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God is omnipotent, and therefore able to watch _infinite_ cute cat videos while keeping track of your sexual indiscretions. (Although, admittedly, God does find the cats more _interesting_).
Really? Mike seems more like a Troll who very much doesn’t like to put up with people who are self-deceptive or hypocritical and enjoys getting a rise out of people (particularly those who are too uptight or neurotic, like with Joyce and the whiteboard).
Mary seems really uptight, neutoric and at least sort of hypocritical (at least in so far as she ignores the whole love thy neighbour and various parts of Christianity about being a decent person).
Pretty sure her and Mike would destroy eachother in like half an hour. /If/ they were playing the long game and scheming.
Mike and Roz, I can see. Meanwhile I can’t picture anyone self-loathing enough for Mary… maybe Faz?
i doesn’t matter how much she changes either it in this universe or the other you’r feelings for her is always going to be “fuck, I hate that bongo!” because her natural personality is always going come off as” shame on you Godless heathens, why can’t you be more like me are perfect servant of god”….she’s the basic stereotype that gives christian’s a bad rap.
my feelings for her are like: mary started out as just danny’s friend, who was a quirky , and very christian (ina a annoying, but ok way) artist, and a nice person in general. of course she talked “morals this morals that” some times, but wasn’t really a judgemental bicthy girl as she is now. But at some point, from a page to another, she became the worst person in the strip. completly a lying hypocrite, who was beeing evil for the sake of beeing evil(it wasn’t even ’cause she wanted to be above, since she did the same herself). and I dunno, … I want a character redemption.(well maybe I exagerated)
I skimmed the commentary on the old Willis strips, at least up to about the point where the PoV switched over to Walky and I think you’re seeing the evolution as it happened: Willis said Mary sort of started out as an awkward last ditch insertion of a Manic-Dream Girl (Christian, Artist, other traits which Willis admired). In the course of about… 5 strips? He realized what he had done and sort of went to loathing her character and making her a villain.
Honestly, I’d kind of like to see her as a more reasonable foil; A dour and slightly more judgemental Joyce, who is sort of dissaffected but genuinely wants to be a decent Christian.
Instead, for better or worse, I’d interepret her as a sort of representation of a Conservative Christian’s conscience; stern, unrelenting, self-righteous and at least a touch misanthropic.
At very least with this theory, it makes her more bearable since I can imagine her as being Joyce’s shoulder devil dressed up in Angel’s robes.
“Judge not lest ye be- nah, fuck that, where’s the brimstone? Where’s the hellfire? Where’s my righteous divine retribution? Isn’t that what it’s all about?!”
Really? She seems a lot less hateful now that the basic assumptions of the strip don’t align with her. Like, now she just seems like an unpleasant bigot, the kind of person Billie would just shrug off as an asshole. Neither she nor Ruth seem particularly worried about the GAYNESS of their relationship, which, to be honest, has so many more terrible things to worry about, anyway.
Mary is demonstrating the first stage of blackmailing, letting the target know that she holds an important information that the target tried to keep secret.
Not that I’m down for blackmailing as a general rule, but it seems like it helps to have some actual proof on hand to do the blackmailing with, beyond just your word. Mary’s got squat.
I mean, what’s she going to do? Tell? As far as the rest of the floor are concerned, they hate each other, and it’s not like Mary has a lot of influence. As far as the Powers That Be are concerned, Billie had an awful day and needed someone to talk to, and Ruth – because it’s her job – spent the night doing the talking. Or whatever innocent justification they come up with, which Mary can’t disprove because she’s got squat.
I feel like Ruth specifically said something about being worried about her grandfather finding out, if nothing else.
That said, I think Billie’s worry (she at least seems to be paying attention in the last panel, which to me suggests worry) is that ANYONE saw. Even if she doesn’t care about people finding out about her dating another girl, a student and her floor’s RA dating/hate-fucking would not go over well with the school.
Is dating an RA actually against university rules? I mean, I know TA’s and profs can’t get involved with students but that’s cause they handle the students’ grades. Granted, I only spent one semester in the dorms in college so I have no idea.
I would imagine that, at a minimum, administration would frown on an RA dating a student on that RA’s floor (though other students would be ok). I could see that as never being made an official rule at schools with male/female only dorms (like here) due to heteronormativity. Even if an RA isn’t doling out grades, they can still be in a position of power (See: Ruth having a master key to get Billie’s uniform, Ruth tormenting Billie about not turning in her and Sal’s roommate agreement, etc.)
I did a quick search and some schools do have specific rules for it. Apparently, Syracuse says no dating a student on your floor, or even in the building your floor is in (I’m guessing the second part is to stop RAs from dating opposite sex students on other floors since buildings will sometimes alternate floors).
Back when I was in college, I dated a guy who was the RA on one of the male-only floors of my dorm. When I let it slip to our building’s RLC (residential life coordinator), we each got a letter about it. I don’t remember exactly what it said, though I do remember that I found it upsetting and that he considered breaking things off just because of it. And the relationship was probably a contributing factor in why I wasn’t ever able to get an RA position myself.
At one point, after we had broken up once, gotten back together, and I was realising that no, this was not working and he was really bad at respecting boundaries that I’d laid out, and good at making me feel guilty for HAVING them, the whole thing made me uncomfortable and I was avoiding him. And then he’d be waiting on the dorm porch when I walked back from a night class and once when I didn’t answer him knocking at my door, HE FUCKING STARTED TURNING THE KNOB TO LET HIMSELF IN.
So yeah, RAs dating residents is often frowned on even if there aren’t any official rules, and if the relationship ends or goes bad, it can get uncomfortable and potentially unsafe for the non-RA since even if they don’t live on your floor, the keys they have access to can often open any room in the building, not just their own floor.
I think this is more an argument against dating psychopathic weirdos though since you don’t need to be an RA to be a crazy stalker. Also I hope someone punched that dude in the face for harassing you. If not, I would like to volunteer.
It probably depends on the school, but in general it’s probably ignored if the non-RA half of the couple doesn’t abuse the relationship to get away with stuff. (e.g. Billie gets caught with booze–I’m assuming that she’s underage–and Ruth says that she actually confiscated it from another student’s room and Billie was holding onto it until Ruth could dispose of it.)
Usually it’s the opposite. The RA position usually has a certain level of professionaliusm expected, even if fraternization isn’t explicitly forbidden. Dating or going so far as fucking a resident (someone your in charge of) is not exactly professional, to say the least.
Ruth has actually been rather unprofessional. Although she seems to have been given a pass for her abouse of floor residents in the past becasue she runs a “tight” floor. A Lesbian Sucided Pact with a resident may be a tipping point.
Hey, all Mary wants to do is invite Billie to an innocent bible study….Where she’ll probably try to convince her to end a relationship that’s brought her the only shred of happiness she’s had in months…hrmmm? You know I’m starting to think Mary might be kind of a bongo.
Alas, as much as it might be nice to think otherwise, the house is always full at the Church of God the Mean-spirited Asshole. One would think people would all be over at the Church of the God of Love and Forgiveness, but no…
Still, he did imply that if you are without sin its ok to beat people to death for being sinful with rocks. Meaning that even if they shouldn’t do it, people should aspire to PURGING THE SINNER through violence.
Not exactly his most forgiving moment.
Not at all what he meant. The idea behind “he who is without sin throw the first stone.” is that no human person is without sin, therefore no one should be throwing stones. Not that people should aspire to be without sin so that they can purge the other sinners, that’s Mary logic.
Agreed. Also, I’d like to see her eventually take steps towards getting better. The way she acts isn’t entirely her fault, she deserves a chance to not be a jerk.
He and Satan turn on lesHBO and watch every second so they know how many strokes to give their genitals. Then the sinners go to hell and Satan whips them in the vagina as punishment. What did you think I meant?
What Mary doesn’t realize is that I have hired a mercenary to end her, of course he went to eat chimichangas until he decides it’s time…..Dammit, Wade.
Oh COME ON! THIS is messed up! Just MESSED UP! If their God (The Great and damned Willis) really didn’t want there to be homosexual relationships in their world, he wouldn’t have made both Ruth and Billie female!
I always heard some BS like god tests us to make our faith stronger or some shit. Which seems like a fucking shitty handicap to just throw out at random.
What they are being, I’m not sure a god exists, and even if they did I have found religion deeply unhealthy to me for a boatload of reasons and organized religion prone to bullshit on top of that. So I just try to not be a shitty human being and figure that if there is a god, any god worth worshiping would understand my reasons. If they don’t, fuck them, I’d gladly take damnation over a “paradise” that exclusionary.
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
— Marcus Aurelius
Isn’t there also a law in the OT that if 2 guys are fighting and the wife of one of them reaches in and grabs her husband’s opponent by the family jewels you should cut off her hand. I’ve always wondered if they had a lot of trouble with that back then (sounds like WWE), or its in there just in case.
Man, I wish I could get away with posting something like that connected to myself. But no, I have to watch out for my family and schoolmates. Just have to get to college… In the mean time, I need a button to like it.
Finally, somebody whose religious views are similar to mine. I once tried to explain myself to somebody and by the time I got to the “I don’t think God would send people to Hell for not worshipping him” she was trying to interrupt, wouldn’t even let me get to the part where I said I sure as hell wouldn’t worship a God who was that much of a dick.
How can anything be paradise if all the best people are left out? I mean seriously! Do you really expect me to believe that Jewish writers would belong to a christian heaven? That’s just nuts.
One of the things I remember from Bible classes back in high school was that the other people God was talking to besides Satan before he started testing Job were alien observers from sin-free worlds.
I remember the parable of Job being one of the few places in the Bible where Satan is portrayed as an agent of God, acting as an official contrarian and, dare I say it, ‘Devil’s Advocate’, but obeying God’s orders and enacting His will.
Bear in mind, the lord willis does not accept prayers, only suffering. The most common praise to his lordship is ‘Damn you Willis’, in which he cackle gleefully and exerted more suffering on his subjects
I hadn’t thought of this before, but if you change that to “an almost fanatical devotion to Emperor Palpatine,” you have just described the Imperial Guards.
Mary has, to this point, not demonstrated much of a capacity for subtlety (which distinguishes her DoA version from her Roomies counterpart, who was at least capable of covering up her judgmental nastiness and hypocrisy with a cheerful demeanor; DoA Mary just flat out hates everybody and can’t hide it)
I love Y’s? Why would could you ever want to get rid of one…?
*looks at own username* …Well, I was “anonymous,” but that didn’t spell “snow cone” upside down.
I’ve given up hoping that Ruth and Billie don’t have some utter, ugly misery ahead of them. I’m just gonna hope that it’s not quite this EASY, that they get to beat this particular gambit until something ELSE gets them down. But I gotta say this is easily the most effective Mary has ever been (here, or in earlier incarnations).
I’m still not certain if it’s “I’m nervous because I’m gay” or “I’m nervous because I’m discovering things about my personal beliefs that don’t mesh with my parents and I don’t want to lose one of the few threads I have”, but yeah.
(… Actually, now I’m kind of hoping Becky’s secret either is or includes the realization she never really believed in God so much as she was scared of damnation.)
I’m often dismayed by the number of people who argue/seem to believe that the only reason any of us have any sort of “moral sense” is fear of being punished for acting otherwise. This strikes me as sociopathic, or at least lacking in empathy.
Not necessarily. People who’ve been brought up to believe that usually have also been brainwashed into seeing themselves as horrible, worthless sinners, even if they’re basically decent human beings. It’s all about guilt.
But, OnyxIdol, Willis often peppers his strips with expressions, poses, and little things in the background that much later turn out to be significant to the storyline and/or character. So of course many of us examine everyone’s reaction to everything and try to figure out the implications. Like it turning out that Mike had been putting books into Walky’s backpack to make it heavier. Willis subtly drew it in the strips the whole time, but I don’t think any of us noticed until the reveal.
But people often quickly laugh and/or change the subject when a topic they’re uncomfortable about comes up. It’s a classic defense mechanism for stuff you want to hide.
Not all that smart to tip off your intended victim that you know something they’re keeping a secret. Then again she is just a freshman so she’s still new to villainy.
You’re thinking the wrong kind of villainy. You’re thinking Cobra villainy when you really should be thinking political villainy. Now Billie knows that Mary has leverage over her, which means that Billie has to do whatever Mary wants, lest the secret get out. If Mary actually had a defined goal, I’d say you were right. But right now Mary simply gets to torture Billie while feeling self-righteous, which is all the motivation she needs.
It depends on what she is planning. Id she plans to go public with the information, it is not a smart move. But if she intended to extort benefits for withholding the info, she needs to let the target know, or implied that she knoes the info and let paranoia sink in. She is no rookie, she had experience in this matter.
