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David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 9d
Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net ⋅ 12h
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 9d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 9d
Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social ⋅ 1dDavid M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 9d
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 9d
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social ⋅ 22d
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it Cheems doe
alt-text: or an Animal Crosser
Except with the mysterious ability of Pint-size’s old body to grasp things. AnthroPC’s, when will you be real?! I want my thumb-lord case mod’
Pintsize was the first thing I thought of, too.
Are they ever gonna un-hiatus SFP?
OK, I was hoping for answers here, but now I’m even MORE confused than ever
Hopefully we’ll get more details on the initial exchange between Amber and Dina and that’ll sort things out…
Until then, it’s gonna stay a frickin guessing game
Other than that, this initial interaction between newly deconverted Joyce and Dina seems mildly promising……
Pretty sure it’s meant to be left as a joke exercise for the reader, in that all possible answers are ridiculous. Noodle incident, or whatever it’s called.
Man, I remember the Noodle Incident. With the pool noodles. AND spaghetti.
The noodle incident is where i learned that burlap chafes really badly, and I still want to know why someone brought a duck and hose.
Noodle implements, of course.
Pantyhose, of course. Duck, and cover.
Seems pretty straightforward. Dina has mentioned to Amber at some point about Becky’s hangups around physical intimacy and Amber, either at that time or later, described them as a fear of going to “horny jail” – in this case either a euphemism for Hell or a legitimate misapprehension that Becky is worried about social stigma or guilt rather than literal damnation.
I have a different read.
Joyce says “it’s where you send yourself” which means she’s interpreting it as Amber saying it about herself as opposed to the more common meme form where you’re directing it to someone else.
so i don’t think the initial discussion has anything to do with Becky, that’s a connection Dina herself draws in panel 5 (look at her smile, it just occured to her)
Besides remember the previous storyline? Currently, Amber’s way more likely to be preoccupied with her own out-of-control lust than with Becky and Dina’s sex life which has been what it is (platonic) for months. Not to mention that she has been a wee bit self-centered lately. So it makes a lot more sense for Dina to have heard Amber say it about herself. imo
Here’s an explanation of Horny Jail. I just assume Dina has heard Amber mention it at some point and since she spotted Joyce talking about the Galaxy Brain* meme, she figured it’d be a safe bet to ask Joyce about this other one.
Dina: “Hompke! Proceed to fornication penitentiary!”
Amber: “…Good try, Dina.”
Dina: “I am in possession of a pail! May I trouble you for a burger with cheese?”
It took me too long to translate that second part to lolcat. I am shame
10112@p+0rz
Also, Ceiling Raptor is watching your religion become more and more performative.
Leave it to Dina to take interest in memes so old that they’re practically dinosaurs by now.
Panel 5 Dina is cute, like “so this is what Becky fears? Oh, that is adorable, how I love her so.”
Becky doesn’t have to fear horny jail, she already has a life sentence there.
We can’t see them, but her fingers are steepled in front of her.
For some reason… I’m now imagining Sarah as a Shiba Inu with a bat.
Sarah Inu.
Hey now I’m imagining Sarah as Little Slugger from Paranoia Agent.
That would be HELLA cool!!!! 🤩
Does that make Joe and Danny those two cops?
* plays “Paranoia Agent End Theme” *
An hour and 3 minutes?
It’s on repeat.
Oooh, now the comic makes more sense to me. Until you referenced Sarah I thought “bat” like the animal bat. So thank you
Same. Had no idea they weren’t talking about a dog with a little bat friend.
I was today years old when I saw the actual meme. It’s really stupid.
I would have expected Joyce to be just as confused about the phrase “horny jail” but I guess paying attention to memes can actually teach you things.
So how long until Becky snaps and leaves horny jail to go do a horizontal tango?
Remember, Joyce’s “Yes, I know what ‘shipping’ means, I’ve seen the internet!” line was from early Book 2.
No Shiba Inus in Hell, that’s for sure
What about the whole “Dog Heaven is Squirrel Hell” theory?
that would be half hell then
Available for a limited eternity only.
So how long is that, like, a handful of dimensions on the Central Finite Curve?
But is wanting to do something sinful sinful in itself, in Becky’s individual religion?
(Need a word for that, like “idiolect”, ‘the dialect of an individual person at one time.’)
