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Yeeep… It was a warning, all right, but it was a warning that Joyce had better not put up a fuss with the church when Ross saves his daughter from herself… eugghh
That… really seems unlikely. On multiple levels. But for starters, why would Carol assume Ross would kill his daughter? His motivation, if really not thought through, is to get her away from all this and save her. Killing her would only condemn her sinning soul to hell. Kill all the negative influences around her, maybe (and I doubt Carol believes he’s going to do that either) , but Ross was having second thoughts when it appeared Mike was going to die, let along his own flesh and blood. You are taking this down a somewhat darker road then the story is going, I think.
Yeah. Let’s not forget what happened with Bonnie. I’m dead certain the narrowness of what she was allowed to be according to him and the church played a role in her attempting suicide.
Unintential death from “I will save you whatever it takes” is still a far cry from “I intend to go kill my daughter” and Church saying “We will fund you going to kill your daughter.”
Well, it’s for Becky’s own best to be killed before she is able to commit more unredeemable sins. It will save her so much pain in the afterlife. Really, it’s a mercy killing. I wanted to add “come to think of it” to that last sentence, but thinking really has nothing to do with it.
Yeah, because she ascribes to a worldview where “it’s OK. We saved her soul so she’s in heaven now” is more important than the fact that somebody is dead. I personally find that kind of view utterly reprehensible, but I won’t deny the possibility that Carol and people like her COULD be right; none of us really know for sure what awaits us after we die. But at the end of the day, they believe they’re in the right, we believe we’re in the right, and life/society is all about everybody trying to make compromises so we can all live together despite these differences. The only other alternative is basically exterminating the other side so that your view is the only one that remains. (Which, basically, was what much of human history was all about.)
Exactly. She’s looking at this as a parent disciplining his daughter for bad behavior, not as potential murder. There’s all sorts of awfulness tied up even in that, but I doubt she sees death as at all likely.
Jhon, I assure you that Phil Foglio would not be thrilled with you using his art as an icon while insinuating that threatening one’s daughter with a rifle isn’t as bad if its with a squirrel rifle.
He might only be imprisoned and tortured.
Maybe he’s even in a hospital somewhere.
Maybe! Who knows, maybe someone had a change of heart, maybe even Toe Dad was like “hmmkay I’m here to ‘save’ my daughter, not murder some random kid for accusing you of mafia crimes, which to be honest you responding with murder does kinda lend his claim some credence.”
If he’s assuming that Becky hasn’t yet committed any mortal sins, then killing her now, while she’s mostly ‘pure’ might send her to heaven. Ross would be sending himself to hell, but he is willing to pay that price to ‘save’ her.
Mortal sins are a Catholic thing and don’t really exist in evangelical land. The question would be whether or not she still truly believes in Jesus. Ross is probably of the opinion that she cannot simultaneously identify as a lesbian and really believe in Jesus, so therefore, he needs to “fix her” before she could go to heaven. So he probably really needs her to NOT die, based on his own logic.
That’s probably wise – Civil Campaign is like the 14th book in the series. You wouldn’t want spoilers.
^^
But seriously, the Vokosigian series is pretty great. A Sci-Fi adventure series that morphs seamlessly into a sci-fi mystery series.
The “baby factory” comment is also far less icky than it sounds. The series as a piece of technology that replaces “being pregnant” with a machine and does not require sexual cells to operate – a cheek swab from any two people go in and nine months later a baby comes out.
….
… trying.. to resist urge… to pontificate about the Vorkosigian series…
Which I misspelled in the previous post. Shit.
But seriously, it’s a great novel series, and I could ramble about it for ages. Particularly how the Uterine Replicator started out as a minor plot point but slowly expanded to be a major element of the universe upon which entire novels hang as the author Fridge Brillianced her way through the implications of such a machine.
Joyce is right outside the Student Union, the location where she was eating lunch (and she currently can see the site of Mike’s fall as well as any police tape that would be up as a result of it).
Cool thing I just noticed: Obviously things have improved for her since she can be outside without an escort. Too bad she is finding a new source of trauma.
Yeah, Ryan donating some major organs for transplant would go a long ways towards Joyce feeling safe on campus again. But Toe Dad on campus would negate those feelings.
I think we first saw her walking on her own outside after the stabbing, yeah. (In a symbolic shot where she was looking at the police tape or something, even.) That was an improvement!
It will likely be short-lived. I really do hope Roz’s suggestion she talk to someone way back after that party turns out to be a really long-waiting Chekhov’s Gun. Poor girl needs hella therapy.
Most Nazis went (and go) to church. Whichever one.
The Nordic mythology bent was just Hitler trying to provide a belief system that totally subscribed to the idea of „survival of the strongest and most unscrupulous“.
its a bother fora bunch of subjects from medieval history to modern paganism, black metal , satanists groups,
as nazis have infested them , and you have to presume active fascist communities if they dont denazify and have explicitly antifascist policies
First thought: They were just at the party. They know where she lives.
Second more useful thought: go to Dina.
More likely, they’ll take at least some time trying to persuade Joyce. Remember they think this is something the church is still trying to do. They don’t know he’s already out. That makes it not quite so urgent so urgent as we know it is.
So Joyce’s dad absolutely doesn’t know that carol helped when it came to bailing out becky’s dad. I mean, how can he know without warning joyce?
I wonder if Joyce’s parents will divorce over the course of the comic. Tbh, bailing out a psychopath that held a gun to your daughter and her bestie without telling you is divorce worthy. That’s just my hot take
Not just divorce, either. Boot that asshole out of the house entirely and let her fend for herself. It’s probably in his name, anyway, along with anything else of value, because they’re fundies.
As bad as her older brother with his scamming his congregation for a sports car is (seriously, it makes me sick) I like to hope he’s not a guy who would approve of this.
Because this should be something no one sane should defend.
John thought Becky was being too aggressive with her gayness and ‘sin’, that she was doing it to be trendy, and that Joyce was overly angry about her best friend being kidnapped at gun point and disowned, and Joyce herself being threatened at gunpoint as well. He thought Joyce punching Ross in the face was an ‘extreme reaction’, and that maybe Becky should have thought about the difficulties of getting a job or accessing her official paperwork ‘before’ at which point Joyce cut him off in a cold rage. (Implication clearly being ‘maybe you should have thought of that before deciding to be gay’ or something likewise gross.) He said college made people entitled and that there should be consequences for actions (while discussing Becky being gay, in other words Toedad kidnapping her at gunpoint was a reasonable consequence.)
John’s on board with this, is what I’m saying. He cared more about Joyce being angry than that she and Becky were almost shot. I had forgotten how completely I hate him before checking that tag, but wow! That is a lot of awful concentrated into one sequence.
Jordan might also be salvageable. He was driven away by Carol pushing so hard, or at least that was Hank said (Carol said she did not push enough and that is why Jordan bailed).
Jordan is and continues to be an enigma, and Hank’s definitely trying! We may get four!
(Forget Mike. TELL US ABOUT JORDAN, WILLIS. Is he Catholic? Mormon? Is he gay? Is he a goth who has one of those parody Chick Tracts praising Cthulhu or Galactus, using the same awful fear rhetoric as a real one but a distinct nihilist bent? A punk rock musician who does openers for midlist bands that had one hit in the early 2000s? What is his deal? I want to know.)
Whatever it is, it’s bad enough he never gets invited anywhere and this is summed up as ‘too Jordan’, but good enough early!Hank says he’s still a good kid.
I have a theory about her brother John. He supposedly got married in India. Joyce has never met his wife. He has a sports car he got from skimming the money given to him for the mission trips that he and his wife go on. Is it possible that he ISN’T married and never goes on mission trips? He is just skimming the money and lying to everyone?
Divorce will not be easy for Hank. I was confused about him, but now it seems clear that Carol scares the hell out of him. I guess he is afraid that confronting her directly might be the final push to going totally nuts with no way back.
Carol is going to end up pushing Joyce away entirely at this rate and I’m perfectly fine with that. Her mom is so misguided that she literally can’t accept that Becky deserves to be her own person, not Toedad’s property.
I think if confronted with that idea, Carol would deny that she sees Becky as her father’s property. She would say that it is his duty to care for and protect his daughter, and this includes rescuing her from the “sin” of homosexuality. For the good of her immortal soul.
We have no reason to doubt that she sincerely believes this, though we have seen her use that belief to justify some horrible behaviour.
I absolutely think endgame with the Brown family is Jocelyne and Joyce both estranged from Carol and John but with a good relationship with each other, and I strongly suspect Hank and Carol will divorce. Jordan is still an enigma and I’m still not certain where Hank will fall with Jocelyne when the chips are down, but the sisters will be together and I think Carol will realize too late just how much of her family she’s pushed away. (And John does missionary work. Let her spend a good long while alone, I say.)
I like to think Jordan was the first one to wise up and jump ship, and is oblivious to what he’s missing by going limited- or no-contact with the entire family.
“Wise up” isn’t exactly the intended meaning here… More like he was the first to both see how terrible Carol is and have the opportunity to escape (as the second oldest).
How terrible the family was. Remember Jocelyne was surprised to find that Hank was sympathetic to Becky. Nor did Hank come off so well at family weekend.
They’d long presented a united front and I’m not sure all of that was just Hank going along with Carol. I like to think of Hank as having grown and learned recently rather than having always been decent but going along.
He said that Joyce taught him stuff about being a kinder person, and that he was proud of her and respected that, and would try to follow her example, I believe
I think we’re well and truly past the Moral Event Horizon here. She has literally enabled a man to kidnap her daughter’s best friend and who threatened to kill her.
This not “pushing Joyce away”, that’s refusing to accept Becky is still a wonderful awesome human being (which she is). This is burning down any love they ever had and salting the Earth.
Not just that, it’s actively and knowingly putting her daughter in danger (even if Joyce walked away now, I’m not sure Ross would think too kindly of her for bringing down the wrath of superheroes and then punching him.)
Remember how I said Thanksgiving/winter break was gonna be a shitshow whenever we finally reached it? Yeah… I’m thinking Joyce is going to spend her holidays elsewhere, now.
I wouldn’t say “actively and knowingly putting her daughter in danger” Remember, Carol equates “Christian” with “Good” and “Moral.” Likely, she is deluding herself. She believes that Toedad is just trying to protect his daughter and using appropriate, if extreme, methods. She would never conceive that he would actually hurt Joyce. Not really. He may hit Becky and maybe even hit Joyce, but it would be in the pursuit of bringing them back to God, which would make everything ok. She believes that what she is doing is right because she is supporting another person’s conviction in God and there is no way that this could go wrong. In this way, she is willfully ignorant, which is not any better, but it is a distinction. She is still a bad person, just a different kind of bad person. The kind who marches to hell on a road paved with “good intentions” ignoring the demons throwing flowers in her path.
I’d argue it’s “White Evangelical Christian Fundamentalist” with good and moral. It strikes me she’d be suspicious of Obama if a certain web comic is canon.
Carol, carol, carol. You already had basically no competition for 3rd worst parent, and you’ll never top Blaine or Ross, so quit while you’re…ahead? Behind?
Maybe just do us all a favor and quit parenting, period.
There is Linda Walkerton – she’s done an absolute number on Walky with the pressure to remain the favorite and everything about the Sal stuff is just… yikes. (Financial abuse, probable emotional abuse, and racism! Lovely!)
And while he’s not a parent as such, Clint is easily third worst guardian and likely to be in a Solid Third on a tier with Blaine and Ross when he takes center stage again. (Ruth’s bit about how he’ll take things out on Howard in particular is… deeply concerning. Also, he’s a controlling shitstain!)
Yeah, forgot about Clint. 4th worst. Still think she’s worse than Linda by a solid margin.
It’s a real shithole of bad parents in DOA-land, frankly. That sending a gun weilding zealot after one’s own daughter and daughter’s best friend only puts Carol in 4th really highlights that.
I HATE defending Linda (and also, I HATE Linda) but agreed. Even she wouldn’t bail out someone who stuck a gun in her daughter’s face.
She’d assume Sal had done something to cause it, y’know, because ‘hoodlum’ and maybe it’s a gang thing and she’d be shitty about it but she wouldn’t bail him out.
They get less attention because of less potential for drama. There are a whole bunch we’ve never seen, but don’t know anything bad about.
The Rutten’s supported Carla, so that’s a big point in their favor, even if we haven’t seen them on panel. Sierra’s dad faced off with Blaine on Family weekend so he gets points.
Dina’s parents are also A-ok. If memory serves, they gave money to Dina so she could treat her girlfriend well. I think. My memory is fuzzy and I cand find it.
Trying to picture what a 12 gauge sniper uzi would look like, but it just doesn’t work, plus there is banana clip, or belt fed, pick one. And before anyone says anything, I know there are some mmgs that can use a belt or magazine (Canadian C9 comes to mind).
That seems kinda weird since Joyce has her own cell. But I guess they might be of the mentality that wherever there’s Hank, there’s Carol, and she doesn’t need one. And she has to have some means of communicating with her, as they had to let her know ahead of time to prepare for Becky’s haircut/make more food.
I think she’s got one. Joyce has her id’d as “mom” on her phone – back in the “Hail Satan” strip for one. That could just be the house phone, since Hank has his own, but I’d expect it to be her own phone.
… you know, if the comic panned over to Hank’s corpse (I’m thinking Kitchen Knife for the visual, but poison works too) in the next comic, I will not be all that surprised.
