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Yeah but after the first month the price rises I pay 135 for a 10×20 outdoor they can be lower but I pretty sure Carol would make Joyce pay for the unit.
Biggest problem for Joyce, besides paying the monthly rent, is trying to get material back and forth to the storage unit. The only person I’ve seen with a vehicle is Sal and her motorcycle. There doesn’t even seen to be a bicycle between the rest of them.
Carla doesn’t have “I drive a car” money, she has “I am driven in a car” money.
The only student with a car we’ve seen is Sydney and their first-generation Prius. There’s also Asher and his motorcycle, but those aren’t known for their junk-hauling suitability.
Maybe Joyce can call a ride share, or get a moving dolly.
Vehicle ownership for first years seems limited, so her options are Sarah (no), Ruth (no), Carla (yes but you don’t want to ask her) and a bunch of incidental characters she’s not really friends with.
Yeah, Danny grooming Sal with gifts was like, vital to the start of their dating-style relationship. He was super manipulative and possessive about it, too. I’m surprised it didn’t stick more.
I’m only relaying the #discourse. Certain events in this comic stay stuck in my brain because partway through them and with no apparent cause, somebody will come up with the wildest fucking thing I’ve ever read and treat it like it’s been canon all along.
But going back and forth to the storage unit isn’t really necessary – not once you’ve got your stuff there. It’s all stuff that was sitting in her mom’s house anyway. Nothing she was needing regularly.
And how many months could it be before she’s remarried and”evenly yoked” as the cult calls it with a new house with plenty of space for a few boxes? No, the main mission here is bothering Joyce, as has been suggested. Carol is the main character in her morality play, the idea her family may not want to talk to her makes no sense, so obviously she will take the slightest excuse to bother them because that’s what they’re there for.
Pretty much, yeah. “I drove four hours ti get you these” and couldn’t, you know, call ahead and tell her you don’t have the space to store stuff anymore?
(Also, ffs “to save these” lady cant stop guilt tripping for two seconds straight can she)
I wager dumping this stuff on her is both a way to communicate to her the news AND subtly punish her for whatever blame she assigns to her for the divorce.
Not to punish her, I think. To win her favor, try to become the good parent, the ‘winner’ of the divorce. “*I* had to sell the house because of what your *father* did divorcing *me*, but *I* am out of the goodness of my heart trying my hardest to salvage this situation for you.”
If she “sold” it to the church, it may as well be a nickel. Also, is the divorce even finalized? That’s crazy fast for one after an established marriage. And she likely doesn’t /didn’t have the right to sell it unilaterally if the divorce ain’t final.
Joyce ended up in this situation because her mother is a dangerous individual that will justify anything, including violence against her daughter, if it is for the ‘greater good of her soul’ and for no other reason.
Aaaaaaaaaand there’s the emotional manipulator we all know and hate. Only took, what, three strips for her to be awful? Not that that’s a new record for her, no.
well i can imagine joyce being attached to the childhood home she grew up in , but other than an immediate living situation being an issue after graduating, it might be better/easier to move on if the house is gone
Were we reading different comics? The emotional bullshit started in the first panel of her reappearance. Carol arrived unannounced, not for nice surprise but to ambush Joyce by dumping all of her belongings on her. The house was the important neglected information, but being deliberately fucking weird was right there in Carol’s reappearance: panel 1. Being vague and making people work to understand what is going on is just part of Carol’s abuse toolkit.
That’s exactly what I thought. She couldn’t call Joyce and set this up? Let her know what was happening and make a plan? Nope! Just show up and guilt her intensely.
My parents had four kids. They’ve never REALLY lived alone since at least one of us have found a reason to keep living with them one way or another, so it’s been a revolving door of them at least having someone to bugger.
We worry about the day when we all finally leave and they’ll have a big house to themselves (we’ve tried to persuade them to downsize to no avail).
If they have a house downsizing is the stupidest thing they could do economically. Have them rent out to people. It gets others in the house and makes them a shit ton of passive income for their retirement. Really, anyone who can afford to sell property is very privileged.
Iirc that is literally what Willis’ own mother did, sooo… it depends on how autobiographical Joyce’s current arc is. I’m guessing even if the logistics are different the emotions are drawn from experience.
Writing has a tendency to be like. 50% mining/exorcising your own pain experiences somewhat, at the very least. The rest is imagination, putting those little guys through #Situations, and the rollercoaster of “do i write gud tho”. But boy, it’s an important half.
In my experience, everything the story is about and everything it means is 100% you. You can make up details like what “happens” or, sometimes you don’t have to.
Really depends on how much she values certain things. I’ve found a lot of my old high school/teenage years stuff is pretty worthless. Outgrown clothes, crap from hobbies I no longer have, outdated gadgets that have been replaced. There’s a 50/50 chance Joyce wants most of her shit on the curb anyway..or sent to Goodwill.
Absolutely true, but she’s gotta search through it and decide, which is an emotional/tedious/not-fun chore, and there seem to be oodles of boxes, and she’s probably very attached to that house, and she does not like changes, and five minutes ago she was expecting none of this and was on her way to class.
…I find it interesting that the comments are largely focused on the practical problem of where to put the boxes!
Joyce is trying to wrap her head around the emotional situation — her childhood home unexpectedly evaporating — and that’s the harder bit to deal with.
Frankly when faced with big emotional situations people will often focus on the practical, since those have clear answers that need to be solved as opposed to the more nebulous ones.
Yeah that was my first thought too – change is hard anyway without having any stronger reactions to it, relating to autism. This will be hard to process in many ways.
Until you find yourself surrounded by so much crap you’ve been procrastinating going through that actually going through it feels like an insurmountable task.
Then you end up on one of those shows with Dr. Tolin and Matt Paxton.
Because Joyce is famously good at dealing with changes, and this is a situation where anyone would have difficulty. Even if most of it isn’t stuff she would really want sentimentality is real. I’ve helped family clear out a house before and there are some people who when asked “what do you want to keep?” the answer is honestly “everything.” Her feelings for her mom and family are understandably complicates but I could see her viewing these as items from when her family was together and happy (especially as she is really only just learning how much things have fallen apart).
Possibly “everything” is shorthand for “I don’t have a detailed idea of what’s here, and I need time to evaluate it, but you’re rushing me, so: don’t throw anything out.”
First thing I would do is get the bins up to the common room. Sort the contents into things she actually wants to keep, things to give away to people who might want them, and trash. I’m expecting the bins to have more of the last two groups than the first. Probably more of the third than the second.
She can figure out what to do with the things in the first group later. The third group gets carted to the dumpster. The second group if she knows specific people who might want the item she contacts them. The rest she can ask Ruth for permission to leave in the common room for a while with a sign telling people to take what they want and after a week or two get the rest to a thrift shop. A local thrift shop might even do pickups.
The Jewish boyfriend does not deserve exposure to Carol this early in the relationship. That’s like four different types of “what the hell” going on at once, and he’s not confident enough in himself and his being good for her not to let Carol get uner his skin.
Well since everything that is being returned to Joyce fit in a car, it should fit in her dorm room. (Even if a good part of the area is just a big stack of boxes. It will be awkward to move around but it is doable.)
well, a divorcee selling the house after isn’t too unbelievable, i’m just surprised it was under her names and not the husband unless she did it under his nose/a partial reason for the divorce along with everything else
I can! Mostly because David’s mom sold the house at the pastor’s urging and gave all the money from the sale to the church because the church’s pastor wanted more money.
Man, eff that. My old church ran potlucks, bake sales, and auctions to help pay members rent or mortgages, medical bills, etc. What’s this shakedown bs? You wouldn’t catch me selling my house (if I owned one) to fatten the pastor’s pockets.
If I remember correctly, it was not just “the church’s pastor wanted more money.” It was “the church was closing because it was bankrupt.” So Willis’ mother sold their house to do everything she could to save the church… and the church was still bankrupt.
I’m avoiding Twitter since Musk shilled for DeSantis. Musk gave many previous reasons to avoid Twitter, but that was kinda’ the last straw for me. Oh well.
Twitter has been censoring progressive voices asking for medicare for all for years. There have been loads of reason to avoid it even before the idea thief took over.
Not only does Twitter censor progressive voices, the conservative side keeps blatantly lying and saying they’re the ones being silenced. It’s like putting their hand over their little brother’s mouth and claiming the opposite, with their parents looking right at them. And then the parents send a bomb to the little brother in the mail.
What’s this about the population? Do we secretly have 9.000.000.000 real people and the rest are digital/simulated? If that’s the case, I live with one of the Nine.
In a way it is understandable… Joyce probably does not want to have any contact with her mother since the kidnapping.
I am surprised that her father did not inform her of the sale (since they are on speaking terms), unless he was kept in the dark about the plans to sell the house too
Depends on the situation of her father, he might have enough to live somewhere. Though I don’t know what her moms current living arrangements are going to be, anyway.
Wasn’t Becky trying to have the placed foreclosed so she could prove she was homeless which would have helped with tuition? but I guess Robin is fronting the cost by getting her a scholarship so maybe she sold to Hank for some extra cash.
Yeah, the foreclosure was her plan while Ross was alive but in jail – once he died, she inherited and was planning to sell. (It may or may not have finished that process over break, I don’t believe we’ve heard for sure, but I imagine the logistics that require Becky ARE done for now. Estate stuff just works slowly sometimes.)
Fun fact: at least when I was there up to 2010, IU would kick undergrads out of the dorms over holidays. After all, everyone is from the Midwest and can just drive home for Thanksgiving, eh? I was never entirely clear on what international or other incapable students did, but I had some idea of them camping out in lounges where a limited number of staff could keep an eye on them.
