That’s not a crack ship, it’s fairly reasonable. Yes, they’re theoretically straight, but that’s the only issue. They like each other, spend a lot of time together, are a lot of fun when they share a scene…they’re even roommates. If there was more fanfic for this comic, there’d absolutely be a cadre of Joyce/Sarah shippers in the corner getting occasional flack from the more popular side of things.
I knew a guy like this in college. I felt kind of bad for him.
You can have enjoyable sex without sexual attraction, though, so it can still work out just probably with a strong side of porn and sex toys to fulfill that fantasy.
I kind of wonder if this ties into the “bro” culture. All of your emotional connections are with your male friends and you go out with them looking to pick up women for sex, but not really relationships.
Joyce has also mentioned that growing up with Becky, a closeted lesbian who was in love with her, as her best friend may have coloured her view on how to be friends with other women.
Joyce has explicitly said that she doesn’t know where Jordan is or what he does, but she also said that her parents said they’d tell her when she’s older.
Although considering Joyce’s parents, they might consider anything from “plays Dungeons and Dragons” to “once voted Democrat” to be worthy of shame and ostracism, and something Joyce shouldn’t be told about.
Carol, anyway. Wonder if Hank would spill now that he’s more chill.
Becky was nearly shot for being a lesbian by her own father and Carol supported her daughter being kidnapped and having a loaded gun pointed at her for supporting a lesbian. So honestly run out of town for voting wrong doesn’t feel that farfetched.
When was this? I remember Jordan being mentioned, something along the lines of “he’s too Jordan to come for family weekend,” but I don’t recall any other snippet of backstory.
I’m sorry. I hope at least he recognises you as somebody who cares for him and who seems familiar even if it’s in a “you look like my [other relative]” sort of way 😔
That’s tough, mr D. If memory is lost, the only thing you can hope to achieve is to brighten their day and I think you’re right on doing that. Stay strong, you may not notice it that clearly every time, but you are doing something great and good.
Who is worst member of the Brown family? We now know there’s an aunt and at least one alive grandparent close enough for Joyce to send a copy of her strip to. I’m gonna say John. Sure Carol would be the easy winner but John is younger and apparently embezzles church donations to buy cars. Overall worse longterm impact to me.
Eh, I find banal evil can often be more dangerous than the more extreme versions. There’s a great MLK quote that’s something along the lines of, “The greatest enemy to progress isn’t the KKK or the White Citizens’ Councils, but the white liberals who demand that progress only come at the proper time, in the proper way.” (Sorry, it’s late and I can’t be bothered to look up the exact quote.) Similarly, the cult leaders and the abusers may seem like the worst that organized religion has to offer, but all told they’re probably doing less damage than the run-of-the-mill grifters and scam artists. (Not that those are mutually exclusive, mind you.)
I get what you’re saying, but I want to draw a line between John’s bamal church had and Carol’s exemplary church evil. John skimming from the donations is obviously a bad thing but it’s almost expected for big churches (and I’m not entirely convinced he embezzled; I suspect from what Jocelyn said that the car may have been purchased for him by the church). Carol helped pay bail for and then made excuses for a kidnapper who was an accessory to murder. Thats pretty damn bad.
I’m not saying John is good or okay or whatever. But Carol seems to go out of her way to be the worst possible type of “Christian” .
Yeah, I’m not convinced by “embezzled” either. I mean, it ould be, but that feels a bit too much like making John an individually terrible person, as opposed to a hypocrite joining a hypocritical organization because they’d buy him a nice car. If Jocelyn was (accurately) accusing him of embezzling, that might make his refusing to give her a ride understandable, but that would be out of guilt. It felt a lot more like Jocelyn was pointing out the overall hypocrisy of the church. You can argue that the church embezzled the donations, in that the donors presumably assume that all their donations are going towards charity, and the church convinces itself that nice cars are just a necessary thing, for various reasons, and thus charitable in their own right, but suggesting that John does it on his own feels like less of an indictment of the whole organization. It’s the “just a few bad apples” argument. It seems pretty clear that John joined a church that Carol would approve of; we know that that church is rotten all around. Suggesting John is just a dishonest member is a bit too close to letting the rest off for comfort.
“Embezzle” admittedly might be a leading term since I didn’t 100% remember the strip, but I still think it implies a general disingenuine aspect of John we haven’t quite seen. Definitely comes off as a privileged guy using faith as a grift/enablement of his lifestyle that’s all too common and dangerous in organized faith. But maybe I’m wrong. I do think he has more potential than Carol to do horrible things than her upper middle aged divorcee stay at home mom status does.
Jocelyne says the church bought the Mustang for him, so it’s probably a kickback for the “mission work” he does overseas rather than him skimming off the top. Just your run-of-the-mill American fundagelical grift, nothing to see here!
Hey thanks! I didn’t feel like archive diving to find this and I guess it does imply more of the churches wrongdoing than his. But I actually think he comes off even worse, what with casually dismissing lgbt rights in front of his trans sister, while talking about Joyce and Becky. “Life is hard” I guess it’s too hard for gay people to exist according to John. Becky is so entitled. College did that!
John sometimes reminds me of the televangelist in Good Omens, where the narration says something along the lines of he’s not exactly a hypocrite, because he really does spend most of the money on what he thinks God wants him to do.
