I’m still lost, why does the Rapture mean that Walky has to disrobe?i know he’s using it as a cover, but can someone’s explain the whole disrobing part to me?
At least in the Left Behind series (which I’m SURE Joyce loved), when people got raptured their bodies were whisked off to heaven but their clothes and such were left in a little pile whereever they where. So he’s hoping they’ll turn around, see the pile of clothes, and assume he got raptured.
One of the elements of the Rapture is transubstantiation – that all good people will suddenly and instantly be transported to Heaven, leaving behind all their worldly goods – including clothing. So, people disappearing and leaving behind piles of clothing would be good evidence that the Rapture was happening.
It didn’t. I’m visualising Joyce, Becky, Dina and Mike watching in a combination of amazement and horror as Walky tries to run whilst dragging off his hoodie and jeans. The reason they didn’t pursue was that they felt that doing so would be to enter into a world where what he was doing was sane.
Terror of being perceived as a failure that borders on a phobic response. He’s so deep into ‘fight or flight’ psychology that I think that the girls (and Mike) will need to use physical force to make him attend the class.
Why did I include Mike? Because I think dragging a semi-naked and screaming Walky into a lecture hall is his idea of a ‘good time’.
Okay, but Mike is probably half the reason he decided to ditch today considering he purposefully exacerbated his anxieties about school and his relationship with Dorothy.
The way you said that makes it sound like you have actual knowledge, so I choose to believe that you were sent from a seperate dimension where the rapture happened through an accidental hole in the space time continuum
My aunt gave me the kids version of those books. For years every time I couldn’t find my mom in the house I’d freak out that the rapture had happened, she’d been taken and I wasn’t good enough.
There is even a movie adaptation “Left Behind” starring Nicholas Cage (which is the reason a roommate wanted to watch it with us on Netflix). The movie hadn’t progressed all that much before I was convulsed with laughter time and again to the embarrassment of said roommate. It was pathetic, horrifically bad, with no redeeming qualities, badly acted and without any self-irony. Look up the online criticism of it. Worst movie I’ve ever seen and then some. Had I paid anything for it, I would have been livid.
Wasting an evening on it with three people wasn’t all that bad, particularly since the embarrassment of the Nicholas Cage fan added to the entertainment.
Even when he’s doing a bad job in bad movies, Nicholas Cage always finds a way to be entertaining. I think it’s just that thing he does where he opens his eyes really wide.
And as bad as that movie was, it was head and shoulders above the version with Kirk Cameron.
And of course, either movie version is better than the books, because no movie director is going to have the characters spend half the film on the phone, and “tell, don’t show” is impossible in a visual medium.
Yes, those are problems with the books. I recommend reading the rest of Slacktivist’s Left Behind reviews.
Clothes aren’t natural– Adam and Eve are always naked in depictions, and didn’t start wearing clothes until after they ate the fruit of knowledge and developed a sense of shame. Thus, logically, nudity isn’t a problem in heaven, and when you go there you’re naked.
Ah, but neither is circumcision. Yet because it was commanded by God, it BECOMES part of us spiritually, which is why Jesus’s foreskin is a sacred relic appearing several times through history, rather than just another one of his wounds that was healed upon Resurrection.
Similarly, since God GAVE Adam and Eve clothes, clothing has become a part of us.
…. I WISH I was making any of this up. If anything, my description of the Holy Foreskin left out some of the more entertaining pieces.
Were his wounds healed upon resurrection? My impression was that it was generally assumed that Thomas had seen the wounds of Jesus (having asserted that he would not believe Jesus had risen without thrusting his hand into the wounds).
Also, many Christians believe circumcision to not be a holy mandate as Paul said in Corinthians “Was anyone called while uncircumcised? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing”. So is it still a part of us spiritually?
Due to the fact that male circumcision was a a part of the spiritual covenant with God for the Jewish people (sort of like signing a contract, except by cutting off a part of the penis that one does not actually need), I’d assume that anyone who goes to heaven and happens to be Jewish (even though Judaism doesn’t technically have an afterlife), then they wouldn’t get their foreskins back. I think anyone else who gets into heaven circumcised would probably get the choice of whether they want to have a foreskin again or not, since Paul was making the arguement that Gentiles could be Christians without first becoming Jews and getting circumcised or making sure your children did after you converted probably just earned you brownie points with your local Jewish community.
Technically there are (last time I checked) three separate relics that are claimed to be the foreskin of Jesus. Which means either a) two of the three are wrong b) Jesus had a couple of clones or c) Jesus was born with three sets of genitalia. It’s also a part of the covenant between God and the Israelite people and thus a mark of being one of the chosen people.
God: “I shall make you a great nation and give you the holy land, and in exchange all you must do is worship only me, follow these ten simple commandments coupled with several hundred social and dietary rules, and cut off your foreskins.”
Israelites: “…Wait, what was that last one?”
You left out the far most likely answer: All three of them are wrong. The whole idea of Christian relics came centuries after Jesus, and all of them are quite likely inauthentic. People just wanted physical objects to hang on to for their invisible God.
Well, and some less scrupulous people wanted the tourist money or just the esteem.
Or all three are authentic. A neat thing about Great Relics is their holiness can be transmitted, creating further relics. As in yes, you could build a cathedral out of pieces of the True Cross.
I wish I still had the source for this, but I’m remembering a legend from medieval times in which it was questioned whether a certain woman was really a virgin. The “relic” of Jesus’s foreskin was produced and placed on her finger like a ring, at which point it swelled and plumped up, proving her virginity.
…. I mean, where do you even BEGIN with something like that?
You need to understand that Walky has literally no idea what he’s talking about beyond a few stills from ‘Left Behind’ that he saw on the Internet once.
This was already funny because I wish I could use the ‘rapture’ to get out of shit. Then I realize Walky stripped and left his clothes behind. And it got better.
I will not write another series where the apocalypse happens, I will not write another series where the apocalypse happens, I will not write another series where the apocalypse happens…well maybe…
i hope walky didn’t interpret dorothy’s affirmation that she still loved him and that she would help him catch up as meaning he could skip class w/o losing her, while still getting help from her.
i mean i don’t think that’s the case, but it’s still disappointing that he’s continuing to do this
Part of the Rapture’s myth is that those who are worthy of God’s grace shall disappear, leaving only their clothes behind, so those who are unworthy are left behind are left to wallow in their darkness and corruption with satan in the end days.
So what about bowel contents? Parasites? Do the tapeworms get to heaven or are they left in the shirt? Or pants? Presumably the clothes are to be left in a somewhat orderly state? What about head lice? Contact lenses? Dandruff? Hair extensions? Tooth implants? Pace makers? Heart transplants?
Everyone is made whole so any organs missing? Bam, replaced. Any machines in place of organs? Bam, gone and replaced with organs again. Eye problems? Bam, gone. Head lice and parasites are presumably just left to fall from where you used to be essentially holding them up.
I would hope the good bacteria that has shielded you from bad bacteria comes with you though because like, it just feels like they deserve to come too.
I’ve always wondered if the Rapture was a trick, and that those who accepted being taken away from the rest of the world (whose remaining occupants are assumed to be about to embark on a whole lot of suffering) are actually getting a one-way express ticket to Hell because abandoning people who are suffering is literally the most counter-teachings-of-Jesus action possible.
Walky’s used that trick multiple times? And it’s worked? (I’m assuming Joyce is the only one of the group who’d fall for it, but even pre-Enlightenment Joyce might get suspicious after a couple times.)
1. It’s Walky… he is what he is. Best just to accept that his ability to change is stunted.
2. Dina isn’t in the same class and she and Becky were walking with them due to Joyce.
3a. In Mike’s case it didn’t, but pretending it did fits his purposes (skipping hurts Walky’s ability to turn his tail spin around, hurts Walky’s relationship with Dorothy, hurts Joyce in a few ways due to being entrusted with making him not skip, etc)
3b. Dina wasn’t fooled, but also has no stake in this and seems to avoid being aggressive unless threatened (cf. Ross’s encounter with her).
3c. Sarah is likely still laughing from the sight of Walky running away.
At least it’s because he knows the material. If he can recognize signs of the rapture well enough to cliffhanger arcs, it’s because he knows his arc-signs.
Oh, sure you are, you teach a technical subject. But meanwhile we’ve got a history major being forced to listen to our STEM puns and feeling like a lambda led to the slaughter.
…… but you have to actually have a head for numbers for that!
Like, the only numbers I can remember from history are that the American continent was first discovered in 1492 and the American Revolution started in 1776, and I’m pretty sure both of those are wrong!
That’s why I prefer math. With math I don’t need to have a head for numbers.
The first number is wrong, because the American continent was first discovered when ancient tribes crossed the Sibera-Alaska land bridge, and then later when Vikings sailed here and settled in Labrador.
Also, for the record, there wasn’t an imaginary number anywhere in there. If we were doing calculus with imaginary numbers, we would inevitably be referencing the equation e ^ (pi * i) + 1 = 0, and we haven’t done that yet, have we?
Good, Ethan, stick with that first “Maybe…but ultimately no” instinct. If you must grapple with the hypothetical, restrain yourself “what if” fantasies- Mike’s hot, you’re human, that can be a safer way to entertain the idea. Keep talking it over with Amber to remind yourself of the “ultimately no” reasons. Do not fuck Mike. Do not tolerate Mike’s BS. Do not get sucked in by Mike’s BS. He is not worth it, unless and until he proves otherwise, which would be a long road.
Honestly, I want Mike to fail with Ethan and in the process find himself suddenly way, WAY over his head and having to find a way to give Ethan a way to feel secure in a relationship with him. It would be delicious.
I do believe that Walky was prepared and wearing the short pants he is currently sporting, rather than streaking off in his undies. Heading back to his dorm room to rerobe would make him too easy to locate. There is always a logic to Walky’s inanity.
Panel 1: Yeah, good, back off that trail, it leads to nowhere you really want to go.
But more seriously, I get what he’s almost saying here. He’s not obsessed with Mike’s attractiveness, he’s more lonely and desperate for connection, especially connection to an old life he feels has slipped away from him since he came out.
And Mike, abuser that he is, is exploiting that for his little dumb petty plan. Using Ethan’s desire to see something salvageable in Mike because Mike is the only thing that hasn’t changed when he came out. Because he’s seen Mike with a guy and so there’s that tantalizing possibility of connecting on a deeper level with a friend from older times, who understands what it’s like to be queer, who is being nice in a way he hasn’t before, making him feel special.
And it’s the hope that pushes past reason. Because he would love it to be easy and not just have so much of his old life be toxic and something he needs to mostly raze and start over from (keeping Amber of course). And I can recognize that pull for a time that will never come back before one came out.
But letting it go will be healthier in the long-run.
Panels 2-3: Oh, Walky… no.
After that beautiful moment with Dorothy, with her building back your confidence, you run away immediately? But then, I get it. It’s not just the grades or the failing or the feeling like you’re an “idiot”. It’s the fact that Walky has sunk a large portion of his identity into being “smart”. That being able to succeed at schoolwork with minimal effort and get all A’s is a key part of what sustains him and allows him to face all the other stuff in the world. So having an academic setback shakes him harder than it might others.
And while he may be moving past some of his demons, he’s still running into the problem of the emotional side of it and how awful he knows it will feel to get a really nasty grade or some warnings about his missed classes and their affect on his grades. Consequences can be hard to handle, though necessary, but Walky has never been big on accepting those with any measure of grace or ease.
Poor Ethan. I guess I’m pretty lucky in that the majority of my childhood friends wound up being queer. Three gay guys, one bi chick, and I even have two bi cousins to look up to! I’m still something of the odd one out since I’m ace, but it still means a lot especially down here in podunk Florida.
Hi, Cerberus. If you don’t want me to talk about this with you or have any other restraints I need to abide aside from that then tell me I’ll stop.
You have probably / may have known by my (in retrospect, wow that’s a lot) posts on yesterday’s comment that Ethan is not the only one that is able to see something salvageable in Mike, because I can. I do not ask anyone to believe this also and never would. I am however at the same time increasingly upset by the treatment as fact that Mike is an abuser and his attempts to seduce Ethan right now can and only will be traumatic and intentionally so because his intent is toxic. I will stop at that, and I am only commenting this to you because you are the analyst of this comic that I and others most look to for readings of what certain things might mean in the bigger picture and perspective for your insight, and I rarely disagree with your readings on comic interpretations and never in my recollection on anything related to morality. But I do disagree with you about Mike and I think he is relatable because of aspects of his personality that are recognizable for reasons I am familiar with and have thought very very hard about before deciding anything.