Coming from a college that had no problem letting you stay through Christmas, this was rather shocking to me.
Yeah I worked for student security in college and one of my least fun days was having to endlessly repeat “You can’t get in your dorm yet because the locksmith hasn’t gotten there to change the locks back yet. I don’t know when he’ll get there except it is supposed to be today. And no, security can’t come around and unlock it just for you or prop the door open or something.”
In my college, there were certain dorm buildings that were kept open over breaks, though most of them were closed. (This is for winter break– during Thanksgiving, I’m pretty sure they were all available, though on campus dining was extremely limited.)
The dorm I remember being open was one that specialized in international student housing anyway, but I think if you were in another dorm building, you’d have to temporarily move in there.
i’d imagine even if she didn’t move in with joe, becky would happily wanna live together with her unless she’d rather just stay with dina and have joyce more as a neighbor
Much sooner than graduation. It’s late winter. She has a few months until the end of Semester and most colleges kick everyone out over the summer. I think some will grant students permission to stay if they have a clear need to, but it’s not automatic and a lot of student services, like the dinning hall, will be closed down.
Also, I would be worrying about her getting to graduation. Her mom just sold their house to give money to the church (presumably). Does the family still have the money for tuition or did Carol donate that too? It’s an instate public university so probably cheaper than many places she could go, but still a good amount of money.
I don’t think Joyce would be “homeless” since she did have another parent she could move in with in an emergency.
Plus, given the strained nature of the relationship between Joyce and her mother (helping get your daughter kidnapped will do that…) Joyce probably would not have lived in that house again anyways.
“I sold the house to help pay for the legal fees our church had to deal with after we started helping the two crazy people almost kill you sweeite” I imagine is the next line of this conversation.
Obviously you didn’t think about it Carol and you’re mot saving them if you’re giving it to Joyce without any consideration on how she can store these, you just came here tried to lay a guilt trip on Joyce, Wjere the hell is she suppose to put these in her dorm room? Storage units after first month aren’t cheap at least for a college student with no income.
About 75.00 to 300.00 on average depending on size and whether it’s indoor or outdoor.
The fact she wouldn’t try to foist them off on John or Jocelyne is interesting. After all either of them have more space for them than Joyce. In fact given what has been hinted about John’s church they’re probably paying for a large house for him to live in.
It’s Joyce’s stuff. It would be weird to foist it off on John or Jocelyne.
Let Hank take care of it or keep it yourself for now depending on the living arrangements. Both of you will have more room than Joyce. Or put it in storage for her. And let her know, involve her in the process.
That’s if we’re looking for practical solutions, rather than emotional manipulation. Which we’re not.
Yup, she’s just transferred all responsibility for all of Joyce’s worldly belongings to a college student who will now suddenly have to find a job and an apartment as soon as the semester is over. Even if she throws out all of her childhood keepsakes, book collection, out of season clothes, etc. Why can’t Carol just move that stuff in with all of her other stuff, unless she’s leaving the county. And where is Hank?
She just has to find a job on campus over the summer. Covering summer housing would just be an expected perk if the college expects to get enough college students to stay and work minimum wage jobs for them.
she has another parent who has his head on straight, he’s probably renting an apartment alreay if they split during winter break. At very least she can sleep on the couch for a bit
There goes the one thing Joyce still had to fall back on. She now no longer has a Home she can go back to that she remembers. Her Faith is broken, her Mom is horrible and her parents divorced, and her childhood home is now gone. There isnt many more shoes that could drop at this point. I really hope Joyce snaps at her mom, or at the very least doesnt let her mom get to her anymore.
I don’t think going back there was an option before, bc Carol lived there.
But having no time to decide what to take from your past life/house on the one hand while being dumped with the stuff you already had put away into storage is… the passive aggressive shit move that we should have expected from Carol.
Maybe she’s actually wearing a bath robe over a nightgown with slippers? No one else thinks this is weird? Recently divorced parents certainly can exhibit some shocking personality changes.
they’re visibly not slippers, though. like, we can see that they’re just flats. and i’ve never seen a bathrobe with a collar/lapel like that. it looks like just a normal long coat. that MIGHT be a nightgown underneath, since we don’t see enough detail on it to tell either way, but the fact that joyce hasn’t reacted or commented at all on her mother’s appearance continues to suggest to me that it is, in fact….Just A Dress.
yeah, in fact, looking back at the fullbody image we can clearly see that the coat has buttons. it’s definitely not a bathrobe. the pink dress still *could* be a nightgown but in that case i’d still have expected a reaction from joyce by now. like, she might be more concerned with carol being there at all, but she hasn’t so much as blinked at the outfit
The shoes still look like slippers to me. I do not think we can see enough detail to distinguish between slippers and flats.
I do not see buttons on the coat. I DO see what looks like a rope belt. It absolutely looks like a bathrobe to me.
Joyce has been dealing with a lot of things. I do not think she really has had time to ask why Carol is in nightclothes, and also perhaps Joyce would not consider that unusual. I will await future updates to draw conclusions.
So much for that generational wealth. What are the odds Carol’s cashing out and moving to Florida? That’s a surprisingly common play for middle class white folk.
Please don’t remind me. My state has become a beacon for religiously obsessive lot in the last near decade. They’ve turned Florida insane…More insane than it was but at least then it was manageable.
She’s probably liquidating the house to pay for the church’s legal debts, what with Linda vowing to “sue them off the map” for their involvement in the kidnapping.
(not really relevant, but even art from just under three years ago looks noticeably different from Willis’ current style! noses have gotten pointier.)
I think I actually prefer my option over bailing out that church. It deserves to be dissolved. That’s one thing Linda had right. That organization is dangerous. Footing the bail for Ross was a huge mistake that directly resulted in loss of life. You can’t pray that away.
If it helps, “house was sold to try and save church (based off Willis’s childhood home’s selling IIRC)” and “church goes under anyway” are not mutually exclusive! I believe that was in fact what happened in reality, but may be misremembering from the last time Willis brought this event up.
I don’t disagree that Linda is right on precisely one count and it was the church being dangerous.
I, too, am hopeful that Linda succeeds at this one thing she is correct about, and then proceeds to fall ass over quietly racist passive-aggressive teakettle in her other endeavors until she fixes her heart. Or perishes.
I don’t think so. John lives in India, Jordan is estranged for reason never explained, Jocelyne is a starving artist in an apartment somewhere (and almost certainly doesn’t want Carol coming there), and Joyce lives in a dorm.
surely there must be an area for colleges to have students to store stuff other than their room. Tho given how ‘organized’ dorothy is i’m sure she’d probably help joyce sort things out
i just meant that i can imagine more college students having a ton of their own stuff/hoarding as opposed to being fully minimalist/organized. money aside, i’d think amber/ethan would have a decent collection of all their transformer/other fandom toys
Or simply in a country where it exists, and seems so natural that it’s hard to imagine US colleges not doing it, with the kind of money they are charging their students…
I hear there’s a lot of stuff like that. Things Americans will say that sound perfectly normal to them, and then their friends from elsewhere will be like “WTF, we tie those ourselves in the store because they trust us not to eat them”.
Probably why Carol waited until after the house was sold to tell Joyce, now when Joyce asks why she’s only hearing about this now Carol can play the “you wouldn’t contact me” card to elicit guilt.
I’ve always wondered about the two sets of grandparents, Joyce’s and Becky’s, and any aunts, uncles, or cousins. Are they all dead, all estranged, or does DYW ignore them because he has TDM characters to keep track of already?
In all seriousness, my headcanon is that the rest of Becky’s extended family, if any of them are alive at all, are either a) just as fundamentalist as Ross was and therefore unwilling to help or b) were cut off from Ross’s life so thoroughly, likely for ideological reasons, that they don’t even know Becky exists.
Some people might not be able to pull off a horrific accident that only destroys their car and leaves everyone else involved only minorly injured to a laugh track, but Carol is a master of comedy.
Assuming there was a divorce, she may not have had a choice about selling the house. If there was still a mortgage, she would likely be on the hook for half of it – and probably pay Hank at least partial value if she was occupying the house and he wasn’t. If it was paid off, she’d probably have to give Hank half the value. Either way, selling the house would be a likely outcome of the need to divide property. And while this impacts Joyce, it’s not like this would have been done to spite her, or even that she would have figured into it – that’s just how divorces work out.
Yeah, the theory about it being for the church is based off a thing Willis has publicly said happened to THEIR childhood home while in college, but it really doesn’t NEED to be the case for the house to sell. The divorce is enough and selling would be totally normal.
Doesn’t make Joyce any more emotionally prepared for it, though.
It has only been a couple of months since Hank and Carol started having martial issues, right? Having some experience with divorce intersecting home ownership, I can’t see this having happened so quickly unless the house was solely in her name.
I don’t know anything about Indiana law, but in Texas it took a minimum of two months from filing papers to a final divorce decree, assuming there wasn’t a lot of legal conflict. I assume it would be *possible* to sell a jointly owned house *if* Carol and Hank could remain rational and civil enough to agree about all the details of the sale. Which strikes me as unlikely.
In my family, the angrier party drained the entire shared bank account into personal accounts before things were frozen.
I’m thinking that Carol’s done this before anything is frozen in a more extreme version of events. Plus add in that the community surrounding them might not have the most prudent advice around divorce then I’m guessing this has a good chance to slip through.
It seems unlikely that she would have gotten the house free and clear unless there were commensurate marital assets that Hank got. Indiana isn’t a community property state, but there would still be an “equitable” split, which the principal breadwinner would apparently (generall) gist the bigger share. I don’t know if employment was ever discussed in the comic. it seems unlikely Carol would get any special treatment since she couldn’t really accuse him of financial (or other) improprieties, and he could potentially accuse her of those. But as noted above, while it feels a lot of time has passed, in-universe they might well not have gotten as far as properly division in a divorce proceeding yet, so it isn’t clear if this would have been a forced sale or just one they agreed to between them.
