It’s been a running joke since the Walkyverse that she never appears fully-on-panel (we only saw her face once, and that was in a drawing Willis did of her SEMME squad for tumblr); the Dumbiverse compounds that joke by not tagging her, either.
I had not noticed the resemblance to Marceline. That’s… a thing.
OH! Due to the horrors of late stage capitalism, I will be getting HBOMax for free tomorrrow and thus able to watch the new episodes of Adventure Time! Yay!
The problem with talking shit about a group of people is that sometimes you know people who are in that group and they tend to find out that you talked shit about them with disturbing frequency (when you’re a fictional character, at least).
I mean there’s being an atheist and then there’s just being a jerk. Note how Dorothy is an atheist yet never guilted or mocked Joyce or Becky for their beliefs.
You can be bitter that people taught you to believe things that you now consider to be a lie, but don’t paint everyone of their very broad group with the same tarred brush. It’s not even a thing where Joyce was being rude and didn’t know that someone she cares about was part of the group she talked shit about. She knows that Becky is still very much a Christian and should’ve found a different way to work through her bitterness from the start. I mean, what was she going to do if Joe had said “hey, you do remember Becky’s a Christian,” replied with “yeah, but she’s one of the GOOD ones”? Because I kinda feel like when you’re using that sort of statement, either the group has to be objectively shitty or you’re being a jerk about it.
I kind of feel for Joyce though and can see why she ended up on this path? The only one she hangs out regularly with that has the same sort of fundie background as her is Becky but Becky doesn’t understand Joyce’s bitterness. Whenever it came up, Becky would shut her down rather than talk about it. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/beeessin/
I’m not saying Becky brought this on herself but Joyce was hurting and needed a proper outlet to discuss this with. Dorothy doesn’t have the experience of having her parents lie to her, Joe runs away the moment a conversation gets too “real” and Sarah is Sarah. Becky might just have been in the best place to give Joyce some perspective but she’s too self absorbed to actually help her best friend.
Ethan might have actually done the best thing for Joyce by encouraging her to talk to Jocelyne…
She needs an outlet, yes, but she also needs to be aware of how her venting affects others. In the example you linked, Joyce asks if their parents were BS-ing B-holes. And when we look at her parents, that makes sense: her mom aided and abetted an attempted murderer and a kidnapper, and her dad was at least okay with her Carol’s abuse of their children.
But for Becky, that’s a much more loaded question. Her father was a grade-A dickbag, but she reveres her mother still. Her mother died before she could disappoint Becky, and so to Becky she never would have done. When Joyce asks if she’s a BS-ing B-hole, some of the strongest language Joyce is using at this point in the story, Joyce is asking if that same mother one of those B-holes, and that’s not something Becky can take.
On top of that, we know that Becky is facing an immediate crisis of faith and values right here. Is it okay for her to have premarital sex or no? And when she goes to the friend who was raised with the same religion and values and asks for support, her friend tells her those values are worthless. Becky failed Joyce here, but let’s not pretend that Joyce didn’t fail Becky at least as badly, and she insulted her in the process.
Like Becky, we know Joyce does things in phases. She’s like Danny in that way, where he jumps into phases to figure out who he is. The difference here is that Joyce jumps into phases uncritically and unthinking and carries an obsession for a while before letting it drop. Becky knows this, which is part of why she calls out that Joyce has been rebelling “for like thirty whole seconds.” Joyce has just jumped with both feet into another phase. And she’s not wrong: this bitterness and hating Christians and Christianity IS a stupid phase. It’s one she does need to grow out of and one that shouldn’t be encouraged. The hatred she’s carrying is the sort that compels atheists to gather on reddit and spend the looking for articles that show religious people doing bad things so they can feel superior. It’s the same sort of hatred that makes people think they need to make up quotes about being “euphoric.”
At the end here, Joyce is just being Joyce again. She’s not thinking through the rightness or appropriateness of her words or beliefs. She’s taken them on blind faith that she’s right and is seeking out validation. She’s sorry when she hurts someone with them, but she never looks at how she can avoid doing so until it’s too late. That does seem pretty stupid to me, and I think Becky had a decent read on Joyce.
Becky and Joyce both act dumb. I don’t think Joyce deserves full blame here for venting in what she believed to be a private setting. She’s admittedly just being so outspoken to butter herself up to Sarah’s cool sister, and that might speak to a flaw in Joyce’s character, but I don’t think being vocally frustrated is inherently wrong. Andy makes a good point that she’s making sweeping generalizations, but the fundies are a pretty messed up community that tried to indoctrinate her into being a cookie-cutter homophobic xenophobic (esp with regard to other denominations or religions, or lack of faith) “good little Christian girl”.
Becky wants her relationship with Joyce to stay exactly the same despite the fact that both are changing, and Joyce felt pressured to keep her crisis of faith secret from Becky because of this. So yeah, I’d say Becky in no small part brought this on herself.
My money’s on “everything hurtful Joyce has said about Christians today is self-directed, and she’s just trying to unpack all the traumatic bullshit that got dumped into her head.”
Becky saying “this is a stupid phase and I need you to grow out of it” was understandable in one sense, in that Becky had been dealing with a lot more messed up stuff. But Joyce’s screwed-up childhood upbringing is also significant, and Becky’s been pushing that away for awhile. The first time Joyce came to Becky with any doubts, Becky essentially said “shut up and be the bubbly, safe Christian I need right now.”
She was also egged on to say this stuff by Liz. Liz started the topic in general and kept saying how stupid something is, Joyce wanted to look cool in front of her friend so she went along with the jokes, you can tell it was also hurting her a little bit.
Not knowing Liz well enough to know if she deserves the benefit of the doubt on this I’ll say I think it’s one of those situations where she was trying to connect with Joyce. They just met each other in person and the first thing they bond over is their perspective on religion so it’s easy to make it all about that, overexaggerate your beliefs for a laugh or to impress. Maybe Liz really does enjoy mocking religion but part of me thinks she’s been trying just as hard to look cool in front of Joyce.
It might be trying to have a connection, but also I think Liz is just not at the stage of maturity where she can recognize things aren’t so black and white, and people who believe different things aren’t just gullible idiots. Liz is enjoying her little rebellion, which is not nearly as personal for her as it is for Joyce. And that’s pushing Joyce’s buttons and getting her to vent, which would probably have been cathartic if Becky hadn’t shown up.
It’s not just Joyce wanting to look cool—she’s sympathetic to some of these ideas and has no other sounding board.I didn’t get the impression this was bothering Joyce at all. In fact, she seems to have been relishing in finding someone with whom to explore the doubts she is most terrified of without being judged.
Becky has made it very clear that she won’t tolerate the fact that Joyce has sincere doubts. I’m not sure why Joyce didn’t feel safe speaking about it with Dorothy, but I have some guesses (one of which is that I don’t think I’ve seen Becky let Joyce and Dorothy be alone together since the time skip). Sarah is way to agnostic—both in belief and with regard to Joyce’s specific doubts—to really support her if she wants to explore her doubts.
Is Liz being pretty annoying? Yeah, sure, but she’s getting zero pushback, and in fact Joyce is actively encouraging her, so I can’t blame her much.
I definitely did read Joyce as being uncomfortable saying this stuff–if you look at her expressions last few pages, she’s looked kinda queasy and pained, or at the very least she’s not smiling like Liz is–like she’s trying to convince herself, or potentially mocking herself, like Jon said. But that doesn’t really cancel out the fact that she’s probably excited to explore this with somebody to whom it’s no big deal. + trying to look cool, trying on a new personality when nobody* you know is around… I think all of those fit into her head right now…
I kinda hope Sirksome is right about Liz too, heh. Seems possible…though maybe too early to tell.
*nobody but Joe, Joyce doesn’t want to think of Joe as a person
I guess the question is, was Joyce actually being a “jerk”.
She was not making those comments to Becky (or any other christian… At least i don’t think Sarah is one). And while the comments she did make were very negative, I kind of see them more as a “Look at how dumb I was” rather than “Look at how dumb these other people are”.
yeah… I really don’t see Joyce as a jerk here. Personally, as a Christian who has had several friends deconvert or even just reject the particular flavor of Christianity they grew up with, I see these sorts of comments from friends (usually to a lesser degree because it’s usually on social media) fairly frequently. I might get offended in the moment, but I know deconversion is a complicated experience. I don’t hold it against them long-term. It’s entirely different than if somebody like Dorothy or Walky said those things.
Don’t see any reason to think Sarah isn’t Christian – probably fairly nominal and certainly not fundamentalist, but I don’t believe she’s claimed to be atheist. Joe is Jewish, I believe, though again not particularly devout. Mocking people for believing in magical sky wizards doesn’t just apply to Christians.
Yeah, that’s something Joyce has to learn. But these emotions are pretty raw and Joyce hasn’t had to deal with something as crazy as deconversion before, so it’s a learning experience. I just hope that Becky and Joyce are able to reconcile after they talk things out–well, okay, maybe shout things out… to be precises, after Becky yells at Joyce until Joyce yells back and starts crying and then Becky starts crying too and Joyce apologizes and promises to always be there for Becky and then Becky realizes that people can change and it doesn’t have to change the relationship between them and they hug it out. They might avoid each other for a day or two at some point in that interval but hopefully it gets sorted before too long.
It’s interesting to be default-passing. I don’t get much bigotry directed at me, but I hear an awful lot of $*&# said around me when folks think they’re in sympathetic company.
What’s extra fun is when they try to hint that maybe you shouldn’t be talking so much shit cos they’re part of that group and then you double down on it.
I have not always been the brightest apple in the barrel.
Well, this was inevitable and yet somehow it’s worse than what I imagined. I think the hurt look plus leaving makes it worse than if they had just argued about it.
Oof. An even harsher Becky reaction than I expected. But then, hard to prove that first panel Joyce was saying that to herself (which is my guess), and that first panel statement carries some real acid.
Money’s on “Dorothy has to talk Joyce through her situation in a more healthy, less-insufferable way before Joyce can apologize properly.”
Money’s also on Liz making this whole situation worse, immediately.
They’re both edgelord-atheisting and encouraging each other to do so, which puts some blame on both of them, but Joyce is still responsible both for what she said and for the ring that she was insulting her friend by saying it.
Me neither. She’s a bit of an edge-lord, but she and Joyce were very clearly egging each other on. She hasn’t stomped anyone’s boundaries (besides Sarah’s, but everyone stomps those, for better or worse), and I could see her being regretful about speaking so candidly when she finds out exactly what Joyce is going through and why she needed someone like Liz to vent to.
Or she could be a little shit. It’s honestly way too early to tell I think.
I’ve noticed folks seem to be calling Liz a bad influence and insisting she’s egging Joyce on, but all she did was . . . be an atheist and into sex, at least at first? Joyce was the one who went all in to impress her. Joyce is at least as responsible for all this as Liz.
No, I agree completely; Joyce mentioned the Bible verses on social media, and Liz explained that they were just to keep her stepmom happy since Liz is an atheist. She had no way of knowing that Joyce is 1) a very recent atheist, and 2) prone to trying WAY too hard to impress people, especially her friends’ cool siblings.
TBH I’m a little uncomfortable with how quick people are to blame Joyce’s decisions on Liz.
Yup, this is a ‘Birthday Pursuit’ level fuckup on Joyce’s part. She got caught up in the moment and forgot words have consequences again.
Liz was clearly dragging it out of Joyce at first, but that doesn’t make her at fault for Joyce inadvertently hurting Becky by revealing her true feelings once their mutual game of one-upmanship snowballed.
It’s really weird. I like these characters and this strip largely because they are all dumb kids who make dumb mistakes. It’s a genuinely good story because Willis lets them be less-than-perfect, and so it weirds me out when some of the commentary is like “No, this character has never done a bad.”
Also, I really like Raidah as a character. She’s got issues, but her “Jacob needs to impress his family, that’s why he’ll stay with me” line honestly broke my heart – it speaks to an idea that she’s valuable not as a person, but as a status marker. Add to that Joyce’s Islamophobia when they first started talking, and, just, eugh. I think the comment section has come a long way from the days of tut-tutting Sarah’s distrust of the police (you ever go back and read that section? I did, once, and a LOT of the comments are full-body cringe “well there’s bad people in every profession but she’s being quite biased here” shit), but it is still super weird how the default sometimes seems to be that Joyce (and sometimes Dorothy) are the Goods, and other people are varying degrees of wrong.
Yeah, Joyce started it and then Liz went all in. I think Liz is a bit immature and sees things in black and white, but not inherently a bad person. Maybe she brings out the petty side of Joyce, and she’s probably not someone Joyce should be spending a whole lot of time with because of her clear desire to be a rebel, skipping classes and dissing religion… but that’s a phase a lot of teens go through. I’m sure Liz will grow out of it.
I never said it was Liz’s fault. Joyce is responsible for her own words and actions, and for throwing herself into another ridiculous sitcom lie (who could forget Pizza with Jacob’s Brother?) But it’s hard to imagine Joyce saying what she just did if she was unpacking her shitty upbringing with, say, Dorothy.
Liz’s whole schtick seems to be, as others have said, quite edgy. She’s been rubbing me the wrong way for a few strips, maybe I overreacted. But I don’t think nuance, subtlety, or “other people’s feelings” are major concerns for her, and the next few strips will require exactly that. These are my reasons for thinking she’s about to make things worse.
Which was her point all along, I suspect. Show up, egg Joyce on, get her to rip the Band-Aid off. But that doesn’t make her an interesting character who I want to see hanging around long-term.
Her father wouldn’t have taken it so hard. Also, as mentioned above, Becky had her chance to accept the changes in Joyce. It’s not Joyce’s fault Becky insists she be something she’s not. Joyce has been trying to accommodate, but it couldn’t last forever.
He might have. We’ve seen Hank be decent, and stick to it, but being anti-homophobia and anti-violence is different from having your daughter bitterly reject the foundation of what you raised her on.
I think he’s try to trust her on it, but I don’t know if he’d succeed.
Nope, next strip the camera pans back. We see Joyce’s body on the floor, while Joyce’s ghost is all pale-faced. Becky failed her Will save and became Panicked, which is why she left. Joyce then locks eyes with Dorothy, and Ms. Keener takes 15 points of damage and loses two points of Charisma. She reaches out to touch Liz and Sarah, but they recoil, not wanting to suffer ability drain themselves.
Then the day after the day after tomorrow’s strip, Joyce wakes up in bed and it’s revealed this whole chapter was just a dream inspired from that one time Joyce finally tried D&D over winter break.
Also, Joyce is ridiculously pale in the 3rd panel. I’d say she’s a ghost but they don’t play video games, zombies do though. Therefore we must now accept Joyce’s uhdead status.
I’ve allegedly been that pale, but it was from losing a fair amount of blood.
(It was bad enough my friend called my mom, 2,000 miles away at 1 (or 3) AM, to tell her) :/
I have a roughly 4″ by 9″ scar from the skin graft to repair my leg blowing out the opposite side of where the truck hit me, I’m familiar with the concept of “degloving”.
Is it weird that my first thought after reading is that ditties only grant divine spells not arcane, so thus God must either have Mystic Theruge prestige class or is gesalted wizard/cleric yet if their spells come from internal power wouldn’t they be a sorcerer not a wizard? But if God is a wizard does that mean that through intense study of the arcane arts one could become God and was that what Nietzsche was talking about?
Anyway thoughts like that keep me distracted from the very uncomfortable feeling this strip brought out.
I brought that up to a DM with a spiritual/mysticism campaign and he answered it by saying, “Virtually every wizard believes with enough time and practice that they, too, can become a god. The vast majority of gods, by contrast, just roll their eyes and throw the occasional adventure at the likely future Liches.”
Not necessarily just Greek myths. D&D’s approach to myth and folklore is to take everything but the kitchen sink from whatever sources it can. It draws on a lot of polytheistic mythologies for it’s gods.
I think it’s an element I didn’t consider: Becky was hoping for another believer friend. Literally the only other one she knows on campus right now is Jennifer.
Why would she dismiss Lucy? Lucy seems to have inserted herself into the general circle of friends that exists on the floor (and Lucy was quite eager to talk about her relationship with Walky), so if she really needs another christian to hang around with, Lucy would fit the bill.
Plus, I assume that she’s met more of the people on the floor, so she probably knows Sierra is a christian (and one that is bisexual and/or lesbian). You also have Agatha (A mormon… christian but not always seen as christian by others) or Mary, although admittedly she’s not exactly friendly.
There is no universe in which Becky ‘nuked the closet from orbit’ MacIntyre and Mary the noted homophobe are gonna be buddy-buddy, because to Mary, being gay precludes you from being Properly Christian. Mary probably thinks Ross was right to kidnap Becky at gunpoint.
Becky has seen Sierra at church, and Lucy has attached herself to the friend group, but neither of them appears to be as close to her as Jennifer, much less Joyce. She may still be on good terms with Jacob. He’s not Joyce. Amber’s family, at least, is Catholic, though her personal religious beliefs haven’t been made clear. And while Becky’s a lot closer to her than everyone else I listed, Amber is still not Joyce. Joyce was someone she grew up with – one of the last links to their old community, much like Becky is to Joyce, except Joyce has supportive, living family members she’s in contact with. So she’s going to take Joyce losing faith especially hard because Joyce is Becky’s only best friend and Becky’s already insecure about not being Undisputed #1 in Joyce’s heart.
