<— This week’s Welcome To The Fuck Zone is Walky/Dorothy
and thankfully not walky/puppy dorothy
that would be weird
Discussion (193) ¬
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<— This week’s Welcome To The Fuck Zone is Walky/Dorothy
and thankfully not walky/puppy dorothy
that would be weird
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“well, you asked” also works
now I’m envisioning Puppy-Dorothy in a little Kraft Macaroni & Cheese doggie jacket
THANKS WILLIS
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/2c/7c/5a/2c7c5a068c52382c5627cb9110addb30.jpg
To be fair, Joyce was walking right into that one.
Would’ve been hilarious to see her reaction
“You think you’re masculinity is inherently linked to the number of shoes you own”
“Your first instinct upon struggling in a class is to stop attending that class”
“You consistently mock and badger your girlfriend’s best friend and don’t think that’s gonna bite you in the ass”
Dammit “your”
But you believe in the Rapture
The first two are easy shots from Joyce that she absolutely could take. The third one is just opening up another target, given that she constantly mocks and badgers her best friend’s boyfriend and doesn’t think that’s going to bite her in the ass. Plus, they’re both probably right – it’s friendly enough badgering.
Yeah, that was right over the plate.
Joyce didn’t really walk in to having her religious beliefs mocked…
Really, she did. Not this particular instance, but overall she does. And Walky’s been gentler about it than some. Like Dina.
Mostly she walked into it by using her beliefs like a cudgel early on.
if walky values his femurs, he wont answer
That’s Ruth. Joyce would probably just punch him.
Joyce has learned many things from her fellow residents. Femur extraction could be one of them.
http://imgur.com/a/iG7gt
I found top secret footage of Dina being sexually intimidating.
:0
OMG PUT SOME NSFW TAGS ON THAT
(Not Safe For the Weak)
so, everyone?
Not safe for Becky’s immortal soul.
I AM WEEAAAAAAK
Warning: Contains drawings of topless Dina!
(And by “topless”, I of course mean “hatless”.)
No… no hat!? Lewd!
Lascivious full-cranial nudity!
Yotoart, now with twice as much Dina as the next leading brand!
So she had to clone herself a sexually aggressive version. Got it!
By Walky’s standards, this is a big step…
The bearded guy behind is trying really hard at poker face
He has some amazingly flat hair.
But wait, why is the last part lined through
The last panel is in Walky’s head.
Yeah, it took me a few tries to work out what was going on here.
I think the main issue is that the removed speech bubble is quite far away from the gap, so it’s hard to see the connection initially. Perhaps some lines an a cartoon dust cloud or something like that would help here?
Walky is a better man than I. I consider myself pretty good at adulting, and I’d have still said it.
I think most of us would’ve
Not me.
I mean, there’s like six easy zingers. Why go for the most obvious one?
“Stupid enough to ask me an easy set-up question like that.”
Ding ding ding. We have a winner!! (Read in corny old-style Carny voice)
“I totally underestimated you. You’ve fallen for the piles of clothing trick at least once, right?”
I mean most of us tend to not be insufferably smug assholes so maybe not?
Tbf Joyce can be pretty insufferable herself.
Are you kidding? It’s almost insulting to her to *not* take advantage of a setup like that. When you don’t respond to what a person says it means you don’t think they and what they say are important.
TBH, that’s a darned if you do, darned if you don’t kind of situation if you ask me.
Alright, I need to comment on the Fuck Zone pic this week…
Absolutely brilliant. My favorite of the series. And I thought nothing would top the last two weeks.
Walky’s mental image of Dorothy has gained sentience. We are all doomed.
Not until it breaks out into the real world. There is still time. Not much, but some.
Long enough to hide in our iron-clad bunkers in the mountains under Arizona and hope for the aliens to come and take us away before Dorothy meets Mind-Dorothy and grapple with the power of Walky’s mind.
What if someone broke out of a hypothetical situation into the comment section right now?
If MindDorothy gained sentience, it would be bogged down with “fixing up” Walky.
The first battlefield would be math, next might be clothes, but the war would rage eternally. So I think we’d be quite safe.
I am also happy you are no longer a puppy, mind!Dotty.
yes, very.
Amazing.
Hey the rapture could potentially happen! It’s….plausible.
…. wait.
Are you saying that it’s plausible?
Or are you saying that it’s …. plausible?
……..plausible?