Etymologically, that would be “heresy”.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/heresy#Etymology
Nay, it was heresy
Let’s am _absolutely_ spelling it hæresy henceforth! Two lumps. By Jove this is a delightful discourse tomorrow morning. Please.
þere’s a lot of þings about archaic forms of english þat were superior to the current version. We should bring back “þ”, ‘th’ is common enough to deserve it’s own letter, and “Man” should be gender neutral with the male and female variants being modified versions of the root word.
Cosigned!!!!!!!!
In triplicate.
I’m down for most of that, but “Man” has too much momentum at present to fall neutral. Maybe Wight? Then we can be afraid of the mwights and fwights? Except then there’s the whole homophone with colour problem.
Huh. I kinda dig “wight” as a neutral noun. The only issue is, like you said, it sounds exactly like “white”, which could make things really awkward in a conversation. “Be a good little wight” miiiiiight cause some problems.
If you’re in a relationship a girl, would that make you fwightened?
It’s as I have ſaid many, many times: we need to bring back the long-s! It’s long paſt time we did ſo!
Blame the printing press for the death of þ, and it’s conversion into y. I want to go to þe olde medieval faire not ye olde medieval faire
Capital Thorn (the P looking thing) was the one the printing press took out , lower-case thorn was the one replaced by “y”.
Hey I remember that!
In context, the term “choosers” (heresy) was used to denounce those who refused to believe the “correct opinions” ( orthodoxy ) for the alleged sake of selfish gain or sin, around 300 AD, when Roman sects of Christians competed for control over Official Biblical Canon.
Does that sound about right, Willis?
The word for it is “sect” or “denomination”
Now I have Shonen Knife’s “Supergirl” playing in my head.
*looks up song*
Thanks! New favorite song!!!!
This is the second mention of Shonen Knife I’ve seen in these comments in the last few days and that is a fact that makes me happy ^^
“Professor, your hands don’t work!” – Buttercup body-swapped into the Professor’s body.
The best horny jail gif is the one with the guillotine.
reference Citation when ¿ provided URL must youn’t
BBCC speaks truth
hahaha ok yes it is very funny ^^
So what’s your saying Dina is that you want to help Becky to “get over that fear”
you’re*
(oh my god, i am tired. and ashamed)
She must not fear. Fear is the horn-killer.
So much for being scared stiff.
“That’s what zhe said!!!”
Did I do it right?
i mean, Agemegos was already making an innuendo. the point of a “that’s what s/he said” joke is that it recontextualizes what has just been said, making an innocent sentence sound lewd. i appreciate the gender-neutral version though. the french version of this is to just say “title” after a sentence that could work as a porn movie title, and i love that joke, it’s never not hilarious. i’m less a fan of the “that’s what she said” joke which in my head sounds very bro-y to me, but i guess the gender-neutral version is cute =)
e.g.
milu: i played your game!
Wellerman: and?
milu: it was super hard
Wellerman: that’s what zhe said.
milu: rofl you dumbass
I’ve also read before that “That’s what she said!” is just a reduced version of “…as the actress says to the bishop”, if that clears it up any. Story goes, actresses (I assume in plays or other stage shows) could have their company bought after performances (yes, in that way), and they’d head off to a confessional afterwards to clear their cards with Jebus. So the idea I guess is that “She” (the actress) is saying “that” (the dirty thing) to a priest.
huh! that’s cool. i’m sure pretty much every era had its own variant on this template =)
And they’re all based around shaming promiscuous women!
Language is great and not at all inherently sexist!
hahaha indeed! the punchline is that female sexuality is taboo! how fortunate for us that our societies are so pathologically repressed, or what would we even laugh about?!
That Shiba has to bonk another Shiba, or a reasonable facsimile, though
*angrily walks by playing “I will send you to Jesus” on speakerphone*
BRB gotta go find a public domain translation of the Bible, change all instances of “Hell” to “horny jail,” and sell it as an ebook
Your comment made me chuckle
In a mischievous way
Like a cartoon villain about to do crime
I wonder if they ever finished the LolCat Bible. I did the first few verses of with Ruth or Esther.
Make sure it’s a translation with lots of instances, rather than one with none.
You’ll also want to change “eternal damnation” and it’s derivatives as well. Also, every printing of the bible is public domain, but if you really want to get the most out of it in protestant areas, make sure to do the New King James versions, since that is the “only true translation”
It’s a little funny because our modern ideas of Hell and eternal damnation are on pretty thin ground Biblically. There are a handful of terms often translated as “Hell”, but they had different meanings back then.