Well, if as Christians believe there is only One True God, then that God must be the same God for the entirety of The Multiverse.
Now, let us also take as a truth the Christian belief in the Holy Trinity, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three things are all different aspects of the One True God.
We know for a fact that, in another universe (which must be a part of the Multiverse as a whole), historical Jesus is about to officiate at a lesbian wedding. This is also a wedding of two people who have not only had much “pre-marital hanky panky,” but have also had [I]three[/I] children together out of wedlock.
Historical Jesus is, theoretically, the real Jesus, not diluted by thousands of years of scripture as written by man. He is a part of the Holy Trinity. He is an aspect of God.
From this, we can take that God [I]approves[/I] of homosexual relationships, even ones that involve people having sexual relations out of wedlock, as long as those who are in this relationship love one another. This is regardless of whatever was written in Romans, which was written by the fallible being known as Man.
From [I]this[/I], we can take that Mary should go and fuck herself. Or wait, would that (if interpreted literally to mean “masturbation”) be a sin, too? Well how about she should just accidentally walk into an open elevator shaft and die?
Oh bother. I accidentally used the wrong format to code my italics in the above comment… Ah, well, I am sure most people here are smart enough to figure out my intent…
I know! I try to proof read before I hit “Post Comment,” but there are still many times that after I do hit it, my next action is to look at my post and go, “Aw, crap!” A 5 or 10 minute editing grace period would fix that, and still prevent people from rewriting history if they say something they’d later rather pretend they didn’t.
Well, theres different branches of Christianity and different views on the subject. It also varies from Church to Church. For instance, in mine, our pastor was very clear he didn’t believe homosexuality to be wrong and to believe otherwise is against the spirit of the text.
I know that some churches (which obviously don’t include the ones that Mary or Joyce belong to) are more open to homosexuals. Heck, there’s one in Northampton which flies a rainbow flag up front! If I was a church goer, that’d certainly be the kind I’d want to go to!
(Alas, I think I got burned out on the whole thing in my adolescence, and these days you’ll typically only find me in a church for a wedding or funeral.)
There are enough branches of Christianity that any blanket statement about them would be wrong. 2,000 years of division does that. Are only a few saved (144,000 specifically) or is Hitler in heaven? Depending upon your church, one of those may be orthodox. Plus culture and “niceness” step in and replace scripture or tradition. Are gays icky? They they are bad. Does my culture think they are bad? Then they are. It took Christians a loooooong time to decide that slavery was not a Christian virtue.
So it can be a big buffet. But most people live in one church in one town and are happy enough with that.
Well being doctrinally correct is fairly useless if your heart’s not in it. Salvation by faith not works is a core tenet of the Protestant Reformation.
Totally despise Mary, she is such a holier than thou, holier than thou. And a bongo to boot.
Does make me wonder who she’s looking at? Obvious would be Billie, and Billie will now have to worry if Mary knows how long will it take her to rat out the RA.
But, Mary addressed Joyce: seems to be a bit of a thing going on with Becky’s look too: so is Mary accusing Joyce and Becky of having a relationship going?
Ah well, Mary is probably accusing all of them? She’s that way.
I think she’s definitely using it as a “I know what happened, Billie, and I will use this to RIP YOU APART”… but I could see her also being sure that Joyce, not properly shunning the sinners as she does, is clearly in league with this promiscuous heathen she-devil.
Technically that passage in Romans doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say what “unnatural” act it refers to (and lesbianism is mentioned absolutely nowhere else, so there’s nothing to build it on as implied), and even if it did it only says it’s a thing that happened. Not that any of that likely matters to Mary, or to Joyce’s parents.
Paul, yeah. Is it better or worse than women preaching? Since he probably just wanted to keep that gig for himself, maybe that’s what was behind his other statement about women?
And on that basis, I’d like to think it means they were having sex with robots, or something along those lines, except that the very next sentence begins, “In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women”. This makes it explicitly clear that men and women were behaving unnaturally in the same way: not having sex with women.
Of course, the whole thing about Jesus’ ministry was a lot of his doctrine was very specifically reactionary to the stuff which Jewish doctrine was making all-important. The central idea being, “God doesn’t care about stuff which is immoral to persecute.”
Historical Jesus would be a cool character to show up as a Jewish guy talking about that sort of thing.
Well, Jesus was bais shammai it seems based on his opinion of divorce amusingly enough. Anyhow it’s rather rich of Mary to start spouting about sin and leading a bible study when she is spreading lashon hara(which she should know about if she knows her bible), publicly bringing someone to shame, and driving a wedge between people.
“Romans” is just a letter from St. Paul to… well, the Romans. Paul was the guy who established that in order to be a Christian you didn’t need to be a Jew, much less bother with all the Jewish ritual laws; so he’s actually the least likely guy in the Bible to give you crap for mixing fabrics or eating pork. Dead set against gaysecks, though.
Totally cheesed Peter, with whom he had it out. It was a fight about the target market. Paul realised that requiring adult Greeks and Romans to get circumcised in order to become Jewish before being allowed into the Jesus Movement was a serious barrier to market penetration.
Does Mary even have the power to play this card? Is this even a card to play? Same sex relationships aren’t illegal, they’re not against the school rules. The only one this hurts is Ruth, and at the moment this is a rumor at best. She video tape them fucking. Snap a picture maybe? If it comes down to word against word who’s honestly on team Mary?
It is still a valid card to play, unfortunately. Billie would not want to see Ruth get hurt, after all. Also, I’ve gotten the impression Billie might not want her friends knowing about her being bisexual. (Likely most of them won’t care, and her fears are unfounded, but that doesn’t make her fears any less real.)
Thus, as I stated, it is still a very valid card to play. If, that is, you’re an evil and petty bongo who should die.
Billie wasn’t exactly secretive when Joyce asked her something about it. (“It’s basically inevitable,” something like that.)
And Walky already knew about her ex, and talked about that to Joyce.
Now, Joyce may not have quite grokked either of those, but there’s no impression it’s a secret as far as I can see.
All I’m saying is unless there’s something we don’t know Mary has nothing. All she saw was Billie leaving Ruth’s room at an odd hour fully clothed. Which can be explained away a thousand different ways. There’s no proof Ruth was even in there from what she saw. She could just as easily accuse Billie of trying to steal something. Unless she was creepily scoping out Ruth’s room from her cracked door all night. I guess she could have seen Ruth lying to Joyce and friends first but that’s pretty flimsy.
She could be probing for a reaction, trying to ascertain whether she has some useful material on Ruth and Billie or not. Or she could be threatening Billie with the rumour itself.
I was going to say that Mary is probably the only unequivocally nasty character in DoA, but then I remembered Blaine. It seems that most of Willis’ characters are more prone to well-meaning mistakes and errors of thinking, building for themselves without active malice their own downfalls, but then there’s Mary. I’m not sure whether or not it would be worthwhile exploring Mary’s worldview and rationalizations more. On the one hand, it would round out her character a bit more from “malevolent, judgmental affront to Christ” … but on the other hand, it’d mean we’d have to spend more time with Mary.
Best “Christian” Friend. I mean, she hasn’t got a lot of alternatives here; I don’t think she’d count Sara as Christian. Dorothy and Ethan, definitely not. Walky and Sal are iffy both as Christians (To Joyce, Walky probably comes off as Agnostic and Sal hasn’t shown signs of being different) and maybe friends (Walky due to being annoying and Sal due to hero worship). So, Billie’s could still be kind of low on the totem pole, just the highest Christian.
Mary has so far implied to Billie that she is aware of something Billie and Ruth want kept secret as well as demonstrated that Joyce, one of Billie’s only two real friends, is against it as well and played the religious damnation card, all without saying anything she could be reported for. As a play against Billie it’s a pretty good opening move.
I believe it was The Edge who said, in reference to U2’s 50m-wide, 150000 pixel screen behind the stage on the PopMart tour, “If God watches television, his screen is not as big as U2’s”.
Maybe Mary doesn’t really have a scheme. Maybe she’s just happy to have found someone to righteously tear to shreds.
I think the glee on Mary’s face when she saw Billie come sneaking out of Ruth’s room says it all. She wants revenge on Ruth for the dick-slap (and other assorted beefs real or imaginary, no doubt), and knowing that Ruth has a secret means there is the potential for exploiting that secret to inflict grief.
Sad to say, first signs are that it’s working. Billie’s expression in the last panel looks like the shocked look of someone who just realized there is deep trouble brewing.
Hmmmm… we have the “nice, sweet likable Christians”, and the “bongoy horrible human being Christians”.
Nothing in the middle? “The Christian we don’t mind, but don’t really think about.” “The progressive with a good heart, but annoying personality Christian”?
Billie is on one end as a Progressive Christian with issues. Don’t forget she can be a jerk.
Joyce is on the other as a mostly decent person who can still be a jerk because she’s still getting used to the idea of “progressive” being a good thing.
The problem with reasonable, middle of the road characters is, well, they’re boring. So yes characters in a drama situation tend to gravitate to the more extreme ends of the spectrum as that engenders conflict, which is the lifeblood of narrative.
I can’t read Becky at all in the 3rd panel. I don’t know if it makes her seem less gay or more gay now. Ahh! Plus it does kinda look like Mary is looking at Becky when I kind of expected her to be looking at Billie. As it obviously is a stab at Billie. Really obviously. C’mon Mary don’t be a bongo. lol who am I kidding Mary’s always a bongo. but you gotta love her for it
Um, actually it says that man may not lay with man as he would with woman. So lesbian sex is totally cool. Also men can have sex with men if it’s not missionary position. Sucks how so many bible readers seem to not actually read the bible?
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
“In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women”
You know, just like the women abandoned their natural relations with women. I think the takeaway from this is that having sex is only natural if one’s partner is female.
I didn’t try to correct him. Nowhere in anything I have said was I correcting him. I was doing like modern-day Christians do (in a mocking manner) and reinterpreting things written in a book to serve my own ends while ignoring other parts, all in a completely non-serious manner.
You know I’m starting to think that even now. We still can’t truly translate the bible. Even with our computers and experts. I honestly think we’re still winging it. Because of the saying Life, Liberty, an the pursuit of happiness exists. If God doesn’t like gay or lesbians why the hell would he/she let that exist in the first place?
There are a great many things that God allegedly hates yet exist/happen regardless. That’d have to be one hell of a mistranslation. Can we be certain that any translation of the Bible is perfect? Nope, any translation is almost certainly flawed. Can we be confident, though, that the mistakes are tolerably slight? Yes, we can. The languages in which the Bible was written have changed, but they aren’t even dead, much less lost to time. Here’s a much simpler explanatory theory: the Bible is wrong.
It’s kinda sad. I got your joke JessicaWhitmore, a shame it is being jumped on like that, because I think it was quite funny. Until people started taking words so literal…;-).
My dream response (though clearly Billie’s in no mental state at the moment to be so off the cuff): “Okay, you’re clearly insinuating that you think I’m gay. I don’t really care where or why you think that, but I AM curious about why you’d think I give two fucks about your opinion!”
On an unrelated note, I *hate* Daylight Savings. Before you poor, deluded souls outside of Arizona pointlessly shifted your clocks around I could sneak off to a computer as the Barnes and Noble at which I work begins closing procedures and check out the new DoA, Shortpacked, etc. A lovely little pick-me-up at closing time. Now I’ve gotta wait till I get home like a sucker.
As an interesting note, Benjamin Franklin came up with the idea as a joke to mock the French. And even then, it wasn’t entirely a direct correlation to modern daylight savings; it was more like a method of timekeeping in which the day started at dawn. We have the day start at midnight; the Jews and other societies have had the day start at sundown; and navies have historically started the day at noon. Franklin’s satire was stating that everyone should be roused by church bells and cannons at dawn to maximize the use of daylight, since high society types tended to sleep until past noon so their evenings would be free.
Your chosen name belies your purpose in this instance, my skeptically-sneering-Mary-avatared friend. This is a key historical tidbit I was unaware of…and the fact that M. Franklin himself didn’t really believe in the concept just adds to my conviction that the whole thing is unnecessary and pointless. Having lived without it my whole life I can tell you I haven’t missed it. My brothers who have moved out of state, by counterpoint, loathe it more than ever.
It is a pointless thing driven solely by traditional inertia that does little more than keep me from enjoying my webcomics in a timely fashion. But hey, that’s just my hang-up!