Carol wasn’t alone in helping pay bail though. That was a church effort. We didn’t see John, but that certainly doesn’t mean he would have objected. Given his reaction to Joyce at the lunch, I’d be surprised if he would have.
Sarah talks about how they’re going to have to set bail. And it sounds like the court was trying to set an impossibly high bail, but then mob money made it possible.
At the time of the earlier comic posting I think someone pointed out that by law, judges in Indiana HAVE to allow bail for all crimes except for murder.
The best they can do is set bail to be really high (which obviously failed here)
Look I’m open to replacing the US constitution with something less scummy, but if you’re going to operate within that framework, there’s a *reason* you can’t require excessive bail.
Eighth amendment:
Excessive bail shall not be required nor excessive fines imposed,
nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Iunno. In my mind, “Vocally/Fiscally supports someone that repeatedly tried to abduct their child so they could ‘shelter’ the sexual deviancy out of them” is quite a bit worse than embezzlement.
Another thing I’ve thought of is that even if we accept the premise that those who allow evil or tacitly support it are more evil than those who actively do it, that still doesn’t mean John is the worst Brown. Hank would be.
Hank has spent decades married to Carol and failed to prevent her from abetting evil when it mattered. He agreed with and assisted in raising their children in ways that left them with trauma. He has probably done the least direct bad on screen of any member of that church, with the exceptions of Joyce and Becky, but he did not oppose nearly enough of the others’ actions. If we’re accepting banal evil as more damaging, Hank helped set much of the family’s evil into motion and then did almost nothing to stop it. Divorcing Carol and opposing her after the kidnapping is too little too late to truly mitigate that.
Hey, remember when Hank was upset that Joyce took the family car to get herself and Becky out of a house where a discussion about how terrible Becky was for being lesbian was undergoing? Good times, good times.
Hank is making an effort to change because he got out of the loop long enough to realize the loop was fucky and destroying his daughter, and then his wife bailed out the guy who almost shot her in the face. None of this changes that Hank was also as willing and complicit in every single bad thing that went on in the Brown household because he got indoctrinated super hard like every fundie does. Carol is the same, Carol just didn’t recognize the same weight Hank did when Joyce defied them, and so she remained in the loop until she utterly ruined her relationship with Joyce.
Hank wants to be a good person now, that’s because he wasn’t one prior.
Well, that’s cause it’s a dumb premise if taken literally.
Where it does work is the larger societal context, where there are generally a lot more of the banal evil types and their tacit support is necessary. That doesn’t mean that even MLK thought the average white liberal was worse individually than a KKK member, just that the cumulative effect was more of a problem.
And Hank’s a different case anyway, because Hank has changed. Old Hank was (nearly?) as bad as Carol, but he’s shifted to being much more supportive. That’s not quite the same as just a banal liberal. More someone who’d been in the KKK, but got outraged and switched to working for desegregation.
Like, nope. Carol is the worst one we know about, by far. It’s not even a contest.
Also, John isn’t embezzling. He didn’t skim funds to buy the car. It’s just that the Brown’s church thinks getting him a new car is a worthy way to spend the money. Shit, I’d have MORE respect for John if he WERE in the church to embezzle funds instead of being a true believer.
Of course, he’s likely in the church, doing that work, because he gets the fancy car out of it. He’s not skimming from the church. The purpose of the church is skimming from the populace for the leaders.
John doesn’t embezzle. The church, arguably, embezzles from itself but I think that’s fairly legal.
Carol hands down – she enabled a man who pointed a loaded gun ather daughter to then kidnap her daughter and a bunch of other people and defended this action to the hilt.
One of these days I will figure out a way to play those old pre-Roomies! “Walkerton” games on modern hardware.
I did find some playthrough videos of them on YouTube, if nothing else, on a channel called Ragey0. One of said games gives God a “Special Thanx” credit, and given everything Willis has written since then I’m not sure if that’s hilarious, depressing, or both.
I am just now fully appreciating that it’s quite likely that Joyce’s church, and almost certainly her mother, believes the pain of menstruation to be punishment for sins. Which, yikes, and which, also, Joyce, this is not standard, please see a medical professional about it. Get some relief and make sure you’re essentially okay.
Every day someone asks this and every day someone else answers. It has not been explicitly stated, but there’s an implication of severe severe period effects.
If it happens at random between two weeks and three months apart, it tends to be more painful than if it happens… more regularly >.> Honestly, I’m impressed she managed to crawl all the way to the newspaper stand. I take prescription-level pain meds and still consider it a quest to get to the toilet, the first couple of days. :/
Seems to be implied menstrual pain. In which case she might need to be checked for endometriosis or something, because cramps aren’t supposed to be that painful.
Sadly not uncommon for them to be even without anything physically wrong. I needed prescription pain meds to get through periods and there’s nothing wrong with my reproductive organs.
I’ve found a supplement that’s a blend of herbs that have been researched and found helpful and vitamins that have been researched and found helpful and that’s made a big difference.
Sarah was disintegrated and replaced with a clone overnight but a glitch in the development led to that clone being capable of the slightest human decency without griping about it first.
(incidentally, this is the final plot twist of my favourite book)
Sarah did gripe about this first when Joyce first got the gig. She hadn’t said a single positive thing about the comic project until now, so she’s already done more than enough griping about it to show some uncomplicated support and kindness without tipping the scales too far
Sarah is being the least Sarah possible at the moment right after she threw her hands up and went “damn I did the same thing I always did and it didn’t work, I guess it’s because I suck and you shouldn’t look up to me” and it is terrifying me.