The Old Testament really has no trace of the concept (or of Heaven, for that matter) – the few references to the afterlife bear more resemblance to the shady half-life of the Greek Hades (which is another term used in the New Testament).
Gehenna is also used, but that was an actual place and seems to be a metaphor for destruction by fire. Not torment, but destruction. Permanent death with no resurrection into the Kingdom of God.
Eternal damnation and Hell as we think of them today seem to have evolved in early Christianity largely after the books of the Bible were written as part of the shift from an apocalyptic faith with the Kingdom coming in this world to more of a focus on the afterlife, since the Kingdom didn’t seem to actually be at hand.
I wonder how much of modern heaven and hell conceptions still owe to Hades, frankly. Tartarus (the internal area within Hades) is essentially Hell in at least some iterations, while Elysium has a lot in common with Heaven a lot of the time.
other improvements while you’re at it:
• all instances of “know” to “boink” (don’t check that you’re only swapping the ones that actually mean boink. just go ctrl-F, “replace all”)
• all instances of “the Lord” to “teh Lord”
• “Jesus” to “Jesus “not-a-white-guy” Christ”
• Turn the Pauline epistles into dialogues by randomly inserting “Goddammit Paul” and “go away Paul” and “yeah whatever, i’m off to do some fornication, who’s with me?” into the text
• replace “idolatry” with “rock’n’roll” and “heathens” with “goth skater girls”.
If we’re replacin’ shit, let’s go fuckin’ nuts and just swap all instances of “God”, “Lord”, ect. with “Zordon”, Judas can be “DJ Slinky Twink”, and any references to beverages can be replaced with flavors of Mountain Dew. Just make the entire thing completely illegible and tell people it’s always said that.
In between two books, insert a random Noam Chomsky op-ed about the Middle East, but just change every verb into its “shall” form and say it was a prophecy.
And change servant to slave and handmaiden to female slave.
“why do you hate fun, Paul?”
♪ Don’t tell my brain
My hanky-panky brain
I just don’t think it’ll understand ♫
i think these are my favourite Dina expressions. Especially panel 2.
I love that is conversation is actually happening on-panel!
For some reason, even knowing the meme, I skimmed the page and pictured a dog with a fruit bat rather than a baseball bat. The idea of dogs wrestling with bats entertains me.
I am even more entertained with the concept that people don’t need to fear hell because the guardian dog can’t grasp things with their paws.
I didn’t know the meme or what a shiba inu was. I was imagining a vampire bat being held by a demon or a ninja.
“Becky, a three-headed dog would almost definitely not be viable, but if it did survive despite the odds, it would almost certainly be a sickly and feeble creature! I believe this should put your fears to rest, should it not?”
That’s an interesting theological position in the last panel
That’s an interesting take from Joyce on having no soul. I didn’t think she’d jump straight into hard atheism. I went from deciding that God couldn’t be a good and just God as he was described in the bible to being a deist… to being spiritual to just deciding I was agnostic.
Joyce has been through a lot. Clearly she’s decided on an all-or-nothing approach, which is certainly not unheard of with people leaving fundamentalism of all stripes. When you tell your kids that you have to believe it all EXACTLY as VERY LITERALLY TRUE, and they find out you were wrong about some of it, some of them conclude that you were, therefore, wrong about all of it.
And in Joyce’s situation, I can see why she’s trying to ditch the whole thing.
We’ve known that about Joyce for quite awhile. Tying everything together as literally true can help strengthen faith, but when it finally snaps anyway it all goes at once.
To some degree anyway. Much of the conditioning remains once the belief is gone. The fear and guilt stay and take much longer to root out.
I mean honestly it might help.
I said I wasn’t gonna play this guessing game, but here we go anyway I guess.
It might be more likely that Amber was implying not that Becky is AFRAID of Horny Jail but rather is IN Horny Jail.
Wait, what happens in Horny Jail anyway?
Is it like, what, a chastity belt for your brain?
You can’t just ask people about what it was like on the inside Wellerman.
chihuahua_vietnam_flashback.gif
And here I thought “going to horny jail” was a new term for being sexiled.
Horny Jail is the worst meme (because there’s nothing wrong with being horny) but this is gold.
No victim, no crime!!!