Kitchen knife seems most likely given the setting, but a classic blunt object such as a rolling pin or frying pan also seems possible.
On the other hand, killing Hank just now seems like a drastic over-reaction unless she’s much deeper in and more committed to something she knows he can and will act to prevent than I have any reason to suppose she is.
What doesn’t seem likely is that hank should have walked back into the kitchen and handed over his phone to Carol.
I wonder if the owners ever consider that the creepy dry well deep and wide enough to easily contain two grown men in their basement could be what’s put off all the prospective tenants?
People don’t think about these things! Renovators in particular come to grief again and again because they assume that what they want seems good to everyone.
He charges his phone in the kitchen. Even if he suspected his wife of using his phone to contact their daughter in a way which she doesn’t welcome, and thus hurting his own ability to contact his daughter, this is a routine and I, for one, find it very believable that he absentmindedly plugged his phone back in, in the same room as his wife, and thought nothing else about it.
He should have changed his password and he probably will after the next time he and his daughter talk…which may be Thanksgiving at this point since I don’t see her answering her phone again, or going back into that house again, before then.
Also paganism. Or really any non-Christian belief system.
I went with paganism because I still believe in the spiritual but don’t think there is any one “right” to anything and that all the gods are just as fucked up and flawed as we are. And that’s fine, because flawed and complex are real while ‘perfect’ is not.
I think you get this kind of thinking in all abrahamite religions. Maybe every religion with a single, all-knowing god.
Multiple gods don‘t necessarily help.
It’s part of human nature to seek a spiritual connection. It’s a need that’s easily exploited. Also, being self-righteous is very self-satisfying, so a lot of poeple do the exploiting.
BarerMender, you recall how that parable ended right? Jesus changes his mind (:shock:) because of a woman’s plea and proceeds to start helping all of the non-Jews as equals to Jews. It’s why he helps the children of Romans and other Non-Jews in the area.
FUCK YOU CAROL! FUCK YOU! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You are the reason Mike is probably dead! You killed our edgy baby, Carol! You killed the one we loved to make fun of! I hope God is real and he sents you to hell for being an homophobic sociopath! It’s because of your church that Joyce got an awful upbringing and is almost the same mistakes as you!
… So like. Approximately how much would a Kickstarter commission of Joyce getting hugged by all her sisters/surrogate sisters/best friends be? Asking for a friend
Sorry to hear that, my mother has a similar…affliction…though mine does thing intentionally (mostly subconsciously) or definitively in a manipulative way.
Never being wrong, nothing you do is good enough. As a teen, she and my sister regularly had screaming matches (about basically everything), and I just kept quiet and tried to meditate. As soon as my sister left, she focused her attention on me, and suddenly nothing I did was good enough, only, maybe just for the moment, and in the next it’s forgotten.
So I’d like to offer some internet hugs, if that’s okay. I’d like to say it might get easier (with mine it kinda did after some mental health discoveries), but that wholly depends on your situation and all. Anyway, hope you have a nice day.
Oof I feel that. I say I have middle child syndrome, but it’s mostly “my parent focused on my other siblings and tried to tell at me in college but I lived away!”. I still had her lash out at me, like when she slapped me because she was afraid I was a lesbian. JOKES ON YOU MOM, IM BI AND YES I DID LOVE THAT FEMALE FRIEND. ALSO THANKS FOR NOT PROTECTING ME FROM A MAKE PEDOPHILE AT 16 FEELING ME UP. Anywho, therapy does wonders.
Puh, I’m so sorry that’s all happened to you! Internet hugs! (If you want)
My place kinda got better. Mostly because my mother finally got some mental help and now that she isn’t constantly stressed out and I’m grown up – though still at home – I can simply check out of a situation and counter with logical arguments. She can still be effing work and sometimes I really really think ‘once I’m gone and she tries any of this bs I’ll go no contact’ I still love her. After all the manipulation tactics and everything (what saves/d me are honestly my friends. I was lucky enough to catch a bunch of good ppl and never let them go for the past 10+ years, they’re my chosen family).
I do hope you’re in a better place too, though, and even if you maybe don’t see this I wish you all the best and yeah, I hope I’ll soon pass the threshold of getting professional help.
Anyway, internet hugs and all the best!! (the more hugs the better)
Carol has probably been WAITING to be able to answer get husband’s phone when Joyce called.
Or she had his phone forward calls to her, which I wouldn’t put past her at this point.
Did Joyce call Hank? She finished a conversation with him, stormed out dramatically from her friends, and then promptly called back the person she had just been talking to?
I thought that Carol had somehow got hold of Hank’s phone again and called Joyce, and that she had answered thinking it was her father.
This is what makes me fear that Carol followed him out onto the porch with a kitchen knife. But I don’t think she would do that unless she knew that she was already into some felonious shit life-sentence deep.
Did she help dispose of Mike’s body? Murder Mike in the course of rescuing Ross from the bottom of the dry well? I would have guessed that she lives too far away to be involved like that.
Unfortunately, no one yet makes a self-charging cell-phone.
What he should have done is change his password. Or, if he’s never bothered before, locked his phone.
At one point, letting his wife have access to his phone was probably a demonstration of trust, but it has now been demonstrated to be misplaced trust.
It should be noted that Utah has outlawed conversion therapy as cruel and inhuman as well as incompatible with the religious beliefs of the vast majority of residents. Indiana only allows it as something an adult agrees to (as sad and horrible as that still is)–which means Becky would still never be legal to subject it to.
This outlawing is a good thing but also shows that Carol and her church are even more insane in the context of the setting. Kidnapping an adult woman at gunpoint, torturing her, and then working to get him released so he can try again.
Toe Dad likely imagines seeking services of a religious provider rather than a licensed mental health practitioner anyway. I have no idea how he thinks it’s going to work, but then, I’m kind of glad I can’t get in his head.
Given Toedad’s actions, my view is that he intends to do the conversion therapy himself or take her to a compound somewhere. Probably one he isn’t aware of.
Rationality is not his strong suit. God will presumably shine a light on the building or something.
I’m not sure Ross is thinking anything as scientifically supported as conversion therapy. Has that actually come up in comic or is it just something we’ve talked about here?
He’s going to get his daughter back and teach her how to walk right with the Lord.
Given there’s no scientific support for conversion therapy, I would argue that anything Ross is thinking is as scientifically supported as conversion therapy.
Nope. It tries to pretend, even though it’s bullshit. Ross won’t hold with that pretense. Ross takes his religious bigotry straight up, not in pseudo science disguise.
Or so I suspect.
The governor of Utah implemented a de facto ban after an outright ban was killed by the state legislature. Basically any mental health professional caught practicing conversion therapy on minors stands to lose their license. Adults still aren’t protected.
The text implications of this phone call are bad, but the subtext is also bad in that it is now clear there is a serious conflict brewing between Carol and Hank and they don’t trust each other right now. Given the conflict among their kids already, this could rip the Brown family apart.
Yeah, this is one of those parts of the comic where you can tell the ‘Joyce is autobiographical’ wounds are still VERY raw. (I’m wondering when this strip was written/planned, but I have a suspicion.) It’s awful and infuriating and painful, because of course people are like this, and it sucks.
My sympathy goes out to Willis every time he shares this. I’m glad he has a family that he’s made himself and people who love him. My wife had a very similar background to him and her scars are terrible too.
I had a thought, and not just because I highly doubt Mike is dead:
We all think Mike is gonna be the Redemption Sacrificial Lamb.
But what if it’s Mary?
We’ve already had multiple comics that end with her visibly shaken by people’s reactions to her actions, most notably when she found out that absolutely no one approved of her plan to drive Billie/Ruth to suicide.
Mike showed remorse when he found out that Amber was Amazi-Girl, that he had a hand in her creation. Mary’s only ever expressed frustration and anger when people stop her.
That’s the problem I’ve always had with that Captain America quote. It can be a great attitude when you really are right and the stakes are high enough, but it’s an awful one when you’re wrong and the kind of moral absolutism linked to that “I know I’m right and I will never back down” is not commonly linked to a deep well thought out examination of one’s own motivations and biases.
It’s a quote that works for Cap because of his role as moral exemplar in a relatively simplistic super-hero world, but in the real world it’s far more likely to be taken up by bigots and zealots.
I would like to point out that that quote also does not work for comic!Cap, the man who hid the fact that a SHIELD death machine went haywire and nearly genocided a country and wanted to confiscate a reporter’s photos of it, because if the truth came out it would damage SHIELD’s reputation.
I don’t recall that bit. Was it part of Civil War or just something random out of Cap’s history? I wasn’t really following it at the time. There’s certainly been plenty of inconsistent characterization over the decades.
Yeah, this BS. When I converted to Paganism about 1988-89 it was because of all the Xtians saying we had to use all the oil and all the coal and just leave the planet an empty burned-out husk or Jesus would be angry we didn’t use all the gifts He gave us.
I could see that doing that was 1) impossible and B) going to make things really bad in expectations of something that did not have a definite timetable (“like a thief in the night”). And ß) I didn’t believe in the book of Revelations anyway, why would you literally try to bring the end of the world?
A lot of crazier elements of American fundamentalist start making more sense if you wonder, “is someone making money by claiming Jesus would want this blatantly stupid/awful thing?” be it slavery, environmental devastation, or giving to Reverend Joe because God said he wanted a private jet.
I think a better explanation is this.
“Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to guide us. Things bothering me, like murder and stealing, do so because the Holy Spirit informs my soul that they are Evil Actions.”
“This thing which I am witnessing bothers me to the core.”
“Ergo. This mus be an Evil Action.”
Suddenly, anything that makes a person uncomfortable must be a terrible sin. Be it homosexuality, women in positions of recognized power (such as the pulpit), interracial marriage, or whatever.
I think that also ignores the fact a bunch of the stuff fundamentalists are up in arms about only became issues when the politicians started railing about them. Coincidentally when they were in the wilderness. There’s some fascinating insight into the change on abortion, putting homosexuals as a target, and more in political/religious discourse.
The idea being its a magician’s shuffle to get people to avoid talking about poverty, war, and other issues.
And much of it started in the US in the wake of court decisions keeping segregated religious schools from getting government support and those segregated religious schools sprung up in response to court mandated desegregation of public schools.
With a little bit of luck Carol will let it slip to Joyce that her cabal has already effected Ross’s release. At this point all se knows is that they are planning to try.
Know what I think? I think the churchgroup has a plan to spirit Becky away to the Conversion Therapy gulag that Ross had picked out when Joyce and Amazigirl foiled his plans. “Your mother and your
Church will always do what is right.” That’s sinister as hell. It sounds like a goodbye as well.
Carol is basically Willis’s mother, IIRC his posts on the matter. “I am your mother, therefore you should accept whatever I say and want to be unequivocally right and deserving of your unthinking cooperation.”
Redemptive twist: Carol is acting as the inside agent on the church’s plan to raise bail. She’d actually been subtly thwarting their efforts to get enough money and would have been successful if Blaine hadn’t showed up.
She’s still staying in character to keep her cover intact, but made sure to let enough slip to Hank that he could warn Becky through Joyce.
My parents use each other’s phones relatively frequently. It might be that Dad took photos of my girls Mum wants to share with me so she messages me them from her phone along with a stream of consciousness which can confuse me if I don’t realise it’s not Dad messaging me, or I might call and the other might be closer to the phone so they’ll answer it even if it’s not theirs.
But while neither of them is perfect, they are both loving people who I trust, and who recognise that I’m not always going to make the choices they want and they do need to accept that (I might get arguments or passive-aggressive guilt trips, but they ultimately accept them). Neither of them thinks that kidnapping a grown-up child at gunpoint after threatening their friends with said gun, or stalking their child, is a justifiable/acceptable/reasonable thing to do.
So if I need to talk to one of them specifically I will ask if they’re around, but I won’t be upset about the other answering, or expect the conversation to leave me devastated because one of them has such a skewed perception of “right” or “reasonable” that they may pose an active threat to my safety or that if somebody I love.
I want to remind you that I always believe I‘m acting like an Angel, even when I‘m acting like a total asshole. The same goes for the church I made you grow up in.
Yes, mom, I get it. You are Never wrong, no matter how utterly, inhumanly wrong you are.
Mother. The father was the one he really hated for taking his daughter away. It is possible he did treat his actual daughter better but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he treated her perfectly either as he clearly questioned her choice of husband and doesn’t care for Ruth or Howard due to the part of their father in them.
I’m just gonna put it this way – when their parents had just died and Howie was crying, Ruth mentioned that their grandfather was coming to take care of them and Howie’s reaction was ‘Okay, I’ll stop.’
As a semi-practicing Christian myself, you know what I just realized?
What Carol is doing here, what Ross has done, what everyone in the church is doing, disgusts me for the same reason that I get pissed when people take the Bible literally.
They’re calling their own judgment and actions “always right” by claiming it’s done in line with their faith. They’re calling their actions God’s actions.
And in doing so… they’re breaking the first commandment. And are therefore even BIGGER hypocrites than people might realize.
Yep. People like this never notice that miraculously God’s opinion is always exactly the same their own.
They claim to know exactly what the omniscient Creator of the Universe wants. Until you ask them about stuff like why he allows childhood cancer, and then they’re all “mysterious ways.”
Also, they tell you that God has a vast and unfathomable divine plan, so detailed that not a sparrow falls but he planned it, and so wonderful and perfect that all the suffering and horror in the world is justified as a necessary part of it. But they ask Him to set it aside so that their team can win a game of football.