Remember it was established that Joyce and Sarah share a finite amount of happiness so when Joyce is miserable Sarah is elated? Well Joyce is in fucking agony so pretty damn miserable. We’re lucky she got a high off her comic or else Sarah would be doing a Disney Princess Song.
This seems to be a problem some comic artists face. Your pacing is fine, but something about reading your own work makes you think you need more panels. Probably picturing a whole range of fun faces and poses that you could be drawing for some of those sentences? That’s usually what it is when it happens to me. But don’t worry, to the outside observer the pacing isn’t a problem and everything is communicated that needs to be communicated.
While a part of me is distracted by Jordan lore I’m almost surprised Joyce is cool with her family knowing about her soon to be atheist proclaimed comic. Granted her first strip is no indication of this theme but like if they keep up with it…as some supportive family members will.. can outsiders get a college comic easily? Sarah did say it was online but would that be restricted to an intranet rather than internet presence?
Also wondering if aunt and grandpa are dads side or mums. Probably dads but. It would be interesting if say the aunt Joyce likes was Carol’s sister? Kind of like how Joyce and her siblings diverge.
Also John probably blames Joyce for his parents divorce doesn’t he? He’s that kind of ass.
Like, dang, there’s a lot of little characterization details here WRT Joyce’s family dynamic. I think this is the first time her aunt’s been mentioned? Not really much information we can extract from that, beyond “she exists” and “Joyce has a good relationship with her,” and it’s not clear if she’s Hank’s sister or Carol’s. And I think it was already established that Joyce’s grandpa has Alzheimer’s.
But it’s the way she talks about her immediate family (Hank aside) that’s just super damn heartbreaking. The way she just has… no response whatsoever to Sarah mentioning Carol. Joyce doesn’t even want to acknowledge her existence, right now– especially since she’s willing to acknowledge John, who was already pretty damn awful in his own right. Then there’s the persistent reminder that nobody knows who Jocelyne really is, because it isn’t safe for her to tell them the truth. And then there’s Bruno Jordan. Any details on Jordan have been hard to come by, and all we really knew was that Hank thought he left because he and Carol were “squeezing too hard,” and that when Joyce asked her parents what Jordan did they said she’d find out when she was older. We never got any idea of what he was like as a person. This one little detail, that he used to draw and Joyce used to copy him and look up to him, suddenly makes him feel a lot more like an actual person, if only because one thing to go by is infinitely more than zero. Getting just that little sense of what their relationship was like makes it feel all the more tragic. This strip really drives home just how utterly Carol’s devotion to hatred has destroyed her family.
Yeah, you’re the only one so far who seems to be reacting to the fact that Sarah suggests one for Joyce’s mom and Joyce just continues like she hadn’t spoken.
I wonder if Joyce and Jordan are following similar arcs without even knowing it. It sounds like they had a pretty typical sibling relationship, maybe he would be open to reconnecting if he knew she wasn’t a little Carol clone anymore? Maybe he’s still in contact with Jocelyne? Is he the second oldest, or second youngest?
That’s one corner of Joyce’s story I hope we get to explore someday.
I know that frequently, for me? My cramps can make pretty much everything from my rib-cage down (yes all the way to my legs) feel sore and fatigued. Not necessarily pain, but… just a general feeling of malaise and “ow ow ow ow ow ow ow my body doesn’t feel normal”.
Kinda fascinating seeing lots of comments saying with confidence that Joyce’s pain is due to menstruation when all the evidence we have is Becky’s somewhat cryptic counting months down.
I certainly wouldn’t have made that connection; first because Becky counted three months and second because it feels really weird that Becky would track anyone’s cycle except her own and maaaaybe Dina’s insofar as it might get in the way of sex.
Crap, I just remembered that Becky said “take lots of iron”, which is another clue. I still think that if Becky is truly keeping track of Joyce’s cycle that’s super weird
Not that weird if it tends to take her fully out of commission like this. Becky didn’t know Joyce’s period was coming up in advance or anything. Saying ‘oh right it has been about the right amount of time since this regularly occurring debilitating pain session last happened to you’ strikes me as pretty normal for close friends who spend a lot of time together.
If her best friend’s cycle is regularly this bad, it’s not that weird. You’d tend to notice – and predict so you could plan around it. This wouldn’t just get in the way of sex, but basically everything.
The 3-month thing threw me as well, but some people have said that is a possibility.
Becky thinks it’s menstrual cramps but I don’t know if that was confirmed. I suspect it may be psychosomatic after the fight with Becky and rejection by her friends.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, as besties and also women in the same dorm area (even if not really roomies), their cycles might have synced before, if not now than definitely in the past as they grew up together. My cycle syncs up with the women I work with! So I don’t necessarily ‘keep track’, but if I notice that either I am more tired/hungry/snippy, or that somebody else seems more tired/hungry/snippy, I’m like ‘aah it’s that time, I better keep an eye out in case I start tomorrow’.
If you are on the floor of your school and/or you need to be carried by someone, it’s not normal and you need to be checked for endometriosis. Just saying in case anybody needs to read it.
