (in point of fact, she hasn’t appeared on any covers to date to my knowledge—not even Book 6’s “The Machinations of My Revenge Will Be Cold, Swift, and Absolutely Ridiculous”, which directly involved a Mary-featuring plotline).
check again inside the partially-opened door behind ruth and billie
Very sneaky!
How many times has she watched the Montero video, anyway?
Clearly not enough or she would have sat the mannequin on a throne, and had Peter give it a lap dance.
While Mary is far from my favourite character this has been an interesting experience
So is Becky basically immune to Mary’s awfulness? Like the other exhibits were bad but this one was by Mary’s own admission blatantly intended to shame Becky and homosexual people in general and Becky kind of just took it all on the chin.
I am wondering why Becky is here in the first place. The whole exhibit is a reminder of all the bullshit she chose to leave behind
Becky isn’t afraid of Mary.
She probably regards it as a chance to call out and ridicule said bull shit.
Why do they watch bad movies on MST3K?
IIRC they are trying to force him to leave and forfeit his pay.
nah, they’re Mads. They’re trying to find the worst, most mind-destroyingly awful movie so they can weaponize it and Conquer the World.
But how does he eat and breathe, and other science facts?
Well, for one, she was going in fully expecting this sort of bullshit, so she had time to brace for it, and it’s frankly hard to effectively shame someone if they have no respect for your opinion or judgement. Also, watching Mary flail around trying to maintain control of her own shitty project is hilarious.
Becky’s passive aggression masked with a friendly attitude is the perfect foil to Mary whose looking to get a reaction that she can use to escalate conflict. Becky’s not giving her anything to work with.
on the other hand, Dina may maul her at any moment.
Dina is probably too confused to be angry. Mary’s whole belief structure is entirely alien to her, to the point she probably thinks that Mary is either mentally ill or making a joke she can’t quite understand.
Well belief in things provably false is a mental illness.
Just like Dorothy dealing with Jerk-Becky.
At the moment, Dorothy is pulling the rug out from under Amber.
Becky’s been kidnapped at gunpoint by her own dad, Mary’s theatrics ain’t got shit on that.
Right, Mary is beneath her contempt and probably difficult for her to take terribly seriously. I assume she has no real respect for her to speak of.
I don’t know why your mad Marry they’re giving you exactly what you asked for.
Then only time the Bible seemed to have mentioned any negative direction against gay intimacy was in a verse that said “one most not lay with a man as one would a woman” which in it of itself is unclear. So does that mean one a woman can lay with a woman as they would another woman or man. And how does a one lay with a man as they would a woman it’s not like guys naturally have a vage of their own.
I just don’t think Mary knows what she wants.
I have read that the original Hebrew says, “You shall not have the lyings of a man in the lyings of a woman.” Don’t ask me what it means.
Well now I’m even more confused and it sounded like it had nothing to do with gay love making to begin with.
Without context, if I’d been asked what that meant I’d have guessed it either had to do with beds or with the preparation of corpses.
I mean no one who uses the Bible as an excuse to hurt others actual cares about most of what’s in that book. It’s more about using cherry picked lines to enable your own prejudices and occasionally quoting passages when you have nothing original to say at a wedding.
I have come to the conclusion that this is the most accurate way to describe American evangelicals. I keep seeing Atheist and former Christians be better read up on the book so many base the foundation of their entire world view on.
It’s a big book, hugely complex, open to many interpretations, and even sometimes self-contradictory. Plus, it was written many centuries ago, mostly in ancient Aramaic and Greek. Both languages have changed over the centuries. (Most English speakers have trouble understanding Shakespeare with a glossary and liberal footnotes, and that was only about 400 years ago.) Most modern texts are the result of multiple translations, often based on documents reconstructed from fragments. Oh, and various sects don’t even agree on exactly which books are even canon!
Therefore, there’s absolutely no way to base any coherent philosophy on a “literal” reading of the text. So, you can either regard it simply as a general guide rather than a clear and explicit rule book, or you can just emphasize the parts that can be interpreted to promote the beliefs and biases you already have.
Mostly Hebrew and Greek. Part of Daniel and some other little OT book were written in Aramaic. Bart Ehrman said whole books in the Bible were written to contradict other books in the Bible. He didn’t say which ones.
Ezra presents the post-exilic decision to send away non-Jewish wives (and their children) as a major triumph of righteousness, while Ruth (set much earlier but written around the same time) is all about how faithful David’s Moabite great-grandmother was. While the latter doesn’t directly cite Ezra, reading the two together kind of invites the reader to draw their own conclusions about whether somebody was maybe talking out of his arse.