I LOVED DST as a kid in Ohio and celebrate it every spring and summer eve now that we have it in Indiana: light out till 10 for a stroll! Only thing better was the summer solstice that I spent on the shore of a fjord in Norway when I realized that it wasn’t going to get dark all night! Many of you anti-DSTers are nice folks and I understand your preference … but PTHT!!!
As a fellow Ohioan, I don’t understand why we bother to roll the clocks back in November. Why make the day end FASTER? Why not just leave it permanently forward, so the sun isn’t setting at 5pm?
Mary’s doing it again. You notice how she likes rolling up her eyes every so often when talking about how awesome she is, and smirking? It’s like even SHE can’t fully buy the bullshit coming out of her mouth.
Actually God doesn’t say anything about lesbians, at least not in the Bible. being a Gay man, that is a sin (according to the bible), but not being a lesbian.
Even God wouldn’t be so cruel to forbid hot lesbian sex…
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
“29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;”
Yes, I know that verse, but it’s really ambiguous (and even more so, when you look at multiple translations of the original text).
Can it be interpreted as saying that homosexuality is a sin? Yes, if you try really hard. Does it state it clearly? No, not even close to it.
Leviticus 20:13 is a better example. That passage says it clearly, that homosexuality is a sin, however only for men. I don’t know every verse in the Bible, but as far as I know it’s never mentioned clearly as a sin for women, or for both sexes.
Maybe. But that is the way Joyce and, presumably, Mari interpret the Bible and, therefre, that is the interpretation that is relevant to the comic right now.
Joyce explicitly mentioned the Romans, so saying that Leviticus can be interpreted as forbidding male homosexuality only is irrelevant. Joiyce believes Roman forbids Lesbians and that is what matters.
Yeah, even without the Bible, it’s “pre-marital hanky panky” for Joyce. And ultimately it’s up to the church to decide their doctrine (the Pope, the Patriarch, or whoever leads).
I just find it funny that, while most people THINK the Bible clearly forbids same sex relations, that isn’t actually true (It misses out lesbians)
That’s the problem with free churches – there is no real head of church, leading to what you could call a mixed bag. Some of them are very tolerant actually promote kindness towars sinners, while others, well – but that’s what happens when there’s no one in charge who’d be able to reign these people in.
y’know this whole problem is why we don’t have a nice long episode of Adventure Time on Princess Bubblegum and Marceline’s conjoined backstory. Grow up, governments. Don”t outlaw that, that’s shitty thing to do.
Wait a sec……
I CALL BULLSHIT
I forgot that we could do that.
No, no it bloody well isn’t. It’s loading homosexuality amongst women with a bunch of negative words and talking about how it’s a just dessert. This is just rules lawyering (Including the part where precedent says you’re wrong but you’re continuing anyway). That’s not ambiguous at all.
Read the passage, God punishes the people with homosexuality, among other things. It’s very clear that a village, where everyone was turned into gay, won’t last long, so is the reason behind the punishment.
It does speak of sinful- and homosexual desires, and other things, but it doesn’t say if those two things are separate, or same desires in this case, and it says nothing general about homosexuality.
Rutee: “it’s grouping homosexuality with a bunch of other negative stuff and describing it as a punishment”
Evan Dark: “read the passage, it’s saying god punishes the people with homosexuality, among other things”
You apparently agree with Rutee, but you seem to have missed the part about that whole thing about homosexuality being administered as a punishment among other terrible things still being fucking awful and kind of the opposite of an endorsement.
But wait a sec – generally, calling something a punishment is not the same as calling it a sin. In fact, Christianity considers many punishments cathartic, and redeeming of sin. So, if God punished sinners by making them homosexual, was he actually trying to help them?
“Christianity considers many punishments cathartic” is not something I’ve experienced, especially since so many of these punishments were, y’know, death.
It’d be pretty bizarre for it to be both punishment and sin. Think about it. “You have broken my law, and so I shall punish you by FORCING YOU TO BREAK MORE OF MY LAWS. THAT’LL LEARN YA.”
Alright, stand back as I go full rules lawyer here:
//Technically,// they are only given over to “shameful lusts” and “unnatural sexual relations” which could be read in ways other than “homosexuality”.
Further, it only says men “abandoned natural relations with women” but not that they abandoned relations with women entirely.
It seems then, on this very technical (but depending on how translations pan out, still valid) reading, “unnatural sexual relations” could be interpreted as a variety of things that are not necessarily homosexuality.
It’s a stretch but I’d be willing to offer it as a response and see how they reacted.
“received in themselves” … isn’t that the point? I had a student who argued a biblical line on sex but a libertarian line on drugs, on the basis that the latter is about what you put into your own body. I pointed out that that’s pretty much what (consensual) sex is about too. The class seemed to accept that as appropriate ….
Ha, not the only one who thinks that Becky could be gay. It makes sense cause early when she was talking to Sarah and was all “gee, you’re so lucky to be with Joyce ALL the time.” It could be a stretch, but it could be that Becky has missed Joyce so much to the point she may have realized she had feelings for her, so thats why she travels out of the blue to see her. I don’t know. Could be she is just gay and wanted to tell her best friend right away and see if she could help her. It’s not like with Ian where she dates him to shoo the gay away. It could be harder with a girl friend.
It sounds more like she sees herself as an agent of god, projecting her own horrible beliefs on him, i.e. god made it possible for her to see that so she can act against it in his will – which isn’t any better, to be honest.
From above:
Ghostforge
November 6, 2014 at 12:23 am
“Badgers?!! We don’t need no stinkin’ Badgers!!!!!”
It’s a line from a classic movie in which Humphrey Bogart is prospecting for gold up in the mountains and some bandits tell him they’re Federales, so he asks where are their badgers, and one of them answers as Ghostforge quotes. So if Mary is an official agent of God, she must have an AoG (Agents of God) badger. Billie should ask to see it! “If you’re working for God, show me your badger.” (That’s badger, not beaver.)
So what is even Mary’s angle in this? Does she set the stage for blackmailing? Does she want to have Ruth fired? Is she lashing out against an (in her eyes) acceptable target? In either case there are few constructive reasons to gloat about it.
It’s almost like she’s a bully who’s only motivation is to have power over someone else.
Yes Joyce, she’s talking to you. And you know your sin. And while she’s beautiful in her own dangerous way, and though your attraction is justified, your love for Sal’s motorcycle will always be taboo.
Mary is like everything wrong with Roomies, collected in a coffee filter, and left on the kitchen counter for weeks because no one seems to throw it away. You slowly get used to it being there, and when you actually notice it, it’s the vilest thing ever.
God, if you kill off any characters in this universe, please let it be Mary. She is babies.
Or Malaya.
Or Danny.
Or anyone worth making drama for.
Whatever. It’s your comic. I’m just here to enjoy the totes awesome ride.
Don’t you just love how Joyce and Becky are on their own private wavelength like the best of childhood besties? ^^ Mary can go eat a prayer book, that’s what I’m keeping of today’s strip.
Obviously you can’t blame God: writing “damn you Willis” is like writing “damn you God.” But when I saw your “Mary delenda est” I was totes stoked: that was brilliant!
Sure, by signing up for yet another unnecessary Internet account (the fewer accounts I have, the better). Anyway, my original comment wasn’t meant to be a serious complaint. Just a humorous twist on the chorus of “I hate Mary.”
It determines which “random” gravatar you get from a hash of the email address you provide. The address doesn’t have to be a real one, and I believe the hash is case-sensitive, so you can change the address or just fiddle with the capitalization and it’ll change the gravatar you’re assigned. You’ll probably have to get approved again, though.
Y’know, I’m strangely pleased that Joyce cited Romans for that. If you’re going to have unpleasant opinions because the Bible tells you so, at least cite the right verse for them.
I know Mary has a problem with Ruth because of the time when Ruth slapped a dick on her face but does she have specific beef with Billie? I would think she would want to direct her blackmailing directly onto Ruth, but maybe she is just so hateful she’ll target anyone she can.
Paul. All of the epistles referred to by their recipient rather than their (purported) writer, with the likely exception of the Letter to the Hebrews, are Paul’s. (Probably.)
The two epistles traditionally attributed to Peter are simply First Peter and Second Peter. (Though Second Peter being by him is doubtful.)
Well now Billie knows that she knows. It’ll probably trigger Billie’s anxiety but it could also be a misplay on Mary’s part to tip her hand so early. It only can bother Billie and Ruth if they give it power. And not such a big news flash but Mary is a bongo.
…Really, guys? You think MARY is going to out bongo Billie? This is JUST the thing Billie needs to reassert herself in this weird time she’s having where she isn’t sure quite who she is right now.
If this doesn’t end up with Billie going all “Queen bongo Head Cheerleader” on Mary, I’m going to be very disappointed.
Except Billie isn’t the Quenn bongo Head Cheerleader anymore. She has no authority, isn’t popular, is out of shape, is suffering from depression and alcoholism and resorting to physical violence would get Billie in bigger trouble than anything else.
Mary’s in a much more secure position than Billie and has no reason to be intimidated.
“Simon, son of John, do you love Me? John 21:17.
“If you love Me, you will keep my commandments. John 14:15.
“Greater Love hath no man than this, that a man lay …
All of the places in the Bible where it traditionally says “love” it should really say “lesbians”, according to the new Bryan Lee O’Malley edition (BLM).
“Simon, son of John, do you LESBIAN Me? John 21:17
“If you LESBIAN Me, you will keep my commandments. John 14:15.
“Greater LESBIANS hath no man than this, that a man lay …
What I don’t get is why Mary is even at a secular college in the first place. Like I’m not saying all christians who attend christian colleges hate non-christians (I don’t think Becky does), but if you’re one who is like this in Mary’s case, then what the heck are you doing going to a secular institution? Did you not make the grades Mary for said hypothetical college? Was Indiana your second choice? Only unlike Dorothy, who remains (mostly) positive, and is attempting to get into her first choice later- you instead remain bitter and don’t try to do anything to change your situation at all?
I mean you’re still and will still be terrible if you got into one it seems but goddamn why are you here if you seem to hate it so much outside of attempting to make people’s lives miserable.
Oh no, Mary found out about Billie’s and Ruth’s relationship which is bad… because… I don’t know. I really don’t get what Mary plans to do besides for what she just did. Billie doesn’t seem like that much of a religious person nor does she have reason to listen to Mary.
Hell, the only reason I can see it being kept secret is because they want privacy and that’s about it.
Depends on whether or not Billie wants the relationship to be public, and whether or not having a sexual relationship with one of the students in your charge is against the rules of being an RA.
That, and her relationship ties to her shared alcoholism which involves Ruth’s breaking of the rules she’s supposed to enforce for all her hard-boiled pretenses of ‘running a tight ship.’
I still don’t see how Mary saw anything..
Ruth and Billie didn’t kiss in the hallway or anything. All she could have seen was those 3 asking Ruth if she’s seen her, then Billie leaving but looking like she wasn’t suicidal now..
So.. she just jumped straight to lesbian? as opposed to.. RA actually doing her job?
Given how nosy Mary’s been shown to be about anything happening in the hallway, I think it’s likely that she saw Billie go in the night before and didn’t see her leave, and then in the morning Billie’s friends came by looking for her, and Ruth claimed to not know where Billie was, and also said that she wasn’t wearing pants, and then shortly thereafter Billie left Ruth’s room. It’s not direct evidence, but she can deduce: 1) Billie probably spent the night in Ruth’s room, 2) Ruth and Billie don’t want even Billie’s friends knowing that, and c) whatever they were doing in there didn’t require pants.
She may have also overheard some of their discussions. I’m not sure how thick the walls in Read are.
So, will Joyce find out how hurt Billy is by this and will she change any of her bigoted opinions? Eh, who am I kidding -keeps sweeping them under the rug-
I think it’s implying that since she has “power”, if something where to happen to Billie, it would greatly effect her decision making skills if they where dating.
quote: ……Resident Assistants and Graduate Supervisors are academic appointees. As such they are bound by the same guidelines, which exist for all academic appointees. In addition, it is the expectation of RPS that amorous “dating” relationships not occur between in-center staff members within the Residential Operations supervisory chain. Such situations endanger the trust, communication, and understanding among the other staff and residents, as well as fuel potential violations of our institutional anti-harassment policies.
Staff members departing from this expectation are subject to disciplinary job intervention including dismissal…..
Its a little hard to decipher…it seems to indicate no dating other employees rather than residents?
Don’t date people in your command chain, AKA people who have power over you or people you have power over. So they’re free to date people they aren’t watching over.
If the school finds out they are going to get in trouble. I attempted a romance with my RA last year. He turned me down because of school regulations. If Mary told, Ruth could get fired. Goddamn it Mary.