Having had an insufferable atheist phase much older than middle school, I feel like it comes from the same place as Becky’s insufferable lesbian phase: when you can no longer cover up who you are and what you believe you instead overcompensate and shove it at everyone you meet so you know first thing if they’re going to be cool or look at you as a conversion or shame target. I see it as a reaction to or defense mechanism against shame around who you are and what you believe or don’t believe in an environment that wants you to not be that – or at least to cover it up for others’ comfort.
That said I genuinely don’t think that’s what Joyce is doing here. I think it’s more like her playing at rebellion by mimicking Sal’s style. She’s processing her newfound discomfort with how she was raised and seeing if this new persona fits for her. But you can tell from her face it’s not a comfortable experiment for her.
There’s probably a dash of self deprecation in there too, making fun of her old behavior and a dash of processing her anger at religion as well.
& Like others have said I don’t at all blame her for not opening up to Becky. Becky, for all her own circumstances, still has some VERY regressive beliefs about what emotions are permissible for women (see also strips about her needing to be wacky Becky so others don’t hate her – ties into conservative beliefs that women are supposed to always be pleasant & bring joy to those around them) and atheism/loss of faith. She’s got her own shit going on, too, but she’s not a safe person for Joyce to confide in on this (especially since Becky’s proven herself very prone to pain Olympics so if Joyce does try to process how a loving God could put her through this, Becky will counter with something to the effect of “Well I’m an orphan who was exiled from my community and kidnapped by my father and I still believe, why can’t you?” ).
Dorothy is generally nice but neither has bandwidth for this nor is she good at listening and empathizing without trying to solve. Joyce needs someone who will just be with her as she feels what she needs to feel. Dorothy can’t give her that. Joe can but it’s too much for one person so now that Liz is openly going through something similar, Joyce is going to try to connect on it.
& Like I don’t see this as Joyce being a jerk. It’d be different if she was openly mocking her very religious friends to their faces, but she’s not. Was it smart to do it with the door open where others could track her down? Well, no, but this isn’t Smarting of Age.
Same, best and worst part about realizing i was an atheist at 12. I was the most insufferable but, i was expected to be. Problem is I’m in an ultra religious country and all the other christian 12 year olds around me were WAY more insufferable than i was. I had a friend/crush beg me to convert, a classmate shake me down while screaming “WHY DONT YOU BELIEVE IN JESUS” while i was talking to my cousin, a group of popular kids call me over to confront me, accuse me of worshipping Satan and say things like “my mom said not to speak to people like you”
Yeah… I think they kept me from being too insufferable
Yeah that time Danny said a painful truth instead of keeping his mouth shut in the name of submitting to someone he cared about and perpetuating a frustrating and stifling status quo.
Joe’s survival instincts have kicked in, so he is going to stay very still and very quiet and hope nobody notices him, and if someone does he’s going to bolt
i mean, if they do, he’s going to have to confront COMPLEX FEELINGS. TBH I kind of hope he’s forced to be a moral compass (or at least like, a balancing force) here. But he will most likely flee.
This is good, for too long Becky has tied herself to Joyce (and been quite insufferable about it) but now she has the opportunity to branch out for herself
She has a girlfriend, she’s studying and knows what she wants to do, that’s a good place for anyone to be in
Now she can jettison that unholy jealousy and start to get to know other people
I mean that’s true to an extent. This is kind of a horrible way for that to happen though and a friendship she’s had for years straining or even breaking for her to develop is hard to sell as a “good” thing. Joyce has probably saved her life y’know. But I guess Becky being less obnoxiously possessive of Joyce is technically better for her.
Well sure the situation could have been better but considering the last time they talked about something like this Becky was very dismissive of Joyce
The whole at war with your parents for 30 seconds thing completely ignoring that it was Joyce protecting Becky that lead to the war starting in the first place
I meam, she had a right to be. Joyce was being an annoying, nihilistic asshole and Becky was having an immediate crisis of faith and needed real advice from someone who could understand her position. To steal a point from someone above, yeah sure Becky failed Joyce there, but Joyce also totally failed Becky
because Becky needs her to be stable and supportive and not have any feelings or drama of her own when Becky comes to her to try to resolve the contradictions in her faith and/or desires, duh. :p
Joyce’s advice was that sexual purity was probably bullshit, like many of the other things their community taught them, and so Becky could feel okay doing whatever she wanted. That advice isn’t what Becky wanted to hear but it was still entirely valid advice, because whoops, sexual purity IS bullshit.
Like Joyce’s advice was actually the thing Becky needed to hear, it is what she is currently struggling with right now, but Becky decided Joyce was throwing a tantrum.
Was Joyce being an “annoying, nihilistic asshole”, though? She was in pain and doubt and expressed that hurt point of view instead of pasting a smile over it like Becky. She’d been having a worse crisis of faith and this was her hint to Becky that she was hurting and questioning EVERYTHING she had been told, not just the purity. And Becky’s response to Joyce’s vulnerability and pain was essentially “Shut up, you don’t get to be upset (‘bein’ a bummer’), I had worse!”.
Maybe I’m empathizing too much since I’ve been having a significant amount of existential anxiety lately, but it hurts to keep such big anxieties and fears to yourself. Making allusions to your struggles (like Joyce tried to do to Becky when she was shut down) or venting/half-joking about your struggles (like here with Liz) are ways to relieve some of the pressure and openings to really talk about them. And Becky made it clear she was not someone who would accept Joyce expressing her worries.
Honestly, that is where I started really considering Becky a bad friend – I think of friends as people you can confide in and be vulnerable with, and Becky is not that. (And does not want to allow anyone else who could be more supportive near Joyce.) It must have been hard for Joyce having all these doubts and pain that she didn’t feel she could talk about, I completely see why she jumped on the chance to vent with someone less involved in her life that was not likely to judge her, open to discussing this, and where there was not as much danger of damaging a significant relationship by “being a bummer”.
It’s probably not even what Joyce said, but the fact that Becky has sensed something off with her since they returned from break and Joyce has been lying to her about it the entire time instead of trusting her. Even when the topic was about Becky’s mom. That’s gonna be hard to come back from for Ms. Brown.
Yes, this! Telling Becky privately about her crisis of faith in response to a direct question would have been much better than letting her find out accidentally.
I think the issue with the ‘insufferable atheist phase’ is it comes in two stages. The outwardly aggressive one like we see with what Joyce and Liz are doing right now that belittles Becky, but afterward there’s a quiet paternalism that passively looks down on religious people for having a faith. Breaking out of the second stage is one that Joyce hasn’t even begun to approach and that Dorothy or Dina often find themselves in. Honestly, I think it takes a sort of agnostic atheistic approach to avoid being insufferable like the confidently religious. I think it’s similar for how a lot of religious people are also agnostic, in the sense of appreciating that faith doesn’t mean absolute fact and is part of the inherent definition.
I think the phases you are describing happen to people who have been deep into a cultish religion – like Joyce has – because religion is just of mighty disinterest to people whose life’s hasn’t been badly affected by it and who are atheist.
Where people who base their life on rationalism might come across as paternalistic is the topic of magical thinking that is inherent in the kind of religion that expects the respective god to actually and directly influence life as it is.
I don’t think this is true. You don’t have to have been in a religion like that to have strong feelings on religion. You just have to have been hurt by religion, which can happen even if you weren’t directly a believer. That’s mainly true of places where religion, especially a single religion, is overwhelmingly dominant in a culture, so it’s not everywhere. However, we shouldn’t pretend that religion only has effects on the believers. Dominant religions affect everyone, believers nd those just living in the area, though the degree of that depends on a lot of factors.
YES, thank you! This is where I fit in, personally.
I was raised with a very sanitized, ‘nice’ version of Protestant Christianity – I didn’t even know gay people existed until I was a preteen because, although my family’s church would have undoubtedly been at least mildly homophobic, it definitely wasn’t a “THE GAYS CAUSED ALL NATURAL DISASTERS” type of place. Sermons mostly concentrated on Jesus’s positive life lessons. Compared to my best friend, who was legit traumatized by people in their aunt’s church acting like they had a heart attack because ~the holy spirit had entered them~, I got off REALLY easy.
…but I still had to realize I have never (and probably will never) be able to believe, in ANY religion. (I really just Do. Not. Get. It.) I still had to realize that as a queer person, a HUGE percentage of Americans hate me because of their alienating mythology that has always sounded like gibberish to me. And now that I’m old enough to be solidly out as an atheist, I now feel guilty or doubt myself for celebrating a secular version of Christmas, because I grew up in a country with rich winter traditions (Germany) and have a lot of good memories associated with it, so it’s still my favorite holiday. It also helps the homesickness now that I live in the US, haha.
So, to sum it up: religion IS of disinterest to me, but society keeps forcing its tenants on me, and it is constantly stifling. 😐
Sorry for the slight tangent/vent – this wasn’t even directed at Ludaire specifically! Just wanted to illustrate how non-ex-fundies are also shaped by the extreme dominance of Christianity in the US. :C
Honestly, I *only* read self-loathing into Joyce’s comments. I think she’s yelling at herself over all the stupid stuff she used to believe, because if you distance yourself from that as hard as possible, you can convince yourself that you’re better now and will never be as helpless/stupid/pathetic as you used to be.
Liz’s “I can’t imagine how stupid you’d have to be to be religious” hit Joyce really hard, hard enough for her to go all-in convincing herself she was never that stupid.
Well, sort of. Honesty requires time and place and I don’t think Joyce was ready yet. Let me revise – this is why we don’t shit talk people who believe in god because sometimes people don’t realize we’re venting about ourselves and yeah, that’s hurtful if they believe in god.
For some reason I find the fact of Dorothy pointing at Becky in the 2nd panel really funny! As if Joyce WOULDN’T have figured out she fucked up without the pointing?
He’s said “Heaven and Hell never existed” to Joyce, but he was actually pretty upset at Amber when he was talking about he and his dad were trying to include her and her mom in Hanukkah stuff and she didn’t really care.
Well there’s a difference between practicing something for religion and and a cultural practice. Joe is likely a secular Jew who still views the culture of Judaism and it’s practices (at least the major holidays) as important
Yeah that’s a good read. Joe doesn’t have faith, but his culture is important to him.
I actually like the idea that Joe has an affection for Jewish culture and practices and we just never saw it because it cut into being Fun Sex Man time. It’s a new area to explore for his character.
Well hell (as a classical concept, at least) doesn’t generally exist in Judaism, so saying “it never existed” doesn’t preclude him still being religiously Jewish.
Yeah, a LOT of Christian beliefs about the afterlife aren’t actually from any canonical religious text, much less the ones that are in any way derived from Judaism, they’re from things like Paradise Lost and the Divine Comedy.
I have felt exactly that way before. Shame, fear, excitement, and illness all at once. It’s quite an experience, and I don’t think the thing I personally felt it for will ever be gone from me.
It sure as hell reminds you that you’re alive though.
This has been a long time coming, is it the best way for this to all come out? No, but I dont see Becky responding well to Joyce no longer being Christian even in the best scenario. She’s made it clear that she has a specific picture of Joyce in her mind and she didn’t want it to ever change
She shut Joyce down right quick last time she tried to talk about her crisis of faith, calling it “a stupid phase” she needs to “grow outta”. I think that was the point where Joyce decided to stay closeted about her agnosticism/atheism (whichever it was at the time) around Becky.
That strip was what made me worried that Becky wouldn’t react well to learning Joyce is now an atheist, no matter how she found out. Though this is definitely one of the worst ways Becky could find out about Joyce’s atheism.
In all fairness Joyce wasn’t just questioning her faith there, she was being a nihilistic prick and dismissing Becky’s own crisis. And that WAS a stupid phase she needed to grow out of
Joyce was CORRECT in that strip, even if Becky didn’t want to hear it. Hank and Bonnie certainly meant well and they definitely believed the bullshit they taught them, but it was still bullshit and Joyce is entitled to be angry and bitter about it for ONE NIGHT (Since IIRC, she was fine the next day).
I decided not to leave a comment back then. But I thought that was really messed up for Becky to say. It wasn’t a pain contest to who gets the most pain and entitlement or something
Mildly worried about how this might affect Becky’s relationship with Dina, because there was already some anxieties there a few chapters ago and this might lead to some conflict
I dunno. Dina is pretty perceptive. If Becky seems upset, she might ask why she is upset and then just comfort her. This isn’t about science or dino denial, after all.
You’re the real [expletive bc i don’t like calling names in the comments] if you think that’s the issue here and not Joyce insulting her and her entire belief system, revealing that she’s been lying to her for god knows how long
I hope not. That doesn’t sound very Dina to me (at the very least she wouldn’t say it so rudely), but also Dina knows Becky has beliefs AND is reconciling them with silence, so it would be really weird and mean to just call her stupid and insinuate it’s just about believing in god or not
Well since people seem to be sharing, here’s my experiences with the (newly) ex-Christian and/or smug atheists.
People like Joyce and Liz all over the Internet, especially from Middle School to Undergrad.
In Middle School and High School there were those kids who were convinced Jesus never existed.
My neighbor converted to Wiccan in High School and took a weird delight in offering to show of his closet shrine (normal) and later in quizzing me on amatuer hour Bible “contradictions”. (Stuff like why my Mom and sisters weren’t sacrificing doves or whatever the the Old Testament says to every month. Dude used to be Catholic, he knows how sacrifice works in Christianity or he damn well should have).
My dad’s proud, self-described atheist friend who also believes in The Secret. Because that’s so rational.
There were also the ex-Christian agnostics who I describe as such because they just didn’t care enough to have an opinion once their parents stopped forcing them to go to Church.
Oh, dang. This was a long time coming and we all knew it was going to happen in the worst possible way, AND YET.
Becks is ollying out of this because this must’ve hurt her wildly, but also… A good deal of her coping mechanisms are about controlling her environment through assigning everyone a role. She’s doubting her relationship with Dina because Dina’s sex positive asexuality breaks her expectations, Dorothy has to be her frenemy even if she doesn’t want to, and Joyce has to be her Christian Heterosexual Life Partner.
Joyce tried to talk to Becky about this back when she was still trying to cling to faith, and got rebuffed with a “how dare you doubt when your life hasn’t even been as hard, I can still believe”. Meanwhile both Joyce and Liz were egging each other on to look cool, but… Bruh. There was such self-loathing going on for our protagonist. Yet I’m pretty sure a good deal of her also means it, cruel wording and all: “I was stupid for believing in it but OH WOW IT’S SO STUPID, HOW WAS I DUPED FOR SO LONG, RELIGION SUCKS.”
Dorothy has her work cut for her. I legit hope Joe intervenes for good as well. #Pain for everyone, yay! (?)
But also adding, Joyce hasn’t had much in the way of a safe space to work any of this out with peers. Dorothy can’t relate because she never went through the deconversion process. Dina is… no, for several reasons. (Conflict of interest, wouldn’t relate to deconversion, existing semi-animostiy…) Sarah rebuffs most of Joyce’s attempts to open up about serious stuff. Becky has, intentionally or not, in various ways communicated that she is not a safe person to talk to about this.
So of COURSE Joyce is going to vent, full-steam, with the first person able and willing to relate. She has to. This has been building up for months.
And of course it can’t be done privately. They tried to do it privately, but…
… but not having space to process deconversion properly because that’s being interfered with by the still-faithful who think it’s their perogative to monitor, pry into, and supervise your thought process is… not fun. Finding space to do that can be very, very difficult.
(Was Becky trying to pry, monitor, and supervise today, or in this past week’s sequence of comics? No. Has she been doing so on and off throughout much of the comic’s run? Yes.)
Yeah. Joyce really needed Jacob, and maybe Ethan, in her life. They were earnest enough and serious enough and different enough that they could have helped her through this.
Yes the realization your religion is in deep conflict with current reality is deeply disconcerting. It’s like walking across a transparent bridge over a staircase. You keep trying to step down, but the actual bridge gets in the way.
Joyce has a right to believe the things that seem true to her that is completely independent of how much bad stuff she has survived. Just because Becky has been at odds with her parents for longer doesn’t mean that she is allowed to dictate that Joyce believe propositions that seem unreasonable and lack evidence.
Oh I’m not Joyce is unreasonable.
Just… people are all having emotions.
Complicated emotions based on the disillusionment of a major cornerstone of their whole childhood.
The differences are normal and okay, and I understand.
Becky feels like Joyce leaving Christianity is slightly an attack on her.
Joyce…. is not in the wrong at all here. She’s venting feelings of frustration and dealing with a fundamental change in her worldview. And had chosen someone other than Becky to talk with.
It’s good to see that I’m not the only one who isn’t instantly trying to throw around blame. Sometimes people end up in painful situations due to accidents or unfortunate circumstances where no one was in the wrong. It’s understandable and okay for Joyce to vent this way, and it’s understandable and okay for Becky to be upset.
I’m interested in seeing how they deal with the immediate fall out and to what degree the two will remain friends now that both know that they have such fundamentally different beliefs. I know that can sometimes be rough, but it’s also necessary for many people to have any friends at all.