It’s possible Hank basically gave her the house, possibly to not have to figure out alimony payments, etc. Isn’t he a dentist or something like that? I genuinely do not recall for sure.
i wouldn’t expect an older ‘traditional ‘Christian couple to have a prenup written up, unless you automatically get /some/ rights when you first file for marriage even if you don’t get a specific contract written out pre-divorce
As I’ve said above, I don’t buy any of this happening so quickly. My theory is that the house was solely in Carol’s name because she inherited it or bought it with inherited money, or something.
Watsonian answer: Hank was already fed up with Carol in the aftermath of Toedead and the Blaine’s kidnapping plot. Their divorce was probably already in motion during the time skip.
Doylist answer: Fast-tracking the divorce keeps the story moving.
It certainly carries the connotation that they’re in the process of splitting up. Knowing Carol, she 100% would’ve said “we’ve sold…” if the marriage was even mildly stable
The two parents are divorcing.
Which in religious communities leads to a stigma.
After selling the house, she’ll likely want to get a place quickly.
It can’t be close or she’d just rent a storage unit until she got a place.
She was talking to Joyce wistfully like she was saying goodbye before saying goodbye.
A bunch if things really.
Might not be correct, but it feels like Carol’s… on her way out.
If she was indeed thinking of the emotional effect springing the news on Joyce would have then that’s even worse then if she hadn’t thought things through because now there’s a malicious streak in addition to the usual a-hole holier then thou thought process.
I’ve rented a storage unit a time or two, and I have a recurring fear that I forgot to get my stuff out of it. It’s like the “oops, forgot I was enrolled in a class for months” nightmare, but it happens while I’m awake like right now.
Anyways, the ones that are like big closets are relatively cheap. I hope I didn’t leave my chest in one.
I hope that’s the solution; Hank pays the $50/mo or whatever it costs for Joyce to get a self-storage unit. Otherwise there’s nothing she can do with the bins except pile them up in her dorm.
Joyce comes back from class to find Sarah has built herself a mini-office using the bins as the walls.
“darling, I love you . You glasses are beautiful, you know to pick colors.
But I just drove for 4 hours and I’ll throw your things away if you don’t pick them right now.
Also, you’re homeless, are you reading your Bible? Good bye God bless you.”
considering they all fit in her car she could just keep them there lol but other than some ‘important’ documents secretly hidden/snuck in i imagine most of them don’t have anything too valuable, sentiment aside
OH this is about the time the author’s mom sold the house, wow, congratulations on sublimating it with your art, this is going to be an incredible arc everyone
(Seriously I was afraid that next part would be hard to read because my own mother played the “you’re dead to me and I can’t stand to look at your things so I mailed some of them, enjoy bringing back a huge 15kgs package from the Post Office to your apartment by foot”, but this is so deeply personal to Willis that I have to come here daily to see it all unwrap as it happens.)
It’s okay now, was a pain at the time – I even had the privilege of venting to this commentary section about the whole situation in 2017. My parental trauma is less intense than the one that Willis went through, my mother is an atheist and didn’t have faith to back her up, she’s just a deeply individualistic… individual.
I’m fighting back for my right to continuity and meaning in my own life story right now! (Which is a really pompous way to say that now that I’m in my thirties, I’m asserting myself as The Adult in the relationship and asking her to take on the mantle of The Old Woman so she can be an okay-tier grandma to her future grandkids; I trust that she can achieve that, and I’m trying to salvage things that way.)
i’d assume some are probably also old clothes and stuffed animals as opposed to all drawings, otherwise some could fit in a folder/binder/be folded up and in something smaller than bins
I hope Joe happens along (maybe clued in by one of the others, who witnessed Carol’s arrival). At least then, Joyce will have help transporting all of the boxes to her dorm room. Instead of sitting down on the pavement, in the snow, and crying.
I hope she does the crying, too. That usually helps. It’s just better to do indoors (with Joe).
Net-Zero Joeyce Shipper (no engine, slowly following the current)
She just sold the house and gave the money to the church. She has a daughter in a major university. She likely doesn’t have a job or, if she does, one that doesn’t pay much. Even if she’s getting alimony, I don’t think she has just tons of spare cash at the moment. Also, this is probably trying to make her daughter feel guilty. “See what YOUR FRIEND BECKY made me do!”
I forget if Carol has a job or not. I’m assuming not, since she’s a Good Christian Wife®️, so maybe selling the house is how she plans on living until she finds another dick to mooch off of.
Facts. Carol likely sold her place to survive. Maybe got a small apartment, and applied to work through the church. I would think that church community got gutted too with the faith subscribed crime that ran rampant through there.
The fact that you think that a member committing doctrine-related crimes (like “trying to rescue their wayward daughter from the evil lesbian liberal university indoctrination”) would gut the average evangelical community strikes me as hilariously optimistic.
It’s FAR more likely that this is Willis being autobiographical, as described in the other response. These types of churches are KNOWN for doubling down (which they mistake for “steadfast certainty in their faith”).
She didn’t sell it to survive. The church bailed out Toedad who then kidnapped several students and was involved with conspiracy to commit murder. This likely put the church in a bad financial state (not that they think they did anything wrong or contributed to the situation in any way)
Now, you have Carol, who is now divorced. This would be a mark of shame and suspicion in that kind of church. She likely has very few friends and those she does have a church members who now look at her differently. Wondering just what she was getting up to that would lead God to punish her like this.
Now she has a house big enough for a family but is single and living alone. She could see selling it and giving the church the money as “redeeming” herself in the eyes of the church & its members (though she wouldn’t call it that consciously). The leaders of the church may also have subtly encouraged her to do it. Sort of “Hm, the church has a debt of $X. Man, you could almost buy a house for that!”
It still sounds weird to me that the church (business entity) would peel off money from its operating budget for something like this, even if the leaders thought it was right. My church is not exactly impoverished, but we had to take up a special offering to get the heat fixed. Churches spend what they take in, if it isn’t already spent.
Much more likely that when Linda went to sue the Fourth Street Church of Whatever, her lawyer found that that entity was not involved in the bailment or even known to the bondsman, and that “the church” in this instance means the members, directly and severally.
Executive summary: if The Church is in financial straits, it probably has nothing to do with Ross’ bail.
Of course that’s a job, and it’s one I respect a lot despite never encountering a mom who could afford to do it. It’s just not one that generates money, like you said. She’s gonna need one that does, or she’s gonna need to find someone to stay with. I may have phrased that second part in a really mean-spirited way, but it’s friggin’ Carol, fuck ‘er.
I’m wondering if she’s now staying with Pastor(?) Beardo, the guy who was at the center of bailing Ross out until Blaine came in and offered his gangster expertise. She seems like she could probably even justify having an affair with that guy before the divorce (“your faith was never strong enough, Hank.”)
I’m not sure what’s gross about how I phrased my comment. That’s what I assume she did, because she’s a nasty zealot and I figure they’re always doing something normal for a really fucked-up reason.
it’s gross because it’s a thing that mysoginists will say about women in general (or those in their life in particular). we all hate Carol, but sexism is a thing and we live in a society, yknow.
And another thing, you don’t just pull this sort of stunt on people, period. Much less your change-averse kid with the freshly undiagnosed braintism who’s got a history of YIIKing out over much smaller problems. Starting to think Carol might not be a very good person.
Carol doesn’t even know Joyce had these issues. She was surprised by her glasses showing proof she cared more about the spirituality over her actual health and needs.
Carol is a failure of a mother because she selfishly superimposes herself onto her children. Not because she dumps problems on them. Every Mother dumps problems on their kids randomly and without warning.
So don’t just assume she knew any of the changes with her daughter in the time she wasn’t there to be with her through these changes over the month.
I don’t think Carol would care if she found out about Joyce’s possible autism. She probably doesn’t think it’s a real thing or that if it is Joyce would just be saying it for attention.
Growing up in a fundy community/cult, anything like autism, depression, schizophrenia, anything thing that makes you neuro-divergent, or really any thing that made you different, was seen as evil spirits possessing you.
I had to start wearing glasses in second grade, and remember asking the pastor of my church to pray over me to fix my eyes. I thought god was mad at me when I still couldn’t see without glasses.
On one hand, imagine dropping everything on your kid who’s away at college. On the other hand I would have wanted my stuff to be saved rather than dumped in this situation.
Oh yeah this is a “drop everything in your hand and force your mother to explain herself whilst desperately holding her shoulders to keep her in place” situation.
Considering what Willis has mentioned about his own mom selling her house and giving the money to the church, this is almost certainly the reason. Willing to bet that the church leaders somewhat-subtly encouraged her to do it, too. After all, she’s the one who is (in her and their mind) sinfully divorced and this is a way to “redeem” herself.
The fact that Joyce says “You’re the one with a house” seems like strong evidence that she knew that the house was (probably) solely Carol’s, whether by inheritance, or by prior-to-now agreement with Hank as part of the divorce settlement process.
I mean, she didn’t say “…half a house” or even “…who will get the house (in the divorce)”. Joyce would presumably know if the house was being argued over between her parents, and seems to honestly think, until Carol says otherwise, that Carol owns it and will continue owning it, quite possibly in the clear (no mortgage).
Women get the house by default in divorce, which still heavily favour the woman even though the era when they were unemployable dependents is long past. Even if one of the primary reasons for divorce is the wife helping set a gun-wielding maniac who threatened their daughter loose on the streets to threaten her again.