(the theological argument is about the Deuteronomic injunction against intermarriage. Ezra is saying “look how righteous we are for following the letter of the law”, Ruth is retorting with “if they convert to the faith then it’s not intermarriage, and by the way you’re a massive dick for breaking families up.”)
The existence of said sects and which texts are cannon is simply another version of the cherry picking lines to enable your own prejudices, except with even bloodier methods of enforcement. That’s not really a modern phenomenon by any means…
This description gives the impression of far more scholarly confusion than actually exists. Yeah, it’s certainly a complex text, but the differences in canons are fairly minor, with the vast majority of canonical text being common. Modern translations go back to the oldest texts we have and are thus the result of multiple translations. None are reconstructed only from fragments, though ancient fragments are used to consider differences from the earliest complete copies.
Modern sects aren’t really cherry picking canons. It’s not even clear how much that kind of approach was ever used to set canonical texts. It doesn’t seem to be a significant factor in any of the different canons we currently have. Possibly more so in the original disputes over canon.
It is all good as long as you don’t fuck a man in the vagina. Obviously.
(Yes I am aware that it is possible for a man to have a vagina, but the joke doesn’t work otherwise…)
ALSO, Mary is angry because she can’t get off at Billie and Ruth making out like she can with Peter making out with Satan(‘s mannequin)
I can see that now.
Oh, Hellsing Abridged.
Shhhh don’t want people knowing I’m a hack
I read the original texts forbid sex with boys.
I’ve actually just read an essay analysing that line the other day! The conclusion there was that it wasn’t intended as forbidding male/male sexual acts in general, but specifically about the idea that the penetrating partner is a role reserved for (adult, free) men and the penetrated partner – for women (or slaves and boys). Therefore, while oral sex or ‘between the thighs’ sex (yeah I didn’t know that had a word for it either) is okay, and so is a free man topping an enslaved man, a free adult man being penetrated anally is forbidden because it amounts to a confusion of the natural order of things, or a mixing of what should be kept separate (rigid gender roles).
It was an interesting read! The essay is “Against Rabbinic Sexuality” by Daniel boyarin. The first half at least, the second is about Sodom.
If a gay man can’t lay with another man as he can with a woman, does that mean gay sex is ok if both participants are standing?
Also, I believe we now have the context for the penultimate panel of this strip! https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/04-dont-stop-billie-ving/billie/
You know, it’s not as dramatic as I would have hoped, but nicely spotted.
I was checking to see if anyone else had mentioned this! Yep, there’s context!
(Aaaand there’s me accidentally flagging yet again. Maybe commenting more often would break the muscle memory/Farthest Right Means Reply habit, but uh. That sleep thing.)
Willis insists accidental flaggings are a non-issue, they set a threshold so that only a concerted, deliberate effort to yeet a comment will result in it getting removed. So, not to worry ^^
I think the threshold where something actually happens is 5 or 10.
He said 5 then 10 and then he raised it again apparently, and now no one knows. Honestly I’m skeptical as to how useful this flag feature will prove (has proven???) to be. But surely its a crisis tool, so, TBD.
Hopefully we don’t need it.
*need to use it, that is.
Peter needs to come out on Halloween and make out with Ethan.
org
“peterneedstocomeoutonhalloweenandmakeoutwithethan.org”? That’s a mouthful of a website name.
I quote Pogo. “Org” is something he’d say when he was disconcerted in a weird or creepy way. (Not at the idea of two men making out, but the idea of Peter making out with anyone.)
I’m a native Bridgeporter and have owned a number of Pogo books. Consider this an upvote.
This would be the perfect time for Ethan to stop giving a fuck and just start breaking hearts left and right.
It’s what Mike would have wanted
LOL
So this confirm Mary as a fujoshi uh
“The bewitching carnality of queer debauchery” is just Maryspeak for “yaoi”
Are you certain that it isn’t a band name?
It’s a yaoi band name
No Mary quote is fine, but I do note also that “In our defense, the sign on this sex altar says ‘Don’t'” would do just fine.
Mary is, by far, the most fun antagonist in Dumbing of Age (admittedly the second most fun is, like, Toedad, so it’s not a hard title to claim). Even when she’s at her most villainous, there’s like twenty percent of her that’s just Joyce.
She was left relatively toothless after her blackmail leverage got taken away, so the only weapon she has left is annoyance that backfires on her. (Start going off on a holier-than-thou tirade, get HOMPK’d.)