I agree that there is nothing wrong with being horny, but horny jail sentencing is usually reserved for people who are being horny in a place where overt horniness can be very uncomfortable for people.
for example, Amber in pretty much that entire interaction with Danny and Sal.
Yup. Honestly she should be put into horny solitary confinement for that fiasco.
I feel like all of horny jail is solitary, or you would just have a horny mess.
omg or maybe it’s the other way around, you get sent to horny jail where everyone is just way too horny and it’s just this constant nonstop pile of writhing, moaning hanky-panky. I think i might need to go there now, someone bonk me
Nah, there are far worse memes than horny jail.
Horny Jail is funny and good actually
No horny jail is hilarious actually
Disagree. Normalize horny.
Context matters—horny jail should be for times when horny is inappropriate.
i think you can normalize horny and still find extravagant horniness funny. i feel like the “horny jail” meme implies a certain tenderness towards the person you’re directing it too. compare with “get a room” which is more slut-shamey. “go to horny jail” sounds less disgusted and more knowing and friendly. i think?
Mostly I’d see “get a room” being directed at a couple being too affectionate while “horny jail” more at one person being inappropriate. Either Amber in the last story or Becky at multiple times could be sent to horny jail. Can’t really think of a good example in comic for any couple being too publicly horny. Maybe Peter Paul and Mary back when Mary was being weirdly nice.
Every horny jail meme I’ve seen feels shame-y, never tongue in cheek and it’s not used for things like when Amber was visually shipping her two friends in person. Maybe that’s just where I’ve seen it, but it’s grating to me.
Dina doesn’t know about New Joyce yet, does she?
No, and for drama reasons I am very eager for her to find out right the heck now.
She does now! Look at her reaction in panel 2, that’s Dina noting Joyce is no longer religious.
I’m hoping she finds out pretty soon. I want to see her reaction to finding out that Joyce is now an atheist. I assume Dina would be very ok with that.
I was not familiar with the meme, and I was okay with that, until this told me that there was a dog. Okay, now what’s a Cheems? Also a dog. Well if memes are all dogs, that’s okay by me.
Does Becky even believe in hell? Like she seemed to be of the opinion both her dad and Dina would get to heaven despite the former doing awful things (‘Tell mom I’ll be a while’: heck, her mom committed suicide which is usually taught as a big ticket to hell); and the latter not being a believer and Becky herself seeming not to think that will ever change since she thinks Dina will be ‘mad that it’s all true’.
Like she still possibly believes there’s no heaven until judgment day: but what is being judged precisely? Like be it belief or deeds there’s nothing concrete.
Which makes me really wonder at this sex issue. Like Becky, girl, you think Christianity is a safe and fair religion and your dad partaking in bigotry, kidnapping and shooting a gun is okay (well not okay but not something that will barr him from heaven) but consensual sex is not?
Is it like a Liz thing? (As in puritanical teachings have still infected her brain even if Liz doesn’t believe she still says shit like she could have been ruined. Maybe the same is so even if Becky believes/has in her mind mostly edited and created a very positive version of the religion with little downsides?)
Granted it’s possible Becky doesn’t think she’ll actually go to hell for it anyway, not really. Probably not if she’s honest with herself and thinks about it more. It’s just that she hasn’t really deep dived in her brain enough to figure this out why it’s a big deal when she’s been able to do it with a lot of other things. And maybe Becky believes more in intentions and forgiveness. Like her dad did die at Amber’s dad’s hands? He was technically the less terrifying of the two? She thinks he could have made a turn around? Idk. It’s all so very confusing.
I would not be surprised to learn that Becky doesn’t think Hell is real. But I don’t think Becky actually cares much about doctrine. I can’t really think of any good evidence for or against, though.
I don’t know that we’ve heard much of Becky’s take on Hell. Joyce obviously believed she could lose her salvation and go to hell over little things, but we know Becky and Joyce didn’t necessarily grow up on the same teachings. Many super conservative groups believe that you can’t lose your salvation, no matter what you do. So Becky might believe that her parents are both in heaven because they believed in Jesus and that she will also go to heaven, regardless of what Hanky Panky she engages in. In that case, her fear would be more about a general conviction that premarital sexual activity is just inherently wrong. She might fear God’s disappointment, general guilt and shame, etc. or maybe she just thinks that premarital sex will be damaging to her or to her romantic relationship. She might even view it as hurting Dina/harming Dina’s soul. I think this final one is particularly likely since she knows Dina isn’t super into sex.