…I am breaking my own promise hear to say “yesterday’s comment” means “yesterday’s post.” I replied to many many many comments yesterday but I do not think yours was one of them because of when I woke up when the strip ran yesterday
I think it’s absolutely fair to have your own perspective and feelings about a character and to see a particular resonance with them even if they are not a particularly popular character at any given moment or they are doing something wrong.
I think that sort of connection is beautiful and awesome and I celebrate that.
Given your comment here, I went back and reread all your comments from yesterday to make sure I’m being respectful of your perspective. And I am sorry that my strong feelings on Mike have hurt you or made you feel upset.
And yeah, I’m big on analysis, but that does not mean I’m Willis and does not mean I get things 100% right all the time. My views are just that, my own perspectives, informed by my life experiences and knowledge bases, and filtered through that and my own style of analysis. They’re not commandments.
You are right, I do disagree with you and think Mike is an abuser. He gaslit Ethan in the hall when Ethan rumbled that he was trying to hurt someone. He regularly harasses and isolates people who get within his sphere of influence. He thrives on hurting people and making them feel bad and uses that to gain a sense of power.
But that doesn’t mean he’s inhuman. In contrary, abusers are very human and very common (unfortunately). They have internal motivations and internal scripts that they use to justify their behaviors and we’ve seen that in previous abusive characters like Blaine, Toedad, Carol, and Mary.
And in my perspective, Mike, I feel, is fulfilling a different type of abuser, which is basically the modern troll harasser. The person who “for the lulz” harms others around them, especially those who are more marginalized, hiding behind a mask of careful indifference. And I see in the fallout to his actions and in particular his statement in planning to harm Ethan and Danny with this lengthy seduction plan entirely in response to Ethan begging him not to harm Danny and his statement that he would have slept with Amber’s boyfriend if he had known who he was just to hurt her, that kind of harmful direct bullying and abuse.
And given my own life experience at the hands of folks like that and seeing how folks like that have harmed many of the people close to me, I’m not overly inclined to be overly charitable to the character.
But just because I hold this view does not mean you are not welcome to see Mike as redeemable. Nor does it mean I see him as an inhuman monster, more just an insufferable harmful edgelord.
I support you in your reading and perspective even if it is not one I am in a position to share.
The more I have reflected on this the more that I find the reason it bothers me to read Mike as an abuser, or someone who exists is a punch down in the direction of people who are already powerless, is because I think Mike is one of Willis’s oldest characters and one that Willis thought mattered, perhaps more importantly than anyone than Danny, was told in a way that was reflective of the change not just in Mike from IW! or Shortpacked! but Willis from the person he was when he wrote them. Mike’s character is an asshole and a troll and that’s what the author had to work with, and obviously the grandiose aspects of Mike’s…self won’t translate to a world socially parallel to ours even if Willis wanted to try. And I think what may have happened instead was that Willis created Mike to be, if an asshole and a troll, then at least maybe the asshole or the troll Willis saw in himself (and I see in myself) the way characters like Amber and Dina had pieces of his experiences. And I have this reading because the narrative that Mike is toxic is woven to include and account for another, false narrative, namely that Mike is a secret moral guide that points out things other characters should change in them. And for that narrative to be false it had to exist, and it existed because the things Mike says could be defended as true.
I think they are true. When Mike isn’t existing to deliver jokes, he is the asshole that I am sometimes and that Willis and I both acknowledge is not beholden to the feelings of others if it means calling out harmful practices that have to stop.
But Mike’s a character. And he’s talking to other characters. And many of them being insecure about, traumatized by, or also victimized by the status quos they unwittingly perpetuate was perhaps something Willis didn’t realize would logically result in a way for Mike to be something more than just an asshole. And that if characters in the story were to be called out for saying wrong and twisted and unhealthy things about their treatment of others or themselves or about the world, they would still be and be read as unfair victims in that situation if the one doing the calling out was as much of an asshole as Mike—regardless of whether or not those things being said were true.
And that is all speculation but I do think there is a case for it because this is the kind of dialog and alt text (and clarification if it’s added) that Willis writes when he gets tired of reading people shitting on, say, Danny for three months over things that Willis knows Danny isn’t horrible for or even guilty for. And that Danny will be vindicated.
This is all entirely separate from what I find empathetic about Mike as a character with emotions. I can go into that as well but I think if it’s deliberate then it’s still only something that happened later and wasn’t always planned. But I thought an explanation of why even the consideration that Ethan having sex with Mike would result in Mike deliberately or even unwittingly making it a traumatic experience made me pause for reasons that had nothing to do with either of them. It wouldn’t be fair. There’s no narrative justice there. I think that matters a lot more in this world than it does in ours.
You are not the only one who reads Mike that way. So do not let me make you feel like your perspective is invalid.
But I really can’t share that reading of Mike. His actions don’t lead to people being in better places. Objectively, they end up in worse places and he goes after those who are marginalized rather than any actual power he could affect real meaningful change towards and there’s little evidence in my mind that he even wants to help people.
And this is also colored in my perspective by not believing that being “an asshole for someone’s good” is actually a good thing. Being cruel to someone to “wake them up” doesn’t actually help. It makes them shrink deeper into the self-destructive behavior and stop talking about it. What helps is love and support and giving them the space and resources to recognize what is going on and adapt or if someone’s behavior is harming others, direct intervention and removal from the people they are harming.
And I doubt I’d like a Mike that fit that, because I’ve dealt with a number of harassment movements that believe that by being relentlessly cruel to me they will “help” “cure” me of my “delusions” that being trans is a real thing, that being ace is a real thing, that being DID is a real thing. That that bullying will “fix me up”.
But, that all said, I recognize and respect your own perspective and the connections and resonance you find with Mike and I think there’s no shame in finding those resonances and enjoying the character because of that.
Thank you for your words and I hope you do not mind me talking again to clarify and acknowledge my feelings about both your response and, again, how we differ in opinion on Mike. I agree with nearly everything you have posted in fact the reading of Mike as the “righteous asshole” is not the reading of Mike that I have or believe, but one I believe matters because it means I don’t think that even if Mike’s “calling” out behavior is applicable to real-world contexts without being terrible. I envy your kindheartedness and I want badly to believe that there is no point in being the asshole and that I’d be better without it in me, because I do know that in any context Mike is an asshole he is a harmful one because he’s saying these things to people. I have had instances where hearing thing written, argued, and delivered in methods that were sarcastic or mean or even vitriolic were more beneficial and affirming or important for changing beliefs in myself than a nicer message would have been, but absolutely none of them were in face to face encounters. I do not know even as I practice that it’s okay, definitely, to be an asshole to someone directly over the internet for any reason including a moral one. The example that comes to mind most easily is both up and policing in a safe space like Willis has to do in the comments section and I am wholly empathetic when he does it in a way that’s kinda dickish taken at face value, because the end result is places where you and I feel safe to talk. I also really, really do believe I have tried my best to sever any notion that “usefulness” in asshole behavior exists for the reasons I see (and I do see them and I see a lot) Mike having humanizing elements or even seeing / hoping for potentially sympathetic ones in the context of things he actually does that I am reading.
And, uh, now with all the madness accompanying my reasons for this aside, I’ll try to collect my thoughts on what I do actually see in DoA Mike that makes me think he could or will be sympathetic or have parts of him that indicate he’s not purely or unforgivably or even drastically evil.
He’s spiteful and displays a face and persona that’s apathetic and that is the face he is presenting to the world when inciting people. And he is definitely inciting people and I don’t think either of us disagree with that. I do think we disagree about why. I think Mike is like the kinds of troll harassers I think you’re describing in that he 100% goes around saying things intentionally to bait people, does so in the hopes of pissing them off, and does so without concern for their feelings or the potentially devastating long- or short-term consequences for them. I am so sorry for your experience with and knowledge of these people and what they are capable of, and it is not comparable remotely to the damage I sustain from attitudes I think of as ‘trolling’ in my life.
It is personal trolls that cannot be blamed for anything so describable in terms of impact and consequence that are coloring my nagging instinct that Mike is not a troll in the same sense as them. Because the lulz you mentioned driving trolls like that are familiar to me. Because “lulz” on their own, absolutely independently and not the horrible things they are or can be used to perpetuate behind a so-called mask, are the one thing I am probably most attuned to and the invalidation but also the lack of cohesion inherent in them is something that inevitably sets me off. I’ve spent last year and a half unpacking the part of my history that explains why I am spiteful enough to relate without questioning out of hand why Mike does anything. And it isn’t the part of me that was driven to fear everything or the part of my conditioning that makes me think I’m worthless, but the one that my brain uses to present both my powerlessness and the fact of nihilism as reality. I do not want to be grateful for this but I acknowledge that many threats and even perceived threats (emotional to financial) in memory exist to explain why I’m still bound, despite everything in my nature that contradicts it, to bend over backward to please other people no matter what if they are or I can imagine them physically there in front of me where I can sense their feelings. I hate that part of myself and want to cut it out and burn it and live without fear but I am so frightened of what I’d be without it. Because it is being intensely attuned to and caring about the feelings of people that may well be the reason I’m not acting like Mike Warner. If I didn’t care I would be dangerous. I already am dangerous in my own estimation. Because other coping mechanisms, not necessarily of abuse but of emotional overstimulation, that I’m trying to acknowledge and deal with now are fanatical devotion to truth and what is provable and repressing my emotions until they explode into rage. Without fear (fear of setting off unwanted emotions in others and inability to cope with them at expense of my self) the part of me that calculatedly and deliberately tears into people who are wrong on the internet about cartoon characters would be the viciously angry part of me that also determines parts of what it’s okay to say to someone in a written form and EVERYTHING about what’s acceptable to say to people in front of you.
…Because being an asshole the way Mike is is not useful. I want to make that clear that’s not why I find so much to relate to in him. I do not think it’s okay even remotely that he’s an asshole even if I strongly do not believe he is an abuser or someone without boundaries or even many beliefs I personally share. His intent is what I’m arguing but none of it excuses him being an asshole. Being an asshole is exactly what it sounds like and sometimes I think for a webcomic an asshole can be funny because they will say the things that the Joyces and Dorothys won’t. But I don’t think even my most, hypothetical intensely sympathetic reading of Mike thinks there’s any reason it’s cool to be a dick to the people around you. But I do feel also very very very very strongly because of my own neuroses (and they factor into my reading) that there should be evidence of consequences as drastic as the act of Mike actually isolating and belittling and manipulating over time another person to the point they can’t conceive of any scenario where they aren’t too worthless to make a friend on their own for readers to say like fact that his toxicity is equally as dangerous. This isn’t because I don’t think it’s possible or because I don’t think those readings into his behavior aren’t valid or even don’t think they’re more valid than mine. But still even though I acknowledge his behavior could or may well be wholly toxic, and that this may be inarguable and I am wrong, that DoA Mike is not the one on the record that has proven himself so evil by doing all of that and then finally sleeping with Dina Sarazu to ruin her life—and because of that I cannot judge him as or even closely to the same character. Because the character who did that did something I can and never would forgive a real person for doing to my favorite character and if I’m reading DoA Mike as a real person I am also mentally incapable of treating him as or judging him (I am never picked for jury duty) the same as the person who has done it and has a body count. I know that one isn’t necessary to judge a character alone or understand why others would judge them and find their judging reasonable and obvious based in how that kind of characterization operates. And I can’t make myself care. I won’t put DoA trial on Mike for Dina until he literally does or even imagines doing that to Ethan and we see it happen.
Seems likely. It’s hard to face failure in the face when you’ve been trained all your life that failure isn’t what is necessary for growth, but proof of your worthlessness (I dislike greatly families like Walky’s who make their children afraid of ever “disappointing” their parents and thus develop complexes around the very necessary act of failing something to improve).
Oh, Walky. I know that feeling. My parents tried so hard to push the opposite narrative – failure will happen sometimes, it helps us grow, no one can be good at everything all the time – but relentless praise for being “so smart and talented” from teachers and the ensuing sharks-with-the-scent-of-blood behavior from my classmates any time I was less than omniscient sure did make me afraid to admit to needing help. With anything. Ever. I’m getting better at it, but my freshman year of college I very nearly failed a class because I was too afraid of admitting weakness to actually go to office hours and ask questions.
Walky is a guy that thinks owning more than one pair of shoes makes one less of a man. Given that, “I might need help with my brain problems” is probably a concept that causes him to experience an enormous amount of self-loathing. “Real men” don’t have these kinds of problems, so it must mean I’m weak and pathetic.