Always reminds me of the famous quote from Alfonso X of Castile (also known as Alfonso the Wise) “Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.”
It’s not that God’s opinion is the same as their own. It’s that they’ve learned their opinions from studying God’s Word and thus they must do what they’ve learned from that is right even when it hurts them.
It’s certainly messed up, but it’s not quite as simple as you paint it. Most religious bigots don’t come to their opinions in a vacuum and then go find a church that agrees with them. It’s all tied up in a nasty feedback loop where the religious teachings they get (often masquerading as the only reasonable reading of the literal Biblical text) amplify and reinforce existing prejudices – or install them in the first place, since they’re often exposed to this from young childhood.
Of course, if you start off in what Joyce would call a hippie church, you can get the opposite kind of feedback loop. Still selective reading/interpretation of the text, but biased towards what I’d consider more positive teachings.
Jesus said, “Don’t divorce, unless she cheats. But then, don’t EVER get remarried!”.* And yet, I know of at LEAST one pastor on his second wife.
It was PAUL who said “Well, if she’s not a believer, better to divorce her then be ‘unequally yoked'”.
As far as I know, divorce is still not celebrated in churches, and at least one prominent one still makes a Very Big Deal about it, but for lots of people, and their congregations, it’s okay. But, all these OTHER things disqualify someone from a leadership role within the church.
*I personally suspect Jesus would be fine with some 21st century divorces, where one partner is treated as the doormat of the other. That time was a time when a divorced woman had pretty literally nothing. Today, a woman can walk away from a bad divorce and start over.
A 1st Century Ivana Trump would not have been as well off, going literally from riches to rags.
That’s another interpretation of the Jesus quote. Technically he said, “Let those who God has brought together never be torn apart.” But then people spend AGES dissecting these passages and what they REALLY mean until they become entire ideologies.
He also said the concept of “Eternal Marriage” where you’re married in Heaven is nonsense (“divine beings don’t need marriage”) so remarrying after your spouse dies is fine.
Yeah, anyone who professes to understand exactly what god wants is actually implying they are like god.
I don’t know why that idea is increasingly common nowadays.
Yeah, it’s my biggest hatred, taking your own vendetta and saying it’s God’s will. I want to have a faith so badly, but the things I’ve seen my own family do in “God’s name” just hurts, I lost faith and just can’t find it again. I have cut off an Uncle entirely, and am afraid for the next family gathering as it was recent. But he said the Challenger explosion was punishment from God because we “took prayer out of public schools” and I just snapped. He’s said extreme things regarding abortion, and I took it to be the ramblings of a brainwashed man, but this was something he came up himself and I just can’t anymore.
I have a theory about her brother John. He supposedly got married in India. Joyce has never met his wife. He has a sports car he got from skimming the money given to him for the mission trips that he and his wife go on. Is it possible that he ISN’T married and never goes on mission trips? He is just skimming the money and lying to everyone?
My guess is that he is married and does go on mission trips. Its just that he considered embezzling donations for his own benefit to be a”fringe benefit” of his position. Hell, he might even tell himself that it is a “reward from the Lord” for doing The Good Work.
Both your viewpoints are equally possible (and have a number of real life examples), but I think the mission trips are real. In his one appearance, he did carry a strong odour of one who believes they “carry the white mans burden of enlightening the savages and saving them from their heathenish superstitions”, complete with the moral superiority over everyone else that implies.
There’s more local Christians in India than in America, FYI. Also, more fundamentalist Christians. It should be noted that they tend to view American fundamentalists as an extension of THEIR churches as we’re a corrupt, liberal, and dying society. More like a piggy bank for their efforts.
It’s an interesting perspective that I appreciated for enlightening my somewhat condescending view of them that they were under the control of the white churches there.
I didn’t know that, so thank you for that very interesting insight! I’m not sure John would see it that way, the moral superiority is strong with that one.
That doesn’t seem right to me. India has only a tiny minority of Christians. That’s a large absolute number, since it’s population is high, but still smaller than the majority Christian population of the US.
A quick bit of internet research gives me numbers around 31 million Christians in India and 240 million in the US.
Joyce hasn’t met her, but I think the parents have. Joyce complained that “I didn’t get to go to the wedding”, so it sounded like it was just her left out.
And Christi’s been in the US for awhile with John so it seems like it would have been emphasized more if the others hadn’t met her. Jocelyne didn’t chime in during that discussion about how she was still waiting to meet her too.
Ok, so Carol stating that she (and the church) always does the right thing, implies by omission that Hank does not. This is heading straight to a messy divorce with Carol demanding the children choose a side (hers naturally, because she’s the “real victim” by being persecuted for “doing the right thing”).
I’ve no doubt that this is where it is going. Worse, sides WILL be chosen and perpetual enmities will be forged. As a result, there are people in the Brown family who will not speak to others ever again except in bitter and vitriolic occasional outbursts via third parties.
I’ve no doubt that there is a plausible scenario where Carol will make her acknowledging Joyce’s existence as her child contingent on her handing over Becky and/or testifying on Ross’s behalf. I won’t go into the firestorm that will be inevitable when Jocelyn comes out.
On the up side, that might give Joss the idea it’s safe to come out to Hank and Joyce (neither of whom will likely understand at first, but are of the type that their love of Joss would make them try).
(And on the real-world only up side, Jordan will probably be un-disowned by Team Hank, so we’ll learn about him.)
With the logical next step of: “Anyone who tries to stop us is therefore in the wrong, even if they were acting to protect themselves against an obvious and overt physical threat.”
Ross McIntyre may yet find himself becoming a martyr (at least in his peer group), just as he always wished.
Errrm … what? That’s one hell of an extremist statement. Not even “will always TRY to do the right thing” but straight out “DO” the right thing? Way to force your kid back into the religious corset, mom. Also, I don’t get why everybody now says it means “murdering Becky is cool”.
Not saying this is conclusive that Carol didn’t do something rash to her husband, but I checked back to the beginning of the phone call from him that was answered by Sarah, and he said he had not called Joyce a dozen times and that his phone had been sitting on the counter for a long time untended. This means he regularly leaves it out like this, probably to stay on the charger. So all Carol had to do was wait until he walked away and them access his phone to make this call. I hope that is all that happened but knowing Willis and his plotting I am not as sure as I would like to be.
I’m honestly coming to read Carol as a split personality. The fact that we can’t see her face feels like an important art choice. If every part of her felt that The Right Thing to Do was to free Ross and let him abduct and forcibly convert Becky, then strategically, she should deny Hank’s claim, or at the very least, not call Joyce with a cryptic defense of her actions, to minimize the chance that Joyce and Becky might prepare some defense. Joyce was thinking that Ross was still in jail after Hank’s call. But we know how Carol sounds when she’s conflicted, and how she sounds when she’s committed.
There is a part of her that feels freeing Ross was wrong–hang on, bear with me a second here–a part of her that wants to protect Joyce and even Becky. It’s just not the dominant part, or she wouldn’t have done what she’s done. It’s like the last little bits of Henry Jekyll when Hyde’s in the driver’s seat.
This call is as close to an apology as Carol is capable of giving–this horrible, defensive, self-aggrandizing, absolutist filth is literally the best gesture of love that her fundamentalism-crippled mind can produce. She hopes to provide a bit of comfort in the difficult moments ahead, to assure Joyce (and again, maybe even Becky by proxy) that there’s a moral order behind them. “God’s choices hurt us sometimes, but He works in mysterious ways, for the greater good. Do the right thing even when it’s difficult, isn’t that how you put it when defending your godless friend?”
I wouldn’t have expected the Browns to be at such a low simmer with each other at this point. Their quiet toxicity does fascinate me, but I hope it keeps ramping up… and I hope that when it does, Hank has the strength to leave his marriage of so many years instead of excusing the inexcusable out of misplaced love.
I’d like to counter argue with a personal experience: It’s not split personality. It’s pride. She’s too prideful to admit that she and all that she believes in wrong so she’s going to extreme lengths to prove that she and her faith are “In the Right” out of fear of facing the truth that she just might be *dramatic gasp* wrong. When I was a kid, my mom would defend my father’s abuse to every degree imaginable. It took him attempting to do something unspeakable to my older sister that finally knocked some sense into the woman to divorce him and take the kids…only to still make us go visit him for the weekends, be nice and act like nothing happened because “YoU dOn’T wAnT tO mAkE aN eNeMy Of YoUr FaThEr” To this day, my mom would still try to threaten to “tell dad” as a way to try to control me to behave, as if it still has an effect.
In Joyce’s case, her mom is trying to show her “The Way” by doing what she MORALLY knows is wrong as all get out but she can’t bring herself to accept the fact that it’s all pretty much FUBAR for ol’ Toedad. I agree that Mrs. Brown wants nothing more than to protect her kids, but her pride and narcissism are her absolute undoing. You say she’s trying to apologize with that statement. I disagree, she’s just telling her daughter “I did what I had to because I love you.” and considering the actions taking place, it’s the most ass backwards, batshit, toxic love that NO ONE should accept, regardless of the source. She’s FAR from sorry for what she and the church have done, she’s just trying to absolve herself from any sort of responsibility for what comes next, KNOWING it’s gonna be FUBAR.
See, it’s hard for me to go with “she’s flat-out evil,” not only because that seems wildly overused as an explanation these days (don’t get me started on tribalism), but because Joyce herself had to come from somewhere, and Hank did not raise her on his own, and she was not in open rebellion against her parents when she arrived here. Kindness like Joyce’s has to be nurtured to thrive, and even if Hank took the lead on that front, Carol must have more or less gone along with him there. Otherwise, Joyce-as-she-was at the start of the comic might’ve been friendly and positive or unquestioningly accepting of parental authority, but she wouldn’t have been both.
So even though yes, absolutely yes, Carol is a bad person, I don’t think she’s a flat-out evil person.
Thing is, some people–let’s call them Carols–think kindness is only for those inside their circle: those who share certain beliefs or follow certain rules. To any outsiders, Carols are hostile in a major or minor key, and anyone at risk of straying outside is to be corrected with varying degrees of sternness. Others–Joyces–think kindness is for pretty much everyone, as long as it doesn’t allow others to get hurt (no stabbing me or my friends, Ryans!)
The distinction between Carols and Joyces doesn’t always mean much in practice. If you never meet anyone outside your circle, then you can be nice to everyone you meet, and no one could tell from observation whether you’re a Carol or a Joyce. You yourself might not know. But in an increasingly complicated world, there’s an increasing likelihood you’ll live long enough to find out.
That’s pretty much it and I don’t think it requires any kind of split personality as you suggested earlier.
As for that last bit, Hank is (or was) a Joyce who didn’t really interact outside his circle, so he didn’t see the conflict until Joyce ran into it and he listened to her.
Carol is likely nice, but not good. That nurtured Joyce’s kindness, but also all her pathologies.
It could still be that she thinks she’s doing the right thing but she knows Joyce will disagree and she doesn’t want to lose Joyce so she’s reaching out to her with her vestiges of motherly authority.
I would REALLY like it if people stopped minimising people being absolute hypocritical, disingenious shitheels by going “but maybe it’s a mental health issue”.
I don’t think anyone thinks Carol’s got clinical MPD, I certainly don’t. That’s Amazi-Girl’s thing, and we haven’t seen anything from Carol that would indicate it. I’m talking about something less rigidly defined: a technically healthy person can wander into weird mental territory if their closely held beliefs start conflicting too violently with each other.
And they can still be held responsible for that. I’m not making an excuse. I want Hank and Joyce and Jocelyne to turn their backs on her, whereas if I thought she were having the kind of issues that get you hospitalized, the moral thing to do would be to stand by her, at least long enough to help her. She isn’t, and it’s not.
Carol’s Carol-ness is probably better compared to NPD than MPD anyway.
She clearly doesn’t have NPD (doesn’t need anything that severe to deal with things the way she has) but I’d boil down the source of her beliefs as wanting to be in the right from the beginning before anything else.
She made a choice in what to make of her kids’ adult lives and continues to stick to it. Like all choices, it comes with consequences. How Carol is choosing to write the Final Chapters of her Life as a Mother, Wife, and Christian is actually quite normal……Just not the better part of ‘normal’ is all.
She isn’t conflicted, and this certainly isn’t anything remotely related to apologizing. She is feeling ‘attacked’ (insofar as Hank and Joyce are not questionlessly and enthusiastically supporting her moral stand) and thus is lashing out with justifications and guilt-tripping.
Any basis that attacked feeling has in an inkling of her own conscience that she is supporting someone who threatened and is a continuing danger to her own daughter is buried under a thousand layers of self-righteousness, pride, and ignorant hatred, to the point of being academic.
The irony is, the mothers advice is good and this is Joyce now deciding she needs to warn Becky; which is the conclusion she should have come to in the first place.
Even Carol is having trouble feeling validated with her Church family’s latest decision……….Did they find out about Blaine, or did He and One-Note Ross come back with Mike’s body seeking a place to hide from the authorities?
What? No she’s not, she’s telling Joyce to not fight when Ross comes to get Becky (Carol is afraid for Joyce’s soul because interfering with Ross’s family headship last time was the wrong thing to do according to her morality, and therefore Joyce took one more step towards Hell). And i doubt they’ve heard anything yet, it’s been less than 24 hours.
Well, since Blaine got involved, that probably didn’t happen, but I could see her doing it for a shitty purpose in the future. Like…hiring a lawyer to try to get conservatorship over one of her kids or something. (I don’t think that would happen, let alone work, but y’know. Something shitty.)
