“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss your friends standing in the doorway overhearing you unburden yourself about how your entire public facing identity is a hollow lie.”
…It’s from the deleted scene where he admits he actually prefers the Isley Brothers version of “Twist and Shout”.
No no. You can only stretch a college newspaper weekly so long before it becomes some weird successful retrospective spin-off/reboot of an initial web-launch that itself was also awesome and successful. or something
It’s a good thing vinyl has made a comeback. Be a shame if none of these kids could recognize the sound they all just heard in their heads as a record scratch.
My now-husband gave my brother a lift home once, when he was a student. When he came home:
“I’m confused, you describe your brother as permanently poor. But he has a huge TV and -”
Nodding slowly, “Why do you think he’s poor? He buys expensive shiny things he wants then ends up eating tinned tomato-based foods on toast for a week or so straight because he spent all his money on shiny things.”
This is a very, very common situation and it lead to reactionary pundits’ talk point of “you claim these people are poor, but they have fridges and TVs and smartphones!” as if that was some incredible gotcha that negated all the wealth inequalities issues.
Yes, we have an incredibly consumerist society that encourages buying stuff, even when it results in having to eat discount noodles for month or having to fall in the clutches of loansharks. That’s not the same thing as prosperity.
Yeah, I’d say if one consciously makes the choice to eat very cheap food for a month because they want to afford the same fun tech everybody else has, and that’s a fair tradeoff to them, why not? that’s just called budgeting.
ofc some people do just make bad choices, but sometimes there’s not a lot of good choices to be made.
and everyone else who’s got all that shiny tech? eating the same cheap foods and playing ‘balance the rent and the overdraft’ games. We saw it all the time in the Army-get a guy who brings home three to six hundred bucks a month with a thousand dollar barracks tech habit, a new car he’s paying 26% interest on and he eats in the chow hall and has to get permission for a second job when in garrison to make his bills. They let it happen because it’s a way to keep him re-upping for another tour.
I imagine for college kids without prior service, living on pell grants and mommy’s credit card is pretty much the same way. (Note: this isn’t everyone in either example, but it IS common to see a $500 dollar car with a $2500 stereo in enilisted parking, and same for college student lots.) In both instances, the binge and waste period gives way to ‘holy shit I can’t do this!’ which in most people leads to eventually controlling your spending and learning to budget, instead of going with the hot-new-thing as fast as you can and damn the consequences.
but then, we still have all those student loans going into default, so maybe some people don’t learn so quickly from experience?
Many college freshmen collect vinyl records. Who needs anything more expensive to eat than ramen when you can buy more vinyl. Abandon necessities, return to vinyl.
You kids calling them “vinyls” make me feel like I’m going through the aging sequence in Saving Private Ryan.
When I was in college, nobody made new ones except for DJs, because they were just seen as old junk. I remember finding dozens of classics at the thrift stores, two for a dollar. Now those same bins are just full of calypso, Christmas compilations, and Mitch Miller sing-alongs for $4 each. It’s ludicrous!
Liz and Joyce are saying nothing Walky wouldn’t, and Joyce is A. getting caught up in the heat of the moment and B. maybe the person most entitled in the entire universe to say these things.
I am a bit on the fence. I absolutely agree that she has a right to say it, but she waited so long to tell Becky that she fell into the “You weren’t supposed to hear that” trope. 🙁
‘guy’ is used casually (if insensitively) to refer to both guys and gals. “hey guys!” So the shirt is still maybe generally right. I mean… It is pointing right. Right?
As much as I hate that, I was actually letting it go in this case. Good point that there may be someone further along that plane that the arrow could be pointing to that we just don’t see.
This greeting was used by girls in multiple girl-only spaces while I’ve been in. Which makes it very hard for me to find it insensitive since it’s what a lot of women find most comfortable in referring to themselves and their female peers.
Sometimes change comes at you
like a broadside accident
There is chaos to the order
Random things you can’t prevent–Joni Mitchell (with help from Michael McDonald and Thomas Dolby)
See you’d think the timing would be too convenient but today I walked to the bathroom, turned around going “the phone is going to ring as soon as I sit down”, walked back in thinking that was really stupid and trying to apply a fictional narrative an occasional real life coincidence and then the fucking thing went off.
Oh geez I’ve been thinking about it and you have just made a very persuasive argument for it. Although if I do I’ll probably just find out that tomorrow’s strip cuts back to sal and danny or some other evil Willis thing.
I’m just saying Alucard made a crucifix out of his crashed jet entirely for style points while he sailed his aircraft carrier up the river Thames so he could fight Nazis and Papal knights
Also I feel like leaving the door open so passers by can see that 3 girls are in his room is the kind of soft brag Joe would quietly be into. He’s not outright saying he’s a stud but if you wanted to assume he was popular with the ladies he wouldn’t stop you.
Three girls playing video games and not having an orgy? Hell no, Sarah opened the door in order to underline evidence that nobody was fucking in this room no way no how.
Why are they even in the men’s wing? It’s not as though either Sarah or Joyce would have left a message on their whiteboard saying “gone to hang with Joe”.
They are in the men’s wing because Joyce promised Liz an introduction to her friends and she wasn’t willing to go shitty shit shit etc in front of Dorothy and Becky, but was perfectly willing to do it in front of Joe.
Maybe they asked one of the women from the floor who said “i think i saw them somewhere in the men’s section earlier”?
Or maybe it was through elimination… They left their winter coats in Joyce’s room (so they couldn’t be outside) and they weren’t in the women’s area or common area… Leaving the men’s section.
Yup, and that’s been bothering me, as well. It only makes sense as a means of forwarding the narrative (because without finding Joyce and company, drama cannot happen), but there is no reason for the Dorothy/Becky to know where Joyce is, when 1) she’s literally hiding from them, 2) they did not know that she was even skipping class, and 3) nobody outside of Joe’s room knows where they went.
1. Playing games and talking loudly with the door open is not hiding very well. Joyce isn’t hiding from Becky and Dorothy. She just expected them to be in class. She’s taking advantage of the assumption they’d be busy to present a different version of herself to Liz.
2. Lucy the blabbermouth told Dorothy and Becky Joyce skipped and why. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/shallowgrave/
3. Joe’s door is wide open. Perhaps it always was. There are admittedly maybe a few details you could use to milk the reveal of this like Becky and Dorothy running around the halls for a strip or two, but this was inevitable as soon as they decided to skip class and track down Joyce. There’s only a few places she could be on campus following logical trains of thought.
It’s not clear how it took them to get here. They easily could’ve checked a dozen other places first, especially if those places are all dorm rooms. And where else would Joyce go? She’s not at Dorothy’s or Becky’s, obviously. Ethan’s gone. Jacob’s unavailable. Amber doesn’t socialize.
Joe/Danny’s room isn’t a hard deduction. The main other option is getting food or going shopping, and they may have decided that would be the second place they’d look.
And IMO, that strip is exactly why Joyce hasn’t confided any of this to Becky. The LAST time she expressed anger/upset/bitterness, Becky’s reaction was Shades of ‘how dare you’ and ‘this is Not Allowed’.
If I were Joyce I wouldn’t confide either. My relationship with Becky would become the relationship Jocelyne has with her parents: placidly conforming with what they want to their faces, then living her real life as soon as they’re gone. Joyce is already a fair but down this road w/r/t Becky.
This may hurt, but if Becky doesn’t completely shatter what’s left of her relationship with Joyce in the next few minutes, it’ll be a genuinely good thing – Joyce won’t have to be Somewhere Becky Isn’t in order to live her actual life and show her actual feelings.
Super queer here and can confirm that there arephases to certain things. Hell there’s phases to queerness – Becky seems to have already outgrown some of her baby queer tendencies. Thank Schrodinger’s god.
Joyce IS currently going through a phase that, even if she stays atheist, she will eventually grow out of.
But the initial detoxing is an important part of the process.
Buuuuut it’s also important to be sensitive about where you detox. Considering that Becky is the actual target and Joyce is just collateral damage, it is reasonable for Becky to not have the spoons to deal with Joyce’s shit right now. Especially becauseJoyce is processing in a very different way, and its reasonable for Becky to not be able to handle that right now.
There’s a good model for supporting people through grief – you draw concentric circles so the most impacted (Becky) is at the middle then the farther removed you are the farther out you put them (Joyce in the nextcircle, then Dorothy in the one after that, etc) – support is the only thing that goes inward and you should only dump outwards.
Becky will eventually need to be able to be open to Joyce – but geez it takes more than 6 months to “get over” the level of trauma they’ve both been through.
Don’t forget Dorothy and Bekcy have currently teamed up because they both find Joyce’s current behavior problematic. I think that’ll help a lot. Whatever Dorothy’s faults are – casually skipping class sure ain’t one of them.
Also did Joe just open the door for them no dinosaur related questions asked? What a shitty doorman. Like if he had even a shred of respect for proper security and had vetted Becky and Dorothy first this drama filled scenario would never have happened. Dina is laughing at him right now…..or more accurately expressing a concise statement of his failure and if he’s lucky offering a brief bit of advice toward improvement.