That said, owning a large house and keeping it are two different things. This house used to house a family of… what, seven? We can presume it was pretty big. If we inlcude Joyce in college, all but the youngest child have moved out (and I’m willing to assume the non-binary writer jumped at the chance to live with his father). The 4 bedroom house I grew up in cost over $6000/y in property taxes alone, and that doesn’t get into the maintenance costs (in both time and money) to manage two large lawns and a lot of trees. Some years after the divorce, Mom sold the big house and moved into a smaller one.
I’ll say this for Joyce: While this is probably going to be a shocker, and kick out a few more of the already shaky legs holding up the table of her childhood, this is still a better way to find out than my own mother’s “I’m selling this house; you have 3 months to find a new place to live… AND a better job that can actually afford you a place to live in the current housing market.” “BuhWHAT???”
Uh, I assume by “the non-binary writer,” you’re referring to Jocelyne? She’s a trans woman, and she’s Joyce’s older sister who is already moved out of the family home.
If we’re playing “who’s the most respectful to an entirely fictional character”, then my response is to let Jocelyne label themselves before you presume to, nor drag them out of the closet until they’re ready to come. They’re publicly presenting as male for the time being.
On the other hand, I might well have gotten the age order wrong. (I also can’t remember which J-name that brother is.) He gives a very young impression, so I assumed he was the baby of the family, and planning to stay in the closet at least until he was out from his parents’ (especially his mother’s) watchful eye and house. My memory isn’t great on small details anymore. Getting old sucks.
“Women get the house by default in divorce, which still heavily favour the woman even though the era when they were unemployable dependents is long past.”
Maybe if you’d stop covering your comments in barbecue sauce and setting them in front of the fan that’s pointed directly toward the walking cottage of Comments Yaga, they’d get eaten less.
Would you like to take a survey? Do you like to eat beans? Do you like George Wendt? Would you like to eat beans with George Wendt? Would you like to watch a movie about George Wendt eating beans?
so i'm thinking, okay, i took some extra photos of this set of doors this year so i could draw some other angles, it's an important set of doors, so let's pull up my new reference photos...
....and do you see a problem, do you see an issue
Well, Lizard is here, and I've been telling myself for... years that I'd take down my Endgame shelf and put up Spider-Man:No Way Home once the final villain was out.
So.
That's a thing I gotta do.
okay okay -- spider-man reboot idea
the lizard is still dr connors, but he's dr PHIL connors, and he wakes up every day and it's groundhog day and he's a lizard
is this anything
Sean Thomason @seanthomason.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Rolling Stone @rollingstone.com ⋅ 1d
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Barb O. Saur 
⚧️
come on, storage units are free/$1 for the first month!
also just dropping the news like “hey, I put that old lamp on eBay and got $500 for it“
That $1 first month would last through a few years of comics, barring time skips.
Yeah but after the first month the price rises I pay 135 for a 10×20 outdoor they can be lower but I pretty sure Carol would make Joyce pay for the unit.
I was thinking Carol w/o even having Joyce in the picture but I wouldn’t put it past Carol to foist the guilt of throwing out the drawings onto Joyce
Biggest problem for Joyce, besides paying the monthly rent, is trying to get material back and forth to the storage unit. The only person I’ve seen with a vehicle is Sal and her motorcycle. There doesn’t even seen to be a bicycle between the rest of them.
Willis never established that one college friend everyone likes because they own a truck trope huh?
Carla has to drive Ultracar.
This must be so.
Also she’d be the most comedic person to have a van in which to cart things around with.
Something tells me Ultracar doesn’t have a lot of cargo space. Trunk space yes. But room to put things? Not necessarily.
A lot of that space is definitely taken up with moving parts, yeah
“No, you’re not putting that in *my* trunk.”
Carla doesn’t have “I drive a car” money, she has “I am driven in a car” money.
The only student with a car we’ve seen is Sydney and their first-generation Prius. There’s also Asher and his motorcycle, but those aren’t known for their junk-hauling suitability.
Maybe Joyce can call a ride share, or get a moving dolly.
Now I have the mental image of Sal and Asher driving their motorcycles in tandem, carrying a stretcher full of crates between them.
They wouldn’t, and probably can’t, but it’s funny to imagine.
Hmm. Haven’t we seen Danny riding a bicycle? Oh. That got stolen, didn’t it?
I want to make a Dottie joke so bad right now, but I’m drawing a blank.
I have failed the comment section.
Uber.
Zoomr
Danny & Sal have bicycles. So does Meredith, the weed woman.
Vehicle ownership for first years seems limited, so her options are Sarah (no), Ruth (no), Carla (yes but you don’t want to ask her) and a bunch of incidental characters she’s not really friends with.
Walky has a car available for the weekend.
How did you miss Danny and Sal having bicycles?
I didn’t … I figured those were rentals through Student Activities or whatever they call it at IU.
Danny buying Sal a bicycle was a significant plot point in their relationship
Yeah, Danny grooming Sal with gifts was like, vital to the start of their dating-style relationship. He was super manipulative and possessive about it, too. I’m surprised it didn’t stick more.
wutface
I’m thinking a few people here have had some bad relationships and are, um, slightly insanely paranoid…
I’m only relaying the #discourse. Certain events in this comic stay stuck in my brain because partway through them and with no apparent cause, somebody will come up with the wildest fucking thing I’ve ever read and treat it like it’s been canon all along.
a lot of people stick around bc the trauma in the comic resonates with their own lives, I wager
like… *maybe shouldn’t give direct examples if only bc it would take me too much time for too little payout to find the relevant comics*
Take the bus. Yes, Bloomington has a bus system.
But going back and forth to the storage unit isn’t really necessary – not once you’ve got your stuff there. It’s all stuff that was sitting in her mom’s house anyway. Nothing she was needing regularly.
they saved me from losing all my things to my family. Nice investment
Yeah, $1 for the first month plus the $30 fee to get an account with the company.
And how many months could it be before she’s remarried and”evenly yoked” as the cult calls it with a new house with plenty of space for a few boxes? No, the main mission here is bothering Joyce, as has been suggested. Carol is the main character in her morality play, the idea her family may not want to talk to her makes no sense, so obviously she will take the slightest excuse to bother them because that’s what they’re there for.
Pretty much, yeah. “I drove four hours ti get you these” and couldn’t, you know, call ahead and tell her you don’t have the space to store stuff anymore?
(Also, ffs “to save these” lady cant stop guilt tripping for two seconds straight can she)
The weird part is, the house was only 30 minutes away.
No, Joyce is from La Porte, which is near Chicago. 4 hours is about right, depending on the traffic.
To be fair, Joyce may have (quite rightly) not been answering her calls.
Not to mention where in the world did she think Joyce would put these while in a college dorm room?
I wager dumping this stuff on her is both a way to communicate to her the news AND subtly punish her for whatever blame she assigns to her for the divorce.
Not to punish her, I think. To win her favor, try to become the good parent, the ‘winner’ of the divorce. “*I* had to sell the house because of what your *father* did divorcing *me*, but *I* am out of the goodness of my heart trying my hardest to salvage this situation for you.”
I’m sure there’s a hint of “you helped set this sequence of events into motion and look where it got us, but I ‘forgive’ you anyway” in there too.
How many magic beans did she get?
…. now I’m wondering who got the dog in the divorce.
hoping its jocelyn
who already has a cat who may not be amenable to a dog?
unfortunately, it’s likely John but hopefully Hank
Why is it likely John? Doesn’t John travel a lot for extended amounts of time? And why would Hank or Carol be less likely than one of their kids?
I’m hoping it’s Hank. I’m also hoping Hank is employed.
FOR A NICKEL
…probably not actually
Just channeling Mike through the grave, carry on
If she “sold” it to the church, it may as well be a nickel. Also, is the divorce even finalized? That’s crazy fast for one after an established marriage. And she likely doesn’t /didn’t have the right to sell it unilaterally if the divorce ain’t final.
THIS.
Oh I see, this is going to be sad. For Joyce, at least, cause like fuck Carol.
But that’s how Joyce ended up in this mess in the first place!
Joyce ended up in this situation because her mother is a dangerous individual that will justify anything, including violence against her daughter, if it is for the ‘greater good of her soul’ and for no other reason.
The joke appears to have flown over your head.
*looks for the George Thorogood in the record collection*
Move it over
Rock it on, Rover!
Joyce may need one whiskey one scotch and one beer and drink it alone with nobody else beacude Carol is bad to the bone
“G 1 house” spelled out is “gone house.”
Aaaaaaaaaand there’s the emotional manipulator we all know and hate. Only took, what, three strips for her to be awful? Not that that’s a new record for her, no.
“Look what YOU did Joyce. Fell BAD about what YOU did.”
Sarah pops back into frame and says the only thing Joyce has done is a Maytag, and fist bumps the ghost of Mike.
well i can imagine joyce being attached to the childhood home she grew up in , but other than an immediate living situation being an issue after graduating, it might be better/easier to move on if the house is gone
Were we reading different comics? The emotional bullshit started in the first panel of her reappearance. Carol arrived unannounced, not for nice surprise but to ambush Joyce by dumping all of her belongings on her. The house was the important neglected information, but being deliberately fucking weird was right there in Carol’s reappearance: panel 1. Being vague and making people work to understand what is going on is just part of Carol’s abuse toolkit.
“Thinking of you”, yeah totally not emotional blackmail /s
Yep. Yeeeee-up. Yip yip yip.
That’s exactly what I thought. She couldn’t call Joyce and set this up? Let her know what was happening and make a plan? Nope! Just show up and guilt her intensely.
Sold the house for the church, I’m betting. Feels familiar.
In fairness, living alone in a suburban house meant for 5+ people probably sucks.
Good.