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion.”
― Steven Weinberg
See, I disagree with that.
Joyce is a good person. She makes mistakes, but she generally does good, religion or no.
I have seen nothing that indicates that Carol or Ross are good people. At all.
Plus, Carol at least didn’t get molded by her religion – she shopped around and chose her faith. And, unlike Hank, she not only does not seem to be regretting that decision; she is actively doubling down on it.
If my thoughts count for anything, the spaces make it easier for me to read the third/fourth words as separate (“Any Other“) rather than combined into a single compound (“Another”).
Thanks for the input!
So, the result is two votes for spaces in Dumbing and one vote for no spaces in It’s Walky… so I’m gonna do both. Spaces here, none there. Just to be confusing. ^^
Well, try to look at things from Carol’s point of view.
Carol wants to be good. To be good, you have to be a good Christian. To be a good christian, you do what god says and don’t do what he says to do. And she lives in a country that has reinforced that message for many, many decades and in a culture that has said the same for millennia. Heck, even nowadays where christianity is facing an unprecedented decline – few popular figures and nooooo politicians are willing to describe the bible as anything other than “the good book.”
And IT says the man is the head of the house and must be obeyed, homosexuality is sinful(1), and sinful people are going to be tortured. It also endorses violence as a means of control and lacks any concept of consent. So Carol knows (or suspects) full well what Ross intends to do, and agrees with it because it’s what god demands, therefore it’s good. Clear?
jmsr
(1) i’d just like to point out here that the Venn Diagram of “sinful” things and “immoral” things only partially overlap at best. trimming your beard may be sinful, but immoral? newp.
So do you disagree with the quote in general or just its relevancy here?
I’m not sure I agree with it, unless one has a very loose definition of “religion”– but then I also get into what even the concepts of a “good person” and “bad person” are.
There are things other than religion that work, but I think they generally push the same kinds of buttons. Other ideologies.
Voltaire’s “Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities.” Religion is particularly good at that, but there are other approaches.
I think that has more to do with group think, peer pressure, and mob-mentality stuff than the organizations involved. Get enough upset people together with a charismatic speaker, and you can convince otherwise rational people of all sorts of insane shit – and get them to act on it.
Yep. It has less to do with their Fundamentalist beliefs and more to do with them being Reverse-Hippies obsessed with controlling their man-child kids (Joyce was an exception. Becky was still in the closet.) who use their Fundamentalist Ideals as a shield from Accountability and the ego-bruising personal growth and humility it can bring.
Any movement or form of idealism-based sect that grants people a recognizable identity that both makes them feel validated and guaranteed to be proven right in worldview and deed can fill this just as easily as any major religion.
This hit me so hard that after years of lurking DoA, I had to comment. Mr Willis, that last panel had me in tears. Thank you for this strip. I appreciate you capturing what that moment is like, so eloquently in silence, and it makes me feel less alone with the memory of my own experience.
Not to get too heavy or anything but, just, thanks. If you’ve been there, you understand.
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 20h
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
It's #webcomicday? We have a special day???
Well, my name is Pat McHoarney and I draw 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd, a multigenerational story about women who all have sexy legs and probably other features. There was a grandmother, but she wasn't hot and so she died off-panel.
Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. Her partner, Billy Evans, is now trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics.” nyti.ms/3FbtZm9
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 20h
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 5d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3d
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Oh good, I was worried for a second there.
Luckily, Carol is here to assure us that they were just getting Toe Dad out of jail so that they could take him out themselves.
…That’s What she’s saying, right?
… I think it sounds like she’s telling Joyce that she shouldn’t mourn Becky after she’s murdered. As in, Carol fully expects Ross to kill her.
Which is so FUCKED, I don’t have enough Us to write it properly.
I don’t know what is worse: Carol telling Joyce to be okay with it, or Carol *ordering* Joyce to be okay with it.
I remember when people were speculating she was trying to warn Joyce.
Nope, Papa Brown is terrified of his wife and trying to hide how many times he’s been frantically calling Joyce.
Or perhaps he was telling the truth, and *Carol* had been calling her a dozen times to deliver this message
Seems likeliest at this point, especially since Joyce thought it was her dad again (implying Carol used his phone)
Yeeep… It was a warning, all right, but it was a warning that Joyce had better not put up a fuss with the church when Ross saves his daughter from herself… eugghh
The phone having been left on the counter made me think this too – she probably grabbed it and used it to try and reach Joyce
Only a very few thought she’d been trying to warn her. Many thought and seem likely to have been right that she was calling for some other reason.
To try to obliquely justify what she’d done perhaps?
That… really seems unlikely. On multiple levels. But for starters, why would Carol assume Ross would kill his daughter? His motivation, if really not thought through, is to get her away from all this and save her. Killing her would only condemn her sinning soul to hell. Kill all the negative influences around her, maybe (and I doubt Carol believes he’s going to do that either) , but Ross was having second thoughts when it appeared Mike was going to die, let along his own flesh and blood. You are taking this down a somewhat darker road then the story is going, I think.
Just because Ross won’t murder Becky, doesn’t mean she won’t end up dead from what he is willing to do to “save” her
Yeah. Let’s not forget what happened with Bonnie. I’m dead certain the narrowness of what she was allowed to be according to him and the church played a role in her attempting suicide.
Unintential death from “I will save you whatever it takes” is still a far cry from “I intend to go kill my daughter” and Church saying “We will fund you going to kill your daughter.”
In the end, it’s still Carol and the church being okay with Becky ending up dead.
To them, Becky is an acceptable loss.
It’s different than “please murder her outright” but it’s still super duper bad.
Well, it’s for Becky’s own best to be killed before she is able to commit more unredeemable sins. It will save her so much pain in the afterlife. Really, it’s a mercy killing. I wanted to add “come to think of it” to that last sentence, but thinking really has nothing to do with it.
Yeah, because she ascribes to a worldview where “it’s OK. We saved her soul so she’s in heaven now” is more important than the fact that somebody is dead. I personally find that kind of view utterly reprehensible, but I won’t deny the possibility that Carol and people like her COULD be right; none of us really know for sure what awaits us after we die. But at the end of the day, they believe they’re in the right, we believe we’re in the right, and life/society is all about everybody trying to make compromises so we can all live together despite these differences. The only other alternative is basically exterminating the other side so that your view is the only one that remains. (Which, basically, was what much of human history was all about.)
No it’s not.
In reality, sure. But we’re talking within Carol’s mind. I don’t think she’s expecting Becky to die.
Exactly. She’s looking at this as a parent disciplining his daughter for bad behavior, not as potential murder. There’s all sorts of awfulness tied up even in that, but I doubt she sees death as at all likely.
yes I feel that too. And how willfully blind she is being thinking that hi coming with a shotgun was no big deal.
Ahem. Squirrel rifle.
Jhon, I assure you that Phil Foglio would not be thrilled with you using his art as an icon while insinuating that threatening one’s daughter with a rifle isn’t as bad if its with a squirrel rifle.
Darker than Mike getting dead?
He might only be imprisoned and tortured.
Maybe he’s even in a hospital somewhere.
Maybe! Who knows, maybe someone had a change of heart, maybe even Toe Dad was like “hmmkay I’m here to ‘save’ my daughter, not murder some random kid for accusing you of mafia crimes, which to be honest you responding with murder does kinda lend his claim some credence.”
“which to be honest you responding with murder does kinda lend his claim some credence”
If people like Ross actually thought like this a lot more politicians would be in jail
“I would die for you.” <—- cause that isn't a red flag….
Two words: Honor Killing
Ross is not going to murder his daughter. That would send her to hell, and he’s going to do anything he can to keep that from happening.
He will, however, grit his teeth and murder anyone else to keep that from happening. Where they wind up is not his responsibility.
Depends on several factors.
If he’s assuming that Becky hasn’t yet committed any mortal sins, then killing her now, while she’s mostly ‘pure’ might send her to heaven. Ross would be sending himself to hell, but he is willing to pay that price to ‘save’ her.
Like I said, not enough ‘U’s.
Mortal sins are a Catholic thing and don’t really exist in evangelical land. The question would be whether or not she still truly believes in Jesus. Ross is probably of the opinion that she cannot simultaneously identify as a lesbian and really believe in Jesus, so therefore, he needs to “fix her” before she could go to heaven. So he probably really needs her to NOT die, based on his own logic.
Yumi, that’s what I heard.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
It’s a Willis comic. What could go wrong?
Every character contracts butts disease.
now that’s gonna require bigger orgies
Goddamn it Carol.
That is a very sinister looking Carol.
That’s a Carol that Joyce would be advised not to accompany to Vormir.
Vormuir? The guy with the baby factory?
Vormir, aka the “soul for a soul” planet.
No, you’re thinking Boromir. Vormir is a level in Mass Effect where you have to make a difficult decision.
No, that’s Virmire. Vormir is that kink where someone fantasizes about being eaten alive.
Take the Internet. Please.
That’s vore. Vormir is the color of the dream-world Parabola in the game Fallen London.
That’s Violant. Vormir is the small species of rodents often used to make furs.
Those are voles. Vormir is the Daedric Prince of nightmares in The Elder Scrolls.
That’s Vaermina. Vormir is just a slightly archaic word that means “previous”, often used in contrast to “latter”.
Yay, another Vorkosigan fan!
Good old 118 Dowries Vormuir. Wonder how he’s doing now.
(The answer is: not well, because of all the dowries, and it’s great.)
Oh shit! I missed that being a Bujold reference! Well spotted, Regalli.
I feel dumb. Civil Campaign is my very favorite Bujold novel.
Given the comments, I won’t google any of this.
That’s probably wise – Civil Campaign is like the 14th book in the series. You wouldn’t want spoilers.
^^
But seriously, the Vokosigian series is pretty great. A Sci-Fi adventure series that morphs seamlessly into a sci-fi mystery series.
The “baby factory” comment is also far less icky than it sounds. The series as a piece of technology that replaces “being pregnant” with a machine and does not require sexual cells to operate – a cheek swab from any two people go in and nine months later a baby comes out.
….
… trying.. to resist urge… to pontificate about the Vorkosigian series…
Which I misspelled in the previous post. Shit.
But seriously, it’s a great novel series, and I could ramble about it for ages. Particularly how the Uterine Replicator started out as a minor plot point but slowly expanded to be a major element of the universe upon which entire novels hang as the author Fridge Brillianced her way through the implications of such a machine.
I feel like Fridge Brillianced should come with a tropes link.
Carol was always awful but now this is, “That Jewish girl was threatening the Fuhrer by her existence.”
I’ve learned to avoid people who insist that their actions are always right. It’s usually a very bad sign.
can confirm. that kind of logic works backwards, too. they use it to justify things they’ve already done even when shown they are wrong.
Good people do good things. They’re good people, therefore, the things they do must be good. QED.
My actions are always wrong. That means you can trust me.
That was the sound of all of the air being sucked out of the room…er..ah..campus grounds….
….along with all of the background art…
What we call Locus Evanescet in the biz.
Also called the Tite Kubo Effect.
I like it. It makes her look super small and alone.
is joyce home ?
She’s somewhere on campus. Carol seems to be in the house.
Oh god, she’s already in the house!
The call was, indeed, coming from inside the house.
Joyce is right outside the Student Union, the location where she was eating lunch (and she currently can see the site of Mike’s fall as well as any police tape that would be up as a result of it).
Cool thing I just noticed: Obviously things have improved for her since she can be outside without an escort. Too bad she is finding a new source of trauma.
Pretty sure the dude who attacked her getting ventilated helped a bit with that.
Yeah, Ryan donating some major organs for transplant would go a long ways towards Joyce feeling safe on campus again. But Toe Dad on campus would negate those feelings.
I think we first saw her walking on her own outside after the stabbing, yeah. (In a symbolic shot where she was looking at the police tape or something, even.) That was an improvement!
It will likely be short-lived. I really do hope Roz’s suggestion she talk to someone way back after that party turns out to be a really long-waiting Chekhov’s Gun. Poor girl needs hella therapy.
Hey, I’m not the only one waiting for the payoff to Roz’s card!! Do you think we will have to wait another decade?
Home is everywhere, like ravenous alligators.
“I want you to know that we can never possibly be wrong about what the right thing is and are incapable of making mistakes.”
This is the woman that said atheists were nazis.
Soviets were atheists. Not all atheists are soviets.
Nazis were into weird nordic opera/pseudoscience/pagan folk religion/bullshit racism.
Some were. Others were Lutheran, Catholic, etc.
Not all Nazis.
Mostly just Hitler and a small band of occultists. But disagreeing with Hitler was not a good career move for most nazi.
C.S. Lewis would say they have lost any ability to tell the difference between Aslan and Tash.
He would also mock Darwin with an ape villain.
Yes, but he still made a distinction between acting like a good person and defining oneself as a good person no matter what one does.
Most Nazis went (and go) to church. Whichever one.
The Nordic mythology bent was just Hitler trying to provide a belief system that totally subscribed to the idea of „survival of the strongest and most unscrupulous“.
It’s a bother for pagans because you sometimes get Nazi conventions at sites of pagan relevance.
its a bother fora bunch of subjects from medieval history to modern paganism, black metal , satanists groups,
as nazis have infested them , and you have to presume active fascist communities if they dont denazify and have explicitly antifascist policies
Of course Hank’s the one who said Hitler was maybe partly Jewish, so …
I archive-dived to find the quote, and the very next page feels extremely relevant here.