Looking at the Comments, I am beginning to enjoy Mary just for how pissed off she is guarenteed to make everyone in the comments. She is like a Meta-Mike or Roz: where they can shock/annoy/troll charactrs, Mary invariably pisses off the entire readership.
So, blackmail it is. Hopefully Mary won’t get monetary with it cause that could get criminally interesting REAL quick. While not a Federal crime on just about every states’ books.
I’m the active father of a young lass who was borne to a lesbian couple to whom I donated, after being introduced to them by my wife. Pretty much all available family is directly involved in the life of this progeny.
When I say, “This strip is alien to me,” please take it in the sense of SFAM alien or R. Scott Alien – ’cause that kinda goram pudu don’t live in our world.
How to read all 28 issues of my Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane run on Marvel Unlimited:
1: The first four issues were published as the miniseries "Mary Jane."
www.marvel.com/comics/serie...
today in #9chickweedlane i learned we have to be shown children learning and relearning what sex is, for Reasons, even though they already clearly know and have prepared nuanced questions about it!
also that Gran must hate, if she's still alive, how Old Juliette is the same but with gray hair
one of my favorite things is when a commenter explodes WHEN DO THESE CHARACTERS GET THERAPY but directed towards a character who canonically has a regular therapist
Hot Toys Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith 1/6 Scale Darth Vader Deluxe ($495) & Standard ($315) is up for preorder at Sideshow - shrsl.com/4wcx6 #ad
If you preorder make sure to hit the Exclusive versions since they include a commemorative plaque and cost the same.
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 ⋅ 2d
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 ⋅ 2d
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
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 1d
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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no way, God streams straight to YouTube
[don’t skip the ads, that’s like not tithing]
[[Mary can suck on a huge fucking butthole]]
So you can avoid burning forever if you distract Him with an awesome cat video then?
God is omnipotent, and therefore able to watch _infinite_ cute cat videos while keeping track of your sexual indiscretions. (Although, admittedly, God does find the cats more _interesting_).
On today’s episode of “Who’s that gravatar?”…
A dark fusion of Mayo and Abiru from SZS.
Is that what really happens when I do these animal sacrifices?
Yup!
I wonder if God watches Vines?
Imagine hooking up with God on Tinder.
I’m sure it’s not that great…
And I’m not only saying that because He swiped left on me, obviously.
Imagine hooking up with God on Grindr….
what part of God watches everything do people not get
I think that’s what she does when nobody’s around.
I think God has TiVo.
Nah, bit torrent and a big external hard drive.
God cut the cord a long time ago. Cable companies are the domain of Satan now, hence Comcast.
An infinite HDD powered by a singularity per each sector, obviously!
Well! Here comes ol’ Mary! Good ol’ Mary… yes, ma’am!
Good ol’ Mary…
Peanuts Strip 1.
Just a swell gal.
*slow clap*
Hey there Mary! Have a nice morning jog!
Jog on!
Peanuts reference. Have an internet.
I feel like her and Mike are meant for each other.
Really? Mike seems more like a Troll who very much doesn’t like to put up with people who are self-deceptive or hypocritical and enjoys getting a rise out of people (particularly those who are too uptight or neurotic, like with Joyce and the whiteboard).
Mary seems really uptight, neutoric and at least sort of hypocritical (at least in so far as she ignores the whole love thy neighbour and various parts of Christianity about being a decent person).
Pretty sure her and Mike would destroy eachother in like half an hour. /If/ they were playing the long game and scheming.
Mike and Roz, I can see. Meanwhile I can’t picture anyone self-loathing enough for Mary… maybe Faz?
Why would god care? We’re overpopulated. We can stop going forth and being fruitfull!
things are kind of bullshit in this plain of existence anyway.
“New Commandment: BE MORE GAY!”
“I thought you’d catch on to that when I kept makin’ them! sheesh. Why do I have to spell everything out for you dumb-dumbs”
he wouldn’t. he’s been over this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PJIHzYEMFs
Yes! That’s exactly what I was thinking of when I typed that. I love Bo.
DAMNIT! SOMEONE THOUGHT OF BO FIRST!
Right on, the world can’t handle any more people. Let LGBT people be.
“You make my job a living hell, I sent gays to fix overpopulation, boy did that og well” -Bo Burnham
1600 Penn? That show’s old.
Not really that old, it ended just last year. Didn’t last long, and didn’t get much love, but I kind of enjoyed it.
Ah, Mary. About a subtle as a hand grenade in a barrel of oatmeal.
Cooked.
Flash bang or Fragmentation?
Flash-bang makes a bigger mess.
About as pleasant, too.
In lieu of nasty death threats, bestow upon Mary spit in her oatmeal.
FUCK! I really, REALLY hate Mary :/
Same here
i doesn’t matter how much she changes either it in this universe or the other you’r feelings for her is always going to be “fuck, I hate that bongo!” because her natural personality is always going come off as” shame on you Godless heathens, why can’t you be more like me are perfect servant of god”….she’s the basic stereotype that gives christian’s a bad rap.
my feelings for her are like: mary started out as just danny’s friend, who was a quirky , and very christian (ina a annoying, but ok way) artist, and a nice person in general. of course she talked “morals this morals that” some times, but wasn’t really a judgemental bicthy girl as she is now. But at some point, from a page to another, she became the worst person in the strip. completly a lying hypocrite, who was beeing evil for the sake of beeing evil(it wasn’t even ’cause she wanted to be above, since she did the same herself). and I dunno, … I want a character redemption.(well maybe I exagerated)
I skimmed the commentary on the old Willis strips, at least up to about the point where the PoV switched over to Walky and I think you’re seeing the evolution as it happened: Willis said Mary sort of started out as an awkward last ditch insertion of a Manic-Dream Girl (Christian, Artist, other traits which Willis admired). In the course of about… 5 strips? He realized what he had done and sort of went to loathing her character and making her a villain.
Honestly, I’d kind of like to see her as a more reasonable foil; A dour and slightly more judgemental Joyce, who is sort of dissaffected but genuinely wants to be a decent Christian.
Instead, for better or worse, I’d interepret her as a sort of representation of a Conservative Christian’s conscience; stern, unrelenting, self-righteous and at least a touch misanthropic.
At very least with this theory, it makes her more bearable since I can imagine her as being Joyce’s shoulder devil dressed up in Angel’s robes.
The Republicans just won the Senate; we really don’t need her on top of this right now.
My condolences.
So full of HATE.
“Judge not lest ye be- nah, fuck that, where’s the brimstone? Where’s the hellfire? Where’s my righteous divine retribution? Isn’t that what it’s all about?!”
That will only happen when Mary takes the final journey.
Go fuck yourself Mary.
Anyway, I’d like to see an answer to Sarah’s suspicions.
Masturbation is a sin, Mr K. So is premarital sex. She’s have to mary herself first.
She’s already Mary herself.
Stop making me want Mary Slipshine :/
Damn yes. Mary Slipshine. I’d pay for this…
It’d just be her jilling off while telling herself how much better she is than everybody else.
That is a wonderful euphemism you just used
That would be a pretty good just one panel. I’d buy that for a dollar.
Mike already did that. With your mom. For a nickel.
One panel? I think Willis could write a few full pages of her being righteous to herself.
Willis, if you are reading this consider it a challenge (please).
For one, brief moment, I thought Joyce was going to say something like ” f-word off Mary!”
THe more Mary shows up, the more I despise her.
Really? She seems a lot less hateful now that the basic assumptions of the strip don’t align with her. Like, now she just seems like an unpleasant bigot, the kind of person Billie would just shrug off as an asshole. Neither she nor Ruth seem particularly worried about the GAYNESS of their relationship, which, to be honest, has so many more terrible things to worry about, anyway.
Mary is demonstrating the first stage of blackmailing, letting the target know that she holds an important information that the target tried to keep secret.
Not that I’m down for blackmailing as a general rule, but it seems like it helps to have some actual proof on hand to do the blackmailing with, beyond just your word. Mary’s got squat.
I mean, what’s she going to do? Tell? As far as the rest of the floor are concerned, they hate each other, and it’s not like Mary has a lot of influence. As far as the Powers That Be are concerned, Billie had an awful day and needed someone to talk to, and Ruth – because it’s her job – spent the night doing the talking. Or whatever innocent justification they come up with, which Mary can’t disprove because she’s got squat.
The thing about rumors is it doesn’t matter whether you can prove them or not.
But it does matter if people believe them, and Mary doesn’t have a lot of credibility to draw on.
I feel like Ruth specifically said something about being worried about her grandfather finding out, if nothing else.
That said, I think Billie’s worry (she at least seems to be paying attention in the last panel, which to me suggests worry) is that ANYONE saw. Even if she doesn’t care about people finding out about her dating another girl, a student and her floor’s RA dating/hate-fucking would not go over well with the school.
Is dating an RA actually against university rules? I mean, I know TA’s and profs can’t get involved with students but that’s cause they handle the students’ grades. Granted, I only spent one semester in the dorms in college so I have no idea.
I would imagine that, at a minimum, administration would frown on an RA dating a student on that RA’s floor (though other students would be ok). I could see that as never being made an official rule at schools with male/female only dorms (like here) due to heteronormativity. Even if an RA isn’t doling out grades, they can still be in a position of power (See: Ruth having a master key to get Billie’s uniform, Ruth tormenting Billie about not turning in her and Sal’s roommate agreement, etc.)
I did a quick search and some schools do have specific rules for it. Apparently, Syracuse says no dating a student on your floor, or even in the building your floor is in (I’m guessing the second part is to stop RAs from dating opposite sex students on other floors since buildings will sometimes alternate floors).
Back when I was in college, I dated a guy who was the RA on one of the male-only floors of my dorm. When I let it slip to our building’s RLC (residential life coordinator), we each got a letter about it. I don’t remember exactly what it said, though I do remember that I found it upsetting and that he considered breaking things off just because of it. And the relationship was probably a contributing factor in why I wasn’t ever able to get an RA position myself.
At one point, after we had broken up once, gotten back together, and I was realising that no, this was not working and he was really bad at respecting boundaries that I’d laid out, and good at making me feel guilty for HAVING them, the whole thing made me uncomfortable and I was avoiding him. And then he’d be waiting on the dorm porch when I walked back from a night class and once when I didn’t answer him knocking at my door, HE FUCKING STARTED TURNING THE KNOB TO LET HIMSELF IN.
So yeah, RAs dating residents is often frowned on even if there aren’t any official rules, and if the relationship ends or goes bad, it can get uncomfortable and potentially unsafe for the non-RA since even if they don’t live on your floor, the keys they have access to can often open any room in the building, not just their own floor.
I think this is more an argument against dating psychopathic weirdos though since you don’t need to be an RA to be a crazy stalker. Also I hope someone punched that dude in the face for harassing you. If not, I would like to volunteer.
It probably depends on the school, but in general it’s probably ignored if the non-RA half of the couple doesn’t abuse the relationship to get away with stuff. (e.g. Billie gets caught with booze–I’m assuming that she’s underage–and Ruth says that she actually confiscated it from another student’s room and Billie was holding onto it until Ruth could dispose of it.)
Usually it’s the opposite. The RA position usually has a certain level of professionaliusm expected, even if fraternization isn’t explicitly forbidden. Dating or going so far as fucking a resident (someone your in charge of) is not exactly professional, to say the least.
Ruth has actually been rather unprofessional. Although she seems to have been given a pass for her abouse of floor residents in the past becasue she runs a “tight” floor. A Lesbian Sucided Pact with a resident may be a tipping point.
Hey, all Mary wants to do is invite Billie to an innocent bible study….Where she’ll probably try to convince her to end a relationship that’s brought her the only shred of happiness she’s had in months…hrmmm? You know I’m starting to think Mary might be kind of a bongo.
“Mary, You really need to stop being such a B-word”
Buttmunch.
Butt-wipe
Butthat?
Bothriospondylus.
Badger
Badgers?!! We don’t need no stinkin’ Badgers!!!!!
Badgers! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6joOVjEemh4 Only about 3 minutes of it…
That is the joke.
Best. Pun. Ever.
Slightly more political Badgers, with Brian May of Queen on guitar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EllYgcWmcAY
Billy-hater
Butt-taco.
Butthat?
…Well, I’ve got the torches. Who’s got the pitchforks? We’ll need them to DESTROY MARY.
I got a knife that can kill nearly everything. Does that work?
I hear Mike can punch someone so much that towards the end, he gives back more blood than he takes away…
Stakes and torches, scimitars and bayonets…
knives, swords, and guns
Those are not the lyrics!
They are now
Shovels and rakes and implements of destruction.
