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A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
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Two hunters try to survive and end up being pushed to pursue a deadly bounty dubbed "The Ghost".
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Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
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Fun fact: a number of Jewish mystics were convinced that they had descended to the throne of God and measured, with precision, various lengths upon the body of God. Shoulder to shoulder, God is apparently ~56,035,000 miles wide. (Their unit of measure was the Persian “parasang”, which… we don’t have a very exact measure for, so the conversion I was given was 3.5 miles.) Your Google keyword of the day is “Shi’ur Qomah”.
Well spotted. It should in fact be attributed to William Bruce Cameron instead of Albert Einstein. The quote actually comes from Cameron’s 1963 text “Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking.”
Ironically, painfully, illustrated to be false, with the number of covid survivors dying during their *second* round of the disease because they *still* didn’t get vaccinated.
Speaking as someone who is vaccinated, I was under the impression that if one was already infected and survived then a vaccine was rendered unnecessary as you already had the antibodies. Like, I thought a vaccine worked because it injects you with a weakened/partially dead virus for your immune system to learn how to beat so it can fight the real virus later, so if it’s already fought off the real virus wouldn’t the vaccine be redundant? Genuinely asking, not trying to start a fight
Many vaccines do use weakened or dead virules to prime the body’s immune system, but the mRNA vaccines that are all of the Covid vaccines don’t do that. They instead pull an IU/Asma, attach a picture of Billie Covid-19 and instructions on how to fight it to the injected materials, and send it to the body which then disemminates the instructions through the body. The side effects with the vaccine currently, which mostly amount to very low grade versions of Covid symptoms like soreness and fever, are a vaccinated body running through its systems testing immune response. No diease actually makes the body heat into a fever, it’s an immune response that kills disease.
Now with Covid, early tests showed that people who caught it and recovered had “better” antibodies than those who were vaccinated, but more recent testing has showed that vaccination provides longer-lasting protection and has protection against newer variants. If you somehow lucked your way through a Delta diagnosis without a shot (because vaccinated people overwhelmingly handle the disease well, or at least better than not getting the shot), Omicron gives zero shits whereas the shot (especially with a booster) will still provide protection.
Yes, that is the way it works, when it’s nice and neat and the virus doesn’t change too quickly. Previous infection works similarly to a vaccine and they partially substitute for one another. The problem with the common cold has always been that it changes too darn fast, so that by the time your body has “learned” how to beat ‘it’, a different strain is already beginning to make the neighborhood rounds. Some viruses evolve more quickly than others, which is why we need a different flu shot every year but chickenpox only once or twice in our lives.
That’s why the mRNA technology was so promising: it offered the possibility of quickly fabricating a vaccine against emerging variants, when previously it was just not worth it to make a dead-virus vaccine for a minor inconvenience, when it would only last a few months or one year tops before it failed to work quite as well, or at all, against the new prevalent strains.
COVID-19 changed the calculus. Its damage made it worth trying to make a vaccine anyway, even against the target that we knew was moving so fast. But as we can see, it’s still a hard problem.
That’s not quite it with Covid – and some other diseases too. For some diseases immunity from either infection or vaccination is very long lasting or even permanent (think measles or chickenpox). Others, like the flu, change drastically so that exposure to this years doesn’t help much with next years.
Resistance to Covid though isn’t complete from the start with either vaccine or past infection and drops off significantly over 6 months or so, even if it’s the same variant. That’s why boosters were being recommended even before omicron came along.
Now – get your booster. If you’re not vaccinated yet, get started.
There are actually a couple of issues with colds. First, “the cold” is a set of symptoms, not a specific virus. There are actually dozens of different viruses that can cause colds. Some of them also tend to mutate quickly, so no matter how many you develop resistance to, there’s always one more out there.
Secondly, there’s the length of resistance. In many cases, this varies with how dangerous the disease is. A cold may make you miserable for a few days, but it almost never kills anyone. Because there’s a certain biological cost to maintaining resistance, it’s more efficient to fight off “nuisance” infections repeatedly than to maintain resistance indefinitely. For diseases that can cause serious or fatal problems, resistance tends to last longer. Chickenpox is rarely a serious danger for children, but it can be life-threatening for adults. That’s why our bodies tend to remain resistant more or less indefinitely after a single infection or vaccination. It’s similar with other serious diseases such as measles or polio.
Because Covid is a very new virus, our immune systems aren’t entirely sure how to handle it. If it becomes endemic, which seems likely, our response may change over time. But that doesn’t really matter to you or me, since evolution happens over the course of generations. Our relatively very long life spans and limited number of offspring mean that human evolution moves very slowly. That being the case, annual Covid boosters may become the norm.
I am on neither side, but I will point out that Joyce’s self-righteousness only bothers Becky when it’s not in agreement with her own. It’s not like self-righteous bullhockey is new to Joyce’s personality.
At least this is a growing pain rather than indoctrination.
Ah, but you’re an outlier. Most people are swayed by peer opinion. Thus, Sir Pterry-advocacy on average ought to get more readers… until the field is so saturated with the persuaded that diminishing returns set in.
Although in this specific case, as a confirmed materialist atheist, I respond to his line about being unable to measure “justice” or whatever by saying that those are abstractions occurring in people’s brains, and as such can’t currently be measured, silly man. Good books, though.
I don’t think I’m parsing your response correctly. Are you saying “Justice” is in fact measurable, but that we just lack the ability at this time?
—
At any rate, it is actually shocking how different different cultures can be. Even involuntary physical phenomena can have different meanings. In Peru, a yawn indicates hunger.
A yawn for hunger is not confined to Peru or even H. Sapiens. Any given yawn has many possible causes including fatigue, boredom, and yes, hunger. The NewYorker has a great write up.
My personal favorite is to oxygenate the brain, as it indicates you haven’t been breathing properly, or that there is something wrong with the air in your immediate environment. I actually don’t think I’ve ever yawned from boredom, but I did have a teacher who would get pissy with me whenever I yawned, because my yawns are loud, and she thought it was rude that I would yawn in her class, never mind the fact that it’s a totally involuntary action that I literally can’t control, and that there are a large number of reasons one might yawn other than boredom, but even if it *was* due to boredom it isn’t like I was doing it on purpose, so how can it possibly be rude, and if it is rude, what does she expect me to do about it since it’s totally involuntary!
Oh, I’m well aware I’m an outlier in that regard. I could take a bus down to the librarby and probably find a plethora or Pratchett that I’d enjoy. But since I see the recommendations everywhere I go online, my reptoid brain takes it as others telling me what to like.
I absolutely forbid you from ever reading Pratchett and if you should ever somehow find yourself reading it, I order you to avoid enjoying the experience at all costs.
Fair enough feeling like people are making you do something can make you not want to, even if its something you would enjoy.
Frankly I don’t know how much telling people they should read something compares advertising wise to telling someone not to read a book.
I always bristle at people telling me I need or have to do something, because I’m pretty sure I only need to drink water, consume calories, and breathe a little to live. It’s part of why I’ve never watched The Godfather on my family’s recommendation because they’re all giant asses about it, acting like it’s almost a moral failing on my part that I haven’t seen it. The person who almost got me to try it didn’t implore I
watch it for vague arbitrary reasons, they said they thought the movie would appeal to my personal sensibilities, my actual tastes.
Don’t be shitty about what media someone has or has not consumed. No one’s tastes are universal, just because something clicked for you and 1998 friends does not mean the 2000th person in your group will like it, or that they’re even obligated to give it the time of day. And the four people IMMEDIATELY brazenly trying obvious reverse psychology is as bad and maybe even slightly worse. You’re all still dogpiling Taffy, only now it’s directly flying in his request to NOT dogpile him and the “cleverness” is just coming across as shitty and condescending. You’ve made your recommendation, now shut up and leave him alone.
I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s alright in this particular case, since I sort of invited it by mentioning unprompted that I had an aversion when nobody particularly asked. You do make a valid point about media-taste dogpiles though, so your comment doesn’t go amiss conceptually, and it’s handy to have this kind of thing said from time to time.
Also, I use they/them pronouns, for the record. No big deal, just a gentle reminder.
Nice try, but that sort of statement also makes me not wanna look into stuff, because it’s gained the connotation of “[X] is super #Problematic and you’ll just get upset reading it.”
Haha me too. Ppl started recommending me prattchett when I was like. 9. And J’REFUSE.
Until like. 5-6 years later, I finished my book one history class, and nicked a classmate’s without checking the cover and it was spectacularly good instantly and I had to go FIIIIIINE YALL WERE RIGHT.
with the years, I find it less and less good.
I used to reread all once or twice a year.
Haven’t open one since two years.
Reading his collected articles kind of killed it for me.
(FEEL FREE TO NOT READ THIS STUPID NEVER-ENDING NIGHTMARE)
There is probably a biological/sociological reason for it that I don’t know of. Perhaps it’s a phenomenon like being left-handed, in that it is naturally occurring, although I would be more inclined to think it is simply a result of social interactions and behaviors.
In my case, for example, I am almost certain it has something to do with how I was constantly told by someone who I had to be, what I had to like, and so on. Having someone constantly drilling you about things as sinple as what programs you should like or not can be quite jarring for a personality like mine. So naturally, while I spent years unable to protest these attitudes myself out of simple cowardice, I developed a considerable aversion to recommendation- (along with an unhealthy level of paranoia, just to top it out). For years I learned that other’s suggestions were often vailed attempts at (and I use this word because I think it encompases a nunber of adecuate concepts on it’s own) correcting me- there was often a hidden meaning behind the comments said around or about me.
Therefore now, everytime someone tells me to “watch this, it’s awesome” or “read that, it’ll *change your life!*” my mind does the following questions: What does this person consider (qualifier)? Why are they suggesting this? What is the topic matter? What are they implying? What do they gain from this? Who gets a benefit from it? Do they know what I like?
And I’m sure I’m missing some, but you can get the idea. Sometimes I eventually manage to “answer” all the questions and actually follow the recomendation years later, sometimes I don’t. The more people talking about it makes me more weary and pops more questions, but in general the effect is the same. And it’s not like I don’t realize how detrimental it is in matters of content. For example, I was meaning to start reading Isaac Asimov’s work two years ago, and then one of my older brother’s started praising every book- now I haven’t come around to read even the first one, and I love robots and science fiction. I grab the book and go “ooooh!” and yet when I leave it it’s like, a constant repultion for me. It’s weird.
Anyway, my only way of resisting people influence used to be internally rejecting of their suggestions/comments (or being rude/horrible when I was feeling self-destructive in general) so some of those responses are still engraived in my head. Not that I can’t work them our with a professional.
(I don’t know if they were mocking Taffy or just “joking” with one another, but the thread higher up regarding “inverted psychology” or whatever that was is particularly jarring for me. They’re probably just fooling around, but to me it’s like a nightmare-read. Maybe it’s just the Internet’s fault, since I can only read what they write and I can’t read their behaviors. You asked clearly and honestly, and I tried to answer the same.)
That was well presented. Thank you for sharing. I occasionally experience recommendation aversion for pop culture items (Lost, Survivor being two that I dodged), but it’s not hard and fast. What I never did, was consider the overall drive behind it, because it never impacted anything important, like vaccination, or so I thought. I shall consider this more.
Most people when recommending media just want a new person to talk about how great it is with or are tribalistically championing their favorite media.
My guess is recommendation aversion proberly comes from different places, not wanting people to think they can boss you around is part of it.
I could also see it being at least a little an instinct that came about because if everyone is hunting the forest will get over hunted and next year the people who know where all the good berry picking spots or fishing spots will have all the food
This is very nicely written, and it hits a lot of the right points for my case as well. There’s definitely an element of not wanting other people to define what I can like or have to like, steeped in people forcibly defining every single aspect of my life since I was a kid. There’s also the element of, like temporaryobsessor mentions above, a tribalistic vibe where I’m the Other if I don’t follow the crowd.
To respond to Wereg in particular, it’s absolutely not contrarianism. That mindset used to control my life just as much as the people who took my personal choices away, because I was still letting them decide what the conversation was about in the first place. The urge still comes up sometimes, but not in cases like this.
Of course, what better way to spite a group of separate people who don’t know you or each other than depriving yourself of something really precious? Being a victim to hype backlash is such a weird thing to brag about.
See, that’s the sort of language that makes me not wanna check things out. If I don’t read specifically Pratchett, I’m “depriving” myself to “spite” other people. If I mention it at all, I’m “bragging”. Sure, nobody asked for my input there, but you’re so off-base with your response here that we’re not even in the same ballpark. The jokey reverse-psychology replies at least seem lighthearted, but this comes off as needlessly aggressive and dismissive.
Hey Spence, not that I don’t wanna derail this apparently invigorating Pratchet thread by too much, but what happened to that popcorn conversation we had down there?
Did it get inflamed somehow when I wasn’t looking? If so, I’m REALLY sorry if I had anything to do with it
Last one I saw was “have fun” regarding that fanfiction comment I made, and a smiley emot. Was that actually an insult? I suck at reading “””social cues””” like this.
I’m certainly not trying to be dismissive. I’m just not giving you any solutions to the problem you’re having. Or are you saying you would like some suggestions?
I’ll be perfectly honest: I don’t understand your responses or what premise they’re starting from, and so I’m essentially just confused. I’m not looking for “solutions” to a “problem”, and I think that’s where a misunderstanding has been born.
I’d say it’s a problem you’re letting other people’s opinions dictate what media you should consume, at least when you yourself say that’s something you don’t want. That’s been a problem for me, but never mind me then.
I don’t like Terry Pratchett’s writings. Yeah yeah, I know, give it a chance, read it first. I bought and then read the first 20 Discworld books, just to make sure I was giving him a fair chance to get past early installment weirdness and all that. Four, maybe five of them were worth the paper they were printed on. If I was the sort of the person who threw away books, into the bin they’d go.
“Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it’s the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it’s just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder. So let’s just say that Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort
Yay! I’m so glad we can all be happy on the comments and talk about happy things, like how I like how both of them are drawn in this comic! Gosh, the world is so great. Did you know femboy masks made a huge comeback last year for no reason?
Omni-presence dictates that this is actually flipping off god. Failing that, given earth’s mass is insufficient to trap light, the curvature of the atmosphere /also/ dictates she’s flipping off god. However, as with any postal mis-delivery, it is clear from the “To:” line, that this isn’t addressed to the mythical bearded sky faerie, so it will be marked “return to sender” if it isn’t just politely dropped in Joyce’s box.
I mean I suspect some kind of traumatic dramatic incident will happen, possibly putting Becky at risk, and the only thing Joyce can do to help us to just have faith. That might accelerate it a little.
I just now realized that Willis uses traumatic or hyper-realistic events so often specifically because otherwise the character development within the timeline of this series would be non-existent.
That’s one advantage of the Walkyverse (including Shortpacked!) over the Dumbiverse, I suppose; time passage in the Walkyverse was roughly tied to real-world time progression, so the regularly-updating Walkyverse–from Roomies!‘ beginning in 1997 to Shortpacked!‘s ending in 2015–had about eighteen years in total for its incarnations of Willis’s characters to grow and evolve over time. With Dumbing of Age, it’s been just over four months in-universe since the first strip.
I swear to god if Becky ends up in jeopardy just to accellerate Joyce’s character growth one more time, I’m gonna start suspecting her of setting it up because she’s secretly been sick of Joyce’s shit for a while already.
Speaking of this, i had this absolutely CURSED prediction where Becky acts cartoonishly stupid just to fuck with Joyce the same way Sandy acted stupid to fuck with Spongebob in that one episode where he was making squirrel jokes.
It was an early enough episode that the resolution wasn’t “making racist jokes is bad”, SpongeBob just started making racist jokes about everyone instead. Maybe that flew in 2001*, but that doesn’t sound like the right message 20 years later.
I think “it’s only okay to laugh at each other if everyone is fine with it, instead of focusing on one person at their expense” is a pretty good comedy lesson.
Eh, a LOT tends to happen in DoA time. I’m not expecting this phase to last more than a storyline or two. From a writing standpoint, one ought not to have the main protagonist be unlikable for TOO long.
For the most part I’ve been sort of on the side of Joyce. (e.g. her earlier comments about god were a private conversation, she has valid reasons for feeling the way she does, etc.) But, I think her jumping into the whole “sky daddy” thing was the first time I think she might be pushing it a bit much.
Yeah, agreed, I really can’t find a way to spin this one. Joyce is imploding here, which is so hard and confusing to watch after seeing how much she cared about everyone for so long. Even if she’s angry at Christianity, this behavior is wayyy out of line and, more importantly, out of character.
Just gonna have to grit my teeth and tell myself it’ll shake out for the better.
Joyce is finally getting to enjoy the sweet-sweet taste of bullying. She was never comfortable using Jesus to bully people but objective science, OH YEAH. Perfect! Maybe she can get in on social darwinism and Objectivism!