I guess I’m not normal then, because when I was in college I usually left my door closed and locked while I was in my room. When I was in my dorm room I was probably either studying, playing video games, sleeping, or just doing any number of other things that I really didn’t want random people barging in on me doing.
If you have small children and try to explain that you would like to be alone in the bathroom, they will happily close the door in their siblings’ faces and refuse them entry, while completely missing you wanted THEM to get out and give you privacy… Both the toddler and 3.75 year old do it now. The almost 7 year old stalks me slightly less…
Not only does Becky see that she is skipping class to play video games, she heard her yelling about not believing in god anymore, and heard her cursing… I wanted her to find out soon, but this has gotta hurt coming all at once.
Not to be That Guy, but I fail to see what Joyce did wrong in this situation. This is how she actually feels. Liz pulled it out of her, yes, but it’s not like she’s saying random crap just to be part of the in-crowd.
Yes, I know what day it is. That f*cking sucks. But this was always going to happen, regardless of context.
On the one hand, you’re right. Joyce isn’t wrong for her feelings.
But on the other… she’s been lying to Becky for months now through omission/in the for a big secret. And it just got revealed in probably THE worst way possible.
Whether or not Joyce is right won’t diminish the fact that Becky’s feelings are valid and… they’re gonna take a hit.
I mean she’s been lying to Becky because it’s an incredibly difficult conversation to have, which is separate from Joyce mouthing off in private with a like-minded individual and having a good time that Becky walked in on.
Like neither of them are wrong, it’s just feelings. The only way this could go wrong is if Becky tried to stake a claim on Joyce’s feelings, that Joyce has let her down by losing her faith, but even if that’s wrong that’s still something motivated by explosive feelings.
It is wrong that Joyce is playing up her feelings to impress Liz but it isn’t wrong for her to have complicated feelings about religion now and to no longer be able to believe.
However this is very much the worst way to convey them – she’s basically agreed that Becky and people like her are stupid for keeping their faith. Even though I don’t think she actually believes THAT specifically to be true.
I agree that it’s not wrong for Joyce to express how she really feels about religion now. But this is probably one of the worst ways for Becky to find out that Joyce is no longer religious. I’m betting the next few strips with Becky and Joyce in them are gonna be hard to read.
At least some of what she’s been doing the last few strips has been “random crap to be part of the in-crowd” – or to impress Liz at least. Remember “friends with a reward program”? (Liz has pretty clearly been doing the same. Or playing along to see how far Joyce will go.) While she’s already been shown to have lost her faith, this particular religion bashing is likely part of the same performance.
Or are you suggesting that she really does think that still believing in God makes Becky basically a moron?
Like most things in life, it’s more complicated than that.
Can you honestly tell me that raw anger Joyce is displaying right now isn’t real as shit? Do you think Liz is maybe giving her the first real chance she’s ever had to be right and proper mad at the life she’s lived up until now?
Maybe. There’s certainly some of that.
OTOH, the facial expression and even the words in the second panel don’t seem so much like raw anger. Maybe that last panel is, but we can’t see her face.
And coming on top of complete performative bullshit like the “friends with a reward program” from earlier, it’s hard for me to take this as completely real. Is this really her feelings or is she doing a “this is what I think rebel atheists are like” bit? Or some of both?
I agree with this: a lot of what she’s been saying has been playing to what she thinks Liz wants to hear, while her facial expressions over the last couple strips have conveyed a lot more complexity and uncertainty compared to Liz’s mockery.
I’m not saying that what she’s saying is coming from nothing more than trying to fit in. But as much as this is a release valve for some thoughts that have been genuinely percolating for months, they’re being expressed through an ugly, mean-spirited filter that wasn’t Joyce’s making.
I think it started performative, but once she’s gotten going it became genuine.
Liz has super basic commentary and is making cartoony faces while Joyce’s face is a lot more troubled while she talks about some ridiculous fantasy nonsense she used to believe and then in the last panel she’s outright describing her own thoughts that God made her suffer to teach her lessons.
Like right now “the sky firmament of water” and “a God who loves me” are equally as farcical to Joyce because she thinks it’s all bullshit.
Is it bad that I’m kind of excited for this? Joyce was never going to get up the courage to tell Becky how she really feels—maybe she’d admit to doubts or interest in another form of Christianity, but shed never cop to these full-blown atheist inclinations. It had to happen this way. And I sincerely do not care enough about Becky to care if it hurts her.
I do wonder, especially because she’s right there and Becky is already an absolute monster toward her, if this will just result in Becky blaming Dorothy for corrupting Joyce. But at least that might argue into the Yale departure, so yay either way.
I don’t think Becky’ll blame Dorothy; I think this is going to pretty seriously station her relationship with Joyce, and potentially Dina as well. There have been a few times bite when Dina and Becky have clearly doddere differed on belief, and add their potential incompatibility and Becky’s torch for Joyce, and I suspect Becky complaining to Donna about this will prove difficult.
But here, I suspect Dorothy will be on Becky’s side. Joyce and Liz are doing the Atheists Are The Only Rational Ones bit, and until recently, Dorothy had a close Christian friend, Catholic grandparents, and in general isn’t down with cruelty or mockery.
Of course it’s not bad, Regina. This is the comic. This is what we’re here for. Shit’s about to go down, and it’s going to be glorious. And painful. Gloriously painful.
I am hyped let’s goooooooo-(hard cut to Walky and whatsername delivering comics to Daisy)
Becky will be absolutely tilted out of her danged mind and she and Joyce will have a falling out for at the very least the rest of this chapter. This is too big a deal brought to light in the absolute worst way for it be resolved within a month or two.
Dorothy isn’t going to let anyone process feelings because she’s too busy trying to solve the problem and tell everyone they need to be respectful and understanding while they’re flailing around on fire.
Liz will have zero tact and insist that Joyce did nothing wrong, which is true, but then start talking smack about Becky as if this is as simple as a game of who’s right and wrong.
Sarah and/or Joe will make pointed commentary to Becky and/or Dorothy that neither of them are Joyce’s closest and most beloved friends and yet, for some reason, Joyce felt more comfortable telling the truth to them than they did to Becky and Dorothy.
Honestly I think the only reason Joyce has let Sarah and Joe know is because they aren’t her closest friends. They aren’t the ones whose opinions matter most – it is easier to brush off their disapproval. While Dorothy is outright her morality compass at times and Becky’s words can cut her more deeply, so telling them is scarier due to their closeness rather than because of a lack of it.
I mean yeah that’s exactly why but I think it goes deeper and into their own problems as people.
Dorothy kind of humiliated Joyce about the glasses. It was necessary, it had to happen, but Dorothy’s still the one who not only dragged Joyce into it, she did so by calmly and rationally explaining that Joyce needed glasses and then gently supported her every step of the way, and then capped it off with “see how much better your life is with glasses, Joyce?”
Which is to say that when Joyce just wanted to be upset about something, for a problem to exist in a state where she can just react and panic at it because it entered her reality right now and she hasn’t even had to time to deal with it, Dorothy swooped in and mommed super hard and forced Joyce to confront it and do her homework and eat her vegetables. Dorothy because she means well by absolutely everyone and especially her dearest friends tries her hardest to be smart and affable all the time, which is to say that Dorothy is a freaky Nice-dispensing Robot incapable of normal human emotion and she’s actually kind of difficult to talk to because it’s always going to be a lecture, and it’s hard to have a problem about this because Dorothy is always right about everything. Normal human problems can’t exist in front of Dorothy without her trying to solve them because Dorothy is absolutely genuinely well-meaning and caring person, especially to Joyce, and, consequently, it makes her kind of unapproachable when you just want to react to a problem’s existence.
I don’t think Joyce talking to Joe about it is as simple as narrative convenience, I think the problem is that Dorothy wouldn’t let Joyce’s fears about her atheism exist. If Joyce said “yeah I’m having complicated feelings and it sucks” Dorothy would immediately launch into a speech filled with gentle and passive kindness about how Joyce is growing up and seeing the world in a new light and it’s all valid and important and she’ll answer any question Joyce has.
And Joyce doesn’t need that right now. Joyce needs to be upset, Joyce needs to be angry, Joyce needs to be confused, because that’s all of what she’s feeling right now, and that’s what Joe did when instead of lionizing or catastrophizing her fear when Joyce learned she is actually just a monkey, Joe just bluntly stated his own feelings (it’s nice not to have pressure of a divide God because we can choose who we are) and then let Joyce panic some more, because Joyce needs to panic right now more than she needs an answer.
I could probably write one of these about Becky too but it’s already too long.
I like long comments!
I think your comment was an insightful analysis of Dorothy and Joyce’s relationship. Discussions of characters’ relationships, emotions and motivations are really interesting to me. Also, it happens quite often that a strip just leaves me confused, but then I read the comment section and … yay, someone explained it! So, if the only thing that’s holding you back from writing a similar analysis for Becky is that you’re afraid people might be disinterested or annoyed, then here’s one person who’d be glad to read it!
Of course, I might be misunderstanding. Maybe the “too long” thing was more about you not wanting to get carried away and spend all day at your computer writing about fictional characters, in which case I don’t want to be all “NO, WRITE MOAR”.