“Happy Opposite Day!”
Joyce: “Mom, let me show you how much I HATE YOU!”
Joyce is chasing Carol with a bulldozer.
Carol: “I didn’t expect Joyce to love me this much!”
It’d be too kind of Willis for this to mean that Joyce will tell Becky after all, wouldn’t it?
Sarah or Dorothy ought to have told Becky right away. Joyce is not the boss of them.
If either of them have a non-Joyce means of contacting her.
First thought: They were just at the party. They know where she lives.
Second more useful thought: go to Dina.
More likely, they’ll take at least some time trying to persuade Joyce. Remember they think this is something the church is still trying to do. They don’t know he’s already out. That makes it not quite so urgent so urgent as we know it is.
Thinking about how Joyce is autobiographical, and certain blog posts…
…I feel so sorry for Willis.
This was where my thoughts went too. :/
this arc is gonna be tough.
So Joyce’s dad absolutely doesn’t know that carol helped when it came to bailing out becky’s dad. I mean, how can he know without warning joyce?
I wonder if Joyce’s parents will divorce over the course of the comic. Tbh, bailing out a psychopath that held a gun to your daughter and her bestie without telling you is divorce worthy. That’s just my hot take
Not just divorce, either. Boot that asshole out of the house entirely and let her fend for herself. It’s probably in his name, anyway, along with anything else of value, because they’re fundies.
As bad as her older brother with his scamming his congregation for a sports car is (seriously, it makes me sick) I like to hope he’s not a guy who would approve of this.
Because this should be something no one sane should defend.
Well, John has also said that they shouldn’t be understanding of Becky’s “sin”. Sounds to me like he’d agree with Carol.
I guess I am trying to think even a person who is a loathsome hypocrite and bigot might balk at kidnapping and murder.
I need to adjust my expectations of evil. It is never in a diet coke format.
John thought Becky was being too aggressive with her gayness and ‘sin’, that she was doing it to be trendy, and that Joyce was overly angry about her best friend being kidnapped at gun point and disowned, and Joyce herself being threatened at gunpoint as well. He thought Joyce punching Ross in the face was an ‘extreme reaction’, and that maybe Becky should have thought about the difficulties of getting a job or accessing her official paperwork ‘before’ at which point Joyce cut him off in a cold rage. (Implication clearly being ‘maybe you should have thought of that before deciding to be gay’ or something likewise gross.) He said college made people entitled and that there should be consequences for actions (while discussing Becky being gay, in other words Toedad kidnapping her at gunpoint was a reasonable consequence.)
John’s on board with this, is what I’m saying. He cared more about Joyce being angry than that she and Becky were almost shot. I had forgotten how completely I hate him before checking that tag, but wow! That is a lot of awful concentrated into one sequence.
I guess only three browns are salvageable.
Shame.
Now that’s not fair, there’s also the mystery brother we know nothing about. He could be not awful, possibly, perhaps.
Jordan might also be salvageable. He was driven away by Carol pushing so hard, or at least that was Hank said (Carol said she did not push enough and that is why Jordan bailed).
Jordan is and continues to be an enigma, and Hank’s definitely trying! We may get four!
(Forget Mike. TELL US ABOUT JORDAN, WILLIS. Is he Catholic? Mormon? Is he gay? Is he a goth who has one of those parody Chick Tracts praising Cthulhu or Galactus, using the same awful fear rhetoric as a real one but a distinct nihilist bent? A punk rock musician who does openers for midlist bands that had one hit in the early 2000s? What is his deal? I want to know.)
I bet he’s just an atheist. And Carol disowned him for that
thank you for alerting me to the existence of chick tract parodies.
Whatever it is, it’s bad enough he never gets invited anywhere and this is summed up as ‘too Jordan’, but good enough early!Hank says he’s still a good kid.
Sithrak tracts!
Even now Sithrak oils the stake!
Sithrak! (link to Oglaf).
Hank is not trying any more. Carol is now the rightful owner of his phone. Rest in Peace.
I still think Jordan is too extreme fundamentalist for the Browns. Joined something they think of as a crazy Christian sect.
I don’t think so, because Hank said Joyce is taking after Jordan after she defended Dorothy from Hank and Carol.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/takeafter/
I don’t really think so either, but I like the idea and it’s going to be my head canon until we get a reveal.
Fair enough. What’s canon got to do with head canon anyways?
I know right? Some older brother. Most good ones would be ready to rip Ross a new asshole.
I have a theory about her brother John. He supposedly got married in India. Joyce has never met his wife. He has a sports car he got from skimming the money given to him for the mission trips that he and his wife go on. Is it possible that he ISN’T married and never goes on mission trips? He is just skimming the money and lying to everyone?
I think she said he was his 3rd car ?
Divorce will not be easy for Hank. I was confused about him, but now it seems clear that Carol scares the hell out of him. I guess he is afraid that confronting her directly might be the final push to going totally nuts with no way back.
Carol is going to end up pushing Joyce away entirely at this rate and I’m perfectly fine with that. Her mom is so misguided that she literally can’t accept that Becky deserves to be her own person, not Toedad’s property.
I think if confronted with that idea, Carol would deny that she sees Becky as her father’s property. She would say that it is his duty to care for and protect his daughter, and this includes rescuing her from the “sin” of homosexuality. For the good of her immortal soul.
We have no reason to doubt that she sincerely believes this, though we have seen her use that belief to justify some horrible behaviour.
I absolutely think endgame with the Brown family is Jocelyne and Joyce both estranged from Carol and John but with a good relationship with each other, and I strongly suspect Hank and Carol will divorce. Jordan is still an enigma and I’m still not certain where Hank will fall with Jocelyne when the chips are down, but the sisters will be together and I think Carol will realize too late just how much of her family she’s pushed away. (And John does missionary work. Let her spend a good long while alone, I say.)
I like to think Jordan was the first one to wise up and jump ship, and is oblivious to what he’s missing by going limited- or no-contact with the entire family.
“Wise up” isn’t exactly the intended meaning here… More like he was the first to both see how terrible Carol is and have the opportunity to escape (as the second oldest).
How terrible the family was. Remember Jocelyne was surprised to find that Hank was sympathetic to Becky. Nor did Hank come off so well at family weekend.
They’d long presented a united front and I’m not sure all of that was just Hank going along with Carol. I like to think of Hank as having grown and learned recently rather than having always been decent but going along.
He said that Joyce taught him stuff about being a kinder person, and that he was proud of her and respected that, and would try to follow her example, I believe
I think we’re well and truly past the Moral Event Horizon here. She has literally enabled a man to kidnap her daughter’s best friend and who threatened to kill her.
This not “pushing Joyce away”, that’s refusing to accept Becky is still a wonderful awesome human being (which she is). This is burning down any love they ever had and salting the Earth.
Not just that, it’s actively and knowingly putting her daughter in danger (even if Joyce walked away now, I’m not sure Ross would think too kindly of her for bringing down the wrath of superheroes and then punching him.)
Remember how I said Thanksgiving/winter break was gonna be a shitshow whenever we finally reached it? Yeah… I’m thinking Joyce is going to spend her holidays elsewhere, now.
I wouldn’t say “actively and knowingly putting her daughter in danger” Remember, Carol equates “Christian” with “Good” and “Moral.” Likely, she is deluding herself. She believes that Toedad is just trying to protect his daughter and using appropriate, if extreme, methods. She would never conceive that he would actually hurt Joyce. Not really. He may hit Becky and maybe even hit Joyce, but it would be in the pursuit of bringing them back to God, which would make everything ok. She believes that what she is doing is right because she is supporting another person’s conviction in God and there is no way that this could go wrong. In this way, she is willfully ignorant, which is not any better, but it is a distinction. She is still a bad person, just a different kind of bad person. The kind who marches to hell on a road paved with “good intentions” ignoring the demons throwing flowers in her path.
I’d argue it’s “White Evangelical Christian Fundamentalist” with good and moral. It strikes me she’d be suspicious of Obama if a certain web comic is canon.
And she makes an exception for Trump.
Yeah, but she equates “Christian” with “White Evangelical Christian Fundamentalist” too, mostly without even thinking about it.
I’m not sure if it’s worse if Carol buys her own bullshit or not.
Carol, carol, carol. You already had basically no competition for 3rd worst parent, and you’ll never top Blaine or Ross, so quit while you’re…ahead? Behind?
Maybe just do us all a favor and quit parenting, period.
There is Linda Walkerton – she’s done an absolute number on Walky with the pressure to remain the favorite and everything about the Sal stuff is just… yikes. (Financial abuse, probable emotional abuse, and racism! Lovely!)
And while he’s not a parent as such, Clint is easily third worst guardian and likely to be in a Solid Third on a tier with Blaine and Ross when he takes center stage again. (Ruth’s bit about how he’ll take things out on Howard in particular is… deeply concerning. Also, he’s a controlling shitstain!)
Yeah, forgot about Clint. 4th worst. Still think she’s worse than Linda by a solid margin.
It’s a real shithole of bad parents in DOA-land, frankly. That sending a gun weilding zealot after one’s own daughter and daughter’s best friend only puts Carol in 4th really highlights that.
I HATE defending Linda (and also, I HATE Linda) but agreed. Even she wouldn’t bail out someone who stuck a gun in her daughter’s face.
She’d assume Sal had done something to cause it, y’know, because ‘hoodlum’ and maybe it’s a gang thing and she’d be shitty about it but she wouldn’t bail him out.
is there a good parent’s list anywhere in here?
Dina’s, Dorothy’s, Amber’s mom are the only ones I can think of as good
Joe’s dad and Hank could end up good but are starting with some negative points.
They get less attention because of less potential for drama. There are a whole bunch we’ve never seen, but don’t know anything bad about.
The Rutten’s supported Carla, so that’s a big point in their favor, even if we haven’t seen them on panel. Sierra’s dad faced off with Blaine on Family weekend so he gets points.
Dina’s parents are also A-ok. If memory serves, they gave money to Dina so she could treat her girlfriend well. I think. My memory is fuzzy and I cand find it.
There: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/credited/
Too tired to try and make a nice link. Effective is good too.
Carol just gave Joyce a 12-gauge sniper UZI with a full banana clip belt of ammo, in Panel 3. “Always do the right thing. No matter what.”
That’s gonna backfire against her so fucking hard, Daffy Duck will be saying “Told ya so.”
Yeah, that line’s definitely coming back in an Ironic Echo.
Do the right thing, Joyce. Throw the trash can through the window of Danny Aiello’s pizzeria.
Dumbing of Age Book 10: Always do the right thing. No matter what.
Living with something something, no regret
I had the same thought. Much later than you did, of course.
Trying to picture what a 12 gauge sniper uzi would look like, but it just doesn’t work, plus there is banana clip, or belt fed, pick one. And before anyone says anything, I know there are some mmgs that can use a belt or magazine (Canadian C9 comes to mind).
The FBI is gonna laugh so hard when they check my browser history…
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-
See? Not enough ‘U’s.
**shakes head sadly**
It’s why the mathematicians invented …
Yeah.
This is a “line approaching infinity” kinda situation.
10 PRINT “FFFFFUUUUUUUUUU”
20 PRINT “UUUUUUUUUUUUUU”
30 GOTO 20
40 PRINT “UUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”
That should be plenty.
So, Carol just poisoned hank, right?
Oh I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to think that.
Oh Jesus, I didn’t consider that! How else she got his phone?!
My girlfriend could easily swipe my phone anytime at home. Carol probably got Hank’s to make sure that Joyce would pick up.
When my dad is at home he leaves his phone sitting on the counter a lot, making it easy for anyone who lives with him to get ahold of it.
I suspect Carol doesn’t have her own cell phone
That seems kinda weird since Joyce has her own cell. But I guess they might be of the mentality that wherever there’s Hank, there’s Carol, and she doesn’t need one. And she has to have some means of communicating with her, as they had to let her know ahead of time to prepare for Becky’s haircut/make more food.
I think she’s got one. Joyce has her id’d as “mom” on her phone – back in the “Hail Satan” strip for one. That could just be the house phone, since Hank has his own, but I’d expect it to be her own phone.
… you know, if the comic panned over to Hank’s corpse (I’m thinking Kitchen Knife for the visual, but poison works too) in the next comic, I will not be all that surprised.
Kitchen knife seems most likely given the setting, but a classic blunt object such as a rolling pin or frying pan also seems possible.
On the other hand, killing Hank just now seems like a drastic over-reaction unless she’s much deeper in and more committed to something she knows he can and will act to prevent than I have any reason to suppose she is.
What doesn’t seem likely is that hank should have walked back into the kitchen and handed over his phone to Carol.
In other words, I’m expecting to cut away to a different plot thread now.
You mean she could stab him in the back with his own cell phone and we would just cut away? What kind of monster do you think Willis is?
He’s the kind who would leave Ross in the dark at the bottom of a dry well in a disused house, smearing lotion onto Blaine’s skin?
I wonder if the owners ever consider that the creepy dry well deep and wide enough to easily contain two grown men in their basement could be what’s put off all the prospective tenants?
People don’t think about these things! Renovators in particular come to grief again and again because they assume that what they want seems good to everyone.
I understood this reference.
La Porte, Indiana, home town of Belle Gunness.
He charges his phone in the kitchen. Even if he suspected his wife of using his phone to contact their daughter in a way which she doesn’t welcome, and thus hurting his own ability to contact his daughter, this is a routine and I, for one, find it very believable that he absentmindedly plugged his phone back in, in the same room as his wife, and thought nothing else about it.