Yeah, callous conga bongo deserves that.
It really does. There’s a reason a lot of people on ghost hunting shows are empty nesters.
My parents had four kids. They’ve never REALLY lived alone since at least one of us have found a reason to keep living with them one way or another, so it’s been a revolving door of them at least having someone to bugger.
We worry about the day when we all finally leave and they’ll have a big house to themselves (we’ve tried to persuade them to downsize to no avail).
If they have a house downsizing is the stupidest thing they could do economically. Have them rent out to people. It gets others in the house and makes them a shit ton of passive income for their retirement. Really, anyone who can afford to sell property is very privileged.
…I’m assuming that “bugger” has a different meaning in your dialect. Or that autocorrect caught something else.
It is of course possible that my assumption is a sign of appalling optimism about the human race on my part.
I share that optimism, so at least you’re not alone. I’m assuming they were going for a meaning more like “bother,” “badger,” or “buffalo.”
Iirc that is literally what Willis’ own mother did, sooo… it depends on how autobiographical Joyce’s current arc is. I’m guessing even if the logistics are different the emotions are drawn from experience.
Yeah, this is exactly what I was thinking.
Yuuuuuup.
:/
People or family giving their belongs to the church is a real thing, if you lived for so long.
Writing has a tendency to be like. 50% mining/exorcising your own
painexperiences somewhat, at the very least. The rest is imagination, putting those little guys through #Situations, and the rollercoaster of “do i write gud tho”. But boy, it’s an important half.In my experience, everything the story is about and everything it means is 100% you. You can make up details like what “happens” or, sometimes you don’t have to.
Yeah, just call Joe. Not for support. For manual labor.
The real challenge is figuring out how to store this stuff now. Surely Joyce cannot afford to rent a storage space.
Really depends on how much she values certain things. I’ve found a lot of my old high school/teenage years stuff is pretty worthless. Outgrown clothes, crap from hobbies I no longer have, outdated gadgets that have been replaced. There’s a 50/50 chance Joyce wants most of her shit on the curb anyway..or sent to Goodwill.
Absolutely true, but she’s gotta search through it and decide, which is an emotional/tedious/not-fun chore, and there seem to be oodles of boxes, and she’s probably very attached to that house, and she does not like changes, and five minutes ago she was expecting none of this and was on her way to class.
…I find it interesting that the comments are largely focused on the practical problem of where to put the boxes!
Joyce is trying to wrap her head around the emotional situation — her childhood home unexpectedly evaporating — and that’s the harder bit to deal with.
Joyce has had three seconds to absorb that. She hasn’t even begun the wrapping. Maybe tomorrow.
Frankly when faced with big emotional situations people will often focus on the practical, since those have clear answers that need to be solved as opposed to the more nebulous ones.
Yeah that was my first thought too – change is hard anyway without having any stronger reactions to it, relating to autism. This will be hard to process in many ways.
Hoarding everything forever is easier.
Much easier.
Until you find yourself surrounded by so much crap you’ve been procrastinating going through that actually going through it feels like an insurmountable task.
Then you end up on one of those shows with Dr. Tolin and Matt Paxton.
Because Joyce is famously good at dealing with changes, and this is a situation where anyone would have difficulty. Even if most of it isn’t stuff she would really want sentimentality is real. I’ve helped family clear out a house before and there are some people who when asked “what do you want to keep?” the answer is honestly “everything.” Her feelings for her mom and family are understandably complicates but I could see her viewing these as items from when her family was together and happy (especially as she is really only just learning how much things have fallen apart).
Possibly “everything” is shorthand for “I don’t have a detailed idea of what’s here, and I need time to evaluate it, but you’re rushing me, so: don’t throw anything out.”
First thing I would do is get the bins up to the common room. Sort the contents into things she actually wants to keep, things to give away to people who might want them, and trash. I’m expecting the bins to have more of the last two groups than the first. Probably more of the third than the second.
She can figure out what to do with the things in the first group later. The third group gets carted to the dumpster. The second group if she knows specific people who might want the item she contacts them. The rest she can ask Ruth for permission to leave in the common room for a while with a sign telling people to take what they want and after a week or two get the rest to a thrift shop. A local thrift shop might even do pickups.
well, the drawings can probably find a space rather than the full bins itself but maybe joyce can resell some old stuff if there’s any values
The Jewish boyfriend does not deserve exposure to Carol this early in the relationship. That’s like four different types of “what the hell” going on at once, and he’s not confident enough in himself and his being good for her not to let Carol get uner his skin.
That said, he absolutely should be around for the post-Carol sorting/schelepping/comforting.
Carol doesn’t have to know he’s the boyfriend yet.
Well since everything that is being returned to Joyce fit in a car, it should fit in her dorm room. (Even if a good part of the area is just a big stack of boxes. It will be awkward to move around but it is doable.)
If the car she drove is the teal Chevy S10 Blazer / GMC Jimmy we saw before, there’s not an insubstantial amount of stuff there.
It should still fit in the dorm, but Joyce and Sarah will probably have to pick a wall to stack them against.
I suspect she will call dad and get him to store it.
She might have lead with that. I still don’t think this was a coincidence.
led
Unless she’s packing heat
I can’t
believe
it.
well, a divorcee selling the house after isn’t too unbelievable, i’m just surprised it was under her names and not the husband unless she did it under his nose/a partial reason for the divorce along with everything else
I can! Mostly because David’s mom sold the house at the pastor’s urging and gave all the money from the sale to the church because the church’s pastor wanted more money.
David? Which David?
Willis
Man, eff that. My old church ran potlucks, bake sales, and auctions to help pay members rent or mortgages, medical bills, etc. What’s this shakedown bs? You wouldn’t catch me selling my house (if I owned one) to fatten the pastor’s pockets.
well, there was also that lawsuit rather than the church just randomly asking for more than usual suddenly
If I remember correctly, it was not just “the church’s pastor wanted more money.” It was “the church was closing because it was bankrupt.” So Willis’ mother sold their house to do everything she could to save the church… and the church was still bankrupt.
Well the bomb dropped and, well. Now that I remember, autobiography and all that.
I keep seeing people reference that. Is there somewhere that Willis has talked about his parents selling his house to support their church?
Twitter.
I’m avoiding Twitter since Musk shilled for DeSantis. Musk gave many previous reasons to avoid Twitter, but that was kinda’ the last straw for me. Oh well.
This was years ago.
Twitter has been censoring progressive voices asking for medicare for all for years. There have been loads of reason to avoid it even before the idea thief took over.
Not only does Twitter censor progressive voices, the conservative side keeps blatantly lying and saying they’re the ones being silenced. It’s like putting their hand over their little brother’s mouth and claiming the opposite, with their parents looking right at them. And then the parents send a bomb to the little brother in the mail.
Not “parents,” per se — it was his mother specifically who sold the house and gave the money to her church
Not his parents. His mother.
Assuming I didn’t read a “.” as a “,” as happened recently with the population of the earth.
What’s this about the population? Do we secretly have 9.000.000.000 real people and the rest are digital/simulated? If that’s the case, I live with one of the Nine.
Wow. Telling her during/after the fact is an ass move.
I’d call her the B word, but 1) that’s already established and 2) I don’t want to offend any ladies in the comments.
…No, no, I think you should go ahead and say it…
bongo bongo bongo I don’t wanna leave the conga oh no no no no no~
+1 Great use of the filter!
Bingo, bango, Bungle, I don’t wanna leave the jungle . . . 
Bingo, bango, bongo
I don’t want to leave the Congo.
The Ookabollaconga say “please do”.
In a way it is understandable… Joyce probably does not want to have any contact with her mother since the kidnapping.
I am surprised that her father did not inform her of the sale (since they are on speaking terms), unless he was kept in the dark about the plans to sell the house too
I guess this technically makes Joyce homeless. She better make some post grad plans.
Depends on the situation of her father, he might have enough to live somewhere. Though I don’t know what her moms current living arrangements are going to be, anyway.
At a guess, I’d say Hank is probably living at Becky’s house and Carol is most likely living at the church.
Wasn’t Becky trying to have the placed foreclosed so she could prove she was homeless which would have helped with tuition? but I guess Robin is fronting the cost by getting her a scholarship so maybe she sold to Hank for some extra cash.
Becky sold the house.
Yeah, the foreclosure was her plan while Ross was alive but in jail – once he died, she inherited and was planning to sell. (It may or may not have finished that process over break, I don’t believe we’ve heard for sure, but I imagine the logistics that require Becky ARE done for now. Estate stuff just works slowly sometimes.)
Fun fact: at least when I was there up to 2010, IU would kick undergrads out of the dorms over holidays. After all, everyone is from the Midwest and can just drive home for Thanksgiving, eh? I was never entirely clear on what international or other incapable students did, but I had some idea of them camping out in lounges where a limited number of staff could keep an eye on them.
Coming from a college that had no problem letting you stay through Christmas, this was rather shocking to me.
Yeah I worked for student security in college and one of my least fun days was having to endlessly repeat “You can’t get in your dorm yet because the locksmith hasn’t gotten there to change the locks back yet. I don’t know when he’ll get there except it is supposed to be today. And no, security can’t come around and unlock it just for you or prop the door open or something.”
That sort of thing is why I would leave my bedroom window unlocked and then climb up the wall to get in and open the dorm up from the inside
Grest idea, but my dorm room, before moving off campus was on the 14th floor of a 22 story tower.
In my college, there were certain dorm buildings that were kept open over breaks, though most of them were closed. (This is for winter break– during Thanksgiving, I’m pretty sure they were all available, though on campus dining was extremely limited.)