Rapturist belief structures are weird sometimes. But I think this one especially hammers home a key problem of the belief structure, which is the belief that anything of the world is stained with sin and imperfect in the eyes of the lord. So, all the clothes and all the medical aids and so on get “left behind”, because to this way of looking at the world, they’re stained in sin by existing here whereas the human body is “crafted by God” and so remains in Heaven but without actually dying.
And that has consequences for society. The people who believe this stuff have no interest in saving people’s lives or even viewing things on Earth as important beyond the conspiracy theories of “good vs evil” showdown between the Antichrist and “good Christians”. And it promotes viewing politics and life as just a loading screen game while waiting for your early punch ticket to that much better afterlife you only get if you avoid being tempted into actually experiencing the world and acknowledging you are fully living in it.
Like, you need to avoid sex for pleasure, marriage with people you want who may not share your race or your religion or be of a different gender, being what your gender identity actually is, even openly caring for and seeking to aid the needy with good deeds.
Because those show disloyalty to God’s plan and the trust that if you wait hard enough he’ll ruin the planet fast enough for you to get your early ticket to Heaven.
And that also means you’re encouraged to ruin the planet, do nothing to steward future generations, because the Rapture is any day so there won’t be future generations. And you’re encouraged to abuse and harass others into following your narrow worldview, because all that matters is getting enough God souls before the near end, so convert everyone you can and make sure no one slips up by actually trying to focus on improving the here and now.
And that part is not hyperbole. According to Left Behind and the worldview it’s coming from, the Antichrist will be marked by “good seeming” deeds surrounding international cooperation or selfless aid of those marginalized, because that’s all a ruse to a One World Government and the Antichrist taking over the world.
It’s… one hell of a thing to grow up adjacent to, so I have all the feels for Willis growing up in it.
Speaking of feels, I’m all the sad face for Becky’s look of horror in the background. Like, she’s been told all her life that if she was ever so foolish to “give in” to her “desires”, she’d be shut from the Kingdom of Heaven and the Rapture that is going to happen any day.
So when Walky yells that out and points, she looks into the sky, fully believing she’ll see the departing figures floating nakedly into Heaven leaving her behind in her sin, vindicating her father’s hateful view of her.
And that’s sad cause I don’t think Walky had any intention of traumatizing her, but this joke definitely is hitting a really sore place for her and that makes me sad.
Ouch, yeah, that is a gut punch for Becky. She KNOWS that God is cool and answers lesbian prayers, but the gut reaction is still a reminder of a loss that is far too fresh.
If you haven’t read/heard The Hand Of God by Julia Ecklar, run-don’t-walk and check it out – it’s a song that speaks powerfully about the corrosiveness of this kind of religion.
I want to quote some of it to show how amazing it is, but there are too many great lines and it’s hard to choose. For example:
“Just deny any questions outside a small range;
Feel safe all our lives, for our lives cannot change;
We’ll be told if it matters that we understand,
And be led to the end by God’s Hand.”
This page has the song track, the lyrics (at the bottom), and her story of how she wrote it. Very cool – one of the most powerful lines in the song wrote itself while she was performing it for the first time.
I love that song. Breaks me every time. I particularly like that while it rejects this kind of religion as evil and destructive, it does so without actually denying it. More like the classic Huck Finn, “Alright then, I’ll go to hell”, than an atheist’s rejection of god.
It’s an even greater defiance, in my opinion. The rejection in the final verse, loops right back into the chorus:
“If defiance means death, I would die before stand
Like a sheep to be thrown to God’s Hand.
But we’re all in the hands now of God …”
I’ve now spent most of the evening trolling through my old filk collection. See what you made me do. 🙂 Julia Ecklar has some other good stuff I’d forgotten, Lullabye for a Weary World also kind of broke me.
But instead I’ll offer a bit more of a positive take on religion, for Becky and Dina. Cat Faber’s Word of God.
“We gaze upon creation where erosion makes it known,
And count the countless aeons in the banding of the stone.
Odd, long-vanished creatures and their tracks & shells are found;
Where truth has left its sketches on the slate below the ground.
The patient stone can speak, if we but listen when it talks.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the rocks.”
“The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.”
What you mentioned about how this would affect Becky is precisely why I have a hard time finding it funny. For all we know that could have triggered a nervous breakdown for Becky. She’s already a bit freaked because of earlier when Chloe walked past them, and presumably a little worried that she might lose her current housing set up.
Also, Cerberus I really hate to bother you, but you have more experience with American fundamentalist Protestantism than I do. Where the hell did the whole “rapture” thing come from? I’ve got a Catholic background myself and have read the Bible in its entirety at least four times, and there is nothing, literally nothing, that I have found to justify this theological idea. The actual picture it paints of the apocalypse in revelation is seven years under a Facist police state with routine torture and execution for those who don’t join the state mandated religion, and then Jesus comes and smites the unrighteous and the unjust with holy wrath. No “rapture” anywhere.
…
Sorry, the “rapture” is probably the western theological tradition that I despise the most because of how utterly corrosive it is as you said.
There’s a nasty irony there. Pagan Rome tolerated many foreign religeons in new territories, and treated their gods as different avatars of the Roman pantheon. They sometimes clamped down on monotheistic religeons, which they saw as politically dangerous. But when Christianity took over, they ruthlessly suppressed ALL other religeons.
Spain after the Christian Reconquista was properly apocalyptic: they came up with the Inquisition to root out Muslims and Jews who still practiced their religeon in secret.
It’s hard to argue that ancient Rome was a fascist police state, because… well, they didn’t have any police. Or any other real means of control over their subject peoples, besides the army which was concentrated along the borders. (Living just outside the empire and next to this army probably wasn’t as much fun, as the Romans tended to pre-emptively smash and/or destabilise any neighbour who looked to be doing too well) Internally, the Roman state was woefully small and underequipped to govern their huge empire. It took centuries before they even started to develop a proper bureaucracy, and even then it was much smaller than the contemporary Chinese version.
The Romans were brutal conquerors, but once the conquering was done they pretty much left their new subjects to live their lives as they had always done. Local elites often started to look and act more like the Romans, but not so much because they were forced to as because doing this then meant they could get all kinds of neat stuff for themselves like Roman citizenship or even a seat in the senate, and of course a lot of prestige. Worked pretty well, for a few centuries.
Modern police states are much scarier than ancient dictatorships and autocracies, because means of gathering information and exerting control are immeasurably greater than they were back when information travelled at the speed of a dude on a horse and the only real way the emperors had of spreading propaganda was to carve it on the coins they minted.
While that is true, my point was that the Roman empire from the perspective of those it conquered very probably inspired the horror images in the Bible. If you’ll pardon the sarcasm, they were the civilization that pretty much produced books that could be summarized as ‘Genocide for dummies’ and used torture and rape and murder as methods of ‘reminding the population of their place in regions that weren’t considered properly obedient. Of course, the Romans weren’t objectively monsters in everything they did, but when they were monstrous, they didn’t hold anything back. History is written by the victors, but it’s not every victor that brags about killing entire populations without claiming divine justification for their actions.
The short answer to that is basically a long series of end-times prophets starting in the mid 1800s who have all been cribbing of each other, so you have Scofield begetting Hal Lindsey begetting Tim LaHaye and Left Behind, frequently mixing in other conspiracy theories along the way like the John Birch Society.
For a much longer and complete answer, I’d heartily recommend this series by Fred Clark deconstructing the Left Behind books as he frequently breaks down the ugly history of how this arose and how it affects those who believe in it and the rest of us along with them: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/11/05/left-behind-index-the-whole-thing/
Point of interest, “Hey look! [any reasonably short phrase]” works, because people are conditioned to look when you say “Hey Look!” It being The Rapture maybe bought him a couple extra seconds.
It works best when you name something that’s actually in the direction you’re pointing, but I shit you not, you can pull this off with “Hey Look! A distraction!”
True, but it Depends how long you want it to last:
Saying, “Hey Look, a distraction” will have a split second’s effect before they wise up.
Saying, “Hey look, that thing over there!” Will have most people saying “so what?” without even glancing.
Saying, “Hey Look! That immobile object moved” will have the broadest effect, but will still be brief.
But…Saying, “Hey Look, the Rapture!” Or “Hey look, a ghost!” Or “Hey look, it’s Luke Skywalker!” Or whatever the other person was raised to worship will have the longest lasting possible effect. Because they will want to believe you and look, examining their surroundings for a good while,before wising up.
Real talk, Willis, how did you make mike so hot? I don’t understand how that personality with a fairly average mid-fit physique parses as the embodiment of sexy mistakes
He’s not hot Willis’ art style doesn’t really lend itself to hotness. Maybe within the setting he’s hot but he looks like a pretty average douchebag white dude to me.
The art style doesn’t lend itself to depicting people as hot unless they are big and muscly. Walky doesn’t look insanely hot, either, yet he also has those drooling abs.
As for Willis making Mike hot, I find it perfectly reasonable, as him being insanely hot is the only reason I can figure he’s gotten away with so much horribleness. I mean, the only other excuse would be him being rich, and I don’t see a rich kid going to this type of college.
I just don’t get him being so hot that people who actually know him are actually tempted when they know he’s fucking with them.
Billie comes from a very well-off family (“The only way my father knows how to show his love is with huge amounts of money,”), and Carla’s family is almost insanely rich. So we do know of at least a few rich kids who attend this college. 😛
Really Walky. Really. The goddamn “where-the-hell-did-the-fundies-come-up-with-this-idea-I-can-find-literally-nothing-about-it-in-the-bible” rapture? That is low. That is really low. Because for Joyce and Becky that’s potentially traumatizing and or triggering given their upbringing. At the very least you have just majorly scared them and stressed them out, and put a real damper on what was looking to be a good day. Dina will most likely not have mercy when she finds you. And make no mistake. She will find you Walky. There is nowhere you can run, nowhere you can hide that she can’t track you to. And you will never see her, not even as she brings you down from behind.
It’s probably an indicator of just how afraid Walky is of math class right now that he actually considers the possibility of Joyce, Becky and Dina beating him into a pulp to be a lesser of two evils.
Could someone please explain the Concept of The Rapture?
I know I don’t really remember all that much from reading the bible 30odd years ago, but this looks like something that would have stuck in the mind.
Or should I rather try the true visions of Agnes Nutter for it?
Having tried to read through the Wikipedia article on the topic: don’t bother, I don’t think I can wrap my mind about the concept (having always taken the bible as something not to be taken literally).
It’s not a hard concept but its a non-biblical one. The idea being God will take up all the good Protestants and leave the Catholics, pagans, Hindus, Muslims, and non-extremist Protestants to die horribly in Armageddon.
Expected to be seen in a few strips time: Mike dragging Walky (still in his underoos) through the corridor whilst Joyce and Becky lecture him sternly about how wrong it is to ‘take sacred things in vain’.
Hey, Walky. I’ve been there before. I’ll be there again. Maybe next time we’ll make ourselves do the right thing and maybe I won’t treat myself the way you probably will yourself.
Walky is the one in this strip I understand the least:
I have had plenty of conversations about potential partners and mutual friends with other friends that do not share my sexuality. We somehow managed to avoid the trauma that I keep being told is the inevitable result of sexual congress with narcissists and Republicans.
I have shut myself off from the world to chat with someone. Listening booths in libraries,I miss them.
Like a Walky, I have even ditched difficult classes.
What I don’t get is the desire to run from something as logical as Math. If he was naturally good at it in high school, then he will also be naturally good at it in College.
Literary analysis, that I can understand dodging, or anything as subjective as that. But something as logical and easy to progress in as Math, an extra hour of homework and anyone that can factor a trinomial in a test environment can ride the calculus bus.
I can understand his desire to run away, something that used to make sense to him now doesn’t. That’s scary! As for the facts that math is logical and easy to progress in and therefore he can do it with a little more effort; I’ve always been terrible at math to the point that I cried after my final math exam in high school because I was afraid I had failed it and would have to do a make-up test and I never wanted to study math again (in Belgium they don’t force you to take those classes in college, you’re free after high school). I worked my ass off to pass it and it killed me. It was my least favorite class of all time.
You know, every time I see someone who claims they have “always been terrible at math” I can’t help but think that somewhere down the line there was a teacher that let them down in the worst way…
This is probably true for me.