Losing your faith is hard. No amount of praying brings it back. Joyce is dealing with her loss of faith, the realization that she was fed lies since infancy and praised when she swallowed them. Her mother betrayed her in the name of those lies. She helped the man that harmed Joyce get free to do it again. Now Joyce’s parents are divorcing. Another thing Joyce was raised to see as impossible. She’s got mad PTSD from all that’s happened in the last 6 months and she’s Not okay. All the harm that she’s experienced, from the Christian rapist/stalker, to Toe-Dad attacks, to her parents divorce she sees as the fault of Christian brainwashing.
Oddly, I do know some people who come back to their faith after losing it. It’s as much a shock to them as anything else. I don’t think there’s any chance of that happening for Joyce (given its autobiographical nature) or where her mind SHOULD go right now but it’s interesting to know I had some fundamentalist-atheist-liberal Christianity path friends.
Willis stated that the chapters When It Crumbles/Is a Song Forever? were meant to be viewed as a “season one finale” for Dumbing of Age as a whole. Hence, Books 1-10 are “Season 1” and Books 11-present are “Season 2”.
Joyce has stopped believing in the culty Christianity she was raised in and devoted to after some truly devastating events in a very short amount of time. The foundation on which has has based the last 18 years of her life has crumbled. She is closed off from her previous church and family. She is angry and grieving. Some self-loathing ranting seems like a pretty normal response to everything she is going through.
It makes sense that Becky after all she has gone through she wants her best friend to continue to be part of what is still very much a core of her being. Joyce has been a rock for her for many years and she doesn’t have many supports left. It makes sense she would feel this is a betrayal. But while understandable it still isn’t fair to Joyce.
I love Becky’s reaction and the way she’s ready to give Joyce to Dorothy. Now Dorothy has to choose whether to talk to her roommate first or to her friend. I can’t wait to see what Liz will think about this dramatic scene and what Joyce will tell her.
She didn’t give Joyce to Dorothy. Her bit is that she was going to evict Joyce’s new Christian friend, but since she is instead Joyce’s new Athiest friend, defending that slot falls to Dorothy and she is out of there.
The fact that it makes sense as a wacky bit, but doesn’t match probable reality is why Dorothy is staring after her in the last panel.
Two things: Firstly, I genuinely think that Joyce is beginning to question if someone loves her. Secondly, I don’t envy Dorothy having to deal with this conversation (because she will because she’s that kind of woman).
I suspect that Joyce is not going to have a happy day, assuming that she can bear to show her face outside her room between bouts of crying. I’m hoping that Liz realises that her presence is definitely not helping and makes a quiet exit. Anything else she tries to do will only make things worse at this point.
Which kind of makes me wonder… do Khornates hate killing Necrons? Does Khorne accept machine oil? Or metal skulls… but Necron bodies just teleport away… Fighting Necrons must be such a disappointment for Khornate Berserkers.
Becky loves Joyce, that’s been the constant theme throughout this. She’s hurt right now, but I haven’t seen anything to indicate that she’d break ties with Joyce over it.
Carol? Yeesh. While I’m not quite as torch-and-pitchfork about Carol as some here are, even I can see that she mostly seems to love being right and her power to control Joyce, and that woman would go crazy on learning this.
Like, there’d be violence. Immediate, serious violence. All Becky said was a harsh statement and fled.
Carol. Becky’s hurt because she trusted her friend and thought she was still Christian. To hear her mocking Christians for having belief is an earth-shattering thing for her. And let’s be clear on this, as much as Joyce was hurt and betrayed by fundamentalist Christians specifically, she’s portraying a Christians as the same brainwashed sheep. Including Becky, hence the earth shattering.
Carol, on the other hand, has been around a while. She’s lived in the world and experienced what she sees as persecution. She’s the sort of person to at least half expect that her kids are going to be brainwashed into baby-eating atheists if they don’t go to the right college. This won’t surprise or hurt her. This will just prove she was right, and she’ll decide she needs to fix Joyce and bring her back into the flock.
I think that Becky was in a state of shocked silence, too horrified by what she was hearing to alert Joyce to her presence, and that Dorothy realized this and tried to cut Joyce off before she could do any further damage.
I love Becky, but I’m having a hard time feeling all that bad for Becky right now. It kind of serves her right after her insufferable and unhealthy obsession with monopolizing Joyce to herself. One we’ve been putting up with for literal real-time years I might add.
Ah yes, when someone is struggling to detangle themselves from a codependent friendship/unrequited crush, it follows that the universe should then punish them with unrelated emotional whiplash /s
Seriously, are you for real? If this were a situation where Becky was suffering consequences for her… monopolizing? Because she was being overzealous and it was a direct cause-effect thing? I’d kinda see where you’re coming from, ish. But you’re literally just wishing random harm on her because she’s struggling with codependency… it’s a yikes from me, bud
While harsh as a reveal Joyce is entitled to her own reinterpretation of her childhood beliefs. She and Becky don’t have to come to the same conclusions, and if one side has shut down the conversation about it then it will leak out badly like awfully sealed leftovers.
Anyway when we all start arguing about feelings and responsibility and all that fun stuff, I think it’ll be important for all of us to remember the following:
This is a complicated situation where “what Joyce did wrong” means a lot of things all at once and that can run the gamut of personal responsibility for your own feelings, hurting someone else through your actions intentionally or not, and the situation where that hurt was caused by your recipients bulldozing after you while you were in a private conversation.
Anyway (echo) here’s my take: Joyce is super right and Becky and Dorothy can go pound sand (but in a nice way where eventually everyone talks about feelings).
Joyce barfed out complicated feelings about her upbringing in a private conversation that Becky and Dorothy are only observing because Becky learned Joyce had a friend over and either perceived it as a challenge or did that ironically, except “ironically” in that she just acts like an over-possessive nut but laughs about it later.
This is the first time in her life Joyce has been given an opportunity to get real and proper mad about her bullshit upbringing, it has been transparently obvious everything she’s saying has been directed at her deep and abiding faith and how she can’t believe she ever had it in the first place. For all that Joyce wants to look cool in front of Liz I think that’s long since disappeared and she’s vocalizing tearing down her upbringing, and it’s raw as shit. Joyce needs to do this, Joyce is entitled to these feelings, and Joyce could say them anywhere and not be wrong. Of all the people in this universe who are allowed to be mad at her fucked up Conservative Christian upbringing, it’s Joyce, and anyone who wants to tell her that’s wrong can go screw.
This isn’t about Becky and Dorothy, Joyce does not need to check her feelings with Becky and Dorothy before she has them, and I think they’re gonna show exactly why Joyce could never bring herself to tell them the way she was able to with Sarah and Joe.
Because I don’t think it’s just a matter of Joyce valuing their opinions so much that she can’t bring herself to risk that opinion changing, I think the problem is that they’d actually act really badly about it.
Becky’s already been a dickbag in the face of Joyce questioning her religion. At Dina’s party Joyce started getting resentful so Becky stormed out of the room telling Joyce her feelings didn’t matter and it was just a phase. It’s not just a matter of what Becky could do or say in the face of learning the truth, something we know Joyce has flat out nightmares over, she has already seen what happens when that valve bursts for a second. Becky rejected her in that instance, what’s going to happen now that the dam is completely obliterated?
I mean this as nicely and as nuanced as possible, but I don’t think Dorothy really respects Joyce as a person. Dorothy means well, she’s a really good person who tries even harder to be good all the time, but she still kind of relies on Joyce being in a box. She’s the weird sheltered fundie girl and Dorothy needs to gently lead her by the hand out of her box, Dorothy needs to be smarter and kinder and more mature and refined than Joyce, and that’s been pretty easy so far because she’s Joyce. But Joyce is growing up too, Joyce isn’t that weird goober anymore, and I don’t think Dorothy is prepared for that. As this develops I think Dorothy is going to resent Joyce’s changes as much as Becky.
As opposed to acting like a huge turd, Dorothy did Joyce a favor by alerting her to Becky’s presence before she could dig herself in further. There is nothing here to upset Dorothy except her feelings for others. Now if Dorothy had walked in while Joyce was going shitty shitty shitting shit, Dorothy might have had opinions, but it’s unlikely she would have reacted without searching for a cause. Dorothy has boundaries, and she isn’t likely to presume on her friendship except where she feels Joyce is actively hurting herself, as with the glasses.
I’m curious as to what leads you to think that Dorothy is at all invested in Joyce not evolving.
I do place a little bit of blame on Joyce for not being honest with Becky earlier. She has a tendency to avoid hard conversations that usually ends up making things worse.
I wrote above this post that the emotionally charged nature of this conversation and the deep friendship between these three characters is naturally going to draw a lot of interpretations where we don’t have enough words to clearly enunciate between them. With that said, I will try my best.
Joyce does not have a responsibility to be honest to Becky about her faith, and certainly not a responsibility for the pain Becky is now feeling when the only reason Becky is here is because she heard Joyce had a friend over and then bulldozed over because she is wildly possessive of her.
It’s okay that Becky is upset, it’s okay that Becky is feeling things right now, but Joyce does not actually have to hide that she’s an atheist from Becky, and Joyce can say whatever she wants about her now dead personal relationship with Evangelical Christianity as long as it’s not “and that’s why Becky is a big stupid dumb dumb for believing it”, because Joyce can have feelings about things that don’t need Becky’s input.
It’s a complicated issue and while I don’t disagree with anything you said, something about Joyce lying to Becky and pretending she still believes doesn’t sit right with me. I guess it’s easy to judge as an adult reader, and harder to remember that I would likely have done the same thing at her age.
It’s worth remembering that the one and only time Joyce ever said anything to the effect of questioning her faith, Becky told her she was rebelling for 30 whole seconds and it was just a stupid phase she needed to outgrow.
Joyce was super goddamned mad while saying it, but that’s the closest example we can point to for the question of “how does Becky, the person Joyce values more than anyone, react to the idea of Joyce not being a Christian anymore?”
Thats an interesting take and gives food for thought. This could be ultimately freeing for all three of them or at least an opportunity for some personal growth
The bit about Dorothy is really intrigueing, mostly bc it seems totally out of left field for me. (Granted, I don’t particulary pay attention to Dorothy bc I think she’s kinda boring. This would certaintly make her a bit more interesting.) Can you point to like any specific panels or scenes you got that vibe from?
In terms of “the strip where we find out Dorothy thinks poorly of Joyce”? Well that didn’t happen, it’s something I’m inferring from their existing character dynamic as well as looking backward from the conclusion I think will occur.
(which is a bad sign, because I am really bad at predicting plot points in this series. Danny and Sal hooking up actually completely blindsided me until the moment she kissed him)
But in terms of specifically the idea that I don’t think Dorothy really respects Joyce, here I go.
A constant subtext to Joyce and Dorothy is that the former is a screwball and the latter is more mature, more worldly, more put together, more knowledgeable, yada yada. This is all true but it’s less because Dorothy is a wunderkind and more that Joyce is Joyce, except Dorothy also puts a lot of effort into being a wunderkind and constantly being smart, polite, understanding, accommodating, and helpful.
Consequently, I think this makes her kind of a pain in the ass to deal with.
Dorothy doesn’t let herself be flawed, but when it comes to other people and Joyce in particular, someone who if they were even slightly less charismatic and willing to change would be an insufferable asshole, Dorothy is perfectly fine with them being flawed because it’s an opportunity to help them grow. Dorothy likes people, Dorothy loves Walky and Joyce, but she’s always approaching them on the level of “how can I make them better” as if that is her responsibility.
To go on a non-sequiter that’ll loop back in trust me, there’s this one moment in Silent Hill 3 where protagonist Heather enters into a confessional and listens to a stranger confess her sins, and you have the option to forgive her. This sounds good right? Forgiveness is nice! Except doing so is a choice that’ll put you on-course for the Bad Ending, because the point is that Heather is just some regular person and doesn’t and shouldn’t have the authority to pardon someone for a crime, and attempting to do so is an admission that you view yourself above them.
Another case is Allison, the protagonist of the new defunct Strong Female Protagonist (no relation). She’s got Superman powers in a world where everyone with powers is like 25 and she’s learned life’s problems are more complex than getting solved by punching the right guy, and it eventually gets to the point where a friend is suffering and there is a jerky rich man who has the powers to fix it, and when he doesn’t want to Allison breaks him arm, kidnaps him, threatens to abandon him on an island, and forces him to solve that friend’s suffering. She also attempts to bullrush through societal issues with the plan of “let’s work together” that one teacher outright describes as “the axiom of a tyrant” and a supersmart Reed Richards-like character outright tells her that her insistence on not just solving all the world’s problems but being the one to do it is a form of narcissism.
And my read of Dorothy is basically like that but without the nightmarish Silent Hill monsters and superpowers and way, way nicer and more genuinely altruistic. Dorothy can’t tell Becky to fuck off with the bullying or even calmly discuss that she knows Becky is trying to be funny but it’s unappreciated, it’s a speech about friendship. Joyce starts questioning ideals she was infused with by her upbringing and Dorothy keeps pushing until Joyce snaps that she’s changed enough for the time being. Walky is suffering in math so Dorothy who is already encumbered with work picks up a textbook and starts tutoring him. People have problems and Dorothy needs to solve them, instead of just accepting that things can happen and people can have problems without Dorothy coming in to fix them and make them into the better people she knows they can be, because life can go on without the input of Dorothy Keener.
But maybe I’m reading too much of myself into her at the moment, because the above paragraph accurately describes my current struggle with some people in my life I love very very much and who are seemingly choosing to make things worse for everyone around them on the grounds of can’t be assed to do otherwise.
I don’t think I’m getting this same feeling. Dorothy fell for Walky because he “is kind and fun to be with and he sat with me when I had a bad day.” That’s a direct quote from super early on, and I think that’s reflected in their relationship while it lasted. I remember her later saying that she loves him because he’s a goofball but nonetheless fights tirelessly for his friend. I think she’s great friends with Joyce for much the same reason. After Joyce stood up to her parents on Dorothy’s behalf, Dorothy made a comment on Joyce being an admirable and dedicated friend.
She certainly does have a tendency to be pushy about helping others improve themselves, and that tendency has gotten away from her a few times. However, I wouldn’t say that’s a foundational part of her relationship with others. I’m also not sure this tendency is a bad thing as long as it’s sufficiently tempered by respecting others autonomy and boundaries. She tries to do this, but it often takes the form of crossing the line and then trying to pull back rather than seeking to understand those boundaries before involving herself in others’ problems.
When Joyce has doubts, or says this sorta thing, Becky is confronted with the fact that her Mom isn’t waiting up in Heaven and is actually gone forever and she’ll never see her again.
And we’ve seen the lengths she’ll go to to avoid that truth.
This side of Joyce reminds me so strongly of when I learned my church friend was actually atheist now, in the middle of Christmas Eve service (though I like to think I handled it better than Becky did).
For context, I was raised Methodist in the midwest (not anywhere NEAR the level of fundie Joyce’s family is, but my family was still pretty active in the church, I wonder why my sister and I both abandoned our faith later?) and this friend and I had grown up together in the context of the church. We used to spend every minute we could together, and our folks were convinced we would end up dating when we got older.
Then my family moved to the east coast.
We kept in touch, and visited on breaks, but we obviously weren’t as close anymore, and it took a while to get used to that.
Years later, in the midst of said Christmas Eve service, this friend who I’d always felt so close to revealed that she not only no longer believed in god, but that she had some pretty powerful resentment for religion and faith in general. That’s when she revealed she had been assaulted, and several of her close friends had died young, in the space of a few years.
Now I know drawing trauma parallels can be tricky, but I’d wager her experience with life and faith was pretty similar to Joyce’s arc to some degree. Something so core to her upbringing had let her down (or actively hurt her) in some profound ways while she was still processing some intense trauma. Joyce’s words in this arc sound so much like someone who was deeply hurt by something a friend is still holding onto, and doesn’t know how to address it. I mean, how do you address a friend who just flippantly accepts what you can’t bring yourself to reconcile? Someone who (in your mind) has more right to have the feelings you’re having but doesn’t? Someone who rejects your feelings as “just a phase” and assumes you can’t possibly be hurting over this because she isn’t?
I’ll admit, her leaning way too hard on the “people who still believe are stupid idiots and terrible people” brand of atheism around Becky is tactless at best, but the signs were absolutely there for Becky to see and she ignored/actively rejected those signs. Her friend was hurting enough that they abandoned their faith and began talking to other people before her, and she didn’t notice (probably because “Joyce is a rock, she was always the most resilient, I can take her for granted, like the kilogram!”).
I have a feeling that Becky, with some time, would be entirely okay with Joyce becoming an atheist or agnostic or severely questioning or wherever she lands (heavy lean towards atheist of course). She’s Christian, sure, but not evangelical, and there’s plenty of people who are Christians who are entirely welcoming of those of other (or non-) faiths.
I think its the lying and deception that’s hurting Becky more right now.
I mean, going off of the last time Joyce expressed Atheist/Agnostic feelings, Becky may hold it against her (the vibe being “I’ve been through worse shit for longer and still have my faith, so why can’t you?”)
Yeah, I saw that strip… and I don’t think Becky was talking about Joyce’s views on faith there.
Joyce wasn’t going “I hate god” or “Christianity is all nonsense”. She was basically going “Everyone that raised us were complete doodoo heads screw ’em all”.
Now, the questioning of faith being connected to that sure makes sense, and I get Joyce was kinda saying that through clumsy means, that shit happens. But I think its unfair to assume what Becky, the girl who still reveres her mother, was hearing at that moment.