It would be… interesting to see an alternate reality where Joyce was less open-minded and befriended Mary instead of Dorothy. The entire course of the story would’ve been completely different.
I think that’s just the standard American Evangelical experience at college.
Dumbing of Age, Book 11: YOU’RE Supposed To Be The One On Top Of The Satan Mannequin
Hovertext already said no (since the speaker of the quote gets top billing on the cover art, I’m guessing).
Also just noting, we’re in the final chapter of Book 12, not 11. xD
Hmm, Mary finds the prospect of a dude making out with Satan, *another* dude, to be ‘bewitching’ does she…?
Well if there’s no temptation, whats the point in it being a sin? Its like, does god tell you partaking of the Celery is a sin? No, cos celery is boring. God only punishes you for the fun stuff, like being gay and wearing shimmying disco clothes (aka “mixed fabrics”).
Oh, and for being a woman. Duh.
Billie’s :3 face is too cute.
I really hope Peter gets justifiably expelled for exposing his genitals to people without their consent.
Expulsion seems just a little harsh, under the circumstances. It’s not like the occasional bit of inappropriate nudity is unheard of in this environment. They’re free to leave at any time, and it’s not like Peter has even the tiniest bit of power or authority over them. I think a little counseling to maybe not expose himself too anyone who hasn’t clearly indicated they’re okay with it should be sufficient.
Dude. DUDE. Most children learn by the age of five, six TOPS, that they aren’t supposed to expose their genitals to people.
If Peter has not learned that by now, a little counseling is not enough.
My nearly-5 year old nephew’s reaction to my 7 year old trying to explain you don’t show people your pants regions when she wanted some privacy was to flash her.
In his defence, nearly-5 is in fact 4; she didn’t explain why; as his big sister has checked/asserted a few times before changing in front of people, they are all family; and it probably seemed pretty funny to him. (I let my brother know and left the fun of thinking up age-appropriate wording that doesn’t sound like a challenge or skew towards body-shaming so he can explain gently why that isn’t very nice up to him.)
That’s a shocking amount of justification as to why a *grown adult* should get a pass for willingly flashing people his genitals
> It’s not like the occasional bit of inappropriate nudity is unheard of in this environment.
It’s also not like this is his personal room, the shower area, a bathroom, or any other place he could reasonably be expected to be naked without it being A Problem. Hell, I’d be more inclined to give him a pass if he were blatantly walking out of Mary’s room post-fuck and, in his dazed state, forgot he was naked still. But this is the girls’ dorm hall, where I think it’s perfectly reasonable for them to expect a lack of exposed cocks. Art doesn’t justify everything, and all that.
It wouldn’t fly in review I don’t think, he was part of an officially registered art exhibition. Nudity in artistic contexts isn’t considered pornographic. You don’t need a disclaimer for Peter’s nudity in the same way you don’t need one for the statue of David.
It’s a girls’ dorm hall, not an art museum.
Nudity isn’t inherently sexual. This wasn’t about sex or about power (at least- the nudity ITSELF was not supposed to include a transference of power, although Mary is trying to… make people afraid in order to gain a level of power, I think?)
This is played up as a form of performance. It is not the same as being flashed. A word of “your intent doesn’t change the fact that some people would be deeply discomforted (or worse) by seeing that”, sure, but expulsion…? As much as he seems to be Mary Lite, that particular “crime”, to me, isn’t the thing to be punished for, imo.
(This whole display- which is clearly more Mary’s work- on the other hand…)
(Actually just after I posted that, I realised that Mary’s goal is proooobably to make people angry… and be lustful herself on the way.)
But its not bad because it aims at ticking people off, or because its horny.
Those are fine motivations for creating stuff.
It IS bad, because of the hate speech though.
I’m not sure how that’s a defense, Ruth, but you do you.
Or you do Billie, whatev.
oh shit
Now Mary’s threat just got a lot more serious. Did she try to legit kill them?
…how did you get to that?
There was a genuine smile creeping on her face…how much yoi anime hentai do you think Mary has stashed away somewhere?
All of it.
I think “In our defense, the sin on the sex alter says ‘don’t'” would be an amazing title for book 12
*sign lmao
By Mary’s lights at least, they’re definitely sinning on the sex altar.
You do have to admit “behold the bewitching carnality of queer debauchery” is a stellar book title though.
It is an excellent book title, and spoken by any other character? Would 100% be acceptable. but with Mary? it loses all the coolness
Oh ooooh Dumbing of age book 12 title!?
Per Word of God, nope.
Oh wait, I saw the hover text damn it.