Joyce never did answer Sarah’s first question, whether or not Joyce would send a copy of her strip, to her mother. I guess the two are not on speaking terms, not that Joyce is an atheist.
I would imagine it has less to do with Joyce being an Atheist and more that Joyce’s mom knowingly and unapologetically supported a bigoted whack job who kidnapped her and all her friends and nearly got them all murdered by the mob, and then AFTER that defended the act.
Seriously, I adore my parents, but if my dad pulled that shit? He would *never get to talk to me again.*
I love how, “I know you don’t care,” is kind of an endearment here. Like, they’re good friends. Joyce knows if Sarah’s accepting it, it’ll be out of courtesy only, and so they get around it. It might seem rude, but it’s honestly just refreshing and caring.
Nope. She didn’t. She thought about it when Joyce was talking on the phone about who to trust and that she wanted to be a person who was trustworthy. Joycelyn looked like she wanted to, but ultimately sat on it.
Yknow, I’d bet money on Joyce never having properly been evaluated by an OBGYN before. Carol would probably have considered that unnecessary and defining for a virgin, even if her daughter’s periods were agonizing. Do people here think its more likely endometriosis, PCOS, or something else?
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“is ‘dump in Radio Flyer’ not an option”
Jordan is in Western Asia *badum tish*
She still has access to Carla’s Zoomr account, maybe see if they have someone with a moped that can handle stairs.
I don’t think that’s an intended use of the app.
And yet, if Sarah went to Carla and said the words “moped” and “stairs”, she would absolutely approve.
She would, but Carla would also probably approve of a lot of things that you can’t do with the Zoomr app.
Evidence for the “Jordan is the internet pornlord expy” theory!
Or some variation on post-Shortpacked! Willis that’s incompatible with even the compressed timescale of Joyce’s personal growth.
Jordan IS Willis, he escaped through a wormhole into our reality, where time moves faster.
That’s why he says Joyce is autobiographical, they literally had the same childhood because they grew up as siblings.
where time moves faster…
so reality then. XD
and I realize late on rereading that that said “into our reality” rather than “into a reality”.
Ignore me. -_-
Damn, beat me to it!
Aw! I wanna see Sarah princess carry Joyce to feed my Joyce x Sarah crack ship I just came up with right now!
That’s not a crack ship, it’s fairly reasonable. Yes, they’re theoretically straight, but that’s the only issue. They like each other, spend a lot of time together, are a lot of fun when they share a scene…they’re even roommates. If there was more fanfic for this comic, there’d absolutely be a cadre of Joyce/Sarah shippers in the corner getting occasional flack from the more popular side of things.
There have been signs that Joyce might be Bisexual, or maybe Biromantic, if her comic has anything to say about it lol.
Or much of her interaction with Dorothy, Sal, and Billie.
There are people who are heterosexual but homoromantic. They don’t get laid very often, but the have lots of friends.
I knew a guy like this in college. I felt kind of bad for him.
You can have enjoyable sex without sexual attraction, though, so it can still work out just probably with a strong side of porn and sex toys to fulfill that fantasy.
I kind of wonder if this ties into the “bro” culture. All of your emotional connections are with your male friends and you go out with them looking to pick up women for sex, but not really relationships.
Joyce has also mentioned that growing up with Becky, a closeted lesbian who was in love with her, as her best friend may have coloured her view on how to be friends with other women.
Great points
Oh my god they were roommates.
If it was ever gonna happen, I bet Becky thought she’d be the girl someday picking up Joyce… ;D
Poor Joyce!!!! 😵😭
Information about Jordan! Nice.
I knew Jordan was out of the loop, didn’t know he was MIA. I wonder if Joss knows.
Joyce has explicitly said that she doesn’t know where Jordan is or what he does, but she also said that her parents said they’d tell her when she’s older.
Although considering Joyce’s parents, they might consider anything from “plays Dungeons and Dragons” to “once voted Democrat” to be worthy of shame and ostracism, and something Joyce shouldn’t be told about.
Carol, anyway. Wonder if Hank would spill now that he’s more chill.
I think as far as the agreed-upon timeline is, Jordan left home at ‘maybe sixteen?’ He definitely wasn’t run out of town for voting wrong.
Becky was nearly shot for being a lesbian by her own father and Carol supported her daughter being kidnapped and having a loaded gun pointed at her for supporting a lesbian. So honestly run out of town for voting wrong doesn’t feel that farfetched.
I’m pretty sure they’re saying he wasn’t old enough to vote.
They kicked him out for trying to vote while underage.
“Your brother…your brother runs a record store. A secular record store!”
When was this? I remember Jordan being mentioned, something along the lines of “he’s too Jordan to come for family weekend,” but I don’t recall any other snippet of backstory.
Ahh elder dementia. Not fun. Been taking care of grampa for a year now.
He doesn’t know who I am and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t known for a long time.
That is tough, Mr. D. You’re a good person for caring for him anyway. Everyone needs someone who will care for them if they need it.
I’m sorry. I hope at least he recognises you as somebody who cares for him and who seems familiar even if it’s in a “you look like my [other relative]” sort of way 😔
That’s tough, mr D. If memory is lost, the only thing you can hope to achieve is to brighten their day and I think you’re right on doing that. Stay strong, you may not notice it that clearly every time, but you are doing something great and good.
The comment section demands a princess carry !