In kindergarten they said “wow, watch out for Leorale in math”, because I scored really high on whatever kindergarten IQ tests think is mathy, probably being analytical, or critical thinking, or something. I got to be in all the fancy gifted classes.
But they didn’t find out that I had dyscalcula and, as a result, was just average at math, at best. So all the gifted kids around me skipped the drill and got it quickly, but I probably needed the drill and didn’t get it at all.
Then I moved a bunch, which was fine in English (it doesn’t matter if you read children’s books in a different order), but was death in math (where you can’t go skipping all over the curriculum, it’s linear).
Anyway. I’m not sure if this counts as teachers letting me down. I rather think my brain did.
It depends on whether or not he actually understood the concepts behind the highschool math. He may have found it easy and breezed through it in highschool without actually understanding it and now that he’s in college and is hitting math concepts he can’t just naturally breeze through he’s in a pickle. Or it may just be that the math they are doing he doesn’t just get by default and so has to work at it to understand…and Walky does not strike me as the type to work at anything.
That was pretty much me, except I didn’t hit that wall until somewhere late in junior year. Kind of killed my physics degree.
I stopped being able to grasp it intuitively and had never learned how to actually learn it.
Nope, nope, nope.
It’s nice that you’re good at math. Some of us aren’t.
Literature is easy peasy for me, you just make stuff up using critical thinking, and words are my friends. Objectively right answers mean you can get it wrong.
Plus I have a math learning disability (in sequencing) that went undiagnosed til the middle of college. By then I’d learned quite categorically that numbers were awful for me.
All of this is irrelevant to Walky, who got effortless A’s at every academic subject, as long as he was a big fish in a small pond. This is the first time he’s faced the need to actually study or pay attention (like a not-Smart kid, oh no), the first time school ever made him cry, and that’s a different flavour of scary.
You are correct there at least, very little that has been said so far has been relevant to Walky at all. Or to anything I said. Repeating, verbatim, the plotline we have already seen is doesn’t help either. Those seem to be pretty much the only responses so far. I seem to have stuck quite a nerve. I certainly wasn’t saying math was easy. Or the standard for intelligence. It is hard and itisn’t the only subject intelligent people excel at. And, for everyone else, there’s always philosophy.
Just to reword my original statement, which may have been unclear. For someone that was successful at everything in high school, math is the least intimidating subject, Frashman year at least. It requires the least study and lesson and study plans follow each other in a logical profession. I am surprised Walky is running away from that subject rather than the impenetrable, subjective, and homework and study heavy subjects he would also be faced with. If he is doing this badly in something like Math, then those subjects you have to start studying hard at right from the start must be flapping in the wind.
Someone may never have been good at math, we all have our weak spots (mine was chemistry, I am awful at it and I will never be a lawyer) but that doesn’t really apply to Walky.
This is sophomore year math for a media studies degree, not pure mathematics or linear algebra. It is exactly the subject you can work through without having to worry about the concepts.
You’re still making very broad statements about things that really do vary from person to person. Maybe Walky’s actually good at retaining the more subjective material even without studying and decent enough at bullshitting to get through the papers and essay tests and things. I was. Throughout my college years. I never “studied”. Never. Sometimes I did the reading, depending on the class. I did the assigned homework, usually at the last minute. I still don’t know how to study. I never had that kind of problem with the “impenetrable, subjective, and homework and study heavy subjects “.
I didn’t hit the wall in Math first year, but I did hit it. I’m not sure there’s any specific point that it can’t happen before. I never really hit it with anything else – other than hard sciences that depended on that math.
People are different. They have different problems with different things.
I excel at high school math (and depending on where you draw the line, early college math since at least the first 2 semesters of calculus are included), but hit a hard ceiling when it comes to linear algebra. It is incredibly plausible that Walky could have coasted through high school math and hit a wall in college calculus. Add in the fact that this is one of his first experiences with a large lecture, and there’s multiple reasons for him to be struggling.
I don’t know about Willis, but I took calc freshman year. Even ended up having to re-take it, despite having been good in math. Though in my case, the issue wasn’t with study skills so much as the professor being terrible.
Ha my friends in Bible college totally did that to one of our more gullible classmates, complete with clothes laid out on the bed as though someone had been resting there, reading their Bible.
Walky hasn’t lied to her either, unless he promised off-panel not to skip class. He’s being cowardly and running away from something because it’s difficult and failure is scary.
Her instructions to Joyce would indicate she probably won’t be surprised by this outcome.
REALLY?!! Being bad at math is more embarrassing than running around naked outside during the day and manipulating your girlfriend’s friends religious beliefs? Shit man, I get fearing class, but not that much
If it’s a girl, she might say thanks, pull it up, or zip up/button up the plaid
If it’s a boy, probably the same thing except she’d say ‘bounce your eyes’.
Oh for crying out loud Walky….You JUST had a conversation with Dorothy about not skipping out on your classes. She even helped you study….She may not leave you for being foolish, but she certainly will leave you if you keep acting stupid.
I and a bunch of others are being pretty hard on Walky for all this, but it’s looking like he’s dealing with some sort of major anxiety attack whenever the subject comes up. He doesn’t need tutoring (sorry, Dorothy). He needs a sit-down with a shrink.
Dangit Wally, I know dealing with the problem is scary but it’s not going to get any better just sitting there and you’re just adding stress by not tackling it head-on.
…I should take my own advice and talk to the mechanic today. Got a dead battery that’s 95% probably the battery but I’ve spent three days terrified that it’s the much more expensive alternator.
I’m pretty sure that both Becky and Joyce are aware enough to know you can’t see the Rapture. But confidently saying “Hey, look, X” is hard to ignore. So, for a split second, they aren’t quite thinking.
I don’t think either one will be all that hurt, and literally no one is dumb enough to think it happened. Why would Walky of all people be the only one who went? Not that he’s evil or anything, but he’s openly mocked the idea of believing in God.
As a kid, I was taught that everyone would see the forms of the believers rising into the sky – first the “dead in Christ” would be seen bursting out of the ground, followed by the ascension of the ones who were still living. Joyce and Becky could have been taught the same.
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who needs pants tho!
tho I’m not really sure how this jump-cut of stripping happened
wait DUH RAPTURE
ME AM SMARTS!
I’m still lost, why does the Rapture mean that Walky has to disrobe?i know he’s using it as a cover, but can someone’s explain the whole disrobing part to me?
At least in the Left Behind series (which I’m SURE Joyce loved), when people got raptured their bodies were whisked off to heaven but their clothes and such were left in a little pile whereever they where. So he’s hoping they’ll turn around, see the pile of clothes, and assume he got raptured.
One of the elements of the Rapture is transubstantiation – that all good people will suddenly and instantly be transported to Heaven, leaving behind all their worldly goods – including clothing. So, people disappearing and leaving behind piles of clothing would be good evidence that the Rapture was happening.
Though I don’t think that Joyce will accept that Walky was Raptured and she wasn’t for a second. It would appeal to Walky’s sense of humor though.
Took me a few reads, too.
Walky is clearly a video-game protagonist.
It didn’t. I’m visualising Joyce, Becky, Dina and Mike watching in a combination of amazement and horror as Walky tries to run whilst dragging off his hoodie and jeans. The reason they didn’t pursue was that they felt that doing so would be to enter into a world where what he was doing was sane.
i like pants, though im strongly considering switching to overalls
Solomon Grundy wants pants too!
solomon grundy oughta go back to his swamp! wait…. solomon grundy was in a swamp and shrek was in a swamp…. shrek is solomon grundy
WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY SWAMP?!
I certainly don’t need pants. I wear kilts.
Silly Walky. If you thought you saw Dina, you didn’t.
You’ll know Dina is hunting you when you feel perfectly safe and alone. And then it’s too late.
Unless Dina allows herself to be seen to lull you into a false sense of security. Right before she bites out your jugular.
Nah, she’d allow herself to be seen to distract Walky from Becky and Joyce flanking him.
Clever girl
(sorry not sorry)
God dammit, Walkerton!
What? You don’t think Walky would get taken during the Rapture?
The meek shall inherit the earth, right? Well obviously that means we gotta get rid of the loudmouths like Walky.
Gonna be nothing left but Dinas, you’ll see.
God, please? Can we have a series where Dina has a massive clone army and is exploring a new world?
I assume Mike also ditched his clothes there just for the sake of messing with Joyce
Or he wanted to get rid of some weight so he could run faster.
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0025.html
His hair is aerodynamic, so he can hit a pretty good speed.
Angry scowls also have less of a drag factor than smiles. Joyce’s toothy grin is like dragging a parachute, she’ll never be a sprinter.
Or he declared himself Walker-Taa King of the Jungle
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/da/8e/9a/da8e9a9f27be485cba030b65d5bac5c7.jpg
Also so he could hop into this cube chair naked and seduce the hell out of everyone involved.
*plays David Bowie’s “Blue Jean” on the hacked Muzak*
Ahhh, baiting the fundies, I see. Good job thinking on your feet.
god damn it i thought i fixed that
Was the Amber Butt your personal Grav or assigned from the avvie pool? Because I think you used to type in Butts instead of butts as your name.
It’s always been just ‘butts.’ Think I might’ve got it working now though
you mean, “butt” you got it working now? 😀
It must have been custom; we mere mortals cannot be trusted with something so glorious!
whoops, what about this
Fundies ain’t so bad, they just goofs
Hey, is the Alt Text a form of Clothes Captioning?
That pun knocked my socks off.
That was a very dangerous bit of wordplay. You might even say it was apparel-is pun.
I certainly can’t top those. Mine were just pieces of shirt.
This is a nice thread.
Outfit
Outdress
Outblazer
Shirtvivor
Why is Walky ditching? He already got the clear from Dorothy, why is he seeking to get on her bad side again?
Force of habit?
I am also confused.
Because fuck math
It’s still scary and hard to start trying again.
Do you think they could go through the several weeks worth of material Walky didn’t get in one afternoon?
Because he’s immature and a coward.
Terror of being perceived as a failure that borders on a phobic response. He’s so deep into ‘fight or flight’ psychology that I think that the girls (and Mike) will need to use physical force to make him attend the class.
Why did I include Mike? Because I think dragging a semi-naked and screaming Walky into a lecture hall is his idea of a ‘good time’.
Okay, but Mike is probably half the reason he decided to ditch today considering he purposefully exacerbated his anxieties about school and his relationship with Dorothy.
For some reason, I really want Walky and Ethan to become friends if they aren’t already.
So when you get raptored, you lose your clothes?
Nope. When you’re raptored, you lose your sinewy muscles and vital organs. They don’t care for clothes, too tough.
Opps wrong word.
Seriously though. When one is raptured, they indeed lose their clothes before going to heaven. What happens after, I’m not sure.
Heaven is a huge nudist colony.
Heaven is a huge nudist colony, where your body is exactly the way you always wanted it, and everyone else thinks it looks awesome.
–Admittedly, I may be projecting, ha ha.
It’s just weird because your parents and grandparents and older relatives are all there and all young and healthy too.
The way you said that makes it sound like you have actual knowledge, so I choose to believe that you were sent from a seperate dimension where the rapture happened through an accidental hole in the space time continuum
Uhhh, sure let’s go with that. It’s DoA comment board canon now.
Again, “let’s go with that” almost makes it sound like there’s is a more complex answer.
Er, byeee. *teleporter beam*
Yup. Medical devices and donated organs too, because the rapture “makes one whole”. Slacktivist had a whole thing on it way back at the beginning of his deconstruction of the Left Behind books:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2003/11/08/lb-the-naked-truth/
Oh my god I love this and it’s not because they referenced my favorite Beatles movie
Okay, it’s not just because they referenced my favorite Beatles movie
My aunt gave me the kids version of those books. For years every time I couldn’t find my mom in the house I’d freak out that the rapture had happened, she’d been taken and I wasn’t good enough.
There is even a movie adaptation “Left Behind” starring Nicholas Cage (which is the reason a roommate wanted to watch it with us on Netflix). The movie hadn’t progressed all that much before I was convulsed with laughter time and again to the embarrassment of said roommate. It was pathetic, horrifically bad, with no redeeming qualities, badly acted and without any self-irony. Look up the online criticism of it. Worst movie I’ve ever seen and then some. Had I paid anything for it, I would have been livid.
Wasting an evening on it with three people wasn’t all that bad, particularly since the embarrassment of the Nicholas Cage fan added to the entertainment.
Even when he’s doing a bad job in bad movies, Nicholas Cage always finds a way to be entertaining. I think it’s just that thing he does where he opens his eyes really wide.
