Interesting idea, but I’m not sure how that could help. Take a look at the bottom right view from the mirror? What are those dark things to either side of her shoulders? If we didn’t know better it would make us think that we were seeing the back seat. But that can’t be the case because we can see evidence of reflection where the back window is in front of her face. And so my interpretation is that the dark area is the back of the car and that Amazigirl has used whatever was in the glove to give her a purchase and she’s now on the back trunk. Next comic will.tell.
…Ok..I have to ask…..but has anyone drawn a little toedad face on their big toenail and stuck a little fake moustache on with glue to make the Littlest Cosplay Ever?
Because ever since people started calling him Toedad I’ve been seeing that every danged panel.
Also, looks like Dina didn’t draw much blood, but got a pretty nice scratch in there.
I always thought the ‘Christian thing to do’ was “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Isn’t Ross just hating the ‘sinner’ right now?
Also, maybe Amber really is the one that ends up in the hospital jeez please don’t suddenly break the car, FoeDad.
This. There’s a huge culture of casting deep shame on and shunning of the “sinners” you are supposed to “love”, because by doing so, you aren’t hating on them. You’re just hating on their sin and disappointed by their weakness in giving in to temptations (smug smug we’re so better) and proving your love by “graciously” letting them back in the fold so long as they are penitent and accept that their wisdom about their life isn’t worth shit as demonstrated by their sinful choices.
It’s rampant in suburban middle class PMD Rapturist culture and becomes sort of a one-upmanship, where you all talk a game about everyone being sinful and needing the salvation of Christ, but behind closed doors or even whispered in the pews, it’s all about who isn’t praying “enough” or whose kid was seen being all “sinful” with the neighbor’s kid.
Honestly, it’s really all about raising oneself up by reveling in the wickedness of others at the end of the day.
And that’s why Toedad is so committed to retrieving and “correcting” his misbehaving property. Because if he doesn’t, then he’s reduced in the smugness games and just becomes the rumor mill target about the man whose daughter went to college and became one of those… you knows. And that casts disparagements on his own holiness.
“People would rather imagine that they’re a beleaguered hero than that they’re creating imaginary enemies because they’re bored.” – Alex Hirsch, twitter, today
(in a conversation about fanart, but surprisingly relevant to suburban middle class PMD Rapturists)
I find it particularly disturbing that he is talking about “his daughter” as though she is a different person from the one he’s talking to. He really seems to be mentally preparing himself to kill her.
You know, I was gonna comment on that, too. I’m guessing that Ross is the “love the sinner BENEATH the sin” kinda guy. Meaning that he loves previous sinless Becky, rather than the current sinner Becky is.
Having seen this logic first hand, Ross thinks that Becky’s “choices” (in his mind) are leading her to a path of eternal torture. The only loving thing to do in his mind is to take any and every step necessary to prevent that. So to him, he is absolutely loving her by trying to “save her from herself.” It is a twisted idea of love.
Given she was raised “right”, her current “lifestyle choices” are only because of her recruitment at the hands of gay demons feeding on her weakness in order to rob her of her womanhood and confuse her about her “natural role” as wife and mother.
They are no more worthy of consideration as being a part of her than a malignant tumor and once he has cut that corruption from her with his faith, then she will return to her purity and find joy in her “natural place” and thank him for saving her from the fires of Hell.
I’ve always found the insane beliefs religious people hold top explain away how people can actually be gay to be hilarious. Like if we had demons or could infect other people there’d be any of them left. We’d zombie plague the fuck out of you so we could finally just be normal and left in peace.
Loving the sinner and hating the sin is equivalent to hating the person it is applied to. It is a weaselly way of getting around the fact that Jesus says to love they neighbor as yourself without condition. It is both a very radical commandment and a very difficult one.
Unfortunately it means the love part gets drowned out.
While this thought comes up among christian sects, it really isn’t something that is supported by scripture. Its more of something that people say to make themselves feel better.
I’ve heard ‘love the sinner, hate the sin” used with wide-eyed sincerity. (I explained that, unfortunately, it’s impossible for the recipient or anyone else to tell the difference! In the ensuing conversation, I found that some kindhearted Christians are actually quite reasonable when gently challenged from a place that strongly accepts and reinforces love as their central tenet.)
Unfortunately, Ross is NOT one of those kindhearted Christians. He is deeply devoted, in his way, to the daughter he thinks he has, or to the daughter he thinks she ought to be. But he’s not about love, he’s about righteousness and matyrdom and avoiding Hell. I don’t know how on heaven or earth he’ll come around to love his daughter who is actually sitting right there.
“love the sinner, hate the sin” is a perfectly good approach when it applies to something we all agree is a problem – someone who’s alcoholic or otherwise addicted, someone who’s stolen or committed whatever other sins we all agree are bad. Or even just in the “We’re all sinners” kind of sense.
It’s when it’s used for things like homosexuality where we’re coming to see that it really isn’t bad, then the “hate the sin” part, no matter how sincere and loving it may be, is still pushing the “This is bad, you have to stop, you have to change” line. Especially when it’s pushed on kids growing up in those environments. It’s damaging. I’m sure it’s a contributor to the high rate of LGBTQ suicide. “I love you, but I hate your sexuality and you’re damned if don’t live in denial your whole life.”
Except that even with with things like addiction or theft it is still absolutely corrosive, whether or not it is meant with malice or the best of intentions.
While there are several other lesser problems with the concept, the main problem is that hating the sin requires that one love the sinner less. With this dogma it would be impossible to love someone unconditionally for who they are because it makes the love conditional by its nature. Hence one cannot love someone fully while hating their sin.
On top of that, it is generally not applied to everyone, since everyone is a sinner. Instead it is generally applied to select groups that don’t fit in in some way. Also, while being LGBT is part of who you are (and I do agree that makes it significantly more corrosive when applied to sexual identity), so is to a lesser extent what you’ve done in the past or what medical illnesses you have (in the case of addiction).
What you have done will at some level always be part of who you are as a person. Its why the phrasing is that we are forgiven our sins. It doesn’t change the fact one has sinned in the past, but the forgiveness is what is important.
Yep, Christians sure loved all those heathens they forcibly converted, crusaded against, burnt at the stake, enslaved, oppressed, etc. over the last millennia and a half.
Pikes are hard to handle, and really only effective in massed formations. I’ll take a shorter polearm anyday.
Well, not a guan dao, those things are monstrously heavy, but a bardiche or voulge would probably do. Something light like a naginata would be optimal though.
Why go for the Death look? Why not life? Most of life is bacteria, and apparently most animals are parasites. So Life would be a quivering mass of slime interspersed with fungal tentacles, plant roots and botflies. Seems more intimidating than a skeleton, no?
I dunno, a good spear or a dane axe can be pretty good in a one on one fight so long as you have the skill to keep your opponent out of arm’s reach. Like, take a spear to a sword fight, make sure the sword can barely reach down your spear haft and you’re in the money. I’ve been on both sides; holding someone back with the head of my dane, and once clinging to the end of someone’s spear when all I had was a dagger, to piss them off.
oh man now I’m imagining this as only a distraction with Amazi-Girl as part of a raptor pack. Toedad is so focused on taking out the one ‘enemy’ of his daughter he doesn’t notice Dina approaching from the side. Again. His peripheral vision kinda sucks.
I don’t think Stealth is a trained skill for Amazigirl, nor do I expect she’d put any ranks into it anyway. But her Willpower check must be hella high by now.
Looking at the backgrounds, he managed to get all the way out of town (likely onto old Highway 37) without checking his mirrors. He must never check them.
Really, though, is it EVER a good time to distract someone who’s driving a car? Especially when you’re in it? And you’re intentionally trying to distract him from looking in his mirrors? So, he doesn’t know what’s going on around the car? Isn’t that just BEGGING for an accident?
That’s the thing. Joyce has the same exact culture as Toedad. All the horrible things that have slipped through her mouth because she didn’t realize how awful they were is what Toedad fervently believes and supports.
The key difference is that Joyce listens to her conscience and does not view the feelings and lives of others as being inferior to what she was told about the world and seeks to change when her words or actions do harm. Whereas Toedad is inflexible and believes that the fault when his conscience and moral teachings disagree lies with his conscience. And instead of having enough empathy to care about others, he views everyone else mostly as props in the eternal show of “I, Ross MacIntyre, am a godly man and I am strong”.
Joyce is a lot younger, and is going through a lot of new experiences (it’s what University should be for, rather than a job factory) so she’s open to change.
If Joyce had stayed at home, she might well have ended up like Toedad.
I think she has noted that herself, and that the horror is not lost on her.
But frankly I doubt that Joyce would be anything like Toedad. She would not even be as bad as her own parents. But she would not be as good as the Joyce we see now.
Another comparison is Mary who shares Joyce’s background AND experiences (I mean, she rooms with Roz), but who still nurtures her homophobia and bigotry. It remains to be seen what hard choices she will make when it comes down to it.
Roz may not be the ideal person to change someone’s world view. Someone that obnoxious about it is more likely to ram one further into one’s current beliefs than inspire the realization that perhaps other views are legitimate.
Agreed. Roz is a bludgeon, who could be great at energizing the base who already basically agrees with her. But she’s absolutely terrible at communicating with people who disagree with her, and that’s where Roz needs folks like Joyce to become that understanding bridge to the fundies back home.
Unlike Roz, Joyce can validate the good and kind aspects of their shared worldview, which can then be a springboard towards more kindness. (That’s what she was hoping to do with quoting the Bible at Toe-Dad, but she underestimated how dug in and unreasonable he is.) Roz would just yell at Mary in righteous indignation, which has no chance of success.
But even Joyce’s parents aren’t that bad either. They listen to Joyce, even if they ‘know’ what’s right. It’s shows the inate personality, religious or not. It’s good to contrast that to toedad who didn’t even give Becky the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah, yeah they are, they “Prayed” that their daughter would grow to understand that she is WRONG and that God’s wisdom will open her poor short sighted gaze to the turth!
Uh, horrifying is ok as long as it’s the work and will of the Lord. If you need to exterminate the evil with fire and brimstone, do you want to be the one denying the heroes their pitchforks?
that all hinges on whether you believe in an objective ‘good’ and whether you’re confident that a specific horrifying thing is definitely serving that good. i think that most people allow for a degree of doubt, so we as a society steer toward finding a more neutral behavior acceptable. maybe you’re a hero, maybe you’re a villain, but pitchfork use is limited, so use it under heavy discretion
I was trying to figure that out too. I can’t tell what’s happening with her in panel 2 either–is she still trying to get something out, or is she actually using whatever’s in there?
Her DS. She’s gonna play some Mario Kart with her nose to relieve the everyday tedium of skateboarding grappled to a car driven by a crazed gunman who’s kidnapped his daughter in the name of Jesus.
that would be a pretty sensible thing to pull out, but i feel like that would be more accessible in normal pockets, and Amazi-girl’s nothing if not practical.
Cell phone? “Hi, 911? Yeah, you know the shooting at IU? Okay, you know how the cops sailed right past the costumed vigilante on a skateboard hanging off the back of a fleeing car with a grappling hook? Yeah, well, hi; I’m the costumed vigilante and I’m following the fleeing SHOOTER on a skateboard, hanging onto a grappling hook. We’re headed north; still on the campus. Brown car, damaged rear bumper. You think you could get them to turn around and back me up? You know, since having a costumed vigilante hanging off a car leaving the scene of the shooting wasn’t of interest the first time they went by.”
Pretty sure the cops were just all like, “Kids these days! Sheesh! Get out of the way; we’ll deal with you and your crazy get-up car-surfing and being a public menace another time; we’ve got important things to do here! Now shoo!”
Given that the “important thing” was “Shots fired near the fountain”, they’re pretty much right.
Admittedly it turns out they were wrong, but that doesn’t mean they had their priorities wrong – they just lacked information.
Nonsense. He braved the truly godless lands of a secular university, retrieved his property, wrongfully stolen by “deviants and perverts”, and showed such manly strength even demons relented.
Are you serious? He did not even hit anybody. I mean, even stoning a girl to death who was raped within the city walls (and consequently has to be assumed not to have raised as much racket as could be expected of her) is perfectly within the duties of a man of faith, for you must purge the evil from within your midst.
it figures that only when he’s supposed to be having a serious parental discussion does he pay attention to his mirrors. but hair? seriously? is the whole plumbing thing a bit too heavy for him to tackle so he sticks to the length of the curtains?
Notice how he isn’t denying any of Becky’s accusations. His defenses are crumbling in the face of reason but he’s too stubborn to ever admit he’s wrong, so he’ll find new topics and double down on old ones.
This all being about Becky’s ‘sodomite sins’ is likely the other half, along with the outward claims of religious convictions, of his Freudian excuse for his actions (i.e this isn’t about Becky or Jesus, this is about HIM.) We have little background as to what kind of life Gunpoint Rossie led up until now…I’m still curious how he and Becky’s mother even met, for starters.
“I’m still curious how he and Becky’s mother even met, for starters.”
By gunpoint ?
Wouldn’t it ironic though, if Ross and BeckMom actually had a “shotgun-wedding”, maybe even with the same gun he brought with him ? (He got to keep the gun afterwards as a wedding present)
Uh, Becky is Sapphic, not sodomite. The problem in Sodom was that the citizens wanted to fuck an angel visiting Lot in the behind and were unwilling to take Lot’s offer of screwing his daughters instead. I mean, they were obvious duds and finally got their father drunk in order to get any action, but that’s a different story. Not all that much better than Sodom, actually.
To your first point, many religious groups consider lesbian sex to also be sodomy. Or, as one person put it, literally anything other than unprotected vaginal intercourse is called “sodomy.”
It didn’t make any sense to me either, but there you go.
To your second… yeah, I don’t think I’ll be touching that one.
The Bible actually does not even care. If we focus on the Old Testament which is pretty much the part concerned with sodomy, there is a ban for men lying with men (as if they were a woman), and there is a ban for women screwing with cattle. It evades me right now whether men were allowed to screw cattle, but at any rate, women with women is never a topic.
I mean, if you look at the size of the harem King Solomon entertained, you could not really expect all of those women to wait for their turn without occasionaly refresh courses not involving men (since that would muddy up the property and/or blood relations).
St. Paul is basically the “stop having fun” guy, and the original born-again. He was once Saul, persecuted Jews, saw a vision of Jesus, went blind, (or something, can’t quite remember), and then when he encountered Jesus, Jesus “washed the scales from his eyes”, and Saul became Paul and a devout follower. After Jesus died, Paul was just…Paul was just a bitter weird fuck. I used to refer to him as St. Stop-Having-Fun, now I call him St. Salty. Basically, Paul hated happiness.
From what I’ve heard he just hated women generally and anything to do with them and would happily have not had to deal with them at all, but FINE, ugh, if you HAVE to be there, then you can’t cut your hair short and get mistaken for a guy. And you have to hide it, so you don’t look like a guy. Also shut the hell up and, like, stick to cooking meals and shit. Also no one is allowed to have sex with you because it’s just fucking icky. –What, we’re beginning to die of old age and not getting enough new Christians in? Ugh, FINE, you can have sex, I guess. But ONLY to make babies and you’re not allowed to enjoy it. UGH. Girls are gross.
–Yeah, there’s a contingent that thinks he was gay and it’s not hard to see why.
That’s… really not how I understand Paul, or how he’s generally seen. It mostly comes from a few key clobber verses being quoted out of context with the aim of controlling women’s lives today.
OTOH, I was only thinking today how he could possibly have been ace in a culture that basically had no concept of orientation or a/sexuality.
Another reason, of course, is that anti-gay christians (of which Paul is the prototypical example) think it’s so easy for a “normal” person to be “tempted” into having gay sex, that “everyone” has these urges and it’s hard to suppress them.
Wait no, got some things mixed up, I was thinking of another site but forgot its name. (The aforementioned guy is actually a billion times worse than the impression I get from Paul off Kryss Labryn’s comment.)
Pretty sure that it’s not actually that easy to be tempted into feeling attraction for a gender you aren’t actually on some level interested in. But I suppose that if you do have any non-cis-gendered tendencies, even if only slightly, then yeah, under the correct conditions it might twig loudly enough to catch your conscious attention.
Doesn’t mean that the tendency wasn’t an innate part of you before you saw that, though. And of course then you have people saying things like, “Well, of course everyone goes through a phase like that in college, put you put it behind you and move on with your life and grow up.” Like What’s’isputz, the author who did the book about the kid who thought the space battles he was playing was all just a game, but it ended up not… they made a movie and a lot of people boycotted it because of his incredibly intolerant views and regular columns, I forget his name but I’m sure you all know who I mean. “Ender’s Game”. Yeah. What’sisface who wrote “Ender’s Game,” who it ended up was such a douche. Pretty sure no one who ever said “Well, sure, we all go through that gay phase, but, you know, you grow up and start acting like an adult here…” was actually completely straight to begin with, because, yeah, no, despite what Billie said, while you might sort of wonder about it some time, if you’re actually completely straight I’m pretty sure the instinctive gut reaction is going to be, “Yeah, nope.”
Nah, that was an Old Testament thing. Christians supposedly have a new covenant and don’t have to obey that stuff. They just have to obey the supposed antigay stuff for some reason.
In Romans, one of the Disciples is writing letters explaining the word of God to people and the letters were collected, ordered, and added to the Bible as a corollary to the Gospels.
Unfortunately when translating between various languagea pederasty, which means an older man taking on a young boy as an apprentice who he also bangs like a screen door, was mistranslated to general homosexuality.
So because male Pedophiles in Rome had their way, adult women in love are sinners in the new Testament.
On second thought I may be thinking Galatians. I don’t have a Bible on hand to check.
Fun fact: that rule sort of makes sense with the time, though it’s hilariously misunderstood. I mean, look at it in a modern view-point. These days, we can afford – and have the technology – to do several loads of washing in one day; that way we can separate our lights, our darks, and in some cases different materials. Wool, for example, will shrink unless it’s on the right setting (and even then washing it is a dumb idea). I was once told that this rule in Leviticus was basically “dude, only wear one material at a time, so that when you wash it, you don’t fudge it up”.
….there’s still a lot of rubbish rules in Leviticus, but it’s interesting to work out where some of them came from.
I thought it was that mixed-fabric clothing (that’s a mixed weave of wool and linen, not woollen garments and linen garments) was a particular identifier for another tribal group, whom the Israelites were forbidden from mixing with – I forget which one. So it would be a cultural identity thing.
On a quick google, though, I don’t see this coming up. The top-listed commentaries seem to relate it more to other prohibitions against mixing of different types of thing (seed, animals etc) – so again, related to maintaining Israel’s cultural purity, though more obliquely. There’s also something about the high priest being the only one allowed to wear it, as his ephod is specifically stated to be mixed-weave, but I’unno.
My Gran had some things she always said about the Bible: she liked the book of Ecclesiastes, Paul just didn’t understand how the real world worked, and you’re better off just leaving Revelations alone.
I think Paul was rather detached from real life and didn’t really understand human nature.
I was taught that Paul was expecting the Second Coming to happen within his lifetime (or shortly thereafter), so a lot of his teachings are made with a “Do this for the time being” sort of subtext that his audience might’ve gotten but readers today really don’t.