It wouldn’t surprise me if, a couple days from now, Becky’s will be going all “I thought you were just lashing out at our parents, not questioning your faith, I’m hurt you couldn’t come to me but of course I still love you” and all that jazz. Lets just not take the worst-possible-view of Becky here, girl’s got a maaaaaaaassive number of issues, she’s been through a lot… but nothing’s indicated that she’s got anything but a good, supportive heart.
I wasn’t referring to the “only a rebel for 30 seconds” bit, I was referring to the “completely ignoring/rejecting what you have to say because you were “being a downer” when she was absolutely making a solid point (i.e. we’re both rejecting a lot of what we were taught was sacrosanct, why are you hung up on sexual purity?).
No, Becky DID need to hear it. She already realizes that most of what she’s been taught was bullshit. She just has one tiny step left to go. And knowing that Joyce no longer believes the bullshit may be enough to let her escape.
Becky’s parting “this one’s all yours” can be read so many different ways, I’m hoping it’s more “this conversation/situation is yours to deal with” or “I guess she’s not my rival, but yours” than “I’m done with Joyce and you can have her”
Reading the comments section, maybe it’s a good time to say that Becky and Joyce weren’t put in this no-win situation by their (obvious) personal flaws. The community they grew in and, in particular, their parents, are responsible for not having equipped them with the basic abilities to navigate their lives outside of their sect.
Joyce’s current attitude is VERY justified right now, having found out that what she thought was a normal life being raised by righteous people was actually a life of child abuse at the hands of terrible human beings is going to result in some blow back. I can TRY to list some things, a preacher’s son tried to date rape her and she couldn’t even report it because it would have meant being pulled out of school, her best friend ended up homeless because of her sexuality, her parents divorced because of their attitudes towards child abusers…and her MOM was the one that supported them, her friend’s father died after trying to kidnap her and discharged a firearm on a school campus, and frankly I’m sure she feels like a naive fool considering how obvious it was in retrospect. When her brother visited he barely spoke to her parents at all, clearly showing there was significant trouble at home she didn’t see.
Who, John? He’s the one who drank the kool-aid real hard thanks to the power of having stuff.
Although that does remind me of something. Jocelyne is the “favourite” because Hank and Carol know the least about her, I wonder if John and Joyce both had “failures” over time.
Then of course there is Jordan, who I’m convinced is actually a time ghost or something.
I wouldn’t be surprised if John is on shaky terms with their parents too. He may still be a believer, but I got the impression that he married an Indian woman (he definitely held the wedding in India).
With Carol’s “I can’t wait to tell everyone on our street that MY daughter isn’t RACIST because she has a BLACK FRIEND” thing when she first saw Sarah, that just might be it.
maybe “unapologetically me” isn’t *precisely* the right label for it if you won’t tolerate it in others?
please, please PLEASE let her fuckin’ majesty go off and sulk for a couple days in-universe? because moving is just a nicer thing than i’m allowed to have.
Anyway, I don’t know how I feel about people in the comments acting like Becky not believing in god is some “inevitable” step she needs to take. You can believe in god and not be a fundamentalist, and the idea that all theists are brainwashed or under some abusive thumb is, ironically, a very Christian-centric worldview.
And I think the issue here is that Becky, I’m sure, would understand if Joyce decided she was atheist. Much as Joyce has hang ups on the fact that Becky believes in god despite everything, Becky seems to be completely chill with the atheists in her life. This just wasn’t the way to find that out.
“Anyway, I don’t know how I feel about people in the comments acting like Becky not believing in god is some “inevitable” step she needs to take.”
Yes thank you. I’m not religious in any way, and my general reaction to (non-shitty) christians is ‘that’s some weird stuff to believe,’ so I get that it feels weird for her to stay christian after trauma, but that doesn’t mean I think Becky needs to lose her religion, especially since she’s been at odds with it and figuring out what doesn’t make sense with her life vs what she was raised to believe probably since puberty, as she pointed out to Joyce (and while she was harsh, and wrong for calling it a phase, it is true she’s had more time to consider how these things impact her beliefs)
Many atheists think of faith as a permission slip you give yourself to believe things for no good reason. It’s generally not a fatal flaw, unless you take things on faith so much you start eating horse paste.
Oof… This is a really painful situation that’s very unfortunate, and it’s likely that it’s going to be a challenge to resolve. However, I don’t see as much fault here as lots of other people are. We all have different filters for different circumstances. I’m going to talk about religion differently when I’m among fellow atheists who have been similarly hurt by religion than when I’m talking to a casually religious friend, and both are totally different from talking to a coworker who is very religious. The same is true of being vegan, a leftist, etc.
Being an adult in modern society means that you’re going to be around people who you fundamentally disagree with on very big, powerful issues. There isn’t anything wrong with expressing those strong feelings with no filter around people who are okay with and appreciate it. When you accidentally mis-calibrate your filter, it can lead to some pretty painful moments, but unless your attitude about these things is to stick your fingers in your ears and go “la la la” until someone says something more overtly antagonistic, then in the long run, whether someone uses diplomatic or harsh words to express their feelings shouldn’t matter. If you’re a religious person, you’re either okay with having an atheist friend with negative views of religion or you aren’t. Same thing vice versa. How they might talk about the subject in private among like minded people might hurt in the moment, but if that makes the difference, you’re just pretending others don’t have different beliefs up until the point it’s impossible to deny. That’s not tolerance; that’s just willful ignorance.
To say that we always have to speak as if anyone could be listening is absurd. I’m going to talk to a lover I’m literally in bed with differently from my mother. Saying that I shouldn’t say anything literally during sex that I wouldn’t say at a family function is totally ridiculous, and that’s just as true of this situation. I can see an argument that Joyce should have been aware that Becky might be joining them soon and calmed things down in anticipation of that, but you can’t say that someone should never vent like this when in private with other like-minded people.
Becky may be hurt, but if she’s a real friend, the thing that’s going to matter in the long term is whether or not she can have a best friend who doesn’t share her religious beliefs. It won’t be down to the specific circumstances of finding that out. It’s also going to be interesting to see how Joyce feels about things now that all the cards are on the table. She’s been uncomfortable around Becky already, and that may grow. I do hope that they can remain friends, but I suspect that they won’t ever be as close as they once were. It’s difficult to be super close to someone when you both know each other believe things that are quite diametrically opposed.
I think a lot of this is true, but I think it’s valid for Becky to feel hurt right now – not because Joyce isn’t allowed to vent, but because the specific thing Becky overheard sounded like Joyce was making fun of her by saying that people who believe in God are idiots. Yes, Joyce almost certainly meant herself when she said that, but what Becky heard could apply to her too and she’s allowed to feel hurt and insulted by that. There’s a world of difference between overhearing ‘I believed A and now I feel like an idiot for believing it. X, Y, and Z stories are so stupid.’ and ‘You’re an idiot for believing A.’
That’s definitely true; Becky’s feelings are valid. I’d view this as an unfortunate accident not a situation where either party is wrong. Sometimes we overhear or stumble into situations that can be painful or awkward by no fault on either side. Joyce would never have voiced these thoughts so aggressively or at all if she knew she was in mixed company (especially if Becky was there), and Becky doesn’t have the full context that most of this is introspection about her past beliefs, not something directed at Becky.
People often seem to want to find *someone* to blame any time someone is hurt or invalidate the feelings of the person on the receiving end. Accidents happen, though. Sometimes there just isn’t anyone at fault to blame/punish/be angry at, but the person is still hurt and is reasonably so. We just have to do the best we can to heal and move on. I hope that’s what we see next.
Yeah, I can see Joyce apologizing in the sense of ‘I’m sorry I accidentally upset you’. I don’t think she needs to say ‘I’m sorry for venting’ or anything along those lines though. Those thoughts were real, even if Becky dislikes them. The only thing Joyce can really do is explain and contextualize.
She didn’t say anything about the afterlife, though. Sure, you can infer that from what Joyce says here, but that’s an inference. By that logic, Joyce expressing that she’s no longer a Christian in any way regardless of context or tone would be equally blame-worthy. I don’t think it’s remotely reasonable to expect Joyce to never let Becky find out about her beliefs changing because of the implications about Joyce’s belief in the afterlife. It would be like expecting Becky to never let Dorothy know she’s Christian because that implies that Becky thinks Dorothy is destined to burn to hell.
Like I said, part of being an adult is making your peace with the fact that some people are going to believe things that are hugely different from you and may even imply things that are hurtful to you. That happens every time someone eats meat in front of a vegan. If this were a case of that, Joyce a recently deconverted vegan and excitedly talking about how great this meat she’s eating is, few people would be clamoring to declare Joyce or Liz as awful people because Becky is hurt by the sudden and unexpected change in Joyce’s beliefs. To be honest, in that case, most would probably rush to invalidate Becky’s feelings and say Joyce did nothing wrong, though I think that mostly comes down to cultural attitudes about veganism. That’s a totally separate discussion.
Point is, others not sharing your beliefs and expressing that (appropriate to the context they’re in) is not wrong just because those beliefs are deeply held and important to you.
Except she’s not talking about great eating meat is, she’s talking about dumb being vegan is. That might be a subtle difference, but she’s not just talking about her new beliefs, but mocking her old ones. The ones that Becky shared.
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Dotty, reading the room: “Dibs, I guess”
“Also, that is also a super interesting color I have never seen on a human before!”
Eh, if memory serves Jennifer’s been that colour a few times and Bloodrose is that colour most of the time
Wait wait.. who is Bloodrose again? Is that a cousin of Bloodthorn¿
Meredith’s roommate who’s appeared in the background like twice ([1], [2]). Goth girl who looks like Marceline the vampire queen.
It’s been a running joke since the Walkyverse that she never appears fully-on-panel (we only saw her face once, and that was in a drawing Willis did of her SEMME squad for tumblr); the Dumbiverse compounds that joke by not tagging her, either.
So really they _could_ be relatives or twins even.
I had not noticed the resemblance to Marceline. That’s… a thing.
OH! Due to the horrors of late stage capitalism, I will be getting HBOMax for free tomorrrow and thus able to watch the new episodes of Adventure Time! Yay!
Just think, Dorothy. You could have stayed and watched Lucy and Walky snuggle.
That would probably be at least slightly less uncomfortable than this.
But it wouldn’t have been over as quickly.
Is it over?
One is her best friend at school and the other is her roommate. I’m guessing it’s not over.
Well Becky’s left, so it’s over in the same way that watching Lucy and Walky snuggle was over once Dorothy left.
I know it’s entirely the wrong generation of Mario game, but I can’t help but imagine that the game makes this sound right as panel 3 happens.
This is the game music that was playing in my head as it happened:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO4GdYnYOFs
Not a Mario theme, and I’ve never played the game it’s from, but it’d be remiss of me not to post this:
https://youtu.be/JnY1d-J9r3w
ooh, i wasn’t expecting Metroid. very ominous indeed (and ironically, if it’s the reboot then one of the few games of its era i actually did play)
YES
Damn Joyce’s face went pale as snow
I’ve never seen snow that color. Granted my experience with snow has been somewhat limited, but still.
It’s not just pale. It turned a little green, too.
Snow that also had a bit of a lime slushie dumped on it. Like 2 days ago. or maybe just some alien pee…
Maybe, but I’m not seeing it. To me it looks kind of like the color of oatmeal in milk.
“That her face, at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale”
Thank you very much.
Maybe it’s just my display, but the green ear and forehead worry me more than the paleness.
We haven’t seen blanched Joyce since way back when.
Always a treat.
Well spotted.
RIP Joyce
She got touched by verbal oatmeal.
That would explain it.
Hm…sad.
The coldest burn
Twas never a question of if it’d hurt. Only how bad it would hurt
The problem with talking shit about a group of people is that sometimes you know people who are in that group and they tend to find out that you talked shit about them with disturbing frequency (when you’re a fictional character, at least).
I mean there’s being an atheist and then there’s just being a jerk. Note how Dorothy is an atheist yet never guilted or mocked Joyce or Becky for their beliefs.
I can’t say Joyce is without her rights to be bitter, too. She’s just gonna take time to work through that.
The problem is whether or not Becky is willing to put up with that.
You can be bitter that people taught you to believe things that you now consider to be a lie, but don’t paint everyone of their very broad group with the same tarred brush. It’s not even a thing where Joyce was being rude and didn’t know that someone she cares about was part of the group she talked shit about. She knows that Becky is still very much a Christian and should’ve found a different way to work through her bitterness from the start. I mean, what was she going to do if Joe had said “hey, you do remember Becky’s a Christian,” replied with “yeah, but she’s one of the GOOD ones”? Because I kinda feel like when you’re using that sort of statement, either the group has to be objectively shitty or you’re being a jerk about it.
I kind of feel for Joyce though and can see why she ended up on this path? The only one she hangs out regularly with that has the same sort of fundie background as her is Becky but Becky doesn’t understand Joyce’s bitterness. Whenever it came up, Becky would shut her down rather than talk about it. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/beeessin/
I’m not saying Becky brought this on herself but Joyce was hurting and needed a proper outlet to discuss this with. Dorothy doesn’t have the experience of having her parents lie to her, Joe runs away the moment a conversation gets too “real” and Sarah is Sarah. Becky might just have been in the best place to give Joyce some perspective but she’s too self absorbed to actually help her best friend.
Ethan might have actually done the best thing for Joyce by encouraging her to talk to Jocelyne…
She needs an outlet, yes, but she also needs to be aware of how her venting affects others. In the example you linked, Joyce asks if their parents were BS-ing B-holes. And when we look at her parents, that makes sense: her mom aided and abetted an attempted murderer and a kidnapper, and her dad was at least okay with her Carol’s abuse of their children.
But for Becky, that’s a much more loaded question. Her father was a grade-A dickbag, but she reveres her mother still. Her mother died before she could disappoint Becky, and so to Becky she never would have done. When Joyce asks if she’s a BS-ing B-hole, some of the strongest language Joyce is using at this point in the story, Joyce is asking if that same mother one of those B-holes, and that’s not something Becky can take.
On top of that, we know that Becky is facing an immediate crisis of faith and values right here. Is it okay for her to have premarital sex or no? And when she goes to the friend who was raised with the same religion and values and asks for support, her friend tells her those values are worthless. Becky failed Joyce here, but let’s not pretend that Joyce didn’t fail Becky at least as badly, and she insulted her in the process.
Like Becky, we know Joyce does things in phases. She’s like Danny in that way, where he jumps into phases to figure out who he is. The difference here is that Joyce jumps into phases uncritically and unthinking and carries an obsession for a while before letting it drop. Becky knows this, which is part of why she calls out that Joyce has been rebelling “for like thirty whole seconds.” Joyce has just jumped with both feet into another phase. And she’s not wrong: this bitterness and hating Christians and Christianity IS a stupid phase. It’s one she does need to grow out of and one that shouldn’t be encouraged. The hatred she’s carrying is the sort that compels atheists to gather on reddit and spend the looking for articles that show religious people doing bad things so they can feel superior. It’s the same sort of hatred that makes people think they need to make up quotes about being “euphoric.”
At the end here, Joyce is just being Joyce again. She’s not thinking through the rightness or appropriateness of her words or beliefs. She’s taken them on blind faith that she’s right and is seeking out validation. She’s sorry when she hurts someone with them, but she never looks at how she can avoid doing so until it’s too late. That does seem pretty stupid to me, and I think Becky had a decent read on Joyce.
The more I think about it, the more Joyce is just a Rule 63 Danny.
You Joyce’d it up!
Becky and Joyce both act dumb. I don’t think Joyce deserves full blame here for venting in what she believed to be a private setting. She’s admittedly just being so outspoken to butter herself up to Sarah’s cool sister, and that might speak to a flaw in Joyce’s character, but I don’t think being vocally frustrated is inherently wrong. Andy makes a good point that she’s making sweeping generalizations, but the fundies are a pretty messed up community that tried to indoctrinate her into being a cookie-cutter homophobic xenophobic (esp with regard to other denominations or religions, or lack of faith) “good little Christian girl”.
Becky wants her relationship with Joyce to stay exactly the same despite the fact that both are changing, and Joyce felt pressured to keep her crisis of faith secret from Becky because of this. So yeah, I’d say Becky in no small part brought this on herself.
Yup. :/
My money’s on “everything hurtful Joyce has said about Christians today is self-directed, and she’s just trying to unpack all the traumatic bullshit that got dumped into her head.”
Becky saying “this is a stupid phase and I need you to grow out of it” was understandable in one sense, in that Becky had been dealing with a lot more messed up stuff. But Joyce’s screwed-up childhood upbringing is also significant, and Becky’s been pushing that away for awhile. The first time Joyce came to Becky with any doubts, Becky essentially said “shut up and be the bubbly, safe Christian I need right now.”
^all of this
When did Joyce hint at voicing doubts to Becky? I having trouble remembering those strips.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/beeessin/
This is the final part of the scene, but the strips leading up to it as well.
This
Agreed. I don’t blame Joyce for this particular gaffe.
She was also egged on to say this stuff by Liz. Liz started the topic in general and kept saying how stupid something is, Joyce wanted to look cool in front of her friend so she went along with the jokes, you can tell it was also hurting her a little bit.