Just what IS a princess carry? Or is that the traditional “carrying-the-bride-over-the-threshold” maneuver?
Yeah, that’s what it is: I think it’s called that because it’s how you’d traditionally carry a princess out of a tower after rescuing her or something
Exactly.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/02-this-is-the-way-that-we-love/effer/
man, it’s weird seeing Joyce without glasses now
Who is worst member of the Brown family? We now know there’s an aunt and at least one alive grandparent close enough for Joyce to send a copy of her strip to. I’m gonna say John. Sure Carol would be the easy winner but John is younger and apparently embezzles church donations to buy cars. Overall worse longterm impact to me.
John is a normal banal type of church bad. Carol goes for extra credit.
Eh, I find banal evil can often be more dangerous than the more extreme versions. There’s a great MLK quote that’s something along the lines of, “The greatest enemy to progress isn’t the KKK or the White Citizens’ Councils, but the white liberals who demand that progress only come at the proper time, in the proper way.” (Sorry, it’s late and I can’t be bothered to look up the exact quote.) Similarly, the cult leaders and the abusers may seem like the worst that organized religion has to offer, but all told they’re probably doing less damage than the run-of-the-mill grifters and scam artists. (Not that those are mutually exclusive, mind you.)
I get what you’re saying, but I want to draw a line between John’s bamal church had and Carol’s exemplary church evil. John skimming from the donations is obviously a bad thing but it’s almost expected for big churches (and I’m not entirely convinced he embezzled; I suspect from what Jocelyn said that the car may have been purchased for him by the church). Carol helped pay bail for and then made excuses for a kidnapper who was an accessory to murder. Thats pretty damn bad.
I’m not saying John is good or okay or whatever. But Carol seems to go out of her way to be the worst possible type of “Christian” .
Yeah, I’m not convinced by “embezzled” either. I mean, it ould be, but that feels a bit too much like making John an individually terrible person, as opposed to a hypocrite joining a hypocritical organization because they’d buy him a nice car. If Jocelyn was (accurately) accusing him of embezzling, that might make his refusing to give her a ride understandable, but that would be out of guilt. It felt a lot more like Jocelyn was pointing out the overall hypocrisy of the church. You can argue that the church embezzled the donations, in that the donors presumably assume that all their donations are going towards charity, and the church convinces itself that nice cars are just a necessary thing, for various reasons, and thus charitable in their own right, but suggesting that John does it on his own feels like less of an indictment of the whole organization. It’s the “just a few bad apples” argument. It seems pretty clear that John joined a church that Carol would approve of; we know that that church is rotten all around. Suggesting John is just a dishonest member is a bit too close to letting the rest off for comfort.
“Embezzle” admittedly might be a leading term since I didn’t 100% remember the strip, but I still think it implies a general disingenuine aspect of John we haven’t quite seen. Definitely comes off as a privileged guy using faith as a grift/enablement of his lifestyle that’s all too common and dangerous in organized faith. But maybe I’m wrong. I do think he has more potential than Carol to do horrible things than her upper middle aged divorcee stay at home mom status does.
Jocelyne says the church bought the Mustang for him, so it’s probably a kickback for the “mission work” he does overseas rather than him skimming off the top. Just your run-of-the-mill American fundagelical grift, nothing to see here!
/s
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/trendy/#comments
Hey thanks! I didn’t feel like archive diving to find this and I guess it does imply more of the churches wrongdoing than his. But I actually think he comes off even worse, what with casually dismissing lgbt rights in front of his trans sister, while talking about Joyce and Becky. “Life is hard” I guess it’s too hard for gay people to exist according to John. Becky is so entitled. College did that!
John sometimes reminds me of the televangelist in Good Omens, where the narration says something along the lines of he’s not exactly a hypocrite, because he really does spend most of the money on what he thinks God wants him to do.
Other times I think “Nope, he’s the other kind”.
Carol wasn’t alone in helping pay bail though. That was a church effort. We didn’t see John, but that certainly doesn’t mean he would have objected. Given his reaction to Joyce at the lunch, I’d be surprised if he would have.
It just occurred to me that Carol and her church get a lot of flak for posting bail but I don’t remember outrage at the court for setting bail.
Sarah talks about how they’re going to have to set bail. And it sounds like the court was trying to set an impossibly high bail, but then mob money made it possible.
At the time of the earlier comic posting I think someone pointed out that by law, judges in Indiana HAVE to allow bail for all crimes except for murder.
The best they can do is set bail to be really high (which obviously failed here)
Look I’m open to replacing the US constitution with something less scummy, but if you’re going to operate within that framework, there’s a *reason* you can’t require excessive bail.
Eighth amendment:
Excessive bail shall not be required nor excessive fines imposed,
nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Iunno. In my mind, “Vocally/Fiscally supports someone that repeatedly tried to abduct their child so they could ‘shelter’ the sexual deviancy out of them” is quite a bit worse than embezzlement.
liked *and* subscribed.
John is a prick, Carol is a monster. Give him time, i know, but right now it’s no contest.
Another thing I’ve thought of is that even if we accept the premise that those who allow evil or tacitly support it are more evil than those who actively do it, that still doesn’t mean John is the worst Brown. Hank would be.