Seriously though, I hope not. Randian Objectivists to my knowledge may not condone violence like Joyce’s group did, but they’re still just as bad, on some levels even worse of a CULT. No better can be said of Social Darwinism, which is but a distorted parody of real science, melted into utter garbage by the selective hearing of bourgeois fucks.
But I see why some would think she might go that far. Joyce is trying to put as much physical and mental distance between herself and her group as possible, and she might just go in the unhealthy direction of becoming an increasingly cartoonish display of what she thinks an atheist looks like.
Joyce is out of character, but real life people act out of character all the time. For someone who has been through multiple traumatic experiences, and then lost a foundational belief that she relied on to give her strength. Lashing out at those closest to us is obviously not healthy, but it is perfectly understandable.
This is where I’m at too. Everything previously was private, and had the argument of some level of critiquing systems, but this is just petty rude attacks on beckys faith. I get those 2 things are intwined in Joyce’s head but still, not cool.
I feel like Joyce is at a place where she doesn’t really work as a semi-autobiographical character, but Willis is still trying to write her as one. It reminds me of how badly Roz got derailed, honestly.
Firstly, can’t wait to see all the comments talking about how horrible a friend and unhelpful Dorothy is being in this strip because she’s not immediately jumping in to solve everything with carefully reasoned arguments and diplomacy.
Second, here’s the thing that’s putting me off about Joyce. I understand that she’s been through a huge amount, she’s in a chaotic place, acting like an asshole is going to happen. But all she had to do here was not fucking mock Becky’s faith. Not agree with it, not even respect it, just not fucking throw the first verbal punch.
And at some point, sympathy does run out. I’m not going to say that Dorothy would normally be at that point (Becky has been through more shit than Joyce and she’s handling it better just by virtue of not throwing the first punch, so no question she gets a pass for being done with Joyce), but… yeah, at some point, a person’s self-care is more important than managing a friend’s trauma…
While there’s no doubt that Joyce threw the first punch, I’m intrigued by her initial facial expression. It’s looks more curious, like she’s feeling Becky out (even though the speech bubble of “…*Becky*.” reads more chilly). And Becky looks, y’know, *pissed.* Let’s just say I’m not opposed to the idea of Joyce being aggressive because she perceived that Becky was still hostile (as opposed to her just metaphorically smacking her in the face just because she showed up).
Also, glad to see someone cutting Dorothy some slack. While I was disappointed in some of her reactions as events unfolded, I can’t say they weren’t *human* reactions based on what she witnessed, and I’m not going to be mad at a character for being human. It’s like people expect her to be perfect just because she wants to be, but we’ve seen time and time again that she simply isn’t perfect, so….
I think one of the week eases of the 4-5 panel per day comic format is so much has to be squeezed in so quick that we don’t really see the sequence of emotions that leads to the “punch” we go from interesting but not aggressive Joyce face to spiteful comment without much of a transition or visual explanation cuz u gotta get the whole thing into the panels you e got. Not to say that Willis does a bad job, this comic does a lot with its format, but there’s a lot of space where u gotta fill in the blanks
I think at some level, Joyce is thinking “uh-oh, how much of that did you hear this time”, since Becky still doesn’t have all the context behind Joyce’s shift in mindset.
But then she notices Becky’s agitated and on the defensive, and comes out swinging.
So we continue the dispute between the girl who’s lost all her reason believe in God and the other girl who definitely refuses to believe that the only type of God that would exist is one that would not except her as she is.
Uh, Becky’s been explicitly clear that she believes that God is 100% cool with her being a lesbian. Like, she’s said that at least a dozen times, one way or another.
That’s what newlland said. Becky refuses to believe the only God that would exist is one that wouldn’t be cool with it. Meanwhile Joyce no longer has reason to believe in God.
LGBT+ Christians do in fact exist, my best friend is one of them. The main belief structure is based on the fact that only conservative fundie Christians seem to believe God truly hates the LGBT community. Aside from a couple piecemeal quotes, which are alongside rules such as wearing two different sorts of cloth and handling pigskin, the bible doesn’t say the LGBT community is evil. The Bible’s main message SHOULD be one of love, community, and compassion. True Christians, such as my best friend and Becky, believe in this version of the Bible.
There are also multiple passages in the New Testament where Jesus or God straight out say some Old Testament rule or rules are completely wrong or made up.
So you see the reason we weren’t allowed to build the space elevator right away was only by having differences could we over come our differences and if we can’t overcome our own differences how could we ever hope to overcome our differences with space beings.
“There are also multiple passages in the New Testament where Jesus or God straight out say some Old Testament rule or rules are completely wrong or made up.”
Where did you get that idea? That’s just utterly false. What he said is the exact opposite:
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
Yes, Jesus believed that EVERY commandment, even those that have to do with the two kinds of cloth and circumcision, etc, need be obeyed and fulfilled.
Paul, in order to convert foreigners, did away with circumcision and dietary restrictions. But that’s on Paul, not on Jesus, who was very adamant on the law being obeyed.
Matthew 15:11
“What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”
In context it refers to the washing of hands and food, but the lesson directly applies to being Kosher.
Matthew 19:8
“Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.”
Jesus straight up says Moses added Laws at the behest of the people, even when they contradicted God’s Law.
And …hmmm. Well, I could have sworn Jesus spoke of a “new covenant”, but aside from one line during the Last Supper that’s mostly discussed in 2 Corinthians and Hebrews, which you already implicitly discounted.
That’s also no text that Jesus wrote. There are 4 texts about what Jesus said and did that were written at least a generation later by people with their own ideas about what the message really was. All of our ideas about what Jesus really taught are filtered through that.
And thus through Paul, since the 4 gospels were written after Paul’s mission and can been seen to be influenced by its effects. Probably Matthew least, from what I can tell. Some of Matthew seems to be in opposition to Paul – like the passage you quote.
There’s a bit in Acts where Peter says he was chilling in a roof and hungry and God sent a bunch of non-kosher animals to him and said to go eat them, at which point Peter goes “um, that’s not clean” and God replies “don’t call shit unclean when I’ve made it clean, capisce?” There’s also the argument that because Jesus did fulfill the law, it no longer applies, and Paul also notes in 1 Corinthians that everything is now permissible even if not everything is healthy and people still shouldn’t let their desires rule them. So there is some argument to be made that parts of the OT don’t apply anymore, but which parts and why the rest still does matter is a matter of debate and schism.
What we see in those parts of the New Testament is conflict between the Pauline faction which was expanding the movement’s reach to Gentiles and the Jamesian faction was intent on staying a Jewish movement. Obviously the Pauline side won out, but that doesn’t really say anything about which side the historical Jesus would have been on, had he not been dead before the question really arose.
Perhaps the most well known example can be found in the Gospel according to John. Virtually everyone knows the phrase, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” That was in reference to the scriptural requirement that an adulterous woman be stoned to death. The local temple leaders assumed Jesus would oppose that punishment, at which point they could label him a blasphemer and eliminate him themselves. Instead, he insisted that the sentence be carried out but under that condition. He waited until EVERYONE but the condemned woman left in shame, at which point he freed her and definitely violated that official scripture.
There are no “true Christians”. The original text has plenty of hate and bile in it–yes, the one “Jesus wrote”. There’s just different interpretations of the same bad book. Some readings are better than others, but none of them are “true Christianity”. The idea that goodness and kindness are intrinsic to Christianity is actually a very Christian perspective, and it’s commonly held among ex-Christians who are still part of the culture.
“Aside from a couple piecemeal quotes, which are alongside rules such as wearing two different sorts of cloth and handling pigskin, the bible doesn’t say the LGBT community is evil.”
Oh, well, as long as it only says to murder gay people in only a *couple* places, that’s okay then! Same as if it only to says to murder gay people alongside *other* stupid things it also says, that means it’s not actually stupid at all, because the stupidities being next to each other means they cancel each other out! /s
I suggest that if a really benevolent God actually existed, he needn’t have actually said even once to murder gay people. In fact if a really benevolent God actually existed, that God could have chosen to teach acceptance of different sexualities instead of teaching “They shall be put to death because it’s an abomination”.
Alright dude calm down a bit. I’m on your side here, just making the factual statement that the bible, which was written by fickle humans, mentioned gay people in maybe 2% of it, which is what terrible people decide to narrow focus in on. I think you’re being aggressively sarcastic because you presume me to be a Christian but I’m an atheist. I’m on your side here. Just saying, LGBT Christians do exist, my best friend is one of them.
yeah, they should have narrowed on the not wearing mixed fabrics part, or the one where you are not allowed to cook a goat in it’s mothers milk. That would have made things a little easier.
I feel like trying to differentiate between True and Untrue Christians on moral standards leads to the dangerous thinking that any Christian who engages in evils frees True Christians from the responsibility of cleaning up within their own institution.
I don’t think the moral victory of being a True Christian matters unless that True Christian attempts to make small-scale changes where they can by using the influence they have as a member of a religious majority with continent-defining levels of cultural power.
Maybe you’re overestimating the “influence” individuals may have on “majorities”. The average “True Christian”™ has the same level of influence on the Christian majority that you or me have on our respective countries’ governments. And I’m not saying this as justification or validation of inaction.
Well, if the answer is that it’s helpless, then I think the idea of a Good or Bad Christian is kind of moot when the both of them reap the benefits of being part of a cultural majority. Making the lives of the marginalized better is Good, not refusing to make them worse; there’s a difference.
I dunno what it means to be good if doing good isn’t part of that, and if any Good Christian is well and truly unable to do good, then they should be so blessed that “shitty, edgy atheists on the internet” are the worst they have to put up with.
Counterpoint: the pope is hardly an average christian, and that doesn’t stop him from being a homophobic, transphobic shit who covers for pedophiles. The problems are baked into the system at a (haha) fundamental level.
The moment he started calling transfolk “nuclear weapons against the plan of god” and saying that the pedophilia in the church was the result of “the Church being infiltrated by homosexuals” was the moment I decided him getting hit by a truck was a great way to make the world a better place.
How is he a communist? Did he declare the end of pope’s unflappability?
If not, he’s still the heir of the one instigating fascism in Austria (austrofascism, distinct from Hitler) not to get socialism.
Also I failed to see him say anywhere: I give away all the capital the church has.
Beside his whole homophobic/transphobic/rape defense stances
I see it as completely the opposite actually. As long as mainstream Churches accept those evangelical and other right-wing Churches as legitimate… well then. It would be rude to pick fights with them. After all, we are all the same side and so long as they are saving souls, then it doesn’t really matter if they’re fudging the details. Dirty water still saves the dying of thirst as my pastor said in Sunday School.
But, if they are explicitly not Christian and just dragging the Church’s name through the mud and confusing what it means to be Saved? Then that’s a spiritual threat that undermines everything the Church is and needs to be dealt with.
OTOH, taking the “Those Churches aren’t Christian!” approach is one that’s led to some pretty awful religious wars in the not to distant past. OTGH, that’s basically already the approach the religious right is taking and it really only takes one side to start a war.
Becky is someone who benefits from actually understanding all the persecution and faith in times of tribulations thing in Christianity versus, well, the Browns who assume being white, straight, and Christian in America is under attack.
This horse has been thoroughly beaten into Jell-O, which has been beaten into a pulpy mess, but…
Becky learned to see the nuance between absolutes. Joyce built her entire mindset on top of absolutes with the assumption they would be rigid and unchanging.
It may just be me, but I think Becky’s eyes are drawn a bit… weird… in the earlier panels. (The whole “pupil/top eyelid” combination is one that I’m not used to seeing in this strip.)
It’s because she usually has dot eyes and the implied sclera is filled with her skin tone. Characters with dot eyes generally only get white sclera for a panel to help a dramatic expression land harder. (Becky, Rachel, and Walky have all done it.)
I tried coloring them white with MS Paint. My lacking in skills of an artist aside, it doesn’t look bad but I don’t think it looks right for this instance either. These panels are more subtle than the usual over-the-top situations that have called for it before. If she usually had white sclera and black dot pupils (like Agatha, Dina, Liz, Robin, and Sarah), it wouldn’t stand out as much.
oh hey different thought on why Joyce might be having trouble with the sexuality being fluid thing: She’s still unpacking her issues in layers, and is still hanging on to the hyper-monogamy thing — there’s no doubt she was raised with the idea that you’re supposed to have one serious relationship in your life, that being your spouse, who you’re supposed to be with until death do you part. If that part of her upbringing held on while she was unlearning the other stuff, it’d allow her to feel more comfortable with Becky being in a long-term serious relationship with a woman because it’s still partially following the “rules”
I feel like “questioned” is an overstatement. “Been terrified of”, sure. But “questioned” suggests a level of honest intellectual engagement with the subject.
Man, when it comes to religion, I just mind my own business and don’t bother people. Am I personally Atheist/Agnostic? Yes. Any belief in God I had as a child shriveled the day I learned my dad was diagnosed with Stage 3 Colon cancer, the same as my mom had, and any remnants of that belief dissipated the day my mom died from a second cancer she managed to develop ten years after the first. I, personally, cannot believe in any form of loving God who would cause such suffering to my loving parents who have never done anything to harm others. So, I do get where Joyce is coming from, with the hurt and having formerly been a Christian.
However, my best friend is Christian and for him, Christianity has been a solace after losing his mom to cancer, much like Becky finding solace after losing her mother. And I would never, NEVER ruin that peace for him. We don’t have to believe the same thing to be friends. We agree on the important things (be good to others, don’t be an asshole), and he isn’t hateful about his beliefs. Therefore, even if I don’t believe in God personally, I don’t debate it with him. Because honestly, how do either of us know who’s right? We don’t. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe he’s wrong. Is being ‘wrong/right’ more important than my friendship with him? No. This is the dilemma Joyce needs to work through as well.
On one hand, Becky’s not wrong about the self-righteousness. On the other, they have been friends since they were little kids and Joyce has upended so much of her life for Becky these last few months. Yes, Joyce is being a total arse but like, c’mon Becky. Be the better person for once.
Honestly, I feel Becky is right to be upset due to how this fight has become tied to how she lost her mother. Namely, they recently celebrated her mother’s birthday, where Joyce expressed a false belief in Becky’s mom watching from heaven. Now, from Becky’s POV, she thinks Joyce was lying to her to humor her, like you would a child who believes in Santa. It’s a bad feeling. Also, Becky obviously ties her Christianity to her mother, who was absolutely her main teacher in the home. Being Christian is what she did with her mother, Christianity says her mother will be in Heaven waiting for her someday (although depending on the doctrine, maybe not quite, but that’s complicated and obviously Becky doesn’t wanna think that her mom’s in Hell), and it’s comforting after all she’s been through to think it’s all for SOMETHING. Trust me, after losing someone like a parent, feeling like someone (even a best friend, or in my case, family member) is disrespecting your dearly departed person is a whirlwind of emotions that hurts.
If so, then I feel like Becky has tied the argument to her mum herself. Joyce tried to not say anything about the subject but Becky put her (understandably considering their relationship) in a place where she either had to either lie (bad) or state she didn’t believe anymore (worse, considering the timing). If Becky feels like Joyce not believing in heaven is an insult to her dead mother then that is something she has to deal with internally. It is unfair to expect others to have the same religious beliefs as you.
Now, Becky 100% percent has a right to be upset. Panel three Joyce is being, excuse my language, a huge butthead. Joyce is in the wrong here. My opinion is that that while she has every right to be upset she also owes it to Joyce to reach out and not just attack back.
It isn’t Joyce not believing that is an insult, it is statements such as “ONLY IDIOTS BELIEVE IN GOD”, which insults both herself and her mother, as well as the time she said ‘everyone who raised us is a B-sin asshole’.
Becky has made her friend’s loss of religion all about her. Joyce wasn’t mocking Becky, she was mocking who she used to be. She wasn’t doing it behind her Becky’s back, she was doing with another friend. Joyce wasn’t humouring her at the party for her mother, she was being polite and supportive.
Joyce not believing in heaven so therefore not believing Becky’s mother is in heaven is 100% not an insult. Someone having a different belief in what happens after death is not an insult.
Becky doesn’t want Joyce to be an atheist, she doesn’t want her to be angry at her (previously their) religion and community. But Joyce, very understandably, is.
Joyce’s parents are divorcing, her faith is gone, her old community is gone, she was kidnapped, assaulted, and more. She has gone through so much. And yes, she is being obnoxious and rude and is in the wrong. But I don’t think it would be as bad if Becky didn’t blow up at her. Becky may be hurt but she could act better right now. Like, my mother died when I was not much older than Becky. It sucked and still sucks. But grief doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and be a good friend.
It may not be an insult per se, but it’s still hurtful. Becky takes solace in the hope that she will see her mother again, and Joyce is trying to tell her “No, that will never happen, she’s dead and gone and that’s that.” That hurts. Thats Joyce ripping away her coping mechanism. And then on top of that, Joyce is acting like being atheist is the intelligent thing to do, and that not being an atheist is objectively stupid. That IS an insult. So now we have Joyce not only ripping off Becky’s bandaid, she’s pouring salt into that wound.