Scythes, pitchforks, a sickle with a sharpened edge…
I have a walking cane. Can I bring that, too?
I’m sorry, all I’ve got is napalm, some chlorine gas, 3 sticks of TNT, and a rusty butter knife. Will that do?
BRING THE BUTTER KNIFE. Leave the other stuff.
The Bible study group is just Mary sitting amid a bunch of empty chairs, silently fuming.
The main topic tends to be how everyone else is going to hell but her.
It’s basically ten whole minutes of her going from chair to chair, agreeing with her original statement.
Ooh, like playing chess with yourself?? :O
Playing with yourself, anyway.
That… sounds kinda interesting actually.
Alas, as much as it might be nice to think otherwise, the house is always full at the Church of God the Mean-spirited Asshole. One would think people would all be over at the Church of the God of Love and Forgiveness, but no…
Well, Jesus did say to throw them stones, right?
He addressed it to an empty set—nobody meets his eligibility requirements.
Still, he did imply that if you are without sin its ok to beat people to death for being sinful with rocks. Meaning that even if they shouldn’t do it, people should aspire to PURGING THE SINNER through violence.
Not exactly his most forgiving moment.
Not at all what he meant. The idea behind “he who is without sin throw the first stone.” is that no human person is without sin, therefore no one should be throwing stones. Not that people should aspire to be without sin so that they can purge the other sinners, that’s Mary logic.
Stone comes flying out of the crowd. Jesus is PO’d, looking around for who threw it, then says ” Mom! Cut that out!”
The Director’s Cut of the bible
Mary, I don’t like you.
Go away.
Shoo.
I love to hate her. I want her to stay.
Agreed. Also, I’d like to see her eventually take steps towards getting better. The way she acts isn’t entirely her fault, she deserves a chance to not be a jerk.
Of course you’d say that, Mike. Everyone loves to hate you. Nobody likes me and I should die in a fire.
In my opinion, Mary has a very punchable face.
God has a DVR full of lesbian sex?
Don’t you?
HE wouldn’t have mentioned it in the Bible if he didn’t.
Yes, for, um… research. He has it for research.
He and Satan turn on lesHBO and watch every second so they know how many strokes to give their genitals. Then the sinners go to hell and Satan whips them in the vagina as punishment. What did you think I meant?
“Mmmmm… Jehovah like.”
http://somethingpositive.net/sp04262010.shtml
I hated Mary the first time I read through the Walkyverse. This just reinforces that hate. YAY!!!
What Mary doesn’t realize is that I have hired a mercenary to end her, of course he went to eat chimichangas until he decides it’s time…..Dammit, Wade.
Hire Slade instead.
Why not both?
Slade is more likely to seduce her than end her.
Good point I’ll stick with Deadpool
Best Mercenary = Schlock
When you hear OMMMINOUSSS HHUMMMM behind you …
I would hire a Faceless Assassin. Who has 100,000 Golden Dragons i can borrow?
Oh COME ON! THIS is messed up! Just MESSED UP! If their God (The Great and damned Willis) really didn’t want there to be homosexual relationships in their world, he wouldn’t have made both Ruth and Billie female!
I always heard some BS like god tests us to make our faith stronger or some shit. Which seems like a fucking shitty handicap to just throw out at random.
This is why my religious views are what they are.
What they are being, I’m not sure a god exists, and even if they did I have found religion deeply unhealthy to me for a boatload of reasons and organized religion prone to bullshit on top of that. So I just try to not be a shitty human being and figure that if there is a god, any god worth worshiping would understand my reasons. If they don’t, fuck them, I’d gladly take damnation over a “paradise” that exclusionary.
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
— Marcus Aurelius
Thank you, Marcus Aurelius. I knew there was a reason I thought you were a pretty cool dude.
Dang. I did not know that quote, but it is perfect. Thank you.
Well, there is the story in the Bible in which Aaron’s 2 older sons burned some bad incense during a ritual and Yahweh vaporized them on the spot.
Isn’t there also a law in the OT that if 2 guys are fighting and the wife of one of them reaches in and grabs her husband’s opponent by the family jewels you should cut off her hand. I’ve always wondered if they had a lot of trouble with that back then (sounds like WWE), or its in there just in case.
It’s right after the rule about using a folding chair when the ref is distracted.
Pro wrestling started with guys like Goliath and Samson!
“Kill more barbarians, hahaha they are not real people. Rome is the greatest, get back to work slaves” -Marcus Aurelius
Just your daily reminder that everyone in history was terrible!
Man, I wish I could get away with posting something like that connected to myself. But no, I have to watch out for my family and schoolmates. Just have to get to college… In the mean time, I need a button to like it.
Finally, somebody whose religious views are similar to mine. I once tried to explain myself to somebody and by the time I got to the “I don’t think God would send people to Hell for not worshipping him” she was trying to interrupt, wouldn’t even let me get to the part where I said I sure as hell wouldn’t worship a God who was that much of a dick.
How can anything be paradise if all the best people are left out? I mean seriously! Do you really expect me to believe that Jewish writers would belong to a christian heaven? That’s just nuts.
Take a refresher on the Book of Job. “Messed up” is within the operating parameters.
One of the things I remember from Bible classes back in high school was that the other people God was talking to besides Satan before he started testing Job were alien observers from sin-free worlds.
Was that in the KJV? I don’t remember that in my few years at Baptist Sunday school.
I remember the parable of Job being one of the few places in the Bible where Satan is portrayed as an agent of God, acting as an official contrarian and, dare I say it, ‘Devil’s Advocate’, but obeying God’s orders and enacting His will.
…and that’s actually the only time he’s mentioned in the Bible, If I remember correctly.
Or rather, the only time he makes an appearance.
Satan? No. He tempts Jesus on the mountain, if nothing else.
Bear in mind, the lord willis does not accept prayers, only suffering. The most common praise to his lordship is ‘Damn you Willis’, in which he cackle gleefully and exerted more suffering on his subjects
So basically he’s Sithrak from Oglaf?
Nah, Sithrak isn’t cruel, he’s just misunderstood.
If WILLIS had wanted them to be a straight couple, they would have been Ruth and Billy, not Ruth and Billie!
Little does Mary know, Joyce just gave her some plans for Wednesday. You brought this upon yourself Mary.
All will be answered in the undiscovered country. I don’t think Mary is going to like the answers.
Mary: What does god need with a starship?
Wait, wrong Star Trek movie… Ehh, I like the visual anyhow.
“Why is this bridge getting so narrow and sharp all of a sudden?”
Huh. I wouldn’t have thought that would get to Billie so badly. I mean, pretty much everything else she does is also disapproved of by Christians?
Maybe it’s just her secret being out. And knowing that Mary knows. Which is, admittedly, disturbing.
Oh, right. And dangerous to Ruth’s position as RA.
Yeah, okay, understanding that reaction now.
Yeah, I think it’s more who knows and what that possibly means than any sort of particular concern regarding religious approbation.
I also think that Joyce’s deflection (and the “um”) say a lot about how she’s slowly rethinking her stances more than we may give her credit for.
Subtle, Mary. Real subtle.
Presumably your evil plan doesn’t rely on the advantage of surprise.
Billie should find someway to blackmail her.
Windows figure largely in the Dumbyverse. Can you say “defenestration” boys and girls?
But where can we find a bohemian in IU?
Czech around, I’m sure you’ll find one eventually.
What about fear, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms?
… I didn’t expect that …
Nobody does ^^
I hadn’t thought of this before, but if you change that to “an almost fanatical devotion to Emperor Palpatine,” you have just described the Imperial Guards.
Mary has, to this point, not demonstrated much of a capacity for subtlety (which distinguishes her DoA version from her Roomies counterpart, who was at least capable of covering up her judgmental nastiness and hypocrisy with a cheerful demeanor; DoA Mary just flat out hates everybody and can’t hide it)
Welp, looks like Mary’s gonna be a b-word again
Including she stopped sometime between her birth and November 6th, 2014 12:10 am.
Implying*
There’s something about Mary…
I vote Billie re-enacts the Nomi Malone and Krystal Conners on the stairs scene from “Showgirls.” Billie is Nomi, Mary is Krystal.
I looked up their names. Apparently you spelled both if Cristal Connors’ names wrong. But I can’t blame you. Who spells Crystal without a Y, anyway?
I love Y’s? Why would could you ever want to get rid of one…?
*looks at own username* …Well, I was “anonymous,” but that didn’t spell “snow cone” upside down.
Pop dat Cristal
I’ve given up hoping that Ruth and Billie don’t have some utter, ugly misery ahead of them. I’m just gonna hope that it’s not quite this EASY, that they get to beat this particular gambit until something ELSE gets them down. But I gotta say this is easily the most effective Mary has ever been (here, or in earlier incarnations).
Mary is so sweet.
And by sweet, I mean A HUGE FRIGGIN ASSHOLE
They do say that sugar is a poison after all.
Is it just me or is Mary Ethan’s evil opposite sex clone?
Did you just call Ethan a bongo?
Did ethan looks like a bongo?
What?
She said “evil”.
Ethan is a basic bongo.
“Oh man, I’m a sinner, and God’s a pervert.”
Ceiling Cat only watches you masturbate, God records it too.
Do you mean to imply that cats are more worthy of worship than Yahweh?
…because if you do, you’re probably right.
Anyone else think Becky looks a little nervous in panel three?
Yeah I get that vibe myself.
IYKWIMAITYD.
Not NEARLY as nervous as Joyce, man.
Yeah, that looks like a, “Hmm, looks like I’m going to have to soften her up some before I spring this on her,” expression to me.
…or so we hope ^^
I’m still not certain if it’s “I’m nervous because I’m gay” or “I’m nervous because I’m discovering things about my personal beliefs that don’t mesh with my parents and I don’t want to lose one of the few threads I have”, but yeah.
(… Actually, now I’m kind of hoping Becky’s secret either is or includes the realization she never really believed in God so much as she was scared of damnation.)
I’m often dismayed by the number of people who argue/seem to believe that the only reason any of us have any sort of “moral sense” is fear of being punished for acting otherwise. This strikes me as sociopathic, or at least lacking in empathy.
Not necessarily. People who’ve been brought up to believe that usually have also been brainwashed into seeing themselves as horrible, worthless sinners, even if they’re basically decent human beings. It’s all about guilt.
Because it is. I wouldn’t even call it real morality. More of a ‘mob mentality’ form of social behavior, much like authoritarianism or hyperbole…
She may well just be nervous at having stumbled into an obviously tense confrontation involving people she doesn’t know.
Added by the fact one of them brought up the topic of lesbianism for no real raeson.
Aren’t You reading too much into her expression? Personally I don’t see her as nervous, more like “Ok what’s up with this person”
But, OnyxIdol, Willis often peppers his strips with expressions, poses, and little things in the background that much later turn out to be significant to the storyline and/or character. So of course many of us examine everyone’s reaction to everything and try to figure out the implications.
Like it turning out that Mike had been putting books into Walky’s backpack to make it heavier. Willis subtly drew it in the strips the whole time, but I don’t think any of us noticed until the reveal.
Well if that’s subtle foreshadowing it’s to subtle for me. To me it’s really just a blank face.
I would have said yes, but in the last panel, she’s totally laughing and joking around, so maybe not.
But people often quickly laugh and/or change the subject when a topic they’re uncomfortable about comes up. It’s a classic defense mechanism for stuff you want to hide.
Hahahaha I hate you so much.
Not all that smart to tip off your intended victim that you know something they’re keeping a secret. Then again she is just a freshman so she’s still new to villainy.
Now there’s an interesting nemesis for Amazi-Girl.
That’s what I was thinking. She just gave up her best advantage…
You’re thinking the wrong kind of villainy. You’re thinking Cobra villainy when you really should be thinking political villainy. Now Billie knows that Mary has leverage over her, which means that Billie has to do whatever Mary wants, lest the secret get out. If Mary actually had a defined goal, I’d say you were right. But right now Mary simply gets to torture Billie while feeling self-righteous, which is all the motivation she needs.
I don’t think Mary quite grasps how incredibly easy it would be for Ruth to have her removed from the building.
It depends on what she is planning. Id she plans to go public with the information, it is not a smart move. But if she intended to extort benefits for withholding the info, she needs to let the target know, or implied that she knoes the info and let paranoia sink in. She is no rookie, she had experience in this matter.
People were theorizing about Becky being gay recently, and i gotta say, her face in panel three is hard for me to read. Also, wow fuck off Mary
Seconded. This either torpedoes that theory or doesn’t. So we’re back where we started. We are good at this.
She is so gay. Maybe she still thinks it’s a sin, but she is so gay. Everyone in dumbing of age is gay until proven otherwise.