Sarah is close enough that Joyce can tell her things, yeah.
But I don’t think it’s as simple as “Joyce likes Sarah but not as much, therefore it’s fine if Sarah rejected her”, it’s that Joyce fears the truth coming out in front of Becky and Dorothy not just for how much their judgment means to her, but for how Joyce can make a reasonable guess as to how’d they act when the truth came out.
Sarah is a close friend but she is not one of the closest in the way that Dorothy and Becky are where disapproval would incite fear in her. Her relationship with Sarah is more sibling-like where even if she disapproves, the care will still remain and she can trust that to still be the case. She is close enough to open up to a lot and feel secure, but not so close and held in such high regard that she’s circled around to not wanting to burden her with difficulties.
Becky was concerned that Liz was trying to supplant her as Joyce’s “Super Jesusy Friend.”
No longer a concern.
Of course, now we need to decide if Liz and Dorothy have to fight a duel over who is Joyce’s Atheist Friend, or if the position can be divided into Jerk Atheist Friend and Polite Atheist Friend.
I don not think Dorothy will be bothered. She is very well adjusted and probably won’t care if Joyce has other atheist friends. (And it is not like Dorothy wascactively trying to discourage Joyce from believing in god. She was an atheist but was accepting joyce for who she was, even when she was in her fundamentalist phase)
Hey, with any luck this will be the catalyst for Becky to finally admit she’s over religion, too and had just been going through the motions to spare *Joyce’s* feelings.
Maybe now that Dorothy knows, Joyce will realize Liz is not actually a good influence (if the “you feel the need to lie around her” and “she implied you were a moron your entire life through last semester” aren’t good enough evidence).
So, who talks next? I’m guessing Joe to get Joyce’s attention, and then many panels of Becky!
I don’t think Liz is necessarily a bad influence (yet). It’s unfortunate that they were overheard, but Joyce has been intentionally avoiding saying this kind of stuff around folks it might hurt. The frustration she and Liz share is that probably they feel like they were a moron their entire lives before they became apostates. And while Dorothy can help her out, she hasn’t experienced that.
If you look back at the rest of what they’ve been bonding over, I think she qualifies. What Becky walked in on might just be what Joyce has avoided saying around folks it might hurt, but the boasting about sex with Joe and how wild she generally is doesn’t really fit the same category.
Finally Becky knows her best friend has changed! I wonder if Joyce said that last sentence casually or specifically thinking about Becky. She looks so hurt… Dorothy is surprised too. Dunno if this will be the end of a lifelong friendship, but it looks very possible.
The last couple of strips indicates that, right now, the only thing keeping Joyce interacting with Liz is her neurotic certainty that she needs to be part of (and conform with) the social group with the loudest voice.
Okay, I’m going out on a limb here with this prediction….
I think it’s likely that Becky’s not going to confront Joyce. She’ll just walk away and pretend she overheard nothing.
Becky’s been thinking for a while that Joyce has been hiding something. Now she knows what. Becky knows how closets work, (maybe) knows that nuking them from orbit isn’t for everyone. Becky knows that Joyce doesn’t feel ready to confide with her. She might just be happy for Joyce to have an outlet.
…. mind you, I don’t think this is the MOST likely outcome. Likely, but not most likely. Maybe in the top 5?
I’ll admit my heart sank a little when I saw a familiar patch of orange in the blurry public Patreon teaser yesterday, but it also feels like they need to stop kicking this can down the road and just get it out.
I don’t think Becky realizes just how deeply Joyce was affected; their faith was the bedrock of her entire psyche, inflexible and unmoving. Once she saw for herself how reality clashed with what she was told to believe, the whole thing fell apart. Becky was more easily able to reconcile what she experienced because she sees faith by what she feels, not necessarily as a rigid structure like she was told. (That’s not to say Becky hasn’t felt loss either, far from it. Both her parents died and she’s a pariah in their hometown. But that’s another difference in their experiences. There’s nothing tying Becky to that world except for Joyce, but Joyce still has one foot there.)
Becky’s probably going to take the stance she did in Joyce’s ‘Rich Mullins’ dream: “I lost everything and I still believe, how could you throw all that away?!” This will open a rift between them, like there was between Marcie and Sal after the fight at the political rally. I just hope we can see them reconcile eventually. It probably won’t be this chapter, or maybe those strips haven’t even been drawn or written yet, but I hope it’s somewhere on the roadmap.
The form of Joyce’s atheism isn’t going to help. You can see it in Dorothy’s face: “Oh shit, she’s turned into one of those atheists.”
Atheism and nihilism aren’t the same, but it’s probably unsurprising that Joyce has moved towards what her parents think atheism is (lack of a higher moral authority = morality doesn’t exist). I don’t have any statistics, but I suspect that it’s particularly common, at least as a phase, among those who lose their faith as opposed to just never have any. Which is probably why certain types of people of faith can’t grasp the concept of atheists not being miserable.
Okay but if there’s anyone who’s entitled to be really annoying about it, it’s someone who has been involved in more than one car chase because of a crazy Christian person.
Like we haven’t delved into it that much, but this is basically the first time Joyce has had the chance to get actually angry about her upbringing now that she’s not a Christian anymore. What is she supposed to say?
Now quick, Joyce! Say “Shit shit shitty shit shit” in front of Dorothy so you get a double “What the hell happened to you??” award from BOTH your friends for maximum awkwardness. 😀
When he marries Sal, part of Danny’s vows is going to include the fact that she’s the reason he’s not in his room suffering through this. I mean, if ever there as dowry…
This could make for some entertaining Becky comeuppance. After all, Joyce has just been outed as an atheist the same way Becky was outed as a lesbian (unlocked door). Becky, meanwhile, is the one who told Joyce that her crankiness about religion was just a phase she needed to grow out of.
Let’s see if she doubles down on her bad role models and accuses Joyce of being corrupted by Dorothy, and if Joyce has the stomach to point out that that’s how Kaitlyn (was that her name?) got out of being expelled!
There was rejecting her kiss, coming out as straight (so to speak), and causing her to run off, but she made up for that pretty quickly. There are other low-level things, mostly homophobic, that may never have risen to the level of “hurt” but nevertheless were not great, and she’s mentioned being worried about things she may have said regarding Becky’s mom in the past, which we may not have seen but which she may not be wrong to be worried about.
Plus she keeps hanging around with that boring atheist nerd.
I mean I get your point but all that and in particular the whole “not being a lesbian and in love with Becky as much as she is with Joyce” isn’t really stuff Joyce can help. Like, that isn’t a thing Joyce has to make up for.
Also unintentional, but we literally just had Joyce realizing she probably said hurtful things regarding Becky’s mom’s death
Like I’ll grant you that Joyce has never intentionally hurt Becky, but most people generally don’t intend to hurt the people that they do hurt, especially when those people are close friends
Okay but that’s like saying Dina is responsible for Becky being hurt because she’s a sexual tyrannosaurus who constantly imparts lust in Becky’s innocent loins that she’s unequipped to deal with.
There does not need to be a responsible party for someone to be hurt. Like….I can’t believe this even needs to be said. Just going through a growth spurt should be enough to have taught someone that lesson, between all the random leg cramps and the stubbed toes, there’s a lot of hurt just in the process of getting taller. Are you saying that someone is responsible for that? Or are you saying that the “hurt” I speak of isn’t real “hurt”?
There’s a lot of things I can’t believe were said but most of them are in that text talking about literal growing pains in a conversation about Joyce causing pain to Becky.
Uhh, you’re the one that’s continuously bringing completely unrelated hypotheticals up. What I initially said was not even remotely analogous to saying “Dina is responsible for Becky being hurt” so don’t you go acting like I’m the crazy one here.
Unless that was a response to someone else in which case the fault is with this comment program not making reply chains very clear.
Surely there’s a level of nuance where not being a lesbian and in love with your childhood friend who is in love with you shouldn’t count for “hurting someone” in anything but its broadest, most surface level descriptors.
Yes – mostly that Joyce is a caring person who was raised in a guilt-o-genic environment and ruminates over when she thinks she was the proximate occasion of someone’s pain. It’s worse when it was someone she really cared about.
Not like she walked up and hit her with a stick, obvs.
After all Becky has lost, she’s about to lose (or become aware of the loss) of her best link to Joyce. Will they take divergent paths, Becky with a robust belief in God and Joyce with her shattered faith. DYW is good at portraying teens who become atheists when their brittle evangelical faith cracks. Hope he is just as good at those -like Becky-who remain believers.
Will Joe save this mess by convincing Becky it was the edibles’ fault? Or will he just follow that nice guy arrow on his shirt until he’s out of earshot?
I personally think the behavior is reminiscent of someone who is somewhat fresh out of religion (say a year or so). I’ve had a few people in my life who would consistently spend their time debunking religion socially in what retroactively feels like them trying to dissipate the dissonance in their head as they’re only just rebuilding their worldviews.