I’m not saying Becky doesn’t need to grow here as well, but she’s very much under attack here. If we say that everything else from this semester is cordoned off and not an issue here, Joyce still fires the first shots right now. Joyce is still choosing the most inflammatory and insulting ways to refer to Becky’s belief and acting like it’s all Becky’s fault that she’s upset by it.
Neither one is being a good friend, but one of them is being a massive dick.
I don’t know how Joyce as an atheist is meant to express that she does not think Becky’s mom is in Heaven (besides the part where she has not, in those exact words, said as much). What has happened is that Joyce felt the need to somehow be there for Becky despite her own fears that she had contributed to her suffering thinking Bonnie had died of cancer, and then put a party together to celebrate her birthday.
There’s also the part where Joyce’s atheism, something she has only referred to by name starting today, is brand new, based in a complete lack of understanding of what life is now without the inerrant facts that told her what everything meant, and only got to “shitty, edgy atheist” levels when Becky and co. dragged her into a fight where she’s defending thought processes she only just barely understands. Y’know, maybe there’s A Point to how Joyce was introspective around Joe but a total rage machine around Becky.
Like actually maybe the collapse of Joyce’s religious indoctrination and the gaping void that is now her understanding of how life works matters more than whether or not Becky is sad about the fight she caused by stalking her.
I don’t know how Joyce is firing the first shot either, considering Becky starts off by glaring daggers at her without attempting to broach the misunderstanding that dragged her over here to begin with. You don’t make that face at someone unless you’re making a statement.
You’re telling me that saying to a believer’s faith that they believe in a fake sky wizard isn’t telling them their faith is incorrect and therefore the attached afterlife also doesn’t exist? You’re able to pull “firing the first shots” out of a glare but not the follow-on conclusions out of “your god doesn’t exist”?
And for the record, I don’t read panel 2 as a glare. Both panels 1 and 2 are varying levels of wariness to me. Joyce looks somewhat surprised and maybe a touch hopefully but still wary, while Becky seems to be giving a “don’t start none won’t be none” sort of look.
I am able to pull “firing the first shot” when the first shot is fired in a sequential order, yes. If Becky did not want to Start None then she could turn around or at least bring up the thing that dragged her here in the first place. She has not, which, and apparently I have to write this shit, also does not mean Becky’s wrong to be upset about what gets said in the immediately following panel or that it’s Her Entire Fault that she ran over here when her sexuality was questioned.
Anyway, it’d be really fucking helpful if Becky could even once vocalize it like “Joyce, you’re saying I’m never gonna see my mom again,” which is something Joyce actually believes, yeah; that’s why Joyce didn’t fucking tell her she doesn’t believe anymore, lied while trying to emotionally support Becky on her mom’s birthday, and Becky only found out when she stalked her to a private conversation where Joyce was raging at her entire life being a fucking lie. Like Joyce, however, Becky’s running on hurt and anger and can’t just say it because Joyce is already supposed to know it’s the case, the way Joyce thinks Becky’s supposed to just figure out that everything is a lie.
But Joyce’s relationship with her religious indoctrination doesn’t have to be run past Becky. Becky doesn’t actually matter to that, and Becky only started mattering when it all went down, when she stalked Joyce to a private conversation where (and thanks to Seth over at Patreon for spelling it out so succinctly) Joyce was saying she was a big stupid moron for ever believing there was someone looking out for her with a plan in mind, and that’s actually how Becky’s faith in God works.
I’ll beat this dead horse until the giblets all coalesce back into a cohesive form: Joyce did not act like this until Becky dragged her into a fight she was not prepared to have. She was not confrontational about it until Dorothy, Joe and Sarah pushed her to go after Becky, they yelled passed each other for a week of strips, and then Sarah kept egging her on. Previously with Joe? Expressing vulnerability and confusion, accepting answers she wasn’t really ready to accept. This whole thing with Joyce going off at Ruth is in direct contrast with how she treated Booster; Walky told her that Booster uses they/them pronouns so Joyce said she didn’t get it but she’s wrong all the time and so she’ll go look it up herself. Before Becky and Dorothy fucking stalked her, Joyce was in a point where she had a big pile of nothing that was slowly getting built back up, but then whoopsie doodles, no one can ask Joyce how she’s feeling for ten seconds so now she’s gotta zealously defend her newfound lack of belief in anything.
I think it’s going to be best if you just keep scrolling the next time you see my name and I’m talking about this conflict, and I’ll give you the same courtesy. It’s pretty clear you and I will not agree and I just don’t have the energy or desire to keep rehashing this with you. I have no really issue with you on other matters but this one needs to be dropped.
If grief doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to be a friend, why doesn’t that rule also apply to Joyce then? Both of them have plenty of trauma’s, grief and lost communities. Why is Becky the only one not allowed to be hostile?
You say that Joyce wasn’t mocking Becky, but that’s simply not true. Joyce has openly declared how she considers all believers idiots, Becky included. And when Becky confronted her after the unfortunate overhearing, she only confirmed that. Joyce had the chance to (somewhat) mend things there if she’d gone for any kind of ‘I didn’t mean it like that’ or ‘I really meant religion/extremists in general’ or anything, but she didn’t do that. Instead she only doubled down on her position of ‘I think all believers are idiots, you included’.
Becky isn’t angry about Joyce’s loss of religion. She’s angry that her (former?) best friend openly mocks her and calls her an idiot. That’s not Becky making Joyce’s loss of religion about her, that’s Joyce turning her loss of religion into a hate campaign against her (former) friend (along with the rest of religion).
Joyce’s beliefs aren’t the issue here, the issue is her intolerance towards people that don’t share her beliefs. Becky seems cool with atheists, she hangs out with Dorothy and Dina. The difference is that they don’t go out of their way to crusade against all people that do have beliefs.
Joyce not believing in heaven is not an insult, and neither is her participating in the ceremony for Becky’s mother without actually believing. What would be insulting, however, is her mockingly participating while actually thinking Becky is an idiot for doing it. And while we know Joyce didn’t really think or feel that at the time, Becky doesn’t know that. And when asked about it, Joyce all but confirmed it was the disrespectful version of events. Becky’s anger is quite justified.
It’s not that I can’t understand this read as the “canon” intended meaning of the Faith-Off, so much as I don’t think we spent over a decade of Joyce chafing and ultimately cracking under a lifetime of oppressive religious indoctrination where her desire to be as good as possible to as many people ultimately led her to defy everything she ever knew to protect the person she loved most of all, and then once Joyce becomes an atheist we’re now going with her as the most unsympathetic kind of atheist possible, which, given Joyce’s specific circumstances (they involve almost being shot in the face), would still be pretty damned sympathetic even if she were just lashing out.
It just feels like “Joyce Brown becomes an atheist” should matter more than whether or not Joyce is being mean to Christians. Not “should” as the comic itself is not failing to make it matter so much as I don’t think that’s really all there is to it.
It would be great if Becky had her best friend continue to share her lifelong faith with her and have that connection through religion and could connect on the good and bad of their shared upbringing. For Becky her religion is based on what she feels is true, and the words in books and the thoughts of her community were not what really mattered.
It would be great if Joyce had her best friend go through the experience of loss of faith with her, someone who experienced the same culty upbringing as her and could commiserate on the good and bad and the experience of all this new knowledge. For Joyce her religion was based on the words in books and the thoughts of her community, when what she felt was right contradicted them, it caused massive cracks in her religion.
It really seems like Becky completely forgot about that interaction between her and Joyce, because if she remembered that it would make it a lot more clear to her why Joyce is acting the way she is now.
Judging by how she acted at Dina’s birthday party (and just in general), Becky never considered the idea of Joyce questioning her belief as a possibility. It was a stupid phase she needed to get over, because she’d only been rebelling against her parents for 30 seconds.
Oh for fuck’s sake, just grab some cardboard tubes and bonk each other until all the aggression drains and you can actually talk your shit out without the anger getting in the way.
I feel like you are overestimating cardboard’s durability under, shall we say, certain conditions. Although yes it can probablychafe, at least while it lasts.
Hrrm. After a day of deliberation, and with the realization that it has now been four years nearly to the day with no resolution in the actual comic…perhaps it can be dedicated to the name of Tag the Cricket, who has sadly been overlooked for too long! That is, unless…Tag the Cricket is the comic’s secret final boss, and his survival was foreshadowing for what is yet to come!
(My previous thoughts were respectively either, in light of Current Comic Goings-on, a Joyce-v-Becky Battle of the Heroes-style thing situated over, I dunno, a comically-oversized bowl of oatmeal–or something Asher or Dina-related instead, given my gravs–but like I said yesterday, don’t want to overask here or spend ages deliberating with myself. Though I’d be happy with any one of those, really. XD)
A penguin comes into an automotive shop for a flat tire, as he waits for them to fix his tire he. proceeds to eat some of the powdered doughnuts out for customers ( This is pre covid) as he’s stuffing his face and getting white powder all over the mechanic comes out
“ Seems you blew a seal”
The penguin frantically wipes at his face “ Its powdered doughnuts I swear!”
Joyce: Boy is Becky gonna be pissed if I admit to myself/anyone that I’m into girls and I didn’t go for her. Better make her so mad about something else so I won’t have to deal with that.
This forever and ever. You can’t just mash two people of complementary orientations together and make them stick. Attraction has to be there and plainly isn’t on Joyce’s part.
The problem with statements like “Only that which can be scientifically verified is true” is that they can’t themselves be scientifically verified and thus fail their own test.
That, and true statements like the Pythagorean Theorem are logically or analytically verified.
Strictly speaking, mathematical theorems can never be really verified with empirical examples where they happen to be true, no matter how many you have.
That’s because to be “mathematical truth” it needs to be proven to be true for ALL possible cases, and you can’t do that with examples, because examples give you no guarantee of the inexistence of corner cases.
Yeeeeee, I don’t like Becky much at these moments.
Joyce is kind of an a** on her “I am so clever now, atheist cloud” but she weirdly still believes in people and obviously tries for sth better.
Becky on the other hand, is sth worse.
She went straight into accusing Joyce from that first moment she accidentally heard Joyce was an atheist now,
and it seems that she keeps that demeaning atttitude still.
(I just really hated back, when Becky accused Joyce of faking Becky’s mom’s birthday.
Joyce wanted the best for her friend, but was pulled from different sides/pointviews to find the best outcome and keep Becky’s feelings and spirit, up.)
Sort of? The tension behind the previous conversation was palpable. Now Becky may be good at Wacky Ignorance Of Obvious Tension (see: the entire arc where Joyce and Becky went back to their home town), but Joyce always clicks Fight in the Fight-Or-Flight option menu as a matter of instinct. Honestly, I think that’s for the better in this situation. Get stuff on the table.
Could Joyce have phrased it more tactfully? Also yes, but Joyce has never been good at tact either. Moreover, this is less harsh than a lot of the stuff Becky said to Joyce last conversation.
I got suprised in my life when I figured out ow many christians are able to talk dirty, like Becky, showing the finger.
And how many christian are so dirty and low, like Carol or Mary.
Absolutely zero subtext in Joyce parsing through a conversation of her own ignorance on a topic that also involves a degree of personal guilt then getting derailed when Becky shows up.
Aaaand that’s two points straight to Becky. Everything up until now has been a bit grey, with both sides having very valid reasons to behave the way they did, but Joyce is just out and out being a dickhead here.
Some people expect Dorothy to intervene here and I’m just like nah, she should stay out of it and let them argue to the death. Whenever Dorothy tries to help and isn’t 100% perfect at it and doesn’t know exactly what to say with exact perfect precision, people throw a fit or declare her the literal worst at talking to people.
We wouldn’t be taking shots at her if she weren’t literally the smuggest person in the main cast, postures herself as the kind of person who is great at situations like this, and never acknowledges or works on any of her flaws or limitations.
You’re asking why we’re kicking her. I’m saying she wrote the sign and stapled it to her back.
Dorothy trying to help and bungling it is why I’m actually interested in where this could go because “what if all three of Joyce’s closest friends were extremely bad at this when she needed them most” is a really good pitch for a story.
She’s not a dumb or callous person, I just think she’s come off as supremely wise, compassionate, knowing and responsible because she hung out with Walky and Joyce all the time, and so when confronted by a problem that isn’t immediately solved by a lecture, it doesn’t work out. That’s rad! It’s rad in the same way Ethan disappears for a year, comes back as a malnourished goth with zero patience for the walking disasters around him, and suddenly I’m chomping at the bits for him to keep showing up.
Dorothy’s fine as the gang’s Cyclops, but even Cyclops could rue his cursed mutant energy-blasting eyes every once in a while. That the only real victory she’s had since the Faith-Off is giving Joyce a hug and correctly pointing out that Joyce’s anger is as internal as it is external (because that was the part she and Becky walked in on) is interesting, because Dorothy’s pretty much been able to solve Joyce Problems the entire series since Joyce Problems are pretty simple; Joyce bumbles into something, Dorothy gives a helpful and well-meaning lecture, and Joyce rolls with it. The idea of the main dynamic of the series leading to growth and conflict, that Dorothy herself still has beef she needs to confront and where her own attempts at meaningfully helping Joyce aren’t working like they used to,I feel like a facetious asshole talking it up like this but, no, I think it’s really cool!
You know I find this argument somewhat reassuring. It really feels more like a spat between two friends rather than anything serious. It has this “Well Infinity!” “Well Double Infinity” kind of vibe.
Joyce needs to take a Cultural Anthropology class. God may not exist, but God has value. Brings people comfort, which should be what really matters. Be mad at some of the practices of Christianity? Sure! I think Becky would be right there with her, but not the belief in a “sky wizard” part.
Becky’s problem is that she isn’t communicating. She mentions the “important parts” of her belief just as that. She needs to accept the fact that Joyce isn’t seeing what the important parts are and explain. You really shouldn’t be mad at someone for not understanding something personal to you if you won’t explain what it is. Joyce can look up/study why religion has value in general and that will absolutely help her stop being so rude, but Becky needs to take her the rest of the way. Also Becky needs to understand that Joyce was valid to keep it from her that she is now atheist. Just cause they’re best friends doesn’t mean Becky is entitled to the information.
Exactly. They have two definitions of what “faith” is, but they both thought the other had their definition this whole time. Joyce can’t grasp how Becky can carve out the parts she likes and discard those she thinks are frivolous, because to her all those “frivolous” parts were load-bearing members of an interconnected web.
They both need to stop shouting past each other and honestly explain what’s going on.
Can we get back to Lucy sucking stains off Wally’s clothes and everyone blushing to the point their heads are going to explode like the dude at the beginning of Scanners?
I hope Joyce isn’t an edgy atheist to the guy who tried to make her stop being friends with Dorothy, the woman who helped pay for the release of the guy who almost shot her in the face and later kidnapped her, and her older brother who kept trying to downplay Ross’ actions, which included almost shooting John’s baby sister in the face like four days ago.
It’s so fucking weird to me how so many of the commentariat are unwilling to hold anyone in Joyce’s life accountable for why she’s a seething ball of confused anger other than Joyce herself. I mean, besides the fact that she’s prettier when she smiles.
Probably a good time to remember that her mom has implied in the past that she would go to Toedad lengths over Joyce
My concern for a while has been them being open about it on campus would lead back to Carol finding out, if not directly from Joyce then from someone like Mary, or any of the other people who as far as I know have no idea Carol wouldn’t be safe to tell about Joyce’s issues
It’s also important to remember that Carol’s reaction to Joyce escaping her kidnapper….. was heavily implied that she was just going to kidnap her again.
Carol was NOT happy that Joyce got away. She was angry.
My guess is she won’t want to see them at all. She’s probably avoiding the majority of her family right now because the divorce is stressful. But especially Carol and likely John will get the worst of the cold shoulder from her for the forseeable future! She won’t want to speak to or see them for long enough to get the opportunity to be an obnoxious atheist at them.
Honestly, as much of a jerk as Joyce is currently being, I STILL can’t help but be irritated at Becky for getting this bent out of shape and not even TRYING to meet Joyce halfway.
Considering how much over the first semester Joyce rearranged her entire LIFE for Becky, some goddamn consideration for her friend is in order.
Sure, Joyce is being rude, but in a way that merits a “Dude, what the hell?” vs. a committed counterattack.
ESPECIALLY since Becky is only having this conflict because she enjoys the crashing sounds it makes when she bursts through other people’s boundaries and into conversations that don’t involve her.
Well here she either heard her name and the suggestion she might not be a lesbian from across campus and teleported to the spot or she was walking by and heard Joyce talking about her.
Admittedly, that was a side tangent to the main conversation, but it should be hard to blame someone for “bursting” in when they’re talking about her in public.
But that’s how Becky discovered Atheist Joyce in the first place, by barging into her conversation with another person unannounced. Joyce needs to can the toxic malarkey, but Becky is overly possessive of her and acts like she’s entitled to her attention.
Except this isn’t related to being possessive of Joyce.