The dorm I remember being open was one that specialized in international student housing anyway, but I think if you were in another dorm building, you’d have to temporarily move in there.
i’d imagine even if she didn’t move in with joe, becky would happily wanna live together with her unless she’d rather just stay with dina and have joyce more as a neighbor
Much sooner than graduation. It’s late winter. She has a few months until the end of Semester and most colleges kick everyone out over the summer. I think some will grant students permission to stay if they have a clear need to, but it’s not automatic and a lot of student services, like the dinning hall, will be closed down.
Also, I would be worrying about her getting to graduation. Her mom just sold their house to give money to the church (presumably). Does the family still have the money for tuition or did Carol donate that too? It’s an instate public university so probably cheaper than many places she could go, but still a good amount of money.
I don’t think Joyce would be “homeless” since she did have another parent she could move in with in an emergency.
Plus, given the strained nature of the relationship between Joyce and her mother (helping get your daughter kidnapped will do that…) Joyce probably would not have lived in that house again anyways.
Post Grad isn’t the immediate issue. What about summer break?
heck with post grad plans, that is too far off. More like spring break and summer semester.
Is Carol wearing a housecoat?
Trench coat.
Lol looks like a bathrobe over a nighty to me! With bedroom slippers.
I thought it was supposed to be a scandalously slinky dress. That’s what everyone was saying a couple of days ago.
Well, that’s what the poster you’re replying to was saying anyway….
“I sold the house to help pay for the legal fees our church had to deal with after we started helping the two crazy people almost kill you sweeite” I imagine is the next line of this conversation.
Oh, yeah, DEFINITELY.
Was waiting for this shoe to drop given autobiographical elements but yeah being able to tie it into his strip’s plot is a masterstroke.
Obviously you didn’t think about it Carol and you’re mot saving them if you’re giving it to Joyce without any consideration on how she can store these, you just came here tried to lay a guilt trip on Joyce, Wjere the hell is she suppose to put these in her dorm room? Storage units after first month aren’t cheap at least for a college student with no income.
About 75.00 to 300.00 on average depending on size and whether it’s indoor or outdoor.
Again Carol you’re an asshole.
The fact she wouldn’t try to foist them off on John or Jocelyne is interesting. After all either of them have more space for them than Joyce. In fact given what has been hinted about John’s church they’re probably paying for a large house for him to live in.
I mean, Jocelyne doesn’t have THAT much more space, she’s a writer.
John is supposedly leaving for India by the end of January. (Unless he’s just pocketing the money)
I haven’t read the patreon comics, but Jocelyne always struck me as having a small apartment, probably shared with a few roommates.
Well, a warning call to Jocelyne about possible impending mother might be in order.
Wait didn’t see try to call Joyce? Didn’t Joyce ignore it?
It’s Joyce’s stuff. It would be weird to foist it off on John or Jocelyne.
Let Hank take care of it or keep it yourself for now depending on the living arrangements. Both of you will have more room than Joyce. Or put it in storage for her. And let her know, involve her in the process.
That’s if we’re looking for practical solutions, rather than emotional manipulation. Which we’re not.
Yup, she’s just transferred all responsibility for all of Joyce’s worldly belongings to a college student who will now suddenly have to find a job and an apartment as soon as the semester is over. Even if she throws out all of her childhood keepsakes, book collection, out of season clothes, etc. Why can’t Carol just move that stuff in with all of her other stuff, unless she’s leaving the county. And where is Hank?
She just has to find a job on campus over the summer. Covering summer housing would just be an expected perk if the college expects to get enough college students to stay and work minimum wage jobs for them.
unfortunately, they do not
I always chuckle a little when I see “just” right next to “find a job”.
she has another parent who has his head on straight, he’s probably renting an apartment alreay if they split during winter break. At very least she can sleep on the couch for a bit
The cheapest units I can find within reasonable distance to the school are $60/mo for a 5×5.
There goes the one thing Joyce still had to fall back on. She now no longer has a Home she can go back to that she remembers. Her Faith is broken, her Mom is horrible and her parents divorced, and her childhood home is now gone. There isnt many more shoes that could drop at this point. I really hope Joyce snaps at her mom, or at the very least doesnt let her mom get to her anymore.
and she doesn’t have a toenail, either
By now it’s likely regrown. Toenails can regrow after falling off after injury – I had one that did, and grew back mostly normal.
Ok but that was a hilarious comment nonetheless
I don’t think going back there was an option before, bc Carol lived there.
But having no time to decide what to take from your past life/house on the one hand while being dumped with the stuff you already had put away into storage is… the passive aggressive shit move that we should have expected from Carol.
Even if you’re not going back, having the childhood home sold can be traumatic.
Maybe she’s actually wearing a bath robe over a nightgown with slippers? No one else thinks this is weird? Recently divorced parents certainly can exhibit some shocking personality changes.
they’re visibly not slippers, though. like, we can see that they’re just flats. and i’ve never seen a bathrobe with a collar/lapel like that. it looks like just a normal long coat. that MIGHT be a nightgown underneath, since we don’t see enough detail on it to tell either way, but the fact that joyce hasn’t reacted or commented at all on her mother’s appearance continues to suggest to me that it is, in fact….Just A Dress.
yeah, in fact, looking back at the fullbody image we can clearly see that the coat has buttons. it’s definitely not a bathrobe. the pink dress still *could* be a nightgown but in that case i’d still have expected a reaction from joyce by now. like, she might be more concerned with carol being there at all, but she hasn’t so much as blinked at the outfit
The shoes still look like slippers to me. I do not think we can see enough detail to distinguish between slippers and flats.
I do not see buttons on the coat. I DO see what looks like a rope belt. It absolutely looks like a bathrobe to me.
Joyce has been dealing with a lot of things. I do not think she really has had time to ask why Carol is in nightclothes, and also perhaps Joyce would not consider that unusual. I will await future updates to draw conclusions.
no, we haven’t seen it close up in the comic yet: I’m referring to the fullbody image of her outfit that willis posted on twitter where those details are clearly visible: https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1661777969952485380
So much for that generational wealth. What are the odds Carol’s cashing out and moving to Florida? That’s a surprisingly common play for middle class white folk.
Dammit lets hope the site doesn’t eat any more of my replies.
and wow that wasn’t meant to be a reply.
but still, Florida… *shudders* gonna Bugs Bunny that shit away NOPE
Please don’t remind me. My state has become a beacon for religiously obsessive lot in the last near decade. They’ve turned Florida insane…More insane than it was but at least then it was manageable.
She’s probably liquidating the house to pay for the church’s legal debts, what with Linda vowing to “sue them off the map” for their involvement in the kidnapping.
(not really relevant, but even art from just under three years ago looks noticeably different from Willis’ current style! noses have gotten pointier.)
I think I actually prefer my option over bailing out that church. It deserves to be dissolved. That’s one thing Linda had right. That organization is dangerous. Footing the bail for Ross was a huge mistake that directly resulted in loss of life. You can’t pray that away.
If it helps, “house was sold to try and save church (based off Willis’s childhood home’s selling IIRC)” and “church goes under anyway” are not mutually exclusive! I believe that was in fact what happened in reality, but may be misremembering from the last time Willis brought this event up.
I don’t disagree that Linda is right on precisely one count and it was the church being dangerous.
I, too, am hopeful that Linda succeeds at this one thing she is correct about, and then proceeds to fall ass over quietly racist passive-aggressive teakettle in her other endeavors until she fixes her heart. Or perishes.
Probably not. More emotional damage possible if she stays close by.
Doesn’t she have adult out of college kids who probably have a house she could pawn this stuff on?
I don’t think so. John lives in India, Jordan is estranged for reason never explained, Jocelyne is a starving artist in an apartment somewhere (and almost certainly doesn’t want Carol coming there), and Joyce lives in a dorm.
surely there must be an area for colleges to have students to store stuff other than their room. Tho given how ‘organized’ dorothy is i’m sure she’d probably help joyce sort things out
Why?
i just meant that i can imagine more college students having a ton of their own stuff/hoarding as opposed to being fully minimalist/organized. money aside, i’d think amber/ethan would have a decent collection of all their transformer/other fandom toys
That’s a very funny idea that isn’t even remotely true.
We have someone who lived a very privileged life, or not very much of it, here. Surely blank is never true.
Or simply in a country where it exists, and seems so natural that it’s hard to imagine US colleges not doing it, with the kind of money they are charging their students…
I hear there’s a lot of stuff like that. Things Americans will say that sound perfectly normal to them, and then their friends from elsewhere will be like “WTF, we tie those ourselves in the store because they trust us not to eat them”.
“I’ve sold the house.”
Next line – “…and donated the money to the church.”
y’know carol, this probably would’ve been a lot better to bring up like 2 weeks ago when she was staying with you for winter break, don’t ya think?
Joyce stayed with Becky for winter break
Joyce actually “spent the entire Winter Break at Becky’s place,” so she probably didn’t see Carol much if at all. I’d go so far as to say she probably actively avoided her.
Probably why Carol waited until after the house was sold to tell Joyce, now when Joyce asks why she’s only hearing about this now Carol can play the “you wouldn’t contact me” card to elicit guilt.
“Becky’s place” at the time being the apartment Robin rented to establish residency in the district where she was a US Representative.
Now the question is where will Joyce store it, she’ll likely have to reach out to another family member to store it for her
So place your bets, will she ask her dad, Jocelyne, or try to reach out to Jordan for help dealing with this?
I’ve always wondered about the two sets of grandparents, Joyce’s and Becky’s, and any aunts, uncles, or cousins. Are they all dead, all estranged, or does DYW ignore them because he has TDM characters to keep track of already?
“Are we dealing with generations of only childs marrying other only childs, with grandparent suicide pacts?”