My sticking point was why the letters of Paul were canonical teachings of the church instead of just a “This is how the early church did things” history lesson like several books in the OT.
Argon, that is a very good point about Paul expecting the Second Coming in his life time. I had forgotten about that. Definitely helps to have some context.
If you’re reading the KJV, then revelations has some wonderful and evocative language that’s well worth a read. Though the narrarative basically boils down to “wooh, I think I’ve eaten one too many of those mushrooms. Gonna be trippin’ hard for a while.”
Part psychedelic trip, part sci-fi. Really! The city of New Jerusalem is described very much like a huge space station descending on Earth in a cloud of thunder and smoke, it’s hallways lit by strange lights that needs no oil.
There’s an argument that at least two of the so-called Pauline epistles are not by Paul at all, and the main support is that in the others he’s all “hey say hi to these awesome female apostles and and pillars of the congregation who I will now call out by name” and “hey you know your mom and grandma already taught you all you need to know, but I’d like to elaborate a bit,” but the epistles that are supposedly faked are realllly not about liking women as people, at all.
The other main argument is that that run-on sentence I wrote up there? That’s the tl;dr version of a Pauline sentence. The so-called faked epistles are much less prolix. IOW, too well written to be by Paul.
It’s closer to about half of the books attributed to Paul are not actually by Paul. The Pastorals (Timothy 1/2 and Titus) are definitely not, but there’s good arguments against a few others being authentic.
Yeah, it all gets a bit messy with the Pauline epistles. As well as the disputed authorship you mention (although 1 Corinthians is generally accepted to be genuine), there are issues like textual interpretation: I’ve repeatedly seen the argument that several of the more regressive ‘rules’ (viz. the bits that fundies like to quote while ignoring all the radical-inclusion, love-is-the-answer stuff) are actually Paul quoting his opponents before knocking down their arguments in the following section – absent punctuation or explicit ‘they say’ markers, how do you tell except by inference? Which I think tracks with how those sections seem to stick out as inconsistent with his other writing.
Then there are issues of cultural context… such as the suggestion that “a woman’s hair is her glory” could be translated as “a woman’s hair is her testicle“, because the anatomical thinking of the day was that a woman’s hair was essentially a sperm magnet, drawing it in and up and increasing her fertility. (I am NOT making this up.)
Ironically enough, though, one thing Paul can’t be accused of is conservatism. To steal a quote from Fred Clark via James McGrath, “Quoting Paul to defend exclusion is like quoting Tony Soprano to defend pacifism.”
Eh, you’re a bit off the mark. Paul never met Jesus (in the flesh); persecuted Christians, not Jews (…in the modern meaning, since the early Christians were Jews); and had his road-to-Damascus conversion experience post-crucifixion.
As to Saint Stop-Having-Fun… that’s a whole other kettle of fish and many, many books have been written on the subject (see also comments above). But he certainly wasn’t bitter about Jesus’ death.
Saul didn’t persecute Jews, except inasmuch as Christians were heretical Jews until he took over. He was a Jew with Roman citizenship, and he persecuted the followers of Christ until his episode on the road to Damascus. See Acts 9:1–29.
Contrary to what you might think from the teachings of Homer Simpson, Jebus wasn’t a person who had a word to learn. Jebus was a Canaanite city conquered by King David. See the First Book of Chronicles, chapter 11, paragraphs 4 to 8. Jebus is usually said to be Jerusalem.
Big Toe Daddy’s thing about women’s hair sounds like one of the many bees in the bonnet of Saint Paul. I’m thinking in particular of his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, paragraphs 14 & 15. After rambling semi-coherently for thirteen paragraphs, he writes: Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.
My translation: “Ew ew ew; stop being all gross and icky. Go, like, grow your hair long or something so I can’t ever see you naked. Ew.” Also, “Guys, cut your hair shorter so I can see your naked bodies better,” I guess.
You have to understand that hair is actually serious business to people like this. These are the people who lobby to get “unnatural” hair colors and “distracting” haircuts banned in schools, along with the equally “distracting piercings. They genuinely believe a girl wearing her hair in an undercut or something similar is an affront to The Correct Way and a rejection of belief. I’m not even joking. When my mother briefly went through her Evangelical phase, she was not quite drinking enough Kool-Aid to protest me having blue hair (I was twelve and it was a reward for straight A’s), and the church told her I could no longer attend the youth group until I fixed my hair, and pretty much all the kids in the youth group were forbidden by their parents to speak to me any more.
Thus began my mother’s slow realization that these people weren’t quite right in the head.
And those comments weren’t even religious based.
My mother, a staunch atheist, had the exact same view on hair colours and piercings, and “different” hair cuts. After years of my younger sister going through the whole gamut of colours and styles though, she has softened up a bit, but it was the source of many a heated arguments at first.
Turns out being opposed to “different” things isn’t limited to religion. To atheists, the struggle is not between Heavenly and the Devil, but between “Normality” and “Insanity/delinquency”
Of all the ways a kid can rebel, a haircut (no mater how extreme) is the least dangerous and permanent a kid can have. Worst damage possible? Photos they may regret later in life; and who the hell has high school photos that aren’t awful in some way, seriously?
What’s that? You want to dye your hair pink, [Daughter]? Yeah, go for it; it’ll be cute as hell. You want a mohawk? Augh, no, my baby, protest, protest, all right, fine, I guess, but you’ll regret it. (Can’t give in too easily, heh. If she wants to rebel I’d rather she think she’s rebelling with her hair than I just say yes immediately to whatever extreme thing she wants to do with it and have her try to rebel further with something actually dangerous like drugs).
Having said that, piercings? Hey, if you’re old enough to keep them clean while they heal, have at ‘er; but be aware facial piercings may impact your employability (as will facial tattoos). But whatever; you can take out the ring or what for work if you need to, and again, it’s not actually harmful. Tattoos? Be old enough and really sure the design has deep meaning and will for a very long time, because it’s going to last for a very long time. No, you can’t get one with Justin Bieber.
I really don’t get people who won’t let their older teens do things like experiment with their hair or get all shocked by piercings and tats and things. Who cares? As a parent it’s my job to point out that a lot of places that would otherwise hire you may not, based solely on the piercings, and their customers’ perceived reactions to that; it might be nice to have more options available than just the funky cafe down the road. Tattoos? Hey, if it’s something that has very deep meaning to you, again, have at ‘er. Or, hell, if you just want one, sure, why not; I’m not your mother. I’d advise waiting until you’re in your late 20’s or older, though, simply because they are more or less permanent (sure, you can laser them off, but that’s prohibitively expensive) so you want to (I figure) make sure it’s not something you’ll change your mind about in five years. Five years goes by really, really quickly.
My partner’s little brother went through a major death metal phase in high school, in which he grew his wheat-blond hair past his waist. It was friggin gorgeous. His mom approved, and also bought him ripped band tshirts at goodwill. He was so disappointed. 😜
Both my daughters were free, and in some cases encouraged, to define their own look. The only limits were things that were irreversible (like tattoos) or would interfere with their education. The younger once wanted colored streaks in her hair. When I suggested that the streaks should be horizontal, I got “the look.” Men first learn about “the look” from their wives. Those blessed with daughters sometimes get “the look” from several sides at once. It can be frightening, or amusing, but whatever you do, don’t laugh. That won’t end well.
When I was fifteen I went and bleached a streak of hair (to look kinda like Rogue from the X-Men movies). I thought it would anger my parents, something along the lines of “that’ll show’em!”. My mom said it looked adorable and my dad didn’t even notice. I was sooo disappointed. In hindsight it was actually quite hilarious. I think, if I ever have a kid and they decide to rebel in a similar way, I’ll pretend to be outraged just so they don’t do something worse.
Yeah, never understood why parents so often care about superfluous things like hair, clothes, etc., are they all expecting little “Mini-Me”s?
I got flack from wearing tweed jackets even! I mean, TWEED. I didn’t wear it to “rebell”, I wore it because it seemed mature, stylish and comfortable. I never understood why some kids go through “rebellions” either, why would they want to ? For me, growing up, the problem was that my parents mistook everything I did as a rebellion, I just wanted to live in peace. They still let me, and my sister, dress and style like we wanted, they just complained about it and let us know how “ridiculous” everyone would think we were. I even got a lot of crap for being Christian, they tended to look at it as a form of insanity. Yes, there are fundamentalist atheists as well. They have nothing against religious people, as long as they “don’t really believe” in what they are saying. And they can be just as conservative as many Christian fundies on many areas, they just happen to think Christians are just as dangerous as Christians believe devil worshippers to be.
Eh, while my favourite Becky design is still the one from last year, I think her new haircut was an important visual indicator of Becky trying to affirm her new identity; that she’s putting her restrictive bullshit behind and becoming All New Becky.
And for me, the complaint was really about the way Willis drew her hair, I didn’t think it looked like the real-world hair-style he was trying to copy at all. But the way he draws it now looks much better.
Because you remind her of your father. Jesus may have worn a beard (“is there womanfolk among us?”), but being parthogenetic offspring, had XX chromosomes and consequently was actually female.
Hair length is a big deal to some of the fringier conservative Christian sects. For example the Duggars have been followers of a guy named Bill Gothard, and one of Gothard’s things is that women should have long, curly hair. In a way I’m surprised Becky was allowed to have he hair style he originally did. Joyce’s hair seems closer to the kind of style Ross might think is Biblical.
You forgot the “best” part: that Gothard systematically molested the young women who were sent to/chosen by him for special counseling–and he specifically picked out the ones with long, curly hair.
Honestly pretty impressed with Becky, even if it didn’t work. I know in that situation I’d be too scared/sad/helpless to even think of trying to distract him while the cavalry came through.
Becky’s shown a few times that she cares for people before herself, like asking if Dina was alright, or getting in the car to prevent Joyce from getting shot.
And it makes the religious allegory very interesting. Becky is willing to sacrifice herself to protect and save all around her, whereas all Toedad knows how to do is threaten her and try and kill the key part that makes her her.
Goddamnit, he wasn’t supposed to notice Amazigirl. He needs to learn how to actually stay distracted when somebody is trying to distract him. THIS IS WHY NOBODY LIKES YOU, TOEDAD.
Huh. How long have we had that “beginning of week” button on the homepage?
Also, hangups on gender roles are on thing, but hairstyle condemnation is the first thing he has to say? Fuck you, Ross. I’m increasingly convinced he’s a lost cause, which makes him all the more tragic.
I am curious how Amazi-Girl will be processed by Ross’s worldview. Quickly as just another sinner? Or will there be a few moments of WTF? (Or whatever the appropriate equivalent would be.)
…too revealing? They literally cover her from neck to toe. Joyce and Becky get to wear pants, so I have a hard time picturing him being offended by visible leg-shapes.
…scratch that, he’s proven himself to be less than rational at the moment. I can picture it all too well.
We’ll see.
Tight=Revealing. While I don’t necessarily agree with it, it is why people generally wear tights under another layer, so it’s not incredibly weird a leap.
Are you sure you meant 1:8 ? Cause that says:
“Neither their silver nor their gold Will be able to deliver them On the day of the LORD’S wrath; And all the earth will be devoured In the fire of His jealousy, For He will make a complete end, Indeed a terrifying one, Of all the inhabitants of the earth.”
I’m not sure how that applies.
Never mind, I accidentally typed 18 instead of 8.
“And it shall come to pass in the day of the LORD’S sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king’s children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel.”
And I see “strange apparel” is translated other places as “foreign attire/garments” and even as “following pagan customs”
It’s simple. He will view her as someone who is looking to take Becky out of his control. He is willing to hurt her over that (though he said he hoped he would not have to hurt anyone). He also made it sound like he was willing to kill Becky to prevent her from sinning anymore, so if he thinks she might be successfully taken away from him he might go for the extremest choice possible.
Yup. Yet another pokemans type come to forestall his sacred mission and steal her away to the lands of sin and Hell. And as he’s said before, he’s not going to let her leave him again. No matter what…
His view of AG may depend on what Becky’s mother looked like. If Becky’s mother was a freckled redhead, he may see AG as Satan coming to steal his daughter. It would also bode ill for Becky since he may see her as a replacement. if Becky’s Mom was a dark eyed brunette, he may see an avenging spirit coming to defend her daughter. Otherwise, he may be thinking “I’d be on the highway by now if it weren’t for these meddling kids.”
He even had a friendly wrestling match with her girlfriend, a right of passage he usually preserved for his daughter’s boyfriend but changed his rules because he respects his daughters decision. That’s what I’m assuming he was doing right?
Too many parents are only too happy to lose the child they do have in their demands to only love the child they wanted to have and thought they had. And they are only too happy to torment said child when it refuses to play along.
Yeeeeeeep. Fortunately I have a kickass uncle (who married into the family and therefore didn’t grow up with their insanity) who was like “Put up with it for now, use them for what you need (like tuition money, etc), and then leave and never speak to them again.”
Took several years for me to wrap my head around that but if your parents, who are supposed to be the people who love and support you more than anybody else in the world, can’t love you for who you are then they’re not worth you loving them.
*DS9 spoilers follow*
Toedad is an unambiguously bad person, but I don’t think he compares to Kai Winn. Unless his off-screen activities include bombing schools for teaching science, assassinating his competition at work, or stabbing his oldest friend to death.
He probably was part of the stoning party for his wife after she dyed her hair. Sad, but it needed to be done before Becky got to see her. Still seems to have affected her womanhood, though.
Hair is the first major battle for self-expression and identity a lot of the time. A lot of parents, when it becomes clear that the sprog might not be 100% heteronormative get very controlling about hair and thus reclaiming hair as an expression of self often is the first key part of living openly and honestly.
This is also why hair is often strongly culturally regulated and that’s before factoring extremely narrow gender role expectations of the type seen in Toedad’s church (there’s a reason that Becky’s smoking hot ‘do was so initially startling to Joyce).
Screwed. We are all screwed. Well, at least toedad is about to be screwed when that masked vigalante catches up to him. And he’ll be toetally screwed when the rebel motor bike chick and his sinner daughter’s bestie catch up! This is getting good…
Yes, the fecal matter has indeed struck the oscillating air transport device. Depending on what toedick does next, this could be very bad. So Sal is going to arrive in the nick of time and save the day?
It’s a dvd with the “It gets better” PTSA. She’s gonna force Toe dad to watch it until he either changes his mind or kill himself from the nonstop viewings.
NOW CORRECT ME IF I’M WRONG but I just feel like Jesus would probably have some hangups about swinging a loaded gun around in order to get your way. I mean I may be wrong. The bible doesn’t have anything specifically against it since guns weren’t invented yet. But you are indeed a sinner, man. And only he who is without sin should load the first shotgun.
True enough. It’s not unfeminine to Toedad because women don’t have it; it’s unfeminine because how dare his property choose to express herself in a way that he and Jesus didn’t explicitly approve.
Agree. I think it is a very unflattering cut myself. Agree, not many can carry it off. I guess she was needing a physical manifestation of her new life with a new haircut. (thought she should have spent the money smarter, but see why she did it I guess after it was pointed out).
That was not a well thought out plan Becky. He was looking straight ahead with divine fury, and you drew his attention to the middle of the windshield.
“Your hair is your womanhood”….but she had a pretty short cut before….in terms of total hair retention, it’s cut a bit on the side, but more so styled.
In Toedad’s culture, gayness isn’t an orientation, it’s a failure of gender roles. Gay men is what happens if your kid ends up too girly and you fail to beat it out of them. And lesbians are really just confused and want to be men and so start to adopt male roles like dating women or short haircuts.
As such, her cool dykey haircut and her whole identity is, in her eyes, an intentional rejection of her womanhood and her womanly duties and that she will abandon haircut and identity once she has been carefully taught to embrace her “femininity” again.
This is also why professional homophobes of this culture don’t seem to separate out trans people and gay people very much. To people like Toedad and sadly a large number of individuals out there, trans people are just extreme examples of gay people. Basically, what happens when you gay so hard you lose track of your “correct gender” in your fealty to the “wrong roles”.
But that haircut is neither associated with lesbians nor men, but it’s still a hair cut, and to seem people, even a “regular” hair cut is an attack on her womanhood. The short style she already had could’ve been caused by either very slow hair growth, or some kind of hair accident, or maybe she cut it that way after leaving home. I know a lot of strict religious folks have hair down to their knees.
A lot depends on the specific flavour of his views. However, I suspect that his perception of ‘womanhood’ is a long-haired, barefoot mother, teacher and home-maker who is either nursing or pregnant and who has absolutely no real identity other than being someone’s daughter or wife.
I don’t get it since it doesn’t seem like Becky’s hair was that long in the first place. It’s not like she had long flowing locks before her haircut…….. ._ .”
What’s in Amazi-girl’s glove pouches? Spearmint gum, of course! After all you want fresh breath when you go into action against a kidnaper. They’re the right size for gum.
AG is a lot closer in that last frame. Is it the back window before she crashes into the rear plastic or the side window as she slides past at previous speed dodging the car and passing it? Is the look on her face curiosity of the car’s contents or impending doom?
Ugh, that dehumanising. This must have been said before but what Ross is doing is the definition of objectification. Becky was, in his mind, an object called Ideal Daughter defined by certain visible characteristics he took for granted. Since those characteristics aren’t there any more, she is now another object, one he can’t even name, a Whatever instead of a Who. Maybe Becky is starting to realise this now since the threat of the gun isn’t at the forefront of her mind, and it’s pretty heartbreaking to have to come to terms with.
Having lived through it, it’s the worst. To realize that one’s own parents don’t want to get to know the you that is and accept you, but are only interested in your serviceability to serve as “perfect son” or “perfect daughter” or even just a placeholder child, there to be seen and never mention the objectification.
It’s alienating and brutal to think that all the connections one thought one made with one’s folks was really to some imaginary object and all this hate was just oozing under the surface waiting to come out. I honestly wouldn’t wish that feeling on my worst enemy.
As a religious man, Ross, I can say this: You are a bigoted waste of space and I am hoping you go to prison so Becky can live a life without some over bearing wacko controlling her
On one hand I’d love to hear his racist comment over the dreadlocks (because of course in his mind dreadlocks = black thugs. Probably), but on the other hand, I don’t think dreads would suit Becky at all.
And if she did call 911 — and they answered — everything that follows is being recorded.
ToeDad, thou hast just plucked thy tongue from thy mouth, and fashioned thyself a sling for thine ass.
I originally thought she was tapping toedad, as a way to distract him and get him involved in a conversation. Calling 911 probably makes more sense however.
It’s not, it’s Ross being a monster and condemning Becky for not conforming to what is “Christian”.
That being said, I prefer long hair on women, but I have met girls that looked very good with short hair. But again, this isn’t a matter of preference, it’s a matter of Ross being a giant piece of shit.
As is to be expected, Fundie’s a bit of a hypocrite. 1 Corinthians 11:15 is the most common verse quoted requiring women to have long hair. The later verses saying that if you object, there is no such custom in the house of God is ignored. He also seems to have forgotten Ephesians 6:4 where it says to not bring your children to anger.
As for AG, she could easily be in a world of hurt very soon. Stepping on the brakes, or swerving wildly, could create a high speed wipeout.
So, womanhood is defined by hair? By hair??? HAIR?????
Dead folicles jutting out of your head? That defines a woman?