Of course anecdotal yada yada, but I do have one close friend who in university was constantly talking like Liz but has since mellowed out, and I know he grew up religiously
It’s normal. For a little while after you leave god belief, you look back and realize how much you invested in what seems like a deliberate lie, and you feel stupid, you feel cheated, and you’re hurt and angry. The degree of hurt is a direct function of how much you invested and what else you feel you could have been doing instead.
I mean it’s quite similar to queer people who have recently come out of the closet being unable to talk about literally anything other than the fact that they are super duper gay gay gay and being HYPER obnoxious about it. You know. Like Becky did?
You’ve been trapped alone in your head about a thing for SO LONG that when you finally feel able to talk about it out loud, it’s like all you actually CAN talk about, you have to just get it the fuck out of your system instead of letting it sit there and fester inside you forever.
Wow, this is pretty much my mental picture of what was going to happen when I saw this storyline develop. Now I can’t wait to see how this plays out. Is Becky going to quietly leave, or remain standing there as Joyce inserts more footwear into her vocal system.
I tried “Lookit me! I believe in God! I think” in Google, and the autocompletion brought me back all kind of sentences containing “God hates me”. Maybe the algorithm is trying to tell me something.
I honestly don’t get how Becky is still religious after all the shit she went through. Like, girl, if there’s a god then it’s clear he gives absolutely zero fucks about you, so why bother worshiping him?
How do you get rescued from homelessness by your best friend and a slew of people who all risk punishment by sheltering you at their university, get saved from a horrible fate by an actual superhero in a car chase, and start smooching a rad dino lady and not believe that there is a higher power in your corner?
Credit your survival and success to the help of the friends and loved ones that helped you along?
I agree that it doesn’t strain credulity for Becky to still be religious, but I can absolutely see someone going through similiar circumstances and ending up an atheist
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*Dina joins in once she understands the joke* “Look at ME, believing in the scientific method and empirical evidence!”
She’s got the right spirit!
Also, Dina is just suddenly there. She’s been sitting right next to them, playing. They never even noticed they had a Player 4 in the game.
Glad to know I’m not the only person who played with 3 people without realizing the third person was actually playing the game xD
God was Player 4 the entire time.
can someone who knows Mario Smash do a clever “two sets of footprints” joke, please?
“Wait, are you the reason no one’s been able to beat Yoshi for 2 rounds?”
Dina is currently behind the door. Obviously.
“I’m afraid I must take my leave, Becky, as Joyce has now proven herself a more suitable partner to my interests.”
moreso than any crack ship ever, that just kicked me right in the guts.
Wow that happened way faster than I thought it would.
To quote Ferris Bueller:
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss your friends standing in the doorway overhearing you unburden yourself about how your entire public facing identity is a hollow lie.”
…It’s from the deleted scene where he admits he actually prefers the Isley Brothers version of “Twist and Shout”.
I was thinking of another scene from that movie, actually:
“Here’s where
CameronBecky goes berserk.”I mean, you can only stretch this kind of thing so long before it becomes a college newspaper weekly.
No no. You can only stretch a college newspaper weekly so long before it becomes some weird successful retrospective spin-off/reboot of an initial web-launch that itself was also awesome and successful. or something
The cycle is now complete. Now I am the anti-Joyce.
Except this time, Joyce didn’t kill the anti-Joyce, the anti-Joyce is killing Becky.
I didn’t expect it to happen literally the next strip either.
Bets on whether they were already standing in the doorway last strip.
I want to know if they were there to witness the Joyce swearing part.
It’s a good thing vinyl has made a comeback. Be a shame if none of these kids could recognize the sound they all just heard in their heads as a record scratch.
Ah but do college freshmen have the kind of money to get into vinyl?
Some of these freshman might. Most of them are casually walking around with Switches which are 250$ systems. I couldn’t afford that in college.
My now-husband gave my brother a lift home once, when he was a student. When he came home:
“I’m confused, you describe your brother as permanently poor. But he has a huge TV and -”
Nodding slowly, “Why do you think he’s poor? He buys expensive shiny things he wants then ends up eating tinned tomato-based foods on toast for a week or so straight because he spent all his money on shiny things.”
This is, I hasten to add, my big brother… 😅
This is a very, very common situation and it lead to reactionary pundits’ talk point of “you claim these people are poor, but they have fridges and TVs and smartphones!” as if that was some incredible gotcha that negated all the wealth inequalities issues.
Yes, we have an incredibly consumerist society that encourages buying stuff, even when it results in having to eat discount noodles for month or having to fall in the clutches of loansharks. That’s not the same thing as prosperity.
plus they all say “flatscreen TVs” as opposed to what other kind that’s been manufactured in the last decade?
Yeah, I’d say if one consciously makes the choice to eat very cheap food for a month because they want to afford the same fun tech everybody else has, and that’s a fair tradeoff to them, why not? that’s just called budgeting.
ofc some people do just make bad choices, but sometimes there’s not a lot of good choices to be made.
and everyone else who’s got all that shiny tech? eating the same cheap foods and playing ‘balance the rent and the overdraft’ games. We saw it all the time in the Army-get a guy who brings home three to six hundred bucks a month with a thousand dollar barracks tech habit, a new car he’s paying 26% interest on and he eats in the chow hall and has to get permission for a second job when in garrison to make his bills. They let it happen because it’s a way to keep him re-upping for another tour.
I imagine for college kids without prior service, living on pell grants and mommy’s credit card is pretty much the same way. (Note: this isn’t everyone in either example, but it IS common to see a $500 dollar car with a $2500 stereo in enilisted parking, and same for college student lots.) In both instances, the binge and waste period gives way to ‘holy shit I can’t do this!’ which in most people leads to eventually controlling your spending and learning to budget, instead of going with the hot-new-thing as fast as you can and damn the consequences.
but then, we still have all those student loans going into default, so maybe some people don’t learn so quickly from experience?
Many college freshmen collect vinyl records. Who needs anything more expensive to eat than ramen when you can buy more vinyl. Abandon necessities, return to vinyl.
I spose I had underestimated the ability of students to sacrifice basic necessities in the name of [whatever they’re into].
I myself was wearing shoes until I literally walked through the soles, but I had an excellent DVD collection.
There is at least one person in their dorms with a vinyl collection, especially since they’re in the anti-social headcase music major dorms
I mean most of my vinyls are like 15-30$ bucks so, not hard? Also the vinyl scratch sound effect was still massively in use after vinyls fell off, so…
You kids calling them “vinyls” make me feel like I’m going through the aging sequence in Saving Private Ryan.
When I was in college, nobody made new ones except for DJs, because they were just seen as old junk. I remember finding dozens of classics at the thrift stores, two for a dollar. Now those same bins are just full of calypso, Christmas compilations, and Mitch Miller sing-alongs for $4 each. It’s ludicrous!
Oooooooh SHIT!!!!
WELP. time for some random friggin bullshit to enter your life, yet again, Joyce.
Or possibly a life lesson. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.
You know, I was gonna say a thing, but I ain’t doin better than the alt text already did, so peace out yall – see ya tomorrow.
Joe’s shirt is finally pointing to people and it doesn’t fully apply
Eh it applies well enough.
Liz and Joyce are saying nothing Walky wouldn’t, and Joyce is A. getting caught up in the heat of the moment and B. maybe the person most entitled in the entire universe to say these things.
I am a bit on the fence. I absolutely agree that she has a right to say it, but she waited so long to tell Becky that she fell into the “You weren’t supposed to hear that” trope. 🙁
‘guy’ is used casually (if insensitively) to refer to both guys and gals. “hey guys!” So the shirt is still maybe generally right. I mean… It is pointing right. Right?
As much as I hate that, I was actually letting it go in this case. Good point that there may be someone further along that plane that the arrow could be pointing to that we just don’t see.
This greeting was used by girls in multiple girl-only spaces while I’ve been in. Which makes it very hard for me to find it insensitive since it’s what a lot of women find most comfortable in referring to themselves and their female peers.
Please don’t use some girls’ comfort to invalidate others’ discomfort.
Here’s the take right – the shirt is actually pointing at Joe, you just have to follow the arrow right the way around the world.
went so far down the rabbit hole that he came out the other side, eh??
…oh, dear. We are in trouble, aren’t we.
DAMN YOU WILLIS
This was the worst way for Becky to find out Joyce is an atheist now. 🙁 Damn you Willis! 😭
I guess there is not way to make it easy, saddly…
In other moments, this revelation should be painful.
We all knew it was coming and yet I had somehow hoped she would manage to fuck it up less than this.
Here’s some more friggin’ random bullshit, Joyce. See if you can learn life lesson.
Oof
Definitely oof
Undeniably oof
Oaf
Sometimes change comes at you
like a broadside accident
There is chaos to the order
Random things you can’t prevent–Joni Mitchell (with help from Michael McDonald and Thomas Dolby)
So I can look it up on YTM what is the title of that song?
Good Friends
See you’d think the timing would be too convenient but today I walked to the bathroom, turned around going “the phone is going to ring as soon as I sit down”, walked back in thinking that was really stupid and trying to apply a fictional narrative an occasional real life coincidence and then the fucking thing went off.
Joe: Uh…Joyce?