……….theatre.
Since no one can prove that the Rapture definitively *IS* a thing until such time as it actually happens, it is by definition plausible — along with things like UFOs and intelligent life elsewhere in the universe — because you also cannot prove definitively that it is *NOT* a thing.
It’s the same thing with modern medicines. For the longest time everyone believed that there was no cure for syphilis. But then, in the 1940s, some guy named Fleming discovered penicillin — something that had always been there, of course — but we as a society just didn’t know about it.
UFOs definitely exist. I mean, surely you’ve seen an object that was flying and you didn’t know what it was before, right? It’s just that it’s almost always made by humans (e.g. planes, UFO hoaxes), and the rest of the time it’s meteors or what have you. Unidentified is an incredibly non specific term, after all.
You are so correct.
Afterwards they become IFOs.
Or it is determined that they are the result of the ingestion of any variety of psychotropic substances.
Mountain Dew as an example.
Or sometimes they just remain UFOs. You never find out what they are.
Doesn’t mean there isn’t a reasonable non-alien space ship explanation. Just that you don’t know what it is.
That’s…not how the word plausible works?
It’s not plausible that killer whales could devour the entire landmass of China and regurgitate it as animate cheese. And it doesn’t become plausible if I say that it won’t be possible until 2162, when the laws of physics will change to allow it, just because that’s me postulating something that hasn’t happened yet and so impossible to disprove.
Consider the rapture plausible or not at your discretion, but let’s not try drilling a whole in the word to slip it through.
Does that include the bits in the Himalayas that are claimed by multiple countries? Because that’s just silly.
Life on other planets isn’t just plausible, it’s a statistical probability based on the size of the universe and everything we know about the right conditions for life. It’s actually more unlikely we’re the only planet with or has ever had life in the entire universe.
Given the size and age of the universe, and the fact that we’ve found a few hundred HUMAN habitable planets after looking at about 0.000000000001% of it, life elsewhere is a guarantee.
There is nothing special about life, it’s just a natural occurrence of the physical universe we inhabit.
We have not in fact found a few hundred human habitable planets. We’ve found, most generously, a few hundred planets which are approximately in the right positions, maybe, but are wildly unknown in every respect except estimates of mass (biased towards planets significantly larger than Earth, which is not great for living on) and position.
Calling those “human habitable” is like calling Venus or Mars or the Moon that.
Yeah, I just want to second 3oranges here. “Plausible” is giving the rapture waaay too much credit. If something is plausible then belief in it being possible is at least somewhat justified. This is most definitely not the case for anything in religion – if that stuff was plausible nobody would need to fall back on faith to believe in it.
For the rapture to be at all possible there would need to be a god around who has been carefully lying in wait very secretly until he suddenly jumps out and goes “boo” and starts wrecking shit as if he’d been hiding behind the couch at a surprise party for someone he hated. If a person did that, I’d question whether they were insane. The kind of god required to carry out the rapture and the rest of the revelations fanfiction would be too mentally unstable to plausibly have waited this long before going nuts – and that’s not even factoring in that all god are implausible (or impossible) based on physics and the historical record.
So yeah. Possible, in the same sense that it’s theoretically possible that your left leg will suffer quantum instability and suddenly turn into a puppy, yes. Plausible? Not even a bit.
I’d like to have a leg-puppy.
Plausible and possible are not the same thing. Plausible means there is some defined way it could happen, based on past information.
Sure, to someone who believes in God and that particular interpretation of the Bible, it can seem plausible. But, to everyone else, it’s implausible. And it would remain so even if it did happen.
And that’s without any need to argue that religion is false or anything like that. Even the Bible doesn’t actually say there will be a Rapture like the one being described here. It only describes people who are still alive on Earth being taken to the final judgement along with those who are dead.
It’s stuff in Revelation that people interpret to mean that a Rapture will happen before, take people up, wait 3.5 to 7 years, and then Jesus comes back, then he reigns for 1000 years, and then he has a big battle with Satan and wins.
Point is, you do not have to believe in this sort of Rapture even as a Christian. Even the Biblical justification is weak. I’m not saying it won’t happen that way–I refuse to argue that unimportant parts of a religion are false–but I will say it’s not the most plausible option, even assuming the Bible is 100% accurate.
I wondered for a moment, if plausible was a false friend…
Appropriate avatar, lets try for a better one.