This is related to Becky hearing her name and also hearing doubt being expressed on her sexual identity, something she is very public and proud (is that the right word?) about.
Given the comedic use of teleportation in a world that’s supposed to have no fantastical elements of that sort, it can be argued that she didn’t even know Joyce was the one talking or was even there, let alone wanting her attention; she did appear yelling “who” said she wasn’t a lesbian.
Just because Becky is often possessive of Joyce doesn’t mean every interaction has to include that dynamic, and I don’t believe this one does.
I don’t know what halfway point that would be. As far as I can see the choices Joyce is giving Becky is embracing her new infantile personal belief system without question or staying away from her. Maybe Becky would rather fight her best friend, however ineffectively she may be able to when angry and hurt, than just lose her.
Like sure, either one of them could try acting like an adult, sit down and explain what she’s thinking and what she wants, open some lines for actual communication, but how should Becky know that’s an option for her? Joyce is the one who’s changed into a person who as far as Becky is aware does nothing but snark slogans at her and make fun of her beliefs behind her back. The last time they talked Joyce yelled at Becky until she walked away, then complained to everyone about how she did the right thing because she’s right and Becky is wrong, and now she’s picking up from the same point again. Not listening to anything Becky or anyone else has to say, not leaving any room for conversation. I know if I was in Joyce’s shoes I’d try to listen to people more; in Becky’s shoes I don’t know what I’d do except show her my back as many times as it takes for her to notice the pattern where I’m not interested in being a church-shaped punching bag and start thinking about trying some other form of interaction.
Well, maybe write a letter. But that’s my style, not Becky’s.
And I think your approach is good. I think Becky turning her back and walking away would be way better than whatever fight’s about to happen now. Joyce needs space to unpack everything that happened and what her loss of belief in God means (she did a bit with Joe, but only a bit) and get to a point of not hating who she was before (and by extension, everything like who she was before) without someone who can’t even allow her to believe in a different version of heaven because it doesn’t accommodate her grief (my mommy is having cake).
The fact that you said “as far as Becky knows Joyce does nothing but make fun of her behind her back and snark slogans at her” is like. That’s the whole point, that Becky literally knows Joyce better than anyone, knows that *this isn’t like her at all*, and could maybe take a second to think that maybe this change in Joyce is actually not about *her*? And may in fact be cause for CONCERN for her friend?
Like, this is such an entirely uncharitable way to interpret what is going on with Joyce, especially from Becky’s perspective. For her to genuinely think this she’d have to intentionally just forget ALL of the ways Joyce has gone above and beyond for Becky and take it all for granted the moment JOYCE has an actual issue that’s somewhat inconvenient for her. Apparently, none of that gives Joyce the right to the benefit of the doubt for even a moment from her best friend who she’s known since childhood.
Joyce bent over backwards without even a second thought to be there for Becky in literally every way possible when Becky hit a critical moment of change in her life, but Becky can’t be bothered to even attempt to do anything similar for Joyce. Which like, maybe she’s genuinely not able to! Becky is still dealing with a lot herself, so it’s understandable that she hasn’t reacted in the best way. But I think Joyce deserves better than this from Becky regardless, even if it’s as simple of Becky just giving Joyce space if she can’t handle Joyce’s issues right now.
Like, we’re talking someone who’s risked death like three times specifically for Becky’s sake. I think the prospect that Joyce means well by her is something we can easily accept.
That moment was where I went 100% Team Joyce. I cannot IMAGINE not responding to a cry of pain like that from my so-called “best friend”, especially since it completely explains why Joyce is lashing out about her newfound lack of faith in arbitrary directions.
Even if they’d called our former shared belief moronic in the immediate previous conversation.
I’m supposing Becky’s reasoning is along the lines of “yeah she saved my life like three times, but that was the old Joyce who I could have a conversation with so I’m not sure what to do with that now”. Of course she should look past Joyce trying to hurt her see she’s not doing well, and in response. . .still not do anything and hope she calms down enough to talk about it at some point.
I used to keep a list of all the things I wanted to talk to my stepbrother about at some point when he might be able to talk about it without fighting me. But then I didn’t see him for ten years before he died of his heroin addiction. Probably beside the point. But I can say it’s hopeless to try and talk sense into someone who refuses to talk, no matter how calm and reasonable you are or how special a bond you have with them.
If we’re ranking hardship (which is totally not a weird thing to do), I still have to say Becky’s had it far rougher and deserves the sympathy of a friend.
…sorry, what lip-service respect has Joyce shown to her beliefs? Because Joyce has shown absolutely none, and used Becky’s continued faith as a reason to think less of her, explicitly and openly. There is no fucking respect coming from Joyce to Becky on this subject.
I’m acknowledging that both Joyce’s response to Becky’s change of faith (paraphrased, “I choose Becky over God if it comes to that”) and the fact that Joyce has been literally kidnapped and had her entire family life upended over “I choose to support Becky” support the contention that Joyce cares a hell of a lot about Becky.
IMHO Becky should have the goddamn good sense to notice that Joyce’s crisis of faith is 100% brought on by the fact that she DID choose Becky over God. Becky meanwhile strikes me as completely self-righteously self-absorbed in her own way, paraphrased as “well hell *I* can pick and choose what parts of faith I want, why can’t you?”.
Short version, as I see it:
Becky changed in ways that were morally offensive to Joyce? Joyce sucked it up and tried to understand her friend, talked it out, and directed her anger at it away from the friendship.
Joyce loses her faith as a result and lashes out privately, Becky bursts in and overhears? Time to ESCALATE and GET ANGRY about how Joyce is always so judgy and self-righteous.
Wow that is a hot spicy take, what. Of course they’re still friends. What on earth? Friends fight sometimes, it happens.
And of course Joyce still respects Becky, she’s entirely projecting, that’s the whole point. Neither of them have taken the time yet to have a real conversation where they can try to understand where the other is coming from. But they will eventually, because in the end they care more about each other than about this argument. But they’ll probably need to get some junk out of their system before that happens. So! The fight shall continue for a bit.
On one hand, Becky started the rage this time. Joyce’s face in panel one is one of “Becky, I didn’t expect you to approach me for at least a few more days!” while Becky’s is a “Joyce, still a god hating bongo or did you decend further?” Which Joyce responds to in kind by being “Oh no you don’t, the readers insist I’M the asshole, you don’t get that title!” But it’s also on Joyce for responding to Becky poking the angry bear by inserting herself into a convo that she doesn’t fully know the context of. Joyce is a brat, but Becky ain’t helping by being a brat right back. Becky doesn’t even bother to try and understand her friend, when Joyce did try to understand the changes she brought on her. It wasn’t too good at the start, admittedly, but she did try. But damn does Joyce go about this the wrong way. Such is the way of teenagers…
TL;DR Sarah’s little sister Liz, who’s in the same newly de-converted boat as Joyce, surprise-visited and got they got caught up in a mutual game of Baby Atheist One-Upmanship. Becky overheard and felt hurt, Joyce doubled down.
I gotta say. When it comes to a story for a piece of fiction I’m absolutely LOVING this. These are some choice, delicious communication issues fueled by extremely deep and complex emotions on all sides. The fact that it’s getting everyone in the readership (or at least the comment section) so riled up is a testament to exactly how compelling I feel this storyline is going to be overall. It’s touching on some REAL stuff, and for all of the complaining I’m doing about frustration with Becky in particular, I am stoked for how this will continue to escalate, and eventually be resolved. It’s gonna make for some extremely juicy reading.
Also. Joyce and Becky bickering like this is honestly just kinda cute and satisfying to me. They’re just indulging in their most immature impulses and letting shit out!!! You go, girls! Let it all out!!
IMHO, they need to let their inner children out a little. Openly express and sit in all of the nasty wounds and emotions they’ve been building up their entire young lives–and then once they’re done, they can start moving on. So they’ll start pointless fights and say mean things and spit overly harsh words that they don’t REALLY mean. But once they’re done, they’ll feel lighter for it, and can start the arduous process of trying to be MATURE about stuff and picking up the pieces.
And then their relationship will have reached a new stage, where they can see and appreciate each other for the complex adults that they are becoming now, rather than the children that they used to be.
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
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
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 8h
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
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someday Joyce will learn immeasurable assholishness is 100% real tho
Technically ‘infinite’ is still a measure. Although that isn’t particularly useful in proctological circles.
” Not all that counts can be accounted for,
and not all that can be accounted for counts. ”
— Albert Einstein
Several notable Jewish scientists were of the mind of the impersonal god was best measured via physics.
Well, I know of none of them that accepted the uncertainty principle.
Even if any said impersonal god(s) existed, they WOULD play dice with the universe, and in fact would throw said dice where they couldn’t see them.
Fun fact: a number of Jewish mystics were convinced that they had descended to the throne of God and measured, with precision, various lengths upon the body of God. Shoulder to shoulder, God is apparently ~56,035,000 miles wide. (Their unit of measure was the Persian “parasang”, which… we don’t have a very exact measure for, so the conversion I was given was 3.5 miles.) Your Google keyword of the day is “Shi’ur Qomah”.
You buried the lede, there. In the same passage, they claim to know the name of God’s dangly bits.
Citation needed on that Einstein quote.
Well spotted. It should in fact be attributed to William Bruce Cameron instead of Albert Einstein. The quote actually comes from Cameron’s 1963 text “Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking.”
*looks up source of quote*
Live and learn, I guess.
The pun only works in English; that makes it less likely that Einstein came up with it.
Einstein learned to speak English when he came to the US, and even before then, no?
Not saying the conclusion is wrong though, just the additional evidence you tried to offer.
“Live and learn I guess.”
Ironically, painfully, illustrated to be false, with the number of covid survivors dying during their *second* round of the disease because they *still* didn’t get vaccinated.
Speaking as someone who is vaccinated, I was under the impression that if one was already infected and survived then a vaccine was rendered unnecessary as you already had the antibodies. Like, I thought a vaccine worked because it injects you with a weakened/partially dead virus for your immune system to learn how to beat so it can fight the real virus later, so if it’s already fought off the real virus wouldn’t the vaccine be redundant? Genuinely asking, not trying to start a fight
Many vaccines do use weakened or dead virules to prime the body’s immune system, but the mRNA vaccines that are all of the Covid vaccines don’t do that. They instead pull an IU/Asma, attach a picture of
BillieCovid-19 and instructions on how to fight it to the injected materials, and send it to the body which then disemminates the instructions through the body. The side effects with the vaccine currently, which mostly amount to very low grade versions of Covid symptoms like soreness and fever, are a vaccinated body running through its systems testing immune response. No diease actually makes the body heat into a fever, it’s an immune response that kills disease.Now with Covid, early tests showed that people who caught it and recovered had “better” antibodies than those who were vaccinated, but more recent testing has showed that vaccination provides longer-lasting protection and has protection against newer variants. If you somehow lucked your way through a Delta diagnosis without a shot (because vaccinated people overwhelmingly handle the disease well, or at least better than not getting the shot), Omicron gives zero shits whereas the shot (especially with a booster) will still provide protection.
Yes, that is the way it works, when it’s nice and neat and the virus doesn’t change too quickly. Previous infection works similarly to a vaccine and they partially substitute for one another. The problem with the common cold has always been that it changes too darn fast, so that by the time your body has “learned” how to beat ‘it’, a different strain is already beginning to make the neighborhood rounds. Some viruses evolve more quickly than others, which is why we need a different flu shot every year but chickenpox only once or twice in our lives.
That’s why the mRNA technology was so promising: it offered the possibility of quickly fabricating a vaccine against emerging variants, when previously it was just not worth it to make a dead-virus vaccine for a minor inconvenience, when it would only last a few months or one year tops before it failed to work quite as well, or at all, against the new prevalent strains.
COVID-19 changed the calculus. Its damage made it worth trying to make a vaccine anyway, even against the target that we knew was moving so fast. But as we can see, it’s still a hard problem.
That’s not quite it with Covid – and some other diseases too. For some diseases immunity from either infection or vaccination is very long lasting or even permanent (think measles or chickenpox). Others, like the flu, change drastically so that exposure to this years doesn’t help much with next years.
Resistance to Covid though isn’t complete from the start with either vaccine or past infection and drops off significantly over 6 months or so, even if it’s the same variant. That’s why boosters were being recommended even before omicron came along.
Now – get your booster. If you’re not vaccinated yet, get started.
There are actually a couple of issues with colds. First, “the cold” is a set of symptoms, not a specific virus. There are actually dozens of different viruses that can cause colds. Some of them also tend to mutate quickly, so no matter how many you develop resistance to, there’s always one more out there.
Secondly, there’s the length of resistance. In many cases, this varies with how dangerous the disease is. A cold may make you miserable for a few days, but it almost never kills anyone. Because there’s a certain biological cost to maintaining resistance, it’s more efficient to fight off “nuisance” infections repeatedly than to maintain resistance indefinitely. For diseases that can cause serious or fatal problems, resistance tends to last longer. Chickenpox is rarely a serious danger for children, but it can be life-threatening for adults. That’s why our bodies tend to remain resistant more or less indefinitely after a single infection or vaccination. It’s similar with other serious diseases such as measles or polio.
Because Covid is a very new virus, our immune systems aren’t entirely sure how to handle it. If it becomes endemic, which seems likely, our response may change over time. But that doesn’t really matter to you or me, since evolution happens over the course of generations. Our relatively very long life spans and limited number of offspring mean that human evolution moves very slowly. That being the case, annual Covid boosters may become the norm.
“Quotes are always misattributed on the Internet” –Chairman Mao
Deep roots are not touched by the frost.
From the Asher a fire shall be woken
Something tells me Asher isn’t, nor will he become, particularly woke. Your optimism is admirable however.
Let’s strike a match and find out.
I’m pretty sure he’ll wake up if we light him on fire.
If he were on fire would I P**s on him, to put him out?
I dunno little droogies shall we try it and see?
Probably not Einstein, but Professor of Sociology, William Bruce Cameron.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/26/everything-counts-einstein/
It’s nice to see they’re both doing well.
I was not expecting them to become antagonists of each other so quickly.
No worse enemy than an ex-friend.
I am on neither side, but I will point out that Joyce’s self-righteousness only bothers Becky when it’s not in agreement with her own. It’s not like self-righteous bullhockey is new to Joyce’s personality.
At least this is a growing pain rather than indoctrination.
Sometimes it takes having self-righteousness pointed at you to recognize it as such.
+1
That’s a good point. Becky is pretty full of herself.
This was my take on it too. She had no problem with it when it wasn’t directed at something she cared about.
Joyce needs to read some Terry Pratchett, I think.
Everyone does.
I’ll get around to it okay. There’s a lot of art out there and I am very lazy.
The more people advocate for Pratchett, the less inclined I am to read it, just out of recommendation-aversion.
Ah, but you’re an outlier. Most people are swayed by peer opinion. Thus, Sir Pterry-advocacy on average ought to get more readers… until the field is so saturated with the persuaded that diminishing returns set in.
Although in this specific case, as a confirmed materialist atheist, I respond to his line about being unable to measure “justice” or whatever by saying that those are abstractions occurring in people’s brains, and as such can’t currently be measured, silly man. Good books, though.
The question is whether an abstraction is a lie.
I don’t think I’m parsing your response correctly. Are you saying “Justice” is in fact measurable, but that we just lack the ability at this time?
—
At any rate, it is actually shocking how different different cultures can be. Even involuntary physical phenomena can have different meanings. In Peru, a yawn indicates hunger.
A yawn for hunger is not confined to Peru or even H. Sapiens. Any given yawn has many possible causes including fatigue, boredom, and yes, hunger. The NewYorker has a great write up.
My personal favorite is to oxygenate the brain, as it indicates you haven’t been breathing properly, or that there is something wrong with the air in your immediate environment. I actually don’t think I’ve ever yawned from boredom, but I did have a teacher who would get pissy with me whenever I yawned, because my yawns are loud, and she thought it was rude that I would yawn in her class, never mind the fact that it’s a totally involuntary action that I literally can’t control, and that there are a large number of reasons one might yawn other than boredom, but even if it *was* due to boredom it isn’t like I was doing it on purpose, so how can it possibly be rude, and if it is rude, what does she expect me to do about it since it’s totally involuntary!
Oh, I’m well aware I’m an outlier in that regard. I could take a bus down to the librarby and probably find a plethora or Pratchett that I’d enjoy. But since I see the recommendations everywhere I go online, my reptoid brain takes it as others telling me what to like.
You know what? You’re right. Pratchett’s books are awesome, but, you know… maybe not for you.
I absolutely forbid you from ever reading Pratchett and if you should ever somehow find yourself reading it, I order you to avoid enjoying the experience at all costs.
You’d not like Pratchett, I heard he absolutely hated taffy
Fine, then. Don’t read great literary works. In fact, you never should!
(… Is the reverse psychology working?)
Fair enough feeling like people are making you do something can make you not want to, even if its something you would enjoy.
Frankly I don’t know how much telling people they should read something compares advertising wise to telling someone not to read a book.