He should have changed his password and he probably will after the next time he and his daughter talk…which may be Thanksgiving at this point since I don’t see her answering her phone again, or going back into that house again, before then.
That’s some Keyser Soze shit there.
People like that are like living billboards for atheism.
I became an atheist/agnostic for philosophical and personal reasons… People like Carol just reinforce my reasons.
Also paganism. Or really any non-Christian belief system.
I went with paganism because I still believe in the spiritual but don’t think there is any one “right” to anything and that all the gods are just as fucked up and flawed as we are. And that’s fine, because flawed and complex are real while ‘perfect’ is not.
I think you get this kind of thinking in all abrahamite religions. Maybe every religion with a single, all-knowing god.
Multiple gods don‘t necessarily help.
It’s part of human nature to seek a spiritual connection. It’s a need that’s easily exploited. Also, being self-righteous is very self-satisfying, so a lot of poeple do the exploiting.
Its funny because Jesus had only a few people he loathed:
1. Fundamentalists
2. People who hid behind religion while abusing others
3. Warmakers
4. The rich
5. People who made money off religion
Carol would be shouting for the heathen to be crucified.
Also, non-Jews. Remember the “pearls before swine” incident?
For a moment I was wondering what a Stephan Pastis comic had to do with this?
BarerMender, you recall how that parable ended right? Jesus changes his mind (:shock:) because of a woman’s plea and proceeds to start helping all of the non-Jews as equals to Jews. It’s why he helps the children of Romans and other Non-Jews in the area.
Also, for some reason I want to start singing “Before my Body is Dry” aka “Don’t Lose Your Way” from Kill La Kill.
Come on Joyce! Your moral compass is strong!!!
I don’t want to imagine Carol as evil rapist mom!
YIKES.
FUCK YOU CAROL! FUCK YOU! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You are the reason Mike is probably dead! You killed our edgy baby, Carol! You killed the one we loved to make fun of! I hope God is real and he sents you to hell for being an homophobic sociopath! It’s because of your church that Joyce got an awful upbringing and is almost the same mistakes as you!
Jesus, I needed that out of my system.
doing the same mistakes*
Sucks finding out that your parent is a monster.
If your parents are an eldritch anomination or a sucubi, things could still be okay.
In this case they are not.
This one is an eldritch denomination instead.
I remember that moment.
I like how Carol’s visually ‘turned her back’ on Joyce. And how damn alone she is in the last panel.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/03-sometimes-the-sky-was-so-far-away/shortsighted/
She got her answer.
It wasn’t the one she wanted.
Carol did the “right” thing. It’s just a shame she did a bad thing.
Should’ve done the left thing instead.
The right-wing thing.
Yeah, normally wanting to do the right thing is good. It’s just what Carol thinks of as the right thing is FUCK OFF EVIL.
… So like. Approximately how much would a Kickstarter commission of Joyce getting hugged by all her sisters/surrogate sisters/best friends be? Asking for a friend
“Is mom a good person”
No.
You forgot the ten lines of “hahahahahahahahahaha” before the “No.”
Personal time:
I have a parent who always does what they think they should do.
Never monstrous. Never directly or intentionally harmful.
But.
That is all.
Sorry to hear that, my mother has a similar…affliction…though mine does thing intentionally (mostly subconsciously) or definitively in a manipulative way.
Never being wrong, nothing you do is good enough. As a teen, she and my sister regularly had screaming matches (about basically everything), and I just kept quiet and tried to meditate. As soon as my sister left, she focused her attention on me, and suddenly nothing I did was good enough, only, maybe just for the moment, and in the next it’s forgotten.
So I’d like to offer some internet hugs, if that’s okay. I’d like to say it might get easier (with mine it kinda did after some mental health discoveries), but that wholly depends on your situation and all. Anyway, hope you have a nice day.
Oof I feel that. I say I have middle child syndrome, but it’s mostly “my parent focused on my other siblings and tried to tell at me in college but I lived away!”. I still had her lash out at me, like when she slapped me because she was afraid I was a lesbian. JOKES ON YOU MOM, IM BI AND YES I DID LOVE THAT FEMALE FRIEND. ALSO THANKS FOR NOT PROTECTING ME FROM A MAKE PEDOPHILE AT 16 FEELING ME UP. Anywho, therapy does wonders.
Hope you’re in a better place.
Puh, I’m so sorry that’s all happened to you! Internet hugs! (If you want)
My place kinda got better. Mostly because my mother finally got some mental help and now that she isn’t constantly stressed out and I’m grown up – though still at home – I can simply check out of a situation and counter with logical arguments. She can still be effing work and sometimes I really really think ‘once I’m gone and she tries any of this bs I’ll go no contact’ I still love her. After all the manipulation tactics and everything (what saves/d me are honestly my friends. I was lucky enough to catch a bunch of good ppl and never let them go for the past 10+ years, they’re my chosen family).
I do hope you’re in a better place too, though, and even if you maybe don’t see this I wish you all the best and yeah, I hope I’ll soon pass the threshold of getting professional help.
Anyway, internet hugs and all the best!! (the more hugs the better)
*Internet support gestures*
*appropriate gesture of support*
Sympathy via light physical contact. Or a hug, if acceptable.
She was then all alone… She felt desperate. How could she keep her friend safe? The last bit of her sanity she still had holding her together…
She’s gonna embrace the Darkness, draw the Heartless in, get got, and become a Nobody.
Joyce: “Everything is pointless! We are only free when we are dead!”
Sora: “You are still human! You have a heart that is seeking light!”
Donald is walking around and not healing Sora.
Carol has probably been WAITING to be able to answer get husband’s phone when Joyce called.
Or she had his phone forward calls to her, which I wouldn’t put past her at this point.
It looks to me like Carol called Joyce with Hank’s phone (and may have done so a number of other times when Joyce didn’t answer).
Yeah, this now puts it actively in the realm of possibility Hank only called the twice, or that his line earlier gave Carol ideas.
Did Joyce call Hank? She finished a conversation with him, stormed out dramatically from her friends, and then promptly called back the person she had just been talking to?
I thought that Carol had somehow got hold of Hank’s phone again and called Joyce, and that she had answered thinking it was her father.
Yeah, the sound effects in the first panel suggest Joyce was called, rather than calling
Maybe stop leaving your phone unattended, Hank.
I feel like he should have JUST learned that lesson, and yet…
This is what makes me fear that Carol followed him out onto the porch with a kitchen knife. But I don’t think she would do that unless she knew that she was already into some felonious shit life-sentence deep.
Did she help dispose of Mike’s body? Murder Mike in the course of rescuing Ross from the bottom of the dry well? I would have guessed that she lives too far away to be involved like that.
WhoWhat exactly is she chopping up and putting into that big stew pot?Unfortunately, no one yet makes a self-charging cell-phone.
What he should have done is change his password. Or, if he’s never bothered before, locked his phone.
At one point, letting his wife have access to his phone was probably a demonstration of trust, but it has now been demonstrated to be misplaced trust.
It should be noted that Utah has outlawed conversion therapy as cruel and inhuman as well as incompatible with the religious beliefs of the vast majority of residents. Indiana only allows it as something an adult agrees to (as sad and horrible as that still is)–which means Becky would still never be legal to subject it to.
This outlawing is a good thing but also shows that Carol and her church are even more insane in the context of the setting. Kidnapping an adult woman at gunpoint, torturing her, and then working to get him released so he can try again.
That doesn’t sound accurate?
https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/conversion_therapy
Toe Dad likely imagines seeking services of a religious provider rather than a licensed mental health practitioner anyway. I have no idea how he thinks it’s going to work, but then, I’m kind of glad I can’t get in his head.
Given Toedad’s actions, my view is that he intends to do the conversion therapy himself or take her to a compound somewhere. Probably one he isn’t aware of.
Rationality is not his strong suit. God will presumably shine a light on the building or something.
I’m not sure Ross is thinking anything as scientifically supported as conversion therapy. Has that actually come up in comic or is it just something we’ve talked about here?
He’s going to get his daughter back and teach her how to walk right with the Lord.
Given there’s no scientific support for conversion therapy, I would argue that anything Ross is thinking is as scientifically supported as conversion therapy.
Nope. It tries to pretend, even though it’s bullshit. Ross won’t hold with that pretense. Ross takes his religious bigotry straight up, not in pseudo science disguise.
Or so I suspect.
The governor of Utah implemented a de facto ban after an outright ban was killed by the state legislature. Basically any mental health professional caught practicing conversion therapy on minors stands to lose their license. Adults still aren’t protected.
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/23/798809266/utah-is-latest-state-to-ban-lgbtq-conversion-therapy
It’s also fraudulent. And abusive. And violent.
It’s kind of against other laws that exists anyway.
The text implications of this phone call are bad, but the subtext is also bad in that it is now clear there is a serious conflict brewing between Carol and Hank and they don’t trust each other right now. Given the conflict among their kids already, this could rip the Brown family apart.
Hank seemingly was trying to desperately call Joyce but hide it from his wife.
And now, what seems only minutes later, she has his phone again.
Demonstrating that Hank was right to do so.
I’d say Carol helping or at the least approving of getting Ross out of jail might put a little strain on the family as well.
Sending a wannabe murderer to try to murder her daughter again may cause annoyance to said daughter, yes.
That sounds like the subtext is, in fact, great, not bad.
Man, this story is triggering my anger far more than most do. I despise people hiding behind religion to justify their hatred.
Its hilarious in a comic way how much of the New Testament was about this.
Yeah, this is one of those parts of the comic where you can tell the ‘Joyce is autobiographical’ wounds are still VERY raw. (I’m wondering when this strip was written/planned, but I have a suspicion.) It’s awful and infuriating and painful, because of course people are like this, and it sucks.
My sympathy goes out to Willis every time he shares this. I’m glad he has a family that he’s made himself and people who love him. My wife had a very similar background to him and her scars are terrible too.
I already didn’t like Carol, but she’s starting to really creep me out now.
Carol forgot to end the conversation with “Bwaa-haa-haa-haa-haaaaaaaa…”.
Fuck off to the 7th ring Carol
Okay. The Inferno reference cheered me up a little.
Do the right thing. Act with Integrity. No regrets.
Hmm.
The alt-text made me sad. Not just because Captain America’s words appeared in conjunction with … this. But because context.
I had a thought, and not just because I highly doubt Mike is dead:
We all think Mike is gonna be the Redemption Sacrificial Lamb.
But what if it’s Mary?
We’ve already had multiple comics that end with her visibly shaken by people’s reactions to her actions, most notably when she found out that absolutely no one approved of her plan to drive Billie/Ruth to suicide.
Mike showed remorse when he found out that Amber was Amazi-Girl, that he had a hand in her creation. Mary’s only ever expressed frustration and anger when people stop her.
That’s the problem I’ve always had with that Captain America quote. It can be a great attitude when you really are right and the stakes are high enough, but it’s an awful one when you’re wrong and the kind of moral absolutism linked to that “I know I’m right and I will never back down” is not commonly linked to a deep well thought out examination of one’s own motivations and biases.
It’s a quote that works for Cap because of his role as moral exemplar in a relatively simplistic super-hero world, but in the real world it’s far more likely to be taken up by bigots and zealots.
I would like to point out that that quote also does not work for comic!Cap, the man who hid the fact that a SHIELD death machine went haywire and nearly genocided a country and wanted to confiscate a reporter’s photos of it, because if the truth came out it would damage SHIELD’s reputation.
I don’t recall that bit. Was it part of Civil War or just something random out of Cap’s history? I wasn’t really following it at the time. There’s certainly been plenty of inconsistent characterization over the decades.
Neither. IIRC, it was part of the lead-up to Falcon!Cap.
One of the best things about comics is with so many authors, you get so many versions of the characters.
It makes it easy to strike the stupid ones from your personal canon.
Yeah, this BS. When I converted to Paganism about 1988-89 it was because of all the Xtians saying we had to use all the oil and all the coal and just leave the planet an empty burned-out husk or Jesus would be angry we didn’t use all the gifts He gave us.
I could see that doing that was 1) impossible and B) going to make things really bad in expectations of something that did not have a definite timetable (“like a thief in the night”). And ß) I didn’t believe in the book of Revelations anyway, why would you literally try to bring the end of the world?
A lot of crazier elements of American fundamentalist start making more sense if you wonder, “is someone making money by claiming Jesus would want this blatantly stupid/awful thing?” be it slavery, environmental devastation, or giving to Reverend Joe because God said he wanted a private jet.
I think a better explanation is this.
“Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to guide us. Things bothering me, like murder and stealing, do so because the Holy Spirit informs my soul that they are Evil Actions.”
“This thing which I am witnessing bothers me to the core.”
“Ergo. This mus be an Evil Action.”
Suddenly, anything that makes a person uncomfortable must be a terrible sin. Be it homosexuality, women in positions of recognized power (such as the pulpit), interracial marriage, or whatever.
I think that also ignores the fact a bunch of the stuff fundamentalists are up in arms about only became issues when the politicians started railing about them. Coincidentally when they were in the wilderness. There’s some fascinating insight into the change on abortion, putting homosexuals as a target, and more in political/religious discourse.
The idea being its a magician’s shuffle to get people to avoid talking about poverty, war, and other issues.
And much of it started in the US in the wake of court decisions keeping segregated religious schools from getting government support and those segregated religious schools sprung up in response to court mandated desegregation of public schools.
Like so much in the US, it all ties back to race.