She is so gay. Maybe she still thinks it’s a sin, but she is so gay. Everyone in dumbing of age is gay until proven otherwise.
Well, if as Christians believe there is only One True God, then that God must be the same God for the entirety of The Multiverse.
Now, let us also take as a truth the Christian belief in the Holy Trinity, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three things are all different aspects of the One True God.
We know for a fact that, in another universe (which must be a part of the Multiverse as a whole), historical Jesus is about to officiate at a lesbian wedding. This is also a wedding of two people who have not only had much “pre-marital hanky panky,” but have also had [I]three[/I] children together out of wedlock.
Historical Jesus is, theoretically, the real Jesus, not diluted by thousands of years of scripture as written by man. He is a part of the Holy Trinity. He is an aspect of God.
From this, we can take that God [I]approves[/I] of homosexual relationships, even ones that involve people having sexual relations out of wedlock, as long as those who are in this relationship love one another. This is regardless of whatever was written in Romans, which was written by the fallible being known as Man.
From [I]this[/I], we can take that Mary should go and fuck herself. Or wait, would that (if interpreted literally to mean “masturbation”) be a sin, too? Well how about she should just accidentally walk into an open elevator shaft and die?
Mary should die.
Oh bother. I accidentally used the wrong format to code my italics in the above comment… Ah, well, I am sure most people here are smart enough to figure out my intent…
For future reference you use >< not ][
I know… as evidenced by my deliberately using a few italicized words in my self-correcting post.
(But man, I wish we just could have an edit button for such things…)
Even if you could only edit it for up til 10 minutes after you pot it, that would be nice.
I know! I try to proof read before I hit “Post Comment,” but there are still many times that after I do hit it, my next action is to look at my post and go, “Aw, crap!” A 5 or 10 minute editing grace period would fix that, and still prevent people from rewriting history if they say something they’d later rather pretend they didn’t.
Haha pot.
You want to edit out the seeds and stems.
I wouldn’t have been able to reedit pot as post as I didn’t even notice until you mentioned it.
Well, theres different branches of Christianity and different views on the subject. It also varies from Church to Church. For instance, in mine, our pastor was very clear he didn’t believe homosexuality to be wrong and to believe otherwise is against the spirit of the text.
I know that some churches (which obviously don’t include the ones that Mary or Joyce belong to) are more open to homosexuals. Heck, there’s one in Northampton which flies a rainbow flag up front! If I was a church goer, that’d certainly be the kind I’d want to go to!
(Alas, I think I got burned out on the whole thing in my adolescence, and these days you’ll typically only find me in a church for a wedding or funeral.)
There are enough branches of Christianity that any blanket statement about them would be wrong. 2,000 years of division does that. Are only a few saved (144,000 specifically) or is Hitler in heaven? Depending upon your church, one of those may be orthodox. Plus culture and “niceness” step in and replace scripture or tradition. Are gays icky? They they are bad. Does my culture think they are bad? Then they are. It took Christians a loooooong time to decide that slavery was not a Christian virtue.
So it can be a big buffet. But most people live in one church in one town and are happy enough with that.
Are we seriously going to have an argument about whether Jesus is a Multiversal Singularity?
If it paints Mary in a negative light, then sure, why not?
It’s cool so long as she doesn’t “spill (her) seed”. Doesn’t “the sin of Onan” only apply to guys?
Yes, because women are not responsible for giving their late brother’s wife a (male) heir?
Even if they’re lesbians?
Mary, I think you just started a fucking war
A fucking war? Sounds sexy.
It’s Mike Warner’s time to shine!
And thus, everybody’s mom looses that war. And restitution was made to Mike in the form of many nickels.
Lets put a whole new meaning to “Ride” of the Valkyries.
I wonder if there are any witchy types in their dorm? Mary would probably froth at the everything seeing a girl wearing a pentacle necklace
Mary is basically the evil version of Joyce, all the basic principles but with a terrible personality.
No, I’m pretty sure Joyce has a better grasp of the basic principles than Mary.
Such as, perhaps, the fact that Joyce recognizes religion as something other than a cudgel to make you feel superior to other people.
Joyce doesn’t really seem to pay too much attention to doctrine. Mary follows a more universally accepted doctrine, but it’s also a super toxic one.
Well being doctrinally correct is fairly useless if your heart’s not in it. Salvation by faith not works is a core tenet of the Protestant Reformation.
And the best part is, Mary was created to be even better than Joyce! Then reality set in. XD
Totally despise Mary, she is such a holier than thou, holier than thou. And a bongo to boot.
Does make me wonder who she’s looking at? Obvious would be Billie, and Billie will now have to worry if Mary knows how long will it take her to rat out the RA.
But, Mary addressed Joyce: seems to be a bit of a thing going on with Becky’s look too: so is Mary accusing Joyce and Becky of having a relationship going?
Ah well, Mary is probably accusing all of them? She’s that way.
I think she’s definitely using it as a “I know what happened, Billie, and I will use this to RIP YOU APART”… but I could see her also being sure that Joyce, not properly shunning the sinners as she does, is clearly in league with this promiscuous heathen she-devil.
I think Mary just unseated Sal as the Queen of Shade
Just punch her in the face ’til she pukes, Billie. It worked in the other universe.
Technically that passage in Romans doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say what “unnatural” act it refers to (and lesbianism is mentioned absolutely nowhere else, so there’s nothing to build it on as implied), and even if it did it only says it’s a thing that happened. Not that any of that likely matters to Mary, or to Joyce’s parents.
>for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.
Regardless of the inherent sexism of this statement, it leaves no doubt what Paul meant.
But yes, it doesn’t say it’s a sin; it says it’s a punishment.
Paul, yeah. Is it better or worse than women preaching? Since he probably just wanted to keep that gig for himself, maybe that’s what was behind his other statement about women?
And on that basis, I’d like to think it means they were having sex with robots, or something along those lines, except that the very next sentence begins, “In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women”. This makes it explicitly clear that men and women were behaving unnaturally in the same way: not having sex with women.
Or having “unnatural” sex with each other. There’s lots of “unnatural” things a man and a woman can do.
Of course, the whole thing about Jesus’ ministry was a lot of his doctrine was very specifically reactionary to the stuff which Jewish doctrine was making all-important. The central idea being, “God doesn’t care about stuff which is immoral to persecute.”
Historical Jesus would be a cool character to show up as a Jewish guy talking about that sort of thing.
Well, Jesus was bais shammai it seems based on his opinion of divorce amusingly enough. Anyhow it’s rather rich of Mary to start spouting about sin and leading a bible study when she is spreading lashon hara(which she should know about if she knows her bible), publicly bringing someone to shame, and driving a wedge between people.
Jeez, Mary, did you not hear Joyce just now yesterday?
Yes, but here’s the takeaway Mary had from that:
Joyce doesn’t fear Mary (and thus God) enough.
Yet.
You mean Mary is God? I always suspected he was kind of a dick
Well he did make us in his image.
Your gravatar is so disturbingly appropriate to your comment…
K so I kinda really hate Mary right now…
I’d like to see a back story on Mary to see what made her such a bitter, fucked up, hate-mongering shrew
You realize that would mean spending more time with Mary, yes?
If you want that, she’s all yours.
I bet it has something to do with the wristbands….
Wristbands, the true root of all evil
She was raised Christian. That’s enough, in some cases. Give some people a crowd to agree with and you get a one-person lynch mob.
Yeeeup… Pretty much what I figured Mary would say to Billie (or Ruth if she saw her first).
Ruth has already demonstrated a willingness to hit her in the face, Billie’s the safer target.
you ever wounder what goes on inside Mary’s imagination zone?
Anime. Anime and Biblical Hellfire on all who are inferior (read: everyone).
I don’t see her watching anime.
Of course, for maximum irony, her favorite might just be Evangelion.
she draws anime.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/pretty/
I was so hoping someone would mention Evangelion.
The year of Mary starts early!
Remind me: isn’t Romans the book in the Bible that says you can’t mix fabrics?
I THINK that’s Leviticus?
Deuteronomy 22:11 and Leviticus 19:19 cover this.
“Romans” is just a letter from St. Paul to… well, the Romans. Paul was the guy who established that in order to be a Christian you didn’t need to be a Jew, much less bother with all the Jewish ritual laws; so he’s actually the least likely guy in the Bible to give you crap for mixing fabrics or eating pork. Dead set against gaysecks, though.
Totally cheesed Peter, with whom he had it out. It was a fight about the target market. Paul realised that requiring adult Greeks and Romans to get circumcised in order to become Jewish before being allowed into the Jesus Movement was a serious barrier to market penetration.
Does Mary even have the power to play this card? Is this even a card to play? Same sex relationships aren’t illegal, they’re not against the school rules. The only one this hurts is Ruth, and at the moment this is a rumor at best. She video tape them fucking. Snap a picture maybe? If it comes down to word against word who’s honestly on team Mary?
It is still a valid card to play, unfortunately. Billie would not want to see Ruth get hurt, after all. Also, I’ve gotten the impression Billie might not want her friends knowing about her being bisexual. (Likely most of them won’t care, and her fears are unfounded, but that doesn’t make her fears any less real.)
Thus, as I stated, it is still a very valid card to play. If, that is, you’re an evil and petty bongo who should die.
Mary should die.
Billie wasn’t exactly secretive when Joyce asked her something about it. (“It’s basically inevitable,” something like that.)
And Walky already knew about her ex, and talked about that to Joyce.
Now, Joyce may not have quite grokked either of those, but there’s no impression it’s a secret as far as I can see.
Billie probably doesn’t want her relationship itself to be known, though.
It’s a valid card, but you have to tap 1 black and 1 red.
Also, Mary’s dorm room is a Land that you tap so see the cards in the other player’s hand, apparently.
It’s definitely a valid card. Messing around with an RA is pretty bad, since RAs are supposed to be seen as authority figures.
All I’m saying is unless there’s something we don’t know Mary has nothing. All she saw was Billie leaving Ruth’s room at an odd hour fully clothed. Which can be explained away a thousand different ways. There’s no proof Ruth was even in there from what she saw. She could just as easily accuse Billie of trying to steal something. Unless she was creepily scoping out Ruth’s room from her cracked door all night. I guess she could have seen Ruth lying to Joyce and friends first but that’s pretty flimsy.
She could be probing for a reaction, trying to ascertain whether she has some useful material on Ruth and Billie or not. Or she could be threatening Billie with the rumour itself.
Man, Fuck you, Mary.
She’s acting so much like Pennsatucky, more than usual.
Ok, seriously this time. |:[
Where is my fucking truck, and why is Mary not under it?
Mary, go fuck a truck.
Automatic hate train for Mary.
“Hate Train” is practically all she’s got going on in her very existence besides Church & Bible Study.
wait, did I miss something? how is it Mary knows?
Shes knows something but no real proof
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/clear/
Riiiiight! Totally missed that.
Thnx, now it makes more sense.
Mary should “trip” on the stairs or something.
I was going to say that Mary is probably the only unequivocally nasty character in DoA, but then I remembered Blaine. It seems that most of Willis’ characters are more prone to well-meaning mistakes and errors of thinking, building for themselves without active malice their own downfalls, but then there’s Mary. I’m not sure whether or not it would be worthwhile exploring Mary’s worldview and rationalizations more. On the one hand, it would round out her character a bit more from “malevolent, judgmental affront to Christ” … but on the other hand, it’d mean we’d have to spend more time with Mary.
If Joyce sees Billie as a best friend, I hope that the climax of this drama bomb sees Joyce defending Billie and Ruth’s relationship against Mary.
Also, I have a theory for the way that this will be heading. Potential spoiler warning.
i dont see a freshman chosen as an R.A.
Best “Christian” Friend. I mean, she hasn’t got a lot of alternatives here; I don’t think she’d count Sara as Christian. Dorothy and Ethan, definitely not. Walky and Sal are iffy both as Christians (To Joyce, Walky probably comes off as Agnostic and Sal hasn’t shown signs of being different) and maybe friends (Walky due to being annoying and Sal due to hero worship). So, Billie’s could still be kind of low on the totem pole, just the highest Christian.
Mary, I find your evil plan underwhelming.
I mean, I guess it’s evil, but it’s not much of a plot.
Mary has so far implied to Billie that she is aware of something Billie and Ruth want kept secret as well as demonstrated that Joyce, one of Billie’s only two real friends, is against it as well and played the religious damnation card, all without saying anything she could be reported for. As a play against Billie it’s a pretty good opening move.
She revealed her hand a little early.
Can I punch her? I want to punch her.