Sounds like the title to a slipshine collection
They definitely could have that as a Slipshine title.
Neat-o!
Mary, all your work to make Becky loose her cool isn’t working. You should have talked to Joyce.
I think it’s less about trying to make Becky mad and more about doing kink stuff with Peter.
Sort of similar to Joyce, Mary isn’t actually that religious when you dig a little, she just uses it as an excuse to do want she wants, which is to demand people respect her.
I feel like, maybe not within the timespan at the comic but at some point in a hypothetical future, Mary is going to digivolve into Ricky Gervais, where she becomes Athiest and it somehow makes her worse.
This hell house just isn’t a hell home without some queer debauchery! …And Satan?
Having some mid eighties SNL flashbacks here.
PERSEPHONE, I’M HERE TO SAVE YOU FROM THIS PLACE OF DEBAUCHERY!
Mary, Mary, Mary. You’re a live presenter interacting with an audience of hecklers and you don’t even know the first rule of improv.
You say YES-and, not STOP-don’t!
She’s got a rock-solid defense.
Becky with a shirt that says “Lesbians” looking through a window and going “YES…HA HA HA…YES!”
I’d say “get fucked Mary” but I wouldn’t wish her on any man, woman, non-binary person, or anyone else for that matter.
I wouldn’t wish her on vegetables!
Bewitching Carnality of Queer Debauchery is the name of my Creed cover band.
Queer debauchery on the sex altar? That’s even worse than fighting in the war room!
Mary is doing the “Lucy Van Pelt’s mischievous smile” in the first panel. Good! But this Hell House is really disappointing. She had months to prepare it and there’s not even a single drawing, just Peter in different positions doing weird things, probably against his will, in ridiculous sets. This is the proof that Mary is not an artist at all. Kinda sad.
At what point do we discover that Ruth quickly and efficiently tied/handcuffed Peter to something to reserve the sex altar for her and Billie? (I assume as she is tagged as Billie this is the best way to refer to her here?)
…now you’ve got me wondering whether the “Billie” tag is a muscle-memory mistake. It only shows up for two strips, and this is one of them.
Seems like it probably is. If it was all the flashback strips, that might make sense, but with just the last two it seems like it’s probably an error.
I didn’t notice on the previous one and it doesn’t look like anyone else commented on it.
Check the alt-text for the first flashback strip with Billie in it.
Once again Willis playing 4D chess. Damn him!
Except she’s tagged as Jennifer there, and in the strip following. It’s only a few strips later that the tags abruptly switch to “Billie”?
I doubt it took much to convince him to let them have it. He goes along with Mary’s plans, and both Billiefer and Ruth are each about 50 times as intimidating as she is.
I say she German suplexed him into a trash can and he is stuck there!
I’m not trusting it. I’m getting real worried all this fun will end with Mary being able to share something truly hurtful.
That’d require A. Someone to have told Mary gossip that would destroy Billie/Ruth’s relationship, and B. Mary to have sat on it instead of using it immediately, neither of which seem very plausible.
Also, IMO, Mary’s kind of a Team Rocket-tier evil, where she’s clearly a bad person but also it’s kind of fun when she’s around and other characters can plausibly hang out with her like this. But if she gets any more evil than she’ll be interchangeable with any of the other DoA villains except characters can ignore her, so there’d be no point having her in the comic anymore and you might as well just kill her off.
“In our defense, desecration is kind of our thing”
“In our defense, you being pissed off by this is so hot”
“In our defense, what did you expect???”
None of those are actually defences
In my defence, i’m a raving ding-dong
Some GREAT maryfaces in this one=)
Key question: Is Mary shipping her boyfriend with Satan?
Don’t interrupt people mid-debauch, Mary. That’s just rude.
“The bewitching carnality” lmao mary……
I guess it’s only acceptable if it’s male queer debauchery, not female queer debauchery.
well, of course it’s more shocking to Mary’s sensibilities*
*or more titillating to her deeply-suppressed desires
Lesbians
That’s a shame. “Stop desecrating my exhibit on queer debauchery” is an excellent title for the entire series.
I’m pretty sure she can get kicked out of the university for this, it officially crossed the line into discrimination and possibly hate speech
Yeah but she’s not a congressperson’s relative getting naked or a douchebag rating women, and nobody’s recording this, so nobody’s gonna care. Ryan went around drugging girls all day and night and the only consequences he ever faced were a cup to the head and a mild case of spaghettification, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he still gets to come back if he recovers from being pasta.
Whoops, accidentally hit report. Anywho:
Ryan was julienned, not spaghettified, keep you kitchen metaphors straight.