I always bristle at people telling me I need or have to do something, because I’m pretty sure I only need to drink water, consume calories, and breathe a little to live. It’s part of why I’ve never watched The Godfather on my family’s recommendation because they’re all giant asses about it, acting like it’s almost a moral failing on my part that I haven’t seen it. The person who almost got me to try it didn’t implore I
watch it for vague arbitrary reasons, they said they thought the movie would appeal to my personal sensibilities, my actual tastes.
Don’t be shitty about what media someone has or has not consumed. No one’s tastes are universal, just because something clicked for you and 1998 friends does not mean the 2000th person in your group will like it, or that they’re even obligated to give it the time of day. And the four people IMMEDIATELY brazenly trying obvious reverse psychology is as bad and maybe even slightly worse. You’re all still dogpiling Taffy, only now it’s directly flying in his request to NOT dogpile him and the “cleverness” is just coming across as shitty and condescending. You’ve made your recommendation, now shut up and leave him alone.
I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s alright in this particular case, since I sort of invited it by mentioning unprompted that I had an aversion when nobody particularly asked. You do make a valid point about media-taste dogpiles though, so your comment doesn’t go amiss conceptually, and it’s handy to have this kind of thing said from time to time.
Also, I use they/them pronouns, for the record. No big deal, just a gentle reminder.
I’ve seen enough of his writing to know that I’d like the books, I just haven’t gotten around to it.
Although… I’m pretty sure I have Hogfather lying around the house somewhere….
Every time somebody mentions that particular book, I think they’re talking about The Pigman.
Good decision Taffy, whatever you do do NOT read Terry Pratchett. Not under ANY circumstances.
Nice try, but that sort of statement also makes me not wanna look into stuff, because it’s gained the connotation of “[X] is super #Problematic and you’ll just get upset reading it.”
Far from being problematic, it’s much much too good for you and you should avoid it because I said so.
Haha me too. Ppl started recommending me prattchett when I was like. 9. And J’REFUSE.
Until like. 5-6 years later, I finished my book one history class, and nicked a classmate’s without checking the cover and it was spectacularly good instantly and I had to go FIIIIIINE YALL WERE RIGHT.
See, that’s another thing. When I finally do cave and check things out, I enjoy them more often than not.
Some Pratchett is really good, some really sucks.
with the years, I find it less and less good.
I used to reread all once or twice a year.
Haven’t open one since two years.
Reading his collected articles kind of killed it for me.
You may find better things to read.
Fine, if you hate puns and love bad social commentary that misses the mark for broad segments of society, you should read Sir Terry Prattchett.
And I still have blowjob cat…is the randomizer broken?
The random Gravatar algorithm probably just spit BJC out for you when your email was capitalized both ways.
Sir Terry’s hand is holding the dice.
perhaps the universe is telling you something… that you ARE Blowjob Cat…
And why is that? I’ve never really understood recommendation-aversion and I’m hesitant to think it comes from just being a contrarian.
(FEEL FREE TO NOT READ THIS STUPID NEVER-ENDING NIGHTMARE)
There is probably a biological/sociological reason for it that I don’t know of. Perhaps it’s a phenomenon like being left-handed, in that it is naturally occurring, although I would be more inclined to think it is simply a result of social interactions and behaviors.
In my case, for example, I am almost certain it has something to do with how I was constantly told by someone who I had to be, what I had to like, and so on. Having someone constantly drilling you about things as sinple as what programs you should like or not can be quite jarring for a personality like mine. So naturally, while I spent years unable to protest these attitudes myself out of simple cowardice, I developed a considerable aversion to recommendation- (along with an unhealthy level of paranoia, just to top it out). For years I learned that other’s suggestions were often vailed attempts at (and I use this word because I think it encompases a nunber of adecuate concepts on it’s own) correcting me- there was often a hidden meaning behind the comments said around or about me.
Therefore now, everytime someone tells me to “watch this, it’s awesome” or “read that, it’ll *change your life!*” my mind does the following questions: What does this person consider (qualifier)? Why are they suggesting this? What is the topic matter? What are they implying? What do they gain from this? Who gets a benefit from it? Do they know what I like?
And I’m sure I’m missing some, but you can get the idea. Sometimes I eventually manage to “answer” all the questions and actually follow the recomendation years later, sometimes I don’t. The more people talking about it makes me more weary and pops more questions, but in general the effect is the same. And it’s not like I don’t realize how detrimental it is in matters of content. For example, I was meaning to start reading Isaac Asimov’s work two years ago, and then one of my older brother’s started praising every book- now I haven’t come around to read even the first one, and I love robots and science fiction. I grab the book and go “ooooh!” and yet when I leave it it’s like, a constant repultion for me. It’s weird.
Anyway, my only way of resisting people influence used to be internally rejecting of their suggestions/comments (or being rude/horrible when I was feeling self-destructive in general) so some of those responses are still engraived in my head. Not that I can’t work them our with a professional.
(I don’t know if they were mocking Taffy or just “joking” with one another, but the thread higher up regarding “inverted psychology” or whatever that was is particularly jarring for me. They’re probably just fooling around, but to me it’s like a nightmare-read. Maybe it’s just the Internet’s fault, since I can only read what they write and I can’t read their behaviors. You asked clearly and honestly, and I tried to answer the same.)
That was well presented. Thank you for sharing. I occasionally experience recommendation aversion for pop culture items (Lost, Survivor being two that I dodged), but it’s not hard and fast. What I never did, was consider the overall drive behind it, because it never impacted anything important, like vaccination, or so I thought. I shall consider this more.
Most people when recommending media just want a new person to talk about how great it is with or are tribalistically championing their favorite media.
My guess is recommendation aversion proberly comes from different places, not wanting people to think they can boss you around is part of it.
I could also see it being at least a little an instinct that came about because if everyone is hunting the forest will get over hunted and next year the people who know where all the good berry picking spots or fishing spots will have all the food
This is very nicely written, and it hits a lot of the right points for my case as well. There’s definitely an element of not wanting other people to define what I can like or have to like, steeped in people forcibly defining every single aspect of my life since I was a kid. There’s also the element of, like temporaryobsessor mentions above, a tribalistic vibe where I’m the Other if I don’t follow the crowd.
To respond to Wereg in particular, it’s absolutely not contrarianism. That mindset used to control my life just as much as the people who took my personal choices away, because I was still letting them decide what the conversation was about in the first place. The urge still comes up sometimes, but not in cases like this.
Of course, what better way to spite a group of separate people who don’t know you or each other than depriving yourself of something really precious? Being a victim to hype backlash is such a weird thing to brag about.
See, that’s the sort of language that makes me not wanna check things out.
If I don’t read specifically Pratchett, I’m “depriving” myself to “spite” other people. If I mention it at all, I’m “bragging”. Sure, nobody asked for my input there, but you’re so off-base with your response here that we’re not even in the same ballpark. The jokey reverse-psychology replies at least seem lighthearted, but this comes off as needlessly aggressive and dismissive.
Yeah that.
Hey Spence, not that I don’t wanna derail this apparently invigorating Pratchet thread by too much, but what happened to that popcorn conversation we had down there?
Did it get inflamed somehow when I wasn’t looking? If so, I’m REALLY sorry if I had anything to do with it
A commenter got his posts deleted since he’s a shitfucker, so everything nested under his posts is also gone.
Last one I saw was “have fun” regarding that fanfiction comment I made, and a smiley emot. Was that actually an insult? I suck at reading “””social cues””” like this.
Eh, maybe. Guy’s a tool though, so no worries
I’m certainly not trying to be dismissive. I’m just not giving you any solutions to the problem you’re having. Or are you saying you would like some suggestions?
I’ll be perfectly honest: I don’t understand your responses or what premise they’re starting from, and so I’m essentially just confused. I’m not looking for “solutions” to a “problem”, and I think that’s where a misunderstanding has been born.
I’d say it’s a problem you’re letting other people’s opinions dictate what media you should consume, at least when you yourself say that’s something you don’t want. That’s been a problem for me, but never mind me then.
I don’t like Terry Pratchett’s writings. Yeah yeah, I know, give it a chance, read it first. I bought and then read the first 20 Discworld books, just to make sure I was giving him a fair chance to get past early installment weirdness and all that. Four, maybe five of them were worth the paper they were printed on. If I was the sort of the person who threw away books, into the bin they’d go.
“Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it’s the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it’s just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder. So let’s just say that Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort
I just YouTube audiobook them.
All the trash of Victorian London but none of the colonialist oppression. Plus more trolls.
Ankh-Morpork practices REVERSE colonialism. It absorbs and exploits people who invade IT.
Ank-Morpora Ank-Morpora Her ner her by the ears.
Whenever some one says that I feel like Going Postal.
Perhaps they think reading them will be a Thief of Time.
I get so mad I start Making Steam, it just whistles out of my ears like a cartoon.
Gonna be a fun few days of this.
Meh, Becky’s probably got to get back to work. I don’t think this will last too long.
I’m more thinking about the comments section. The comic ain’t the issue here
To provide good comment vibes, I will be cordial: Joyce is not being a total dillweed right now. 75% tops
Any non-zero percentage of dillweeditute is equal to or possibly even greater than 200% of a literal war crime.
It literally is a war crime, haven’t you read the Geneva Conventions?
No, and I suspect very few people have.
It is good bedtime reading.
That’s a Geneva Convention violation
Everybody reads the Geneva Conventions! If you don’t want to because that’s what everyone else does, that’s your loss.
awww
:Tc Joyce might be the only person on campus who can get under Becky’s skin.
Since Becky won’t let Dina get into her…
Eh Joe’s irritated Becky a few times.
I feel sure that Booster could get under Becky’s skin if they tried.
Oh my jesus, a Booster-Nu Joyce conversation would be fantastic right about now.
One of the very few where Becky will show it, anyway. She’ll usually just throw up her goof act and keep rolling.
awww, they’re talking again!
Oh Good! They must be friends again!
Yay! I’m so glad we can all be happy on the comments and talk about happy things, like how I like how both of them are drawn in this comic! Gosh, the world is so great. Did you know femboy masks made a huge comeback last year for no reason?
If I google femboy masks, will I regret it?
Not really, it mostly refers to COVID-style masks with cutesy images on them. At least, when I did it.
? Why does that get them called “femboy” masks?
Because before COVID, they were often used by crossdressers who wore them to hide the bottom part of their faces and look more feminine.
Thank you all SO MUCH for helping me discover this is a thing!!!
🥰
Since my comment somehow originated this point of discussion, you’re welcome!
I’m gonna have to award the win to Becky for this round
When you’re losing an emotional maturity contest to *Becky*, you know you’ve lost your way.
Yeah, there both awful right now, but Joyce openned her trap first (and I don’t mean the initial greeting).
As always, tis better to remain silent, than to open one’s mouth and foolishly stick their foot in it.
Joyce knows there’s real things that aren’t quantifiable, right?
Probably not. Where’s a physicist when you need one?
A ball-shaped cow obsessed physicist could work, but I think what we need here is a psychologist or cognitive scientist:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy#:~:text=The%20McNamara%20fallacy%20(also%20known,other%20observations%20cannot%20be%20proven.
Ask the little fink to scientifically prove she loves her dad. She’ll vanish into sand.
Love is actually quantifiable, it’s just be a terribly invasive procedure to do so. On your brain.
Joyce: “Uh no. That’s what quantifiable means!”
Dinah: “How are you losing this argument!?”
Does this count as Becky flipping off the big guy upstairs?
Not really; she’s flipping off Joyce’s self-righteousness.
Omni-presence dictates that this is actually flipping off god. Failing that, given earth’s mass is insufficient to trap light, the curvature of the atmosphere /also/ dictates she’s flipping off god. However, as with any postal mis-delivery, it is clear from the “To:” line, that this isn’t addressed to the mythical bearded sky faerie, so it will be marked “return to sender” if it isn’t just politely dropped in Joyce’s box.
@Yotomoe Any chance of seeing Becky deliver that to Joyce’s box?
In that she is not doing that in any way, no it does not.
Yeah, Joyce is just becoming more and more of an asshole. Looking forward to her growing out of this.
If it’s as short as realistically possible, than it’s probably gonna be a a few years IRL.
Hopefully you’d settle for her shedding the most egregious PARTS of it before then? Otherwise don’t hold your breath.
I mean I suspect some kind of traumatic dramatic incident will happen, possibly putting Becky at risk, and the only thing Joyce can do to help us to just have faith. That might accelerate it a little.
Not the superstitious kind of faith, but yes.
Not believing in a god does not exclude believing in compassion and understanding of others in need.
Of course it would also be nice if she didn’t enable Becky’s possessiveness.
I just now realized that Willis uses traumatic or hyper-realistic events so often specifically because otherwise the character development within the timeline of this series would be non-existent.
That’s one advantage of the Walkyverse (including Shortpacked!) over the Dumbiverse, I suppose; time passage in the Walkyverse was roughly tied to real-world time progression, so the regularly-updating Walkyverse–from Roomies!‘ beginning in 1997 to Shortpacked!‘s ending in 2015–had about eighteen years in total for its incarnations of Willis’s characters to grow and evolve over time. With Dumbing of Age, it’s been just over four months in-universe since the first strip.
I swear to god if Becky ends up in jeopardy just to accellerate Joyce’s character growth one more time, I’m gonna start suspecting her of setting it up because she’s secretly been sick of Joyce’s shit for a while already.
Yeah, is this what you call a trope now?
Speaking of this, i had this absolutely CURSED prediction where Becky acts cartoonishly stupid just to fuck with Joyce the same way Sandy acted stupid to fuck with Spongebob in that one episode where he was making squirrel jokes.
I’ve seen approximately 17 episodes of Spongebob. That one doesn’t seem to be one of them.
It’s an episode where Spongebob is doing stand-up comedy with Sandy being a supportive friend in the audience.
All his jokes fall flat so he resorts to roasting squirrels as a last resort, and it’s a hit.
Can’t believe Spongeman fell into the trap of “racism is comedy” smh my head.
squidwardfuturesitups.gif
It was an early enough episode that the resolution wasn’t “making racist jokes is bad”, SpongeBob just started making racist jokes about everyone instead. Maybe that flew in 2001*, but that doesn’t sound like the right message 20 years later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuvMriwN8B4
*According to the SpongeBob wiki (because of course there’s one), this was the first new episode to premiere after 9/11.
I think “it’s only okay to laugh at each other if everyone is fine with it, instead of focusing on one person at their expense” is a pretty good comedy lesson.
Be nice if that Chapelle fuckface got that.
“Becky, why the hell did you put GLUE on my jacket?”
“Ah put that there so it wouldn’t fall off!”
“That’s insane!”
“You know us believers! We’re SOOO STUUUPID!!!”
We hope she will, at least. People have made careers out of assholery like this.
I mean Joyce is looking to be a comic writers, so the asshole quota is probably about 40-60.
Eh, a LOT tends to happen in DoA time. I’m not expecting this phase to last more than a storyline or two. From a writing standpoint, one ought not to have the main protagonist be unlikable for TOO long.
Becky: “It’s up in the stratosphere!”
Dotty, are you going to break this up before it gets physical?
It’s interesting that it’s somehow Dorothy’s job to do that.
If anything, she has a moral duty to whip her phone out and record this for Tweeter. That’s gonna get her on the fasttrack to Presidency.
Don’t you know? Whenever two Republicans fight, it’s somehow a Democrat’s fault.
Becky is not the Mother of either of them…
*Dorthey
**Dorothy
*Optimus Prime
Darcy
Daria
Damn you Willis!
Jane!
I won’t be soothed.
Bro, meet Haha. Donny, meet Brook.
I thought it was brouhaha. Actually, I thought it was “bruhaha”, but autocorrect did it’s job.
Yeah, Becky’s still making me laugh today.
Good god, Joyce
Good intangible sky wizard, you mean.
Joyce and WALKY would get along now.
Bets?
Wrong comic.
Gotta say…
For the most part I’ve been sort of on the side of Joyce. (e.g. her earlier comments about god were a private conversation, she has valid reasons for feeling the way she does, etc.) But, I think her jumping into the whole “sky daddy” thing was the first time I think she might be pushing it a bit much.
Yeah, agreed, I really can’t find a way to spin this one. Joyce is imploding here, which is so hard and confusing to watch after seeing how much she cared about everyone for so long. Even if she’s angry at Christianity, this behavior is wayyy out of line and, more importantly, out of character.
Just gonna have to grit my teeth and tell myself it’ll shake out for the better.
Joyce is finally getting to enjoy the sweet-sweet taste of bullying. She was never comfortable using Jesus to bully people but objective science, OH YEAH. Perfect! Maybe she can get in on social darwinism and Objectivism!
Seriously though, I hope not. Randian Objectivists to my knowledge may not condone violence like Joyce’s group did, but they’re still just as bad, on some levels even worse of a CULT. No better can be said of Social Darwinism, which is but a distorted parody of real science, melted into utter garbage by the selective hearing of bourgeois fucks.