I believe it was The Edge who said, in reference to U2’s 50m-wide, 150000 pixel screen behind the stage on the PopMart tour, “If God watches television, his screen is not as big as U2’s”.
Maybe Mary doesn’t really have a scheme. Maybe she’s just happy to have found someone to righteously tear to shreds.
I think the glee on Mary’s face when she saw Billie come sneaking out of Ruth’s room says it all. She wants revenge on Ruth for the dick-slap (and other assorted beefs real or imaginary, no doubt), and knowing that Ruth has a secret means there is the potential for exploiting that secret to inflict grief.
Sad to say, first signs are that it’s working. Billie’s expression in the last panel looks like the shocked look of someone who just realized there is deep trouble brewing.
Hmmmm… we have the “nice, sweet likable Christians”, and the “bongoy horrible human being Christians”.
Nothing in the middle? “The Christian we don’t mind, but don’t really think about.” “The progressive with a good heart, but annoying personality Christian”?
Isn’t that what Billie is supposed to represent?
That might be Billie.
And Danny.
Also Sierra, Roz, and Robin.
Also every character that isn’t Ethan, Joe, Dorothy, or Dina.
Billie is on one end as a Progressive Christian with issues. Don’t forget she can be a jerk.
Joyce is on the other as a mostly decent person who can still be a jerk because she’s still getting used to the idea of “progressive” being a good thing.
The problem with reasonable, middle of the road characters is, well, they’re boring. So yes characters in a drama situation tend to gravitate to the more extreme ends of the spectrum as that engenders conflict, which is the lifeblood of narrative.
So Mary thinks they’re still in high school, also?
I can’t read Becky at all in the 3rd panel. I don’t know if it makes her seem less gay or more gay now. Ahh! Plus it does kinda look like Mary is looking at Becky when I kind of expected her to be looking at Billie. As it obviously is a stab at Billie. Really obviously. C’mon Mary don’t be a bongo. lol who am I kidding Mary’s always a bongo.
but you gotta love her for itUm, actually it says that man may not lay with man as he would with woman. So lesbian sex is totally cool. Also men can have sex with men if it’s not missionary position. Sucks how so many bible readers seem to not actually read the bible?
Romans 1:24-27New International Version (NIV)
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
“In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women”
You know, just like the women abandoned their natural relations with women. I think the takeaway from this is that having sex is only natural if one’s partner is female.
Except that homosexuality has been shown to exist among animals, and can therefore be argued to be natural.
I suspect you may have missed the mocking tone I was trying to convey, as well as my literal meaning.
Unnatural relations, like sex with dogs, instead of sex with people.
Dogs are also natural. It must have been robots.
Romans 2:1 through 2:12 is comes right after that. Does Mary feel it relates to this strip in any way?
I was joking.
PROTIP: Never start an attempted correction with “Um actually” if you want to be taken seriously. Or PROTIP, either.
PROTIP: I did not want to be taken seriously.
Yeah, I wouldn’t challenge the author here with “Not reading the bible.”
Dude, Willis knows what he’s talking about. You try and correct him on this stuff, you’re gonna have a BAD TIME.
I didn’t try to correct him. Nowhere in anything I have said was I correcting him. I was doing like modern-day Christians do (in a mocking manner) and reinterpreting things written in a book to serve my own ends while ignoring other parts, all in a completely non-serious manner.
You know I’m starting to think that even now. We still can’t truly translate the bible. Even with our computers and experts. I honestly think we’re still winging it. Because of the saying Life, Liberty, an the pursuit of happiness exists. If God doesn’t like gay or lesbians why the hell would he/she let that exist in the first place?
There are a great many things that God allegedly hates yet exist/happen regardless. That’d have to be one hell of a mistranslation. Can we be certain that any translation of the Bible is perfect? Nope, any translation is almost certainly flawed. Can we be confident, though, that the mistakes are tolerably slight? Yes, we can. The languages in which the Bible was written have changed, but they aren’t even dead, much less lost to time. Here’s a much simpler explanatory theory: the Bible is wrong.
I never said anything about the author. I was making a joke about the character of Mary. Where did I say anything about the author?
It’s kinda sad. I got your joke JessicaWhitmore, a shame it is being jumped on like that, because I think it was quite funny. Until people started taking words so literal…;-).
At least she didn’t use Leviticus as her example. That’s invalid by default.
Was anyone else expecting a different short word that starts with D to follow “like to think God has a massive”?
… No?
Just me?
I’ll show myself out.
Since we’re not talking about the Greek pantheon, no.
I’m just gonna…leave this here…
My dream response (though clearly Billie’s in no mental state at the moment to be so off the cuff): “Okay, you’re clearly insinuating that you think I’m gay. I don’t really care where or why you think that, but I AM curious about why you’d think I give two fucks about your opinion!”
On an unrelated note, I *hate* Daylight Savings. Before you poor, deluded souls outside of Arizona pointlessly shifted your clocks around I could sneak off to a computer as the Barnes and Noble at which I work begins closing procedures and check out the new DoA, Shortpacked, etc. A lovely little pick-me-up at closing time. Now I’ve gotta wait till I get home like a sucker.
CURSE YOU BENJAMIN FRANKLIN!
As an interesting note, Benjamin Franklin came up with the idea as a joke to mock the French. And even then, it wasn’t entirely a direct correlation to modern daylight savings; it was more like a method of timekeeping in which the day started at dawn. We have the day start at midnight; the Jews and other societies have had the day start at sundown; and navies have historically started the day at noon. Franklin’s satire was stating that everyone should be roused by church bells and cannons at dawn to maximize the use of daylight, since high society types tended to sleep until past noon so their evenings would be free.
Just trying to protect my man Ben’s back.
Your chosen name belies your purpose in this instance, my skeptically-sneering-Mary-avatared friend. This is a key historical tidbit I was unaware of…and the fact that M. Franklin himself didn’t really believe in the concept just adds to my conviction that the whole thing is unnecessary and pointless. Having lived without it my whole life I can tell you I haven’t missed it. My brothers who have moved out of state, by counterpoint, loathe it more than ever.
It is a pointless thing driven solely by traditional inertia that does little more than keep me from enjoying my webcomics in a timely fashion. But hey, that’s just my hang-up!
I LOVED DST as a kid in Ohio and celebrate it every spring and summer eve now that we have it in Indiana: light out till 10 for a stroll! Only thing better was the summer solstice that I spent on the shore of a fjord in Norway when I realized that it wasn’t going to get dark all night! Many of you anti-DSTers are nice folks and I understand your preference … but PTHT!!!
As a fellow Ohioan, I don’t understand why we bother to roll the clocks back in November. Why make the day end FASTER? Why not just leave it permanently forward, so the sun isn’t setting at 5pm?
Amen!
The Bible also says judge not lest ye be judged. Or, in the subtext, SHUT UP MARY.
Quick Billie! Get your insanely powerful girlfriend to rough her up!
Mary’s doing it again. You notice how she likes rolling up her eyes every so often when talking about how awesome she is, and smirking? It’s like even SHE can’t fully buy the bullshit coming out of her mouth.
Actually God doesn’t say anything about lesbians, at least not in the Bible. being a Gay man, that is a sin (according to the bible), but not being a lesbian.
Even God wouldn’t be so cruel to forbid hot lesbian sex…
Romans 1:24-27New International Version (NIV)
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
If Mary would keep reading that passage for a couple more verses, she would get to the part about Gossips…
Can you enlighten me about that? I’ve never read that much of the Bible. I’ve only read the Gospels and parts of Genesis.
Romans 1:29-30 (NIV)
“29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;”
Thanks. That’s what I first thought when you mentioned gossips, but I wanted to be sure.
A Fundie reading the whole of the Bible and being consistent about it!
Inconceivable!
Yes, I know that verse, but it’s really ambiguous (and even more so, when you look at multiple translations of the original text).
Can it be interpreted as saying that homosexuality is a sin? Yes, if you try really hard. Does it state it clearly? No, not even close to it.
Leviticus 20:13 is a better example. That passage says it clearly, that homosexuality is a sin, however only for men. I don’t know every verse in the Bible, but as far as I know it’s never mentioned clearly as a sin for women, or for both sexes.
Maybe. But that is the way Joyce and, presumably, Mari interpret the Bible and, therefre, that is the interpretation that is relevant to the comic right now.
Joyce explicitly mentioned the Romans, so saying that Leviticus can be interpreted as forbidding male homosexuality only is irrelevant. Joiyce believes Roman forbids Lesbians and that is what matters.
Yeah, even without the Bible, it’s “pre-marital hanky panky” for Joyce. And ultimately it’s up to the church to decide their doctrine (the Pope, the Patriarch, or whoever leads).
I just find it funny that, while most people THINK the Bible clearly forbids same sex relations, that isn’t actually true (It misses out lesbians)
That’s the problem with free churches – there is no real head of church, leading to what you could call a mixed bag. Some of them are very tolerant actually promote kindness towars sinners, while others, well – but that’s what happens when there’s no one in charge who’d be able to reign these people in.
y’know this whole problem is why we don’t have a nice long episode of Adventure Time on Princess Bubblegum and Marceline’s conjoined backstory. Grow up, governments. Don”t outlaw that, that’s shitty thing to do.
Wait a sec……
I CALL BULLSHIT
I forgot that we could do that.
No, no it bloody well isn’t. It’s loading homosexuality amongst women with a bunch of negative words and talking about how it’s a just dessert. This is just rules lawyering (Including the part where precedent says you’re wrong but you’re continuing anyway). That’s not ambiguous at all.
Read the passage, God punishes the people with homosexuality, among other things. It’s very clear that a village, where everyone was turned into gay, won’t last long, so is the reason behind the punishment.
It does speak of sinful- and homosexual desires, and other things, but it doesn’t say if those two things are separate, or same desires in this case, and it says nothing general about homosexuality.
Rutee: “it’s grouping homosexuality with a bunch of other negative stuff and describing it as a punishment”
Evan Dark: “read the passage, it’s saying god punishes the people with homosexuality, among other things”
You apparently agree with Rutee, but you seem to have missed the part about that whole thing about homosexuality being administered as a punishment among other terrible things still being fucking awful and kind of the opposite of an endorsement.
But wait a sec – generally, calling something a punishment is not the same as calling it a sin. In fact, Christianity considers many punishments cathartic, and redeeming of sin. So, if God punished sinners by making them homosexual, was he actually trying to help them?
“Christianity considers many punishments cathartic” is not something I’ve experienced, especially since so many of these punishments were, y’know, death.
It’d be pretty bizarre for it to be both punishment and sin. Think about it. “You have broken my law, and so I shall punish you by FORCING YOU TO BREAK MORE OF MY LAWS. THAT’LL LEARN YA.”
Alright, stand back as I go full rules lawyer here:
//Technically,// they are only given over to “shameful lusts” and “unnatural sexual relations” which could be read in ways other than “homosexuality”.
Further, it only says men “abandoned natural relations with women” but not that they abandoned relations with women entirely.
It seems then, on this very technical (but depending on how translations pan out, still valid) reading, “unnatural sexual relations” could be interpreted as a variety of things that are not necessarily homosexuality.
It’s a stretch but I’d be willing to offer it as a response and see how they reacted.
“received in themselves” … isn’t that the point? I had a student who argued a biblical line on sex but a libertarian line on drugs, on the basis that the latter is about what you put into your own body. I pointed out that that’s pretty much what (consensual) sex is about too. The class seemed to accept that as appropriate ….
Agreed. And “due penalty for their error” is pretty weird, as euphemisms go.
Nice reference david
I think Mary just compared herself to God.
B-words.
And thus Mary comes for Billie just to be a bongo, as it must be in all universes.
Trying to remember: is Billie actually a Christian, or is Joyce just taking her sarcastic remarks about Jesus at face value?
Billie claimed to be a Christian in an early strip, when Joyce wanted her to come along to church on a Sunday.
She’s one of those “I’m christian because everyone around here is” types.
I hate Mary. :3
Homosexual acts may be a sin, but they sure feel good!!!
Her very first sentence shows how “Christian” she is…
I need to lure Mary over to the 910CMX forums… The Lost and Found could use a snack.
Why Billie drinks: Reason #273
Ha, not the only one who thinks that Becky could be gay. It makes sense cause early when she was talking to Sarah and was all “gee, you’re so lucky to be with Joyce ALL the time.” It could be a stretch, but it could be that Becky has missed Joyce so much to the point she may have realized she had feelings for her, so thats why she travels out of the blue to see her. I don’t know. Could be she is just gay and wanted to tell her best friend right away and see if she could help her. It’s not like with Ian where she dates him to shoo the gay away. It could be harder with a girl friend.