I know this jerkwad is still living in the 50s, and using gender-roles from the Middle-Ages… but where in the Bible does it say that long-hair is the definition of womanhood? Not a uterus? Boobs? Or even just asking the person in question (because there are a lot of women that don’t have a uterus or boobs). Are cancer patients no longer women?
I hate this a-hole with the fury of 1,000 suns. Anyone who identifies as a non-woman has no right, or ability, to judge what “Womanhood” is. Including me, and especially not him.
I actually had a counselor (male, mid-60’s who was doing marriage counseling with me and my husband) who, when he found out that my house is a mess (because that kind of happens in raising a young kid with Autism), actually said, “But a woman’s identity is how she keeps her house.” So my identity is my housekeeping. Not my Master’s degree. Not my intelligence that got my degree. Not any other characteristic that actually does define me. No, my identity is in how I keep my house. Granted, my house reflects my personality, but it’s not who I am. And later he said that a man likes a clean house. It took everything in me not to say, “Then the man can clean it.”
On the other hand, the counseling was somewhat effective in that my husband decided that after watching the counselor, that was definitely not the sort of man he wanted to be and we got out of that office.
Joys of being a woman and running into sexist crap where some men apparently think they know more about being women than women do.
I think he may have had a screw loose and some personal issues (like an apparent dislike for women that we only found out about when he got more comfortable with me and my husband than was professional) that he needed to work through before trying to counsel others.
I totally would have said “Then the man can clean it.”
This is also my general reaction to people who claim I MUST have children cause “that’s what women do” and “what if your husband wants one.”
(bonus points if the jerkoff in question says something along the lines of “you owe it to the world because your parents had you” since I am in fact adopted ^<__<^;; )
Also, anyone who thinks wives are just glorified maids need to be punched in the face til they choke on their own teeth.
A lot of the hyper-conservative-officially-non-denominational Christian sects, the kind that expect couples to wait until marriage for their first kiss (like the Duggars from that TLC show), see long wavy hair as a major marker of femininity. Look up Gothard and the Quiverfull movement and be horrified. But I don’t know how far that ideal extends to conservative but still nominally normal groups like Joyce and Becky’s community. Becky’s her hair was still pretty short before her big chop, after all, and he let her go to college/wear shorts.
That’s “expect couples to wait until marriage for their first kiss” and make excuses for incest, child abuse and rape.
But kissing before marriage is right out.
“Becky’s her hair was still pretty short before her big chop, after all, and he let her go to college/wear shorts.”
Another thought struck me: What if Toedad actually used to be much more “liberal” before she went to college, and all this is a result of him believing that it was exactly that, “letting” her have short hair, wear shorts, etc., that lead to her “corruption”, and now he’s thinking he has to double back with extreme prejudice to “get her back” ?
In the US he is driving on the side of the road that puts his left eye on the side of the driver side door. When he turned his head to the right to talk to Becky, his left eye is now closest to the rear view mirror. And that’s how he spotted AG.
Becky’s plan backfired. She distracted him from staring straight ahead.
Okay, I was admitantly secretly holding out for some minute chance of Toedad coming around to having a moment of coming around to accepting Becky for who she is and allowing her to be her own person, and bless her, she tried to talk him down and get him to see himself from an outside perspective.
But, nope, he had his chance and he f**ked it up. At this point, if death or serious injury is in his cards, let it happen.
Swerve. He just got a glance at Amazi-Girl; I don’t think he knows that she’s hitching a ride from him on her skateboard.
Otherwise, he’d probably stop and Amazi-Girl will have to jump onto the car, run to catch up with her board, and skid to a stop in front of the car like a badass.
He might speed up. The possibility that a “mere female” poses any threat won’t cross what’s left of his mind. His response may be to simply drive away from the nuisance.
Hmmm… you may be right. I thought she was tapping herself (on the arm) indicating for him to pay attention (to distract)
Maybe she *is* tapping 911 (ergo 3 taps)
It might alternatively be explained as hotheadedness, but you’re right, there wouldn’t be much sense in calling out Toedad’s misdeed like that without cause if she wanted to keep things calm.
I know Mr. Willis has said no main character dies in DoA.
But, there are worse things that death as Stephen King reminds us.
Someone has noted that he pretty much has 3 choices now: slam on the brakes, speed up, or start weaving back and forth. Any one of which is going to screw Amber big time.
I hope that whatever is in that wrist pouch is an answer to what’s coming.
Either that, or Sal & Joyce just appear on the road and further distract him.
Which again, could be worse thing to happen. Or not.
Last I heard, no characters will be permanently removed from the comic in a manner that is reminiscent of death, because it accomplishes the same thing. So no comas or anything like that.
The only thing I’ve seen, is a link to Willis answering a comment many years ago, specifically about Dina, that there would be no deaths this time around, a single sentence. I’d like to see links to his other comments to see what exactly has been said.
And that’s the link I was talking about, it’s only one sentence, said as reply to someone worrying specifically about Dina, nothing about comas, nothing about “strip time doesn’t allow for reactions to serious trauma or death”
I’m almost positive I’ve seen it on either another strip or tumblr that no one was dying. (Besides Dina wasn’t nearly as developed way back then. So if he won’t kill off Dina for reasons, than some of those reasons can be extrapolated to the rest of the cast).
With every day we’re getting closer and closer to the Amazi-Girl/Sal “I hate you but we need to work together to defeat this terrible dude” team-up I’ve always dreamed of.
I’ve thought for a while that it’s a huge self-identity issue. Basically, if Becky doesn’t fit into his neat pigeon-hole for ‘daughter’, he can’t really keep his mental structure of his life and personal reality standing intact. People who have self-identities that are so weak tend to be more dangerous as even the smallest thing can bloom into an existential crisis.
Pretty sure he was about to say, “We are all sinners”. Which is either an acknowledgement of how far he’s gone over this, or else an expression of the “Nobody’s perfect” or “NO ONE CAN EVER STOP SINNING TRY HARDER AUGH” attitude. Not sure which. Probably the last one. You know. That whole “fear of God” thing.
A quick deceleration will solve all your vigilante needs! Wait for the sound of the impact to rapidly accelerate an additional ten miles an hour, and just like the second coming of Christ, no more vigilante. Call in the next ten minutes and get the free gift! The best selling book “Everything you didn’t know you didn’t know”.
I mean, so many badass points for trying her ever-loving best to distract Toedad, even though engaging that asshole only means more emotional abuse and involves putting herself in a really dangerous situation. She’s incredibly strong and it’s so sad to see how much these events are just testing that strength to its breaking point.
Also Panel 5. She’s still defiant. Even beaten, broken, defeated, she still refuses to be meek about it and is willing to stand up for herself and who she is. Her dad has rejected everything real about her and threatened her life, but she still advocates for herself and reasons with him as a person…
And that’s painfully familiar for me. Literally begging a family member to just see who I am to accept that and let me do the hard work of educating them and helping them grow. Hoping that somehow beyond the painful reality, that there is some sliver of genuine familial love that would poke its head out at some point. Sadly, much like Becky, it didn’t work out.
Others have already noted Panel 4 and the whole thing in his circles where queerness is a sign of failed gender roles more than an actual orientation, so I’ll leave it there.
And panel 2 and 3. She’s so genuinely hurt there, not because she doesn’t know he’s an asshole, but rather because it shows just how little he regards her and her experiences as even really real. The fact that he stole her from people who love her and the hope for a full sustainable life where she could be happy, threatening and hurting everyone she loved, and to him, it’s as inconsequential as swatting away a few demons in a video game. All her internal suffering, the full horror of what he is doing to her. In his head, nope, it’s all about getting his property back, proving his mettle as “man of the house”, and beginning her rehabilitation from her “gender confusion” (I know that isn’t actually what is happening in boring old reality, but it’s all Toedad sees).
And that’s rough to experience first hand. To really have someone who claimed to love you unconditionally not even regard your life experiences as something worth acknowledging or respecting is… rough. And it hurts, even if you’ve braced yourself emotionally…
I know I tend to drift into TMI a lot in the Becky sections, but it is really profound to me how much sections like this feel healing to what I’ve experienced. So yeah, thank you Willis.
I’m more and more impressed by Becky for every strip. She is strong and defiant and doesn’t loose herself even in the face of the asshole who pretends to be her father.
That last attempt to reach out is heart wrenching, because you know that she WOULD accept just a tiny bit less abusive father in her life, if he just allowed her. But no, he can’t even give her that, he can’t stop short to guns and correction camps and kidnapping, even for the sake of his daughter.
I’m continuously awed by your analysis and experience, and I’m happy that you share that with us and that this emotional roller coaster Willis is taking us on helps you dealing with those experiences.
I think that the thing most of note here is that Ross doesn’t really see Becky as a distinct individual, only as an extension of his own personal identity – a possession that he calls ‘my daughter’, who must look in a certain way and act in a certain way. That’s a bad sign. I have a feeling we’re starting to see the same psychology that leads fathers to murder their children rather than hand them over to their wives after losing a custody hearing.
Meanwhile, why is Amazi-Girl so shocked? Maybe she’s seen Sal and Joyce coming the other way on a chicken run?
She’s never ever worn glasses as Amazi-Girl. I assume contacts and/or non-prescription lenses. (Maybe she learned secret identity-ing from Clark Kent?)
Or a traffic jam, which Toedad failed to notice, since he was distracted by Becky trying to get him from noticing Amazi-Girl, but which Amazi-Girl would definitively see.
AG is shocked for one simple reason. She’s made eye contact with Fundie and found herself looking into the abyss. As we all know, when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you. She also knows, as Shakespeare said, that the eyes are the windows to the soul, and can feel the blackness and hatred devouring the soul that’s looking back at her. Or, it could be that she’s just shocked, and more than a little afraid, now that she’s been discovered.
And he’s very much shown to default to violence and threats when he doesn’t get his way. I can’t even imagine what he would have done in an alternative universe where Becky’s mom tried to leave or divorce him (not that she likely would. That culture views divorce very negatively and as the responsibility of the woman to prevent. In fact, often times, even if the woman is being abused or the children are being beaten or raped, the woman is often encouraged to turn a blind eye and “do the work” to save the marriage by not just the husband and the culture, but by the pastor as well.).
That reminds me of something he said, about how he couldn’t save her Mom, but he can save her. And now I’m wondering exactly what the circumstances of her Mom’s death were, and if he had a hand in it… D:
More like the Marvel Universe. Jesus has 5 origin stories and a lot of extra-canonical texts. You can believe just about anything and call yourself a Christian.
This is the best description I’ve found. “Think of it like a movie. The Torah is the first one, and the New Testament is the sequel. Then the Qu’ran comes out, and it retcons the last one like it never happened. There’s still Jesus, but he’s not the main character anymore, and the messiah hasn’t shown up yet. Jews like the first movie, but ignored the sequels, Christians think you need to watch the first two, but the third one doesn’t count, Muslims think the third one was the best, and Mormons liked the second one so much they retconned the whole thing and started writing fanfiction that doesn’t fit with ANY of the series canon.”
The book of Mormon is sort of like a prequel as well, akin to the Star Wars prequels maybe ? There’s a cool scene in the beginning, where one of the lost tribes of Israel gets schematics from God to build submarines in order to cross the Atlantic to go to America and become Indians. Really! I even think they describe periscopes, and this was written before Jules Verne.
I don’t think she will, but I hope she keeps arguing with him like she hasn’t seen Amazigirl and also distracts him with it. Especially because ‘we’re all sinners’ sounds likes a great time to be like ‘well maybe you with the threatening and kidnapping more than me, assface’
There are two outcomes to this:
1. Toedad jams on the brakes and causes Amber to collide with the car. We then see him looking back as he attempts to reverse over her, with Becky struggling with him before Sal and Joyce arrive.
2. Toedad swerves off the road in an attempt to shake Amber off, and crashes into a tree. The hospital scene later on is for Becky, who is injured from the crash
Third outcome. Sal and Joyce arrive now. No point of having them on their way if they aren’t arriving in time to affect events. They can save the day. Sal can save AG and Joyce can save Becky. Toedad heads to the hospital after the car crash. Police will come to take him away and we never see him again.
Why would they come to visit Toedad in the hospital? I’m pretty sure Becky wants nothing more to do with him at this point, or at least won’t after this. Something’s going to happen to one of the main cast for there to be a hospital scene, be it Amber, Becky, or the duo on the motorcycle.
The most likely explanation is that Becky is hurt too; I can’t see Ross stopping unless the car is disabled or forced to crash in some way. Either way, Becky is going to need a neck-brace and Ross may be on life support until they finish fixing the damage from hitting the steering wheel at 30mph.
Considering he’s not wearing a seatbelt, I’d say that’s a fairly likely outcome. At most, Becky would probably suffer from some bad whiplash from the impact, while Ross would be leaving a toe-shaped imprint in the window.
Yeah, Ross, let’s talk about this one. You have kidnapped your daughter at gunpoint, taken her away from the life she tried to build, waved a gun at her best friend (you know, the daughter of your neighbours) and denied any say she might have about how to live her life, who to love or what to do with herself. Now after a few moments of sullen silence she turns to you and ask you to open up. Do you…
a) Tell her that all that is done is for a good cause? Say something about her immportal soul, the dangers of sin, tell her that the hell you inflict upon her now is temporal to save her from the eternal one?
b) Tell her that you actually love her and that all that you do is because you care for her?
c) Reassure her that her friends will be OK, that you didn’t hurt her girlfriend, that Joyce parents will take care of her, that you ACTUALLY never meant to hurt anyone despite the gun?
If you had answered any of those things I would utterly despise you because of the sheer hipocricy and idiocity in those statements, but you went with
d) A cold, unyielding statement that you will take away yet something else from Becky – one of the last things of her, in fact – that you will inflict another layer of control and that there is NOTHING she can do about it.
FUCK YOU ROSS YOU FUCKING FUCK… no, do you know what, I’m actually not that angry about this one because it tells Becky something ver important. You are still afraid of her. You are still afraid that you can’t control her. You are afraid that she will slip out of your grip yet again. The last time she did it took her ONE weekend to get a haircut and a girlfriend and friends and learn about evolution and start applying for jobs and to get a life and you had to bring a fucking GUN TO A SCHOOL to get her back, and now you are afraid that if you slip even for a moment, despite your gun and your church and your strength and your car and your money and your parental authorothy, you will never get her back again.
TELL YOU FUCKING WHAT, ROSS? YOU ARE RIGHT. YOU ARE DAMNED RIGHT TO BE AFRAID OF LOOSING BECKY FOR GOOD BECAUSE YOU ALREADY HAVE.And if you don’t understand what you see in the mirror, there is a fellow turd in a nearby hospital who could tell you about it. It’s the sight of YOU LOOSING.
Points for trying, Becky. Both for trying to distract him and for trying to reach out to him. Sorry about him being to much of a shit for it to work though. And wow… panel 5 Becky is AWESOME. You go Becky. Get mad.This shit has not treated you anything even close to how a parent treats a child and you have NO reason whatsoever to reagard him as a father any longer.
Just to make it clear, Ross.YOU HAD A DAUGHTER.EVEN NOW YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO HAVE A DAUGHTER INSTEAD OF A KIDNAPPING VICTIM. Your daughter was fun and loud and rad and cool and could have introduced you to her adorable girlfriend and shown you around campus and babbled about dinosaurs and you could have been there to share that joy with her IF YOU HAD NOT BEEN THAT BIG OF A PIECE OF SHIT.
And the thing is, it’s still not a fact he’s lost her. If somehow the situation turns around – he gets arrested, he lands in a hospital – and he doesn’t have power over her, so she doesn’t have to run to retain basic autonomy…
She’ll take care of him.
It’s plainly obvious that despite everything, Becky still thinks of him as her dad, someone she loves, someone who’s a member of her family.
If there’s any turn of tide from “I NEED to run”, he still will have another chance…
And the thing is that he won’t ever stop being a threat to her. Even if he is locked up forever and ever, he’s going to leave his impact in her life, the anxiety of his parole, the memory of all those closest to her being put in danger, the pain of having one’s family reject her so strongly. And a spiking anxiety any time it looks like he’s about to be paroled.
Yeah, this is also why Ethan’s mom is so awful. Unlike Toedad, she still feigns love and care for him, but just the bare minimum before drowning him in bigotry and a complete lack of real care and support for the child he is. And so he’s less likely to make a complete break because there’s just enough of a sliver for the “but she’s my mom” programming to kick in and make him be willing to just accept the emotional abuse as the price of interaction.
I’m just waiting for toedad (ross) to be hawled away in hand cuffs.
kidnapping, illegal discharge of a firearm, public endangerment with a firearm. And his daughter is right… hey ross, if you would have just accepted her for who she is, you wouldn’t be facing jail time right now.
if society would just accept people for who they are, no more discrimination, etc.
The issue is that we still need to draw lines between what is acceptable (say, being non-hereronormative), and what is not (say, pedophilia). And as soon as you have those lines there, there will be arguments about exactly where they should be drawn.
I myself think the most rational place to draw the line is on this side of “Is everyone involved a consenting adult? Then fuck off,” but there are others who get really upset about what configuration of genitalia goes where on whom. Personally, I think obsessing that hard over someone else’s genitals is pretty weird, but there you go.
For interest: I found Libby Anne’s Tale of Two Boxes to be very useful in understanding and explaining the way conservatives think on this one. I’m likewise inclined to side-eye conservatives’ obsession with Other People’s Genitals…
(I’m in the ‘progressive’ camp, obvs, and would prefer the conservative boxes to be labelled “what they think God forbids/allows” – I don’t really think God cares a flying fig which genitalia are involved as long as respect and consent are – but some nuance is lost for the sake of brevity.)
Yeah, I’ve never understood “My religion forbids this so therefore you can’t do it.” Well, okay, if it’s my religion too; but if it’s not, then bug off. You know?
I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again. I’m convinced that Ross is of fairly low intelligence, in terms of average people. So low intelligence that he has a difficult time properly and accurately assessing the consequences of his words and actions. This is worrying because it is entirely possible that he will do something stupid, illegal and maybe even dangerous without really having considered the consequences.
Damnit Becky, never interrupt an enemy while he’s making a mistake. Also, don’t discount AG yet. Just because she’s been rattled, doesn’t mean she’s lost.
Fuck you. Ross, now you’re making me regret my long hair. My past-my-hips hair I’ve spent decades growing out.
You know what, Ross? It used to be a buzz-cut. Down to a quarter of an inch. And that was fine. Fuck you and your “womanhood”.
See, this is why even being female sometimes annoys the crap out of me. Fuck what my gender is. Who cares? It has almost nothing to do with who I am. The me inside doesn’t have one clearly-defined gender and that is just perfectly fine, thanks; I just really like having long hair. Also I got really tired of stylists fucking it up. Like, every single time, man.
Okay, so my prediction: Amber is panicking because she’s seen Sal’s bike coming the other way on a collision course. Ross dodges instinctively, goes into a tree and is injured because he isn’t wearing his seatbelt.
Sal and Amber get into a stupid fight over whose fault is the crash. Joyce basically smacks them both upside the head (verbally or otherwise) for talking about trivia and gets their help to drag Becky and Ross out of the car-concertina.