“And one of these days it will actually be the Rapture and you’ll have been the boy who cried wolf!”
(I don’t think Joyce is quite quick enough on her feet to say that, though.)
Obligatory Blondie link.
I mean, he did say time slowed to a halt in that class, so clearly it’s a thousand years of tribulation in one boring lecture. 😛
(I request walky/puppy dorothy, makes want to erase our minds, Willis)
Welcome To The BARK Zone? :/
Here, let me help you.
Um, Joyce? Even if Walky doesn’t say that thing you KNOW he’s thinking, you’re at least opening yourself up to “you open yourself up for cheap shots”.
It’s okay, Mike doesn’t seem to be talking.
My first random comic when I clicked the random button was actually puppy Dorothy so here’s the url: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/arf/
Would somebody please link to Puppy Dorothy?
Ditto! This is a thing I need to see!
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/arf/
“Tribulationy” would’ve been an ideal title.
Regarding the WTFZ, perhaps Mike and Eric in the future?
I have to admit that it has a ring to it, doesn’t it? It really has the genuine feel of something that Walky would say in an attempt to be profound.
Found it!
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/arf/
I think I would have trouble responding to that without being insulting or sarcastic.
I can’t see the thong….
No lines: that’s how you can tell it’s a thong.
The room must be chilly, so he had to put pants on
Well…I guess Mind-Walky is ever so slightly right.
I’m a little miffed we’ve never seen Puppy Dorothy. Fix that, Willis! FIX IT.
What do you mean? http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/arf/
Oh. Whoops. I have a lousy memory, so I forgot all about that. Sorry.
Uh, Walky, Joyce’s math average is much higher than yours. Just sayin’…
No longer a puppy, Mind!Dorothy is free!
The Gjallarhorn has been blown, now for the unending winters with no summers: First, a Puppy Dotty winter, then a motorcycle winter, finally, and most horribly, a calculus winter. Then the armies of the gods and giants shall meet on the plains of IU, until a closet appears, and a red-headed giant rides a velociraptor from the Realm of Toes, carrying a orbital nuke. Thus shall we know Wallis-narok, the fall of the Dumbing of an Age.
Supposed to be Walkie-Narok, durn autocorrect.
Am I the only one who read it as “Willis-Narok”?
Nope.
Q: How do you carry an orbital nuke unless you are in orbit?
But that is beside the point and on a different tangent.
I was picturing a Nimitz, the aircraft carrier – not the admiral, sized anvils stamped ACME being dropped from orbit on specific target facilities.
hahaha i love the mac n cheese shirt… but yay, he’s back in class!
good on you for not saying it, walky. you might need math help from her one day
Especially since Jason’s a TERRIBLE TEACHER.
it’s like he has a checklist of Everything You Don’t Do as a Teacher and made it his bucket list. that podcast cerberus and emperor norton did on jason – good stuff.
but hopefully with dorothy’s help he’ll come along. hey, sal could even point him toward danny
I had my issues with him before, but Cerberus’ comments and then that podcast really did lay out just how terrible of a teacher he is.
Where is this podcast? Sounds like something I might like to listen to.
https://soundcloud.com/user-956738444/tracks
Thanks, that was very interesting.
And now I like Cerberus more now!
No worries!
I liked Jason okay in It’s Walky, but he needs a lotta growth here, as so far he’s been a stuffy jackass and a terrible teacher – it reminds me of Jason at his worst in that strip (moreso the stuffy jackass part).
And to balance it out, I assume you like me less.
I know you exist now! Yay!
Right now the problem is that all we know of him suggests that professor Rees is ALSO a terrible teacher.
Yuuuuup, as is Penny.
Welcome to college… there are a lot of terrible teachers who get by on being “great” researchers (ie, getting the school’s name in a lot of publications, pulling grants, and helping maintain the school’s research institution status).
Yeeeep. Although Jason’s implied to be an education major, so he REALLY SHOULD know better.
The university I attended was one of the more respected “teaching universities” in the country, focused on undergraduate students and actual classrooms. A “big lecture” 100s-level (100 to 400 undergrad, 500 and up grad classes system at the time) classroom as 40-50 people.
Right after I left (long story), the long-serving president retired, and the university hired a series of ladder-climbing, resume-padding, glad-handing scumbags who tried to make themselves look good by turning the university in a “research institution”, which completely destroyed everything worthwhile about the place.