In all seriousness, my headcanon is that the rest of Becky’s extended family, if any of them are alive at all, are either a) just as fundamentalist as Ross was and therefore unwilling to help or b) were cut off from Ross’s life so thoroughly, likely for ideological reasons, that they don’t even know Becky exists.
Y’know that comic makes me realize that Hush could’ve easily had been a cousin of Bruce Wayne and that would’ve improved his story
Only reference I remember tells us about an aunt and a granddad with memory problems.
Nothing about Becky’s extended family. Seems like they had to be off the table for some reason or she could have turned to them when homeless.
Oooh, fingers crossed this is a way to get Joyce’s sister back into the story.
This arc’s placement does make it seem like a successor to the freshman family weekend arc that introduced Joss, so it seems possible.
Maybe even her estranged brother!
Not John, though. We know he’ll be on Team Carol.
It’d be pretty funny if Carol just unrelatedly crashed her car on the interstate. Just an epic prank really.
Ah, classic Carol!
Some people might not be able to pull off a horrific accident that only destroys their car and leaves everyone else involved only minorly injured to a laugh track, but Carol is a master of comedy.
Even the Muppets are in awe of her skill and comedic timing. And her ability to fly.
That would require integrity though.
Assuming there was a divorce, she may not have had a choice about selling the house. If there was still a mortgage, she would likely be on the hook for half of it – and probably pay Hank at least partial value if she was occupying the house and he wasn’t. If it was paid off, she’d probably have to give Hank half the value. Either way, selling the house would be a likely outcome of the need to divide property. And while this impacts Joyce, it’s not like this would have been done to spite her, or even that she would have figured into it – that’s just how divorces work out.
Yeah, the theory about it being for the church is based off a thing Willis has publicly said happened to THEIR childhood home while in college, but it really doesn’t NEED to be the case for the house to sell. The divorce is enough and selling would be totally normal.
Doesn’t make Joyce any more emotionally prepared for it, though.
It has only been a couple of months since Hank and Carol started having martial issues, right? Having some experience with divorce intersecting home ownership, I can’t see this having happened so quickly unless the house was solely in her name.
I don’t know anything about Indiana law, but in Texas it took a minimum of two months from filing papers to a final divorce decree, assuming there wasn’t a lot of legal conflict. I assume it would be *possible* to sell a jointly owned house *if* Carol and Hank could remain rational and civil enough to agree about all the details of the sale. Which strikes me as unlikely.
I saw 60 day waiting period for Indiana.
Finding the phrasing odd. Does “I’ve sold the house” mean she got it in the divorce, or is Hank getting half the proceeds?
It means she got the house in the divorce settlement.
It means she sold the house (a shared assest) before the divorce settlement and is moving the proceeds into a personal account.
I’ve had family members divorce before, this is a thing that can happen.
Surprising that this can happen. Was the buyer’s title insurance company asleep? Or have I missed an important detail?
In my family, the angrier party drained the entire shared bank account into personal accounts before things were frozen.
I’m thinking that Carol’s done this before anything is frozen in a more extreme version of events. Plus add in that the community surrounding them might not have the most prudent advice around divorce then I’m guessing this has a good chance to slip through.
It seems unlikely that she would have gotten the house free and clear unless there were commensurate marital assets that Hank got. Indiana isn’t a community property state, but there would still be an “equitable” split, which the principal breadwinner would apparently (generall) gist the bigger share. I don’t know if employment was ever discussed in the comic. it seems unlikely Carol would get any special treatment since she couldn’t really accuse him of financial (or other) improprieties, and he could potentially accuse her of those. But as noted above, while it feels a lot of time has passed, in-universe they might well not have gotten as far as properly division in a divorce proceeding yet, so it isn’t clear if this would have been a forced sale or just one they agreed to between them.
It’s possible Hank basically gave her the house, possibly to not have to figure out alimony payments, etc. Isn’t he a dentist or something like that? I genuinely do not recall for sure.
i wouldn’t expect an older ‘traditional ‘Christian couple to have a prenup written up, unless you automatically get /some/ rights when you first file for marriage even if you don’t get a specific contract written out pre-divorce
He is a dentist.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/dozen/
As I’ve said above, I don’t buy any of this happening so quickly. My theory is that the house was solely in Carol’s name because she inherited it or bought it with inherited money, or something.
Watsonian answer: Hank was already fed up with Carol in the aftermath of Toedead and the Blaine’s kidnapping plot. Their divorce was probably already in motion during the time skip.
Doylist answer: Fast-tracking the divorce keeps the story moving.
It certainly carries the connotation that they’re in the process of splitting up. Knowing Carol, she 100% would’ve said “we’ve sold…” if the marriage was even mildly stable
But we knew that. There’s definitely a divorce happening, though we don’t know exactly what stage it’s at.
“the next two are heavy”
are you referring to the boxes, or the next 2 strips?
Embrace the power of “and”!
“Yes”
as the great Mia Agraviador once said: porque no los dos?
Is it me or does it sound like she’s the only one that got a say on this? Pretty sure that the decision was made unilaterally
Either their divorce got finalized fast, or Hank just agreed and signed the title (maybe in a “fine, whatever, just get this over with” kind of way).
Next two revelations or bins?
Ohh, the force is strong with this one!
….she’s moving across the country too? Isn’t she?
I don’t know, I’m expecting some sark secret, Like Jordan situation.
How did you get this theory?
The two parents are divorcing.
Which in religious communities leads to a stigma.
After selling the house, she’ll likely want to get a place quickly.
It can’t be close or she’d just rent a storage unit until she got a place.
She was talking to Joyce wistfully like she was saying goodbye before saying goodbye.
A bunch if things really.
Might not be correct, but it feels like Carol’s… on her way out.
If she was indeed thinking of the emotional effect springing the news on Joyce would have then that’s even worse then if she hadn’t thought things through because now there’s a malicious streak in addition to the usual a-hole holier then thou thought process.
I’ve rented a storage unit a time or two, and I have a recurring fear that I forgot to get my stuff out of it. It’s like the “oops, forgot I was enrolled in a class for months” nightmare, but it happens while I’m awake like right now.
Anyways, the ones that are like big closets are relatively cheap. I hope I didn’t leave my chest in one.
I hope that’s the solution; Hank pays the $50/mo or whatever it costs for Joyce to get a self-storage unit. Otherwise there’s nothing she can do with the bins except pile them up in her dorm.
Joyce comes back from class to find Sarah has built herself a mini-office using the bins as the walls.
“darling, I love you . You glasses are beautiful, you know to pick colors.
But I just drove for 4 hours and I’ll throw your things away if you don’t pick them right now.
Also, you’re homeless, are you reading your Bible? Good bye God bless you.”
considering they all fit in her car she could just keep them there lol but other than some ‘important’ documents secretly hidden/snuck in i imagine most of them don’t have anything too valuable, sentiment aside
It’s probably just everything from Joyce’s room that she didn’t already take with her to college.
She just had to come out swinging with the love-bombing, then followed it up with some passive-aggression and thinly veiled threats.
OH this is about the time the author’s mom sold the house, wow, congratulations on sublimating it with your art, this is going to be an incredible arc everyone
(Seriously I was afraid that next part would be hard to read because my own mother played the “you’re dead to me and I can’t stand to look at your things so I mailed some of them, enjoy bringing back a huge 15kgs package from the Post Office to your apartment by foot”, but this is so deeply personal to Willis that I have to come here daily to see it all unwrap as it happens.)
Sorry about that situation.
It’s okay now, was a pain at the time – I even had the privilege of venting to this commentary section about the whole situation in 2017. My parental trauma is less intense than the one that Willis went through, my mother is an atheist and didn’t have faith to back her up, she’s just a deeply individualistic… individual.
I’m fighting back for my right to continuity and meaning in my own life story right now! (Which is a really pompous way to say that now that I’m in my thirties, I’m asserting myself as The Adult in the relationship and asking her to take on the mantle of The Old Woman so she can be an okay-tier grandma to her future grandkids; I trust that she can achieve that, and I’m trying to salvage things that way.)
Going to be honest, for half a moment I thought you were being sarcastic in the first paragraph, so yeah, I am glad that’s not the case.
Haha sorry I came off that way, I’m not a native english speaker
Oh, no, you were fine, I have just seen people be strangely hostile like that before, so that was me jumping to conclusions.
4 bins? Guess Joyce really was a budding artist… to unknown results.
Sarah, come back! But if she won’t, who else would? The fairy godparents?!?
i’d assume some are probably also old clothes and stuffed animals as opposed to all drawings, otherwise some could fit in a folder/binder/be folded up and in something smaller than bins
At least four. She just said the next two were heavy, not that the next two were the rest of them.
Probably books and DVDs.
(Pro hoarding tip: banker’s boxes and the boxes that reams of paper come in are perfect for storing those. Big plastic bins get heavy fast.)
Oh boy, Hymmel the Humming Hymnal!
I hope Joe happens along (maybe clued in by one of the others, who witnessed Carol’s arrival). At least then, Joyce will have help transporting all of the boxes to her dorm room. Instead of sitting down on the pavement, in the snow, and crying.
I hope she does the crying, too. That usually helps. It’s just better to do indoors (with Joe).
fingers crossed!
Stage them into the lobby. No snow there. Then ferry them up to the floor. Hold the clean-up-throw-out session after class.
I have no advice for the crying.
God, Carol, your chin is so fucked up. Like everything else about you.
i mean personality aside, one should avoid insulting based on looks, given that there are probably perfectly nice, sane ppl with ‘fucked up chins’
It’s fine, she fucked it up herself, for attention.