Not knowing Liz well enough to know if she deserves the benefit of the doubt on this I’ll say I think it’s one of those situations where she was trying to connect with Joyce. They just met each other in person and the first thing they bond over is their perspective on religion so it’s easy to make it all about that, overexaggerate your beliefs for a laugh or to impress. Maybe Liz really does enjoy mocking religion but part of me thinks she’s been trying just as hard to look cool in front of Joyce.
It might be trying to have a connection, but also I think Liz is just not at the stage of maturity where she can recognize things aren’t so black and white, and people who believe different things aren’t just gullible idiots. Liz is enjoying her little rebellion, which is not nearly as personal for her as it is for Joyce. And that’s pushing Joyce’s buttons and getting her to vent, which would probably have been cathartic if Becky hadn’t shown up.
It’s not just Joyce wanting to look cool—she’s sympathetic to some of these ideas and has no other sounding board.I didn’t get the impression this was bothering Joyce at all. In fact, she seems to have been relishing in finding someone with whom to explore the doubts she is most terrified of without being judged.
Becky has made it very clear that she won’t tolerate the fact that Joyce has sincere doubts. I’m not sure why Joyce didn’t feel safe speaking about it with Dorothy, but I have some guesses (one of which is that I don’t think I’ve seen Becky let Joyce and Dorothy be alone together since the time skip). Sarah is way to agnostic—both in belief and with regard to Joyce’s specific doubts—to really support her if she wants to explore her doubts.
Is Liz being pretty annoying? Yeah, sure, but she’s getting zero pushback, and in fact Joyce is actively encouraging her, so I can’t blame her much.
I definitely did read Joyce as being uncomfortable saying this stuff–if you look at her expressions last few pages, she’s looked kinda queasy and pained, or at the very least she’s not smiling like Liz is–like she’s trying to convince herself, or potentially mocking herself, like Jon said. But that doesn’t really cancel out the fact that she’s probably excited to explore this with somebody to whom it’s no big deal. + trying to look cool, trying on a new personality when nobody* you know is around… I think all of those fit into her head right now…
I kinda hope Sirksome is right about Liz too, heh. Seems possible…though maybe too early to tell.
*nobody but Joe, Joyce doesn’t want to think of Joe as a person
I guess the question is, was Joyce actually being a “jerk”.
She was not making those comments to Becky (or any other christian… At least i don’t think Sarah is one). And while the comments she did make were very negative, I kind of see them more as a “Look at how dumb I was” rather than “Look at how dumb these other people are”.
yeah… I really don’t see Joyce as a jerk here. Personally, as a Christian who has had several friends deconvert or even just reject the particular flavor of Christianity they grew up with, I see these sorts of comments from friends (usually to a lesser degree because it’s usually on social media) fairly frequently. I might get offended in the moment, but I know deconversion is a complicated experience. I don’t hold it against them long-term. It’s entirely different than if somebody like Dorothy or Walky said those things.
Actually those are statements I’ve heard almost verbatim from participants in the “recovering Christian” group in the UU Pagan church I attend.
Don’t see any reason to think Sarah isn’t Christian – probably fairly nominal and certainly not fundamentalist, but I don’t believe she’s claimed to be atheist. Joe is Jewish, I believe, though again not particularly devout. Mocking people for believing in magical sky wizards doesn’t just apply to Christians.
Sarah’s agnostic iirc. Becky mentioned it before.
Yup. I interpreted Dorothy in Panel 2 as trying to convey “this is why you don’t say those things out loud” nonverbally.
Yeah, that’s something Joyce has to learn. But these emotions are pretty raw and Joyce hasn’t had to deal with something as crazy as deconversion before, so it’s a learning experience. I just hope that Becky and Joyce are able to reconcile after they talk things out–well, okay, maybe shout things out… to be precises, after Becky yells at Joyce until Joyce yells back and starts crying and then Becky starts crying too and Joyce apologizes and promises to always be there for Becky and then Becky realizes that people can change and it doesn’t have to change the relationship between them and they hug it out. They might avoid each other for a day or two at some point in that interval but hopefully it gets sorted before too long.
The important notion to understand is that Joyce is actually talking about herself.
It’s interesting to be default-passing. I don’t get much bigotry directed at me, but I hear an awful lot of $*&# said around me when folks think they’re in sympathetic company.
What’s extra fun is when they try to hint that maybe you shouldn’t be talking so much shit cos they’re part of that group and then you double down on it.
I have not always been the brightest apple in the barrel.
Well, this was inevitable and yet somehow it’s worse than what I imagined. I think the hurt look plus leaving makes it worse than if they had just argued about it.
Yeah I was expecting an argument, not this. Definitely worse.
You can actually pinpoint the exact second that her heart rips in half.
Mostly because this is a comic strip with discrete representations of instants in time as opposed to fluid motion, but y’know.
Becky or Joyce?
Yes.
As I see it, Joyce’s heart stops in panel 3, Becky’s heart rips in panel 4, and Joyce’s heart rips in panel 6.
ope
ope indeed.
Oof. An even harsher Becky reaction than I expected. But then, hard to prove that first panel Joyce was saying that to herself (which is my guess), and that first panel statement carries some real acid.
Money’s on “Dorothy has to talk Joyce through her situation in a more healthy, less-insufferable way before Joyce can apologize properly.”
Money’s also on Liz making this whole situation worse, immediately.
Rapidly became Not A Liz Fan.
I don’t see how it’s the fault of Liz.
They’re both edgelord-atheisting and encouraging each other to do so, which puts some blame on both of them, but Joyce is still responsible both for what she said and for the ring that she was insulting her friend by saying it.
She did egg on Joyce to start saying those things. While it is Joyce’s fault she kept going with it herself, Liz did start this mess.
Me neither. She’s a bit of an edge-lord, but she and Joyce were very clearly egging each other on. She hasn’t stomped anyone’s boundaries (besides Sarah’s, but everyone stomps those, for better or worse), and I could see her being regretful about speaking so candidly when she finds out exactly what Joyce is going through and why she needed someone like Liz to vent to.
Or she could be a little shit. It’s honestly way too early to tell I think.
I’ve noticed folks seem to be calling Liz a bad influence and insisting she’s egging Joyce on, but all she did was . . . be an atheist and into sex, at least at first? Joyce was the one who went all in to impress her. Joyce is at least as responsible for all this as Liz.
Was Liz aware Joyce was a closeted atheist? Did she know her best friend was unaware?
This is on Joyce.
Joyce chose to lie that her best friend was Joe, so Liz almost certainly did not
No, I agree completely; Joyce mentioned the Bible verses on social media, and Liz explained that they were just to keep her stepmom happy since Liz is an atheist. She had no way of knowing that Joyce is 1) a very recent atheist, and 2) prone to trying WAY too hard to impress people, especially her friends’ cool siblings.
TBH I’m a little uncomfortable with how quick people are to blame Joyce’s decisions on Liz.
Yup, this is a ‘Birthday Pursuit’ level fuckup on Joyce’s part. She got caught up in the moment and forgot words have consequences again.
Liz was clearly dragging it out of Joyce at first, but that doesn’t make her at fault for Joyce inadvertently hurting Becky by revealing her true feelings once their mutual game of one-upmanship snowballed.
Peoe were quick to blame Joyce and Jacob’s cheating on Radiah, this place really stretches to make the bad things Joyce does not her fault.
It’s really weird. I like these characters and this strip largely because they are all dumb kids who make dumb mistakes. It’s a genuinely good story because Willis lets them be less-than-perfect, and so it weirds me out when some of the commentary is like “No, this character has never done a bad.”
Also, I really like Raidah as a character. She’s got issues, but her “Jacob needs to impress his family, that’s why he’ll stay with me” line honestly broke my heart – it speaks to an idea that she’s valuable not as a person, but as a status marker. Add to that Joyce’s Islamophobia when they first started talking, and, just, eugh. I think the comment section has come a long way from the days of tut-tutting Sarah’s distrust of the police (you ever go back and read that section? I did, once, and a LOT of the comments are full-body cringe “well there’s bad people in every profession but she’s being quite biased here” shit), but it is still super weird how the default sometimes seems to be that Joyce (and sometimes Dorothy) are the Goods, and other people are varying degrees of wrong.
Yeah, Joyce started it and then Liz went all in. I think Liz is a bit immature and sees things in black and white, but not inherently a bad person. Maybe she brings out the petty side of Joyce, and she’s probably not someone Joyce should be spending a whole lot of time with because of her clear desire to be a rebel, skipping classes and dissing religion… but that’s a phase a lot of teens go through. I’m sure Liz will grow out of it.
I never said it was Liz’s fault. Joyce is responsible for her own words and actions, and for throwing herself into another ridiculous sitcom lie (who could forget Pizza with Jacob’s Brother?) But it’s hard to imagine Joyce saying what she just did if she was unpacking her shitty upbringing with, say, Dorothy.
Liz’s whole schtick seems to be, as others have said, quite edgy. She’s been rubbing me the wrong way for a few strips, maybe I overreacted. But I don’t think nuance, subtlety, or “other people’s feelings” are major concerns for her, and the next few strips will require exactly that. These are my reasons for thinking she’s about to make things worse.
Which was her point all along, I suspect. Show up, egg Joyce on, get her to rip the Band-Aid off. But that doesn’t make her an interesting character who I want to see hanging around long-term.
IKR? I was expecting an argument between Joyce and Becky, with Becky actually getting genuinely pissed for once and showing her emotions in full.
This… is honestly worse. The silent treatment hurts.
Becky has no snarky comebacks prepared for this.
Joyce cut deep, right through her mask.
Becky had a snarky comeback, but it was aimed at Dorothy not Joyce, who she is not talking to at the moment.
I think Becky is maybe realising she much prefers her memories of Joyce to the Joyce she’s dealing with now.
The pale Joyce’s face makes is a nice touch.
Welcome to Hell, Joyce.
Could have been worse. Could have been her father in the doorway.
I mean, she already lost one parent.
Her father wouldn’t have taken it so hard. Also, as mentioned above, Becky had her chance to accept the changes in Joyce. It’s not Joyce’s fault Becky insists she be something she’s not. Joyce has been trying to accommodate, but it couldn’t last forever.
“it took a nipponized bit of the old sixth avenue el;in the top of [her] head to tell [her]”
He might have. We’ve seen Hank be decent, and stick to it, but being anti-homophobia and anti-violence is different from having your daughter bitterly reject the foundation of what you raised her on.
I think he’s try to trust her on it, but I don’t know if he’d succeed.
I think her dad would have taken it significantly better, or at least understood why Joyce was feeling resentment towards religion
Joyce literally turned into a ghost.
I’m not sure that literally means what you think it does.
Nope, next strip the camera pans back. We see Joyce’s body on the floor, while Joyce’s ghost is all pale-faced. Becky failed her Will save and became Panicked, which is why she left. Joyce then locks eyes with Dorothy, and Ms. Keener takes 15 points of damage and loses two points of Charisma. She reaches out to touch Liz and Sarah, but they recoil, not wanting to suffer ability drain themselves.
Then the day after the day after tomorrow’s strip, Joyce wakes up in bed and it’s revealed this whole chapter was just a dream inspired from that one time Joyce finally tried D&D over winter break.
She’ll have to enter the spooky woods and face her three fears before the witching hour to regain her corporeal form!
That went well.
Of course, now Dorothy has to make a quick decision as to which of them needs her worse.
Also, Joyce is ridiculously pale in the 3rd panel. I’d say she’s a ghost but they don’t play video games, zombies do though. Therefore we must now accept Joyce’s uhdead status.
Undead*
Shaun of the Dead, I presume. Pretty great movie.
You presume correctly, I fucking love that movie. I’m a zombie/horror fanatic, so seeing a comedy zombie movie made me thrilled
I’ve allegedly been that pale, but it was from losing a fair amount of blood.
(It was bad enough my friend called my mom, 2,000 miles away at 1 (or 3) AM, to tell her) :/
Since she totally did it to herself, though, wouldn’t that count as a lich instead?
Liches are skeletons, obviously
Undead are already a confirmed aspect of the canon (that one goth girl with the elusive streak is definitely a vampire) so this tracks
Dorothy, panels 4-6: Shit, this is my jurisdiction now and it’s gonna suck.
As heartbreaking as Dotty’s expressions in panels 2 and 4 are, I have to appreciate Dorothy’s “you done fkd up” faces.
Panel 2 is. Panel 4 is a reaction to Joyce’s near death experience.
Way to go joyce you did a great job and we’re all proud of you for handing this situation with the delicacy it deserves.
At least she can’t hide it any more.
Band-aid lifted, I guess. Only, the kind that yanks out a bunch of hair in the process, whoops.
This is like getting the bandaid ripped off in a degloving incident. It took skin and muscle with it and there will be permanent damage from this.
Also don’t google degloving, it’s real gruesome stuff.
I know already.
Gah.
I have a roughly 4″ by 9″ scar from the skin graft to repair my leg blowing out the opposite side of where the truck hit me, I’m familiar with the concept of “degloving”.
More like ripping off the sutures
Is it weird that my first thought after reading is that ditties only grant divine spells not arcane, so thus God must either have Mystic Theruge prestige class or is gesalted wizard/cleric yet if their spells come from internal power wouldn’t they be a sorcerer not a wizard? But if God is a wizard does that mean that through intense study of the arcane arts one could become God and was that what Nietzsche was talking about?
Anyway thoughts like that keep me distracted from the very uncomfortable feeling this strip brought out.
I brought that up to a DM with a spiritual/mysticism campaign and he answered it by saying, “Virtually every wizard believes with enough time and practice that they, too, can become a god. The vast majority of gods, by contrast, just roll their eyes and throw the occasional adventure at the likely future Liches.”
adventurer. Typo ruins context.
Most D&D gods are small g gods. Members of a pantheon with specific domains and limited powers, not omnipotent but merely extremely poserful
*powerful. D’oh
poserful is just such a choice word though 😉
It does at least still make sense.
Nah, ‘poserful’ still works. Dem pantheon gods posed for a LOT of statues.
Most D&D gods are just copy-pastes of watered down Greek mythology.
Not necessarily just Greek myths. D&D’s approach to myth and folklore is to take everything but the kitchen sink from whatever sources it can. It draws on a lot of polytheistic mythologies for it’s gods.
I was expecting this, but not Becky’s reaction; the fact that she did not argue but simply left with just a short verbal jab just makes it worse.
I think it’s an element I didn’t consider: Becky was hoping for another believer friend. Literally the only other one she knows on campus right now is Jennifer.
Assuming she’s also dismissing Lucy.
Why would she dismiss Lucy? Lucy seems to have inserted herself into the general circle of friends that exists on the floor (and Lucy was quite eager to talk about her relationship with Walky), so if she really needs another christian to hang around with, Lucy would fit the bill.
Plus, I assume that she’s met more of the people on the floor, so she probably knows Sierra is a christian (and one that is bisexual and/or lesbian). You also have Agatha (A mormon… christian but not always seen as christian by others) or Mary, although admittedly she’s not exactly friendly.
There is no universe in which Becky ‘nuked the closet from orbit’ MacIntyre and Mary the noted homophobe are gonna be buddy-buddy, because to Mary, being gay precludes you from being Properly Christian. Mary probably thinks Ross was right to kidnap Becky at gunpoint.
Becky has seen Sierra at church, and Lucy has attached herself to the friend group, but neither of them appears to be as close to her as Jennifer, much less Joyce. She may still be on good terms with Jacob. He’s not Joyce. Amber’s family, at least, is Catholic, though her personal religious beliefs haven’t been made clear. And while Becky’s a lot closer to her than everyone else I listed, Amber is still not Joyce. Joyce was someone she grew up with – one of the last links to their old community, much like Becky is to Joyce, except Joyce has supportive, living family members she’s in contact with. So she’s going to take Joyce losing faith especially hard because Joyce is Becky’s only best friend and Becky’s already insecure about not being Undisputed #1 in Joyce’s heart.
I’m glad I got my insufferable atheist phase out of the way when I was in junior high and I was expected to be somehow insufferable anyway.
If only it were like Chickenpox……
Having had an insufferable atheist phase much older than middle school, I feel like it comes from the same place as Becky’s insufferable lesbian phase: when you can no longer cover up who you are and what you believe you instead overcompensate and shove it at everyone you meet so you know first thing if they’re going to be cool or look at you as a conversion or shame target. I see it as a reaction to or defense mechanism against shame around who you are and what you believe or don’t believe in an environment that wants you to not be that – or at least to cover it up for others’ comfort.
That said I genuinely don’t think that’s what Joyce is doing here. I think it’s more like her playing at rebellion by mimicking Sal’s style. She’s processing her newfound discomfort with how she was raised and seeing if this new persona fits for her. But you can tell from her face it’s not a comfortable experiment for her.
There’s probably a dash of self deprecation in there too, making fun of her old behavior and a dash of processing her anger at religion as well.
& Like others have said I don’t at all blame her for not opening up to Becky. Becky, for all her own circumstances, still has some VERY regressive beliefs about what emotions are permissible for women (see also strips about her needing to be wacky Becky so others don’t hate her – ties into conservative beliefs that women are supposed to always be pleasant & bring joy to those around them) and atheism/loss of faith. She’s got her own shit going on, too, but she’s not a safe person for Joyce to confide in on this (especially since Becky’s proven herself very prone to pain Olympics so if Joyce does try to process how a loving God could put her through this, Becky will counter with something to the effect of “Well I’m an orphan who was exiled from my community and kidnapped by my father and I still believe, why can’t you?” ).