Yikes!
At least he cares about the fact that he’s bad, though. Penny just wants to fuck students.
Sure, the actual professor may care, since we’ve never seen them. They may just assume Walky and Sal didn’t. But we have no indication of such caring.
Sal asked the professor for help on her first week and he told her to go talk to Jason, and Penny remarked that he’s uninterested in doing anything but getting through the day so he can go home and fake research.
Jason may care but he’s made no genuine effort at improving himself, except that he reached out to Walky. No indication he’s reconsidering his methods or learned to listen or even just yanked his head out of his ass regarding the fact students don’t exist to stroke his ego and tell him he’s good when he sucks. If Walky speaks with him, we’ll see, but I remain suspicious of his teaching skills until I’ve seen real effort.
Penny did say that he was a terrible teacher who put nothing into it then went home to pretend to research. She did it as an example of what she thought every teacher did, and even without that wonderful little point of data Penny was already looking like an extremely unreliable source.
If that were untrue, that’d make a super great counterargument from Jason, though. It also ignores that what little we’ve seen of Rees does not make him seem like a very attentive teacher, as he shipped Sal off to Jason immediately.
Penny fucking her students makes her a terrible teacher who is apparently okay with uneven power dynamics. That doesn’t make her a liar wrt her boss’ behaviour.
also, HAPPY PI DAY!!!!
Every year it comes and goes, yet we always circle ’round to it again.
But 2 years ago was the best, because that was 3/14/15.
… er, wait, maybe back in 1592 was better?
Did they even know about it back then? I mean, I know the rest of the world was using it, but they don’t use the same calendar, and that screws up the dating system.
Okay, Simon Stevin introduced the decimal system during the 1500s, and because it was for applied science they probably had several degrees of accuracy. It wouldn’t have been that unlikely for them to work pi out that precisely by then. So observing Pi Day in 1592 would have been at least plausible. But it would also have been unlikely, because the Church would have objected to such a secular “holy day” and so few people were geeks enough to appreciate it throughout Europe…
…. wait….
… Europeans write the date as dd/mm/yy, so they’d have to go with 31/4.
…. THERE IS NO APRIL 31ST!
… those poor damned fools!
COME TO THE AMERICAN SYSTEM!
WE HAVE HOGSHEADS!
The one true date representation is obviously YYYY-MM-DD, because an alphanumeric sort will sort it correctly. So a Pi Day is a rare and special thing. The first one comes around on 31415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164-06-28.
I’ve an irrational urge to eat some pi.
But WE LUV Puppy Dorothy!!! Arf!
Wow it does look lIke it says White Power on the board
*zooms in* … I think that’s supposed to say Unit Four.
It is, as per Willis’ twitter.
WHAT IS THAT PROFESSOR WRITING ON THE BOARD-
Okay, someone up above says it reads “Unit Four.” And here I assumed it said “Ninth Power.” Because it couldn’t be what I INITIALLY thought it was.
Damn,
The mobile alt -text trick stopped working for me.
Would one of the dummies* ( Dumbers, Aging Imaturites , Aging Babies? ) be so kind as to offer me the bookmarklet that works for it. Thanks Babies.
* This Fandom really needs a proper name.
Aging Babies seems to fit.
If you use Firefox on your phone there’s an add on that will add “Show Tooltip” to the long press context menu for the image. It’s called, unsurprisingly, Show Tooltips for Android.
“Walky daydreams Dorothy in her sexy shirt”
http://imgur.com/a/srjvN
How can Dina compete?
Think fast, Becky.
Everyone knows violence is an aphrodisiac.
Hee hee It makes me so happy when you do fan-art, Yotomoe!
Willis, you missed a perfect strip to Slip in the Title of the strip, and get Wally to imply a 3rd wall break.
( Missing Speech bubble ladden with, “End of Days? Actual
Word-of-God more like ‘Dumbing of Age’ , Amirite ?” )
My Revelations is a little rusty, but I thought the Tribulations were to last seven years, followed by the Thousand Year Kingdom, followed by Armageddon and the final defeat of the Beast.
Somebody back me up or de-cobweb my brain on that? Thanks.
I thought the thousand years came after the final defeat.
The way I’ve always understood it, it was Rapture -> Tribulations -> Thousand Year Kingdom -> Armageddon -> Beast cast into the Lake of Fire and destroyed -> Eternity
But again…rusty. Could be mixed up there somewhere.