Hank has spent decades married to Carol and failed to prevent her from abetting evil when it mattered. He agreed with and assisted in raising their children in ways that left them with trauma. He has probably done the least direct bad on screen of any member of that church, with the exceptions of Joyce and Becky, but he did not oppose nearly enough of the others’ actions. If we’re accepting banal evil as more damaging, Hank helped set much of the family’s evil into motion and then did almost nothing to stop it. Divorcing Carol and opposing her after the kidnapping is too little too late to truly mitigate that.
Hey, remember when Hank was upset that Joyce took the family car to get herself and Becky out of a house where a discussion about how terrible Becky was for being lesbian was undergoing? Good times, good times.
yeh
Hank is making an effort to change because he got out of the loop long enough to realize the loop was fucky and destroying his daughter, and then his wife bailed out the guy who almost shot her in the face. None of this changes that Hank was also as willing and complicit in every single bad thing that went on in the Brown household because he got indoctrinated super hard like every fundie does. Carol is the same, Carol just didn’t recognize the same weight Hank did when Joyce defied them, and so she remained in the loop until she utterly ruined her relationship with Joyce.
Hank wants to be a good person now, that’s because he wasn’t one prior.
Thanks Spencer. That’s a good way of generalizing it that I was having trouble with
Well, that’s cause it’s a dumb premise if taken literally.
Where it does work is the larger societal context, where there are generally a lot more of the banal evil types and their tacit support is necessary. That doesn’t mean that even MLK thought the average white liberal was worse individually than a KKK member, just that the cumulative effect was more of a problem.
And Hank’s a different case anyway, because Hank has changed. Old Hank was (nearly?) as bad as Carol, but he’s shifted to being much more supportive. That’s not quite the same as just a banal liberal. More someone who’d been in the KKK, but got outraged and switched to working for desegregation.
Like, nope. Carol is the worst one we know about, by far. It’s not even a contest.
Also, John isn’t embezzling. He didn’t skim funds to buy the car. It’s just that the Brown’s church thinks getting him a new car is a worthy way to spend the money. Shit, I’d have MORE respect for John if he WERE in the church to embezzle funds instead of being a true believer.
Of course, he’s likely in the church, doing that work, because he gets the fancy car out of it. He’s not skimming from the church. The purpose of the church is skimming from the populace for the leaders.
John doesn’t embezzle. The church, arguably, embezzles from itself but I think that’s fairly legal.
Carol hands down – she enabled a man who pointed a loaded gun ather daughter to then kidnap her daughter and a bunch of other people and defended this action to the hilt.
On a more positive note, when you all reckon we get to see Joyce’s game dev phase? 😊🎮
One of these days I will figure out a way to play those old pre-Roomies! “Walkerton” games on modern hardware.
I did find some playthrough videos of them on YouTube, if nothing else, on a channel called Ragey0. One of said games gives God a “Special Thanx” credit, and given everything Willis has written since then I’m not sure if that’s hilarious, depressing, or both.
Windows 3.1 runs inside DOSbox.
Thanks for giving me something to do this morning. Those games are quite the time capsule.
I am just now fully appreciating that it’s quite likely that Joyce’s church, and almost certainly her mother, believes the pain of menstruation to be punishment for sins. Which, yikes, and which, also, Joyce, this is not standard, please see a medical professional about it. Get some relief and make sure you’re essentially okay.
I mean, she has been breaking some commandments lately, so can we completely rule out that theory?
Christ on a cross, did we see what happened to Joyce to cause this amount of pain? Because if so I’ve completely blocked it out.
Every day someone asks this and every day someone else answers. It has not been explicitly stated, but there’s an implication of severe severe period effects.
I honestly find it kind of amusing, because of course it’s all guys. ;p Hell, a couple decades ago it could easily have been me.
If it happens at random between two weeks and three months apart, it tends to be more painful than if it happens… more regularly >.> Honestly, I’m impressed she managed to crawl all the way to the newspaper stand. I take prescription-level pain meds and still consider it a quest to get to the toilet, the first couple of days. :/
Ooh, ouch!
Seems to be implied menstrual pain. In which case she might need to be checked for endometriosis or something, because cramps aren’t supposed to be that painful.
Sadly not uncommon for them to be even without anything physically wrong. I needed prescription pain meds to get through periods and there’s nothing wrong with my reproductive organs.
I’ve found a supplement that’s a blend of herbs that have been researched and found helpful and vitamins that have been researched and found helpful and that’s made a big difference.
Kind Of A Drag…
Grand Dad???
That’s what I call my grandfather, can’t imagine him being called grandpa
I had a Grandpa and a Granddad. Both grandmas were Grandma, once I noticed this I’ve started calling one Grandmum, but posthumously.
Mine were both ‘Pop’ (‘Poppy’ when I was youngest).
Fleentstones???
Spleenstones?
My spouse and I are grandpa and grandma. Our counterparts prefer granny and grampie. I think we won.
Sarah was disintegrated and replaced with a clone overnight but a glitch in the development led to that clone being capable of the slightest human decency without griping about it first.
(incidentally, this is the final plot twist of my favourite book)
Sarah did gripe about this first when Joyce first got the gig. She hadn’t said a single positive thing about the comic project until now, so she’s already done more than enough griping about it to show some uncomplicated support and kindness without tipping the scales too far
Ah, I see. She buffered her griping right at the start so she could jump straight to being nice when necessary.
A clever workaround of her foibles, that Sarah.