Dorothy is generally nice but neither has bandwidth for this nor is she good at listening and empathizing without trying to solve. Joyce needs someone who will just be with her as she feels what she needs to feel. Dorothy can’t give her that. Joe can but it’s too much for one person so now that Liz is openly going through something similar, Joyce is going to try to connect on it.
& Like I don’t see this as Joyce being a jerk. It’d be different if she was openly mocking her very religious friends to their faces, but she’s not. Was it smart to do it with the door open where others could track her down? Well, no, but this isn’t Smarting of Age.
yes to all of this. 🙁
Same, best and worst part about realizing i was an atheist at 12. I was the most insufferable but, i was expected to be. Problem is I’m in an ultra religious country and all the other christian 12 year olds around me were WAY more insufferable than i was. I had a friend/crush beg me to convert, a classmate shake me down while screaming “WHY DONT YOU BELIEVE IN JESUS” while i was talking to my cousin, a group of popular kids call me over to confront me, accuse me of worshipping Satan and say things like “my mom said not to speak to people like you”
Yeah… I think they kept me from being too insufferable
I suppose you could call this divine retribution.
Nah, it’s just some friggin’ random bullshit with a life lesson.
I mean Willis is their God.
He’s just a Warhammer 40K-esque wrathful deity who loves to torment them.
I dunno.
Even the wrathful tormenting dieties of Warhammer 40K couldn’t hold a candle to the biblical God unless they were willing to murder children.
Show me a wrathful God that doesn’t murder children, and I’ll show you a poser who’s just trying to fit in with the cool kids.
In what possible universe do the Warhammer gods not murder children?
I mean, when you send a bunch of demons to a planet, it doesn’t end well.
They murder plenty of children. Like, in pretty large amounts.
Theoretically still less than the Imperium though. Cherubim are awful.
Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between and beyond….Joyce has officially Dan’d it while Dan is making out with sal…
Dan hasn’t really fucked up lately, he’s been doing fairly solid excepting that one catastrophic failure a few months back
We talking about what he said to Ethan about Mike while Mike was in a coma?
Yeah that time Danny said a painful truth instead of keeping his mouth shut in the name of submitting to someone he cared about and perpetuating a frustrating and stifling status quo.
Wonder if there are any parallels there!
nah, couldn’t be
So Dorothy spoke? Joe just stood there?
It happened fast, but still….
Danny’s been rubbing off on him and making him extremely passive.
Probably-unintentional double-entendre alert!
I reckon Joe would have to be very passive indeed to let that one happen.
[pushes Danny away repeatedly]
Bad boy! Bad!
I expect Joe knew it was dynamite and wasn’t touching it.
Joe’s survival instincts have kicked in, so he is going to stay very still and very quiet and hope nobody notices him, and if someone does he’s going to bolt
He had no reason to look back at the doorway till after Dorothy spoke.
But otherwise, what you said.
Probably better than trying to drag himself out of the room by his elbows.
i mean, if they do, he’s going to have to confront COMPLEX FEELINGS. TBH I kind of hope he’s forced to be a moral compass (or at least like, a balancing force) here. But he will most likely flee.
It’s not too late to pick Walky and Lucy, Dorothy.
On the other hand, Walky will be sorry he missed this.
This is good, for too long Becky has tied herself to Joyce (and been quite insufferable about it) but now she has the opportunity to branch out for herself
She has a girlfriend, she’s studying and knows what she wants to do, that’s a good place for anyone to be in
Now she can jettison that unholy jealousy and start to get to know other people
I mean that’s true to an extent. This is kind of a horrible way for that to happen though and a friendship she’s had for years straining or even breaking for her to develop is hard to sell as a “good” thing. Joyce has probably saved her life y’know. But I guess Becky being less obnoxiously possessive of Joyce is technically better for her.
Well sure the situation could have been better but considering the last time they talked about something like this Becky was very dismissive of Joyce
The whole at war with your parents for 30 seconds thing completely ignoring that it was Joyce protecting Becky that lead to the war starting in the first place
Though probably it would have started eventually
I meam, she had a right to be. Joyce was being an annoying, nihilistic asshole and Becky was having an immediate crisis of faith and needed real advice from someone who could understand her position. To steal a point from someone above, yeah sure Becky failed Joyce there, but Joyce also totally failed Becky
She was being nihilistic because she’s constantly being let down and outright savaged by the institutions she was told to believe in without question.
Why’s Joyce gotta be appropriate and wholesome when raging against her faith?
because Becky needs her to be stable and supportive and not have any feelings or drama of her own when Becky comes to her to try to resolve the contradictions in her faith and/or desires, duh. :p
Joyce’s advice was that sexual purity was probably bullshit, like many of the other things their community taught them, and so Becky could feel okay doing whatever she wanted. That advice isn’t what Becky wanted to hear but it was still entirely valid advice, because whoops, sexual purity IS bullshit.
Yeah.
Like Joyce’s advice was actually the thing Becky needed to hear, it is what she is currently struggling with right now, but Becky decided Joyce was throwing a tantrum.
Sexual purity was about making sure your children were from only your husband/owner, so for lesbians it is most definitely BS.
Was Joyce being an “annoying, nihilistic asshole”, though? She was in pain and doubt and expressed that hurt point of view instead of pasting a smile over it like Becky. She’d been having a worse crisis of faith and this was her hint to Becky that she was hurting and questioning EVERYTHING she had been told, not just the purity. And Becky’s response to Joyce’s vulnerability and pain was essentially “Shut up, you don’t get to be upset (‘bein’ a bummer’), I had worse!”.
Maybe I’m empathizing too much since I’ve been having a significant amount of existential anxiety lately, but it hurts to keep such big anxieties and fears to yourself. Making allusions to your struggles (like Joyce tried to do to Becky when she was shut down) or venting/half-joking about your struggles (like here with Liz) are ways to relieve some of the pressure and openings to really talk about them. And Becky made it clear she was not someone who would accept Joyce expressing her worries.
Honestly, that is where I started really considering Becky a bad friend – I think of friends as people you can confide in and be vulnerable with, and Becky is not that. (And does not want to allow anyone else who could be more supportive near Joyce.) It must have been hard for Joyce having all these doubts and pain that she didn’t feel she could talk about, I completely see why she jumped on the chance to vent with someone less involved in her life that was not likely to judge her, open to discussing this, and where there was not as much danger of damaging a significant relationship by “being a bummer”.
Ah, was curious how you were gonna try spin this as a good thing
It’s probably not even what Joyce said, but the fact that Becky has sensed something off with her since they returned from break and Joyce has been lying to her about it the entire time instead of trusting her. Even when the topic was about Becky’s mom. That’s gonna be hard to come back from for Ms. Brown.
Yes, this! Telling Becky privately about her crisis of faith in response to a direct question would have been much better than letting her find out accidentally.
She broached the subject, and Becky told her it was just a phase.
Joyce isn’t allowed to have such crises, only Becky.
I think the issue with the ‘insufferable atheist phase’ is it comes in two stages. The outwardly aggressive one like we see with what Joyce and Liz are doing right now that belittles Becky, but afterward there’s a quiet paternalism that passively looks down on religious people for having a faith. Breaking out of the second stage is one that Joyce hasn’t even begun to approach and that Dorothy or Dina often find themselves in. Honestly, I think it takes a sort of agnostic atheistic approach to avoid being insufferable like the confidently religious. I think it’s similar for how a lot of religious people are also agnostic, in the sense of appreciating that faith doesn’t mean absolute fact and is part of the inherent definition.
I think the phases you are describing happen to people who have been deep into a cultish religion – like Joyce has – because religion is just of mighty disinterest to people whose life’s hasn’t been badly affected by it and who are atheist.
Where people who base their life on rationalism might come across as paternalistic is the topic of magical thinking that is inherent in the kind of religion that expects the respective god to actually and directly influence life as it is.
I don’t think this is true. You don’t have to have been in a religion like that to have strong feelings on religion. You just have to have been hurt by religion, which can happen even if you weren’t directly a believer. That’s mainly true of places where religion, especially a single religion, is overwhelmingly dominant in a culture, so it’s not everywhere. However, we shouldn’t pretend that religion only has effects on the believers. Dominant religions affect everyone, believers nd those just living in the area, though the degree of that depends on a lot of factors.
YES, thank you! This is where I fit in, personally.
I was raised with a very sanitized, ‘nice’ version of Protestant Christianity – I didn’t even know gay people existed until I was a preteen because, although my family’s church would have undoubtedly been at least mildly homophobic, it definitely wasn’t a “THE GAYS CAUSED ALL NATURAL DISASTERS” type of place. Sermons mostly concentrated on Jesus’s positive life lessons. Compared to my best friend, who was legit traumatized by people in their aunt’s church acting like they had a heart attack because ~the holy spirit had entered them~, I got off REALLY easy.
…but I still had to realize I have never (and probably will never) be able to believe, in ANY religion. (I really just Do. Not. Get. It.) I still had to realize that as a queer person, a HUGE percentage of Americans hate me because of their alienating mythology that has always sounded like gibberish to me. And now that I’m old enough to be solidly out as an atheist, I now feel guilty or doubt myself for celebrating a secular version of Christmas, because I grew up in a country with rich winter traditions (Germany) and have a lot of good memories associated with it, so it’s still my favorite holiday. It also helps the homesickness now that I live in the US, haha.
So, to sum it up: religion IS of disinterest to me, but society keeps forcing its tenants on me, and it is constantly stifling. 😐
Sorry for the slight tangent/vent – this wasn’t even directed at Ludaire specifically! Just wanted to illustrate how non-ex-fundies are also shaped by the extreme dominance of Christianity in the US. :C
Honestly, I *only* read self-loathing into Joyce’s comments. I think she’s yelling at herself over all the stupid stuff she used to believe, because if you distance yourself from that as hard as possible, you can convince yourself that you’re better now and will never be as helpless/stupid/pathetic as you used to be.
Liz’s “I can’t imagine how stupid you’d have to be to be religious” hit Joyce really hard, hard enough for her to go all-in convincing herself she was never that stupid.
Ooooh, that shade of green isn’t good. Someone grab a barf bucket!
And this is why we are honest about struggles like this so that venting can’t bite us in the butt.
Well, sort of. Honesty requires time and place and I don’t think Joyce was ready yet. Let me revise – this is why we don’t shit talk people who believe in god because sometimes people don’t realize we’re venting about ourselves and yeah, that’s hurtful if they believe in god.
Would that we were all charismatic enough to drop such a zinger when havin’ our hearts broken.
Becky’s had a lot of experience having her heart broken.
Testing
Did we pass?
Upgrading chrome does seem to have passed the test
For some reason I find the fact of Dorothy pointing at Becky in the 2nd panel really funny! As if Joyce WOULDN’T have figured out she fucked up without the pointing?
I wonder if Becky will confide in Joe? They’re both religious, and they’ve both been heinously burned by Joyce.
And then Becky finds out Joyce and Joe have feelings for each other and Bevkys head literally explodes!
Her head a splode!
I don’t get the impression that Joe takes his religious beliefs all that seriously
Joe is religious? Sometime I’ll have to hunt down this comic you guy’s are reading.
Joe says he claimed to have become an atheist after his parents divorced but that he didn’t actually.
I’d put him in the “nominal Jew” category. Same way many characters are “nominal Christians”. Believers, but not very active about it.
I gotta wonder.
He’s said “Heaven and Hell never existed” to Joyce, but he was actually pretty upset at Amber when he was talking about he and his dad were trying to include her and her mom in Hanukkah stuff and she didn’t really care.
Well there’s a difference between practicing something for religion and and a cultural practice. Joe is likely a secular Jew who still views the culture of Judaism and it’s practices (at least the major holidays) as important
Yeah that’s a good read. Joe doesn’t have faith, but his culture is important to him.
I actually like the idea that Joe has an affection for Jewish culture and practices and we just never saw it because it cut into being Fun Sex Man time. It’s a new area to explore for his character.
Well hell (as a classical concept, at least) doesn’t generally exist in Judaism, so saying “it never existed” doesn’t preclude him still being religiously Jewish.
Yeah, a LOT of Christian beliefs about the afterlife aren’t actually from any canonical religious text, much less the ones that are in any way derived from Judaism, they’re from things like Paradise Lost and the Divine Comedy.
I have felt exactly that way before. Shame, fear, excitement, and illness all at once. It’s quite an experience, and I don’t think the thing I personally felt it for will ever be gone from me.
It sure as hell reminds you that you’re alive though.
This has been a long time coming, is it the best way for this to all come out? No, but I dont see Becky responding well to Joyce no longer being Christian even in the best scenario. She’s made it clear that she has a specific picture of Joyce in her mind and she didn’t want it to ever change
‘She’s made it clear that she has a specific picture of Joyce in her mind and she didn’t want it to ever change’
Huh, hadn’t thought of that
Yeah. Joyce-on-a-pedestal as her unchanging North Star has been there since strip #6.
I am not denying that Becky probably wants Joyce to be a certain way.
But it would be ironic, considering this earlier cartoon (when Joyce first found out Becky was gay and homeless)…
Becky: On Move-in day, remember when I asked you not to let this place change you?
Joyce: … yeah?
Becky: I’m so glad it has
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/sleepover/
She wanted Joyce to change just enough to accept her own changes and not a bit more
Rather wishful thinking….. but that’s the whole point, isn’t it?
She shut Joyce down right quick last time she tried to talk about her crisis of faith, calling it “a stupid phase” she needs to “grow outta”. I think that was the point where Joyce decided to stay closeted about her agnosticism/atheism (whichever it was at the time) around Becky.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/beeessin/
That strip was what made me worried that Becky wouldn’t react well to learning Joyce is now an atheist, no matter how she found out. Though this is definitely one of the worst ways Becky could find out about Joyce’s atheism.
In all fairness Joyce wasn’t just questioning her faith there, she was being a nihilistic prick and dismissing Becky’s own crisis. And that WAS a stupid phase she needed to grow out of
Joyce was CORRECT in that strip, even if Becky didn’t want to hear it. Hank and Bonnie certainly meant well and they definitely believed the bullshit they taught them, but it was still bullshit and Joyce is entitled to be angry and bitter about it for ONE NIGHT (Since IIRC, she was fine the next day).
I decided not to leave a comment back then. But I thought that was really messed up for Becky to say. It wasn’t a pain contest to who gets the most pain and entitlement or something
Mildly worried about how this might affect Becky’s relationship with Dina, because there was already some anxieties there a few chapters ago and this might lead to some conflict
Joyce says she’s throwing out a lot of supernatural thinking but Panel 3 is clearly some substantial evidence in favor of the existence of ghosts…
Called it.
my money’s on Dina calling Becky a dumbfuck for getting huffy over not sharing imaginary friends
Oh shit, if Becky tells Dina about this, Dina and Joyce will finally become actual friends!
And Becky’s heart would break TwT
I dunno. Dina is pretty perceptive. If Becky seems upset, she might ask why she is upset and then just comfort her. This isn’t about science or dino denial, after all.
You’re the real [expletive bc i don’t like calling names in the comments] if you think that’s the issue here and not Joyce insulting her and her entire belief system, revealing that she’s been lying to her for god knows how long
tbh, I’d rather you insult me than be all high-handed and smug like this
what you did is the same as calling someone a name
I hope not. That doesn’t sound very Dina to me (at the very least she wouldn’t say it so rudely), but also Dina knows Becky has beliefs AND is reconciling them with silence, so it would be really weird and mean to just call her stupid and insinuate it’s just about believing in god or not
Ah. Newly atheists. Without the ability to call the difference between religion and faith.
Well since people seem to be sharing, here’s my experiences with the (newly) ex-Christian and/or smug atheists.
People like Joyce and Liz all over the Internet, especially from Middle School to Undergrad.
In Middle School and High School there were those kids who were convinced Jesus never existed.
My neighbor converted to Wiccan in High School and took a weird delight in offering to show of his closet shrine (normal) and later in quizzing me on amatuer hour Bible “contradictions”. (Stuff like why my Mom and sisters weren’t sacrificing doves or whatever the the Old Testament says to every month. Dude used to be Catholic, he knows how sacrifice works in Christianity or he damn well should have).
My dad’s proud, self-described atheist friend who also believes in The Secret. Because that’s so rational.
There were also the ex-Christian agnostics who I describe as such because they just didn’t care enough to have an opinion once their parents stopped forcing them to go to Church.
Ah the agnostics who don’t really give much a shit, My people!
Oh, dang. This was a long time coming and we all knew it was going to happen in the worst possible way, AND YET.
Becks is ollying out of this because this must’ve hurt her wildly, but also… A good deal of her coping mechanisms are about controlling her environment through assigning everyone a role. She’s doubting her relationship with Dina because Dina’s sex positive asexuality breaks her expectations, Dorothy has to be her frenemy even if she doesn’t want to, and Joyce has to be her Christian Heterosexual Life Partner.
Joyce tried to talk to Becky about this back when she was still trying to cling to faith, and got rebuffed with a “how dare you doubt when your life hasn’t even been as hard, I can still believe”. Meanwhile both Joyce and Liz were egging each other on to look cool, but… Bruh. There was such self-loathing going on for our protagonist. Yet I’m pretty sure a good deal of her also means it, cruel wording and all: “I was stupid for believing in it but OH WOW IT’S SO STUPID, HOW WAS I DUPED FOR SO LONG, RELIGION SUCKS.”