But I see why some would think she might go that far. Joyce is trying to put as much physical and mental distance between herself and her group as possible, and she might just go in the unhealthy direction of becoming an increasingly cartoonish display of what she thinks an atheist looks like.
Joyce is out of character, but real life people act out of character all the time. For someone who has been through multiple traumatic experiences, and then lost a foundational belief that she relied on to give her strength. Lashing out at those closest to us is obviously not healthy, but it is perfectly understandable.
This is where I’m at too. Everything previously was private, and had the argument of some level of critiquing systems, but this is just petty rude attacks on beckys faith. I get those 2 things are intwined in Joyce’s head but still, not cool.
I feel like Joyce is at a place where she doesn’t really work as a semi-autobiographical character, but Willis is still trying to write her as one. It reminds me of how badly Roz got derailed, honestly.
To paraphrase a Dude: She’s not wrong, she’s just [being] an asshole
Oh yes this’ll go well.
Firstly, can’t wait to see all the comments talking about how horrible a friend and unhelpful Dorothy is being in this strip because she’s not immediately jumping in to solve everything with carefully reasoned arguments and diplomacy.
Second, here’s the thing that’s putting me off about Joyce. I understand that she’s been through a huge amount, she’s in a chaotic place, acting like an asshole is going to happen. But all she had to do here was not fucking mock Becky’s faith. Not agree with it, not even respect it, just not fucking throw the first verbal punch.
And at some point, sympathy does run out. I’m not going to say that Dorothy would normally be at that point (Becky has been through more shit than Joyce and she’s handling it better just by virtue of not throwing the first punch, so no question she gets a pass for being done with Joyce), but… yeah, at some point, a person’s self-care is more important than managing a friend’s trauma…
While there’s no doubt that Joyce threw the first punch, I’m intrigued by her initial facial expression. It’s looks more curious, like she’s feeling Becky out (even though the speech bubble of “…*Becky*.” reads more chilly). And Becky looks, y’know, *pissed.* Let’s just say I’m not opposed to the idea of Joyce being aggressive because she perceived that Becky was still hostile (as opposed to her just metaphorically smacking her in the face just because she showed up).
Also, glad to see someone cutting Dorothy some slack. While I was disappointed in some of her reactions as events unfolded, I can’t say they weren’t *human* reactions based on what she witnessed, and I’m not going to be mad at a character for being human. It’s like people expect her to be perfect just because she wants to be, but we’ve seen time and time again that she simply isn’t perfect, so….
I think one of the week eases of the 4-5 panel per day comic format is so much has to be squeezed in so quick that we don’t really see the sequence of emotions that leads to the “punch” we go from interesting but not aggressive Joyce face to spiteful comment without much of a transition or visual explanation cuz u gotta get the whole thing into the panels you e got. Not to say that Willis does a bad job, this comic does a lot with its format, but there’s a lot of space where u gotta fill in the blanks
I think at some level, Joyce is thinking “uh-oh, how much of that did you hear this time”, since Becky still doesn’t have all the context behind Joyce’s shift in mindset.
But then she notices Becky’s agitated and on the defensive, and comes out swinging.
Becky has all the context. She was there both times when their church tried to kill or kidnap them.
I think moreso they meant Joyces whole turmoil about it + all the past experiences she had before becky showed up.
Oh hell no, expecting Dorothy to even slightly mediate this would be more than a bit silly. When was the last time she tried that and it worked?
I kinda think Becky’s first reaction being an angry scowl means it ain’t as much of a first punch as it would otherwise be.
Oh my God, the both of you.
I’d say slap each other, kiss each other, and move on, but that would be uncool to Dina.
Nah, Becky deserves better.
Becky? Dina has been Mary Sue levels of perfect.
Just out of frame some idiot starts recording this on his phone screaming WORLDSTAR! WORLDSTAR!
Have we seen Walky today yet?
So we continue the dispute between the girl who’s lost all her reason believe in God and the other girl who definitely refuses to believe that the only type of God that would exist is one that would not except her as she is.
Uh, Becky’s been explicitly clear that she believes that God is 100% cool with her being a lesbian. Like, she’s said that at least a dozen times, one way or another.
That’s what newlland said. Becky refuses to believe the only God that would exist is one that wouldn’t be cool with it. Meanwhile Joyce no longer has reason to believe in God.
It’s a little confusing phrased is all.
Aaaaah, my bad.
LGBT+ Christians do in fact exist, my best friend is one of them. The main belief structure is based on the fact that only conservative fundie Christians seem to believe God truly hates the LGBT community. Aside from a couple piecemeal quotes, which are alongside rules such as wearing two different sorts of cloth and handling pigskin, the bible doesn’t say the LGBT community is evil. The Bible’s main message SHOULD be one of love, community, and compassion. True Christians, such as my best friend and Becky, believe in this version of the Bible.
There are also multiple passages in the New Testament where Jesus or God straight out say some Old Testament rule or rules are completely wrong or made up.
I mean, Joyce seems to have been taught to completely ignore Jesus’ ministry is about. “You got this shit wrong.”
How often does the Bible reference Jesus’s “robust goblinoid nipples” though? If the answer is “never”, it’s not worth reading.
here to say that you might want to try fanfiction, if that’s what you’re looking for
Not falling for that again. Not this time.
So you see the reason we weren’t allowed to build the space elevator right away was only by having differences could we over come our differences and if we can’t overcome our own differences how could we ever hope to overcome our differences with space beings.
or don’t apply anymore.
“There are also multiple passages in the New Testament where Jesus or God straight out say some Old Testament rule or rules are completely wrong or made up.”
Where did you get that idea? That’s just utterly false. What he said is the exact opposite:
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”
Yes, Jesus believed that EVERY commandment, even those that have to do with the two kinds of cloth and circumcision, etc, need be obeyed and fulfilled.
Paul, in order to convert foreigners, did away with circumcision and dietary restrictions. But that’s on Paul, not on Jesus, who was very adamant on the law being obeyed.
Off the top of my head?
Matthew 15:11
“What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”
In context it refers to the washing of hands and food, but the lesson directly applies to being Kosher.
Matthew 19:8
“Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.”
Jesus straight up says Moses added Laws at the behest of the people, even when they contradicted God’s Law.
And …hmmm. Well, I could have sworn Jesus spoke of a “new covenant”, but aside from one line during the Last Supper that’s mostly discussed in 2 Corinthians and Hebrews, which you already implicitly discounted.
That’s also no text that Jesus wrote. There are 4 texts about what Jesus said and did that were written at least a generation later by people with their own ideas about what the message really was. All of our ideas about what Jesus really taught are filtered through that.
And thus through Paul, since the 4 gospels were written after Paul’s mission and can been seen to be influenced by its effects. Probably Matthew least, from what I can tell. Some of Matthew seems to be in opposition to Paul – like the passage you quote.
There’s a bit in Acts where Peter says he was chilling in a roof and hungry and God sent a bunch of non-kosher animals to him and said to go eat them, at which point Peter goes “um, that’s not clean” and God replies “don’t call shit unclean when I’ve made it clean, capisce?” There’s also the argument that because Jesus did fulfill the law, it no longer applies, and Paul also notes in 1 Corinthians that everything is now permissible even if not everything is healthy and people still shouldn’t let their desires rule them. So there is some argument to be made that parts of the OT don’t apply anymore, but which parts and why the rest still does matter is a matter of debate and schism.
And was when all those texts were written.
What we see in those parts of the New Testament is conflict between the Pauline faction which was expanding the movement’s reach to Gentiles and the Jamesian faction was intent on staying a Jewish movement. Obviously the Pauline side won out, but that doesn’t really say anything about which side the historical Jesus would have been on, had he not been dead before the question really arose.
Perhaps the most well known example can be found in the Gospel according to John. Virtually everyone knows the phrase, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” That was in reference to the scriptural requirement that an adulterous woman be stoned to death. The local temple leaders assumed Jesus would oppose that punishment, at which point they could label him a blasphemer and eliminate him themselves. Instead, he insisted that the sentence be carried out but under that condition. He waited until EVERYONE but the condemned woman left in shame, at which point he freed her and definitely violated that official scripture.
There are no “true Christians”. The original text has plenty of hate and bile in it–yes, the one “Jesus wrote”. There’s just different interpretations of the same bad book. Some readings are better than others, but none of them are “true Christianity”. The idea that goodness and kindness are intrinsic to Christianity is actually a very Christian perspective, and it’s commonly held among ex-Christians who are still part of the culture.
“Aside from a couple piecemeal quotes, which are alongside rules such as wearing two different sorts of cloth and handling pigskin, the bible doesn’t say the LGBT community is evil.”
Oh, well, as long as it only says to murder gay people in only a *couple* places, that’s okay then! Same as if it only to says to murder gay people alongside *other* stupid things it also says, that means it’s not actually stupid at all, because the stupidities being next to each other means they cancel each other out! /s
I suggest that if a really benevolent God actually existed, he needn’t have actually said even once to murder gay people. In fact if a really benevolent God actually existed, that God could have chosen to teach acceptance of different sexualities instead of teaching “They shall be put to death because it’s an abomination”.
Alright dude calm down a bit. I’m on your side here, just making the factual statement that the bible, which was written by fickle humans, mentioned gay people in maybe 2% of it, which is what terrible people decide to narrow focus in on. I think you’re being aggressively sarcastic because you presume me to be a Christian but I’m an atheist. I’m on your side here. Just saying, LGBT Christians do exist, my best friend is one of them.
It always kind of amuses (and saddens) me when the atheists join in with the fundies in denying the possibility of LGBTQ Christians.
It always amuses me that there are fundies that read this comic.
I didn’t deny that LGBTQ Christians exist.
yeah, they should have narrowed on the not wearing mixed fabrics part, or the one where you are not allowed to cook a goat in it’s mothers milk. That would have made things a little easier.
I feel like trying to differentiate between True and Untrue Christians on moral standards leads to the dangerous thinking that any Christian who engages in evils frees True Christians from the responsibility of cleaning up within their own institution.
I don’t think the moral victory of being a True Christian matters unless that True Christian attempts to make small-scale changes where they can by using the influence they have as a member of a religious majority with continent-defining levels of cultural power.
Maybe you’re overestimating the “influence” individuals may have on “majorities”. The average “True Christian”™ has the same level of influence on the Christian majority that you or me have on our respective countries’ governments. And I’m not saying this as justification or validation of inaction.
Well, if the answer is that it’s helpless, then I think the idea of a Good or Bad Christian is kind of moot when the both of them reap the benefits of being part of a cultural majority. Making the lives of the marginalized better is Good, not refusing to make them worse; there’s a difference.
I dunno what it means to be good if doing good isn’t part of that, and if any Good Christian is well and truly unable to do good, then they should be so blessed that “shitty, edgy atheists on the internet” are the worst they have to put up with.
Counterpoint: the pope is hardly an average christian, and that doesn’t stop him from being a homophobic, transphobic shit who covers for pedophiles. The problems are baked into the system at a (haha) fundamental level.
Oh, the current pope is also a communist.
Meh.
The moment he started calling transfolk “nuclear weapons against the plan of god” and saying that the pedophilia in the church was the result of “the Church being infiltrated by homosexuals” was the moment I decided him getting hit by a truck was a great way to make the world a better place.
How is he a communist? Did he declare the end of pope’s unflappability?
If not, he’s still the heir of the one instigating fascism in Austria (austrofascism, distinct from Hitler) not to get socialism.
Also I failed to see him say anywhere: I give away all the capital the church has.
Beside his whole homophobic/transphobic/rape defense stances
I see it as completely the opposite actually. As long as mainstream Churches accept those evangelical and other right-wing Churches as legitimate… well then. It would be rude to pick fights with them. After all, we are all the same side and so long as they are saving souls, then it doesn’t really matter if they’re fudging the details. Dirty water still saves the dying of thirst as my pastor said in Sunday School.
But, if they are explicitly not Christian and just dragging the Church’s name through the mud and confusing what it means to be Saved? Then that’s a spiritual threat that undermines everything the Church is and needs to be dealt with.
OTOH, taking the “Those Churches aren’t Christian!” approach is one that’s led to some pretty awful religious wars in the not to distant past. OTGH, that’s basically already the approach the religious right is taking and it really only takes one side to start a war.
The great thing about “spiritual threats” is that they don’t threaten anything.
Becky is someone who benefits from actually understanding all the persecution and faith in times of tribulations thing in Christianity versus, well, the Browns who assume being white, straight, and Christian in America is under attack.
This horse has been thoroughly beaten into Jell-O, which has been beaten into a pulpy mess, but…
Becky learned to see the nuance between absolutes. Joyce built her entire mindset on top of absolutes with the assumption they would be rigid and unchanging.
It may just be me, but I think Becky’s eyes are drawn a bit… weird… in the earlier panels. (The whole “pupil/top eyelid” combination is one that I’m not used to seeing in this strip.)
It’s because she usually has dot eyes and the implied sclera is filled with her skin tone. Characters with dot eyes generally only get white sclera for a panel to help a dramatic expression land harder. (Becky, Rachel, and Walky have all done it.)
I tried coloring them white with MS Paint. My lacking in skills of an artist aside, it doesn’t look bad but I don’t think it looks right for this instance either. These panels are more subtle than the usual over-the-top situations that have called for it before. If she usually had white sclera and black dot pupils (like Agatha, Dina, Liz, Robin, and Sarah), it wouldn’t stand out as much.
https://imgur.com/naRRoQM
THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTIIIIIIIIING
This is going better then I expected tbh
like, at least they’re still talking. that’s a plus
I love the framing and the first two panels. Shit is going DOWN
oh hey different thought on why Joyce might be having trouble with the sexuality being fluid thing: She’s still unpacking her issues in layers, and is still hanging on to the hyper-monogamy thing — there’s no doubt she was raised with the idea that you’re supposed to have one serious relationship in your life, that being your spouse, who you’re supposed to be with until death do you part. If that part of her upbringing held on while she was unlearning the other stuff, it’d allow her to feel more comfortable with Becky being in a long-term serious relationship with a woman because it’s still partially following the “rules”
We also know that Joyce has questioned her own sexuality before, and might prefer to think of that issue as being soundly put to bed.
I feel like “questioned” is an overstatement. “Been terrified of”, sure. But “questioned” suggests a level of honest intellectual engagement with the subject.
Hit the nail on the head.
Man, when it comes to religion, I just mind my own business and don’t bother people. Am I personally Atheist/Agnostic? Yes. Any belief in God I had as a child shriveled the day I learned my dad was diagnosed with Stage 3 Colon cancer, the same as my mom had, and any remnants of that belief dissipated the day my mom died from a second cancer she managed to develop ten years after the first. I, personally, cannot believe in any form of loving God who would cause such suffering to my loving parents who have never done anything to harm others. So, I do get where Joyce is coming from, with the hurt and having formerly been a Christian.
However, my best friend is Christian and for him, Christianity has been a solace after losing his mom to cancer, much like Becky finding solace after losing her mother. And I would never, NEVER ruin that peace for him. We don’t have to believe the same thing to be friends. We agree on the important things (be good to others, don’t be an asshole), and he isn’t hateful about his beliefs. Therefore, even if I don’t believe in God personally, I don’t debate it with him. Because honestly, how do either of us know who’s right? We don’t. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe he’s wrong. Is being ‘wrong/right’ more important than my friendship with him? No. This is the dilemma Joyce needs to work through as well.
Maybe Becky should be the one to deck Joyce.
Maybe Dorothy should know both heads against each other and call them both a bunch of knuckleheads. A-la-Moe Howard.
On one hand, Becky’s not wrong about the self-righteousness. On the other, they have been friends since they were little kids and Joyce has upended so much of her life for Becky these last few months. Yes, Joyce is being a total arse but like, c’mon Becky. Be the better person for once.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/change/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/forever/
Also, an early example of how their beliefs were always different- https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/research/
Say what you will but those two have great expressions
Honestly, I feel Becky is right to be upset due to how this fight has become tied to how she lost her mother. Namely, they recently celebrated her mother’s birthday, where Joyce expressed a false belief in Becky’s mom watching from heaven. Now, from Becky’s POV, she thinks Joyce was lying to her to humor her, like you would a child who believes in Santa. It’s a bad feeling. Also, Becky obviously ties her Christianity to her mother, who was absolutely her main teacher in the home. Being Christian is what she did with her mother, Christianity says her mother will be in Heaven waiting for her someday (although depending on the doctrine, maybe not quite, but that’s complicated and obviously Becky doesn’t wanna think that her mom’s in Hell), and it’s comforting after all she’s been through to think it’s all for SOMETHING. Trust me, after losing someone like a parent, feeling like someone (even a best friend, or in my case, family member) is disrespecting your dearly departed person is a whirlwind of emotions that hurts.