Cut to the ER where Becky and Ross (the latter in much worse shape) are being treated. Sal and Amazi-Girl are shooting daggers from each other’s eyes and Joyce is too focussed on helping Becky to act as umpire. They agree that the time has come to ‘settle matters’ between them.
NEXT STRIP… Is Billie waking up in Ruth’s arms. We then have to wait a month or so, possibly longer (because it looks like we’re going to be following Joyce on a trip to the ol’ homestead after Ruth and Billie), to find out what if anything was the outcome between Sal and Amber.
Just when it looks like someone here is about to be seriously injured, we can cut to wacky hijinks where Joe behaves inappropriately around the nurses while in the hospital for a wisdom tooth removal.
Becky, just reach over and scratch his eyes, then pull the parking brake to slow the car. He can’t drive, defend himself, and shoot you all at the same time. Plus that’ll give AG, Sal & Joyce, and the inept cops time to all catch up.
Well, that explains why Amber nor Amazigirl are in the “Who do you want to see more of? 2015 Edition!” poll. Either we won’t be seeing her much, or her being in the poll would take a lot of dramatic tension out of the comics. I’m leaning towards the latter, but, who knows? Could be the former
Having known a lot of families that genuinely believe the whole “women must have long hair” thing, I’m actually surprised Becky was allowed to have it as short as it was at the beginning of the comic. Maybe the bob was an early sign of “rebellion” to come.
I’m actually starting to wonder if the Browns and everyone else in their congregation think of Ross as ‘That crazy fundie guy’. Basically, even by their standards, he’s way out there!
I feel like they might now, but I don’t find it unlikely that before recently, he was just another one of them. I mean, Joyce’s family were pretty freaked out about Dorothy, so even his initial reaction about Becky probably wasn’t that out-of-line (and was, in ways, shared by Joyce, since she initially (briefly) wanted to de-sin Becky iirc)
There have been a lot of comments about how Fundie should either die, or be arrested and sent to prison. I kind of hope he escapes. Without taking Becky, of course. Once he gets away, his fundie friends can smuggle him out of the country to do a lifetime of missionary work in some foreign country. That will save Becky either the trauma of his death, or the need to make regular visits to a prison to assuage her guilt. She has no reason to feel guilt, but she will anyway. That’s just the way it works. If he’s safe, but out of the country, then their contact can be limited to an occasional letter that she can answer, or burn, as her heart commands.
Yeah, but then we’re just inflicting him on the inhabitants of that other country. The only people who should be putting up with Ross are prison guards who are paid for the task. And maybe, eventually, if she wants to, Becky.
Here’s a question… what does Becky know about Amazi-girl? She has been mentioned in newspapers (and I think more than just in the school paper), but she may not have read any of those papers. And I can’t remember any of the cast talking about her with Becky around.
Does she know she’s a “super hero” who has been relatively successful in the past? Or is she assuming she’s a nutcase who’s going to be a problem?
Amazi-girl was mentioned on the list of people Becky was supposed to invite to Joyce’s party. Crossed off, but still seems likely she got a brief explanation.
This is such a pretty, well done strip. Like this strip in particular and DOA as a whole just: super beautiful and detailed on an artistic level.
I love the writing, yeah. I think its a great mix of humor and drama with really compelling characters.
But the art, man! The art is amazing!
Great job, Willis.
In panel 4 it looks like he has his head (slightly) turned towards Becky. If he were leaning towards her at all, it would make sense that he’d see Amazi-girl through the mirror through his left eye.
A question for our esteemed artist and story teller. Has any other story arc generated this level of comments for this many days? Speculation has been pretty hot and heavy on this one.
I think Amazi-Girl’s interaction with and eventual beat-down of Blaine drew a lot of interest/participation/speculation as well. But because it was Parents’ Weekend Willis had a couple other story arcs going on at the same time so there were some cuts back and forth between Amber and Blaine/Joyce and her family/Dina and Faz/etc. It didn’t exclusively stay on the one plot like this one is.
The problem is not in reading the Bible. The problem is in how people try to interpret what they read in the Bible. That’s why man “… is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them.”
…..also Mark Twain; essay, “The Lowest Animal”; 1896
Just saw the preview picture for Jan 28, and it says “rest easy”! Any bets that they are peeking behind the door of a hospital room ? And Walky and Dorothy are looking in two different directions in that room….
I noticed that after Becky saw evidence that people are still trying to help her, she seemed to rediscover the spirit and fight within her. That would have been encouraging had Toedad not spotted Amazi-Girl almost immediately after. Now, Willis only knows what will happen next, and all the rest of us can do is wait and see.
Yeah. If that is a 911 call she’s tapping out (as Ellen very cogently suggests) then Becky has a better plan for rescuing herself than either of her rescue parties is working on. And she’s doing it.
I agree with this assessment. 🙂 Spotting Amazi-girl has reminded Becky that all is not lost and mentally freed her to do what she can from where she sits.
I admit I thought that was to indicate she was tapping herself vs. merely pointing… is she a lefty? I would’ve expected the other way around if she’s not.
People like Toedad is what is wrong with current mass market religion. The further we get from a source and the more we edit it to make it easy the more that is lost. Zorastrians where a proto-jewdau-christian religion that predated the jews, and had all of the same main pillars shared by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and in that that faith if the kid damned it self than it was on the kids head and everyone knew it. The parents where not to blame and it was up to the kid to attone or not. Leave people up to their own decisions and consequences.
Well, apparently a parody of “Titus Andronicus” but there the crazed man murders his stepsons and feeds their ground beef remains to his wife (so formally an ex-fiancee) after stabbing his own daughter (who had been raped and had her tongue and hands cut off previously) for the sake of wordplay.
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“Huh, Joyce said Becky was taken in this car, but all I see in there is a giant toe with a pornstache”
Who says all kind of stupid things.
Why did you have to be an asshole who checks his mirrors, Ross
This could have been so much easier
He wasn’t checking the mirrors until Becky got him taking. She was trying to distract him, but looks like it did just the opposite.
Road to Amazi-Girl being smashed into the back of a car is paved with good intentions.
The question you should be asking is what did Amazigirl just remove from her glove pocket.
Amazi-condom?
Interesting idea, but I’m not sure how that could help. Take a look at the bottom right view from the mirror? What are those dark things to either side of her shoulders? If we didn’t know better it would make us think that we were seeing the back seat. But that can’t be the case because we can see evidence of reflection where the back window is in front of her face. And so my interpretation is that the dark area is the back of the car and that Amazigirl has used whatever was in the glove to give her a purchase and she’s now on the back trunk. Next comic will.tell.
Pretty sure the dark things to either side of her shoulders are her cape, and that’s a shot from the rear-view mirror.
You’re right, it probably the cape which is simply not visible in the first panel.
A very small portion of her cape is visible in the first panel. And a lot of her cape is visible in the 2nd panel.
…Ok..I have to ask…..but has anyone drawn a little toedad face on their big toenail and stuck a little fake moustache on with glue to make the Littlest Cosplay Ever?
Because ever since people started calling him Toedad I’ve been seeing that every danged panel.
Also, looks like Dina didn’t draw much blood, but got a pretty nice scratch in there.
you know, you may just have started That One Trend for halloween now.
” Trick or treat!”
” Oh look at you all, but what are you supposed to be little one?”
” I’m a toe!”
“….Kids these days.”
Scariest costume since Donald Trump.
Oh I do hope so.
If I did it would take me less than a minute before I jammed it in a door out of spite, so I think I’ll pass.
Car crash toe goes to hospital… No safety belt , weird that it appeared only in panel4 surprise or not
oshit
Um, yeah, I think that covers it.
My thoughts exactly.
and break……..
or brake.
Also: pshit, qshit, rshit and sshit.
I always thought the ‘Christian thing to do’ was “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Isn’t Ross just hating the ‘sinner’ right now?
Also, maybe Amber really is the one that ends up in the hospital jeez please don’t suddenly break the car, FoeDad.
that’s when Amazi-Girl’s like http://imgur.com/gallery/i2Z85jB
I love that gif! I hope that’s the case. Maybe Sal and Joyce’ll be the other Russian Special Forces members, ahaha.
well, in his mind he “loves” the sinner, and wants to save her from her “sin”
This. There’s a huge culture of casting deep shame on and shunning of the “sinners” you are supposed to “love”, because by doing so, you aren’t hating on them. You’re just hating on their sin and disappointed by their weakness in giving in to temptations (smug smug we’re so better) and proving your love by “graciously” letting them back in the fold so long as they are penitent and accept that their wisdom about their life isn’t worth shit as demonstrated by their sinful choices.
It’s rampant in suburban middle class PMD Rapturist culture and becomes sort of a one-upmanship, where you all talk a game about everyone being sinful and needing the salvation of Christ, but behind closed doors or even whispered in the pews, it’s all about who isn’t praying “enough” or whose kid was seen being all “sinful” with the neighbor’s kid.
Honestly, it’s really all about raising oneself up by reveling in the wickedness of others at the end of the day.
And that’s why Toedad is so committed to retrieving and “correcting” his misbehaving property. Because if he doesn’t, then he’s reduced in the smugness games and just becomes the rumor mill target about the man whose daughter went to college and became one of those… you knows. And that casts disparagements on his own holiness.
“People would rather imagine that they’re a beleaguered hero than that they’re creating imaginary enemies because they’re bored.” – Alex Hirsch, twitter, today
(in a conversation about fanart, but surprisingly relevant to suburban middle class PMD Rapturists)
I find it particularly disturbing that he is talking about “his daughter” as though she is a different person from the one he’s talking to. He really seems to be mentally preparing himself to kill her.
You know, I was gonna comment on that, too. I’m guessing that Ross is the “love the sinner BENEATH the sin” kinda guy. Meaning that he loves previous sinless Becky, rather than the current sinner Becky is.
You know, ’cause he’s an asshole.
Huh. Yeah I can see that; it does seem like he is disassociating current Becky from the Becky he thought she was “supposed” to be.
Toedad loves his daughter. That’s why he needs to pray away her sins at riflepoint.
“Spare the .223 and spoil the child.”
Reminds me of this gem of a song…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHUFiG1YBwc
Having seen this logic first hand, Ross thinks that Becky’s “choices” (in his mind) are leading her to a path of eternal torture. The only loving thing to do in his mind is to take any and every step necessary to prevent that. So to him, he is absolutely loving her by trying to “save her from herself.” It is a twisted idea of love.
Given she was raised “right”, her current “lifestyle choices” are only because of her recruitment at the hands of gay demons feeding on her weakness in order to rob her of her womanhood and confuse her about her “natural role” as wife and mother.
They are no more worthy of consideration as being a part of her than a malignant tumor and once he has cut that corruption from her with his faith, then she will return to her purity and find joy in her “natural place” and thank him for saving her from the fires of Hell.
I’ve always found the insane beliefs religious people hold top explain away how people can actually be gay to be hilarious. Like if we had demons or could infect other people there’d be any of them left. We’d zombie plague the fuck out of you so we could finally just be normal and left in peace.
There’s lots of different subsections of Christianity that focus on a lot of different ideas of varying intensity.
Now he’s wavin’ ’round his Bible, sayin’ “Love the sinner, hate the sin”
But he’d do well to drop the Hell and let some Heavenly mercy in
Is this a song? This should be a song.
Google gives me this: https://daynaclay.bandcamp.com/track/little-church-live-2006
Not my usual genre, but still pretty good.
Yeah, my bandmate wrote it! We’ve got a better version in the works.
Loving the sinner and hating the sin is equivalent to hating the person it is applied to. It is a weaselly way of getting around the fact that Jesus says to love they neighbor as yourself without condition. It is both a very radical commandment and a very difficult one.
Unfortunately it means the love part gets drowned out.
While this thought comes up among christian sects, it really isn’t something that is supported by scripture. Its more of something that people say to make themselves feel better.
I’ve heard ‘love the sinner, hate the sin” used with wide-eyed sincerity. (I explained that, unfortunately, it’s impossible for the recipient or anyone else to tell the difference! In the ensuing conversation, I found that some kindhearted Christians are actually quite reasonable when gently challenged from a place that strongly accepts and reinforces love as their central tenet.)
Unfortunately, Ross is NOT one of those kindhearted Christians. He is deeply devoted, in his way, to the daughter he thinks he has, or to the daughter he thinks she ought to be. But he’s not about love, he’s about righteousness and matyrdom and avoiding Hell. I don’t know how on heaven or earth he’ll come around to love his daughter who is actually sitting right there.
“love the sinner, hate the sin” is a perfectly good approach when it applies to something we all agree is a problem – someone who’s alcoholic or otherwise addicted, someone who’s stolen or committed whatever other sins we all agree are bad. Or even just in the “We’re all sinners” kind of sense.
It’s when it’s used for things like homosexuality where we’re coming to see that it really isn’t bad, then the “hate the sin” part, no matter how sincere and loving it may be, is still pushing the “This is bad, you have to stop, you have to change” line. Especially when it’s pushed on kids growing up in those environments. It’s damaging. I’m sure it’s a contributor to the high rate of LGBTQ suicide. “I love you, but I hate your sexuality and you’re damned if don’t live in denial your whole life.”
Except that even with with things like addiction or theft it is still absolutely corrosive, whether or not it is meant with malice or the best of intentions.
While there are several other lesser problems with the concept, the main problem is that hating the sin requires that one love the sinner less. With this dogma it would be impossible to love someone unconditionally for who they are because it makes the love conditional by its nature. Hence one cannot love someone fully while hating their sin.
On top of that, it is generally not applied to everyone, since everyone is a sinner. Instead it is generally applied to select groups that don’t fit in in some way. Also, while being LGBT is part of who you are (and I do agree that makes it significantly more corrosive when applied to sexual identity), so is to a lesser extent what you’ve done in the past or what medical illnesses you have (in the case of addiction).
What you have done will at some level always be part of who you are as a person. Its why the phrasing is that we are forgiven our sins. It doesn’t change the fact one has sinned in the past, but the forgiveness is what is important.
Yep, Christians sure loved all those heathens they forcibly converted, crusaded against, burnt at the stake, enslaved, oppressed, etc. over the last millennia and a half.
You might say they loved them to *death*…
As I recall it was Gandhi who said that. I don’t think that’s actually specifically preached in the bible
Man, fuck this guy.
What you said. This guy’s all about ‘his daughter.’ Bah, being a father’s about more than that.
2/10, would not fuck.
He may be 2/10 in appearance, but when you factor in his personality he becomes a glorious -999/10.
No, no, no… so close… he’s actually a glorious -666/10.
A valiant joke, but I think we’re fishing for -∞/10.
One point for having a pulse, one point for caring in his own twisted, petty way about his daughter?
Having a pulse is not necessarily better than not in his case.
*no one* could fap to Toedad. He is the exception that proves Rule 34.
Um, no thank you.
I wouldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole.
Good call, a 4 to 5 foot pole can be swung much harder.
I’d rather knock his teeth out with a baseball bat. And swing his head like a pinata.
This is quite a comment coming from a Dina gravatar.
I would, but only if it’s got a big blade on the end.
Pikes are hard to handle, and really only effective in massed formations. I’ll take a shorter polearm anyday.
Well, not a guan dao, those things are monstrously heavy, but a bardiche or voulge would probably do. Something light like a naginata would be optimal though.
Give me a good Bow.
I have a sickle. Is that good enough?
Put on a black robe with hoodie and pay him a visit. It will be perfect.
For some reason i read that as scythe..Ok plan B: Tacos to you have a hammer as well?
Why go for the Death look? Why not life? Most of life is bacteria, and apparently most animals are parasites. So Life would be a quivering mass of slime interspersed with fungal tentacles, plant roots and botflies. Seems more intimidating than a skeleton, no?
When you put it that way, then yes, it does.
Hence Shub-Niggurath.
Or the Summer Court.
I dunno, a good spear or a dane axe can be pretty good in a one on one fight so long as you have the skill to keep your opponent out of arm’s reach. Like, take a spear to a sword fight, make sure the sword can barely reach down your spear haft and you’re in the money. I’ve been on both sides; holding someone back with the head of my dane, and once clinging to the end of someone’s spear when all I had was a dagger, to piss them off.
Raptors do prefer grappling.
Any raptor that doesn’t want to get crushed by its prey will just slit its throat rather than expend energy grappling.
oh man now I’m imagining this as only a distraction with Amazi-Girl as part of a raptor pack. Toedad is so focused on taking out the one ‘enemy’ of his daughter he doesn’t notice Dina approaching from the side. Again. His peripheral vision kinda sucks.
Not even for money.
Well someone had to. I’m assuming a woman who looked like a finger.
Rofl.
+1
Mustn’t go there…
Mustn’t go there…
I BET HE GIVES GREAT TOEJOBS
I went there. 🙁
Best comment? Best comment.
Yeah, we’re all sinners. Some more than others.
TALKING ABOUT YOU, ROSS! You pay attention to me! STOP LOOKING OUT THAT WINDOW!
Of all the times for the bad guy to succeed on a spot check..
Amazigirl should have put more points into sneak, that’s all I can say.
I don’t think Stealth is a trained skill for Amazigirl, nor do I expect she’d put any ranks into it anyway. But her Willpower check must be hella high by now.
Looking at the backgrounds, he managed to get all the way out of town (likely onto old Highway 37) without checking his mirrors. He must never check them.
Really, though, is it EVER a good time to distract someone who’s driving a car? Especially when you’re in it? And you’re intentionally trying to distract him from looking in his mirrors? So, he doesn’t know what’s going on around the car? Isn’t that just BEGGING for an accident?
Considering that she buckled her belt before doing so, I think that was kind of the point.
This guy gets scarier with every word he says.
his super power is to say the most messed up crap and believe that it sounds not horrifying
Joyce has lost her niche!
That’s the thing. Joyce has the same exact culture as Toedad. All the horrible things that have slipped through her mouth because she didn’t realize how awful they were is what Toedad fervently believes and supports.
The key difference is that Joyce listens to her conscience and does not view the feelings and lives of others as being inferior to what she was told about the world and seeks to change when her words or actions do harm. Whereas Toedad is inflexible and believes that the fault when his conscience and moral teachings disagree lies with his conscience. And instead of having enough empathy to care about others, he views everyone else mostly as props in the eternal show of “I, Ross MacIntyre, am a godly man and I am strong”.
Joyce is a lot younger, and is going through a lot of new experiences (it’s what University should be for, rather than a job factory) so she’s open to change.
If Joyce had stayed at home, she might well have ended up like Toedad.
I think she has noted that herself, and that the horror is not lost on her.
But frankly I doubt that Joyce would be anything like Toedad. She would not even be as bad as her own parents. But she would not be as good as the Joyce we see now.
Another comparison is Mary who shares Joyce’s background AND experiences (I mean, she rooms with Roz), but who still nurtures her homophobia and bigotry. It remains to be seen what hard choices she will make when it comes down to it.
Roz may not be the ideal person to change someone’s world view. Someone that obnoxious about it is more likely to ram one further into one’s current beliefs than inspire the realization that perhaps other views are legitimate.
Agreed. Roz is a bludgeon, who could be great at energizing the base who already basically agrees with her. But she’s absolutely terrible at communicating with people who disagree with her, and that’s where Roz needs folks like Joyce to become that understanding bridge to the fundies back home.