Dorothy has her work cut for her. I legit hope Joe intervenes for good as well. #Pain for everyone, yay! (?)
Agreed, to all of this.
Very much yes.
But also adding, Joyce hasn’t had much in the way of a safe space to work any of this out with peers. Dorothy can’t relate because she never went through the deconversion process. Dina is… no, for several reasons. (Conflict of interest, wouldn’t relate to deconversion, existing semi-animostiy…) Sarah rebuffs most of Joyce’s attempts to open up about serious stuff. Becky has, intentionally or not, in various ways communicated that she is not a safe person to talk to about this.
So of COURSE Joyce is going to vent, full-steam, with the first person able and willing to relate. She has to. This has been building up for months.
And of course it can’t be done privately. They tried to do it privately, but…
… but not having space to process deconversion properly because that’s being interfered with by the still-faithful who think it’s their perogative to monitor, pry into, and supervise your thought process is… not fun. Finding space to do that can be very, very difficult.
(Was Becky trying to pry, monitor, and supervise today, or in this past week’s sequence of comics? No. Has she been doing so on and off throughout much of the comic’s run? Yes.)
@WanderingLynx, @Reltzik, A+++ to both of you!
But Reltzik, why would Joyce’s deconversion be a conflict of interest for Dina?
Because Dina would want to A) agree with Joyce’s abandoning of unevidenced and counterscience beliefs, but also B) support Becky to the fullest.
But would supporting Becky necessarily entail enabling her possessiveness towards Joyce? Would that be a very healthy way of supporting her?
Wanting her relationship with Becky to work might be above the purely rational option for Dina
The conflict of interest might be manageable and even resolvable, but it’s still a pretty big, obvious hazard.
Yeah. Joyce really needed Jacob, and maybe Ethan, in her life. They were earnest enough and serious enough and different enough that they could have helped her through this.
Alas.
She’ll be fine. But the price for that is higher.
Yes the realization your religion is in deep conflict with current reality is deeply disconcerting. It’s like walking across a transparent bridge over a staircase. You keep trying to step down, but the actual bridge gets in the way.
I feel like Becky’s hurt.
She had WAY worse shit happen to her and still believes in God.
Wasn’t that her argument last time Joyce tried to imply she was having doubts?
Joyce has a right to believe the things that seem true to her that is completely independent of how much bad stuff she has survived. Just because Becky has been at odds with her parents for longer doesn’t mean that she is allowed to dictate that Joyce believe propositions that seem unreasonable and lack evidence.
Oh I’m not Joyce is unreasonable.
Just… people are all having emotions.
Complicated emotions based on the disillusionment of a major cornerstone of their whole childhood.
The differences are normal and okay, and I understand.
Becky feels like Joyce leaving Christianity is slightly an attack on her.
Joyce…. is not in the wrong at all here. She’s venting feelings of frustration and dealing with a fundamental change in her worldview. And had chosen someone other than Becky to talk with.
It’s good to see that I’m not the only one who isn’t instantly trying to throw around blame. Sometimes people end up in painful situations due to accidents or unfortunate circumstances where no one was in the wrong. It’s understandable and okay for Joyce to vent this way, and it’s understandable and okay for Becky to be upset.
I’m interested in seeing how they deal with the immediate fall out and to what degree the two will remain friends now that both know that they have such fundamentally different beliefs. I know that can sometimes be rough, but it’s also necessary for many people to have any friends at all.
Losing your faith is hard. No amount of praying brings it back. Joyce is dealing with her loss of faith, the realization that she was fed lies since infancy and praised when she swallowed them. Her mother betrayed her in the name of those lies. She helped the man that harmed Joyce get free to do it again. Now Joyce’s parents are divorcing. Another thing Joyce was raised to see as impossible. She’s got mad PTSD from all that’s happened in the last 6 months and she’s Not okay. All the harm that she’s experienced, from the Christian rapist/stalker, to Toe-Dad attacks, to her parents divorce she sees as the fault of Christian brainwashing.
Oddly, I do know some people who come back to their faith after losing it. It’s as much a shock to them as anything else. I don’t think there’s any chance of that happening for Joyce (given its autobiographical nature) or where her mind SHOULD go right now but it’s interesting to know I had some fundamentalist-atheist-liberal Christianity path friends.
…aaaaaand there goes the drama tag for Season 2!
I think you might have missed the 1 from 12. We are on book (season) 12 now.
Willis stated that the chapters When It Crumbles/Is a Song Forever? were meant to be viewed as a “season one finale” for Dumbing of Age as a whole. Hence, Books 1-10 are “Season 1” and Books 11-present are “Season 2”.
Joyce has stopped believing in the culty Christianity she was raised in and devoted to after some truly devastating events in a very short amount of time. The foundation on which has has based the last 18 years of her life has crumbled. She is closed off from her previous church and family. She is angry and grieving. Some self-loathing ranting seems like a pretty normal response to everything she is going through.
It makes sense that Becky after all she has gone through she wants her best friend to continue to be part of what is still very much a core of her being. Joyce has been a rock for her for many years and she doesn’t have many supports left. It makes sense she would feel this is a betrayal. But while understandable it still isn’t fair to Joyce.
I love Becky’s reaction and the way she’s ready to give Joyce to Dorothy. Now Dorothy has to choose whether to talk to her roommate first or to her friend. I can’t wait to see what Liz will think about this dramatic scene and what Joyce will tell her.
She didn’t give Joyce to Dorothy. Her bit is that she was going to evict Joyce’s new Christian friend, but since she is instead Joyce’s new Athiest friend, defending that slot falls to Dorothy and she is out of there.
The fact that it makes sense as a wacky bit, but doesn’t match probable reality is why Dorothy is staring after her in the last panel.
But, yeah. Dorothy is going to have to make a quick decision that will probably have consequences down the road.
Christians are used to dealing with things that don’t match with experienced reality.
And what happened, then? Well in Hoosierville they say — that Joyce’s face grew three shades whiter that day.
Guys it’s fine! Joyce is just being unapologetically herself and adding vice to spice up her personality!
Glad you sorted that out for us.
Two things: Firstly, I genuinely think that Joyce is beginning to question if someone loves her. Secondly, I don’t envy Dorothy having to deal with this conversation (because she will because she’s that kind of woman).
I suspect that Joyce is not going to have a happy day, assuming that she can bear to show her face outside her room between bouts of crying. I’m hoping that Liz realises that her presence is definitely not helping and makes a quiet exit. Anything else she tries to do will only make things worse at this point.
I also hope Liz does that.
I expect the exact opposite.
Oof.
I was promised blood by my expectations and am therefore extremely disappointed by this strip.
Sad Khornate Berserker: No Blood for Blood god?
Which kind of makes me wonder… do Khornates hate killing Necrons? Does Khorne accept machine oil? Or metal skulls… but Necron bodies just teleport away… Fighting Necrons must be such a disappointment for Khornate Berserkers.
That just means the Khornates have to keep killing necrons all the way to the base and finish them off there.
There’s blood at the base?
Probably not, but a LOT of mechanical skulls
Unless they are fighting the Flayed Ones… does Khorne accept recycled blood?
Ah so a full day of fun. That sounds neat.
Look at Panel 3. Joyce is CLEARLY losing blood there.
Who could deal worst with this Joyce’s revelation?
Becky or her mother, Carol?
Considering her family is already falling apart I imagine Carol would absolutely lose her marbles. Becky and Joyce at least still have common ground.
Carol, 100%.
Becky loves Joyce, that’s been the constant theme throughout this. She’s hurt right now, but I haven’t seen anything to indicate that she’d break ties with Joyce over it.
Carol? Yeesh. While I’m not quite as torch-and-pitchfork about Carol as some here are, even I can see that she mostly seems to love being right and her power to control Joyce, and that woman would go crazy on learning this.
Like, there’d be violence. Immediate, serious violence. All Becky said was a harsh statement and fled.
Becky made no harsh statement. She made a wacky statement, as is normal for her.
Of course, Joyce has no way to reference the earlier conversation between Dorothy and Becky.
Carol. Becky’s hurt because she trusted her friend and thought she was still Christian. To hear her mocking Christians for having belief is an earth-shattering thing for her. And let’s be clear on this, as much as Joyce was hurt and betrayed by fundamentalist Christians specifically, she’s portraying a Christians as the same brainwashed sheep. Including Becky, hence the earth shattering.
Carol, on the other hand, has been around a while. She’s lived in the world and experienced what she sees as persecution. She’s the sort of person to at least half expect that her kids are going to be brainwashed into baby-eating atheists if they don’t go to the right college. This won’t surprise or hurt her. This will just prove she was right, and she’ll decide she needs to fix Joyce and bring her back into the flock.
Is Dorothy the one that said “Joyce”? I interpreted Becky saying it, but upon seeing Dorothy pointing at Becky, is it her?
I’d wager
Either Dorothy or Joe
I think that Becky was in a state of shocked silence, too horrified by what she was hearing to alert Joyce to her presence, and that Dorothy realized this and tried to cut Joyce off before she could do any further damage.
Joe had his back to the door. Dorothy saying “Joyce” and pointing below Becky’s eye level to Becky is what we are supposed to understand, pretty sure.
That panel 2 numbness into that panel 4 pain. Becky pain. 🙁
And, yeah, aside from wanting to impress Liz, this whole thing was obviously some barely veiled self-deprecation on Joyce’s part.
I love Becky, but I’m having a hard time feeling all that bad for Becky right now. It kind of serves her right after her insufferable and unhealthy obsession with monopolizing Joyce to herself. One we’ve been putting up with for literal real-time years I might add.
Ah yes, when someone is struggling to detangle themselves from a codependent friendship/unrequited crush, it follows that the universe should then punish them with unrelated emotional whiplash /s
Seriously, are you for real? If this were a situation where Becky was suffering consequences for her… monopolizing? Because she was being overzealous and it was a direct cause-effect thing? I’d kinda see where you’re coming from, ish. But you’re literally just wishing random harm on her because she’s struggling with codependency… it’s a yikes from me, bud
She’s literally only here right now because Joyce was hanging out with her cool Christian friend and Becky had a problem with this.
That’s actually kinda monopolizing Joyce’s time.
I don’t know the reason of Becky’s behaivor, but I tottally understood you.
While harsh as a reveal Joyce is entitled to her own reinterpretation of her childhood beliefs. She and Becky don’t have to come to the same conclusions, and if one side has shut down the conversation about it then it will leak out badly like awfully sealed leftovers.
Joyce isn’t so pale because her stomach has sank, she’s actually in the process of being Jokerized.
You think she has a problem with God? Wait until she tells you all that’s wrong with society.
Anyway when we all start arguing about feelings and responsibility and all that fun stuff, I think it’ll be important for all of us to remember the following:
This is a complicated situation where “what Joyce did wrong” means a lot of things all at once and that can run the gamut of personal responsibility for your own feelings, hurting someone else through your actions intentionally or not, and the situation where that hurt was caused by your recipients bulldozing after you while you were in a private conversation.
Anyway (echo) here’s my take: Joyce is super right and Becky and Dorothy can go pound sand (but in a nice way where eventually everyone talks about feelings).
Joyce barfed out complicated feelings about her upbringing in a private conversation that Becky and Dorothy are only observing because Becky learned Joyce had a friend over and either perceived it as a challenge or did that ironically, except “ironically” in that she just acts like an over-possessive nut but laughs about it later.
This is the first time in her life Joyce has been given an opportunity to get real and proper mad about her bullshit upbringing, it has been transparently obvious everything she’s saying has been directed at her deep and abiding faith and how she can’t believe she ever had it in the first place. For all that Joyce wants to look cool in front of Liz I think that’s long since disappeared and she’s vocalizing tearing down her upbringing, and it’s raw as shit. Joyce needs to do this, Joyce is entitled to these feelings, and Joyce could say them anywhere and not be wrong. Of all the people in this universe who are allowed to be mad at her fucked up Conservative Christian upbringing, it’s Joyce, and anyone who wants to tell her that’s wrong can go screw.
This isn’t about Becky and Dorothy, Joyce does not need to check her feelings with Becky and Dorothy before she has them, and I think they’re gonna show exactly why Joyce could never bring herself to tell them the way she was able to with Sarah and Joe.
Because I don’t think it’s just a matter of Joyce valuing their opinions so much that she can’t bring herself to risk that opinion changing, I think the problem is that they’d actually act really badly about it.
Becky’s already been a dickbag in the face of Joyce questioning her religion. At Dina’s party Joyce started getting resentful so Becky stormed out of the room telling Joyce her feelings didn’t matter and it was just a phase. It’s not just a matter of what Becky could do or say in the face of learning the truth, something we know Joyce has flat out nightmares over, she has already seen what happens when that valve bursts for a second. Becky rejected her in that instance, what’s going to happen now that the dam is completely obliterated?
I mean this as nicely and as nuanced as possible, but I don’t think Dorothy really respects Joyce as a person. Dorothy means well, she’s a really good person who tries even harder to be good all the time, but she still kind of relies on Joyce being in a box. She’s the weird sheltered fundie girl and Dorothy needs to gently lead her by the hand out of her box, Dorothy needs to be smarter and kinder and more mature and refined than Joyce, and that’s been pretty easy so far because she’s Joyce. But Joyce is growing up too, Joyce isn’t that weird goober anymore, and I don’t think Dorothy is prepared for that. As this develops I think Dorothy is going to resent Joyce’s changes as much as Becky.
I’m confused, other than Dorothy making Joyce aware of Becky’s presence what did she do to warrent a “ Pound sand”?
Pounding of sand is currently a hypothetical whose activation is dependent on whether Dorothy and Becky act like huge turds.
As opposed to acting like a huge turd, Dorothy did Joyce a favor by alerting her to Becky’s presence before she could dig herself in further. There is nothing here to upset Dorothy except her feelings for others. Now if Dorothy had walked in while Joyce was going shitty shitty shitting shit, Dorothy might have had opinions, but it’s unlikely she would have reacted without searching for a cause. Dorothy has boundaries, and she isn’t likely to presume on her friendship except where she feels Joyce is actively hurting herself, as with the glasses.
I’m curious as to what leads you to think that Dorothy is at all invested in Joyce not evolving.
It’s a hypothetical.
It is is Schrodinger’s sand pounding.
The sand exists in a state of pounded and unpounded.
I mean, they wouldn’t go pound sand just because you told them to.
I do place a little bit of blame on Joyce for not being honest with Becky earlier. She has a tendency to avoid hard conversations that usually ends up making things worse.
I wrote above this post that the emotionally charged nature of this conversation and the deep friendship between these three characters is naturally going to draw a lot of interpretations where we don’t have enough words to clearly enunciate between them. With that said, I will try my best.
Joyce does not have a responsibility to be honest to Becky about her faith, and certainly not a responsibility for the pain Becky is now feeling when the only reason Becky is here is because she heard Joyce had a friend over and then bulldozed over because she is wildly possessive of her.
It’s okay that Becky is upset, it’s okay that Becky is feeling things right now, but Joyce does not actually have to hide that she’s an atheist from Becky, and Joyce can say whatever she wants about her now dead personal relationship with Evangelical Christianity as long as it’s not “and that’s why Becky is a big stupid dumb dumb for believing it”, because Joyce can have feelings about things that don’t need Becky’s input.
It’s a complicated issue and while I don’t disagree with anything you said, something about Joyce lying to Becky and pretending she still believes doesn’t sit right with me. I guess it’s easy to judge as an adult reader, and harder to remember that I would likely have done the same thing at her age.
It’s worth remembering that the one and only time Joyce ever said anything to the effect of questioning her faith, Becky told her she was rebelling for 30 whole seconds and it was just a stupid phase she needed to outgrow.
Joyce was super goddamned mad while saying it, but that’s the closest example we can point to for the question of “how does Becky, the person Joyce values more than anyone, react to the idea of Joyce not being a Christian anymore?”
She tried once, Becky dismissed her
Thats an interesting take and gives food for thought. This could be ultimately freeing for all three of them or at least an opportunity for some personal growth
The bit about Dorothy is really intrigueing, mostly bc it seems totally out of left field for me. (Granted, I don’t particulary pay attention to Dorothy bc I think she’s kinda boring. This would certaintly make her a bit more interesting.) Can you point to like any specific panels or scenes you got that vibe from?
In terms of “the strip where we find out Dorothy thinks poorly of Joyce”? Well that didn’t happen, it’s something I’m inferring from their existing character dynamic as well as looking backward from the conclusion I think will occur.
(which is a bad sign, because I am really bad at predicting plot points in this series. Danny and Sal hooking up actually completely blindsided me until the moment she kissed him)
But in terms of specifically the idea that I don’t think Dorothy really respects Joyce, here I go.
A constant subtext to Joyce and Dorothy is that the former is a screwball and the latter is more mature, more worldly, more put together, more knowledgeable, yada yada. This is all true but it’s less because Dorothy is a wunderkind and more that Joyce is Joyce, except Dorothy also puts a lot of effort into being a wunderkind and constantly being smart, polite, understanding, accommodating, and helpful.
Consequently, I think this makes her kind of a pain in the ass to deal with.