I giggled just thinking about that look.
And as bad as that movie was, it was head and shoulders above the version with Kirk Cameron.
And of course, either movie version is better than the books, because no movie director is going to have the characters spend half the film on the phone, and “tell, don’t show” is impossible in a visual medium.
Yes, those are problems with the books. I recommend reading the rest of Slacktivist’s Left Behind reviews.
Whoa, someone else here reads Slacktivist. I wish I weren’t so surprised; he deserves to be famous.
Yup. You go to heaven naked.
that’s why it’s heaven
+1
Clothes aren’t natural– Adam and Eve are always naked in depictions, and didn’t start wearing clothes until after they ate the fruit of knowledge and developed a sense of shame. Thus, logically, nudity isn’t a problem in heaven, and when you go there you’re naked.
Ah, but neither is circumcision. Yet because it was commanded by God, it BECOMES part of us spiritually, which is why Jesus’s foreskin is a sacred relic appearing several times through history, rather than just another one of his wounds that was healed upon Resurrection.
Similarly, since God GAVE Adam and Eve clothes, clothing has become a part of us.
…. I WISH I was making any of this up. If anything, my description of the Holy Foreskin left out some of the more entertaining pieces.
Were his wounds healed upon resurrection? My impression was that it was generally assumed that Thomas had seen the wounds of Jesus (having asserted that he would not believe Jesus had risen without thrusting his hand into the wounds).
Also, many Christians believe circumcision to not be a holy mandate as Paul said in Corinthians “Was anyone called while uncircumcised? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing”. So is it still a part of us spiritually?
Theology is weird.
Due to the fact that male circumcision was a a part of the spiritual covenant with God for the Jewish people (sort of like signing a contract, except by cutting off a part of the penis that one does not actually need), I’d assume that anyone who goes to heaven and happens to be Jewish (even though Judaism doesn’t technically have an afterlife), then they wouldn’t get their foreskins back. I think anyone else who gets into heaven circumcised would probably get the choice of whether they want to have a foreskin again or not, since Paul was making the arguement that Gentiles could be Christians without first becoming Jews and getting circumcised or making sure your children did after you converted probably just earned you brownie points with your local Jewish community.
…I am intrigued, despite myself. Tell us more.
Technically there are (last time I checked) three separate relics that are claimed to be the foreskin of Jesus. Which means either a) two of the three are wrong b) Jesus had a couple of clones or c) Jesus was born with three sets of genitalia. It’s also a part of the covenant between God and the Israelite people and thus a mark of being one of the chosen people.
God: “I shall make you a great nation and give you the holy land, and in exchange all you must do is worship only me, follow these ten simple commandments coupled with several hundred social and dietary rules, and cut off your foreskins.”
Israelites: “…Wait, what was that last one?”
You left out the far most likely answer: All three of them are wrong. The whole idea of Christian relics came centuries after Jesus, and all of them are quite likely inauthentic. People just wanted physical objects to hang on to for their invisible God.
Well, and some less scrupulous people wanted the tourist money or just the esteem.
Or all three are authentic. A neat thing about Great Relics is their holiness can be transmitted, creating further relics. As in yes, you could build a cathedral out of pieces of the True Cross.
…. so, what were the additional holy foreskins built out of?
Here you go.
I wish I still had the source for this, but I’m remembering a legend from medieval times in which it was questioned whether a certain woman was really a virgin. The “relic” of Jesus’s foreskin was produced and placed on her finger like a ring, at which point it swelled and plumped up, proving her virginity.
…. I mean, where do you even BEGIN with something like that?
Trying that link again.
I.. buh.. guh.. dafuuuuuuck?!
And it’s nice to know the Catholic Church kept track of Jesus’ foreskin…
…one of my favourite QI moments https://youtu.be/LgvzcDcbN1k
I never said religion was consistent
Walky has interfered with the sanctity of the cube fort, punish him. 😛
(oh my god, the thing with the rapture, and the piles of clothes, and Joyce’s face; this is the funniest part of the arc. XD)
Wait, why’d he even take off his clothes for?
A lot of the godawful (ha I made a funny) rapture fiction (notably Left Behind) has the Saved disappear, leaving only their clothes.
If that’s the case then Walky shoulda gone for more authenticity and take off ALL his clothes <.<
Because Joyce had already grabbed his hoodie, and I assume someone else grabbed his pants.
Okay, time for me to sheepishly admit that I didn’t realize this very forseeable turn of events.
I guess we should count ourselves lucky that there weren’t two more people trying to hold Walky back or he’d be starkers right now.
You need to understand that Walky has literally no idea what he’s talking about beyond a few stills from ‘Left Behind’ that he saw on the Internet once.
This was already funny because I wish I could use the ‘rapture’ to get out of shit. Then I realize Walky stripped and left his clothes behind. And it got better.
Way to interrupt some M-M ship talking, Walky. Though it was about Mike, so Ethan dodged a bullet for now.
Pretty sure Mike is actually an eldritch god of chaos in human form and has no real sex or gender anyway.
So is he an avatar of Tzeentch or Slaanesh?
Would have to be Tzeentch. Slaanesh has plenty of sex and plenty of genders.
I will not write another series where the apocalypse happens, I will not write another series where the apocalypse happens, I will not write another series where the apocalypse happens…well maybe…
Mix it up and go Norse Ragnorak instead.
…… you know you want to.
That’s no fun, literally everyone and everything dies!!
Except for two gods, a few humans and the world itself being born anew of course. Everyone seem to forget the renewal part of Ragnarok.
Plus we get Baldur back, so there’s that.
Yeah, okay, the death part’s a downer. But you have to admit that fimbulwinter’s pretty cool.
And the there’s the part with Kirby’s New Gods.
i hope walky didn’t interpret dorothy’s affirmation that she still loved him and that she would help him catch up as meaning he could skip class w/o losing her, while still getting help from her.
i mean i don’t think that’s the case, but it’s still disappointing that he’s continuing to do this
Knowing Walky, is any other interpretation possible?
Damn it Walky, stop skipping math. Though that is a hilarious method of distracting them to get away.
Wait, is that how the rapture works? You go clothless?
Which implies that heaven will be filled with naked Evangelicals.
Proof that God has a sick sense of humor.
Basically it spirits away all the good people to heaven, and there’s no need for clothes in heaven, so it leaves the clothes behind.
Part of the Rapture’s myth is that those who are worthy of God’s grace shall disappear, leaving only their clothes behind, so those who are unworthy are left behind are left to wallow in their darkness and corruption with satan in the end days.
So, ye, it is.
But hey, more clothes for me!
So what about bowel contents? Parasites? Do the tapeworms get to heaven or are they left in the shirt? Or pants? Presumably the clothes are to be left in a somewhat orderly state? What about head lice? Contact lenses? Dandruff? Hair extensions? Tooth implants? Pace makers? Heart transplants?
Everyone is made whole so any organs missing? Bam, replaced. Any machines in place of organs? Bam, gone and replaced with organs again. Eye problems? Bam, gone. Head lice and parasites are presumably just left to fall from where you used to be essentially holding them up.
I would hope the good bacteria that has shielded you from bad bacteria comes with you though because like, it just feels like they deserve to come too.
Went to an exhibit at the NC Science Museum about microbes, that was pretty cool. It is crazy how much bacteria can help shield you from infections.
“All Gut Flora Go to Heaven” was my favorite Don Bluth movie.
I’ve always wondered if the Rapture was a trick, and that those who accepted being taken away from the rest of the world (whose remaining occupants are assumed to be about to embark on a whole lot of suffering) are actually getting a one-way express ticket to Hell because abandoning people who are suffering is literally the most counter-teachings-of-Jesus action possible.
Walky’s used that trick multiple times? And it’s worked? (I’m assuming Joyce is the only one of the group who’d fall for it, but even pre-Enlightenment Joyce might get suspicious after a couple times.)
I would guess this is the first time he’s done it and by “keep doing it” he means “do it again”.
On the other hand, if he’s done it before, I can’t blame Joyce for the look she was giving him when he tried to sneak off.
Wait, 3 questions:
1) Walky what the fuck
2) How could he see JUST Dina walking past if they were all in a group?
3) How did that rapture work on the non-Joyce/Becky’s in the group?
1. It’s Walky… he is what he is. Best just to accept that his ability to change is stunted.
2. Dina isn’t in the same class and she and Becky were walking with them due to Joyce.
3a. In Mike’s case it didn’t, but pretending it did fits his purposes (skipping hurts Walky’s ability to turn his tail spin around, hurts Walky’s relationship with Dorothy, hurts Joyce in a few ways due to being entrusted with making him not skip, etc)
3b. Dina wasn’t fooled, but also has no stake in this and seems to avoid being aggressive unless threatened (cf. Ross’s encounter with her).
3c. Sarah is likely still laughing from the sight of Walky running away.
Forgot to include that it’s probably been a good bit since that moment.
1- Cowardice is a hell of a drug.
2- Presumably the math students made it to class and Dina broke off from the group.
3- Apathy.
dammit walky stop cutting class, you’re leaving other arcs in a cliffhanger!
At least it’s because he knows the material. If he can recognize signs of the rapture well enough to cliffhanger arcs, it’s because he knows his arc-signs.
….. granted, that’s trig and this is calculus, but “hey, look, _____” is hardly original, so it’s an arc-sign derivative.
….
*flees for dear punning life*
*Slow clap that decays by half every clap*
I(‘m) so tope-ing happy with that one.
Oh, sure you are, you teach a technical subject. But meanwhile we’ve got a history major being forced to listen to our STEM puns and feeling like a lambda led to the slaughter.
That was funny. I’ll give you that.
I’m sure it’s very Gaul-ing for the history majors.
So two claps worth then.
So, a 1/√(1-x^2)?
No!!! No imaginary numbers!! No math! I was history major (and starting this upcoming fall full time history teacher) for a reason!
…… but you have to actually have a head for numbers for that!
Like, the only numbers I can remember from history are that the American continent was first discovered in 1492 and the American Revolution started in 1776, and I’m pretty sure both of those are wrong!
That’s why I prefer math. With math I don’t need to have a head for numbers.
The first number is wrong, because the American continent was first discovered when ancient tribes crossed the Sibera-Alaska land bridge, and then later when Vikings sailed here and settled in Labrador.
Also, for the record, there wasn’t an imaginary number anywhere in there. If we were doing calculus with imaginary numbers, we would inevitably be referencing the equation e ^ (pi * i) + 1 = 0, and we haven’t done that yet, have we?
Well, now we have. :p
Dude! I was a history major too! That’s awesome! 😀 what kind of history will you be teaching and to whom?
There are no imaginary numbers as long as x is strictly within the bounds wherein the arcsin function is defined for the real numbers (i.e. x∈(-1, 1))
Oh, Walky. Honey.
Good, Ethan, stick with that first “Maybe…but ultimately no” instinct. If you must grapple with the hypothetical, restrain yourself “what if” fantasies- Mike’s hot, you’re human, that can be a safer way to entertain the idea. Keep talking it over with Amber to remind yourself of the “ultimately no” reasons. Do not fuck Mike. Do not tolerate Mike’s BS. Do not get sucked in by Mike’s BS. He is not worth it, unless and until he proves otherwise, which would be a long road.
Honestly, I want Mike to fail with Ethan and in the process find himself suddenly way, WAY over his head and having to find a way to give Ethan a way to feel secure in a relationship with him. It would be delicious.
Greetings, citizens. I hereby claim these chairs for Thingley.
Poor Walky. One step forward, one step back…
More like one step forward, and a three-hundred-paces dash back.
Without any pants apparently.
He was running on short notice, but he still ran so fast he was a streak.
I do believe that Walky was prepared and wearing the short pants he is currently sporting, rather than streaking off in his undies. Heading back to his dorm room to rerobe would make him too easy to locate. There is always a logic to Walky’s inanity.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: Yeah, good, back off that trail, it leads to nowhere you really want to go.
But more seriously, I get what he’s almost saying here. He’s not obsessed with Mike’s attractiveness, he’s more lonely and desperate for connection, especially connection to an old life he feels has slipped away from him since he came out.
And Mike, abuser that he is, is exploiting that for his little dumb petty plan. Using Ethan’s desire to see something salvageable in Mike because Mike is the only thing that hasn’t changed when he came out. Because he’s seen Mike with a guy and so there’s that tantalizing possibility of connecting on a deeper level with a friend from older times, who understands what it’s like to be queer, who is being nice in a way he hasn’t before, making him feel special.