As my wife said, “It’s Southern Baptist because the Northern Baptists hated slavery.”
So you’re saying the average American Boomer been consistently shortsighted and entitled for 30 years? (Present company excluded, of course.)
Sounds about right…
I’m a Boomer and I’m OK!
But do you sleep all night and work all day?
I can’t believer you’re hoarding all of the ok intended for your entire generation.
With a little bit of luck Carol will let it slip to Joyce that her cabal has already effected Ross’s release. At this point all se knows is that they are planning to try.
And then the view pans T2-style to reveal Hank dead with a knife through his face.
More likely to be his back, I think.
No foster parents for Joyce. And no good mom coming to her rescue.
Know what I think? I think the churchgroup has a plan to spirit Becky away to the Conversion Therapy gulag that Ross had picked out when Joyce and Amazigirl foiled his plans. “Your mother and your
Church will always do what is right.” That’s sinister as hell. It sounds like a goodbye as well.
I never thought about that, but you’re right.
Huh. Strange. This doesn’t sound at all like “Sorry for letting out a monster and also, you should take your friend and run.”
Fudge. You. Carol.
gosh. darn it. to. heck !
Carol is basically Willis’s mother, IIRC his posts on the matter. “I am your mother, therefore you should accept whatever I say and want to be unequivocally right and deserving of your unthinking cooperation.”
Redemptive twist: Carol is acting as the inside agent on the church’s plan to raise bail. She’d actually been subtly thwarting their efforts to get enough money and would have been successful if Blaine hadn’t showed up.
She’s still staying in character to keep her cover intact, but made sure to let enough slip to Hank that he could warn Becky through Joyce.
That woman broke the cardinal rule of marriage and parenting…never use your spouse phone to call your children.
I’ve been asking for a while, but does she even own a cellphone ?
My parents use each other’s phones relatively frequently. It might be that Dad took photos of my girls Mum wants to share with me so she messages me them from her phone along with a stream of consciousness which can confuse me if I don’t realise it’s not Dad messaging me, or I might call and the other might be closer to the phone so they’ll answer it even if it’s not theirs.
But while neither of them is perfect, they are both loving people who I trust, and who recognise that I’m not always going to make the choices they want and they do need to accept that (I might get arguments or passive-aggressive guilt trips, but they ultimately accept them). Neither of them thinks that kidnapping a grown-up child at gunpoint after threatening their friends with said gun, or stalking their child, is a justifiable/acceptable/reasonable thing to do.
So if I need to talk to one of them specifically I will ask if they’re around, but I won’t be upset about the other answering, or expect the conversation to leave me devastated because one of them has such a skewed perception of “right” or “reasonable” that they may pose an active threat to my safety or that if somebody I love.
I want to remind you that I always believe I‘m acting like an Angel, even when I‘m acting like a total asshole. The same goes for the church I made you grow up in.
Yes, mom, I get it. You are Never wrong, no matter how utterly, inhumanly wrong you are.
This … this made me sadder than I expected.
Carol is an honorary member of the Evil Dads Club.
Evil parents. They are bigoted, but inclusive.
Okay THAT made me laugh, thank you. <3
Evil parental figures? Guardians?
We’ve got to get Clint included somehow.
Clint was a parent. He may not be Ruth’s, but still. Do you honestly think he was any better to her … mother, I think?
Mother. The father was the one he really hated for taking his daughter away. It is possible he did treat his actual daughter better but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he treated her perfectly either as he clearly questioned her choice of husband and doesn’t care for Ruth or Howard due to the part of their father in them.
I’m just gonna put it this way – when their parents had just died and Howie was crying, Ruth mentioned that their grandfather was coming to take care of them and Howie’s reaction was ‘Okay, I’ll stop.’
WARNING: RELIGIOUS DISCUSSION BELOW
As a semi-practicing Christian myself, you know what I just realized?
What Carol is doing here, what Ross has done, what everyone in the church is doing, disgusts me for the same reason that I get pissed when people take the Bible literally.
They’re calling their own judgment and actions “always right” by claiming it’s done in line with their faith. They’re calling their actions God’s actions.
And in doing so… they’re breaking the first commandment. And are therefore even BIGGER hypocrites than people might realize.
Yep. People like this never notice that miraculously God’s opinion is always exactly the same their own.
They claim to know exactly what the omniscient Creator of the Universe wants. Until you ask them about stuff like why he allows childhood cancer, and then they’re all “mysterious ways.”
Also, they tell you that God has a vast and unfathomable divine plan, so detailed that not a sparrow falls but he planned it, and so wonderful and perfect that all the suffering and horror in the world is justified as a necessary part of it. But they ask Him to set it aside so that their team can win a game of football.
Always reminds me of the famous quote from Alfonso X of Castile (also known as Alfonso the Wise) “Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.”
It’s not that God’s opinion is the same as their own. It’s that they’ve learned their opinions from studying God’s Word and thus they must do what they’ve learned from that is right even when it hurts them.
It’s certainly messed up, but it’s not quite as simple as you paint it. Most religious bigots don’t come to their opinions in a vacuum and then go find a church that agrees with them. It’s all tied up in a nasty feedback loop where the religious teachings they get (often masquerading as the only reasonable reading of the literal Biblical text) amplify and reinforce existing prejudices – or install them in the first place, since they’re often exposed to this from young childhood.
Of course, if you start off in what Joyce would call a hippie church, you can get the opposite kind of feedback loop. Still selective reading/interpretation of the text, but biased towards what I’d consider more positive teachings.
Jesus said, “Don’t divorce, unless she cheats. But then, don’t EVER get remarried!”.* And yet, I know of at LEAST one pastor on his second wife.
It was PAUL who said “Well, if she’s not a believer, better to divorce her then be ‘unequally yoked'”.
As far as I know, divorce is still not celebrated in churches, and at least one prominent one still makes a Very Big Deal about it, but for lots of people, and their congregations, it’s okay. But, all these OTHER things disqualify someone from a leadership role within the church.
*I personally suspect Jesus would be fine with some 21st century divorces, where one partner is treated as the doormat of the other. That time was a time when a divorced woman had pretty literally nothing. Today, a woman can walk away from a bad divorce and start over.
A 1st Century Ivana Trump would not have been as well off, going literally from riches to rags.
That’s another interpretation of the Jesus quote. Technically he said, “Let those who God has brought together never be torn apart.” But then people spend AGES dissecting these passages and what they REALLY mean until they become entire ideologies.
He also said the concept of “Eternal Marriage” where you’re married in Heaven is nonsense (“divine beings don’t need marriage”) so remarrying after your spouse dies is fine.
Yeah, anyone who professes to understand exactly what god wants is actually implying they are like god.
I don’t know why that idea is increasingly common nowadays.
Claiming to speak for God, calling their actions God’s actions, is pretty much what I understand blasphemy to mean.
Yeah, it’s my biggest hatred, taking your own vendetta and saying it’s God’s will. I want to have a faith so badly, but the things I’ve seen my own family do in “God’s name” just hurts, I lost faith and just can’t find it again. I have cut off an Uncle entirely, and am afraid for the next family gathering as it was recent. But he said the Challenger explosion was punishment from God because we “took prayer out of public schools” and I just snapped. He’s said extreme things regarding abortion, and I took it to be the ramblings of a brainwashed man, but this was something he came up himself and I just can’t anymore.
Easy to say Carol but harder to do. You and that organisation have a very bad track record to be playing the “trust us” card at this point.
Well this is … really disturbing.
Oh, you mean like the church did during the inquisition? Or the black death? X to doubt.
I know that Mr. Brown isn’t perfect by any standards, but he really needs to get away from Carol before she cracks for real.
I see no sign of cracking. Cracking is for nuts, things with a good core.
F**k off Carol!
…Fuck it, head canon – Mike survived and is currently working to expose the entire church and get all but Joyce’s father arrested
Pastor Mike can convert them to the Church of the Second Eaton.
No, Willis, WE WILL NEVER LET YOU FORGET THIS.
I’m kind of starting to wonder if the last few strips are taking place just before Mike & Amazi-Girl vs the 2 doofuses.
Nah, it’s just that Blaine and Toe-dad kind of slunk off into the night, and no one has yet been apprised of the new happenings.
I have a theory about her brother John. He supposedly got married in India. Joyce has never met his wife. He has a sports car he got from skimming the money given to him for the mission trips that he and his wife go on. Is it possible that he ISN’T married and never goes on mission trips? He is just skimming the money and lying to everyone?
My guess is that he is married and does go on mission trips. Its just that he considered embezzling donations for his own benefit to be a”fringe benefit” of his position. Hell, he might even tell himself that it is a “reward from the Lord” for doing The Good Work.
Both your viewpoints are equally possible (and have a number of real life examples), but I think the mission trips are real. In his one appearance, he did carry a strong odour of one who believes they “carry the white mans burden of enlightening the savages and saving them from their heathenish superstitions”, complete with the moral superiority over everyone else that implies.
There’s more local Christians in India than in America, FYI. Also, more fundamentalist Christians. It should be noted that they tend to view American fundamentalists as an extension of THEIR churches as we’re a corrupt, liberal, and dying society. More like a piggy bank for their efforts.
It’s an interesting perspective that I appreciated for enlightening my somewhat condescending view of them that they were under the control of the white churches there.
I didn’t know that, so thank you for that very interesting insight! I’m not sure John would see it that way, the moral superiority is strong with that one.
That doesn’t seem right to me. India has only a tiny minority of Christians. That’s a large absolute number, since it’s population is high, but still smaller than the majority Christian population of the US.
A quick bit of internet research gives me numbers around 31 million Christians in India and 240 million in the US.
Joyce hasn’t met her, but I think the parents have. Joyce complained that “I didn’t get to go to the wedding”, so it sounded like it was just her left out.
And Christi’s been in the US for awhile with John so it seems like it would have been emphasized more if the others hadn’t met her. Jocelyne didn’t chime in during that discussion about how she was still waiting to meet her too.
And with That, Carol has proven herself to be every bit as abusive and manipulative as Blaine.
Wow. Creepy.
Why is she using his phone instead of hers or the house phone? Was she the one calling on his phone, but to lay down a guilt trip like this?
Also now I’m imagining Joyce as Captain America with that alt text
Because she knows that Joyce won’t answer a call from her number.
Honestly if my mom was like that, I wouldn’t neither
Hank left it to her so that there is anything smart about her.
You think you could fit a bus through the door or would you have to knock down a wall to run her over after toe dad?
I do not feel bad about really not liking Carol AT ALL.
So…
Bets on Carol wearing her husband’s face right now…? >:D
Ok, so Carol stating that she (and the church) always does the right thing, implies by omission that Hank does not. This is heading straight to a messy divorce with Carol demanding the children choose a side (hers naturally, because she’s the “real victim” by being persecuted for “doing the right thing”).
I’ve no doubt that this is where it is going. Worse, sides WILL be chosen and perpetual enmities will be forged. As a result, there are people in the Brown family who will not speak to others ever again except in bitter and vitriolic occasional outbursts via third parties.
I’ve no doubt that there is a plausible scenario where Carol will make her acknowledging Joyce’s existence as her child contingent on her handing over Becky and/or testifying on Ross’s behalf. I won’t go into the firestorm that will be inevitable when Jocelyn comes out.
On the up side, that might give Joss the idea it’s safe to come out to Hank and Joyce (neither of whom will likely understand at first, but are of the type that their love of Joss would make them try).
(And on the real-world only up side, Jordan will probably be un-disowned by Team Hank, so we’ll learn about him.)
Was Jordan disowned by Hank and Carol, or were Hank and Carol disowned by Jordan?
“We will always do the right thing.” “We did a thing.” “Therefore, that thing must have been right. QED!”
With the logical next step of: “Anyone who tries to stop us is therefore in the wrong, even if they were acting to protect themselves against an obvious and overt physical threat.”
Ross McIntyre may yet find himself becoming a martyr (at least in his peer group), just as he always wished.
……FUCK
I just want to throw in this link (Joyce asking “…and what about mom?”)
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/monsters-2/
We’re moving into “last thing you hear before the bombs go off” territory now. :/
Errrm … what? That’s one hell of an extremist statement. Not even “will always TRY to do the right thing” but straight out “DO” the right thing? Way to force your kid back into the religious corset, mom. Also, I don’t get why everybody now says it means “murdering Becky is cool”.
When guns and kidnapping are involved, I think that you are a terrorist.
Because that’s the “right thing” she’s helping him do?
Not saying this is conclusive that Carol didn’t do something rash to her husband, but I checked back to the beginning of the phone call from him that was answered by Sarah, and he said he had not called Joyce a dozen times and that his phone had been sitting on the counter for a long time untended. This means he regularly leaves it out like this, probably to stay on the charger. So all Carol had to do was wait until he walked away and them access his phone to make this call. I hope that is all that happened but knowing Willis and his plotting I am not as sure as I would like to be.
I think Hank was lying since his wife was right next door.
Whether he was lying about making all the calls doesn’t change that he leaves the phone right next to where she’s standing. Like you also just said.
That a nice visual for “chilling understanding dawns”.
I like how, in the last two frames, Joyce’s posture collapses… just a little.
“I want you to remember that your mom…and your church…will always do–”
*hangs up*
Joyce: Boring conversation anyway.
Joyce: *blasts phone* ”HEY BECKY, WE’RE GONNA HAVE COMPANY!”
I don’t think Ross’s Toe head would fit a stormtrooper helmet.