Dorothy doesn’t let herself be flawed, but when it comes to other people and Joyce in particular, someone who if they were even slightly less charismatic and willing to change would be an insufferable asshole, Dorothy is perfectly fine with them being flawed because it’s an opportunity to help them grow. Dorothy likes people, Dorothy loves Walky and Joyce, but she’s always approaching them on the level of “how can I make them better” as if that is her responsibility.
To go on a non-sequiter that’ll loop back in trust me, there’s this one moment in Silent Hill 3 where protagonist Heather enters into a confessional and listens to a stranger confess her sins, and you have the option to forgive her. This sounds good right? Forgiveness is nice! Except doing so is a choice that’ll put you on-course for the Bad Ending, because the point is that Heather is just some regular person and doesn’t and shouldn’t have the authority to pardon someone for a crime, and attempting to do so is an admission that you view yourself above them.
Another case is Allison, the protagonist of the new defunct Strong Female Protagonist (no relation). She’s got Superman powers in a world where everyone with powers is like 25 and she’s learned life’s problems are more complex than getting solved by punching the right guy, and it eventually gets to the point where a friend is suffering and there is a jerky rich man who has the powers to fix it, and when he doesn’t want to Allison breaks him arm, kidnaps him, threatens to abandon him on an island, and forces him to solve that friend’s suffering. She also attempts to bullrush through societal issues with the plan of “let’s work together” that one teacher outright describes as “the axiom of a tyrant” and a supersmart Reed Richards-like character outright tells her that her insistence on not just solving all the world’s problems but being the one to do it is a form of narcissism.
And my read of Dorothy is basically like that but without the nightmarish Silent Hill monsters and superpowers and way, way nicer and more genuinely altruistic. Dorothy can’t tell Becky to fuck off with the bullying or even calmly discuss that she knows Becky is trying to be funny but it’s unappreciated, it’s a speech about friendship. Joyce starts questioning ideals she was infused with by her upbringing and Dorothy keeps pushing until Joyce snaps that she’s changed enough for the time being. Walky is suffering in math so Dorothy who is already encumbered with work picks up a textbook and starts tutoring him. People have problems and Dorothy needs to solve them, instead of just accepting that things can happen and people can have problems without Dorothy coming in to fix them and make them into the better people she knows they can be, because life can go on without the input of Dorothy Keener.
But maybe I’m reading too much of myself into her at the moment, because the above paragraph accurately describes my current struggle with some people in my life I love very very much and who are seemingly choosing to make things worse for everyone around them on the grounds of can’t be assed to do otherwise.
I don’t think I’m getting this same feeling. Dorothy fell for Walky because he “is kind and fun to be with and he sat with me when I had a bad day.” That’s a direct quote from super early on, and I think that’s reflected in their relationship while it lasted. I remember her later saying that she loves him because he’s a goofball but nonetheless fights tirelessly for his friend. I think she’s great friends with Joyce for much the same reason. After Joyce stood up to her parents on Dorothy’s behalf, Dorothy made a comment on Joyce being an admirable and dedicated friend.
She certainly does have a tendency to be pushy about helping others improve themselves, and that tendency has gotten away from her a few times. However, I wouldn’t say that’s a foundational part of her relationship with others. I’m also not sure this tendency is a bad thing as long as it’s sufficiently tempered by respecting others autonomy and boundaries. She tries to do this, but it often takes the form of crossing the line and then trying to pull back rather than seeking to understand those boundaries before involving herself in others’ problems.
why am i writing so many gatdanged essays on this site lately
Good essays, and because it’s a story that aligns with your experience
Well, that one we specifically asked for.
When Joyce has doubts, or says this sorta thing, Becky is confronted with the fact that her Mom isn’t waiting up in Heaven and is actually gone forever and she’ll never see her again.
And we’ve seen the lengths she’ll go to to avoid that truth.
And Becky left and was never seen again.
I’m just gonna handcuff Becky to Dina so they’re always on-panel together.
Dating Dina is Becky’s most redeeming feature.
This is true.
Thinking back on this moment will be really helpful to Joyce when Jocelyn comes out (or is outed)
Dorothy, Becky and Joyce are all three ‘good people’ who have varying degrees of never-learned to process changes in themselves and others.
*Dorothy puts on her “I’m with Christian” t-shirt*
*Becky walks away*
Dorothy: Dangit.
Joe knows the feeling.
This side of Joyce reminds me so strongly of when I learned my church friend was actually atheist now, in the middle of Christmas Eve service (though I like to think I handled it better than Becky did).
For context, I was raised Methodist in the midwest (not anywhere NEAR the level of fundie Joyce’s family is, but my family was still pretty active in the church, I wonder why my sister and I both abandoned our faith later?) and this friend and I had grown up together in the context of the church. We used to spend every minute we could together, and our folks were convinced we would end up dating when we got older.
Then my family moved to the east coast.
We kept in touch, and visited on breaks, but we obviously weren’t as close anymore, and it took a while to get used to that.
Years later, in the midst of said Christmas Eve service, this friend who I’d always felt so close to revealed that she not only no longer believed in god, but that she had some pretty powerful resentment for religion and faith in general. That’s when she revealed she had been assaulted, and several of her close friends had died young, in the space of a few years.
Now I know drawing trauma parallels can be tricky, but I’d wager her experience with life and faith was pretty similar to Joyce’s arc to some degree. Something so core to her upbringing had let her down (or actively hurt her) in some profound ways while she was still processing some intense trauma. Joyce’s words in this arc sound so much like someone who was deeply hurt by something a friend is still holding onto, and doesn’t know how to address it. I mean, how do you address a friend who just flippantly accepts what you can’t bring yourself to reconcile? Someone who (in your mind) has more right to have the feelings you’re having but doesn’t? Someone who rejects your feelings as “just a phase” and assumes you can’t possibly be hurting over this because she isn’t?
I’ll admit, her leaning way too hard on the “people who still believe are stupid idiots and terrible people” brand of atheism around Becky is tactless at best, but the signs were absolutely there for Becky to see and she ignored/actively rejected those signs. Her friend was hurting enough that they abandoned their faith and began talking to other people before her, and she didn’t notice (probably because “Joyce is a rock, she was always the most resilient, I can take her for granted, like the kilogram!”).
That feeling when relationships shatter because you left religion? Yea, been there. It was easiest just to move and never go back.
I have a feeling that Becky, with some time, would be entirely okay with Joyce becoming an atheist or agnostic or severely questioning or wherever she lands (heavy lean towards atheist of course). She’s Christian, sure, but not evangelical, and there’s plenty of people who are Christians who are entirely welcoming of those of other (or non-) faiths.
I think its the lying and deception that’s hurting Becky more right now.
I mean, going off of the last time Joyce expressed Atheist/Agnostic feelings, Becky may hold it against her (the vibe being “I’ve been through worse shit for longer and still have my faith, so why can’t you?”)
Yeah, I saw that strip… and I don’t think Becky was talking about Joyce’s views on faith there.
Joyce wasn’t going “I hate god” or “Christianity is all nonsense”. She was basically going “Everyone that raised us were complete doodoo heads screw ’em all”.
Now, the questioning of faith being connected to that sure makes sense, and I get Joyce was kinda saying that through clumsy means, that shit happens. But I think its unfair to assume what Becky, the girl who still reveres her mother, was hearing at that moment.
It wouldn’t surprise me if, a couple days from now, Becky’s will be going all “I thought you were just lashing out at our parents, not questioning your faith, I’m hurt you couldn’t come to me but of course I still love you” and all that jazz. Lets just not take the worst-possible-view of Becky here, girl’s got a maaaaaaaassive number of issues, she’s been through a lot… but nothing’s indicated that she’s got anything but a good, supportive heart.
I mean, everybody who raised them WAS a complete doodoo head. For multiple reasons.
I wasn’t referring to the “only a rebel for 30 seconds” bit, I was referring to the “completely ignoring/rejecting what you have to say because you were “being a downer” when she was absolutely making a solid point (i.e. we’re both rejecting a lot of what we were taught was sacrosanct, why are you hung up on sexual purity?).
Though after re-reading my comment, I worded it poorly so you weren’t wrong to take it that way.
Ooooh those are the ones Becky definitely didn’t need to hear. God it’s been a while since I’ve been so excited for a storyline
No, Becky DID need to hear it. She already realizes that most of what she’s been taught was bullshit. She just has one tiny step left to go. And knowing that Joyce no longer believes the bullshit may be enough to let her escape.
This is a gross take. Faith is not some inherent flaw to be overcome.
Becky’s parting “this one’s all yours” can be read so many different ways, I’m hoping it’s more “this conversation/situation is yours to deal with” or “I guess she’s not my rival, but yours” than “I’m done with Joyce and you can have her”
Becky, wait, no! It was the peer pressure! Peer pressure is cool, right?
Reading the comments section, maybe it’s a good time to say that Becky and Joyce weren’t put in this no-win situation by their (obvious) personal flaws. The community they grew in and, in particular, their parents, are responsible for not having equipped them with the basic abilities to navigate their lives outside of their sect.
Joyce’s current attitude is VERY justified right now, having found out that what she thought was a normal life being raised by righteous people was actually a life of child abuse at the hands of terrible human beings is going to result in some blow back. I can TRY to list some things, a preacher’s son tried to date rape her and she couldn’t even report it because it would have meant being pulled out of school, her best friend ended up homeless because of her sexuality, her parents divorced because of their attitudes towards child abusers…and her MOM was the one that supported them, her friend’s father died after trying to kidnap her and discharged a firearm on a school campus, and frankly I’m sure she feels like a naive fool considering how obvious it was in retrospect. When her brother visited he barely spoke to her parents at all, clearly showing there was significant trouble at home she didn’t see.
Who, John? He’s the one who drank the kool-aid real hard thanks to the power of having stuff.
Although that does remind me of something. Jocelyne is the “favourite” because Hank and Carol know the least about her, I wonder if John and Joyce both had “failures” over time.
Then of course there is Jordan, who I’m convinced is actually a time ghost or something.
I wouldn’t be surprised if John is on shaky terms with their parents too. He may still be a believer, but I got the impression that he married an Indian woman (he definitely held the wedding in India).
With Carol’s “I can’t wait to tell everyone on our street that MY daughter isn’t RACIST because she has a BLACK FRIEND” thing when she first saw Sarah, that just might be it.
Well, that could have gone better….
maybe “unapologetically me” isn’t *precisely* the right label for it if you won’t tolerate it in others?
please, please PLEASE let her fuckin’ majesty go off and sulk for a couple days in-universe? because moving is just a nicer thing than i’m allowed to have.
if you were a cynical bug would that make you a misanthropod
I think it would be misarthopod in the case of bugs.
Not to be confused with Bugs who is a misleporid.
No, Becky. You’ve got it backwards. Joyce is Liz’s new atheist friend.
If there’s not a magazine out there called New Atheist, someone is missing a bet.
Yeesh, that third panel is visceral.
Anyway, I don’t know how I feel about people in the comments acting like Becky not believing in god is some “inevitable” step she needs to take. You can believe in god and not be a fundamentalist, and the idea that all theists are brainwashed or under some abusive thumb is, ironically, a very Christian-centric worldview.
And I think the issue here is that Becky, I’m sure, would understand if Joyce decided she was atheist. Much as Joyce has hang ups on the fact that Becky believes in god despite everything, Becky seems to be completely chill with the atheists in her life. This just wasn’t the way to find that out.
“Anyway, I don’t know how I feel about people in the comments acting like Becky not believing in god is some “inevitable” step she needs to take.”
Yes thank you. I’m not religious in any way, and my general reaction to (non-shitty) christians is ‘that’s some weird stuff to believe,’ so I get that it feels weird for her to stay christian after trauma, but that doesn’t mean I think Becky needs to lose her religion, especially since she’s been at odds with it and figuring out what doesn’t make sense with her life vs what she was raised to believe probably since puberty, as she pointed out to Joyce (and while she was harsh, and wrong for calling it a phase, it is true she’s had more time to consider how these things impact her beliefs)
Agreed. Faith in and of itself is not some flaw that must be excised.
Many atheists think of faith as a permission slip you give yourself to believe things for no good reason. It’s generally not a fatal flaw, unless you take things on faith so much you start eating horse paste.
Oof… This is a really painful situation that’s very unfortunate, and it’s likely that it’s going to be a challenge to resolve. However, I don’t see as much fault here as lots of other people are. We all have different filters for different circumstances. I’m going to talk about religion differently when I’m among fellow atheists who have been similarly hurt by religion than when I’m talking to a casually religious friend, and both are totally different from talking to a coworker who is very religious. The same is true of being vegan, a leftist, etc.
Being an adult in modern society means that you’re going to be around people who you fundamentally disagree with on very big, powerful issues. There isn’t anything wrong with expressing those strong feelings with no filter around people who are okay with and appreciate it. When you accidentally mis-calibrate your filter, it can lead to some pretty painful moments, but unless your attitude about these things is to stick your fingers in your ears and go “la la la” until someone says something more overtly antagonistic, then in the long run, whether someone uses diplomatic or harsh words to express their feelings shouldn’t matter. If you’re a religious person, you’re either okay with having an atheist friend with negative views of religion or you aren’t. Same thing vice versa. How they might talk about the subject in private among like minded people might hurt in the moment, but if that makes the difference, you’re just pretending others don’t have different beliefs up until the point it’s impossible to deny. That’s not tolerance; that’s just willful ignorance.
To say that we always have to speak as if anyone could be listening is absurd. I’m going to talk to a lover I’m literally in bed with differently from my mother. Saying that I shouldn’t say anything literally during sex that I wouldn’t say at a family function is totally ridiculous, and that’s just as true of this situation. I can see an argument that Joyce should have been aware that Becky might be joining them soon and calmed things down in anticipation of that, but you can’t say that someone should never vent like this when in private with other like-minded people.
Becky may be hurt, but if she’s a real friend, the thing that’s going to matter in the long term is whether or not she can have a best friend who doesn’t share her religious beliefs. It won’t be down to the specific circumstances of finding that out. It’s also going to be interesting to see how Joyce feels about things now that all the cards are on the table. She’s been uncomfortable around Becky already, and that may grow. I do hope that they can remain friends, but I suspect that they won’t ever be as close as they once were. It’s difficult to be super close to someone when you both know each other believe things that are quite diametrically opposed.
I think a lot of this is true, but I think it’s valid for Becky to feel hurt right now – not because Joyce isn’t allowed to vent, but because the specific thing Becky overheard sounded like Joyce was making fun of her by saying that people who believe in God are idiots. Yes, Joyce almost certainly meant herself when she said that, but what Becky heard could apply to her too and she’s allowed to feel hurt and insulted by that. There’s a world of difference between overhearing ‘I believed A and now I feel like an idiot for believing it. X, Y, and Z stories are so stupid.’ and ‘You’re an idiot for believing A.’
That’s definitely true; Becky’s feelings are valid. I’d view this as an unfortunate accident not a situation where either party is wrong. Sometimes we overhear or stumble into situations that can be painful or awkward by no fault on either side. Joyce would never have voiced these thoughts so aggressively or at all if she knew she was in mixed company (especially if Becky was there), and Becky doesn’t have the full context that most of this is introspection about her past beliefs, not something directed at Becky.
People often seem to want to find *someone* to blame any time someone is hurt or invalidate the feelings of the person on the receiving end. Accidents happen, though. Sometimes there just isn’t anyone at fault to blame/punish/be angry at, but the person is still hurt and is reasonably so. We just have to do the best we can to heal and move on. I hope that’s what we see next.
Yeah, I can see Joyce apologizing in the sense of ‘I’m sorry I accidentally upset you’. I don’t think she needs to say ‘I’m sorry for venting’ or anything along those lines though. Those thoughts were real, even if Becky dislikes them. The only thing Joyce can really do is explain and contextualize.
Joyce is also saying there’s no heaven, and that Becky’s mom is just dead. And Becky is an idiot thinking she’ll ever see her again.
Yeah I’ll be honest I’m kinda surprised no one’s brought this up yet.
She didn’t say anything about the afterlife, though. Sure, you can infer that from what Joyce says here, but that’s an inference. By that logic, Joyce expressing that she’s no longer a Christian in any way regardless of context or tone would be equally blame-worthy. I don’t think it’s remotely reasonable to expect Joyce to never let Becky find out about her beliefs changing because of the implications about Joyce’s belief in the afterlife. It would be like expecting Becky to never let Dorothy know she’s Christian because that implies that Becky thinks Dorothy is destined to burn to hell.
Like I said, part of being an adult is making your peace with the fact that some people are going to believe things that are hugely different from you and may even imply things that are hurtful to you. That happens every time someone eats meat in front of a vegan. If this were a case of that, Joyce a recently deconverted vegan and excitedly talking about how great this meat she’s eating is, few people would be clamoring to declare Joyce or Liz as awful people because Becky is hurt by the sudden and unexpected change in Joyce’s beliefs. To be honest, in that case, most would probably rush to invalidate Becky’s feelings and say Joyce did nothing wrong, though I think that mostly comes down to cultural attitudes about veganism. That’s a totally separate discussion.
Point is, others not sharing your beliefs and expressing that (appropriate to the context they’re in) is not wrong just because those beliefs are deeply held and important to you.
Except she’s not talking about great eating meat is, she’s talking about dumb being vegan is. That might be a subtle difference, but she’s not just talking about her new beliefs, but mocking her old ones. The ones that Becky shared.
Really funny to read this page and then accidentally click the “First Comic” button