Sarah is just being Sarah. No clones need to be hurt in the making of this scene.
Sarah is being the least Sarah possible at the moment right after she threw her hands up and went “damn I did the same thing I always did and it didn’t work, I guess it’s because I suck and you shouldn’t look up to me” and it is terrifying me.
She’s done this before, it’s totally in character for her to play Big Sis for Joyce.
The qualifier for what I’m saying is at the end of the first sentence of a two sentence post.
Remember it was established that Joyce and Sarah share a finite amount of happiness so when Joyce is miserable Sarah is elated? Well Joyce is in fucking agony so pretty damn miserable. We’re lucky she got a high off her comic or else Sarah would be doing a Disney Princess Song.
Which book, if I may ask? It sounds a bit like the Ancillary series, but doesn’t quite match up.
It’s abbreviated JDATE and that’s all I’m gonna say for anyone who doesn’t wanna get spoiled.
Hope she gets one for Jordan and asks dad or Jocelyn (or, facebook/etc look up?)
Sarah is the best big sister <3
My chronic pain started in my second freshman semester…
dang someone give joyce some tylenol or midol
Sarah you’re right there you can get a copy yourself.
https://imgur.com/a/fHf585Y
I need to work on my composition and probably some better wording but here’s page 2.
And page 1 for those who missed it.
https://imgur.com/a/74qJ0yr
Nice work! Could definitely see you doing your own webcomic with this high quality art!
Hell yeah! And you’ll have fans that’ll make games for it too! 😆
Looking at this i think this comic needs like…twice as many panels for this strip. The pacing is really bad.
This seems to be a problem some comic artists face. Your pacing is fine, but something about reading your own work makes you think you need more panels. Probably picturing a whole range of fun faces and poses that you could be drawing for some of those sentences? That’s usually what it is when it happens to me. But don’t worry, to the outside observer the pacing isn’t a problem and everything is communicated that needs to be communicated.
I think it’s going well but if you must do more the 4 I recommend 6 panels at the most.
I really like them at 3 panels!
This looks like it’s off to a great start!
You are an AMAZING artist!
Nice!
Heh. He said ‘don’t blow me off’.
Foreshadowing?
Perhaaaaaaps :3
While a part of me is distracted by Jordan lore I’m almost surprised Joyce is cool with her family knowing about her soon to be atheist proclaimed comic. Granted her first strip is no indication of this theme but like if they keep up with it…as some supportive family members will.. can outsiders get a college comic easily? Sarah did say it was online but would that be restricted to an intranet rather than internet presence?
Also wondering if aunt and grandpa are dads side or mums. Probably dads but. It would be interesting if say the aunt Joyce likes was Carol’s sister? Kind of like how Joyce and her siblings diverge.
Also John probably blames Joyce for his parents divorce doesn’t he? He’s that kind of ass.
Oh fuck, unexpected feels
Like, dang, there’s a lot of little characterization details here WRT Joyce’s family dynamic. I think this is the first time her aunt’s been mentioned? Not really much information we can extract from that, beyond “she exists” and “Joyce has a good relationship with her,” and it’s not clear if she’s Hank’s sister or Carol’s. And I think it was already established that Joyce’s grandpa has Alzheimer’s.
But it’s the way she talks about her immediate family (Hank aside) that’s just super damn heartbreaking. The way she just has… no response whatsoever to Sarah mentioning Carol. Joyce doesn’t even want to acknowledge her existence, right now– especially since she’s willing to acknowledge John, who was already pretty damn awful in his own right. Then there’s the persistent reminder that nobody knows who Jocelyne really is, because it isn’t safe for her to tell them the truth. And then there’s
BrunoJordan. Any details on Jordan have been hard to come by, and all we really knew was that Hank thought he left because he and Carol were “squeezing too hard,” and that when Joyce asked her parents what Jordan did they said she’d find out when she was older. We never got any idea of what he was like as a person. This one little detail, that he used to draw and Joyce used to copy him and look up to him, suddenly makes him feel a lot more like an actual person, if only because one thing to go by is infinitely more than zero. Getting just that little sense of what their relationship was like makes it feel all the more tragic. This strip really drives home just how utterly Carol’s devotion to hatred has destroyed her family.Yeah, you’re the only one so far who seems to be reacting to the fact that Sarah suggests one for Joyce’s mom and Joyce just continues like she hadn’t spoken.
I figured it went without saying.
I think Joyce wishes it had gone without saying
I wonder if Joyce and Jordan are following similar arcs without even knowing it. It sounds like they had a pretty typical sibling relationship, maybe he would be open to reconnecting if he knew she wasn’t a little Carol clone anymore? Maybe he’s still in contact with Jocelyne? Is he the second oldest, or second youngest?
That’s one corner of Joyce’s story I hope we get to explore someday.
You know I read this as just another manic-Joyce strip but your comment made me appreciate how sad it is as well.
I can’t wait for ten years from now when we find out what Jordan’s deal is
He betrayed the Irregular Hunters and hid himself inside a volcano.
I think it’s that he protects the secret weapon which lies inside the snow base.
Hope to be alive until there. Hahahahah
Ten years? You’re being optimistic about how fast this comic moves.
The moment the adrenaline runs out…
Jordan mentioned, everyone take a shot (of water)
Mom reference. Honestly surprised Sarah mentioned Carol.