Unlike Roz, Joyce can validate the good and kind aspects of their shared worldview, which can then be a springboard towards more kindness. (That’s what she was hoping to do with quoting the Bible at Toe-Dad, but she underestimated how dug in and unreasonable he is.) Roz would just yell at Mary in righteous indignation, which has no chance of success.
But even Joyce’s parents aren’t that bad either. They listen to Joyce, even if they ‘know’ what’s right. It’s shows the inate personality, religious or not. It’s good to contrast that to toedad who didn’t even give Becky the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah, yeah they are, they “Prayed” that their daughter would grow to understand that she is WRONG and that God’s wisdom will open her poor short sighted gaze to the turth!
They’re terrible people.
But they still let Joyce be Joyce. No it’s not their first choice and ya they coulda handled it better but they still let Joyce stay at the school.
Uh, horrifying is ok as long as it’s the work and will of the Lord. If you need to exterminate the evil with fire and brimstone, do you want to be the one denying the heroes their pitchforks?
that all hinges on whether you believe in an objective ‘good’ and whether you’re confident that a specific horrifying thing is definitely serving that good. i think that most people allow for a degree of doubt, so we as a society steer toward finding a more neutral behavior acceptable. maybe you’re a hero, maybe you’re a villain, but pitchfork use is limited, so use it under heavy discretion
less effective, less extreme
“You know Becky, when you think about it, was Hitler really that bad?”
“FOR FUCK’S SAKE DAD.”
anybody know what amazi-girl has in those wrist thingies?
All You Need Is Glove
Power Glove?
Blah blah blah, kill, blah blah blah.
Awesome gravatar.
Hello Man. Would you like to hear a joke?
talky talky stabby stabby
Glove is all you need.
Weighted training clothing?
I was trying to figure that out too. I can’t tell what’s happening with her in panel 2 either–is she still trying to get something out, or is she actually using whatever’s in there?
Her DS. She’s gonna play some Mario Kart with her nose to relieve the everyday tedium of skateboarding grappled to a car driven by a crazed gunman who’s kidnapped his daughter in the name of Jesus.
she just failed the x-treme level test for attention span
Suction cups?
her Kerry Ellis playlist
(it’s “Defying Gravity” on loop)
Not a clue. Only Willis knows.
Who knows what utility lurks in the glove-pouches of Amazi-girl?
The Willis knows.
Best reference.
+1 internets for you
Amazi-girl is prepared for anything.
Here, have an internet.
That’s not the internet.
This is: http://cdn.instructables.com/FR5/5S2J/G4PBP7TA/FR55S2JG4PBP7TA.MEDIUM.jpg
Those shoot web, right?
It looks like she is holding a cellphone in the next panel so maybe something phonelike?
that would be a pretty sensible thing to pull out, but i feel like that would be more accessible in normal pockets, and Amazi-girl’s nothing if not practical.
well… like, sometimes
I think you may be onto something. She seems to carry her phone in a compartment when she’s in costume.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/04-time-keeps-on-slippin/cheese/
Cell phone? “Hi, 911? Yeah, you know the shooting at IU? Okay, you know how the cops sailed right past the costumed vigilante on a skateboard hanging off the back of a fleeing car with a grappling hook? Yeah, well, hi; I’m the costumed vigilante and I’m following the fleeing SHOOTER on a skateboard, hanging onto a grappling hook. We’re headed north; still on the campus. Brown car, damaged rear bumper. You think you could get them to turn around and back me up? You know, since having a costumed vigilante hanging off a car leaving the scene of the shooting wasn’t of interest the first time they went by.”
Pretty sure the cops were just all like, “Kids these days! Sheesh! Get out of the way; we’ll deal with you and your crazy get-up car-surfing and being a public menace another time; we’ve got important things to do here! Now shoo!”
Given that the “important thing” was “Shots fired near the fountain”, they’re pretty much right.
Admittedly it turns out they were wrong, but that doesn’t mean they had their priorities wrong – they just lacked information.
We already know she packs some Amazi-Condoms and… well, No Glove, No Love.
Falsies. Becky reclaims her womanhood, and everyone eats pizza at Galasso’s.
I hope you’re happy, right now!
And that, kids, is how Ross fell in love at first sight.
^ Beautiful!
No one can resist Amazi-Girl. And if they can she’d have to use her secret weapon. The Amazi-rack.
Yes, I’m pretty much powerless against it.
Especially if pressed firmly against it. 😉
The next page he’s all big eyed and glittery
I think the internet needs this image.
Your avatar is fitting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im8uIoq1fjs
this is a disgusting thing you made me think
Well, Sal’s not the one going to the hospital. She’s perfectly fine in the preview panels.
(For the record, I’m of the firm belief that the Hospital preview is just one big massive red herring).
Amazi-girl just saw ToeDad for the first time and is repulsed at the sight.
HOLY FUCK, HOW IS HE ALIVE? HE LOOKS LIKE A MUTANT.
So firing off a rifle on a school campus doesn’t make you a sinner?
Hail Jesus!
The right to bear arms is the second commandment.
as jesus foretold
Nonsense. He braved the truly godless lands of a secular university, retrieved his property, wrongfully stolen by “deviants and perverts”, and showed such manly strength even demons relented.
In his mind, he’s a Bob-damned hero.
Are you serious? He did not even hit anybody. I mean, even stoning a girl to death who was raped within the city walls (and consequently has to be assumed not to have raised as much racket as could be expected of her) is perfectly within the duties of a man of faith, for you must purge the evil from within your midst.
I am muchly intrigued at that first panel and eager to know what Amber’s got in that glovepouch.
Also fuck toedad.
*plays Pete Townsend’s “Face The Face” on the car stereo*
I was quite sad when I got the name of this song wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DVUwWZfzMw
[Covered/reinterpreted as “Tow the Toe”]
Eyes on the road Ross, don’t mind the woman behind the mirror.
it figures that only when he’s supposed to be having a serious parental discussion does he pay attention to his mirrors. but hair? seriously? is the whole plumbing thing a bit too heavy for him to tackle so he sticks to the length of the curtains?
Notice how he isn’t denying any of Becky’s accusations. His defenses are crumbling in the face of reason but he’s too stubborn to ever admit he’s wrong, so he’ll find new topics and double down on old ones.
This all being about Becky’s ‘sodomite sins’ is likely the other half, along with the outward claims of religious convictions, of his Freudian excuse for his actions (i.e this isn’t about Becky or Jesus, this is about HIM.) We have little background as to what kind of life Gunpoint Rossie led up until now…I’m still curious how he and Becky’s mother even met, for starters.
“I’m still curious how he and Becky’s mother even met, for starters.”
By gunpoint ?
Wouldn’t it ironic though, if Ross and BeckMom actually had a “shotgun-wedding”, maybe even with the same gun he brought with him ? (He got to keep the gun afterwards as a wedding present)
If I’m honest, I’m starting to worry about how she died…
Uh, Becky is Sapphic, not sodomite. The problem in Sodom was that the citizens wanted to fuck an angel visiting Lot in the behind and were unwilling to take Lot’s offer of screwing his daughters instead. I mean, they were obvious duds and finally got their father drunk in order to get any action, but that’s a different story. Not all that much better than Sodom, actually.
To your first point, many religious groups consider lesbian sex to also be sodomy. Or, as one person put it, literally anything other than unprotected vaginal intercourse is called “sodomy.”
It didn’t make any sense to me either, but there you go.
To your second… yeah, I don’t think I’ll be touching that one.
The Bible actually does not even care. If we focus on the Old Testament which is pretty much the part concerned with sodomy, there is a ban for men lying with men (as if they were a woman), and there is a ban for women screwing with cattle. It evades me right now whether men were allowed to screw cattle, but at any rate, women with women is never a topic.
I mean, if you look at the size of the harem King Solomon entertained, you could not really expect all of those women to wait for their turn without occasionaly refresh courses not involving men (since that would muddy up the property and/or blood relations).
Saint Paul.
aka Saint Salty.
Care to elaborate for us ignorant heathens?
seconded. desperately leafing through corinthians in an effort to learn the word of jebus. cliffsnotes, plz? what’s up with saint paul?
St. Paul is basically the “stop having fun” guy, and the original born-again. He was once Saul, persecuted Jews, saw a vision of Jesus, went blind, (or something, can’t quite remember), and then when he encountered Jesus, Jesus “washed the scales from his eyes”, and Saul became Paul and a devout follower. After Jesus died, Paul was just…Paul was just a bitter weird fuck. I used to refer to him as St. Stop-Having-Fun, now I call him St. Salty. Basically, Paul hated happiness.
Ugh, one of those types.
Did he dictate that women had to wear their hair long or something?
Yes. 1 Corinthians 11:15.
From what I’ve heard he just hated women generally and anything to do with them and would happily have not had to deal with them at all, but FINE, ugh, if you HAVE to be there, then you can’t cut your hair short and get mistaken for a guy. And you have to hide it, so you don’t look like a guy. Also shut the hell up and, like, stick to cooking meals and shit. Also no one is allowed to have sex with you because it’s just fucking icky. –What, we’re beginning to die of old age and not getting enough new Christians in? Ugh, FINE, you can have sex, I guess. But ONLY to make babies and you’re not allowed to enjoy it. UGH. Girls are gross.
–Yeah, there’s a contingent that thinks he was gay and it’s not hard to see why.
That’s… really not how I understand Paul, or how he’s generally seen. It mostly comes from a few key clobber verses being quoted out of context with the aim of controlling women’s lives today.
OTOH, I was only thinking today how he could possibly have been ace in a culture that basically had no concept of orientation or a/sexuality.
Another reason, of course, is that anti-gay christians (of which Paul is the prototypical example) think it’s so easy for a “normal” person to be “tempted” into having gay sex, that “everyone” has these urges and it’s hard to suppress them.
Kinda sounds like that guy from biblicalgenderroles.com
Wait no, got some things mixed up, I was thinking of another site but forgot its name. (The aforementioned guy is actually a billion times worse than the impression I get from Paul off Kryss Labryn’s comment.)
Pretty sure that it’s not actually that easy to be tempted into feeling attraction for a gender you aren’t actually on some level interested in. But I suppose that if you do have any non-cis-gendered tendencies, even if only slightly, then yeah, under the correct conditions it might twig loudly enough to catch your conscious attention.
Doesn’t mean that the tendency wasn’t an innate part of you before you saw that, though. And of course then you have people saying things like, “Well, of course everyone goes through a phase like that in college, put you put it behind you and move on with your life and grow up.” Like What’s’isputz, the author who did the book about the kid who thought the space battles he was playing was all just a game, but it ended up not… they made a movie and a lot of people boycotted it because of his incredibly intolerant views and regular columns, I forget his name but I’m sure you all know who I mean. “Ender’s Game”. Yeah. What’sisface who wrote “Ender’s Game,” who it ended up was such a douche. Pretty sure no one who ever said “Well, sure, we all go through that gay phase, but, you know, you grow up and start acting like an adult here…” was actually completely straight to begin with, because, yeah, no, despite what Billie said, while you might sort of wonder about it some time, if you’re actually completely straight I’m pretty sure the instinctive gut reaction is going to be, “Yeah, nope.”
Is he the guy who came up with the stupid rule about how wearing clothes of different materials is a sin?
Nah, that was an Old Testament thing. Christians supposedly have a new covenant and don’t have to obey that stuff. They just have to obey the supposed antigay stuff for some reason.
Because Bad Translation.
In Romans, one of the Disciples is writing letters explaining the word of God to people and the letters were collected, ordered, and added to the Bible as a corollary to the Gospels.
Unfortunately when translating between various languagea pederasty, which means an older man taking on a young boy as an apprentice who he also bangs like a screen door, was mistranslated to general homosexuality.
So because male Pedophiles in Rome had their way, adult women in love are sinners in the new Testament.
On second thought I may be thinking Galatians. I don’t have a Bible on hand to check.
Romans, Corinthians, and Timothy.
Fun fact: that rule sort of makes sense with the time, though it’s hilariously misunderstood. I mean, look at it in a modern view-point. These days, we can afford – and have the technology – to do several loads of washing in one day; that way we can separate our lights, our darks, and in some cases different materials. Wool, for example, will shrink unless it’s on the right setting (and even then washing it is a dumb idea). I was once told that this rule in Leviticus was basically “dude, only wear one material at a time, so that when you wash it, you don’t fudge it up”.
….there’s still a lot of rubbish rules in Leviticus, but it’s interesting to work out where some of them came from.
I thought it was that mixed-fabric clothing (that’s a mixed weave of wool and linen, not woollen garments and linen garments) was a particular identifier for another tribal group, whom the Israelites were forbidden from mixing with – I forget which one. So it would be a cultural identity thing.
On a quick google, though, I don’t see this coming up. The top-listed commentaries seem to relate it more to other prohibitions against mixing of different types of thing (seed, animals etc) – so again, related to maintaining Israel’s cultural purity, though more obliquely. There’s also something about the high priest being the only one allowed to wear it, as his ephod is specifically stated to be mixed-weave, but I’unno.
My Gran had some things she always said about the Bible: she liked the book of Ecclesiastes, Paul just didn’t understand how the real world worked, and you’re better off just leaving Revelations alone.
I think Paul was rather detached from real life and didn’t really understand human nature.
He also was more than a bit vain about his commitment as a Disciple.
I was taught that Paul was expecting the Second Coming to happen within his lifetime (or shortly thereafter), so a lot of his teachings are made with a “Do this for the time being” sort of subtext that his audience might’ve gotten but readers today really don’t.
My sticking point was why the letters of Paul were canonical teachings of the church instead of just a “This is how the early church did things” history lesson like several books in the OT.
Argon, that is a very good point about Paul expecting the Second Coming in his life time. I had forgotten about that. Definitely helps to have some context.
If you’re reading the KJV, then revelations has some wonderful and evocative language that’s well worth a read. Though the narrarative basically boils down to “wooh, I think I’ve eaten one too many of those mushrooms. Gonna be trippin’ hard for a while.”
Part psychedelic trip, part sci-fi. Really! The city of New Jerusalem is described very much like a huge space station descending on Earth in a cloud of thunder and smoke, it’s hallways lit by strange lights that needs no oil.
There’s an argument that at least two of the so-called Pauline epistles are not by Paul at all, and the main support is that in the others he’s all “hey say hi to these awesome female apostles and and pillars of the congregation who I will now call out by name” and “hey you know your mom and grandma already taught you all you need to know, but I’d like to elaborate a bit,” but the epistles that are supposedly faked are realllly not about liking women as people, at all.
The other main argument is that that run-on sentence I wrote up there? That’s the tl;dr version of a Pauline sentence. The so-called faked epistles are much less prolix. IOW, too well written to be by Paul.
It’s closer to about half of the books attributed to Paul are not actually by Paul. The Pastorals (Timothy 1/2 and Titus) are definitely not, but there’s good arguments against a few others being authentic.
For a good popular but based on academics book, try . As I try html again, after moving to Drupal at work.
http://www.amazon.com/Forged-Writing-God-Why-Bibles-Authors/dp/0062012622
Yeah, it all gets a bit messy with the Pauline epistles. As well as the disputed authorship you mention (although 1 Corinthians is generally accepted to be genuine), there are issues like textual interpretation: I’ve repeatedly seen the argument that several of the more regressive ‘rules’ (viz. the bits that fundies like to quote while ignoring all the radical-inclusion, love-is-the-answer stuff) are actually Paul quoting his opponents before knocking down their arguments in the following section – absent punctuation or explicit ‘they say’ markers, how do you tell except by inference? Which I think tracks with how those sections seem to stick out as inconsistent with his other writing.
Then there are issues of cultural context… such as the suggestion that “a woman’s hair is her glory” could be translated as “a woman’s hair is her testicle“, because the anatomical thinking of the day was that a woman’s hair was essentially a sperm magnet, drawing it in and up and increasing her fertility. (I am NOT making this up.)
Ironically enough, though, one thing Paul can’t be accused of is conservatism. To steal a quote from Fred Clark via James McGrath, “Quoting Paul to defend exclusion is like quoting Tony Soprano to defend pacifism.”
Saul didn’t become Paul, he’d always used both names in different contexts. The ‘Saul’ context just became less common after his conversion.
So you’d better call Saul Paul after all ?
… go to your room and think about what you’ve done.
Eh, you’re a bit off the mark. Paul never met Jesus (in the flesh); persecuted Christians, not Jews (…in the modern meaning, since the early Christians were Jews); and had his road-to-Damascus conversion experience post-crucifixion.
As to Saint Stop-Having-Fun… that’s a whole other kettle of fish and many, many books have been written on the subject (see also comments above). But he certainly wasn’t bitter about Jesus’ death.
Saul didn’t persecute Jews, except inasmuch as Christians were heretical Jews until he took over. He was a Jew with Roman citizenship, and he persecuted the followers of Christ until his episode on the road to Damascus. See Acts 9:1–29.
. . . and hated women, don’t forget that part.
1 Corinthians 11:14.
Contrary to what you might think from the teachings of Homer Simpson, Jebus wasn’t a person who had a word to learn. Jebus was a Canaanite city conquered by King David. See the First Book of Chronicles, chapter 11, paragraphs 4 to 8. Jebus is usually said to be Jerusalem.
*googles*
Ohh… Finally I understand that irritating thing where people refer to Jesus as ‘Jebus’. Homer Simpson. Huh.
“Jebus” and “‘Murica” go hand-in-hand.
Big Toe Daddy’s thing about women’s hair sounds like one of the many bees in the bonnet of Saint Paul. I’m thinking in particular of his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, paragraphs 14 & 15. After rambling semi-coherently for thirteen paragraphs, he writes: Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.
My translation: “Ew ew ew; stop being all gross and icky. Go, like, grow your hair long or something so I can’t ever see you naked. Ew.” Also, “Guys, cut your hair shorter so I can see your naked bodies better,” I guess.
You have to understand that hair is actually serious business to people like this. These are the people who lobby to get “unnatural” hair colors and “distracting” haircuts banned in schools, along with the equally “distracting piercings. They genuinely believe a girl wearing her hair in an undercut or something similar is an affront to The Correct Way and a rejection of belief. I’m not even joking. When my mother briefly went through her Evangelical phase, she was not quite drinking enough Kool-Aid to protest me having blue hair (I was twelve and it was a reward for straight A’s), and the church told her I could no longer attend the youth group until I fixed my hair, and pretty much all the kids in the youth group were forbidden by their parents to speak to me any more.
Thus began my mother’s slow realization that these people weren’t quite right in the head.
Anyone who doesn’t believe that’s true clearly didn’t read the comments when Becky GOT the haircut…
And those comments weren’t even religious based.
My mother, a staunch atheist, had the exact same view on hair colours and piercings, and “different” hair cuts. After years of my younger sister going through the whole gamut of colours and styles though, she has softened up a bit, but it was the source of many a heated arguments at first.
Turns out being opposed to “different” things isn’t limited to religion. To atheists, the struggle is not between Heavenly and the Devil, but between “Normality” and “Insanity/delinquency”
Of all the ways a kid can rebel, a haircut (no mater how extreme) is the least dangerous and permanent a kid can have. Worst damage possible? Photos they may regret later in life; and who the hell has high school photos that aren’t awful in some way, seriously?