Joyce: Not now Joe I’m insulting God.
Joe: Um…
Sarah: Shut up Joe. I’ll get the bat.
Joe: *just kinda shrugs?*
Joyce isn’t even insulting God in that last bit, she’s moved into existential nihilism.
In the worst way possible
and specifically mocking the way Becky healed
Didn’t even realize that, but yup.
Ooooh, I hadn’t picked up on that either, but oof, ouch, yep…
I’ve been tempted to get on the patreon to see the next strip before but boy howdy is the temptation at its peak today!
Oh geez I’ve been thinking about it and you have just made a very persuasive argument for it. Although if I do I’ll probably just find out that tomorrow’s strip cuts back to sal and danny or some other evil Willis thing.
I wouldn’t put it past Willis tbh.
Whelp
Becky’s going to break.
Uh-oh. 🙁
Thank you, Tarnagh. You’ve said the only thing there is to say.
We get it, Liz, you’re an edgelord. Can you please develop a personality now?
Okay look I’m not saying this comment is invalid
I’m just saying Alucard made a crucifix out of his crashed jet entirely for style points while he sailed his aircraft carrier up the river Thames so he could fight Nazis and Papal knights
…dammit, now I need to go rewatch all of Hellsing Ultimate Abridged all over again.
“Ninja Catholic suicide bombers. What a fun day!”
I wanna like this comment so damn much.
I wouldn’t get rid of God just yet.
I get the feeling you’re going to need someone to pray to in a minute.
To curse, mostly.
But that’s what Wilis is for.
Damn my failing eyesight. I thought I had too many ls so I removed one and this happens.
It doesn’t look like Becky was in the middle of opening the door, so why wrrr they playing video games with the door open?
Cuz college. Most of my dorm left the door open unless you were sleeping/getting dressed.
I seems to have been open all along, unless they closed it since this strip.
Also I feel like leaving the door open so passers by can see that 3 girls are in his room is the kind of soft brag Joe would quietly be into. He’s not outright saying he’s a stud but if you wanted to assume he was popular with the ladies he wouldn’t stop you.
Three girls playing video games and not having an orgy? Hell no, Sarah opened the door in order to underline evidence that nobody was fucking in this room no way no how.
Why are they even in the men’s wing? It’s not as though either Sarah or Joyce would have left a message on their whiteboard saying “gone to hang with Joe”.
They also just left Walky. And the only other men they know in that wing are Jacob and Ethan, who are both currently MIA.
They are in the men’s wing because Joyce promised Liz an introduction to her friends and she wasn’t willing to go shitty shit shit etc in front of Dorothy and Becky, but was perfectly willing to do it in front of Joe.
I think they mean “why are Dorothy and Becky looking for Joyce in the men’s wing?”
Thank you for clarifying that Minibit! Agemegos’s question makes more sense to me now.
Maybe they asked one of the women from the floor who said “i think i saw them somewhere in the men’s section earlier”?
Or maybe it was through elimination… They left their winter coats in Joyce’s room (so they couldn’t be outside) and they weren’t in the women’s area or common area… Leaving the men’s section.
Yup, and that’s been bothering me, as well. It only makes sense as a means of forwarding the narrative (because without finding Joyce and company, drama cannot happen), but there is no reason for the Dorothy/Becky to know where Joyce is, when 1) she’s literally hiding from them, 2) they did not know that she was even skipping class, and 3) nobody outside of Joe’s room knows where they went.
1. Playing games and talking loudly with the door open is not hiding very well. Joyce isn’t hiding from Becky and Dorothy. She just expected them to be in class. She’s taking advantage of the assumption they’d be busy to present a different version of herself to Liz.
2. Lucy the blabbermouth told Dorothy and Becky Joyce skipped and why.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/shallowgrave/
3. Joe’s door is wide open. Perhaps it always was. There are admittedly maybe a few details you could use to milk the reveal of this like Becky and Dorothy running around the halls for a strip or two, but this was inevitable as soon as they decided to skip class and track down Joyce. There’s only a few places she could be on campus following logical trains of thought.
It’s not clear how it took them to get here. They easily could’ve checked a dozen other places first, especially if those places are all dorm rooms. And where else would Joyce go? She’s not at Dorothy’s or Becky’s, obviously. Ethan’s gone. Jacob’s unavailable. Amber doesn’t socialize.
Joe/Danny’s room isn’t a hard deduction. The main other option is getting food or going shopping, and they may have decided that would be the second place they’d look.
Especially when “checking” is basically just walking down the hall.
Joyce still hasn’t actually turned and looked.
I wonder if she’ll keep going.
We’ll get Becky’s response in about five more strips.
This is all moving a lot faster than I expected though. So I dunno.
No, no, we’re cutting back to Sal and what’s’isname.
So two possible outcomes when Joyce knows Becky us in the room:
1. Apologies, backpedal, and Becky is still shattered.
2. Joyce doubles down in her feelings of being betrayed by religion and her bitterness, and Becky is extra shattered.
It’ll be the first one, I’m almost certain.
Personally I’m betting on a failed attempt at 1., followed by 2.
I think you’re right.
Considering this is as close as they got to this conversation so far (and it was even before the kidnapping), it’s overdue.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-10/01-birthday-pursuit/beeessin/
And IMO, that strip is exactly why Joyce hasn’t confided any of this to Becky. The LAST time she expressed anger/upset/bitterness, Becky’s reaction was Shades of ‘how dare you’ and ‘this is Not Allowed’.
If I were Joyce I wouldn’t confide either. My relationship with Becky would become the relationship Jocelyne has with her parents: placidly conforming with what they want to their faces, then living her real life as soon as they’re gone. Joyce is already a fair but down this road w/r/t Becky.
This may hurt, but if Becky doesn’t completely shatter what’s left of her relationship with Joyce in the next few minutes, it’ll be a genuinely good thing – Joyce won’t have to be Somewhere Becky Isn’t in order to live her actual life and show her actual feelings.
It is kind of delicious to see the lesbian tell someone that “It’s just a phase.”
Super queer here and can confirm that there arephases to certain things. Hell there’s phases to queerness – Becky seems to have already outgrown some of her baby queer tendencies. Thank Schrodinger’s god.
Joyce IS currently going through a phase that, even if she stays atheist, she will eventually grow out of.
But the initial detoxing is an important part of the process.
Buuuuut it’s also important to be sensitive about where you detox. Considering that Becky is the actual target and Joyce is just collateral damage, it is reasonable for Becky to not have the spoons to deal with Joyce’s shit right now. Especially becauseJoyce is processing in a very different way, and its reasonable for Becky to not be able to handle that right now.
There’s a good model for supporting people through grief – you draw concentric circles so the most impacted (Becky) is at the middle then the farther removed you are the farther out you put them (Joyce in the nextcircle, then Dorothy in the one after that, etc) – support is the only thing that goes inward and you should only dump outwards.
Becky will eventually need to be able to be open to Joyce – but geez it takes more than 6 months to “get over” the level of trauma they’ve both been through.
Don’t forget Liz is still there, so Joyce will be pulled between trying to appease each of them.
Cookies to everyone who called this
….
I feel lots of sympathetic anxiety
Good. That’s all I’ve got, just good.
I’m going to guess Dorothy is going to have to explain some shit to these two.
I don’t know if there’s anything Dorothy can do to salvage this.
Not with Becky’s hands around her throat, anyway.
I don’t think Dorothy is going to be Becky’s focus here
I just have a feeling the atheist her best friend met when she first arrived at this school will in Becky’s mind be partly to blame here.
Don’t forget Dorothy and Bekcy have currently teamed up because they both find Joyce’s current behavior problematic. I think that’ll help a lot. Whatever Dorothy’s faults are – casually skipping class sure ain’t one of them.
Who said salvage? I’m just saying calling them out.
Also did Joe just open the door for them no dinosaur related questions asked? What a shitty doorman. Like if he had even a shred of respect for proper security and had vetted Becky and Dorothy first this drama filled scenario would never have happened. Dina is laughing at him right now…..or more accurately expressing a concise statement of his failure and if he’s lucky offering a brief bit of advice toward improvement.
Nah, in dorm life it’s normal to leave your door open when you’re in.
Oh dear, that sounds terrible. I’d hate having my door open like that the whole time.
Maybe it’s because I’m an introvert but I feel like I would not do that. Door open only if I’m living alone.
Oh no, even if I were to live alone, I’d still close the door to my room.
I just don’t like having my door open.
I guess I’m not normal then, because when I was in college I usually left my door closed and locked while I was in my room. When I was in my dorm room I was probably either studying, playing video games, sleeping, or just doing any number of other things that I really didn’t want random people barging in on me doing.
Anyway, I hope this gets horribly ugly and screaming and full of heat and betrayal and it alters the character dynamics for everyone involved.
I ain’t reading Dumbing of Age for the peaceful conversations where we all accept each other’s feelings at the drop of a hat.
I want blood.
If you have small children and try to explain that you would like to be alone in the bathroom, they will happily close the door in their siblings’ faces and refuse them entry, while completely missing you wanted THEM to get out and give you privacy… Both the toddler and 3.75 year old do it now. The almost 7 year old stalks me slightly less…
I’m very excited for the fallout
Hell yeah! That’s what EYE am here for.