The instilled by her religion doesn’t go away that easily. Just thinking about it more isn’t going to clean things up easily.
Becky doesn’t really analyze her beliefs, I think. She just feels. Her parents are in heaven because she needs them there and God is good, so that will be fine. Dina will go to heaven with because of course she will, Dina’s great.
None of that gets her past her conditioning about premarital sex being bad.
Becky believes whatever the hell she wants to, essentially. Or rather, what she feels she NEEDS to believe in order to function. She can’t possibly face a reality in which her mom goes to hell, so her mom doesn’t go to hell. She can’t face a reality where she’ll go to hell for being gay, so she won’t. And the only way she can cope with her father’s death and betrayal is to believe that she will have another chance at seeing him and reconciling with him in the afterlife, so her horrible father has to somehow also end up in heaven.
This makes me wonder if part of the reason Becky is clinging to ‘no hanky-panky cause god’ is because she herself has reservations about sex. But I think those reservations might come less from herself and more from how it’s been drilled into her that sex is this HUGE THING that will change you forever and is sacred but also filthy, etc etc.
It’s like being nervous before before the SAT not because you don’t want to take the test or think you’ll do badly, but because the consequences for the test, regardless of what happens, are so huge you can’t help but be anxious. Your score on this one test will determine the trajectory of basically your entire life (or so you’ve been told). It’s built up as this huge turning point in your life that will change EVERYTHING, and so Becky finds reassurance and structure in the idea that that big change can only happen at a specific point in time, when she’s ‘ready’, and have the fact that she waited until the ‘right time’ be validated by god.
Pre-marital sex being sinful is easier to reconcile with her reality than homosexuality being sinful. Pre-marital sex is a temptation for everyone. You struggle with it, but then you eventually get married and can then enjoy your sexuality without moral qualms.
If homosexuality is a sin then she’s just unfairly damned. She knows it’s just who she is, not a temptation or a perversion she’s succumbing to and a just God would not allow that.
what’s so weird though, is that apparently premarital hanky-panky isn’t much of a temptation for her girlfriend?????? <- *confused Becky*
but yeah, well put! this makes a lot of sense.
Universal salvation is a thing for some Christians. After all, if grace is true, all will be saved. Otherwise God’s not very effective at salvation or his love is conditional, either of which disqualifies him as god.
I think all that qualifies him as God is that he has the power to enforce Being God.
But if you’re going to buy into omnibenevolence then, yeah, you’ve got to sort out your Hell problem.
Did we ever figure out who is sitting next to Sarah and Liz in the backseat of the Zoomr? So far we can rule out Carla, Joyce, Dina and Amber since they are all here apparently. Becky is also unlikely even though the conversation doesn’t technically confirm her currently present.
I choose to believe that its Danny, but not DoA Danny. Its Danny LaRusso from the karate kid.
No one. Sarah dragged her into the middle seat so she couldn’t get out as easily.
Well Becky is lucky it’s a Shiba Inu and not… say Medb and Kiara…
I feel like we all needed and deserved a little Dina after the last posts. Dina is the best.
I am kind of worried that this may lead to drama between Becky and Dina, because of how Becky feels about and treated Joyce’s atheism.
There is the possibility that Dina calling her out will be a weak up call for Beck. Or it might blow up and hurt both off them.
Dina shall get into Becky’s pants, one way or another. I believe in her.
The easiest way would be if Becky takes off her pants and Dina puts them on. Or you know, they could eventually do a sex together.
Yes! Pre-marital hanky-panky!
No, Dina, saying something cute like that would do the OPPOSITE of help.
Most of Dina’s harsher commentary on religion has been focused on Joyce and Becky’s biblical literalism, I don’t think we’ve gotten her thoughts on faith other than that she obviously considers it something she doesn’t ascribe to and she’s happy telling Becky to her face that God does not exist.
I feel like Dina would process it the same, the existence of a god to her, I think, would be as farcical as the sky canopy because both of them are as observable, or that time Sarah made her partake in witchcraft (by making snow angels because Sarah was in a cosmically-enchanted good mood).
For Dina religion is just ignorance, and in some cases she suspects it is bad faith ignorance (you don’t know because you actively don’t want to learn).
it seems like Dina may be a little horny, that’s so cute
But she isn’t wearing her tricera-top.
I’m not sure to understand what’s the discussion here.