What’s that? You want to dye your hair pink, [Daughter]? Yeah, go for it; it’ll be cute as hell. You want a mohawk? Augh, no, my baby, protest, protest, all right, fine, I guess, but you’ll regret it. (Can’t give in too easily, heh. If she wants to rebel I’d rather she think she’s rebelling with her hair than I just say yes immediately to whatever extreme thing she wants to do with it and have her try to rebel further with something actually dangerous like drugs).
Having said that, piercings? Hey, if you’re old enough to keep them clean while they heal, have at ‘er; but be aware facial piercings may impact your employability (as will facial tattoos). But whatever; you can take out the ring or what for work if you need to, and again, it’s not actually harmful. Tattoos? Be old enough and really sure the design has deep meaning and will for a very long time, because it’s going to last for a very long time. No, you can’t get one with Justin Bieber.
I really don’t get people who won’t let their older teens do things like experiment with their hair or get all shocked by piercings and tats and things. Who cares? As a parent it’s my job to point out that a lot of places that would otherwise hire you may not, based solely on the piercings, and their customers’ perceived reactions to that; it might be nice to have more options available than just the funky cafe down the road. Tattoos? Hey, if it’s something that has very deep meaning to you, again, have at ‘er. Or, hell, if you just want one, sure, why not; I’m not your mother. I’d advise waiting until you’re in your late 20’s or older, though, simply because they are more or less permanent (sure, you can laser them off, but that’s prohibitively expensive) so you want to (I figure) make sure it’s not something you’ll change your mind about in five years. Five years goes by really, really quickly.
But, fuck. Hair? Have at ‘er. Jeez.
My partner’s little brother went through a major death metal phase in high school, in which he grew his wheat-blond hair past his waist. It was friggin gorgeous. His mom approved, and also bought him ripped band tshirts at goodwill. He was so disappointed. 😜
Both my daughters were free, and in some cases encouraged, to define their own look. The only limits were things that were irreversible (like tattoos) or would interfere with their education. The younger once wanted colored streaks in her hair. When I suggested that the streaks should be horizontal, I got “the look.” Men first learn about “the look” from their wives. Those blessed with daughters sometimes get “the look” from several sides at once. It can be frightening, or amusing, but whatever you do, don’t laugh. That won’t end well.
When I was fifteen I went and bleached a streak of hair (to look kinda like Rogue from the X-Men movies). I thought it would anger my parents, something along the lines of “that’ll show’em!”. My mom said it looked adorable and my dad didn’t even notice. I was sooo disappointed. In hindsight it was actually quite hilarious. I think, if I ever have a kid and they decide to rebel in a similar way, I’ll pretend to be outraged just so they don’t do something worse.
Yeah, never understood why parents so often care about superfluous things like hair, clothes, etc., are they all expecting little “Mini-Me”s?
I got flack from wearing tweed jackets even! I mean, TWEED. I didn’t wear it to “rebell”, I wore it because it seemed mature, stylish and comfortable. I never understood why some kids go through “rebellions” either, why would they want to ? For me, growing up, the problem was that my parents mistook everything I did as a rebellion, I just wanted to live in peace. They still let me, and my sister, dress and style like we wanted, they just complained about it and let us know how “ridiculous” everyone would think we were. I even got a lot of crap for being Christian, they tended to look at it as a form of insanity. Yes, there are fundamentalist atheists as well. They have nothing against religious people, as long as they “don’t really believe” in what they are saying. And they can be just as conservative as many Christian fundies on many areas, they just happen to think Christians are just as dangerous as Christians believe devil worshippers to be.
Many of those comments were simply about aesthetics. Some, myself included, don’t believe that hairstyle suits her.
Eh, while my favourite Becky design is still the one from last year, I think her new haircut was an important visual indicator of Becky trying to affirm her new identity; that she’s putting her restrictive bullshit behind and becoming All New Becky.
Also it’s adorbs.
Yes, as a symbol it works quite nicely.
And for me, the complaint was really about the way Willis drew her hair, I didn’t think it looked like the real-world hair-style he was trying to copy at all. But the way he draws it now looks much better.
Really? I thought it was pretty nifty looking. She seemed more comfortable after she got it.
My hair like Jesus wore it
My hair like Jesus wore it.
Hallelujah, I adore it,
Hallelujah, Mary loved her son,
Why don’t my mother love me?
Because you remind her of your father. Jesus may have worn a beard (“is there womanfolk among us?”), but being parthogenetic offspring, had XX chromosomes and consequently was actually female.
How do they square this with all those paintings of
Cesare BorgiaJesus having long hair?Hair length is a big deal to some of the fringier conservative Christian sects. For example the Duggars have been followers of a guy named Bill Gothard, and one of Gothard’s things is that women should have long, curly hair. In a way I’m surprised Becky was allowed to have he hair style he originally did. Joyce’s hair seems closer to the kind of style Ross might think is Biblical.
Curses, I’m losing letters. The should read “the hair style she originally did.”
Do they think they’re supposed to curl it if it’s naturally straight?
The Duggars do, to some extent.
They aren’t supposed to braid it. (1 Timothy 2:9)
You forgot the “best” part: that Gothard systematically molested the young women who were sent to/chosen by him for special counseling–and he specifically picked out the ones with long, curly hair.
I know a few Christian fundamentalists. Women’s hair is a Really Important Thing for a lot of them.
See also: “controlling women in general” is a Really Important Thing for a lot of them.
Yeeep my parents were like that, and still are 8D First thing I plan on doing when I move out is hack off allll my hair
Honestly pretty impressed with Becky, even if it didn’t work. I know in that situation I’d be too scared/sad/helpless to even think of trying to distract him while the cavalry came through.
Becky’s shown a few times that she cares for people before herself, like asking if Dina was alright, or getting in the car to prevent Joyce from getting shot.
This.
And it makes the religious allegory very interesting. Becky is willing to sacrifice herself to protect and save all around her, whereas all Toedad knows how to do is threaten her and try and kill the key part that makes her her.
Goddamnit, he wasn’t supposed to notice Amazigirl. He needs to learn how to actually stay distracted when somebody is trying to distract him. THIS IS WHY NOBODY LIKES YOU, TOEDAD.
This is why we can’t have nice villains.
Huh. How long have we had that “beginning of week” button on the homepage?
Also, hangups on gender roles are on thing, but hairstyle condemnation is the first thing he has to say? Fuck you, Ross. I’m increasingly convinced he’s a lost cause, which makes him all the more tragic.
Uh. A long time? Possibly forever?
orly? never seen it. seems like it should be handy…in some way. i’ll figure it out in the morning
There is no beginning of the week button. You’re hallucinating. No, don’t go check it.
Huh.
I am curious how Amazi-Girl will be processed by Ross’s worldview. Quickly as just another sinner? Or will there be a few moments of WTF? (Or whatever the appropriate equivalent would be.)
Perhaps hell say the tights are too revealing or some shit and call her a slut or some bs.
…too revealing? They literally cover her from neck to toe. Joyce and Becky get to wear pants, so I have a hard time picturing him being offended by visible leg-shapes.
…scratch that, he’s proven himself to be less than rational at the moment. I can picture it all too well.
We’ll see.
I was rather surprised that Dorothy was wearing jeans, because of Deuteronomy 22:5.
Do you mean Joyce? Because Dorothy is an atheist that was raised without religion.
Yes, I mean Joyce. Sorry.
Tight=Revealing. While I don’t necessarily agree with it, it is why people generally wear tights under another layer, so it’s not incredibly weird a leap.
He might decide that her Amazi-jumpsuit qualifies as “strange apparel”. See Zephaniah 1:8.
Are you sure you meant 1:8 ? Cause that says:
“Neither their silver nor their gold Will be able to deliver them On the day of the LORD’S wrath; And all the earth will be devoured In the fire of His jealousy, For He will make a complete end, Indeed a terrifying one, Of all the inhabitants of the earth.”
I’m not sure how that applies.
Never mind, I accidentally typed 18 instead of 8.
“And it shall come to pass in the day of the LORD’S sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king’s children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel.”
And I see “strange apparel” is translated other places as “foreign attire/garments” and even as “following pagan customs”
It’s simple. He will view her as someone who is looking to take Becky out of his control. He is willing to hurt her over that (though he said he hoped he would not have to hurt anyone). He also made it sound like he was willing to kill Becky to prevent her from sinning anymore, so if he thinks she might be successfully taken away from him he might go for the extremest choice possible.
Yup. Yet another pokemans type come to forestall his sacred mission and steal her away to the lands of sin and Hell. And as he’s said before, he’s not going to let her leave him again. No matter what…
Basically, this is oh holy fuck levels of bad.
Maybe as a literal demon ? Depends on how sheltered his own world view is, and he’s not exactly in a stable frame of mind at the moment.
His view of AG may depend on what Becky’s mother looked like. If Becky’s mother was a freckled redhead, he may see AG as Satan coming to steal his daughter. It would also bode ill for Becky since he may see her as a replacement. if Becky’s Mom was a dark eyed brunette, he may see an avenging spirit coming to defend her daughter. Otherwise, he may be thinking “I’d be on the highway by now if it weren’t for these meddling kids.”
God am I glad Willis has evolved beyond his “Tragic Automotive Accident as Drama” days…
(God I really hope Willis has evolved beyond his “Tragic Automotive Accident as Drama” days…….)
Ditto
Next comic:
Giant truck.
(Goddammit)
Filled with manure.
So Toe Dad is part of the Biff line?
Father, grandfather, aunt and third cousin. If you can’t find another convincingly devout family, stick with your own.
Ya know, I’m starting to think maybe her father isn’t such a good egg…
For real, I thought the fact that he bought a gun as a gift for his daughter was the sweetest thing a father can do.
curses, our comments are too similar and you got here first.
I thought he was pretty cool when he held a small gun show for free for all the students, but maybe you’re right.
He even had a friendly wrestling match with her girlfriend, a right of passage he usually preserved for his daughter’s boyfriend but changed his rules because he respects his daughters decision. That’s what I’m assuming he was doing right?
It was pretty swell of good ol’ Mr. McIntyre to take his daughter back home so he can get everything in order to enroll her in IU.
And giving her friends free rides, will his kindness ever end?
Give it time, he’s got a special bit of metal for some special lady to wear
inon her chest.Good ol’ Mr. McIntyre…
…was REALLY eager to meet his daughters girlfriend
Pretty soon he’ll be donating blood as well.
Who the hell are you to talk about womanhood, Ross?!
Becky’s twice the woman you’ll ever be…
She is conversly half the man you’ll ever be.
She’s 1/3rd the Toe you’ll ever be.
Becky is exactly 3.0 times the woman and 1.89 times the man toedad is. She is not really a toe much at all.
This sir is YOUR daughter. All the family you have left, and she hates your guts.
What’s sad is I don’t think she hates him. She just can’t live with his rules and rather than do that, she ran.
Good for her.
Too many parents are only too happy to lose the child they do have in their demands to only love the child they wanted to have and thought they had. And they are only too happy to torment said child when it refuses to play along.
Yeeeeeeep. Fortunately I have a kickass uncle (who married into the family and therefore didn’t grow up with their insanity) who was like “Put up with it for now, use them for what you need (like tuition money, etc), and then leave and never speak to them again.”
Took several years for me to wrap my head around that but if your parents, who are supposed to be the people who love and support you more than anybody else in the world, can’t love you for who you are then they’re not worth you loving them.
Come on, Becky. Slap him in his ugly face.
Actually, no, don’t. We’re trying to avoid car accidents, remember?
Why? Everyone loves abig pileup.
“Your hair is your womanhood?”
Fer eff’s sake, seriously? I don’t think I’ve ever disliked a fictional character more, and that includes Kai Winn, Kai Leng, and Dolores Umbridge.
He’s about level with Umbridge. Palpatine is still undisputed champion.
oh
OH
he thought Dina ate her hair
lmaOooomg
Is that why he thinks they’re called carpet munchers?
Your comment sent me into a near hysterical fit of laughter. X’D
Mind blown. That makes perfect sense (in a twisted kind of way) and introduces a new level of crazy to fundamentalists that I did not know existed.
*DS9 spoilers follow*
Toedad is an unambiguously bad person, but I don’t think he compares to Kai Winn. Unless his off-screen activities include bombing schools for teaching science, assassinating his competition at work, or stabbing his oldest friend to death.
He probably was part of the stoning party for his wife after she dyed her hair. Sad, but it needed to be done before Becky got to see her. Still seems to have affected her womanhood, though.
Hair is the first major battle for self-expression and identity a lot of the time. A lot of parents, when it becomes clear that the sprog might not be 100% heteronormative get very controlling about hair and thus reclaiming hair as an expression of self often is the first key part of living openly and honestly.
This is also why hair is often strongly culturally regulated and that’s before factoring extremely narrow gender role expectations of the type seen in Toedad’s church (there’s a reason that Becky’s smoking hot ‘do was so initially startling to Joyce).
Well he must have figured womanhood out eventually, given the evidence in the passenger seat.
Why? Galasso has a kid and he apparently didn’t.
What color was the mailman’s hair?
All Ross’ offspring should have dark hair! The seed is strong!
The thing is…Amazi-Girl has been NOTICED. Does he…
A) Slam on the brakes?
B) Accelerate and hope he loses her/throws her off?
C) Pulls out a gun we haven’t seen and tries to shoot her?
Things ain’t looking good for Amazi-Girl/Amber.
C is highly unlikely since he’d have to 1. drive with one arm while trying to aim behind him and 2. there’s glass in the way.
I seriously doubt the Buttmobile’s rear window is bulletproof.
Yeah…he decides to shoot her, the window becomes shrapnel.
I doubt he has anything with him besides his rifle. If he had a pistol he never would have brought out the rifle in the first place.
Toedad loves waterskiing. You know once she’s had some fun he’ll want a turn.
I’m guessing A and causes a traffic jam in one lane.
Or
D) Gets distracted and crashes into the car ahead, or runs off the road ?
E) Take a sharp turn hoping the momentum sends her flying?
Does Toedad even know what momentum is? … Probably not.
“Uh….hey…’sup?”
Screwed. We are all screwed. Well, at least toedad is about to be screwed when that masked vigalante catches up to him. And he’ll be toetally screwed when the rebel motor bike chick and his sinner daughter’s bestie catch up! This is getting good…
Shit has hit the fan, and i think Rss is about the hit the brakes and amazigirl hit the car.
Yes, the fecal matter has indeed struck the oscillating air transport device. Depending on what toedick does next, this could be very bad. So Sal is going to arrive in the nick of time and save the day?
Whatever is in that pouch better be good
It’s a dvd with the “It gets better” PTSA. She’s gonna force Toe dad to watch it until he either changes his mind or kill himself from the nonstop viewings.
I was just thinking earlier today about what he thought about the hair. Go to hell, Toedad, this is even worse than whatever I was thinking.
Amber, I hope you have a plan.
Amber, I mean Amazi-girl, don’t freeze up now. Whatever you got planned, so it already.
I meant, do it already. Typo, no edit, oh well…
It’s funny you think she has a plan.
She has an Amaziplan.
I like to think whatever she’s fiddling with in panels 1 and 2 is part of a plan.
Welp. Here comes the hospital.
And then Toe dad drives right into the hospital.
Through Blaine’s room.
And the real high speed chase starts right about now.
I know I’ve said this before but… well, shit.
“Not-so Clever Girl”
!
NOW CORRECT ME IF I’M WRONG but I just feel like Jesus would probably have some hangups about swinging a loaded gun around in order to get your way. I mean I may be wrong. The bible doesn’t have anything specifically against it since guns weren’t invented yet. But you are indeed a sinner, man. And only he who is without sin should load the first shotgun.
The Israelites were quite fond of executing people with projectile weapons. It’s called “stoning”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xECUrlnXCqk
Becky’s hair isn’t even that unfeminine. I’ve seen way more girls with that hair style than boys. (Most people can’t really pull it off though)
Ditto. To the whole comment.
it’s definitely, like, “untraditional” though, which is kind of inherently unfeminine in ppl like ross’s worldview
True enough. It’s not unfeminine to Toedad because women don’t have it; it’s unfeminine because how dare his property choose to express herself in a way that he and Jesus didn’t explicitly approve.
Agree. I think it is a very unflattering cut myself. Agree, not many can carry it off. I guess she was needing a physical manifestation of her new life with a new haircut. (thought she should have spent the money smarter, but see why she did it I guess after it was pointed out).
From a fundie point of view, this is ExTREMELY unfeminine. Hell, Ross probably has never even seen that haircut before on anyone ever.
Its how BECKY wants it so naturally Toedad has to force her to change it because he is very secure in his parental role…
“Daddy, I like ice cream”
“THEN YOU WILL NEVER EAT IT AGAIN “
That was not a well thought out plan Becky. He was looking straight ahead with divine fury, and you drew his attention to the middle of the windshield.
He’s looking to our right. Which would be towards the driver’s side mirror.
No, I stand corrected. He was turned toward Becky and glanced right towards his center mirror.
“Your hair is your womanhood”….but she had a pretty short cut before….in terms of total hair retention, it’s cut a bit on the side, but more so styled.
In Toedad’s culture, gayness isn’t an orientation, it’s a failure of gender roles. Gay men is what happens if your kid ends up too girly and you fail to beat it out of them. And lesbians are really just confused and want to be men and so start to adopt male roles like dating women or short haircuts.
As such, her cool dykey haircut and her whole identity is, in her eyes, an intentional rejection of her womanhood and her womanly duties and that she will abandon haircut and identity once she has been carefully taught to embrace her “femininity” again.
This is also why professional homophobes of this culture don’t seem to separate out trans people and gay people very much. To people like Toedad and sadly a large number of individuals out there, trans people are just extreme examples of gay people. Basically, what happens when you gay so hard you lose track of your “correct gender” in your fealty to the “wrong roles”.
But that haircut is neither associated with lesbians nor men, but it’s still a hair cut, and to seem people, even a “regular” hair cut is an attack on her womanhood. The short style she already had could’ve been caused by either very slow hair growth, or some kind of hair accident, or maybe she cut it that way after leaving home. I know a lot of strict religious folks have hair down to their knees.
A lot depends on the specific flavour of his views. However, I suspect that his perception of ‘womanhood’ is a long-haired, barefoot mother, teacher and home-maker who is either nursing or pregnant and who has absolutely no real identity other than being someone’s daughter or wife.
I don’t get it since it doesn’t seem like Becky’s hair was that long in the first place. It’s not like she had long flowing locks before her haircut…….. ._ .”
It just hit me how weird it is that he’s driving a car.
Why isn’t he driving a toe truck?
Badump-tsch
Your gravitar’s eyebrow makes this.
I’ve met amazi-girl. She’s going to escalate that shit.
BALLS, ABORT THE MISSION!!! I REPEAT, ABORT!!!
THE TOE HAS SPOTTED THE CAPE, THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!
What’s in Amazi-girl’s glove pouches? Spearmint gum, of course! After all you want fresh breath when you go into action against a kidnaper. They’re the right size for gum.
No seriously, AG, what the hell was Plan A gonna be?
She has an Amaziplan and spearmint to gum up the works.
AG is a lot closer in that last frame. Is it the back window before she crashes into the rear plastic or the side window as she slides past at previous speed dodging the car and passing it? Is the look on her face curiosity of the car’s contents or impending doom?