I mean, saving money/excuse to bother Joyce aside, storage units are a thing lol
She just sold the house and gave the money to the church. She has a daughter in a major university. She likely doesn’t have a job or, if she does, one that doesn’t pay much. Even if she’s getting alimony, I don’t think she has just tons of spare cash at the moment. Also, this is probably trying to make her daughter feel guilty. “See what YOUR FRIEND BECKY made me do!”
I forget if Carol has a job or not. I’m assuming not, since she’s a Good Christian Wife®️, so maybe selling the house is how she plans on living until she finds another dick to mooch off of.
Ok so Carol super sucks etc. But stay-at-home mom is a job. it just doesn’t come with a paycheck.
Facts. Carol likely sold her place to survive. Maybe got a small apartment, and applied to work through the church. I would think that church community got gutted too with the faith subscribed crime that ran rampant through there.
IRL after Willis’s parents divorced, his mom sold the house and gave the money to her church (which was in financial trouble).
He’s mentioned it on Twitter a few times, but thanks to the transient nature of social media I’m having a hard time finding it…
Best I can do right now is this DoA, which is set at the house in question:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/home-sweet-home/
The fact that you think that a member committing doctrine-related crimes (like “trying to rescue their wayward daughter from the evil lesbian liberal university indoctrination”) would gut the average evangelical community strikes me as hilariously optimistic.
It’s FAR more likely that this is Willis being autobiographical, as described in the other response. These types of churches are KNOWN for doubling down (which they mistake for “steadfast certainty in their faith”).
She didn’t sell it to survive. The church bailed out Toedad who then kidnapped several students and was involved with conspiracy to commit murder. This likely put the church in a bad financial state (not that they think they did anything wrong or contributed to the situation in any way)
Now, you have Carol, who is now divorced. This would be a mark of shame and suspicion in that kind of church. She likely has very few friends and those she does have a church members who now look at her differently. Wondering just what she was getting up to that would lead God to punish her like this.
Now she has a house big enough for a family but is single and living alone. She could see selling it and giving the church the money as “redeeming” herself in the eyes of the church & its members (though she wouldn’t call it that consciously). The leaders of the church may also have subtly encouraged her to do it. Sort of “Hm, the church has a debt of $X. Man, you could almost buy a house for that!”
It still sounds weird to me that the church (business entity) would peel off money from its operating budget for something like this, even if the leaders thought it was right. My church is not exactly impoverished, but we had to take up a special offering to get the heat fixed. Churches spend what they take in, if it isn’t already spent.
Much more likely that when Linda went to sue the Fourth Street Church of Whatever, her lawyer found that that entity was not involved in the bailment or even known to the bondsman, and that “the church” in this instance means the members, directly and severally.
Executive summary: if The Church is in financial straits, it probably has nothing to do with Ross’ bail.
Of course that’s a job, and it’s one I respect a lot despite never encountering a mom who could afford to do it. It’s just not one that generates money, like you said. She’s gonna need one that does, or she’s gonna need to find someone to stay with. I may have phrased that second part in a really mean-spirited way, but it’s friggin’ Carol, fuck ‘er.
I’m wondering if she’s now staying with Pastor(?) Beardo, the guy who was at the center of bailing Ross out until Blaine came in and offered his gangster expertise. She seems like she could probably even justify having an affair with that guy before the divorce (“your faith was never strong enough, Hank.”)
Based on what we know about her, it seems within the realm of reason.
And that’s a really gross way to put that.
But yes, she probably doesn’t have a paying job. Which is what alimony is for.
I’m not sure what’s gross about how I phrased my comment. That’s what I assume she did, because she’s a nasty zealot and I figure they’re always doing something normal for a really fucked-up reason.
it’s gross because it’s a thing that mysoginists will say about women in general (or those in their life in particular). we all hate Carol, but sexism is a thing and we live in a society, yknow.
Oh yeah, when you put it that way, I think I get it now. I apologise for the misogynistic remark, y’all.
ah yes “i’m thinking of you” but i’m not thinking of giving you a heads up that i’m gonna drop a carload of boxes at your house like, today.
“Thinking of you, but not in a good way”
That’s just her reflexively jumping to the guilt card.
And another thing, you don’t just pull this sort of stunt on people, period. Much less your change-averse kid with the freshly undiagnosed braintism who’s got a history of YIIKing out over much smaller problems. Starting to think Carol might not be a very good person.
Carol doesn’t even know Joyce had these issues. She was surprised by her glasses showing proof she cared more about the spirituality over her actual health and needs.
Carol is a failure of a mother because she selfishly superimposes herself onto her children. Not because she dumps problems on them. Every Mother dumps problems on their kids randomly and without warning.
So don’t just assume she knew any of the changes with her daughter in the time she wasn’t there to be with her through these changes over the month.
It’s not like Joyce was eager to talk with her, either.
I don’t think Carol would care if she found out about Joyce’s possible autism. She probably doesn’t think it’s a real thing or that if it is Joyce would just be saying it for attention.
Growing up in a fundy community/cult, anything like autism, depression, schizophrenia, anything thing that makes you neuro-divergent, or really any thing that made you different, was seen as evil spirits possessing you.
I had to start wearing glasses in second grade, and remember asking the pastor of my church to pray over me to fix my eyes. I thought god was mad at me when I still couldn’t see without glasses.
Just a really healthy way to raise a kid, innit.
I didn’t assume any of the things you said.
To be fair I don’t think Joyce was taking her calls
Now we know what Jocelyn was trying to contact Joyce about.
How many in universe hours ago was that?
I think it was a few days.
It was right at the end of the chapter “Sister, Christian”, which was 8 chapters ago or about a week DoA time.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/scanner/
Thanks, I’d missed that. Now I wonder what is happening to the other kids’ stuff.
John probably took his years ago.
Jocelyne’s apartment is probably full of bins now too.
Jordan’s stuff probably all went to Goodwill.
On one hand, imagine dropping everything on your kid who’s away at college. On the other hand I would have wanted my stuff to be saved rather than dumped in this situation.
Agreed, knowing you don’t have a home to go back to is one thing, but I’d feel at least somewhat better knowing my stuff was saved.
Knowing this part is autobiographical, @damnyouwillis I’m so sorry…
Same.
Wow, there’s awful, then there’s whatever this is
Oh yeah this is a “drop everything in your hand and force your mother to explain herself whilst desperately holding her shoulders to keep her in place” situation.
her parents divorced right? Maybe she can’t afford the house on her own or it has too many painful memories of her failure
Or she gave the proceeds to the church so they can
afford a renovationpay off debt they took on for bailing out Toedead.Considering what Willis has mentioned about his own mom selling her house and giving the money to the church, this is almost certainly the reason. Willing to bet that the church leaders somewhat-subtly encouraged her to do it, too. After all, she’s the one who is (in her and their mind) sinfully divorced and this is a way to “redeem” herself.
The fact that Joyce says “You’re the one with a house” seems like strong evidence that she knew that the house was (probably) solely Carol’s, whether by inheritance, or by prior-to-now agreement with Hank as part of the divorce settlement process.
I mean, she didn’t say “…half a house” or even “…who will get the house (in the divorce)”. Joyce would presumably know if the house was being argued over between her parents, and seems to honestly think, until Carol says otherwise, that Carol owns it and will continue owning it, quite possibly in the clear (no mortgage).
/closereading
Women get the house by default in divorce, which still heavily favour the woman even though the era when they were unemployable dependents is long past. Even if one of the primary reasons for divorce is the wife helping set a gun-wielding maniac who threatened their daughter loose on the streets to threaten her again.
That said, owning a large house and keeping it are two different things. This house used to house a family of… what, seven? We can presume it was pretty big. If we inlcude Joyce in college, all but the youngest child have moved out (and I’m willing to assume the non-binary writer jumped at the chance to live with his father). The 4 bedroom house I grew up in cost over $6000/y in property taxes alone, and that doesn’t get into the maintenance costs (in both time and money) to manage two large lawns and a lot of trees. Some years after the divorce, Mom sold the big house and moved into a smaller one.
I’ll say this for Joyce: While this is probably going to be a shocker, and kick out a few more of the already shaky legs holding up the table of her childhood, this is still a better way to find out than my own mother’s “I’m selling this house; you have 3 months to find a new place to live… AND a better job that can actually afford you a place to live in the current housing market.” “BuhWHAT???”
Uh, I assume by “the non-binary writer,” you’re referring to Jocelyne? She’s a trans woman, and she’s Joyce’s older sister who is already moved out of the family home.
If we’re playing “who’s the most respectful to an entirely fictional character”, then my response is to let Jocelyne label themselves before you presume to, nor drag them out of the closet until they’re ready to come. They’re publicly presenting as male for the time being.
On the other hand, I might well have gotten the age order wrong. (I also can’t remember which J-name that brother is.) He gives a very young impression, so I assumed he was the baby of the family, and planning to stay in the closet at least until he was out from his parents’ (especially his mother’s) watchful eye and house. My memory isn’t great on small details anymore. Getting old sucks.
This is not even remotely true
“Women get the house by default in divorce, which still heavily favour the woman even though the era when they were unemployable dependents is long past.”
yeah, citation needed.
Women don’t get the house by default in divorce. Jocelyn isn’t non-binary, and she lives on her own.
(meant to be reply to post above it)
huh has the comments section been acting weird for you too?
my replies keep getting eaten up for some reason
Maybe if you’d stop covering your comments in barbecue sauce and setting them in front of the fan that’s pointed directly toward the walking cottage of Comments Yaga, they’d get eaten less.
Are you supposed to click “reply” and “cancel reply” on a bunch of random posts first? because that’s what I’ve been doing.
WOW, I hate her for years, but her condescending words in panel 2 just, make me furious!
So
I’m thinking this part is also autobiographical.
OMG, her parents are getting a divorce!!!!!!