And it’s the hope that pushes past reason. Because he would love it to be easy and not just have so much of his old life be toxic and something he needs to mostly raze and start over from (keeping Amber of course). And I can recognize that pull for a time that will never come back before one came out.
But letting it go will be healthier in the long-run.
Panels 2-3: Oh, Walky… no.
After that beautiful moment with Dorothy, with her building back your confidence, you run away immediately? But then, I get it. It’s not just the grades or the failing or the feeling like you’re an “idiot”. It’s the fact that Walky has sunk a large portion of his identity into being “smart”. That being able to succeed at schoolwork with minimal effort and get all A’s is a key part of what sustains him and allows him to face all the other stuff in the world. So having an academic setback shakes him harder than it might others.
And while he may be moving past some of his demons, he’s still running into the problem of the emotional side of it and how awful he knows it will feel to get a really nasty grade or some warnings about his missed classes and their affect on his grades. Consequences can be hard to handle, though necessary, but Walky has never been big on accepting those with any measure of grace or ease.
Poor Ethan. I guess I’m pretty lucky in that the majority of my childhood friends wound up being queer. Three gay guys, one bi chick, and I even have two bi cousins to look up to! I’m still something of the odd one out since I’m ace, but it still means a lot especially down here in podunk Florida.
Hi, Cerberus. If you don’t want me to talk about this with you or have any other restraints I need to abide aside from that then tell me I’ll stop.
You have probably / may have known by my (in retrospect, wow that’s a lot) posts on yesterday’s comment that Ethan is not the only one that is able to see something salvageable in Mike, because I can. I do not ask anyone to believe this also and never would. I am however at the same time increasingly upset by the treatment as fact that Mike is an abuser and his attempts to seduce Ethan right now can and only will be traumatic and intentionally so because his intent is toxic. I will stop at that, and I am only commenting this to you because you are the analyst of this comic that I and others most look to for readings of what certain things might mean in the bigger picture and perspective for your insight, and I rarely disagree with your readings on comic interpretations and never in my recollection on anything related to morality. But I do disagree with you about Mike and I think he is relatable because of aspects of his personality that are recognizable for reasons I am familiar with and have thought very very hard about before deciding anything.
…I am breaking my own promise hear to say “yesterday’s comment” means “yesterday’s post.” I replied to many many many comments yesterday but I do not think yours was one of them because of when I woke up when the strip ran yesterday
Minder-
I think it’s absolutely fair to have your own perspective and feelings about a character and to see a particular resonance with them even if they are not a particularly popular character at any given moment or they are doing something wrong.
I think that sort of connection is beautiful and awesome and I celebrate that.
Given your comment here, I went back and reread all your comments from yesterday to make sure I’m being respectful of your perspective. And I am sorry that my strong feelings on Mike have hurt you or made you feel upset.
And yeah, I’m big on analysis, but that does not mean I’m Willis and does not mean I get things 100% right all the time. My views are just that, my own perspectives, informed by my life experiences and knowledge bases, and filtered through that and my own style of analysis. They’re not commandments.
You are right, I do disagree with you and think Mike is an abuser. He gaslit Ethan in the hall when Ethan rumbled that he was trying to hurt someone. He regularly harasses and isolates people who get within his sphere of influence. He thrives on hurting people and making them feel bad and uses that to gain a sense of power.
He’s basically a few solid chunks of the power and control wheel:
http://www.theduluthmodel.org/pdf/PowerandControl.pdf
But that doesn’t mean he’s inhuman. In contrary, abusers are very human and very common (unfortunately). They have internal motivations and internal scripts that they use to justify their behaviors and we’ve seen that in previous abusive characters like Blaine, Toedad, Carol, and Mary.
And in my perspective, Mike, I feel, is fulfilling a different type of abuser, which is basically the modern troll harasser. The person who “for the lulz” harms others around them, especially those who are more marginalized, hiding behind a mask of careful indifference. And I see in the fallout to his actions and in particular his statement in planning to harm Ethan and Danny with this lengthy seduction plan entirely in response to Ethan begging him not to harm Danny and his statement that he would have slept with Amber’s boyfriend if he had known who he was just to hurt her, that kind of harmful direct bullying and abuse.
And given my own life experience at the hands of folks like that and seeing how folks like that have harmed many of the people close to me, I’m not overly inclined to be overly charitable to the character.
But just because I hold this view does not mean you are not welcome to see Mike as redeemable. Nor does it mean I see him as an inhuman monster, more just an insufferable harmful edgelord.
I support you in your reading and perspective even if it is not one I am in a position to share.
The more I have reflected on this the more that I find the reason it bothers me to read Mike as an abuser, or someone who exists is a punch down in the direction of people who are already powerless, is because I think Mike is one of Willis’s oldest characters and one that Willis thought mattered, perhaps more importantly than anyone than Danny, was told in a way that was reflective of the change not just in Mike from IW! or Shortpacked! but Willis from the person he was when he wrote them. Mike’s character is an asshole and a troll and that’s what the author had to work with, and obviously the grandiose aspects of Mike’s…self won’t translate to a world socially parallel to ours even if Willis wanted to try. And I think what may have happened instead was that Willis created Mike to be, if an asshole and a troll, then at least maybe the asshole or the troll Willis saw in himself (and I see in myself) the way characters like Amber and Dina had pieces of his experiences. And I have this reading because the narrative that Mike is toxic is woven to include and account for another, false narrative, namely that Mike is a secret moral guide that points out things other characters should change in them. And for that narrative to be false it had to exist, and it existed because the things Mike says could be defended as true.
I think they are true. When Mike isn’t existing to deliver jokes, he is the asshole that I am sometimes and that Willis and I both acknowledge is not beholden to the feelings of others if it means calling out harmful practices that have to stop.
But Mike’s a character. And he’s talking to other characters. And many of them being insecure about, traumatized by, or also victimized by the status quos they unwittingly perpetuate was perhaps something Willis didn’t realize would logically result in a way for Mike to be something more than just an asshole. And that if characters in the story were to be called out for saying wrong and twisted and unhealthy things about their treatment of others or themselves or about the world, they would still be and be read as unfair victims in that situation if the one doing the calling out was as much of an asshole as Mike—regardless of whether or not those things being said were true.
And that is all speculation but I do think there is a case for it because this is the kind of dialog and alt text (and clarification if it’s added) that Willis writes when he gets tired of reading people shitting on, say, Danny for three months over things that Willis knows Danny isn’t horrible for or even guilty for. And that Danny will be vindicated.
This is all entirely separate from what I find empathetic about Mike as a character with emotions. I can go into that as well but I think if it’s deliberate then it’s still only something that happened later and wasn’t always planned. But I thought an explanation of why even the consideration that Ethan having sex with Mike would result in Mike deliberately or even unwittingly making it a traumatic experience made me pause for reasons that had nothing to do with either of them. It wouldn’t be fair. There’s no narrative justice there. I think that matters a lot more in this world than it does in ours.
You are not the only one who reads Mike that way. So do not let me make you feel like your perspective is invalid.
But I really can’t share that reading of Mike. His actions don’t lead to people being in better places. Objectively, they end up in worse places and he goes after those who are marginalized rather than any actual power he could affect real meaningful change towards and there’s little evidence in my mind that he even wants to help people.
And this is also colored in my perspective by not believing that being “an asshole for someone’s good” is actually a good thing. Being cruel to someone to “wake them up” doesn’t actually help. It makes them shrink deeper into the self-destructive behavior and stop talking about it. What helps is love and support and giving them the space and resources to recognize what is going on and adapt or if someone’s behavior is harming others, direct intervention and removal from the people they are harming.
And I doubt I’d like a Mike that fit that, because I’ve dealt with a number of harassment movements that believe that by being relentlessly cruel to me they will “help” “cure” me of my “delusions” that being trans is a real thing, that being ace is a real thing, that being DID is a real thing. That that bullying will “fix me up”.
But, that all said, I recognize and respect your own perspective and the connections and resonance you find with Mike and I think there’s no shame in finding those resonances and enjoying the character because of that.
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.
Thank you for your words and I hope you do not mind me talking again to clarify and acknowledge my feelings about both your response and, again, how we differ in opinion on Mike. I agree with nearly everything you have posted in fact the reading of Mike as the “righteous asshole” is not the reading of Mike that I have or believe, but one I believe matters because it means I don’t think that even if Mike’s “calling” out behavior is applicable to real-world contexts without being terrible. I envy your kindheartedness and I want badly to believe that there is no point in being the asshole and that I’d be better without it in me, because I do know that in any context Mike is an asshole he is a harmful one because he’s saying these things to people. I have had instances where hearing thing written, argued, and delivered in methods that were sarcastic or mean or even vitriolic were more beneficial and affirming or important for changing beliefs in myself than a nicer message would have been, but absolutely none of them were in face to face encounters. I do not know even as I practice that it’s okay, definitely, to be an asshole to someone directly over the internet for any reason including a moral one. The example that comes to mind most easily is both up and policing in a safe space like Willis has to do in the comments section and I am wholly empathetic when he does it in a way that’s kinda dickish taken at face value, because the end result is places where you and I feel safe to talk. I also really, really do believe I have tried my best to sever any notion that “usefulness” in asshole behavior exists for the reasons I see (and I do see them and I see a lot) Mike having humanizing elements or even seeing / hoping for potentially sympathetic ones in the context of things he actually does that I am reading.
And, uh, now with all the madness accompanying my reasons for this aside, I’ll try to collect my thoughts on what I do actually see in DoA Mike that makes me think he could or will be sympathetic or have parts of him that indicate he’s not purely or unforgivably or even drastically evil.
He’s spiteful and displays a face and persona that’s apathetic and that is the face he is presenting to the world when inciting people. And he is definitely inciting people and I don’t think either of us disagree with that. I do think we disagree about why. I think Mike is like the kinds of troll harassers I think you’re describing in that he 100% goes around saying things intentionally to bait people, does so in the hopes of pissing them off, and does so without concern for their feelings or the potentially devastating long- or short-term consequences for them. I am so sorry for your experience with and knowledge of these people and what they are capable of, and it is not comparable remotely to the damage I sustain from attitudes I think of as ‘trolling’ in my life.
It is personal trolls that cannot be blamed for anything so describable in terms of impact and consequence that are coloring my nagging instinct that Mike is not a troll in the same sense as them. Because the lulz you mentioned driving trolls like that are familiar to me. Because “lulz” on their own, absolutely independently and not the horrible things they are or can be used to perpetuate behind a so-called mask, are the one thing I am probably most attuned to and the invalidation but also the lack of cohesion inherent in them is something that inevitably sets me off. I’ve spent last year and a half unpacking the part of my history that explains why I am spiteful enough to relate without questioning out of hand why Mike does anything. And it isn’t the part of me that was driven to fear everything or the part of my conditioning that makes me think I’m worthless, but the one that my brain uses to present both my powerlessness and the fact of nihilism as reality. I do not want to be grateful for this but I acknowledge that many threats and even perceived threats (emotional to financial) in memory exist to explain why I’m still bound, despite everything in my nature that contradicts it, to bend over backward to please other people no matter what if they are or I can imagine them physically there in front of me where I can sense their feelings. I hate that part of myself and want to cut it out and burn it and live without fear but I am so frightened of what I’d be without it. Because it is being intensely attuned to and caring about the feelings of people that may well be the reason I’m not acting like Mike Warner. If I didn’t care I would be dangerous. I already am dangerous in my own estimation. Because other coping mechanisms, not necessarily of abuse but of emotional overstimulation, that I’m trying to acknowledge and deal with now are fanatical devotion to truth and what is provable and repressing my emotions until they explode into rage. Without fear (fear of setting off unwanted emotions in others and inability to cope with them at expense of my self) the part of me that calculatedly and deliberately tears into people who are wrong on the internet about cartoon characters would be the viciously angry part of me that also determines parts of what it’s okay to say to someone in a written form and EVERYTHING about what’s acceptable to say to people in front of you.