People aren’t entirely sure if the rapture is supposed to come at the beginning, middle, or end of the 7 year tribulation period. The Bible isn’t entirely clear on the subject, but the 1000 year reign of Christ is supposed to come after the tribulation.
Mainly because the rapture is non-biblical in its origin, instead springing up as a form of incredibly popular folk belief among evangelical American Christians during the period around 1800-1850. But yeah. 7 year tribulation, 1000 year kingdom, the devil’s escape from imprisonment and last ditch effort to take over the world, God makes a new heaven and a new earth for everybody based on the way it was supposed to be before Lucifer fell and humans started screwing up while Lucifer is simply wiped from existence and thus deader than dead. Fun fact, Tolkien came up with his own version of the apocalypse for Arda, during which the first and most powerful dark lord (and Sauron’s boss) Morgoth (formerly the Vala Melkor, Valar being essentially higher angels) is finally defeated after escaping from his imprisonment in the void, and is slain by Turin Turambar, a human who Morgoth ensured life would be hell for.
In my belief system it’s Sign of the Presence > End of False Religion > Great Tribulation > Armageddon > Millennial Reign > End of the Devil > Eternal Future. I don’t know how those who believe in the rapture organise those things.
The thing I’m annoyed about is Walky trying to double-down on his selfish prank rather than just apologising. that means he isn’t as improved as he wants to believe.
Depends on the Rapture belief. Some have it before the Great Tribulation (which they usually say is 7 years). Other have it in the middle. And still others have it at the end (possibly even after Armageddon) Armageddon may also be delayed until “End of the Devil,” with the great battle being what actually causes that. Others have two battles.
As for the bare concept of the Rapture itself, it’s just these verses:
1 Thessalonaians 4:16=17 (ESV):
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.
Sure, you can interpret it as metaphor. But I don’t see any issue with believing that it would literally happen, as Jesus was also described as literally rising through the clouds. The main question is just when.
Note, the context of those verses is Paul reassuring them that those who died would still make it to Heaven, and not to mourn too much that people died. The ascension of the living seems to be something they already believed in.
The whole Rapture concept is only 150 years old. Most Christians world-wide consider it a misleading modern error. You can find groups of US Christians who agree it MUST fit some exact scheme, but it is so cobbled together from bits and pieces that expecting consistency is asking too much.
Yep. It’s one of the results of the “Great Awakening” as it was called. Also results of the “Great Awakening”: Unitarianism, Mormonism, Jehovah’s witnesses, a bunch of church breakdown as large churches subdivided into even more numerous smaller churches, the idea of “Manifest Destiny”, and a new radical and sometimes violent (look at “Bleeding Kansas” and John Brown) version of abolitionism, as compared to earlier passive or moderate anti-slavery movements.
Well done, Walky! Have a biscuit.
A dog biscuit because, of course, what else would formerlypuppy!Dorothy be carrying around?
Ahem, it’s former!puppy!mind!Dorothy, thank you very much
Joyce needs to stop giving people underhanded slow balls like that.
Also, Professor Rees gets a tag but not the guy in the green shirt sitting right behind them and staring deep into my soul the whole time?
She’s still expecting people to be as essentially nice as she is. At this point, I don’t know if that’s optimism or naivete.
She’s only lobbing it so slowly because she’s trying to get a splitter. If Walky stays silent, he’ll get to walk the bases.
So is he going to take up the TA’s offer to tutor him now? Just going to class may not be enough.
I think that will take a little while more of him banging his head against the brick wall of his personal limits. All humour aside, it will be a very difficult thing for him to accept that he has to do.
It is extremely disrespectful to refer to Dorothy as “the TA”. She is far more than that beautiful body.
You’d give more credibility to Joyce if you’d get her theology correct.
I’d have said it.
She’s smarter than you Walky.
If I liked the person (and I like Joyce) I wouldn’t say it. Everyone else is fair game.
If I liked them, I’d probably say something along the lines of, “Almost as stupid as me,” because self-deprecating humor is hilarious and not a coping mechanism for the stress of a world I was not prepared for
If I hated them, I’d punch them in the face, steal their wallet, and buy myself a new pair of shoes.
There is no in between.
1000 years of tribulation? Seems a tad excessive.