But only Sarah. Joyce doesn’t have the bandwidth to address her conflicting emotions re: Carol yet.
Makes sense. Princess-carry position generally squishes everything together, bad for these cramps ime.
We can’t legalize weed soon enough! Especially in Indiana! 😵
Not even going to acknowledge the mention of mom, are you Joyce?
No wonder she was so crabby the other day. Cripes how nasty ARE her cramps? Seems like they could be a viable legal defense against mass murder O.o
Aw, she’s so excited (but also in so much pain).
Why is she so full-body sore? I see people mentioning cramps… surely this isn’t just pms?
Yes, it’s her period. How bad the cramps are varies from person to person. It can get pretty bad for some.
I know that frequently, for me? My cramps can make pretty much everything from my rib-cage down (yes all the way to my legs) feel sore and fatigued. Not necessarily pain, but… just a general feeling of malaise and “ow ow ow ow ow ow ow my body doesn’t feel normal”.
That sounds miserable and you have my every possible sympathy.
Carol is really dead for Joyce, huh?
“Carol? I don’t know any Carols.”
Kinda fascinating seeing lots of comments saying with confidence that Joyce’s pain is due to menstruation when all the evidence we have is Becky’s somewhat cryptic counting months down.
I certainly wouldn’t have made that connection; first because Becky counted three months and second because it feels really weird that Becky would track anyone’s cycle except her own and maaaaybe Dina’s insofar as it might get in the way of sex.
Crap, I just remembered that Becky said “take lots of iron”, which is another clue. I still think that if Becky is truly keeping track of Joyce’s cycle that’s super weird
Not that weird if it tends to take her fully out of commission like this. Becky didn’t know Joyce’s period was coming up in advance or anything. Saying ‘oh right it has been about the right amount of time since this regularly occurring debilitating pain session last happened to you’ strikes me as pretty normal for close friends who spend a lot of time together.
If her best friend’s cycle is regularly this bad, it’s not that weird. You’d tend to notice – and predict so you could plan around it. This wouldn’t just get in the way of sex, but basically everything.
The 3-month thing threw me as well, but some people have said that is a possibility.
Becky thinks it’s menstrual cramps but I don’t know if that was confirmed. I suspect it may be psychosomatic after the fight with Becky and rejection by her friends.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, as besties and also women in the same dorm area (even if not really roomies), their cycles might have synced before, if not now than definitely in the past as they grew up together. My cycle syncs up with the women I work with! So I don’t necessarily ‘keep track’, but if I notice that either I am more tired/hungry/snippy, or that somebody else seems more tired/hungry/snippy, I’m like ‘aah it’s that time, I better keep an eye out in case I start tomorrow’.
I think it’s time for a Brown family round up! (Brown family round up!)
We don’t talk about Jordan.
They say he saw the future
One day he disappeared
And we don’t talk to Carol.
We don’t talk about Jor-dan-nan-nan doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Unfortunately there’s too many of them to fit the robot roll call part of the MST3K theme…
So are we talking about epic menstrual cramps here or what?
“Epic” in the sense of “She needs to get to a gyno and be checked out”, sure.
That’s even worse :/
Yeah, just gonna go watch Luz scoop Amity FTW.
I hope we eventually find out what happened with Jordan.
If you are on the floor of your school and/or you need to be carried by someone, it’s not normal and you need to be checked for endometriosis. Just saying in case anybody needs to read it.
I’m not trying to undermine this message but I think part of Joyce’s pain may be psychosomatic after the rift with her oldest friend.
I read that as “nft with her oldest friend” and briefly wondered if I missed some real fucked up shit.
Joyce never did answer Sarah’s first question, whether or not Joyce would send a copy of her strip, to her mother. I guess the two are not on speaking terms, not that Joyce is an atheist.
I would imagine it has less to do with Joyce being an Atheist and more that Joyce’s mom knowingly and unapologetically supported a bigoted whack job who kidnapped her and all her friends and nearly got them all murdered by the mob, and then AFTER that defended the act.
Seriously, I adore my parents, but if my dad pulled that shit? He would *never get to talk to me again.*
Joyce and her mom have been on the fritz since she visited with Becky and things were… tense.
I love how, “I know you don’t care,” is kind of an endearment here. Like, they’re good friends. Joyce knows if Sarah’s accepting it, it’ll be out of courtesy only, and so they get around it. It might seem rude, but it’s honestly just refreshing and caring.
IMO, Sarah absolutely cares, but saying/admitting it would be showing vulnerability, so…
Time for a Jocelyn arc, I hope!
I sure hope so!
I was going to make a comment about deadnaming, but, um…
Joyce doesn’t know about her sister, does she?
Did Jocelyn actually ever come out to anyone on campus other than Ethan?
Nope. She didn’t. She thought about it when Joyce was talking on the phone about who to trust and that she wanted to be a person who was trustworthy. Joycelyn looked like she wanted to, but ultimately sat on it.
There oughta be a bulletin board on the side for FAQs like this one.
Yknow, I’d bet money on Joyce never having properly been evaluated by an OBGYN before. Carol would probably have considered that unnecessary and defining for a virgin, even if her daughter’s periods were agonizing. Do people here think its more likely endometriosis, PCOS, or something else?
Edit* I meant Carol would probably consider ir “defiling” not “defining,” I got autocorrected.