…Because being an asshole the way Mike is is not useful. I want to make that clear that’s not why I find so much to relate to in him. I do not think it’s okay even remotely that he’s an asshole even if I strongly do not believe he is an abuser or someone without boundaries or even many beliefs I personally share. His intent is what I’m arguing but none of it excuses him being an asshole. Being an asshole is exactly what it sounds like and sometimes I think for a webcomic an asshole can be funny because they will say the things that the Joyces and Dorothys won’t. But I don’t think even my most, hypothetical intensely sympathetic reading of Mike thinks there’s any reason it’s cool to be a dick to the people around you. But I do feel also very very very very strongly because of my own neuroses (and they factor into my reading) that there should be evidence of consequences as drastic as the act of Mike actually isolating and belittling and manipulating over time another person to the point they can’t conceive of any scenario where they aren’t too worthless to make a friend on their own for readers to say like fact that his toxicity is equally as dangerous. This isn’t because I don’t think it’s possible or because I don’t think those readings into his behavior aren’t valid or even don’t think they’re more valid than mine. But still even though I acknowledge his behavior could or may well be wholly toxic, and that this may be inarguable and I am wrong, that DoA Mike is not the one on the record that has proven himself so evil by doing all of that and then finally sleeping with Dina Sarazu to ruin her life—and because of that I cannot judge him as or even closely to the same character. Because the character who did that did something I can and never would forgive a real person for doing to my favorite character and if I’m reading DoA Mike as a real person I am also mentally incapable of treating him as or judging him (I am never picked for jury duty) the same as the person who has done it and has a body count. I know that one isn’t necessary to judge a character alone or understand why others would judge them and find their judging reasonable and obvious based in how that kind of characterization operates. And I can’t make myself care. I won’t put DoA trial on Mike for Dina until he literally does or even imagines doing that to Ethan and we see it happen.
Damn it Walky, is he just running because he’s afraid of facing the possibility of failure now ?
Seems likely. It’s hard to face failure in the face when you’ve been trained all your life that failure isn’t what is necessary for growth, but proof of your worthlessness (I dislike greatly families like Walky’s who make their children afraid of ever “disappointing” their parents and thus develop complexes around the very necessary act of failing something to improve).
Oh, Walky. I know that feeling. My parents tried so hard to push the opposite narrative – failure will happen sometimes, it helps us grow, no one can be good at everything all the time – but relentless praise for being “so smart and talented” from teachers and the ensuing sharks-with-the-scent-of-blood behavior from my classmates any time I was less than omniscient sure did make me afraid to admit to needing help. With anything. Ever. I’m getting better at it, but my freshman year of college I very nearly failed a class because I was too afraid of admitting weakness to actually go to office hours and ask questions.
Walky is a guy that thinks owning more than one pair of shoes makes one less of a man. Given that, “I might need help with my brain problems” is probably a concept that causes him to experience an enormous amount of self-loathing. “Real men” don’t have these kinds of problems, so it must mean I’m weak and pathetic.
Panels 4-6: Heh. So that’s why he’s lacking a jacket and pants. Clever.
And for those who don’t recognize the reference:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2003/11/08/lb-the-naked-truth/
Rapturist belief structures are weird sometimes. But I think this one especially hammers home a key problem of the belief structure, which is the belief that anything of the world is stained with sin and imperfect in the eyes of the lord. So, all the clothes and all the medical aids and so on get “left behind”, because to this way of looking at the world, they’re stained in sin by existing here whereas the human body is “crafted by God” and so remains in Heaven but without actually dying.
And that has consequences for society. The people who believe this stuff have no interest in saving people’s lives or even viewing things on Earth as important beyond the conspiracy theories of “good vs evil” showdown between the Antichrist and “good Christians”. And it promotes viewing politics and life as just a loading screen game while waiting for your early punch ticket to that much better afterlife you only get if you avoid being tempted into actually experiencing the world and acknowledging you are fully living in it.
Like, you need to avoid sex for pleasure, marriage with people you want who may not share your race or your religion or be of a different gender, being what your gender identity actually is, even openly caring for and seeking to aid the needy with good deeds.
Because those show disloyalty to God’s plan and the trust that if you wait hard enough he’ll ruin the planet fast enough for you to get your early ticket to Heaven.
And that also means you’re encouraged to ruin the planet, do nothing to steward future generations, because the Rapture is any day so there won’t be future generations. And you’re encouraged to abuse and harass others into following your narrow worldview, because all that matters is getting enough God souls before the near end, so convert everyone you can and make sure no one slips up by actually trying to focus on improving the here and now.
And that part is not hyperbole. According to Left Behind and the worldview it’s coming from, the Antichrist will be marked by “good seeming” deeds surrounding international cooperation or selfless aid of those marginalized, because that’s all a ruse to a One World Government and the Antichrist taking over the world.
It’s… one hell of a thing to grow up adjacent to, so I have all the feels for Willis growing up in it.
Speaking of feels, I’m all the sad face for Becky’s look of horror in the background. Like, she’s been told all her life that if she was ever so foolish to “give in” to her “desires”, she’d be shut from the Kingdom of Heaven and the Rapture that is going to happen any day.
So when Walky yells that out and points, she looks into the sky, fully believing she’ll see the departing figures floating nakedly into Heaven leaving her behind in her sin, vindicating her father’s hateful view of her.
And that’s sad cause I don’t think Walky had any intention of traumatizing her, but this joke definitely is hitting a really sore place for her and that makes me sad.
Ouch, yeah, that is a gut punch for Becky. She KNOWS that God is cool and answers lesbian prayers, but the gut reaction is still a reminder of a loss that is far too fresh.
And frankly, I think Joyce expect to be left behind too.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/pit/
But I highly doubt she expects Walky to get raptured.
He has a “get into heaven free” card as a perk from his days as a cute lite mouse boy.
I have never heard of this and neither have you.
…of course not. Mind wipes for all!
And that last paragrah may indicate why Dina is hunting Walky, I gather she didn’t like someone causing Becky even more distress at this point!
If you haven’t read/heard The Hand Of God by Julia Ecklar, run-don’t-walk and check it out – it’s a song that speaks powerfully about the corrosiveness of this kind of religion.
I want to quote some of it to show how amazing it is, but there are too many great lines and it’s hard to choose. For example:
“Just deny any questions outside a small range;
Feel safe all our lives, for our lives cannot change;
We’ll be told if it matters that we understand,
And be led to the end by God’s Hand.”
https://juliaecklar.bandcamp.com/track/the-hand-of-god
This page has the song track, the lyrics (at the bottom), and her story of how she wrote it. Very cool – one of the most powerful lines in the song wrote itself while she was performing it for the first time.
I love that song. Breaks me every time. I particularly like that while it rejects this kind of religion as evil and destructive, it does so without actually denying it. More like the classic Huck Finn, “Alright then, I’ll go to hell”, than an atheist’s rejection of god.
It’s an even greater defiance, in my opinion. The rejection in the final verse, loops right back into the chorus:
“If defiance means death, I would die before stand
Like a sheep to be thrown to God’s Hand.
But we’re all in the hands now of God …”
I’ve now spent most of the evening trolling through my old filk collection. See what you made me do. 🙂 Julia Ecklar has some other good stuff I’d forgotten, Lullabye for a Weary World also kind of broke me.
But instead I’ll offer a bit more of a positive take on religion, for Becky and Dina. Cat Faber’s Word of God.
“We gaze upon creation where erosion makes it known,
And count the countless aeons in the banding of the stone.
Odd, long-vanished creatures and their tracks & shells are found;
Where truth has left its sketches on the slate below the ground.
The patient stone can speak, if we but listen when it talks.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the rocks.”
“The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.”
What you mentioned about how this would affect Becky is precisely why I have a hard time finding it funny. For all we know that could have triggered a nervous breakdown for Becky. She’s already a bit freaked because of earlier when Chloe walked past them, and presumably a little worried that she might lose her current housing set up.
Also, Cerberus I really hate to bother you, but you have more experience with American fundamentalist Protestantism than I do. Where the hell did the whole “rapture” thing come from? I’ve got a Catholic background myself and have read the Bible in its entirety at least four times, and there is nothing, literally nothing, that I have found to justify this theological idea. The actual picture it paints of the apocalypse in revelation is seven years under a Facist police state with routine torture and execution for those who don’t join the state mandated religion, and then Jesus comes and smites the unrighteous and the unjust with holy wrath. No “rapture” anywhere.
…
Sorry, the “rapture” is probably the western theological tradition that I despise the most because of how utterly corrosive it is as you said.
“A Facist police state with routine torture and execution for those who don’t joinn the state mandated religion.”
So basically the Roman empire from the perspective of those it conquered.
There’s a nasty irony there. Pagan Rome tolerated many foreign religeons in new territories, and treated their gods as different avatars of the Roman pantheon. They sometimes clamped down on monotheistic religeons, which they saw as politically dangerous. But when Christianity took over, they ruthlessly suppressed ALL other religeons.
Spain after the Christian Reconquista was properly apocalyptic: they came up with the Inquisition to root out Muslims and Jews who still practiced their religeon in secret.
It’s hard to argue that ancient Rome was a fascist police state, because… well, they didn’t have any police. Or any other real means of control over their subject peoples, besides the army which was concentrated along the borders. (Living just outside the empire and next to this army probably wasn’t as much fun, as the Romans tended to pre-emptively smash and/or destabilise any neighbour who looked to be doing too well) Internally, the Roman state was woefully small and underequipped to govern their huge empire. It took centuries before they even started to develop a proper bureaucracy, and even then it was much smaller than the contemporary Chinese version.
The Romans were brutal conquerors, but once the conquering was done they pretty much left their new subjects to live their lives as they had always done. Local elites often started to look and act more like the Romans, but not so much because they were forced to as because doing this then meant they could get all kinds of neat stuff for themselves like Roman citizenship or even a seat in the senate, and of course a lot of prestige. Worked pretty well, for a few centuries.
Modern police states are much scarier than ancient dictatorships and autocracies, because means of gathering information and exerting control are immeasurably greater than they were back when information travelled at the speed of a dude on a horse and the only real way the emperors had of spreading propaganda was to carve it on the coins they minted.
While that is true, my point was that the Roman empire from the perspective of those it conquered very probably inspired the horror images in the Bible. If you’ll pardon the sarcasm, they were the civilization that pretty much produced books that could be summarized as ‘Genocide for dummies’ and used torture and rape and murder as methods of ‘reminding the population of their place in regions that weren’t considered properly obedient. Of course, the Romans weren’t objectively monsters in everything they did, but when they were monstrous, they didn’t hold anything back. History is written by the victors, but it’s not every victor that brags about killing entire populations without claiming divine justification for their actions.
The short answer to that is basically a long series of end-times prophets starting in the mid 1800s who have all been cribbing of each other, so you have Scofield begetting Hal Lindsey begetting Tim LaHaye and Left Behind, frequently mixing in other conspiracy theories along the way like the John Birch Society.
For a much longer and complete answer, I’d heartily recommend this series by Fred Clark deconstructing the Left Behind books as he frequently breaks down the ugly history of how this arose and how it affects those who believe in it and the rest of us along with them:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/11/05/left-behind-index-the-whole-thing/
Thanks for the link, I have been wanting to read something like that for a seriously long time.
It’s really good and probably one of the best resources for understanding this worldview and the political movement that surrounds it.
Fred Clark is a national treasure.
Seconded. He’s the best essayist I’ve ever seen, right up there with Mark Twain.
> “I’m all the sad face for Becky’s look of horror in the background.”
I dunno, I read Becky’s expression as more baffled than horrified. Guess we’ll see what happens when Dina catches up with Walky.
Wow, Cerberus…I didn’t know any of that. That’s horrifying, but actually makes more sense as to why Rapturists do what they do.
Point of interest, “Hey Look! The Rapture!” actually works.
Point of interest, “Hey look! [any reasonably short phrase]” works, because people are conditioned to look when you say “Hey Look!” It being The Rapture maybe bought him a couple extra seconds.
It works best when you name something that’s actually in the direction you’re pointing, but I shit you not, you can pull this off with “Hey Look! A distraction!”
True, but it Depends how long you want it to last:
Saying, “Hey Look, a distraction” will have a split second’s effect before they wise up.
Saying, “Hey look, that thing over there!” Will have most people saying “so what?” without even glancing.
Saying, “Hey Look! That immobile object moved” will have the broadest effect, but will still be brief.
But…Saying, “Hey Look, the Rapture!” Or “Hey look, a ghost!” Or “Hey look, it’s Luke Skywalker!” Or whatever the other person was raised to worship will have the longest lasting possible effect. Because they will want to believe you and look, examining their surroundings for a good while,before wising up.
Hey look! A three-headed monkey!
“Hey, is that a demonic duck of some kind?”
LOOKOUT, SATAN!
(aka, Hey, isn’t that THE POPE!)
Silly Walky. Everyone knows raptures have feathers.