In the Bible there’s only 7 years of tribulation, followed by 1000 years of Christ reigning over earth, followed by the devil escaping imprisonment and trying one last time to take over, followed by him (the devil) losing and being wiped from existence and God making a new heaven and earth for all the good people to live in in an eternal future. Joyce seems to have gotten the tribulation confused with Jesus’s reign, or her church just switched the numbers, which I wouldn’t put past them.
What’s even the point of the world ending if they believe there’s the equivalent to 1/6th of its lifespan so far left to go? It’s like getting a terminal cancer diagnosis that’ll kill you when you’re 120.
It took me a moment to parse out that you meant it’s 1/6th of that THEY believe the lifespan of the earth to be.
Well, what’s the point in marking Caine if Adam, Eve and Caine ar the only humans on earth?
They know anyways.
The Rapture and the world ending are two distinct events in premillennialism. The Rapture comes and takes all the Christians out, and then the world gets fucked.
Usually it’s only 7 years of tribulation, though, followed by Jesus coming back and reigning for 1000 years, followed by the final battle with Satan.
But, since Willis is being autobiographical, I assume there are some who believe the tribulation will last 1000 years.
Sorry, why final Battle with Satan after Jesus reigning for 1000 years?
If Satan is not already defeated, how does the 1000 years reign work?
Ah, but is today’s WTFZ Walky and MIND-Dotty?
Will someone give that neckbeard a kick in the fork already?
Nice. Pretty creative punchline had me laughing for quite a bit. Here is a well-deserved Cookie for you, Mr. Willis.
I don’t get the humor in today’s comic. Am I reading it wrong?
It looks like the joke comes because Walky is struggling to shut up about how stupid he thinks Joyce is for her Christian beliefs, especially the rapture.
Is it funny just because everyone loves putting Christians down? It seems so to me. After all, if it was Asma sitting there and Walky was struggling to shut up about how stupid he thought her faith was (or Joe or Ethan), we’d think that Walky was a prejudiced jerk and was acting completely out of character. We’d recognize that Walky was being a close-minded bigot.
Sorry, Joyce; you should have picked one of the cool religions.
Yes, you’re reading it wrong.
Walky is proud of being grown up enough to not say something stupid that any half mature person knows is stupid to say.
Well, first, yeah, I think you’re reading it wrong. The joke is that Walky is starting to learn the difference between what people can think and what they can say out loud without going too far in his stupid jokes.
Second, Christians and Muslims do not occupy anywhere near the same amount of societal power, and so that is a false equivalence. It’s the difference between punching a full grown adult with all the power in the house to evict you or leave, and punching one of their small children who cannot actually legally leave the house. One is dickish and you shouldn’t be surprised if people tell you so or the person stops hanging out with you, and the other can cause far more serious harm because the person is more vulnerable. Also, Joyce and Becky’s strand of faith has been shown several times to have fucked them up, psychologically and the rapture is part of that (as they feel the need to be perfect to get rapture and fears of being left behind can be incredibly anxiety inducing). That is not a matter of ‘cool religion’, but it’s not what Walky’s on about, so I’ll leave it at that.
Third, the comment section has been saying the past while that Walky was being an ass for his rapture trick.
Good – I’m glad to see that I was reading it wrong. And I shouldn’t expect too much from Walky anyways; an immature character who’s also a little racist and was previously blind to his parents’ racism, despite being half-black himself.
BBCC, I totally agree that the type of emotional damage is greater if the person’s in the cultural minority, and can even make the person feel scared and in danger. But just because one demonstration of intolerance is more hurtful doesn’t mean that the other one is acceptable. Your argument about Joyce and Becky’s beliefs being harmful could also be argued for any religion – after all, from our Western mindset, wouldn’t Asma’s beliefs be harmful if she’s taught to cover herself constantly and dress in such a submissive way? – but we don’t criticize this because we recognize that it’s a judgmental, ignorant, and dickish move.
He’s also a casually homophobic dickhead. Walky has a fair few privileges he can stand to get over.
Well, that assumes Asma is actively taught she must cover her hair and dress modestly, as opposed to being taught it is a way to express her faith. Joyce was actively taught that she was a horrible sinner destined to hell for any mistakes (or, in the case of Becky, for existing as she is). If Asma were actively taught she had no choice, I don’t think it would be wrong for her to step back and say ‘That was unhealthy’, or for people to suggest it was. And not every religion gives, for instance, the idea that being gay is this horrible thing justifying eternal punishment and societal condemnation. Pointing out unhealthy parts of a belief structure is not the same thing as condemning the beliefs or religion by itself.