I think she’s alarmed over having been spotted.
Ugh, that dehumanising. This must have been said before but what Ross is doing is the definition of objectification. Becky was, in his mind, an object called Ideal Daughter defined by certain visible characteristics he took for granted. Since those characteristics aren’t there any more, she is now another object, one he can’t even name, a Whatever instead of a Who. Maybe Becky is starting to realise this now since the threat of the gun isn’t at the forefront of her mind, and it’s pretty heartbreaking to have to come to terms with.
Having lived through it, it’s the worst. To realize that one’s own parents don’t want to get to know the you that is and accept you, but are only interested in your serviceability to serve as “perfect son” or “perfect daughter” or even just a placeholder child, there to be seen and never mention the objectification.
It’s alienating and brutal to think that all the connections one thought one made with one’s folks was really to some imaginary object and all this hate was just oozing under the surface waiting to come out. I honestly wouldn’t wish that feeling on my worst enemy.
As a religious man, Ross, I can say this: You are a bigoted waste of space and I am hoping you go to prison so Becky can live a life without some over bearing wacko controlling her
^THIS^
*Chapter Doof playing throughout*
Seriously I’m starting to get a very Fury Road vibe out of this.
Oh, I’m not the only one!
Fury Road is all the more on my mind because of yesterday’s Gotham episode.
WITNESSED!
It could’ve been worse, Ross. She could’ve gotten a perm. Or DREADLOCKS.
*vomits* Oh god no.
On one hand I’d love to hear his racist comment over the dreadlocks (because of course in his mind dreadlocks = black thugs. Probably), but on the other hand, I don’t think dreads would suit Becky at all.
Everything that giant toe says is hard to read. I’m reliving coming out all over again, except now with religious overtones
That “tap tap tap” at the bottom of panel 2… is Becky texting?
I didn’t notice it until you said that…
WOW, nice catch! OMG HANG ON A SEC HERE…
1. Becky still has Dina’s phone
2. There are exactly 3 TAPs visible
3. I’m calling five to one odds that Becky just dialled 911!
It’s a much better strategy than texting… police can track the call location (somewhat; harder with a cell)
OH WAIT WHAT IF Becky’s dialogue here is COMPLETELY DELIBERATE so that the 911 operator can get a read on the situation!
Becky may be sheltered and homeschooled but she is smart, dammit.
Oh wow, that’d be actually really super smart.
Well spotted. That would not have occurred to me, but now that you point it out I am instantly convinced.
I thought she was tapping toedad, to get his attention
I thought she was tapping her foot nervously, as some people do. I would prefer Ellen’s version where Becky calls 911 though.
Indeed. 🙂 As a strategy from the character’s point of view, a 911 gambit makes the most logical sense.
What I’m worried about is Willis’ point of view and whether it makes narrative sense. 😛
I just realized this and scrolled down to comment but you beat me to it.
FUCKIN’ CALLED IT!
And if she did call 911 — and they answered — everything that follows is being recorded.
ToeDad, thou hast just plucked thy tongue from thy mouth, and fashioned thyself a sling for thine ass.
I think she is tapping herself, as in “pay attention to me”.
I originally thought she was tapping toedad, as a way to distract him and get him involved in a conversation. Calling 911 probably makes more sense however.
In panel 1, Amazi-girl has her hand to her head; bet she was making a phone call there as well. Can’t imagine it wouldn’t have been to 911.
I actually like short hair. Why is it such a taboo for men to like short hair on women? Hell, I don’t even like long hair.
It’s not, it’s Ross being a monster and condemning Becky for not conforming to what is “Christian”.
That being said, I prefer long hair on women, but I have met girls that looked very good with short hair. But again, this isn’t a matter of preference, it’s a matter of Ross being a giant piece of shit.
Well, a giant piece of shit is an item most deserving of a grand coming out.
Thunderous. Not grand, thunderous. I really have to work on my adjectives.
As is to be expected, Fundie’s a bit of a hypocrite. 1 Corinthians 11:15 is the most common verse quoted requiring women to have long hair. The later verses saying that if you object, there is no such custom in the house of God is ignored. He also seems to have forgotten Ephesians 6:4 where it says to not bring your children to anger.
As for AG, she could easily be in a world of hurt very soon. Stepping on the brakes, or swerving wildly, could create a high speed wipeout.
Doh! I just asked in my post “Where in the Bible does it say that”? But, looks like you got that one on lock.
So, womanhood is defined by hair? By hair??? HAIR?????
Dead folicles jutting out of your head? That defines a woman?
I know this jerkwad is still living in the 50s, and using gender-roles from the Middle-Ages… but where in the Bible does it say that long-hair is the definition of womanhood? Not a uterus? Boobs? Or even just asking the person in question (because there are a lot of women that don’t have a uterus or boobs). Are cancer patients no longer women?
I hate this a-hole with the fury of 1,000 suns. Anyone who identifies as a non-woman has no right, or ability, to judge what “Womanhood” is. Including me, and especially not him.
“Your hair is your womanhood” claims the man with no beard.
Cause if your dad doesn’t have a beard, you’ve got *two* moms!
I actually had a counselor (male, mid-60’s who was doing marriage counseling with me and my husband) who, when he found out that my house is a mess (because that kind of happens in raising a young kid with Autism), actually said, “But a woman’s identity is how she keeps her house.” So my identity is my housekeeping. Not my Master’s degree. Not my intelligence that got my degree. Not any other characteristic that actually does define me. No, my identity is in how I keep my house. Granted, my house reflects my personality, but it’s not who I am. And later he said that a man likes a clean house. It took everything in me not to say, “Then the man can clean it.”
On the other hand, the counseling was somewhat effective in that my husband decided that after watching the counselor, that was definitely not the sort of man he wanted to be and we got out of that office.
Joys of being a woman and running into sexist crap where some men apparently think they know more about being women than women do.
>.> Did he quote Proverbs 31 with the middle verses left out?
God that counselor sounded awfully antiquated. You sure he wasn’t sixty hundred years old?
I think he may have had a screw loose and some personal issues (like an apparent dislike for women that we only found out about when he got more comfortable with me and my husband than was professional) that he needed to work through before trying to counsel others.
Why would you want to work on yourself before testing your counsel on others?
I totally would have said “Then the man can clean it.”
This is also my general reaction to people who claim I MUST have children cause “that’s what women do” and “what if your husband wants one.”
(bonus points if the jerkoff in question says something along the lines of “you owe it to the world because your parents had you” since I am in fact adopted ^<__<^;; )
Also, anyone who thinks wives are just glorified maids need to be punched in the face til they choke on their own teeth.
No worries. If a woman was defined by her hair, then Becky would be a badass woman.
A lot of the hyper-conservative-officially-non-denominational Christian sects, the kind that expect couples to wait until marriage for their first kiss (like the Duggars from that TLC show), see long wavy hair as a major marker of femininity. Look up Gothard and the Quiverfull movement and be horrified. But I don’t know how far that ideal extends to conservative but still nominally normal groups like Joyce and Becky’s community. Becky’s her hair was still pretty short before her big chop, after all, and he let her go to college/wear shorts.
That’s “expect couples to wait until marriage for their first kiss” and make excuses for incest, child abuse and rape.
But kissing before marriage is right out.
I just don’t see how these people think.
You’ll always fail if you try to understand how a fundamentalist thinks. That’s because you believe that they’re equipped for the process.
“Becky’s her hair was still pretty short before her big chop, after all, and he let her go to college/wear shorts.”
Another thought struck me: What if Toedad actually used to be much more “liberal” before she went to college, and all this is a result of him believing that it was exactly that, “letting” her have short hair, wear shorts, etc., that lead to her “corruption”, and now he’s thinking he has to double back with extreme prejudice to “get her back” ?
This seems likely, given how stunned Becky/Joyce are. Neither of them expected this kind of violence.
Becky was stunned by the gun, but she knew when to bolt.
Am I the only one that’s confused by the angle of Toedad’s glance into the rearview mirror at the end there?
In the US he is driving on the side of the road that puts his left eye on the side of the driver side door. When he turned his head to the right to talk to Becky, his left eye is now closest to the rear view mirror. And that’s how he spotted AG.
Becky’s plan backfired. She distracted him from staring straight ahead.
I think he’s supposed to be leaning towards Becky and then eyeing his rearview.
Okay, I was admitantly secretly holding out for some minute chance of Toedad coming around to having a moment of coming around to accepting Becky for who she is and allowing her to be her own person, and bless her, she tried to talk him down and get him to see himself from an outside perspective.
But, nope, he had his chance and he f**ked it up. At this point, if death or serious injury is in his cards, let it happen.
O crap.
He’ll either brake or swerve.
Which one will it be?
Place your bets!
Swerve. He just got a glance at Amazi-Girl; I don’t think he knows that she’s hitching a ride from him on her skateboard.
Otherwise, he’d probably stop and Amazi-Girl will have to jump onto the car, run to catch up with her board, and skid to a stop in front of the car like a badass.
He might speed up. The possibility that a “mere female” poses any threat won’t cross what’s left of his mind. His response may be to simply drive away from the nuisance.
I think Amber looks really pretty in that last panel. The poufy, wind blown hair look really suits her.
Agreed.
Is no one going to comment on becky Tapping on something? My guess: She still has Dina’s phone and is texting someone.
I commented above where someone else pointed it out! I think she has Dina’s phone and just dialed 911
THEREFORE the 911 operator on the line heard everything she said next 😀
Hmmm… you may be right. I thought she was tapping herself (on the arm) indicating for him to pay attention (to distract)
Maybe she *is* tapping 911 (ergo 3 taps)
Oh, I guess tapping herself would make sense too… but I’ll be honest, now I’ll end up being super disappointed if that is all it was XD
Yeah, the way she’s describing what Ross has done to her makes way more sense if there’s someone else hearing it.
+1 good observation.
It might alternatively be explained as hotheadedness, but you’re right, there wouldn’t be much sense in calling out Toedad’s misdeed like that without cause if she wanted to keep things calm.
I missed the tapping!!! Becky is calling 911 while distracting him, like any good kidnapping victim should. AWESOME BECKY!!!!!!
I know Mr. Willis has said no main character dies in DoA.
But, there are worse things that death as Stephen King reminds us.
Someone has noted that he pretty much has 3 choices now: slam on the brakes, speed up, or start weaving back and forth. Any one of which is going to screw Amber big time.
I hope that whatever is in that wrist pouch is an answer to what’s coming.
Either that, or Sal & Joyce just appear on the road and further distract him.
Which again, could be worse thing to happen. Or not.
Aggggg!. I hate the 24 hour gaps.
Last I heard, no characters will be permanently removed from the comic in a manner that is reminiscent of death, because it accomplishes the same thing. So no comas or anything like that.
The only thing I’ve seen, is a link to Willis answering a comment many years ago, specifically about Dina, that there would be no deaths this time around, a single sentence. I’d like to see links to his other comments to see what exactly has been said.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/05-media-rumble/mine/
Per this strip, nobody’s dying.
And that’s the link I was talking about, it’s only one sentence, said as reply to someone worrying specifically about Dina, nothing about comas, nothing about “strip time doesn’t allow for reactions to serious trauma or death”
I’m almost positive I’ve seen it on either another strip or tumblr that no one was dying. (Besides Dina wasn’t nearly as developed way back then. So if he won’t kill off Dina for reasons, than some of those reasons can be extrapolated to the rest of the cast).
Arguably, Toedad started out braindead, so a coma would not be a substantial change.
Panel 1, AG now has her hand to her head. Pretty sure she’s making a phone call. Can’t see who she’d be calling other than 911.
Looks like. But it seems like an odd culmination of superheroing around with a skateboard, grapnel, and moving car.
*Meanwhile in the back of Amazi-girl’s mind*
“Ruh roh”
It turns out that Ross is actually old man Jenkins
Ahh, which version exactly?
Does ToeDad actually have a mouth, or does he just talk through his nose?
His mustache talks for him. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
The only way to destroy him is to destroy his mustache. He’ll implode without it
I knew that ‘stache looked like an eldritch abomination!
“Full Metal Fundie”? Now there’s a twisted mental image!
Of course, it he pulls out a watch with a date scratched inside it will give us a clue about how Becky’s Mom died.
With every day we’re getting closer and closer to the Amazi-Girl/Sal “I hate you but we need to work together to defeat this terrible dude” team-up I’ve always dreamed of.
I’ve been patiently waiting.
I keep waiting for gender studies professor to appear and assist
“Who you are is a sinner,” says the deranged lawbreaker.
I’ve thought for a while that it’s a huge self-identity issue. Basically, if Becky doesn’t fit into his neat pigeon-hole for ‘daughter’, he can’t really keep his mental structure of his life and personal reality standing intact. People who have self-identities that are so weak tend to be more dangerous as even the smallest thing can bloom into an existential crisis.
Pretty sure he was about to say, “We are all sinners”. Which is either an acknowledgement of how far he’s gone over this, or else an expression of the “Nobody’s perfect” or “NO ONE CAN EVER STOP SINNING TRY HARDER AUGH” attitude. Not sure which. Probably the last one. You know. That whole “fear of God” thing.
My guess he sees the letter ‘A’ on her costume and assumes the town has branded her an adultress.
That’s pretty good.
She’d need to be wearing a red ‘A’.
Ross ain’t one for details.
Ah, so she’s been pulling a condom from her pouch in order to frighten Ross.
he’s walked all over any decent concept of dad. “toedad” is no longer a suitable monicker. we need a replacement. i suggest toefungus.
But fungi look significantly better than toedad does.
Taste better too.
How about Bent Staple?
ToeBad? Stubby? gRoss? Fundiepants? Arseface McShitstain?
I like ToeBad.
Fuck you toedad. My hair is not for you to constrict in your narrowly limited definitions of gender expressions.
A quick deceleration will solve all your vigilante needs! Wait for the sound of the impact to rapidly accelerate an additional ten miles an hour, and just like the second coming of Christ, no more vigilante. Call in the next ten minutes and get the free gift! The best selling book “Everything you didn’t know you didn’t know”.
Damn, every time you post something I think it’s me for a sec. Heh.
Preposterous! You aren’t nearly as acidic and intentionally confrontational.
And then my brain decided to picture you as a grumpy, aggressive acid golem.
I’m working on the avvie now.
Naw, I’m more passive-aggressive and accidentally confrontational. 😀
Oh, so much to note.
I mean, so many badass points for trying her ever-loving best to distract Toedad, even though engaging that asshole only means more emotional abuse and involves putting herself in a really dangerous situation. She’s incredibly strong and it’s so sad to see how much these events are just testing that strength to its breaking point.
Also Panel 5. She’s still defiant. Even beaten, broken, defeated, she still refuses to be meek about it and is willing to stand up for herself and who she is. Her dad has rejected everything real about her and threatened her life, but she still advocates for herself and reasons with him as a person…
And that’s painfully familiar for me. Literally begging a family member to just see who I am to accept that and let me do the hard work of educating them and helping them grow. Hoping that somehow beyond the painful reality, that there is some sliver of genuine familial love that would poke its head out at some point. Sadly, much like Becky, it didn’t work out.
Others have already noted Panel 4 and the whole thing in his circles where queerness is a sign of failed gender roles more than an actual orientation, so I’ll leave it there.
And panel 2 and 3. She’s so genuinely hurt there, not because she doesn’t know he’s an asshole, but rather because it shows just how little he regards her and her experiences as even really real. The fact that he stole her from people who love her and the hope for a full sustainable life where she could be happy, threatening and hurting everyone she loved, and to him, it’s as inconsequential as swatting away a few demons in a video game. All her internal suffering, the full horror of what he is doing to her. In his head, nope, it’s all about getting his property back, proving his mettle as “man of the house”, and beginning her rehabilitation from her “gender confusion” (I know that isn’t actually what is happening in boring old reality, but it’s all Toedad sees).
And that’s rough to experience first hand. To really have someone who claimed to love you unconditionally not even regard your life experiences as something worth acknowledging or respecting is… rough. And it hurts, even if you’ve braced yourself emotionally…
I know I tend to drift into TMI a lot in the Becky sections, but it is really profound to me how much sections like this feel healing to what I’ve experienced. So yeah, thank you Willis.
I’m more and more impressed by Becky for every strip. She is strong and defiant and doesn’t loose herself even in the face of the asshole who pretends to be her father.
That last attempt to reach out is heart wrenching, because you know that she WOULD accept just a tiny bit less abusive father in her life, if he just allowed her. But no, he can’t even give her that, he can’t stop short to guns and correction camps and kidnapping, even for the sake of his daughter.
I’m continuously awed by your analysis and experience, and I’m happy that you share that with us and that this emotional roller coaster Willis is taking us on helps you dealing with those experiences.
I think that the thing most of note here is that Ross doesn’t really see Becky as a distinct individual, only as an extension of his own personal identity – a possession that he calls ‘my daughter’, who must look in a certain way and act in a certain way. That’s a bad sign. I have a feeling we’re starting to see the same psychology that leads fathers to murder their children rather than hand them over to their wives after losing a custody hearing.
Meanwhile, why is Amazi-Girl so shocked? Maybe she’s seen Sal and Joyce coming the other way on a chicken run?
She has seen Toedad seeing her, which can’t make things easier.
I find it seriously unlikely that her eyesight is that good
She’s looking directly at the ‘camera’, which is clearly the mirror, so I’d say it’s a safe bet.
As to eyesight, I can generally see the eyes of the person driving the car in front in slow traffic; I don’t think it’s much of a stretch.
Given that she needs glasses most of the time I don’t think she’d be able to tell.
She’s never ever worn glasses as Amazi-Girl. I assume contacts and/or non-prescription lenses. (Maybe she learned secret identity-ing from Clark Kent?)
Or a traffic jam, which Toedad failed to notice, since he was distracted by Becky trying to get him from noticing Amazi-Girl, but which Amazi-Girl would definitively see.
AG is shocked for one simple reason. She’s made eye contact with Fundie and found herself looking into the abyss. As we all know, when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you. She also knows, as Shakespeare said, that the eyes are the windows to the soul, and can feel the blackness and hatred devouring the soul that’s looking back at her. Or, it could be that she’s just shocked, and more than a little afraid, now that she’s been discovered.
Also, he might break/speed up …
Very much this.
And he’s very much shown to default to violence and threats when he doesn’t get his way. I can’t even imagine what he would have done in an alternative universe where Becky’s mom tried to leave or divorce him (not that she likely would. That culture views divorce very negatively and as the responsibility of the woman to prevent. In fact, often times, even if the woman is being abused or the children are being beaten or raped, the woman is often encouraged to turn a blind eye and “do the work” to save the marriage by not just the husband and the culture, but by the pastor as well.).
That reminds me of something he said, about how he couldn’t save her Mom, but he can save her. And now I’m wondering exactly what the circumstances of her Mom’s death were, and if he had a hand in it… D:
Or one where Willis hadn’t promised zero deathChristianism is like maths
All have studied the theory at some point, but when it’s time to aply it everyone screws it
More like the Marvel Universe. Jesus has 5 origin stories and a lot of extra-canonical texts. You can believe just about anything and call yourself a Christian.