Becky: [ SurprisedPikachu.jpg ]
Once against we learn the central message of protecting yourself is:
LOCK
THE
DOOR
Hear! Hear!
This is the only thing Joyce did wrong here, IMO.
Oh NOOOOOO! I can’t look…
That makes one of us, bub.
I’m somewhere between “I want things to be different / oh no” and “that GIF of Michael Jackson eating popcorn”.
Dun dun DUNNNNNNNN!
Not only does Becky see that she is skipping class to play video games, she heard her yelling about not believing in god anymore, and heard her cursing… I wanted her to find out soon, but this has gotta hurt coming all at once.
Not to be That Guy, but I fail to see what Joyce did wrong in this situation. This is how she actually feels. Liz pulled it out of her, yes, but it’s not like she’s saying random crap just to be part of the in-crowd.
Yes, I know what day it is. That f*cking sucks. But this was always going to happen, regardless of context.
On the one hand, you’re right. Joyce isn’t wrong for her feelings.
But on the other… she’s been lying to Becky for months now through omission/in the for a big secret. And it just got revealed in probably THE worst way possible.
Whether or not Joyce is right won’t diminish the fact that Becky’s feelings are valid and… they’re gonna take a hit.
I mean she’s been lying to Becky because it’s an incredibly difficult conversation to have, which is separate from Joyce mouthing off in private with a like-minded individual and having a good time that Becky walked in on.
Like neither of them are wrong, it’s just feelings. The only way this could go wrong is if Becky tried to stake a claim on Joyce’s feelings, that Joyce has let her down by losing her faith, but even if that’s wrong that’s still something motivated by explosive feelings.
It is wrong that Joyce is playing up her feelings to impress Liz but it isn’t wrong for her to have complicated feelings about religion now and to no longer be able to believe.
However this is very much the worst way to convey them – she’s basically agreed that Becky and people like her are stupid for keeping their faith. Even though I don’t think she actually believes THAT specifically to be true.
I agree that it’s not wrong for Joyce to express how she really feels about religion now. But this is probably one of the worst ways for Becky to find out that Joyce is no longer religious. I’m betting the next few strips with Becky and Joyce in them are gonna be hard to read.
At least some of what she’s been doing the last few strips has been “random crap to be part of the in-crowd” – or to impress Liz at least. Remember “friends with a reward program”? (Liz has pretty clearly been doing the same. Or playing along to see how far Joyce will go.) While she’s already been shown to have lost her faith, this particular religion bashing is likely part of the same performance.
Or are you suggesting that she really does think that still believing in God makes Becky basically a moron?
Joyce is talking about herself.
Becky doesn’t actually factor into it.
That’s fair. Up until Becky walks in of course.
But mostly, I don’t this whole conversation is what Joyce actually feels. She’s performing, even if some bits are real.
Like most things in life, it’s more complicated than that.
Can you honestly tell me that raw anger Joyce is displaying right now isn’t real as shit? Do you think Liz is maybe giving her the first real chance she’s ever had to be right and proper mad at the life she’s lived up until now?
Maybe. There’s certainly some of that.
OTOH, the facial expression and even the words in the second panel don’t seem so much like raw anger. Maybe that last panel is, but we can’t see her face.
And coming on top of complete performative bullshit like the “friends with a reward program” from earlier, it’s hard for me to take this as completely real. Is this really her feelings or is she doing a “this is what I think rebel atheists are like” bit? Or some of both?
I agree with this: a lot of what she’s been saying has been playing to what she thinks Liz wants to hear, while her facial expressions over the last couple strips have conveyed a lot more complexity and uncertainty compared to Liz’s mockery.
I’m not saying that what she’s saying is coming from nothing more than trying to fit in. But as much as this is a release valve for some thoughts that have been genuinely percolating for months, they’re being expressed through an ugly, mean-spirited filter that wasn’t Joyce’s making.
I think it started performative, but once she’s gotten going it became genuine.
Liz has super basic commentary and is making cartoony faces while Joyce’s face is a lot more troubled while she talks about some ridiculous fantasy nonsense she used to believe and then in the last panel she’s outright describing her own thoughts that God made her suffer to teach her lessons.
Like right now “the sky firmament of water” and “a God who loves me” are equally as farcical to Joyce because she thinks it’s all bullshit.
This is all going to turn into Joe’s fault.
It’s okay, he can defuse it by hitting on everyone at once and becoming the universal hate sink.
Is it bad that I’m kind of excited for this? Joyce was never going to get up the courage to tell Becky how she really feels—maybe she’d admit to doubts or interest in another form of Christianity, but shed never cop to these full-blown atheist inclinations. It had to happen this way. And I sincerely do not care enough about Becky to care if it hurts her.
I do wonder, especially because she’s right there and Becky is already an absolute monster toward her, if this will just result in Becky blaming Dorothy for corrupting Joyce. But at least that might argue into the Yale departure, so yay either way.
I don’t think Becky’ll blame Dorothy; I think this is going to pretty seriously station her relationship with Joyce, and potentially Dina as well. There have been a few times bite when Dina and Becky have clearly doddere differed on belief, and add their potential incompatibility and Becky’s torch for Joyce, and I suspect Becky complaining to Donna about this will prove difficult.
But here, I suspect Dorothy will be on Becky’s side. Joyce and Liz are doing the Atheists Are The Only Rational Ones bit, and until recently, Dorothy had a close Christian friend, Catholic grandparents, and in general isn’t down with cruelty or mockery.
Of course it’s not bad, Regina. This is the comic. This is what we’re here for. Shit’s about to go down, and it’s going to be glorious. And painful. Gloriously painful.
I am hyped let’s goooooooo-(hard cut to Walky and whatsername delivering comics to Daisy)
This might knock Joyce out of wack enough for Walky to get the comic gig
Here is my accurate prediction of The Future:
Becky will be absolutely tilted out of her danged mind and she and Joyce will have a falling out for at the very least the rest of this chapter. This is too big a deal brought to light in the absolute worst way for it be resolved within a month or two.
Dorothy isn’t going to let anyone process feelings because she’s too busy trying to solve the problem and tell everyone they need to be respectful and understanding while they’re flailing around on fire.
Liz will have zero tact and insist that Joyce did nothing wrong, which is true, but then start talking smack about Becky as if this is as simple as a game of who’s right and wrong.
Sarah and/or Joe will make pointed commentary to Becky and/or Dorothy that neither of them are Joyce’s closest and most beloved friends and yet, for some reason, Joyce felt more comfortable telling the truth to them than they did to Becky and Dorothy.
Let’s see if I can get a bingo.
Honestly I think the only reason Joyce has let Sarah and Joe know is because they aren’t her closest friends. They aren’t the ones whose opinions matter most – it is easier to brush off their disapproval. While Dorothy is outright her morality compass at times and Becky’s words can cut her more deeply, so telling them is scarier due to their closeness rather than because of a lack of it.
I mean yeah that’s exactly why but I think it goes deeper and into their own problems as people.
Dorothy kind of humiliated Joyce about the glasses. It was necessary, it had to happen, but Dorothy’s still the one who not only dragged Joyce into it, she did so by calmly and rationally explaining that Joyce needed glasses and then gently supported her every step of the way, and then capped it off with “see how much better your life is with glasses, Joyce?”
Which is to say that when Joyce just wanted to be upset about something, for a problem to exist in a state where she can just react and panic at it because it entered her reality right now and she hasn’t even had to time to deal with it, Dorothy swooped in and mommed super hard and forced Joyce to confront it and do her homework and eat her vegetables. Dorothy because she means well by absolutely everyone and especially her dearest friends tries her hardest to be smart and affable all the time, which is to say that Dorothy is a freaky Nice-dispensing Robot incapable of normal human emotion and she’s actually kind of difficult to talk to because it’s always going to be a lecture, and it’s hard to have a problem about this because Dorothy is always right about everything. Normal human problems can’t exist in front of Dorothy without her trying to solve them because Dorothy is absolutely genuinely well-meaning and caring person, especially to Joyce, and, consequently, it makes her kind of unapproachable when you just want to react to a problem’s existence.
I don’t think Joyce talking to Joe about it is as simple as narrative convenience, I think the problem is that Dorothy wouldn’t let Joyce’s fears about her atheism exist. If Joyce said “yeah I’m having complicated feelings and it sucks” Dorothy would immediately launch into a speech filled with gentle and passive kindness about how Joyce is growing up and seeing the world in a new light and it’s all valid and important and she’ll answer any question Joyce has.
And Joyce doesn’t need that right now. Joyce needs to be upset, Joyce needs to be angry, Joyce needs to be confused, because that’s all of what she’s feeling right now, and that’s what Joe did when instead of lionizing or catastrophizing her fear when Joyce learned she is actually just a monkey, Joe just bluntly stated his own feelings (it’s nice not to have pressure of a divide God because we can choose who we are) and then let Joyce panic some more, because Joyce needs to panic right now more than she needs an answer.