You’re thinking of ruptures. 😀
…and now I’m picturing the Velocirupture, a terrifying saurian predator with a surgical truss. Thanks!
Real talk, Willis, how did you make mike so hot? I don’t understand how that personality with a fairly average mid-fit physique parses as the embodiment of sexy mistakes
Ethan and Amber both have perspective-defying-hair fetishes
He’s not hot Willis’ art style doesn’t really lend itself to hotness. Maybe within the setting he’s hot but he looks like a pretty average douchebag white dude to me.
The art style doesn’t lend itself to depicting people as hot unless they are big and muscly. Walky doesn’t look insanely hot, either, yet he also has those drooling abs.
As for Willis making Mike hot, I find it perfectly reasonable, as him being insanely hot is the only reason I can figure he’s gotten away with so much horribleness. I mean, the only other excuse would be him being rich, and I don’t see a rich kid going to this type of college.
I just don’t get him being so hot that people who actually know him are actually tempted when they know he’s fucking with them.
Billie comes from a very well-off family (“The only way my father knows how to show his love is with huge amounts of money,”), and Carla’s family is almost insanely rich. So we do know of at least a few rich kids who attend this college. 😛
Really Walky. Really. The goddamn “where-the-hell-did-the-fundies-come-up-with-this-idea-I-can-find-literally-nothing-about-it-in-the-bible” rapture? That is low. That is really low. Because for Joyce and Becky that’s potentially traumatizing and or triggering given their upbringing. At the very least you have just majorly scared them and stressed them out, and put a real damper on what was looking to be a good day. Dina will most likely not have mercy when she finds you. And make no mistake. She will find you Walky. There is nowhere you can run, nowhere you can hide that she can’t track you to. And you will never see her, not even as she brings you down from behind.
It’s probably an indicator of just how afraid Walky is of math class right now that he actually considers the possibility of Joyce, Becky and Dina beating him into a pulp to be a lesser of two evils.
Walky is functionally incapable of sensitivity it’s not surprising at all he’d pull a dumb stunt like this.
He’s the kind of person who members of his dorm have probably already posted to r/neckbeardstories, that’s why.
Could someone please explain the Concept of The Rapture?
I know I don’t really remember all that much from reading the bible 30odd years ago, but this looks like something that would have stuck in the mind.
Or should I rather try the true visions of Agnes Nutter for it?
Having tried to read through the Wikipedia article on the topic: don’t bother, I don’t think I can wrap my mind about the concept (having always taken the bible as something not to be taken literally).
It’s not a hard concept but its a non-biblical one. The idea being God will take up all the good Protestants and leave the Catholics, pagans, Hindus, Muslims, and non-extremist Protestants to die horribly in Armageddon.
Expected to be seen in a few strips time: Mike dragging Walky (still in his underoos) through the corridor whilst Joyce and Becky lecture him sternly about how wrong it is to ‘take sacred things in vain’.
Hey, Walky. I’ve been there before. I’ll be there again. Maybe next time we’ll make ourselves do the right thing and maybe I won’t treat myself the way you probably will yourself.
Also I just learned we both know almost nothing about the Rapture besides the clothes thing
GDI Walky.
Walky is the one in this strip I understand the least:
I have had plenty of conversations about potential partners and mutual friends with other friends that do not share my sexuality. We somehow managed to avoid the trauma that I keep being told is the inevitable result of sexual congress with narcissists and Republicans.
I have shut myself off from the world to chat with someone. Listening booths in libraries,I miss them.
Like a Walky, I have even ditched difficult classes.
What I don’t get is the desire to run from something as logical as Math. If he was naturally good at it in high school, then he will also be naturally good at it in College.
Literary analysis, that I can understand dodging, or anything as subjective as that. But something as logical and easy to progress in as Math, an extra hour of homework and anyone that can factor a trinomial in a test environment can ride the calculus bus.
I can understand his desire to run away, something that used to make sense to him now doesn’t. That’s scary! As for the facts that math is logical and easy to progress in and therefore he can do it with a little more effort; I’ve always been terrible at math to the point that I cried after my final math exam in high school because I was afraid I had failed it and would have to do a make-up test and I never wanted to study math again (in Belgium they don’t force you to take those classes in college, you’re free after high school). I worked my ass off to pass it and it killed me. It was my least favorite class of all time.
You know, every time I see someone who claims they have “always been terrible at math” I can’t help but think that somewhere down the line there was a teacher that let them down in the worst way…
This is probably true for me.
In kindergarten they said “wow, watch out for Leorale in math”, because I scored really high on whatever kindergarten IQ tests think is mathy, probably being analytical, or critical thinking, or something. I got to be in all the fancy gifted classes.
But they didn’t find out that I had dyscalcula and, as a result, was just average at math, at best. So all the gifted kids around me skipped the drill and got it quickly, but I probably needed the drill and didn’t get it at all.
Then I moved a bunch, which was fine in English (it doesn’t matter if you read children’s books in a different order), but was death in math (where you can’t go skipping all over the curriculum, it’s linear).
Anyway. I’m not sure if this counts as teachers letting me down. I rather think my brain did.
Math is logical, it might however not always be intuitive.
It depends on whether or not he actually understood the concepts behind the highschool math. He may have found it easy and breezed through it in highschool without actually understanding it and now that he’s in college and is hitting math concepts he can’t just naturally breeze through he’s in a pickle. Or it may just be that the math they are doing he doesn’t just get by default and so has to work at it to understand…and Walky does not strike me as the type to work at anything.
That was pretty much me, except I didn’t hit that wall until somewhere late in junior year. Kind of killed my physics degree.
I stopped being able to grasp it intuitively and had never learned how to actually learn it.
Nope, nope, nope.
It’s nice that you’re good at math. Some of us aren’t.
Literature is easy peasy for me, you just make stuff up using critical thinking, and words are my friends. Objectively right answers mean you can get it wrong.
Plus I have a math learning disability (in sequencing) that went undiagnosed til the middle of college. By then I’d learned quite categorically that numbers were awful for me.
On the other hand, I don’t judge somebody’s intelligence by what math courses they choose in college, so whatevs, Walky, cut it out.
All of this is irrelevant to Walky, who got effortless A’s at every academic subject, as long as he was a big fish in a small pond. This is the first time he’s faced the need to actually study or pay attention (like a not-Smart kid, oh no), the first time school ever made him cry, and that’s a different flavour of scary.
You are correct there at least, very little that has been said so far has been relevant to Walky at all. Or to anything I said. Repeating, verbatim, the plotline we have already seen is doesn’t help either. Those seem to be pretty much the only responses so far. I seem to have stuck quite a nerve. I certainly wasn’t saying math was easy. Or the standard for intelligence. It is hard and itisn’t the only subject intelligent people excel at. And, for everyone else, there’s always philosophy.
Just to reword my original statement, which may have been unclear. For someone that was successful at everything in high school, math is the least intimidating subject, Frashman year at least. It requires the least study and lesson and study plans follow each other in a logical profession. I am surprised Walky is running away from that subject rather than the impenetrable, subjective, and homework and study heavy subjects he would also be faced with. If he is doing this badly in something like Math, then those subjects you have to start studying hard at right from the start must be flapping in the wind.
Someone may never have been good at math, we all have our weak spots (mine was chemistry, I am awful at it and I will never be a lawyer) but that doesn’t really apply to Walky.
This is sophomore year math for a media studies degree, not pure mathematics or linear algebra. It is exactly the subject you can work through without having to worry about the concepts.
You’re still making very broad statements about things that really do vary from person to person. Maybe Walky’s actually good at retaining the more subjective material even without studying and decent enough at bullshitting to get through the papers and essay tests and things. I was. Throughout my college years. I never “studied”. Never. Sometimes I did the reading, depending on the class. I did the assigned homework, usually at the last minute. I still don’t know how to study. I never had that kind of problem with the “impenetrable, subjective, and homework and study heavy subjects “.
I didn’t hit the wall in Math first year, but I did hit it. I’m not sure there’s any specific point that it can’t happen before. I never really hit it with anything else – other than hard sciences that depended on that math.
People are different. They have different problems with different things.
Those broad statements you just made do manage to repeat exactly what I just said.
Papers and essay tests = studying, even including bullshitting.
*raises hand* Literal counterexample here.
I excel at high school math (and depending on where you draw the line, early college math since at least the first 2 semesters of calculus are included), but hit a hard ceiling when it comes to linear algebra. It is incredibly plausible that Walky could have coasted through high school math and hit a wall in college calculus. Add in the fact that this is one of his first experiences with a large lecture, and there’s multiple reasons for him to be struggling.
At no point did I say Walky wouldn’t be struggling.
I give up. Yes, all I actually said was, “Calculus is easy”
See you all this afternoon/ tomorrow/later.
Oops, no I won’t, Beach/BBQ/Boating weekend. See you all Monday.
Getting As in math until suddenly hitting the brick wall of Calculus is taken directly from the experiences of the author.
Was that the first Math subject you took at University? Cause that is going hardcore.
I don’t know about Willis, but I took calc freshman year. Even ended up having to re-take it, despite having been good in math. Though in my case, the issue wasn’t with study skills so much as the professor being terrible.
Walkyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy ><
Ha my friends in Bible college totally did that to one of our more gullible classmates, complete with clothes laid out on the bed as though someone had been resting there, reading their Bible.
So… will Dorothy dump him now?
If not – why is he getting so much leeway?
Danny might have been hooked on a dream – but he didn’t lie to her.
Listen, Walky just needs to trade sex with a certain bow-tie wearing tutor and he’ll be fine.
Walky hasn’t lied to her either, unless he promised off-panel not to skip class. He’s being cowardly and running away from something because it’s difficult and failure is scary.
Her instructions to Joyce would indicate she probably won’t be surprised by this outcome.
REALLY?!! Being bad at math is more embarrassing than running around naked outside during the day and manipulating your girlfriend’s friends religious beliefs? Shit man, I get fearing class, but not that much
Wait, I just noticed that Joyce is wearing a cleavage-exposing outfit. Has she ever done that before? This seems significant
It’s a tank top, so my guess is she’s not even thinking about it and it’s probably just slipped a little low.
I guess we’ll just have to see how she reacts if it’s pointed out.
Also, I knew it was a tanktop of course. Just surprised Joyce had one in her wardrobe
If it’s a girl, she might say thanks, pull it up, or zip up/button up the plaid
If it’s a boy, probably the same thing except she’d say ‘bounce your eyes’.
My assumption is that this is Walkie’s memory we are seeing sans full color and that his memory slightly emphasizes the cleavage we see in http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/catches/ because, hey, it’s something that registered for Walky.
You’re a couple of strips late to the party, man.
OK, now THAT’S funny!
Oh for crying out loud Walky….You JUST had a conversation with Dorothy about not skipping out on your classes. She even helped you study….She may not leave you for being foolish, but she certainly will leave you if you keep acting stupid.
Okay, you know what?
I and a bunch of others are being pretty hard on Walky for all this, but it’s looking like he’s dealing with some sort of major anxiety attack whenever the subject comes up. He doesn’t need tutoring (sorry, Dorothy). He needs a sit-down with a shrink.
…. along with most of the rest of the cast.
… and most of the rest of humanity.
At least we have a shrink in the cast now. Last time we saw her we left her alone… with Ruth…
We need a new shrink.
Dangit Wally, I know dealing with the problem is scary but it’s not going to get any better just sitting there and you’re just adding stress by not tackling it head-on.
…I should take my own advice and talk to the mechanic today. Got a dead battery that’s 95% probably the battery but I’ve spent three days terrified that it’s the much more expensive alternator.
I have the horrible suspicion that Mike hopes to enact a kind of Othello kind of situation with Walkie and Dorothy.
Only with math instead of adultery.
I’m pretty sure that both Becky and Joyce are aware enough to know you can’t see the Rapture. But confidently saying “Hey, look, X” is hard to ignore. So, for a split second, they aren’t quite thinking.
I don’t think either one will be all that hurt, and literally no one is dumb enough to think it happened. Why would Walky of all people be the only one who went? Not that he’s evil or anything, but he’s openly mocked the idea of believing in God.
As a kid, I was taught that everyone would see the forms of the believers rising into the sky – first the “dead in Christ” would be seen bursting out of the ground, followed by the ascension of the ones who were still living. Joyce and Becky could have been taught the same.
Did he just… I’m not even mad, that’s amazing.
If you say “Velocirapture” you can distract both Joyce and Dina at the same time!
I’m totally trying this.
… and then BAM! Leg sweep!
Whoops, wrong comic.