This is the best description I’ve found. “Think of it like a movie. The Torah is the first one, and the New Testament is the sequel. Then the Qu’ran comes out, and it retcons the last one like it never happened. There’s still Jesus, but he’s not the main character anymore, and the messiah hasn’t shown up yet. Jews like the first movie, but ignored the sequels, Christians think you need to watch the first two, but the third one doesn’t count, Muslims think the third one was the best, and Mormons liked the second one so much they retconned the whole thing and started writing fanfiction that doesn’t fit with ANY of the series canon.”
The book of Mormon is sort of like a prequel as well, akin to the Star Wars prequels maybe ? There’s a cool scene in the beginning, where one of the lost tribes of Israel gets schematics from God to build submarines in order to cross the Atlantic to go to America and become Indians. Really! I even think they describe periscopes, and this was written before Jules Verne.
I meant Native Americans, of course, keep forgetting, since they’re still called “Indians” in Norwegian.
I do love that one.
I don’t think she will, but I hope she keeps arguing with him like she hasn’t seen Amazigirl and also distracts him with it. Especially because ‘we’re all sinners’ sounds likes a great time to be like ‘well maybe you with the threatening and kidnapping more than me, assface’
There are two outcomes to this:
1. Toedad jams on the brakes and causes Amber to collide with the car. We then see him looking back as he attempts to reverse over her, with Becky struggling with him before Sal and Joyce arrive.
2. Toedad swerves off the road in an attempt to shake Amber off, and crashes into a tree. The hospital scene later on is for Becky, who is injured from the crash
Third outcome. Sal and Joyce arrive now. No point of having them on their way if they aren’t arriving in time to affect events. They can save the day. Sal can save AG and Joyce can save Becky. Toedad heads to the hospital after the car crash. Police will come to take him away and we never see him again.
Why would they come to visit Toedad in the hospital? I’m pretty sure Becky wants nothing more to do with him at this point, or at least won’t after this. Something’s going to happen to one of the main cast for there to be a hospital scene, be it Amber, Becky, or the duo on the motorcycle.
The most likely explanation is that Becky is hurt too; I can’t see Ross stopping unless the car is disabled or forced to crash in some way. Either way, Becky is going to need a neck-brace and Ross may be on life support until they finish fixing the damage from hitting the steering wheel at 30mph.
Considering he’s not wearing a seatbelt, I’d say that’s a fairly likely outcome. At most, Becky would probably suffer from some bad whiplash from the impact, while Ross would be leaving a toe-shaped imprint in the window.
Was he about to say “We are ALL sinners”?…
Probably. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
……Romans 3:23 (KJV)
Yeah, Ross, let’s talk about this one. You have kidnapped your daughter at gunpoint, taken her away from the life she tried to build, waved a gun at her best friend (you know, the daughter of your neighbours) and denied any say she might have about how to live her life, who to love or what to do with herself. Now after a few moments of sullen silence she turns to you and ask you to open up. Do you…
a) Tell her that all that is done is for a good cause? Say something about her immportal soul, the dangers of sin, tell her that the hell you inflict upon her now is temporal to save her from the eternal one?
b) Tell her that you actually love her and that all that you do is because you care for her?
c) Reassure her that her friends will be OK, that you didn’t hurt her girlfriend, that Joyce parents will take care of her, that you ACTUALLY never meant to hurt anyone despite the gun?
If you had answered any of those things I would utterly despise you because of the sheer hipocricy and idiocity in those statements, but you went with
d) A cold, unyielding statement that you will take away yet something else from Becky – one of the last things of her, in fact – that you will inflict another layer of control and that there is NOTHING she can do about it.
FUCK YOU ROSS YOU FUCKING FUCK… no, do you know what, I’m actually not that angry about this one because it tells Becky something ver important. You are still afraid of her. You are still afraid that you can’t control her. You are afraid that she will slip out of your grip yet again. The last time she did it took her ONE weekend to get a haircut and a girlfriend and friends and learn about evolution and start applying for jobs and to get a life and you had to bring a fucking GUN TO A SCHOOL to get her back, and now you are afraid that if you slip even for a moment, despite your gun and your church and your strength and your car and your money and your parental authorothy, you will never get her back again.
TELL YOU FUCKING WHAT, ROSS? YOU ARE RIGHT. YOU ARE DAMNED RIGHT TO BE AFRAID OF LOOSING BECKY FOR GOOD BECAUSE YOU ALREADY HAVE.And if you don’t understand what you see in the mirror, there is a fellow turd in a nearby hospital who could tell you about it. It’s the sight of YOU LOOSING.
Points for trying, Becky. Both for trying to distract him and for trying to reach out to him. Sorry about him being to much of a shit for it to work though. And wow… panel 5 Becky is AWESOME. You go Becky. Get mad.This shit has not treated you anything even close to how a parent treats a child and you have NO reason whatsoever to reagard him as a father any longer.
Just to make it clear, Ross.YOU HAD A DAUGHTER.EVEN NOW YOU HAD THE CHANCE TO HAVE A DAUGHTER INSTEAD OF A KIDNAPPING VICTIM. Your daughter was fun and loud and rad and cool and could have introduced you to her adorable girlfriend and shown you around campus and babbled about dinosaurs and you could have been there to share that joy with her IF YOU HAD NOT BEEN THAT BIG OF A PIECE OF SHIT.
FUDGE YOU ROSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And the thing is, it’s still not a fact he’s lost her. If somehow the situation turns around – he gets arrested, he lands in a hospital – and he doesn’t have power over her, so she doesn’t have to run to retain basic autonomy…
She’ll take care of him.
It’s plainly obvious that despite everything, Becky still thinks of him as her dad, someone she loves, someone who’s a member of her family.
If there’s any turn of tide from “I NEED to run”, he still will have another chance…
True, and I can’t even fault Becky for it. But Ross is doing his uttermost to convince her that he will never STOP being a threat.
…it’s almost as if this is more about him staying in control than anything that has to do with Becky…
Indeed on everything in the chain above.
And the thing is that he won’t ever stop being a threat to her. Even if he is locked up forever and ever, he’s going to leave his impact in her life, the anxiety of his parole, the memory of all those closest to her being put in danger, the pain of having one’s family reject her so strongly. And a spiking anxiety any time it looks like he’s about to be paroled.
Yeah, this is also why Ethan’s mom is so awful. Unlike Toedad, she still feigns love and care for him, but just the bare minimum before drowning him in bigotry and a complete lack of real care and support for the child he is. And so he’s less likely to make a complete break because there’s just enough of a sliver for the “but she’s my mom” programming to kick in and make him be willing to just accept the emotional abuse as the price of interaction.
…*Plays “NGAHHH!!” from the Undertale OST Starting at “FUCK YOU ROSS YOU FUCKING FUCK…”*.
I’m just waiting for toedad (ross) to be hawled away in hand cuffs.
kidnapping, illegal discharge of a firearm, public endangerment with a firearm. And his daughter is right… hey ross, if you would have just accepted her for who she is, you wouldn’t be facing jail time right now.
if society would just accept people for who they are, no more discrimination, etc.
The issue is that we still need to draw lines between what is acceptable (say, being non-hereronormative), and what is not (say, pedophilia). And as soon as you have those lines there, there will be arguments about exactly where they should be drawn.
I myself think the most rational place to draw the line is on this side of “Is everyone involved a consenting adult? Then fuck off,” but there are others who get really upset about what configuration of genitalia goes where on whom. Personally, I think obsessing that hard over someone else’s genitals is pretty weird, but there you go.
For interest: I found Libby Anne’s Tale of Two Boxes to be very useful in understanding and explaining the way conservatives think on this one. I’m likewise inclined to side-eye conservatives’ obsession with Other People’s Genitals…
(I’m in the ‘progressive’ camp, obvs, and would prefer the conservative boxes to be labelled “what they think God forbids/allows” – I don’t really think God cares a flying fig which genitalia are involved as long as respect and consent are – but some nuance is lost for the sake of brevity.)
Yeah, I’ve never understood “My religion forbids this so therefore you can’t do it.” Well, okay, if it’s my religion too; but if it’s not, then bug off. You know?
I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again. I’m convinced that Ross is of fairly low intelligence, in terms of average people. So low intelligence that he has a difficult time properly and accurately assessing the consequences of his words and actions. This is worrying because it is entirely possible that he will do something stupid, illegal and maybe even dangerous without really having considered the consequences.
Damnit Becky, never interrupt an enemy while he’s making a mistake. Also, don’t discount AG yet. Just because she’s been rattled, doesn’t mean she’s lost.
Why in blazes is this attached to someone else’s comment. Fucccck.
“It is entirely possible that he will do something stupid, illegal and maybe even dangerous without really having considered the consequences.”
…implying that he already hasn’t?
Fuck you. Ross, now you’re making me regret my long hair. My past-my-hips hair I’ve spent decades growing out.
You know what, Ross? It used to be a buzz-cut. Down to a quarter of an inch. And that was fine. Fuck you and your “womanhood”.
See, this is why even being female sometimes annoys the crap out of me. Fuck what my gender is. Who cares? It has almost nothing to do with who I am. The me inside doesn’t have one clearly-defined gender and that is just perfectly fine, thanks; I just really like having long hair. Also I got really tired of stylists fucking it up. Like, every single time, man.
Oh boy.
Just stepped back into the “fuck this” zone.
Okay, so my prediction: Amber is panicking because she’s seen Sal’s bike coming the other way on a collision course. Ross dodges instinctively, goes into a tree and is injured because he isn’t wearing his seatbelt.
Sal and Amber get into a stupid fight over whose fault is the crash. Joyce basically smacks them both upside the head (verbally or otherwise) for talking about trivia and gets their help to drag Becky and Ross out of the car-concertina.
Cut to the ER where Becky and Ross (the latter in much worse shape) are being treated. Sal and Amazi-Girl are shooting daggers from each other’s eyes and Joyce is too focussed on helping Becky to act as umpire. They agree that the time has come to ‘settle matters’ between them.
NEXT STRIP… Is Billie waking up in Ruth’s arms. We then have to wait a month or so, possibly longer (because it looks like we’re going to be following Joyce on a trip to the ol’ homestead after Ruth and Billie), to find out what if anything was the outcome between Sal and Amber.
Oh geez, I hadn’t even contemplated the possibility that there might be a scene change before this arc’s conclusion /o\
Yeah, we will interrupt this story for a week of Walky angsting over his grades while not being ready to commit to actual studying.
Just when it looks like someone here is about to be seriously injured, we can cut to wacky hijinks where Joe behaves inappropriately around the nurses while in the hospital for a wisdom tooth removal.
Amber will be to Dumbing of Age as Ruth is to Roomies?
dude has really drunk the kool-ade.
It’s on folks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju75EcdcpbM
“Plus”, Toe-dad continued, “that thing your eyes and eyebrows do with sitting on top of your bangs is really freaky.”
More proof of foul demonic magicks.
Damn Toedad and his good driving skills! Damn him to the blood soaked Protestant hell that he’s so afraid of!
Becky, just reach over and scratch his eyes, then pull the parking brake to slow the car. He can’t drive, defend himself, and shoot you all at the same time. Plus that’ll give AG, Sal & Joyce, and the inept cops time to all catch up.
I don’t think Becky is still ready to physically assault her own father, even after everything he has done.
Unless he levels a firearm at someone.
Or, maybe, grab the gun and then bail out of the car.
We’re all sinners, Toedad. But some of us are going to the special hell.
Well, that explains why Amber nor Amazigirl are in the “Who do you want to see more of? 2015 Edition!” poll. Either we won’t be seeing her much, or her being in the poll would take a lot of dramatic tension out of the comics. I’m leaning towards the latter, but, who knows? Could be the former
NO SYMPATHY!!!
Absolutely no sympathy at all for this retrograded piece of shit! He should die in agony!
Having known a lot of families that genuinely believe the whole “women must have long hair” thing, I’m actually surprised Becky was allowed to have it as short as it was at the beginning of the comic. Maybe the bob was an early sign of “rebellion” to come.
I’m actually starting to wonder if the Browns and everyone else in their congregation think of Ross as ‘That crazy fundie guy’. Basically, even by their standards, he’s way out there!
I feel like they might now, but I don’t find it unlikely that before recently, he was just another one of them. I mean, Joyce’s family were pretty freaked out about Dorothy, so even his initial reaction about Becky probably wasn’t that out-of-line (and was, in ways, shared by Joyce, since she initially (briefly) wanted to de-sin Becky iirc)
There have been a lot of comments about how Fundie should either die, or be arrested and sent to prison. I kind of hope he escapes. Without taking Becky, of course. Once he gets away, his fundie friends can smuggle him out of the country to do a lifetime of missionary work in some foreign country. That will save Becky either the trauma of his death, or the need to make regular visits to a prison to assuage her guilt. She has no reason to feel guilt, but she will anyway. That’s just the way it works. If he’s safe, but out of the country, then their contact can be limited to an occasional letter that she can answer, or burn, as her heart commands.
Yeah, but then we’re just inflicting him on the inhabitants of that other country. The only people who should be putting up with Ross are prison guards who are paid for the task. And maybe, eventually, if she wants to, Becky.
They’ll have no trouble ignoring the ramblings of the big dumb guy hitched to the plow.
Yeah, we don’t need another scumbag egging on folks like those Ugandan homophobes.
That won’t stop him coming back. And unless he’s neutralized in one way or another, he will be back.
He’d have to stay gone for 7 years to let the statute of limitations run out. If he came back before that, he could be arrested and charged.
And I am willing to bet he would be back, crazy as ever, on the dot that limit ran out.
People can change, my bloodthirsty friend.
Given the milleu that filth is likely to gravitate to in any such exile, he’s more likely to have his delusions catered to than challenged.
In Indiana there is no statute of limitations for murder or kidnapping.
Good.
I hold out hope that his friends turn against him after this stunt.
“Huh. Well that is certainly NOT normal.”
Here’s a question… what does Becky know about Amazi-girl? She has been mentioned in newspapers (and I think more than just in the school paper), but she may not have read any of those papers. And I can’t remember any of the cast talking about her with Becky around.
Does she know she’s a “super hero” who has been relatively successful in the past? Or is she assuming she’s a nutcase who’s going to be a problem?
Amazi-girl was mentioned on the list of people Becky was supposed to invite to Joyce’s party. Crossed off, but still seems likely she got a brief explanation.
Thanks. Kinda forgot about that.
This is such a pretty, well done strip. Like this strip in particular and DOA as a whole just: super beautiful and detailed on an artistic level.
I love the writing, yeah. I think its a great mix of humor and drama with really compelling characters.
But the art, man! The art is amazing!
Great job, Willis.
Ummm, isn’t dad looking in the wrong direction to see the rear-view mirror?
In panel 4 it looks like he has his head (slightly) turned towards Becky. If he were leaning towards her at all, it would make sense that he’d see Amazi-girl through the mirror through his left eye.
Not in a left-hand-drive car – see Idon’tcarenomore’s comment at 12:58 for detail!
A question for our esteemed artist and story teller. Has any other story arc generated this level of comments for this many days? Speculation has been pretty hot and heavy on this one.
I think Amazi-Girl’s interaction with and eventual beat-down of Blaine drew a lot of interest/participation/speculation as well. But because it was Parents’ Weekend Willis had a couple other story arcs going on at the same time so there were some cuts back and forth between Amber and Blaine/Joyce and her family/Dina and Faz/etc. It didn’t exclusively stay on the one plot like this one is.
A handy graph!:
http://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/132000868492/countingelectricsheep-inspired-by-a-sense-that
Escalation in 5…4…3…2…
https://www.facebook.com/cartoonistpaukinsella/photos/p.567301256704996/567301256704996/?type=3
The problem is not in reading the Bible. The problem is in how people try to interpret what they read in the Bible. That’s why man “… is the only animal that has the True Religion — several of them.”
…..also Mark Twain; essay, “The Lowest Animal”; 1896
or this one
https://www.facebook.com/cartoonistpaukinsella/photos/a.321018391333285.56561.321012548000536/429724113796045/?type=3
First time seeing the whites of his eyes! He must now know true fear.
Or, you know, “WTF” surprise.
I’m thinking that’s slightly more likely.
Just saw the preview picture for Jan 28, and it says “rest easy”! Any bets that they are peeking behind the door of a hospital room ? And Walky and Dorothy are looking in two different directions in that room….
January? Are there three months left in this arc? Oh well, it’s a better title than Rest in Peace, or Rest in Pieces.
Three months. Call it ninety days. We’re covering about 20 seconds per strip. 1,800 seconds. Half an hour.
Easy.
Well, I did remark that I hope the tension lasts.
I think “rest easy” was addressed to fans of Dina.
We were starting to get panicky.
That’s what I thought too.
“Must go faster?”
Becky: “SHIIIIIIT!”
I noticed that after Becky saw evidence that people are still trying to help her, she seemed to rediscover the spirit and fight within her. That would have been encouraging had Toedad not spotted Amazi-Girl almost immediately after. Now, Willis only knows what will happen next, and all the rest of us can do is wait and see.
Yeah. If that is a 911 call she’s tapping out (as Ellen very cogently suggests) then Becky has a better plan for rescuing herself than either of her rescue parties is working on. And she’s doing it.
Go, Becks!
I agree with this assessment. 🙂 Spotting Amazi-girl has reminded Becky that all is not lost and mentally freed her to do what she can from where she sits.
So, I just now noticed the “tap tap tap” in the lower left corner of panel 2.
Somebecky’s trying to get a message out.
I admit I thought that was to indicate she was tapping herself vs. merely pointing… is she a lefty? I would’ve expected the other way around if she’s not.
I wondered that too. We know Sal is a lefty, and Dorothy too if I remember right? …but I’m not sure about Becky.
Joe’s a lefty… I think
Nice try, Becky.
I’m beginning to very much dislike this man… And I’m hoping something both demeaning and crippling happens to him.
That ain’t Falco…
Look inside
Look inside your tiny mind
Now look a bit harder
‘Cause we’re so uninspired
So sick and tired
Of all the hatred you harbor
So you say
It’s not okay to be gay
Well I think you’re just evil
You’re just some racist
Who can’t tie my laces
Your point of view is medieval
Fuck you, Ross! Fuck you very, very much!
People like Toedad is what is wrong with current mass market religion. The further we get from a source and the more we edit it to make it easy the more that is lost. Zorastrians where a proto-jewdau-christian religion that predated the jews, and had all of the same main pillars shared by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and in that that faith if the kid damned it self than it was on the kids head and everyone knew it. The parents where not to blame and it was up to the kid to attone or not. Leave people up to their own decisions and consequences.
Found Ross McIntyre’s double in the news:
http://now8news.com/crazed-man-murders-ex-fiance-feeds-her-ground-beef-remains-to-her-parents-at-bbq/
(now8news is a parody site, so not really “the news”)
Ok, didn’t know that, but the photo sure looks like your drawing.
Well, apparently a parody of “Titus Andronicus” but there the crazed man murders his stepsons and feeds their ground beef remains to his wife (so formally an ex-fiancee) after stabbing his own daughter (who had been raped and had her tongue and hands cut off previously) for the sake of wordplay.
Eat your heart out, now8news.
I apologize for doing the rainbow bullshit, I actually made a post saying that I wanted to delete all of it if I could.
Wow. U actually can see where she dialed 911. I missed that.