It’s a pretty common theory as far as I saw. I’m holding my breath for move evidence one way or another before ruling on it, but I could see it.
Mary, are you saying you’re god? Isn’t that one of the most basic laws of what not to do?
It sounds more like she sees herself as an agent of god, projecting her own horrible beliefs on him, i.e. god made it possible for her to see that so she can act against it in his will – which isn’t any better, to be honest.
She has an official badger and everything.
Uh, you meant to say ‘badge’, right?
From above:
Ghostforge
November 6, 2014 at 12:23 am
“Badgers?!! We don’t need no stinkin’ Badgers!!!!!”
It’s a line from a classic movie in which Humphrey Bogart is prospecting for gold up in the mountains and some bandits tell him they’re Federales, so he asks where are their badgers, and one of them answers as Ghostforge quotes. So if Mary is an official agent of God, she must have an AoG (Agents of God) badger. Billie should ask to see it! “If you’re working for God, show me your badger.” (That’s badger, not beaver.)
Uh, ok – that makes sense, I guess?
There’s only one person in today’s comic in danger of going to hell in a world with a just deity…
A just deity could never send anybody to hell, at least not permanently.
So what is even Mary’s angle in this? Does she set the stage for blackmailing? Does she want to have Ruth fired? Is she lashing out against an (in her eyes) acceptable target? In either case there are few constructive reasons to gloat about it.
It’s almost like she’s a bully who’s only motivation is to have power over someone else.
1600 Penn ;.;
“God sees everything.”
Would that include you being a massive bongo?
Yes, but she favors the old testament, in which God itself is a massive bongo, so she figures this will only get her closer to its good graces.
Fundamentalist Christianity in a nutshell.
If she really read the old Testament, then she’d know that God wasn’t fond of competition.
Only room on this cloud for one boss bongo and it ain’t going to be the Golden Ox.
My, what a bongo.
Also, are lesbian relationships that taboo in Indiana?
If DoA was set here, Billie would be all like “Yeah, your point being?”
Yes Joyce, she’s talking to you. And you know your sin. And while she’s beautiful in her own dangerous way, and though your attraction is justified, your love for Sal’s motorcycle will always be taboo.
Mary is like everything wrong with Roomies, collected in a coffee filter, and left on the kitchen counter for weeks because no one seems to throw it away. You slowly get used to it being there, and when you actually notice it, it’s the vilest thing ever.
God, if you kill off any characters in this universe, please let it be Mary. She is babies.
Or Malaya.
Or Danny.
Or anyone worth making drama for.
Whatever. It’s your comic. I’m just here to enjoy the totes awesome ride.
Malaya and Danny are far superior to Mary.
Don’t you just love how Joyce and Becky are on their own private wavelength like the best of childhood besties? ^^ Mary can go eat a prayer book, that’s what I’m keeping of today’s strip.
May I suggest a topic for your Christianity group? “The Salem Witch Trials.” Also, fuck you, Mary.
Delenda est Mary
You should change your screen name to Cato and end every post with those 3 words!
I tried doing that 4 strips ago.
Willis shut that right down.
Honestly, I don’t blame him.
Obviously you can’t blame God: writing “damn you Willis” is like writing “damn you God.” But when I saw your “Mary delenda est” I was totes stoked: that was brilliant!
I hate my FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE.
You know You can always change it right?
Sure, by signing up for yet another unnecessary Internet account (the fewer accounts I have, the better). Anyway, my original comment wasn’t meant to be a serious complaint. Just a humorous twist on the chorus of “I hate Mary.”
It determines which “random” gravatar you get from a hash of the email address you provide. The address doesn’t have to be a real one, and I believe the hash is case-sensitive, so you can change the address or just fiddle with the capitalization and it’ll change the gravatar you’re assigned. You’ll probably have to get approved again, though.
Mary delenda est
Y’know, I’m strangely pleased that Joyce cited Romans for that. If you’re going to have unpleasant opinions because the Bible tells you so, at least cite the right verse for them.
I know Mary has a problem with Ruth because of the time when Ruth slapped a dick on her face but does she have specific beef with Billie? I would think she would want to direct her blackmailing directly onto Ruth, but maybe she is just so hateful she’ll target anyone she can.
There was that time when Billie busted into her room without warning or invitation when she was naked at 3 PM.
Citation, please?
Okay, not “naked”, technically. She was wearing panties and wristbands.
Hope Mary and Joyce know this XD.
Paul. All of the epistles referred to by their recipient rather than their (purported) writer, with the likely exception of the Letter to the Hebrews, are Paul’s. (Probably.)
The two epistles traditionally attributed to Peter are simply First Peter and Second Peter. (Though Second Peter being by him is doubtful.)
Yeah, I realized my mistake today after thinking about it…ugh.
Billies like :this is why I dont do laundry…..
Nobody noticed that Mary has red irises, the universal sign that she’s possessed by a demon. Quick, call Jack Lalanne!
I feel I’m missing a reference, here…what does Jack LaLanne have to do with demons?
To exercise the demon I’m guessing?
<Michael Palin>What a terrible joke!</Michael Palin>
i think it’s funny in panel three that all three of those girls look nervous. becky’s got some ‘splainin to do
also mary get outta here
*scratches caveman head*
why does billie not just throw down with fisticuffs and nip this in the bud now
I LOATHE MARY WITH A BURNING PASSION
Little did we realize that when Willis promised noone gets hit by a truck, it was actually a way to deny us hope.
She could die another way, like being hit by a BUS. Or trains. I like trains.
Mary don’t you dare make Billie’s life any harder than it already is. ;n;
Well now Billie knows that she knows. It’ll probably trigger Billie’s anxiety but it could also be a misplay on Mary’s part to tip her hand so early. It only can bother Billie and Ruth if they give it power. And not such a big news flash but Mary is a bongo.
…Really, guys? You think MARY is going to out bongo Billie? This is JUST the thing Billie needs to reassert herself in this weird time she’s having where she isn’t sure quite who she is right now.
If this doesn’t end up with Billie going all “Queen bongo Head Cheerleader” on Mary, I’m going to be very disappointed.
i like the way you think! I’m ready for Billie to reconnect to her inner bongo — tearing Mary down is just bonus.
And it’s hard to keep that inner bongo down!
Except Billie isn’t the Quenn bongo Head Cheerleader anymore. She has no authority, isn’t popular, is out of shape, is suffering from depression and alcoholism and resorting to physical violence would get Billie in bigger trouble than anything else.
Mary’s in a much more secure position than Billie and has no reason to be intimidated.
Billie’s problem isn’t status; its attitude. She’s down and depressed, and she needs her fire back!
Does it say anything about lesbians in the Bible? I always assumed the passage in Romans was talking about bestiality.
“Simon, son of John, do you love Me? John 21:17.
“If you love Me, you will keep my commandments. John 14:15.
“Greater Love hath no man than this, that a man lay …
All of the places in the Bible where it traditionally says “love” it should really say “lesbians”, according to the new Bryan Lee O’Malley edition (BLM).
“Simon, son of John, do you LESBIAN Me? John 21:17
“If you LESBIAN Me, you will keep my commandments. John 14:15.
“Greater LESBIANS hath no man than this, that a man lay …
Yes, a massive DVR set up to record and later watch all the lesbian sex he supposedly disapproves of.
What I don’t get is why Mary is even at a secular college in the first place. Like I’m not saying all christians who attend christian colleges hate non-christians (I don’t think Becky does), but if you’re one who is like this in Mary’s case, then what the heck are you doing going to a secular institution? Did you not make the grades Mary for said hypothetical college? Was Indiana your second choice? Only unlike Dorothy, who remains (mostly) positive, and is attempting to get into her first choice later- you instead remain bitter and don’t try to do anything to change your situation at all?
I mean you’re still and will still be terrible if you got into one it seems but goddamn why are you here if you seem to hate it so much outside of attempting to make people’s lives miserable.
I think it’s probably because Mary needed easy targets to look down on?
OHP WELL there goes the drama train
Oh no, Mary found out about Billie’s and Ruth’s relationship which is bad… because… I don’t know. I really don’t get what Mary plans to do besides for what she just did. Billie doesn’t seem like that much of a religious person nor does she have reason to listen to Mary.
Hell, the only reason I can see it being kept secret is because they want privacy and that’s about it.
Depends on whether or not Billie wants the relationship to be public, and whether or not having a sexual relationship with one of the students in your charge is against the rules of being an RA.
That, and her relationship ties to her shared alcoholism which involves Ruth’s breaking of the rules she’s supposed to enforce for all her hard-boiled pretenses of ‘running a tight ship.’
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/stragglers/
So Mary’s animosity towards Ruth and Billie has existed almost exactly as long A Billie and Ruth’s horrifically dysfunctional romance!
Mary is a megabongo!
And that DVR is full of lesbian pay-per-view porn.
Can we have the “no one dies” rule lifted for Mary? Fuck I hate Mary.
I still don’t see how Mary saw anything..
Ruth and Billie didn’t kiss in the hallway or anything. All she could have seen was those 3 asking Ruth if she’s seen her, then Billie leaving but looking like she wasn’t suicidal now..
So.. she just jumped straight to lesbian? as opposed to.. RA actually doing her job?
Given how nosy Mary’s been shown to be about anything happening in the hallway, I think it’s likely that she saw Billie go in the night before and didn’t see her leave, and then in the morning Billie’s friends came by looking for her, and Ruth claimed to not know where Billie was, and also said that she wasn’t wearing pants, and then shortly thereafter Billie left Ruth’s room. It’s not direct evidence, but she can deduce: 1) Billie probably spent the night in Ruth’s room, 2) Ruth and Billie don’t want even Billie’s friends knowing that, and c) whatever they were doing in there didn’t require pants.
She may have also overheard some of their discussions. I’m not sure how thick the walls in Read are.
So, will Joyce find out how hurt Billy is by this and will she change any of her bigoted opinions? Eh, who am I kidding -keeps sweeping them under the rug-
I still don’t get why this is a big deal?
So what if Ruth and Billie are having sexytime?
Back in the day, our RA could date whoever she wanted, resident or not.
I think it’s implying that since she has “power”, if something where to happen to Billie, it would greatly effect her decision making skills if they where dating.
Possibly.
Unless Billie is a minor…theoretically possible as a freshman…Im still not getting the drama.
Any alumns know what the RA dating policy at Indiana?
Nevermind looked it up myself….
quote: ……Resident Assistants and Graduate Supervisors are academic appointees. As such they are bound by the same guidelines, which exist for all academic appointees. In addition, it is the expectation of RPS that amorous “dating” relationships not occur between in-center staff members within the Residential Operations supervisory chain. Such situations endanger the trust, communication, and understanding among the other staff and residents, as well as fuel potential violations of our institutional anti-harassment policies.
Staff members departing from this expectation are subject to disciplinary job intervention including dismissal…..
Its a little hard to decipher…it seems to indicate no dating other employees rather than residents?
Don’t date people in your command chain, AKA people who have power over you or people you have power over. So they’re free to date people they aren’t watching over.
Basically it’s saying “Don’t date employees, and try not to date students.”
I’d like to punch Mary in the nose.
If the school finds out they are going to get in trouble. I attempted a romance with my RA last year. He turned me down because of school regulations. If Mary told, Ruth could get fired. Goddamn it Mary.
I guess it depends on the school. That’s a little harsh on the RA’s
Ruth totally deserves to be fired. Mary’s still a horrible bongo though.
You know with some Churches or Bible studies it seems like EVERY week’s talk is about homosexuality.
Got to wonder about someone who has gay sex on the mind that frequently but is supposedly straight. All I have to say.
Looking at the Comments, I am beginning to enjoy Mary just for how pissed off she is guarenteed to make everyone in the comments. She is like a Meta-Mike or Roz: where they can shock/annoy/troll charactrs, Mary invariably pisses off the entire readership.
It is glorious.
DAMN IT MARY IF YOU FUCK THIS UP FOR EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!
So, blackmail it is. Hopefully Mary won’t get monetary with it cause that could get criminally interesting REAL quick. While not a Federal crime on just about every states’ books.
I’m the active father of a young lass who was borne to a lesbian couple to whom I donated, after being introduced to them by my wife. Pretty much all available family is directly involved in the life of this progeny.
When I say, “This strip is alien to me,” please take it in the sense of SFAM alien or R. Scott Alien – ’cause that kinda goram pudu don’t live in our world.
Fucking Saul and his letters.
Why is it that every time I see Mary on the screen I want to punch her in the face?
I have never seen anyone more passive aggressive than mary. Its truly incredible