Joyce was actively taught that she was a horrible sinner destined to hell for any mistakes
Where? I don’t remember reading that, and I’ve read through DoA at least twice. Unless that’s a generalization about the Christian faith, in which case no, you’re mistaken.
She had a lengthy chat about it with Dorothy in Galasso’s bathroom about how she was afraid of sin and that kept her from doing things that everyone else did – she had a similar chat with Ethan about how she hated herself for lying in his bed, fully clothed, because she was afraid of sin. The consequences of sin is going to hell unless you repent for it.
This is also extrapolation from Willis’ background, as Joyce is autobiographical wrt her religious sect, and he’s made numerous posts about that on his tumblr.
Ah, I had forgotten about those two moments. I do remember reading them. Joyce reminded me of several of the kids I’ve had in youth groups, with a complete misunderstanding of the relationship between sin and the person who accepts Christ. They keep thinking that if they don’t constantly repent, they’ll somehow lose their salvation.
I agree that this kind of thinking -is- destructive, and not just from an emotional and psychological standpoint. It’s also a complete misunderstanding of scripture, and I say that also as a “born again” Christian. Joyce is acting as if she has to -keep- being born again, and therefore keeps feeling as if she doesn’t measure up, instead of being sure in her salvation.
Sorry, this probably just sounds like a bunch of religious nonsense.
I imagine this depends on the interpretation of scripture the church in question uses. The bible can be taken a lot of ways.
I think that would would get a lot more out of this comic (and message board) if you let go of the idea that everyone else loves to mock Christians and doesn’t understand religion in the least bit.
It does sound like religious nonsense to me, but I don’t mean that in a bad way.
It also sounds like a complete misinterpretation of scripture, but so do a lot of other things taught by various versions of Christianity – some for the better, some for the worse.
None of that really matters. What matters is that it is very much what is taught in some pretty common and pretty nasty strands of faith here in the US. One of which Willis grew up in and that he is exploring with Joyce and Becky and their families. A large part of the point of the comic is that they believe some pretty screwed up things.
Less emphasized is that there are plenty of other Christians in the comic who don’t have all the same hangups.
“Is it funny just because everyone loves putting Christians down?”
I honestly have no idea how you could read that unless you were looking for it.
I’m not specifically looking for it. I guess I’m identifying right now with Joyce, who’s giving Walky this “I literally cannot believe what is coming out of your mouth” look the entire time. It’s hard to read what Walky’s saying and see it as anything other than mocking. But if I read this as one of those comics that aren’t supposed to be a funny comic, and instead one of those similar to when Walky started seeing his parents’ favoritism, it makes much more sense. After all, none of the other main characters would do something as insensitive in this situation. They hold Joyce in enough respect not to mock her faith.
Yeah, he’s mocking Joyce’s faith. This would be the same faith that she’s been really pushy about time and time again. She has a habit of being Christian at people, and while she doesn’t do it from malice (unlike certain other characters*) it’s still irritating. Walky’s behavior can be generally categorized as pushing back, and while the manner might be a bit obnoxious that doesn’t make Joyce’s position here all that sympathetic.
*Ruth.
Dina’s torn into her for her anti-science/evolution beliefs. Roz tore into her for comments on the precious flower of virginity or some such.
Walky and she have a kind of friendly hatred thing going on where they do mock and insult each other. Joyce certainly gives as good as she gets.
I would like to point out to everyone reading this that Mark’s post is not representative of Professor Layton.
Joyce’s ridiculous beliefs are not the punchline here. Walky’s behaviour is the punchline.
Walky, I’d be careful. That look on Joyce’s face is about 1 step short of her Toedad punchin face.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/strength-2/
Keep on doing it, I want to see him get one in the middle of the road.
I feel like, expression notwithstanding, Walky ranks far far lower on the scale of ‘things that make me mad’ than Toedad.
Certainly — we just don’t see this expression from Joyce very often.
Here’s an idle thought. A variation of “what sound does deaf people hear when they think”. Does Willis think in sketches, like Walky is doing here? Do you?
My thought bubbles are like watching talking heads in documentary. This happens in my dreams as well. Rarely am I in them so much as I’m watching them.
The speechbubble taken out is a cool visual metaphor