Joyce is trying to say “horny jail is a figurative place you get sent when you feel horny” in a way that both her ex-fundie brain can parse and that Dina will understand.
Dina is taking things a little too literally.
Nah, she’s just interprets Becky as someone who’s known be afraid of fictional characters.
Dina’s asking Joyce about a meme, which she seems to have heard from Amber. Joyce is explaining the meme. Dina then asks if the meme is the reason Becky is so averse to being horny (and also possibly if it’s related to her fundie upbringing) and Joyce explains that they’re separate things. I’ve got links that explain the meme in more detail, higher up on the page.
or to put it all more succinctly, *gestures at Taffy’s avatar*
Thank you for your explanation and what I assume is the meme turned into an avatar. Helps me a lot.
Y’know what, this is going to be interesting. Maybe even helpful.
So I’m guessing that Dina maybe mentioned Becky’s fears of sexuality to Amber, Amber described as “being afraid of going to Horny Jail”, Dina maybe Googled it for more context (how she saw the Shiba Inu with a bat image) but decided she probably needs someone to explain it to her.
With the implication that Dina is worried about Becky’s still-kinda-fundie view of sexuality, that certainly makes me even more intrigued to see what she will thinks of the Great Becky vs. Joyce Religious Debate
Dina, who hates innacuracy a lot, cannot enjoy the meme, because there’s a shiba grabbing a bat…
Dina already knows Joyce is atheist, right?
She did not.
I hope Dina gives a Joyce a joyful experience of learning dinosaur facts when she finds out Joyce is an atheist. It would be nice for someone to respond with joy to the news. I think it would also help Joyce understand that she doesn’t need to put on a wall of smugness to enjoy being an atheist
though to be fair, some atheists aren’t particularly interested in dinosaurs.
like, all of my friends. *deep sigh*
Sadly in this world of worlds, only some are interested in dinosaurs and how cool they are as a concept
truly it is a sad state of affairs.
Agreed, but I would point out that Dina already has someone who responds with joy to learning dinosaur facts.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/unfettered/
It feels intentional to me that Joyce’s smugness is something that only came about after the Faith-Off, while prior to she was lowkey and kind of shaken about it.
Like the way I see it, when the people you’re dealing with are Dorothy, Becky, and Sarah, being self-aggrandizing feels like a counterbalance to their antipathy, browbeating and attempts at controlling Joyce’s feelings.
Couldn’t agree more. (There are dozens of us!)
Yeah like, it’s probably intentional Joyce runs up to Dorothy going “I’m as smart as you now!” and only gets into fights about it with Becky and Sarah, who have egged her on each time. Prior to the Faith-Off she’s hesitant talking about it with Sarah, she’s as forthright as she can be with Joe, she sees Walky and flatly verbalizes that she never had that connection with God everyone else had and thought she’d be outed and dropped into Hell on the spot.
The barely subtext, practically text of Joyce being able to more healthily process her newfound beliefs when not around the people who most rely on her being in a box as Silly Naive Fundie Joyce should probably fly around more, as opposed to whether or not Joyce is being mean to Becky in a fight that Becky is constantly picking. The only actual harm she’s engaged in is going off at Ruth (y’know, for the same thing this gatdanged comments section indulges in all the hecking time), a harm that was ingrained into her by the cultural Christian standards that formed her in the first place, and then two whole strips later we see pretty clearly that she’s thinking about what she did while dating Ethan and her misunderstanding of sexual fluidity gets processed as “I could have actually successfully turned Ethan straight,” and, presumably, when she goes off at another faith that isn’t a cultural milestone, that will also be of actual harm (and I say when because I do think it sounds like a Joyce move, but it’d be deeply funny to me if she already processed that).
I don’t even view it as a subtext anymore, the story’s been really clear about being formed around the failures of Joyce’s idiot children friends to care for her in the way she cares for them all the time.
The barely subtext, practically text of Joyce being able to more healthily process her newfound beliefs when not around the people who most rely on her being in a box as Silly Naive Fundie Joyce should probably fly around more
Oh, this part isn’t in response to Florence’s post above. I dunno if it comes off as such, but it popped out to me when re-reading my comment.
Yea, I definitely think it’s in response to the people that have been talking down to her this entire time, it’s very much “lean into a type of person that these people won’t mock but also if they do I can handle the confrontation cause I’m cool person now”. Definitely the proactive protection wall, based all on what her previous interactions have been with everyone else
That’s the good thing with Dina, just a much better person to figure out her new atheist self without confrontation and having to answer too many big questions. Dina will validate the atheist perspective free of everyone’s judgement cause Dina isn’t gonna judge her
Yep!