I could probably write one of these about Becky too but it’s already too long.
I like long comments!
I think your comment was an insightful analysis of Dorothy and Joyce’s relationship. Discussions of characters’ relationships, emotions and motivations are really interesting to me. Also, it happens quite often that a strip just leaves me confused, but then I read the comment section and … yay, someone explained it! So, if the only thing that’s holding you back from writing a similar analysis for Becky is that you’re afraid people might be disinterested or annoyed, then here’s one person who’d be glad to read it!
Of course, I might be misunderstanding. Maybe the “too long” thing was more about you not wanting to get carried away and spend all day at your computer writing about fictional characters, in which case I don’t want to be all “NO, WRITE MOAR”.
Looks like you got B-57 already,… Don’t put the cap on your marker just yet.
Wait, Sarah isn’t one of Joyce’s closest friends? In what universe?
(The Walkyverse, that’s where. But certainly not this one)
Sarah is close enough that Joyce can tell her things, yeah.
But I don’t think it’s as simple as “Joyce likes Sarah but not as much, therefore it’s fine if Sarah rejected her”, it’s that Joyce fears the truth coming out in front of Becky and Dorothy not just for how much their judgment means to her, but for how Joyce can make a reasonable guess as to how’d they act when the truth came out.
Sarah is a close friend but she is not one of the closest in the way that Dorothy and Becky are where disapproval would incite fear in her. Her relationship with Sarah is more sibling-like where even if she disapproves, the care will still remain and she can trust that to still be the case. She is close enough to open up to a lot and feel secure, but not so close and held in such high regard that she’s circled around to not wanting to burden her with difficulties.
OOF. Well if that ain’t a way to break the ice.
Oh hi, other shoe, I was wondering when you’d drop in
Shoes are raining down everywhere!
Joyce just put a whole shoe store in her mouth.
Just Kirby’d the whole damn Journeys.
She’s working through some stuff.
Oh God Damn It.
Was that door always open? I can’t remember if Joe ever closed it after the girls burst inside.
I can’t figure if it’d be better if it was closed and Joe just now let them in because he wasn’t listening to their conversation.
Everyone is overlooking that this is *good* news.
Becky was concerned that Liz was trying to supplant her as Joyce’s “Super Jesusy Friend.”
No longer a concern.
Of course, now we need to decide if Liz and Dorothy have to fight a duel over who is Joyce’s Atheist Friend, or if the position can be divided into Jerk Atheist Friend and Polite Atheist Friend.
Yeah, people keep forgetting that the DoA-related monkey paw has LOTS of fingers.
So it IS a mutated monkey’s paw.
As an alternative, it has the normal five fingers, but the middle one never curls and is reusable.
I don not think Dorothy will be bothered. She is very well adjusted and probably won’t care if Joyce has other atheist friends. (And it is not like Dorothy wascactively trying to discourage Joyce from believing in god. She was an atheist but was accepting joyce for who she was, even when she was in her fundamentalist phase)
i was betting on Becky arriving to the scene of Liz making out with Joyce, but this is actually better 🙂 (…but that can still happen… right? …right?)
I hope. I mean… let us pray.
Hey, with any luck this will be the catalyst for Becky to finally admit she’s over religion, too and had just been going through the motions to spare *Joyce’s* feelings.
It could happen!
I doubt that
Oh, I know. That’s the best-case scenario, so of course it won’t happen. 😉
OH GOODY
WE GET TO HAVE THIS CONVERSATION NOW
I’ll get the popcorn!
Maybe now that Dorothy knows, Joyce will realize Liz is not actually a good influence (if the “you feel the need to lie around her” and “she implied you were a moron your entire life through last semester” aren’t good enough evidence).
So, who talks next? I’m guessing Joe to get Joyce’s attention, and then many panels of Becky!
I don’t think Liz is necessarily a bad influence (yet). It’s unfortunate that they were overheard, but Joyce has been intentionally avoiding saying this kind of stuff around folks it might hurt. The frustration she and Liz share is that probably they feel like they were a moron their entire lives before they became apostates. And while Dorothy can help her out, she hasn’t experienced that.
It’s definitely A Thing. Not universal, what is, but it’s a thing.
If you look back at the rest of what they’ve been bonding over, I think she qualifies. What Becky walked in on might just be what Joyce has avoided saying around folks it might hurt, but the boasting about sex with Joe and how wild she generally is doesn’t really fit the same category.
As expected. I hope Becky doesn’t run off and prolong her and Joyce’s impending conversation.
*prolong the time until her and..
i am suddenly sad
It’s going to get worse before it gets better
I’m not sure if this happened on purpose or they just showed up looking for joyce but I support it
Lookit me I’m Mr Meeseeks!
Okay, I’m thinking that this is where some very painful conversations happen.
Me: Oh no, oh no, oh nonononono
Also me: Oh yes!
Not pretty when people get into a dark side contest.
That sums it up pretty well.
Joe’s arrow is finally pointing to someone.
So great build-up!
Finally Becky knows her best friend has changed! I wonder if Joyce said that last sentence casually or specifically thinking about Becky. She looks so hurt… Dorothy is surprised too. Dunno if this will be the end of a lifelong friendship, but it looks very possible.
Oof
Like, next level
There is the cat being out of the bag
And then there is a saber-tooth tiger being out of the bag.
Becky might think she’s Joyce’s best friend but Dorothy and Sarah have Joyce’s best interest at heart
Very curious to see what will happen tomorrow. Or will Willis switch to a different scene and make us wait?
Ruh-roh, Sarah’s foreshadowing has come to pass!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/goodenergy/
Sometimes life gives you bullshit, sometimes you manage tomake it yourself just fine!
Good thing there isn’t an audience watching Joyce at every turn and wishing for her to be put in painful situations to learn life lessons
Welp, the abscess is bursted, at least.
The last couple of strips indicates that, right now, the only thing keeping Joyce interacting with Liz is her neurotic certainty that she needs to be part of (and conform with) the social group with the loudest voice.
Well, that could have gone better.
I’m afraid to get a lot of fights.
Tell parents and people I’m not into chistianity anymore is one of them,
Sarah’s retracting? For real?
LOL, I’m sure she saw Becky before anyone.
Clearly this is all Joe’s fault for not guarding the door properly. What kind of host is he?
The dinosaur-based security system has Becky on a permanent whitelist, so she would’ve gotten in anyway.
Okay, I’m going out on a limb here with this prediction….
I think it’s likely that Becky’s not going to confront Joyce. She’ll just walk away and pretend she overheard nothing.
Becky’s been thinking for a while that Joyce has been hiding something. Now she knows what. Becky knows how closets work, (maybe) knows that nuking them from orbit isn’t for everyone. Becky knows that Joyce doesn’t feel ready to confide with her. She might just be happy for Joyce to have an outlet.
…. mind you, I don’t think this is the MOST likely outcome. Likely, but not most likely. Maybe in the top 5?
I’ll admit my heart sank a little when I saw a familiar patch of orange in the blurry public Patreon teaser yesterday, but it also feels like they need to stop kicking this can down the road and just get it out.
I don’t think Becky realizes just how deeply Joyce was affected; their faith was the bedrock of her entire psyche, inflexible and unmoving. Once she saw for herself how reality clashed with what she was told to believe, the whole thing fell apart. Becky was more easily able to reconcile what she experienced because she sees faith by what she feels, not necessarily as a rigid structure like she was told. (That’s not to say Becky hasn’t felt loss either, far from it. Both her parents died and she’s a pariah in their hometown. But that’s another difference in their experiences. There’s nothing tying Becky to that world except for Joyce, but Joyce still has one foot there.)
Becky’s probably going to take the stance she did in Joyce’s ‘Rich Mullins’ dream: “I lost everything and I still believe, how could you throw all that away?!” This will open a rift between them, like there was between Marcie and Sal after the fight at the political rally. I just hope we can see them reconcile eventually. It probably won’t be this chapter, or maybe those strips haven’t even been drawn or written yet, but I hope it’s somewhere on the roadmap.
The form of Joyce’s atheism isn’t going to help. You can see it in Dorothy’s face: “Oh shit, she’s turned into one of those atheists.”
Atheism and nihilism aren’t the same, but it’s probably unsurprising that Joyce has moved towards what her parents think atheism is (lack of a higher moral authority = morality doesn’t exist). I don’t have any statistics, but I suspect that it’s particularly common, at least as a phase, among those who lose their faith as opposed to just never have any. Which is probably why certain types of people of faith can’t grasp the concept of atheists not being miserable.
Okay but if there’s anyone who’s entitled to be really annoying about it, it’s someone who has been involved in more than one car chase because of a crazy Christian person.
Like we haven’t delved into it that much, but this is basically the first time Joyce has had the chance to get actually angry about her upbringing now that she’s not a Christian anymore. What is she supposed to say?
Also, remember the preacher’s son Joyce met?
I think she’s gonna be angry, but Classic Becky style, is gonna walk up, make jokes, and poorly hide the fact she’s hurt with vicious humour.