You get a bunch of little strands either way.
She could, but most likely no one’s going to complain. None of the kids who’ve seen it are really the type to escalate to the authorities.
And yet we know she’s still there because she appeared post-skip.
It’s Indiana, this is progressive by their standards.
I believe this is the party that Joe was looking for…
Why are you upset Mary? They’re making your shitty hell house much better.
I mean, yeah, that’s on you Mary. At that point they had no choice.
i love how mary can’t see the forest for the trees.
“get this gay sh*& out of here so my boyfriend can make out with a satan mannequin, thus mimicking gay sh**”
i think mary is actually getting off on this.
the boyfriend naked in public, the making out with satan… does she have a “Sin” fetish?
So is Satan supposed to look a little like the Satan from Sinfest? Because that would actually make a weird sort of sense.
It looks like a CPR training dummy wearing a devil horn beanie to me.
OK so full disclosure I’m pretty stoned, rn, but I think this is one of those rare ones where that makes it the right state to post random stuff publicly, at least… I think so now.
I’m losing my shit over this one piece by Chris Clark from his album Iradelphic:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=92I_q0ZwlKY (not attempting HTML embedding in this state)
The tones are as gnarly and textured as anything by Autechre, but the deconstructed rhythm feels obscenely organic, while the filters slowly, inexorably bring these cold, glassy chords to the fore and they’re kind of suffocatingly unembodied, but also sublime and… cleansing maybe, its like a different philosophy of sensuality.
Listen its 2min long, go listen to it
Interesting that this is the last “Billie?” From the Billie montage panels. At the time there was a lot of theory the wrong person had walked in on them kicking off the Billie/Ruth disaster, but seems it’s whatever goes down when Ruth breaks up with her that kicks off her new era. The thing I’m most intrigued about is not Asher or the name change even but her totally going back on being bi. I guess it’s probably a “old me = Billie, bi, sucks” and “new me = Jennifer, straight, cool” but still sort of waiting to see how this goes down given she’s doing fine at the moment….
I don’t recall anything suggesting that Jennifer went back to her given first name as a rejection of being bi, nor that she has repudiated that she was attracted to Ruth.
She specifically responds to Becky’s suggestion she might still have the hots for Ruth as “that was just a weird phase I was going through”
OK, so I went back and checked and that is what she says — but she doesn’t say she was never attracted to Ruth.
I think “weird phase” is ambiguous enough that it might just mean the whole dysfunctional aspect of her relationship to Ruth — the codependency, the aggressive rages, the cycles of self-destructiveness and the descents into depression, the switching dom-sub aspect, and most of all, the alcoholism — everything that made their time together a doomed mess regardless of their queerness.
But I guess that it can also be interpreted to include the queer aspect itself.
Of course, she only barely accepted that she was queer at all. I don’t think she’s ever used the term “bi” or any variant for herself. The closest she came was before that date with Ruth, when Becky confronted her.
So even if she’s calling herself straight now – which I don’t think she’s actually done either, that’s not necessarily a change.
Oh no you’re right! It wasn’t a scary memory of getting caught, it was a sad memory of when she was happy with Ruth before everything blew up. She loved Ruth and when Ruth rejected her she felt foolish, that’s why she ran off to Asher and Ruth was just “a stupid phase I was going through”.
An evil thought that I had was that Billie and Ruth would enter and see the first exhibit with naked Peter (which probably wouldn’t “work” because Mary probably has to be there to make sure that the lighting is directed properly), and Billie would say. “Huh. Naked dude. . . Wanna see if we can give him a boner?”, and start making out with Ruth there.
In the current scenario, it might be that things worked out that way in reverse: Ruth and Billie walked in, found the queer sex altar, didn’t even notice Peter nearby, and started petting right there. And Peter is hiding out after seeing them because he has a boner he is either trying to kill or to choke.
I love those two
Channeling Bender and I love it.
How long before Peter gets sick of her $#!7 and gets out of that relationship?
He needs to have spontaneous unexpected drunken sex with Carla and just watch Mary’s head explode when she walks in on them.
I figured that was why he wasn’t at the exhibit. Because he has gotten tired of her b/s and decided he was out.
It’s hard to bone Satan when you’re missing your fevers.
*femers
No no no, I demand a book title quote AND a Mary magnet! Demand, I say! JUSTICE FOR MARY!
Do you have a petition that we can
point and laugh atsign?I almost did, but I couldn’t stop giggling long enough to print it.
I’d buy a Mary magnet tho!
Mary doesn’t understand her audience very well, does she?