The people Joyce most relies on aren’t going to help her right now until they start figuring their own foibles out, and in the meantime Joyce needs people who don’t rely on her existing in that box for her to figure this out. That’s why I’m hoping things get worse to such a degree that Joyce’s main three relationships in the comic break off for a while and she starts forming a new friend group; it’d be nice if the toxic codependency and nannying that’s defined those relationships were examined while Joyce got to deal with more important things for herself, instead of having to reach out to Becky every single time.
Joyce had to solidify a newfound belief system that has no beliefs because she had to defend herself and justify why she’s not a Christian to Becky. She’s running on nerves and self-righteousness because being right is the only thing she was allowed the time to figure out other than being a monkey.
I like to hammer on about this part, but: it’s been three full months and nobody in that room has asked Joyce how she’s feeling. Joe tells Joyce that she’s real even if Heaven and Hell aren’t, Becky asks her if everything was a lie this whole time.
Hear! Hear!
Joyce needs space and time to put together a new world-view (or rather, space, time, time, confidence, and humour). And it would be very helpful to do it in conversation with a group of fellow-seekers who would discuss the issues and possibilities in open mode. Which her bossy and judgemental friends are not. None of them is seeking to figure out the important questions, they all have answers they are happy with.
Joyce needs undergraduate bull-sessions with people who are also seeking new answers.
One more thing: “I always think it’s easier to be creative if you have other people to play with.”
Joyce and Dina can talk shop about DINOSAURS now! Wow!!
Panel 4 was the loudest I’ve laughed at a deadpan joke in years, so thanks for that.
I need to see more of Joyce and Dina talking about memes and other stuff, especially now that Joyce is an atheist. Maybe now Dina can tell Joyce about dinosaurs and evolution without Joyce getting mad or freaking out.
Man sometimes i forget the actual age demographic of the comic and then a strip about memes appears.
I wonder how many other readers are actually college aged
The cast entered college the same year as me.
It’s worked just about the same for both me and them.
Man i always feel like I’m at my grandma’s parties in these comments, where the second youngest person was 14 years older than me. I started reading when i was around 12/13 when a friend introduced me and now I’m Ruth’s age. I actually had a few small freak outs when 1) i was suddenly the same age as all these kids who were always so much older than me, then 2) suddenly older than most of them and starting college myself, and now 3) a year away from graduating and older than most of the main cast enough that I’d probably adopt all the first year girls as my little sisters
I’ve even been rereading the comic and seeing my cringe old angry teenager comments. This comic is like, a measurement stick for my adolescence
Man i always feel like I’m at my grandma’s parties in these comments
mattdamonaging.gif
as a resident Yung’un™ it’s my job :p
My brother (said 14 years older person) finds it equally upsetting
(Fun fact the cast entered college almost 10 years before me)
i suspect the average reader, or i should say commenter, is more or less Willis’s age. i’ve had thoughts about doing a survey to find out more about how the demographics of the readership break down but i’m also a bit uncomfortable with the idea. like i’m not sure where the impulse to want to know comes from; also how the data, flawed as it would be, might end up being used. meh?
I am retired – exact age not important – and value this comments section as a source of information about non-traditional self identities. I have learned much, and feel that I am a more empathic person from reading commenters’ descriptions of their lives and interactions with society.
“Statement.” Uh, yeah, ditto!
“Statement.” Uh, wow, me too.
And special thanks to Cerberus, who was massively instrumental.
Dina?
GO TO HORNY JAIL.
…Ahh, okay. I hadn’t quite realized it because timeskip but it seems like Joyce is still very much in the middle of the initial stages of processing her atheism. That explains why she’s looking at some relative rando as a mentor figure for it, why she feels the need to double down on stuff she said, and why she’s so desperate to be taken seriously. She has this new thing, and it’s very important to her, and she is adamant that she is going to figure out how to be the thing right and nobody’s gonna take it from her.
…Basically, she’s like Becky when Becky first showed up and decided to yell about how lesbian she was. Which explains why despite intellectually understanding this is something other people do with their trauma, my brain keeps responding with “nopenopenope stay away”.
Wait.
Is Horny Jail just Hell?
Is that Shiba-Inu just Cerberos?