Now quick, Joyce! Say “Shit shit shitty shit shit” in front of Dorothy so you get a double “What the hell happened to you??” award from BOTH your friends for maximum awkwardness. 😀
FINALLY, this storyline gets entertaining. If I’m not getting Danny and Sal being sweet at each other, I best be seeing BLOOD!
Yeah I’m glad that Joyce’s try-hard attempts at looking like an edgelord will be interrupted. Her dialogue since Liz appeared has been maximum cringe.
Does anyone in this universe know how to close doors?
Joe has three girls in his room. Closing his door and making the going ons a mystery is probably a bad idea.
When I was in residence, it was pretty common to leave your door open when you were in your room.
It’s Joe’s door. Shutting it without his approval would be rude. (Or Danny’s, but Dan is distracted at the moment.)
When he marries Sal, part of Danny’s vows is going to include the fact that she’s the reason he’s not in his room suffering through this. I mean, if ever there as dowry…
This could make for some entertaining Becky comeuppance. After all, Joyce has just been outed as an atheist the same way Becky was outed as a lesbian (unlocked door). Becky, meanwhile, is the one who told Joyce that her crankiness about religion was just a phase she needed to grow out of.
Let’s see if she doubles down on her bad role models and accuses Joyce of being corrupted by Dorothy, and if Joyce has the stomach to point out that that’s how Kaitlyn (was that her name?) got out of being expelled!
Joyce has hurt Becky before. This time will be worse
Joyce has never hurt Becky and constantly does everything in her power to do right by her in every factor possible.
This is the first time in the entire run of the comic Joyce has caused her even the slightest grief, and even this is unintentional.
There was rejecting her kiss, coming out as straight (so to speak), and causing her to run off, but she made up for that pretty quickly. There are other low-level things, mostly homophobic, that may never have risen to the level of “hurt” but nevertheless were not great, and she’s mentioned being worried about things she may have said regarding Becky’s mom in the past, which we may not have seen but which she may not be wrong to be worried about.
Plus she keeps hanging around with that boring atheist nerd.
I mean I get your point but all that and in particular the whole “not being a lesbian and in love with Becky as much as she is with Joyce” isn’t really stuff Joyce can help. Like, that isn’t a thing Joyce has to make up for.
Becky has been hurt by Joyce. Joyce has never hurt Becky.
It’s weird how both of these things are true.
Also unintentional, but we literally just had Joyce realizing she probably said hurtful things regarding Becky’s mom’s death
Like I’ll grant you that Joyce has never intentionally hurt Becky, but most people generally don’t intend to hurt the people that they do hurt, especially when those people are close friends
Okay but that’s like saying Dina is responsible for Becky being hurt because she’s a sexual tyrannosaurus who constantly imparts lust in Becky’s innocent loins that she’s unequipped to deal with.
What? Who said anything about responsibility?
There does not need to be a responsible party for someone to be hurt. Like….I can’t believe this even needs to be said. Just going through a growth spurt should be enough to have taught someone that lesson, between all the random leg cramps and the stubbed toes, there’s a lot of hurt just in the process of getting taller. Are you saying that someone is responsible for that? Or are you saying that the “hurt” I speak of isn’t real “hurt”?
All is proceeding in accordance with Mike’s plan.
There’s a lot of things I can’t believe were said but most of them are in that text talking about literal growing pains in a conversation about Joyce causing pain to Becky.
Uhh, you’re the one that’s continuously bringing completely unrelated hypotheticals up. What I initially said was not even remotely analogous to saying “Dina is responsible for Becky being hurt” so don’t you go acting like I’m the crazy one here.
Unless that was a response to someone else in which case the fault is with this comment program not making reply chains very clear.
Y’all it doesn’t matter if Joyce meant to hurt Becky; of course she never meant to hurt her dear friend. Even though it was short-lived, she felt responsible for hurting her at the time.
Surely there’s a level of nuance where not being a lesbian and in love with your childhood friend who is in love with you shouldn’t count for “hurting someone” in anything but its broadest, most surface level descriptors.
Yes – mostly that Joyce is a caring person who was raised in a guilt-o-genic environment and ruminates over when she thinks she was the proximate occasion of someone’s pain. It’s worse when it was someone she really cared about.
Not like she walked up and hit her with a stick, obvs.
The question remains: are any of them Sandra Dee?
None of them married Bobby, so…
This is going to end well.
Wow that was pretty much the worst possible thing she could say in front of Becky.
Oh, not at all.
What if she also said “but I think it’s finally made me work up the nerve to ask Dorothy out.”
Oh, shit…
After all Becky has lost, she’s about to lose (or become aware of the loss) of her best link to Joyce. Will they take divergent paths, Becky with a robust belief in God and Joyce with her shattered faith. DYW is good at portraying teens who become atheists when their brittle evangelical faith cracks. Hope he is just as good at those -like Becky-who remain believers.
Wonder if Becky will ramp up her relationship with Dina, or decrease it. She wouldn’t be hung up on Joyce anymore, right?
Chef’s kiss. As always, damn you Willis, but with appreciation.
I wonder if one of the side effects of these events will be Becky actually going through with premarital hanky panky with Dina.
Seeing her best friend dumping on god might make becky think “i have lost a fellow believer… I might as well give up some of my godly ways too”
That would be pretty much the worst possible reason, though.
Looks like the perfect time to switch to the roller derby / malaya storyline tomorrow!
No derby for a while
Don’t forget that Liz is still there, so Joyce will be torn between appeasing them both.
Like Sophie’s choice, but massively entertaining whatever the pick is instead.
Sora is in Smash now what the fuck
SORAAAAAAA!!!!!
TAFFY HAPPY
SORA
koboreochita futatsu no hoshi gaSakurai likes his sword dudes I guess
It’s a big key, totally different.
Also he looks so much cooler and better and more fun than friggin’ Byleth and Pyra.
Will Joe save this mess by convincing Becky it was the edibles’ fault? Or will he just follow that nice guy arrow on his shirt until he’s out of earshot?
That might be a tough sell, considering there weren’t any edibles.
Oh hai consequences, nice to see you!
I see Joe starting to move in the only direction which at this juncture can be called “correct”. Which is away, away.
Tomorrow i expect to see him climb out of the comic and seek refuge behind the Twitter box.
Very meta given Joyce’s whole life is designed by Sky Willis
I feel like Liz is just baiting her, on purpose.
Most atheists don’t sit around making fun of Christianity, we have better stuff to do.
What about new atheists who are mad about their Christian past? Liz and Joyce both fit that bill.
I personally think the behavior is reminiscent of someone who is somewhat fresh out of religion (say a year or so). I’ve had a few people in my life who would consistently spend their time debunking religion socially in what retroactively feels like them trying to dissipate the dissonance in their head as they’re only just rebuilding their worldviews.
Of course anecdotal yada yada, but I do have one close friend who in university was constantly talking like Liz but has since mellowed out, and I know he grew up religiously
It’s normal. For a little while after you leave god belief, you look back and realize how much you invested in what seems like a deliberate lie, and you feel stupid, you feel cheated, and you’re hurt and angry. The degree of hurt is a direct function of how much you invested and what else you feel you could have been doing instead.
I mean it’s quite similar to queer people who have recently come out of the closet being unable to talk about literally anything other than the fact that they are super duper gay gay gay and being HYPER obnoxious about it. You know. Like Becky did?
You’ve been trapped alone in your head about a thing for SO LONG that when you finally feel able to talk about it out loud, it’s like all you actually CAN talk about, you have to just get it the fuck out of your system instead of letting it sit there and fester inside you forever.
Wow, this is pretty much my mental picture of what was going to happen when I saw this storyline develop. Now I can’t wait to see how this plays out. Is Becky going to quietly leave, or remain standing there as Joyce inserts more footwear into her vocal system.
I tried “Lookit me! I believe in God! I think” in Google, and the autocompletion brought me back all kind of sentences containing “God hates me”. Maybe the algorithm is trying to tell me something.
Tag yourself, I’m Dorothy
I’m also Dorothy.
I’m Dorothy and so’s my wife!
Any time a comic prompts me to whisper “shit” out loud, that’s a sign of pretty good writing
And the walls kept tumbling down
This was going to happen eventually.
Is that a Veggie Tales reference? wait no, I’m thinking of a choir hymn about Jericho 😛
I think it’s a reference to the song Pompeii.
^
it’s funny how Joyce has been looking increasingly uncomfortable herself this whole time…even if she didn’t know Becky was there
I honestly don’t get how Becky is still religious after all the shit she went through. Like, girl, if there’s a god then it’s clear he gives absolutely zero fucks about you, so why bother worshiping him?
How do you get rescued from homelessness by your best friend and a slew of people who all risk punishment by sheltering you at their university, get saved from a horrible fate by an actual superhero in a car chase, and start smooching a rad dino lady and not believe that there is a higher power in your corner?
Credit your survival and success to the help of the friends and loved ones that helped you along?
I agree that it doesn’t strain credulity for Becky to still be religious, but I can absolutely see someone going through similiar circumstances and ending up an atheist
Those aren’t bean bags, those are just their butts that have been out of frame for 10 years
Her smile and optimism: gone.