If so, then I feel like Becky has tied the argument to her mum herself. Joyce tried to not say anything about the subject but Becky put her (understandably considering their relationship) in a place where she either had to either lie (bad) or state she didn’t believe anymore (worse, considering the timing). If Becky feels like Joyce not believing in heaven is an insult to her dead mother then that is something she has to deal with internally. It is unfair to expect others to have the same religious beliefs as you.
Now, Becky 100% percent has a right to be upset. Panel three Joyce is being, excuse my language, a huge butthead. Joyce is in the wrong here. My opinion is that that while she has every right to be upset she also owes it to Joyce to reach out and not just attack back.
It isn’t Joyce not believing that is an insult, it is statements such as “ONLY IDIOTS BELIEVE IN GOD”, which insults both herself and her mother, as well as the time she said ‘everyone who raised us is a B-sin asshole’.
Becky has made her friend’s loss of religion all about her. Joyce wasn’t mocking Becky, she was mocking who she used to be. She wasn’t doing it behind her Becky’s back, she was doing with another friend. Joyce wasn’t humouring her at the party for her mother, she was being polite and supportive.
Joyce not believing in heaven so therefore not believing Becky’s mother is in heaven is 100% not an insult. Someone having a different belief in what happens after death is not an insult.
Becky doesn’t want Joyce to be an atheist, she doesn’t want her to be angry at her (previously their) religion and community. But Joyce, very understandably, is.
Joyce’s parents are divorcing, her faith is gone, her old community is gone, she was kidnapped, assaulted, and more. She has gone through so much. And yes, she is being obnoxious and rude and is in the wrong. But I don’t think it would be as bad if Becky didn’t blow up at her. Becky may be hurt but she could act better right now. Like, my mother died when I was not much older than Becky. It sucked and still sucks. But grief doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and be a good friend.
It may not be an insult per se, but it’s still hurtful. Becky takes solace in the hope that she will see her mother again, and Joyce is trying to tell her “No, that will never happen, she’s dead and gone and that’s that.” That hurts. Thats Joyce ripping away her coping mechanism. And then on top of that, Joyce is acting like being atheist is the intelligent thing to do, and that not being an atheist is objectively stupid. That IS an insult. So now we have Joyce not only ripping off Becky’s bandaid, she’s pouring salt into that wound.
I’m not saying Becky doesn’t need to grow here as well, but she’s very much under attack here. If we say that everything else from this semester is cordoned off and not an issue here, Joyce still fires the first shots right now. Joyce is still choosing the most inflammatory and insulting ways to refer to Becky’s belief and acting like it’s all Becky’s fault that she’s upset by it.
Neither one is being a good friend, but one of them is being a massive dick.
I don’t know how Joyce as an atheist is meant to express that she does not think Becky’s mom is in Heaven (besides the part where she has not, in those exact words, said as much). What has happened is that Joyce felt the need to somehow be there for Becky despite her own fears that she had contributed to her suffering thinking Bonnie had died of cancer, and then put a party together to celebrate her birthday.
There’s also the part where Joyce’s atheism, something she has only referred to by name starting today, is brand new, based in a complete lack of understanding of what life is now without the inerrant facts that told her what everything meant, and only got to “shitty, edgy atheist” levels when Becky and co. dragged her into a fight where she’s defending thought processes she only just barely understands. Y’know, maybe there’s A Point to how Joyce was introspective around Joe but a total rage machine around Becky.
Like actually maybe the collapse of Joyce’s religious indoctrination and the gaping void that is now her understanding of how life works matters more than whether or not Becky is sad about the fight she caused by stalking her.
I don’t know how Joyce is firing the first shot either, considering Becky starts off by glaring daggers at her without attempting to broach the misunderstanding that dragged her over here to begin with. You don’t make that face at someone unless you’re making a statement.
You’re telling me that saying to a believer’s faith that they believe in a fake sky wizard isn’t telling them their faith is incorrect and therefore the attached afterlife also doesn’t exist? You’re able to pull “firing the first shots” out of a glare but not the follow-on conclusions out of “your god doesn’t exist”?
And for the record, I don’t read panel 2 as a glare. Both panels 1 and 2 are varying levels of wariness to me. Joyce looks somewhat surprised and maybe a touch hopefully but still wary, while Becky seems to be giving a “don’t start none won’t be none” sort of look.
I am able to pull “firing the first shot” when the first shot is fired in a sequential order, yes. If Becky did not want to Start None then she could turn around or at least bring up the thing that dragged her here in the first place. She has not, which, and apparently I have to write this shit, also does not mean Becky’s wrong to be upset about what gets said in the immediately following panel or that it’s Her Entire Fault that she ran over here when her sexuality was questioned.
Anyway, it’d be really fucking helpful if Becky could even once vocalize it like “Joyce, you’re saying I’m never gonna see my mom again,” which is something Joyce actually believes, yeah; that’s why Joyce didn’t fucking tell her she doesn’t believe anymore, lied while trying to emotionally support Becky on her mom’s birthday, and Becky only found out when she stalked her to a private conversation where Joyce was raging at her entire life being a fucking lie. Like Joyce, however, Becky’s running on hurt and anger and can’t just say it because Joyce is already supposed to know it’s the case, the way Joyce thinks Becky’s supposed to just figure out that everything is a lie.
But Joyce’s relationship with her religious indoctrination doesn’t have to be run past Becky. Becky doesn’t actually matter to that, and Becky only started mattering when it all went down, when she stalked Joyce to a private conversation where (and thanks to Seth over at Patreon for spelling it out so succinctly) Joyce was saying she was a big stupid moron for ever believing there was someone looking out for her with a plan in mind, and that’s actually how Becky’s faith in God works.
I’ll beat this dead horse until the giblets all coalesce back into a cohesive form: Joyce did not act like this until Becky dragged her into a fight she was not prepared to have. She was not confrontational about it until Dorothy, Joe and Sarah pushed her to go after Becky, they yelled passed each other for a week of strips, and then Sarah kept egging her on. Previously with Joe? Expressing vulnerability and confusion, accepting answers she wasn’t really ready to accept. This whole thing with Joyce going off at Ruth is in direct contrast with how she treated Booster; Walky told her that Booster uses they/them pronouns so Joyce said she didn’t get it but she’s wrong all the time and so she’ll go look it up herself. Before Becky and Dorothy fucking stalked her, Joyce was in a point where she had a big pile of nothing that was slowly getting built back up, but then whoopsie doodles, no one can ask Joyce how she’s feeling for ten seconds so now she’s gotta zealously defend her newfound lack of belief in anything.
I think it’s going to be best if you just keep scrolling the next time you see my name and I’m talking about this conflict, and I’ll give you the same courtesy. It’s pretty clear you and I will not agree and I just don’t have the energy or desire to keep rehashing this with you. I have no really issue with you on other matters but this one needs to be dropped.
If grief doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to be a friend, why doesn’t that rule also apply to Joyce then? Both of them have plenty of trauma’s, grief and lost communities. Why is Becky the only one not allowed to be hostile?
You say that Joyce wasn’t mocking Becky, but that’s simply not true. Joyce has openly declared how she considers all believers idiots, Becky included. And when Becky confronted her after the unfortunate overhearing, she only confirmed that. Joyce had the chance to (somewhat) mend things there if she’d gone for any kind of ‘I didn’t mean it like that’ or ‘I really meant religion/extremists in general’ or anything, but she didn’t do that. Instead she only doubled down on her position of ‘I think all believers are idiots, you included’.
Becky isn’t angry about Joyce’s loss of religion. She’s angry that her (former?) best friend openly mocks her and calls her an idiot. That’s not Becky making Joyce’s loss of religion about her, that’s Joyce turning her loss of religion into a hate campaign against her (former) friend (along with the rest of religion).
Joyce’s beliefs aren’t the issue here, the issue is her intolerance towards people that don’t share her beliefs. Becky seems cool with atheists, she hangs out with Dorothy and Dina. The difference is that they don’t go out of their way to crusade against all people that do have beliefs.
Joyce not believing in heaven is not an insult, and neither is her participating in the ceremony for Becky’s mother without actually believing. What would be insulting, however, is her mockingly participating while actually thinking Becky is an idiot for doing it. And while we know Joyce didn’t really think or feel that at the time, Becky doesn’t know that. And when asked about it, Joyce all but confirmed it was the disrespectful version of events. Becky’s anger is quite justified.
Can I approach this in a potentially weird way?
It’s not that I can’t understand this read as the “canon” intended meaning of the Faith-Off, so much as I don’t think we spent over a decade of Joyce chafing and ultimately cracking under a lifetime of oppressive religious indoctrination where her desire to be as good as possible to as many people ultimately led her to defy everything she ever knew to protect the person she loved most of all, and then once Joyce becomes an atheist we’re now going with her as the most unsympathetic kind of atheist possible, which, given Joyce’s specific circumstances (they involve almost being shot in the face), would still be pretty damned sympathetic even if she were just lashing out.
It just feels like “Joyce Brown becomes an atheist” should matter more than whether or not Joyce is being mean to Christians. Not “should” as the comic itself is not failing to make it matter so much as I don’t think that’s really all there is to it.
It would be great if Becky had her best friend continue to share her lifelong faith with her and have that connection through religion and could connect on the good and bad of their shared upbringing. For Becky her religion is based on what she feels is true, and the words in books and the thoughts of her community were not what really mattered.
It would be great if Joyce had her best friend go through the experience of loss of faith with her, someone who experienced the same culty upbringing as her and could commiserate on the good and bad and the experience of all this new knowledge. For Joyce her religion was based on the words in books and the thoughts of her community, when what she felt was right contradicted them, it caused massive cracks in her religion.
I mean Joyce is the one who is aggressive here. Which is unusual.
I find weird how Becky acts like she doesn’t know Joyce for forever.
I still remember the ‘Original sin” comic.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/originalsin/
It really seems like Becky completely forgot about that interaction between her and Joyce, because if she remembered that it would make it a lot more clear to her why Joyce is acting the way she is now.
Judging by how she acted at Dina’s birthday party (and just in general), Becky never considered the idea of Joyce questioning her belief as a possibility. It was a stupid phase she needed to get over, because she’d only been rebelling against her parents for 30 seconds.
Yeah, they reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllly need to circle back to that conversation.
Oh for fuck’s sake, just grab some cardboard tubes and bonk each other until all the aggression drains and you can actually talk your shit out without the anger getting in the way.
For reals though, I’d dig that.
My preferred resolution to this story is that they do the anime cross counter punching each other in the face at the same time thing.
The only inerrant fact left is catching these hands.
I first read that as “boink” and was like wouldn’t that chafe?
I feel like you are overestimating cardboard’s durability under, shall we say, certain conditions. Although yes it can probablychafe, at least while it lasts.
*rubs temples*
CHILDREN
Got any tasty jokes today?
If not, I won’t rush though!
After all, you can’t rush ART.
What do you call it when a hognose snake playing dead (lying on its back, upside-down) is placed right-way-up, only for it to immediately flop back onto its back in an attempt at insisting that no seriously, it’s totally dead for real? A reptile dysfunction.
Speaking of which, got any ideas for the commission yet?
Hrrm. After a day of deliberation, and with the realization that it has now been four years nearly to the day with no resolution in the actual comic…perhaps it can be dedicated to the name of Tag the Cricket, who has sadly been overlooked for too long! That is, unless…Tag the Cricket is the comic’s secret final boss, and his survival was foreshadowing for what is yet to come!
(My previous thoughts were respectively either, in light of Current Comic Goings-on, a Joyce-v-Becky Battle of the Heroes-style thing situated over, I dunno, a comically-oversized bowl of oatmeal–or something Asher or Dina-related instead, given my gravs–but like I said yesterday, don’t want to overask here or spend ages deliberating with myself. Though I’d be happy with any one of those, really. XD)
I’ll see what I could do!
Ideally I’ll have it done by tomorrow’s strip or the next, provided there’s nothing stupid throws itself into my face before then.
A penguin comes into an automotive shop for a flat tire, as he waits for them to fix his tire he. proceeds to eat some of the powdered doughnuts out for customers ( This is pre covid) as he’s stuffing his face and getting white powder all over the mechanic comes out
“ Seems you blew a seal”
The penguin frantically wipes at his face “ Its powdered doughnuts I swear!”
Amazing. A+ joke.
I have heard that joke before, and it doesn’t matter, it is still funny.
Joyce: Boy is Becky gonna be pissed if I admit to myself/anyone that I’m into girls and I didn’t go for her. Better make her so mad about something else so I won’t have to deal with that.
Planz
I mean just because Joyce MIGHT be into girls doesnt mean she would HAVE to be into Becky…
This forever and ever. You can’t just mash two people of complementary orientations together and make them stick. Attraction has to be there and plainly isn’t on Joyce’s part.
She views Becky as family/a sister to her its just not there
You are very right Reaver. But do you think she might be worried about how Becky would take it? Especially given some of her logic in this story arc.
No, I really don’t think “Becky is still into me” has crossed her mind, simply it’s replaced with ‘Becky and Dina”
I’m not sure Joyce has realized yet that she might be into girls as well as guys.
Fundy upbringing: when in doubt, double down.
The problem with statements like “Only that which can be scientifically verified is true” is that they can’t themselves be scientifically verified and thus fail their own test.
That, and true statements like the Pythagorean Theorem are logically or analytically verified.
Strictly speaking, mathematical theorems can never be really verified with empirical examples where they happen to be true, no matter how many you have.
IIRC, the proof has something to do with closed sets. I think Veritasium did a video on it, but I’m not 100% sure.
That’s because to be “mathematical truth” it needs to be proven to be true for ALL possible cases, and you can’t do that with examples, because examples give you no guarantee of the inexistence of corner cases.
I was wondering what would happen and that certainly wasn’t it
it looks hilarious as an onlooker tho
I’m glad to see that despite their disagreements, Becky still thinks Joyce is #1.
(see the hand above her head in the last panel).
At least Becky is fighting with Joyce now instead of Dorothy. Adds a little variety.
It’s actually kind of refreshing. Let’s see if it lasts more than a real world week.
Good for her (Becky)
okay Becks gets the point for the burn
OH SHIT I’M BLOWJOB CAT NOW FUCK YEAH
I just kept getting awkward Leslies before
This feels like the right place to roulette my face.
Hmm Sarah is okay, but I don’t want to roul-outte a chance at someone better.
Absolutely not.
Panel 3 is just a self portrait of the author, isn’t it?
Nah, all the cool kids say “Sky Daddy” these days.
The real cool kids say “ISW” without twisting their tongues.
Yeeeeee, I don’t like Becky much at these moments.
Joyce is kind of an a** on her “I am so clever now, atheist cloud” but she weirdly still believes in people and obviously tries for sth better.
Becky on the other hand, is sth worse.
She went straight into accusing Joyce from that first moment she accidentally heard Joyce was an atheist now,
and it seems that she keeps that demeaning atttitude still.
(I just really hated back, when Becky accused Joyce of faking Becky’s mom’s birthday.
Joyce wanted the best for her friend, but was pulled from different sides/pointviews to find the best outcome and keep Becky’s feelings and spirit, up.)
Okay lets be fair, Joyce poked the bear this time and was being a jerk.
Sort of? The tension behind the previous conversation was palpable. Now Becky may be good at Wacky Ignorance Of Obvious Tension (see: the entire arc where Joyce and Becky went back to their home town), but Joyce always clicks Fight in the Fight-Or-Flight option menu as a matter of instinct. Honestly, I think that’s for the better in this situation. Get stuff on the table.
Could Joyce have phrased it more tactfully? Also yes, but Joyce has never been good at tact either. Moreover, this is less harsh than a lot of the stuff Becky said to Joyce last conversation.
Joyce could have said hello, she instead made a snide comment about sky daddy, that’s on her there…
If I stare at you like being nearby is akin to inhaling dog shit, I think that counts as poking the bear.
I got suprised in my life when I figured out ow many christians are able to talk dirty, like Becky, showing the finger.
And how many christian are so dirty and low, like Carol or Mary.
Too many are in it just to feel superior to others.
Please, someone put a popcorn bucket on Dorothy’s hand.
Absolutely zero subtext in Joyce parsing through a conversation of her own ignorance on a topic that also involves a degree of personal guilt then getting derailed when Becky shows up.
Aaaand that’s two points straight to Becky. Everything up until now has been a bit grey, with both sides having very valid reasons to behave the way they did, but Joyce is just out and out being a dickhead here.
Some people expect Dorothy to intervene here and I’m just like nah, she should stay out of it and let them argue to the death. Whenever Dorothy tries to help and isn’t 100% perfect at it and doesn’t know exactly what to say with exact perfect precision, people throw a fit or declare her the literal worst at talking to people.
Dorothy should take a vacation in the Bahamas until all of this blows over.
It’s time to go to Yale. She can just rent a room and live in the library until next semester.
“Turns out being part of my path to the presidency is the LEAST of this transfer’s benefits.”
Yup, she’s a future politician alright.
We wouldn’t be taking shots at her if she weren’t literally the smuggest person in the main cast, postures herself as the kind of person who is great at situations like this, and never acknowledges or works on any of her flaws or limitations.