Why else do you think he never hit any of our protagonists while shooting?
“Mom, lemme call you back…I’ve got a bigger problem: the entire town of Bloomington just disappeared.”
Ha!
Panel five: (heart breaks)
I’ll damn Willis some other time.
I’m honestly coming to read Carol as a split personality. The fact that we can’t see her face feels like an important art choice. If every part of her felt that The Right Thing to Do was to free Ross and let him abduct and forcibly convert Becky, then strategically, she should deny Hank’s claim, or at the very least, not call Joyce with a cryptic defense of her actions, to minimize the chance that Joyce and Becky might prepare some defense. Joyce was thinking that Ross was still in jail after Hank’s call. But we know how Carol sounds when she’s conflicted, and how she sounds when she’s committed.
There is a part of her that feels freeing Ross was wrong–hang on, bear with me a second here–a part of her that wants to protect Joyce and even Becky. It’s just not the dominant part, or she wouldn’t have done what she’s done. It’s like the last little bits of Henry Jekyll when Hyde’s in the driver’s seat.
This call is as close to an apology as Carol is capable of giving–this horrible, defensive, self-aggrandizing, absolutist filth is literally the best gesture of love that her fundamentalism-crippled mind can produce. She hopes to provide a bit of comfort in the difficult moments ahead, to assure Joyce (and again, maybe even Becky by proxy) that there’s a moral order behind them. “God’s choices hurt us sometimes, but He works in mysterious ways, for the greater good. Do the right thing even when it’s difficult, isn’t that how you put it when defending your godless friend?”
I wouldn’t have expected the Browns to be at such a low simmer with each other at this point. Their quiet toxicity does fascinate me, but I hope it keeps ramping up… and I hope that when it does, Hank has the strength to leave his marriage of so many years instead of excusing the inexcusable out of misplaced love.
I’d like to counter argue with a personal experience: It’s not split personality. It’s pride. She’s too prideful to admit that she and all that she believes in wrong so she’s going to extreme lengths to prove that she and her faith are “In the Right” out of fear of facing the truth that she just might be *dramatic gasp* wrong. When I was a kid, my mom would defend my father’s abuse to every degree imaginable. It took him attempting to do something unspeakable to my older sister that finally knocked some sense into the woman to divorce him and take the kids…only to still make us go visit him for the weekends, be nice and act like nothing happened because “YoU dOn’T wAnT tO mAkE aN eNeMy Of YoUr FaThEr” To this day, my mom would still try to threaten to “tell dad” as a way to try to control me to behave, as if it still has an effect.
In Joyce’s case, her mom is trying to show her “The Way” by doing what she MORALLY knows is wrong as all get out but she can’t bring herself to accept the fact that it’s all pretty much FUBAR for ol’ Toedad. I agree that Mrs. Brown wants nothing more than to protect her kids, but her pride and narcissism are her absolute undoing. You say she’s trying to apologize with that statement. I disagree, she’s just telling her daughter “I did what I had to because I love you.” and considering the actions taking place, it’s the most ass backwards, batshit, toxic love that NO ONE should accept, regardless of the source. She’s FAR from sorry for what she and the church have done, she’s just trying to absolve herself from any sort of responsibility for what comes next, KNOWING it’s gonna be FUBAR.
Is it pride or just she’s flat out evil?
See, it’s hard for me to go with “she’s flat-out evil,” not only because that seems wildly overused as an explanation these days (don’t get me started on tribalism), but because Joyce herself had to come from somewhere, and Hank did not raise her on his own, and she was not in open rebellion against her parents when she arrived here. Kindness like Joyce’s has to be nurtured to thrive, and even if Hank took the lead on that front, Carol must have more or less gone along with him there. Otherwise, Joyce-as-she-was at the start of the comic might’ve been friendly and positive or unquestioningly accepting of parental authority, but she wouldn’t have been both.
So even though yes, absolutely yes, Carol is a bad person, I don’t think she’s a flat-out evil person.
Thing is, some people–let’s call them Carols–think kindness is only for those inside their circle: those who share certain beliefs or follow certain rules. To any outsiders, Carols are hostile in a major or minor key, and anyone at risk of straying outside is to be corrected with varying degrees of sternness. Others–Joyces–think kindness is for pretty much everyone, as long as it doesn’t allow others to get hurt (no stabbing me or my friends, Ryans!)
The distinction between Carols and Joyces doesn’t always mean much in practice. If you never meet anyone outside your circle, then you can be nice to everyone you meet, and no one could tell from observation whether you’re a Carol or a Joyce. You yourself might not know. But in an increasingly complicated world, there’s an increasing likelihood you’ll live long enough to find out.
Dang, guess I got into tribalism there after all.
That’s pretty much it and I don’t think it requires any kind of split personality as you suggested earlier.
As for that last bit, Hank is (or was) a Joyce who didn’t really interact outside his circle, so he didn’t see the conflict until Joyce ran into it and he listened to her.
Carol is likely nice, but not good. That nurtured Joyce’s kindness, but also all her pathologies.
Yeah, I would argue there’s a difference between ‘kind’ and ‘good’.
“Kindness like Joyce’s has to be nurtured to thrive”
Yeah, that’s very obviously wrong.
It could still be that she thinks she’s doing the right thing but she knows Joyce will disagree and she doesn’t want to lose Joyce so she’s reaching out to her with her vestiges of motherly authority.
In short, she’s being manipulative as per normal to get the desired result.
I would REALLY like it if people stopped minimising people being absolute hypocritical, disingenious shitheels by going “but maybe it’s a mental health issue”.
I don’t think anyone thinks Carol’s got clinical MPD, I certainly don’t. That’s Amazi-Girl’s thing, and we haven’t seen anything from Carol that would indicate it. I’m talking about something less rigidly defined: a technically healthy person can wander into weird mental territory if their closely held beliefs start conflicting too violently with each other.
And they can still be held responsible for that. I’m not making an excuse. I want Hank and Joyce and Jocelyne to turn their backs on her, whereas if I thought she were having the kind of issues that get you hospitalized, the moral thing to do would be to stand by her, at least long enough to help her. She isn’t, and it’s not.
I think the term you’re looking for was “cognitive dissonance”, then, not split personality.
“Cognitive Dissonance” is perfect, actually.
Carol’s Carol-ness is probably better compared to NPD than MPD anyway.
She clearly doesn’t have NPD (doesn’t need anything that severe to deal with things the way she has) but I’d boil down the source of her beliefs as wanting to be in the right from the beginning before anything else.
She made a choice in what to make of her kids’ adult lives and continues to stick to it. Like all choices, it comes with consequences. How Carol is choosing to write the Final Chapters of her Life as a Mother, Wife, and Christian is actually quite normal……Just not the better part of ‘normal’ is all.
You literally said that being conflicted meant she had a “split personality”.
(and also that creates a mental link between “terrible person” and “mental heath patient”, and the latter DO NOT need further stigmatising)
(sorry, see above. It’d go better here.)
She isn’t conflicted, and this certainly isn’t anything remotely related to apologizing. She is feeling ‘attacked’ (insofar as Hank and Joyce are not questionlessly and enthusiastically supporting her moral stand) and thus is lashing out with justifications and guilt-tripping.
Any basis that attacked feeling has in an inkling of her own conscience that she is supporting someone who threatened and is a continuing danger to her own daughter is buried under a thousand layers of self-righteousness, pride, and ignorant hatred, to the point of being academic.
All that springs to mind is “welcome to painful truths”
SO I just realized that a few pages ago Joyce said “My dad THINKS the church is trying to get beckys dad out of jail.”
However Carol was there when Blaine came in offering to pay the rest of the bond.
So that means Carol and the Church are specifically hiding this from Hank.
Including the money out of his joint account.
I’m sorry Joyce, but this woman is crazy and you have to say the truth at Becky.
Does it look like Carol is holding something in her left hand?
Also: Fuck you, Mom.
A knife. She’s holding a knife. A bloody knife, that she just used to kill her husband, not yet revealed to the reader.
Alternate theory: Her hand *IS* a knife, and it’s not yet revealed to the reader that she’s a T-1000 Terminator.
That’s not a knife. It’s a phone.
She stabbed him with a bloody phone!?
It was a cutting-edge model.
You’re all going to jail.
That’s okay. I know how to jail break.
So we’ll be safe from Ross!
Time for Hank to move to yet another church. And leave his wife in the old one.
The irony is, the mothers advice is good and this is Joyce now deciding she needs to warn Becky; which is the conclusion she should have come to in the first place.
Even Carol is having trouble feeling validated with her Church family’s latest decision……….Did they find out about Blaine, or did He and One-Note Ross come back with Mike’s body seeking a place to hide from the authorities?
Is that regret or disgust her family (husband and daughter) aren’t righteous anymore?
What? No she’s not, she’s telling Joyce to not fight when Ross comes to get Becky (Carol is afraid for Joyce’s soul because interfering with Ross’s family headship last time was the wrong thing to do according to her morality, and therefore Joyce took one more step towards Hell). And i doubt they’ve heard anything yet, it’s been less than 24 hours.
WELL THIS ISN’T OMINOUS AT ALL
I came here to say this.
Joyce, do the right thing. Tell Becky immediately.
Hey, I found that Claire pun pinnacle strip:
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2465
Surely you mean the punnacle?
If I were funnier, I might have meant that.
either she’s going to bail him out or is planning on murdering him, that is an ominous phone call…
the people mentionning the parallel with DW made me have the horrible thought that Carol may just have mortgaged their house to pay for the bail…
….
….
I want to bleach my brain but I can’t.
Well, since Blaine got involved, that probably didn’t happen, but I could see her doing it for a shitty purpose in the future. Like…hiring a lawyer to try to get conservatorship over one of her kids or something. (I don’t think that would happen, let alone work, but y’know. Something shitty.)
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion.”
― Steven Weinberg
See, I disagree with that.
Joyce is a good person. She makes mistakes, but she generally does good, religion or no.
I have seen nothing that indicates that Carol or Ross are good people. At all.
Plus, Carol at least didn’t get molded by her religion – she shopped around and chose her faith. And, unlike Hank, she not only does not seem to be regretting that decision; she is actively doubling down on it.
That’s… not disagreeing with what jmsr7 posted, though.
Hey, same brainwave.
My point was that I don’t see any “good people doing evil things” here – just shitty people.
On an unrelated note – do y’all like the new name with or without spaces?
If my thoughts count for anything, the spaces make it easier for me to read the third/fourth words as separate (“Any Other“) rather than combined into a single compound (“Another”).
(Could just be a thing with my eyes though.)
I like it without the spaces, but either way, I dig it.
Thanks for the input!
So, the result is two votes for spaces in Dumbing and one vote for no spaces in It’s Walky… so I’m gonna do both. Spaces here, none there. Just to be confusing. ^^
Well, try to look at things from Carol’s point of view.
Carol wants to be good. To be good, you have to be a good Christian. To be a good christian, you do what god says and don’t do what he says to do. And she lives in a country that has reinforced that message for many, many decades and in a culture that has said the same for millennia. Heck, even nowadays where christianity is facing an unprecedented decline – few popular figures and nooooo politicians are willing to describe the bible as anything other than “the good book.”
And IT says the man is the head of the house and must be obeyed, homosexuality is sinful(1), and sinful people are going to be tortured. It also endorses violence as a means of control and lacks any concept of consent. So Carol knows (or suspects) full well what Ross intends to do, and agrees with it because it’s what god demands, therefore it’s good. Clear?
jmsr
(1) i’d just like to point out here that the Venn Diagram of “sinful” things and “immoral” things only partially overlap at best. trimming your beard may be sinful, but immoral? newp.
So do you disagree with the quote in general or just its relevancy here?
I’m not sure I agree with it, unless one has a very loose definition of “religion”– but then I also get into what even the concepts of a “good person” and “bad person” are.
There are things other than religion that work, but I think they generally push the same kinds of buttons. Other ideologies.
Voltaire’s “Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities.” Religion is particularly good at that, but there are other approaches.
I think that has more to do with group think, peer pressure, and mob-mentality stuff than the organizations involved. Get enough upset people together with a charismatic speaker, and you can convince otherwise rational people of all sorts of insane shit – and get them to act on it.
Yep. It has less to do with their Fundamentalist beliefs and more to do with them being Reverse-Hippies obsessed with controlling their man-child kids (Joyce was an exception. Becky was still in the closet.) who use their Fundamentalist Ideals as a shield from Accountability and the ego-bruising personal growth and humility it can bring.
Any movement or form of idealism-based sect that grants people a recognizable identity that both makes them feel validated and guaranteed to be proven right in worldview and deed can fill this just as easily as any major religion.
I go for the more simple, “Everyone is the hero in their own story.”
I’m an antihero at best.
I’m a romantic heroine, splayed out on a fainting couch.
it’s always funny how the right thing feels like the wrong thing when you have to justify it as the right thing.
I would have been like, “Oh good, so you’re not gonna post his bail then. Thanks.”
go to fucking hell, carol
do not pass go, do not collect $200
This hit me so hard that after years of lurking DoA, I had to comment. Mr Willis, that last panel had me in tears. Thank you for this strip. I appreciate you capturing what that moment is like, so eloquently in silence, and it makes me feel less alone with the memory of my own experience.
Not to get too heavy or anything but, just, thanks. If you’ve been there, you understand.
Can we get someone to shiv Carol as well?
No patience for bullshit righteous perpetrator protecting parents who still think they are doing the right thing.
what lovely composition; it communicates so well!