You’re asking why we’re kicking her. I’m saying she wrote the sign and stapled it to her back.
Oh hey look, it’s “Why I didn’t vote for Hillary” rhetoric in the comments about Dorothy again.
You and I are not reading the same comic and I am glad to not be reading the version you are.
It is funny how I almost always like the comic I’m reading rather than the one someone else is complaining about.
Dorothy trying to help and bungling it is why I’m actually interested in where this could go because “what if all three of Joyce’s closest friends were extremely bad at this when she needed them most” is a really good pitch for a story.
She’s not a dumb or callous person, I just think she’s come off as supremely wise, compassionate, knowing and responsible because she hung out with Walky and Joyce all the time, and so when confronted by a problem that isn’t immediately solved by a lecture, it doesn’t work out. That’s rad! It’s rad in the same way Ethan disappears for a year, comes back as a malnourished goth with zero patience for the walking disasters around him, and suddenly I’m chomping at the bits for him to keep showing up.
Dorothy’s fine as the gang’s Cyclops, but even Cyclops could rue his cursed mutant energy-blasting eyes every once in a while. That the only real victory she’s had since the Faith-Off is giving Joyce a hug and correctly pointing out that Joyce’s anger is as internal as it is external (because that was the part she and Becky walked in on) is interesting, because Dorothy’s pretty much been able to solve Joyce Problems the entire series since Joyce Problems are pretty simple; Joyce bumbles into something, Dorothy gives a helpful and well-meaning lecture, and Joyce rolls with it. The idea of the main dynamic of the series leading to growth and conflict, that Dorothy herself still has beef she needs to confront and where her own attempts at meaningfully helping Joyce aren’t working like they used to,I feel like a facetious asshole talking it up like this but, no, I think it’s really cool!
You know I find this argument somewhat reassuring. It really feels more like a spat between two friends rather than anything serious. It has this “Well Infinity!” “Well Double Infinity” kind of vibe.
“…Becky.”
“Joyce.”
“Newman!”
“Donkey!”
“KHAAAAAAAAAAN!”
“NORM!”
“Good afternoon Mr. Peterson.”
Naruto!
I read this with both of them using the “Newman” voice. Seems I was not the only one.
Right back atcha. However, the validation only spins my mind into stranger places.
Joyce needs to take a Cultural Anthropology class. God may not exist, but God has value. Brings people comfort, which should be what really matters. Be mad at some of the practices of Christianity? Sure! I think Becky would be right there with her, but not the belief in a “sky wizard” part.
They’re both being awful. What should Becky do to learn to accept Joyce’s apostasy?
Becky’s problem is that she isn’t communicating. She mentions the “important parts” of her belief just as that. She needs to accept the fact that Joyce isn’t seeing what the important parts are and explain. You really shouldn’t be mad at someone for not understanding something personal to you if you won’t explain what it is. Joyce can look up/study why religion has value in general and that will absolutely help her stop being so rude, but Becky needs to take her the rest of the way. Also Becky needs to understand that Joyce was valid to keep it from her that she is now atheist. Just cause they’re best friends doesn’t mean Becky is entitled to the information.
Exactly. They have two definitions of what “faith” is, but they both thought the other had their definition this whole time. Joyce can’t grasp how Becky can carve out the parts she likes and discard those she thinks are frivolous, because to her all those “frivolous” parts were load-bearing members of an interconnected web.
They both need to stop shouting past each other and honestly explain what’s going on.
Can we get back to Lucy sucking stains off Wally’s clothes and everyone blushing to the point their heads are going to explode like the dude at the beginning of Scanners?
^Walky
I get the feeling it’s gonna be a long hard road out of asshole town for Joyce.
How will she act when her parents/siblings eventually show up? Is she gonna go back into “the atheist closet” or maintain this new asshole behavior?
Ah yes, Joyce’s parents.
Who, along with her oldest brother, have never, in particular, done anything that would influence Joyce into her current views.
Stellar people, all of them.
I hope Joyce isn’t an edgy atheist to the guy who tried to make her stop being friends with Dorothy, the woman who helped pay for the release of the guy who almost shot her in the face and later kidnapped her, and her older brother who kept trying to downplay Ross’ actions, which included almost shooting John’s baby sister in the face like four days ago.
It’s so fucking weird to me how so many of the commentariat are unwilling to hold anyone in Joyce’s life accountable for why she’s a seething ball of confused anger other than Joyce herself. I mean, besides the fact that she’s prettier when she smiles.
Probably a good time to remember that her mom has implied in the past that she would go to Toedad lengths over Joyce
My concern for a while has been them being open about it on campus would lead back to Carol finding out, if not directly from Joyce then from someone like Mary, or any of the other people who as far as I know have no idea Carol wouldn’t be safe to tell about Joyce’s issues
It’s also important to remember that Carol’s reaction to Joyce escaping her kidnapper….. was heavily implied that she was just going to kidnap her again.
Carol was NOT happy that Joyce got away. She was angry.
My guess is she won’t want to see them at all. She’s probably avoiding the majority of her family right now because the divorce is stressful. But especially Carol and likely John will get the worst of the cold shoulder from her for the forseeable future! She won’t want to speak to or see them for long enough to get the opportunity to be an obnoxious atheist at them.
Just walk away Dorothy. Save yourself!
Honestly, as much of a jerk as Joyce is currently being, I STILL can’t help but be irritated at Becky for getting this bent out of shape and not even TRYING to meet Joyce halfway.
Considering how much over the first semester Joyce rearranged her entire LIFE for Becky, some goddamn consideration for her friend is in order.
Sure, Joyce is being rude, but in a way that merits a “Dude, what the hell?” vs. a committed counterattack.
ESPECIALLY since Becky is only having this conflict because she enjoys the crashing sounds it makes when she bursts through other people’s boundaries and into conversations that don’t involve her.
Well here she either heard her name and the suggestion she might not be a lesbian from across campus and teleported to the spot or she was walking by and heard Joyce talking about her.
Admittedly, that was a side tangent to the main conversation, but it should be hard to blame someone for “bursting” in when they’re talking about her in public.
But that’s how Becky discovered Atheist Joyce in the first place, by barging into her conversation with another person unannounced. Joyce needs to can the toxic malarkey, but Becky is overly possessive of her and acts like she’s entitled to her attention.
Except this isn’t related to being possessive of Joyce.
This is related to Becky hearing her name and also hearing doubt being expressed on her sexual identity, something she is very public and proud (is that the right word?) about.
Given the comedic use of teleportation in a world that’s supposed to have no fantastical elements of that sort, it can be argued that she didn’t even know Joyce was the one talking or was even there, let alone wanting her attention; she did appear yelling “who” said she wasn’t a lesbian.
Just because Becky is often possessive of Joyce doesn’t mean every interaction has to include that dynamic, and I don’t believe this one does.
I don’t know what halfway point that would be. As far as I can see the choices Joyce is giving Becky is embracing her new infantile personal belief system without question or staying away from her. Maybe Becky would rather fight her best friend, however ineffectively she may be able to when angry and hurt, than just lose her.
Like sure, either one of them could try acting like an adult, sit down and explain what she’s thinking and what she wants, open some lines for actual communication, but how should Becky know that’s an option for her? Joyce is the one who’s changed into a person who as far as Becky is aware does nothing but snark slogans at her and make fun of her beliefs behind her back. The last time they talked Joyce yelled at Becky until she walked away, then complained to everyone about how she did the right thing because she’s right and Becky is wrong, and now she’s picking up from the same point again. Not listening to anything Becky or anyone else has to say, not leaving any room for conversation. I know if I was in Joyce’s shoes I’d try to listen to people more; in Becky’s shoes I don’t know what I’d do except show her my back as many times as it takes for her to notice the pattern where I’m not interested in being a church-shaped punching bag and start thinking about trying some other form of interaction.
Well, maybe write a letter. But that’s my style, not Becky’s.
As I remember it, Becky was the one who escalated the volume to yelling.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/too/
And I think your approach is good. I think Becky turning her back and walking away would be way better than whatever fight’s about to happen now. Joyce needs space to unpack everything that happened and what her loss of belief in God means (she did a bit with Joe, but only a bit) and get to a point of not hating who she was before (and by extension, everything like who she was before) without someone who can’t even allow her to believe in a different version of heaven because it doesn’t accommodate her grief (my mommy is having cake).
The fact that you said “as far as Becky knows Joyce does nothing but make fun of her behind her back and snark slogans at her” is like. That’s the whole point, that Becky literally knows Joyce better than anyone, knows that *this isn’t like her at all*, and could maybe take a second to think that maybe this change in Joyce is actually not about *her*? And may in fact be cause for CONCERN for her friend?
Like, this is such an entirely uncharitable way to interpret what is going on with Joyce, especially from Becky’s perspective. For her to genuinely think this she’d have to intentionally just forget ALL of the ways Joyce has gone above and beyond for Becky and take it all for granted the moment JOYCE has an actual issue that’s somewhat inconvenient for her. Apparently, none of that gives Joyce the right to the benefit of the doubt for even a moment from her best friend who she’s known since childhood.
Joyce bent over backwards without even a second thought to be there for Becky in literally every way possible when Becky hit a critical moment of change in her life, but Becky can’t be bothered to even attempt to do anything similar for Joyce. Which like, maybe she’s genuinely not able to! Becky is still dealing with a lot herself, so it’s understandable that she hasn’t reacted in the best way. But I think Joyce deserves better than this from Becky regardless, even if it’s as simple of Becky just giving Joyce space if she can’t handle Joyce’s issues right now.
Yeah.
Like, we’re talking someone who’s risked death like three times specifically for Becky’s sake. I think the prospect that Joyce means well by her is something we can easily accept.
That’s the part of their fight Becky didn’t have a snarky answer cued up for. Probably because she’s grappling with that contradiction herself.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/refusing-2/
That moment was where I went 100% Team Joyce. I cannot IMAGINE not responding to a cry of pain like that from my so-called “best friend”, especially since it completely explains why Joyce is lashing out about her newfound lack of faith in arbitrary directions.
Even if they’d called our former shared belief moronic in the immediate previous conversation.
I’m supposing Becky’s reasoning is along the lines of “yeah she saved my life like three times, but that was the old Joyce who I could have a conversation with so I’m not sure what to do with that now”. Of course she should look past Joyce trying to hurt her see she’s not doing well, and in response. . .still not do anything and hope she calms down enough to talk about it at some point.
I used to keep a list of all the things I wanted to talk to my stepbrother about at some point when he might be able to talk about it without fighting me. But then I didn’t see him for ten years before he died of his heroin addiction. Probably beside the point. But I can say it’s hopeless to try and talk sense into someone who refuses to talk, no matter how calm and reasonable you are or how special a bond you have with them.
If we’re ranking hardship (which is totally not a weird thing to do), I still have to say Becky’s had it far rougher and deserves the sympathy of a friend.
Yes. But on the other hand Becky can’t both demand and take offence at lip-service respect to her beliefs.
…sorry, what lip-service respect has Joyce shown to her beliefs? Because Joyce has shown absolutely none, and used Becky’s continued faith as a reason to think less of her, explicitly and openly. There is no fucking respect coming from Joyce to Becky on this subject.
“Do you think my mum’s in heaven eating cake?”
“Uh, yeah, sure” *nods emphatically*
I’m not ranking hardship.
I’m acknowledging that both Joyce’s response to Becky’s change of faith (paraphrased, “I choose Becky over God if it comes to that”) and the fact that Joyce has been literally kidnapped and had her entire family life upended over “I choose to support Becky” support the contention that Joyce cares a hell of a lot about Becky.
IMHO Becky should have the goddamn good sense to notice that Joyce’s crisis of faith is 100% brought on by the fact that she DID choose Becky over God. Becky meanwhile strikes me as completely self-righteously self-absorbed in her own way, paraphrased as “well hell *I* can pick and choose what parts of faith I want, why can’t you?”.
Short version, as I see it:
Becky changed in ways that were morally offensive to Joyce? Joyce sucked it up and tried to understand her friend, talked it out, and directed her anger at it away from the friendship.
Joyce loses her faith as a result and lashes out privately, Becky bursts in and overhears? Time to ESCALATE and GET ANGRY about how Joyce is always so judgy and self-righteous.
I mean, there’s no halfway.
Joyce is clear that she considers Becky’s faith a sham and does not respect her for holding onto it.
Becky is annoyed Joyce considers her a moron.
They are not friends anymore and shouldn’t reconcile as long as they disrespect one another.
Wow that is a hot spicy take, what. Of course they’re still friends. What on earth? Friends fight sometimes, it happens.
And of course Joyce still respects Becky, she’s entirely projecting, that’s the whole point. Neither of them have taken the time yet to have a real conversation where they can try to understand where the other is coming from. But they will eventually, because in the end they care more about each other than about this argument. But they’ll probably need to get some junk out of their system before that happens. So! The fight shall continue for a bit.
Joyce was asked if Becky was a moron by Becky for believing in God.
Joyce defended that take not said, “No, I don’t think your a moron.”
You can’t believe your friend is a moron and be their friend.
Joyce is an expert on digging her own grave
Excuse me while I die of second hand embarrassment.
I’m just gonna dig the he dont mind me
GO BECKY!!!!!
Y’all: Joyce is such a shitty, edgy atheist who doesn’t respect Becky’s religious beliefs!
Becky: “This is a stupid phase you need to grow out of. You’ve been at odds with your parents 30 whole seconds, remember that.”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/beeessin/
And?
You realize you can hate both takes right?
Yep. Becky’s sure got a lot of those moments for someone who’s accusing JOYCE of being self-righteous.
Gawd it hurts to see people try to fix each other with bullying.
On one hand, Becky started the rage this time. Joyce’s face in panel one is one of “Becky, I didn’t expect you to approach me for at least a few more days!” while Becky’s is a “Joyce, still a god hating bongo or did you decend further?” Which Joyce responds to in kind by being “Oh no you don’t, the readers insist I’M the asshole, you don’t get that title!” But it’s also on Joyce for responding to Becky poking the angry bear by inserting herself into a convo that she doesn’t fully know the context of. Joyce is a brat, but Becky ain’t helping by being a brat right back. Becky doesn’t even bother to try and understand her friend, when Joyce did try to understand the changes she brought on her. It wasn’t too good at the start, admittedly, but she did try. But damn does Joyce go about this the wrong way. Such is the way of teenagers…
It’s been over 12 hours and I just now realized Becky is flipping Joyce off.
friends to enemies to… friends?… to…. Lovers????…..
I hope not, don’t need the one constant of the universe to be “Joyce always steals Dina’s partner”.
Doubtful, even if Joyce does eventually realize she’s bi I feel like her feelings towards Becky are more sisterly then romantic
Becky already tried to push down that road, and it was super cringey, let’s not tempt fate.
Man I’ve missed a lot, when did they have a falling out lol
A few weeks ago our time, yesterday their time.
Start here:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/orgy/
TL;DR Sarah’s little sister Liz, who’s in the same newly de-converted boat as Joyce, surprise-visited and got they got caught up in a mutual game of Baby Atheist One-Upmanship. Becky overheard and felt hurt, Joyce doubled down.
Ah thanks, also oof as the kids say
Oh, man, I should have said something sooner. Well, thanks Willis!
*pats with a shovel the dirt covering a shallow grave*
Nice. That is all.
I feel Becky’s face in the second panel in my spirit..
Joyce probs doesn’t believe in those, either.
I gotta say. When it comes to a story for a piece of fiction I’m absolutely LOVING this. These are some choice, delicious communication issues fueled by extremely deep and complex emotions on all sides. The fact that it’s getting everyone in the readership (or at least the comment section) so riled up is a testament to exactly how compelling I feel this storyline is going to be overall. It’s touching on some REAL stuff, and for all of the complaining I’m doing about frustration with Becky in particular, I am stoked for how this will continue to escalate, and eventually be resolved. It’s gonna make for some extremely juicy reading.
Also. Joyce and Becky bickering like this is honestly just kinda cute and satisfying to me. They’re just indulging in their most immature impulses and letting shit out!!! You go, girls! Let it all out!!
IMHO, they need to let their inner children out a little. Openly express and sit in all of the nasty wounds and emotions they’ve been building up their entire young lives–and then once they’re done, they can start moving on. So they’ll start pointless fights and say mean things and spit overly harsh words that they don’t REALLY mean. But once they’re done, they’ll feel lighter for it, and can start the arduous process of trying to be MATURE about stuff and picking up the pieces.
And then their relationship will have reached a new stage, where they can see and appreciate each other for the complex adults that they are becoming now, rather than the children that they used to be.
I’d like Willis to do the opposite.
Joyce REALLY means it and realizes she’ll never take it back and Becky will never relent.
So it’s over between them.
And there’s nothing either can do about it.
Ever.
Mind you, didn’t you think Joyce didn’t mean her insults the first time around?
And then she, in fact, did?