have friends who are mad that paying $1300/mth rent on an apartment for literal YEARS does not qualify them for a (for instance) $750/mth mortgage, even though it should bc.. $1300 is more than $750???
Up side, mortgage on a 3 bedroom house ~$1000/month
Down side, the worst air pollution in America and water is scarce and likely to get worse. (also home turf of Kevin McCarthy)
Nope. As soon as the bubble bursts, Blackrock and co will continue buying up even more properties, to make the rent situation worse, not better. The amount of “It’s not blackrock’s fault” financial propaganda should be eye raising. Of course it’s not **only** their fault, but they are
definitely contributing, as are other firms doing the same thing.
Isn’t that basically exactly what happened during the depression? People who couldn’t afford their mortgage had to sell their house at fire sale prices, and those who could afford to buy a second property could suddenly afford 3?
Becky also doesn’t want to be living in a land of terrorist fundamentalist supporters who are probably blaming her for “killing” her father. Mind you, I might have looked into renting the place but it seems that ToeDad was in heavy debt like most of America.
I feel like we need to keep pretending Blue States are magical lands of freedom and progressiveness run by Anarchist Hippie Christ, Optimus Prime, and Captain Picard.
Pretend all you want, but I’m staying sour. They’re run by Democrats, who are in turn run by corporations and the rich. But so long as the only two viable choices are center-right and extreme-right, I’ll take them over the alternative, I guess.
Even just UBI would be a huge step in the right direction. Too bad we can’t discuss that rationally with everyone in America either, go frickin figure. 🙄
None of the countries in Scandinavia are socialist. They’re very much free-market capitalist with generous welfare states, which is not remotely the same thing. When they briefly flirted with actual socialism, they quickly realized that a robust free market is the only form of economic organization productive enough to support those welfare states.
I cannot for the life of me understand why many American leftists have taken to calling themselves socialists in recent years. When I hear their proposed policies, it’s clear that what they’re actually calling for is Euro style social democracy, not socialism. Given the toxic legacy of actual socialism, why on earth would anyway label themselves that way?
Because socialist has more zip to it than “free-market capitalist with generous welfare states”. Also, communism is different from socialism. Also, also, most young people weren’t around for for those times when large Communist powers were still in existence, and as such don’t have those cultural preconceptions.
So what’s wrong with “social democrat”, an existing term that actually describes what they’re aiming for?
As for communism, that’s another case of mislabeling, although in that case the dishonesty was intentional. The very term “communist government” is an oxymoron, since an ideal communist society would phase out the coercive state altogether.
Economist here: Medicare is socialist. Having a functioning social welfare system is kind of the definition of socialism. Capitalism works best with government intervention to fix market failures. Meaning: capitalism works best with some socialism. They’re not opposites. You can have both.
Um, no. The definition of socialism is common ownership of the means of production. In practice, this usually works out to government control of most or all economic activity. This can actually work, but only in small groups, no more than about 150 adults. Any attempt to scale it up to something the size of even a small modern nation state inevitably results in disaster.
Government intervention doesn’t fix market failures, it causes them. (Just look at the recent baby formula crisis.) When people claim that the market has “failed”, it usually turns out that the only thing the market has failed to do is produce the outcomes they wanted.
As for Rand Paul, he seems to have steadily drifted away from any libertarian impulses he had. The best thing I can say about him at this point is that he’s definitely the better Senator from Kentucky. Granted, that’s a very low bar to clear.
Yeah, but it’s not a VIABLE option here in the states. 2-party system, first-past-the-post, winner-take-all. If a bunch of us lefty types switch our votes from the Democrats to a socialist party, then the Democrats get fewer votes than the Republicans and the Republicans get control. Voting for socialists thus gets transmuted into voting for the fascists. Irony.
And the Democrats understand this perfectly, which is why they oppose reforms and KEEP it a 2-party system. That way the rest of us lefty types have to keep voting for them instead of the candidates we actually like, or else we’ll end up getting stuck with worse.
Such reforms aren’t really viable, without gutting the system entirely. “first-past-the-post, winner-take-all” is built into the Constitution. Democrats couldn’t change that if they wanted to and don’t have to put effort into preventing such reforms. Even things like IRV wouldn’t really change the calculation.
Beyond that though, the bigger problem for lefty types is that you (or we, to an extent) are a minority. A lot of people sort of generally support social welfare policies (though not really actual “workers control the means of production” socialism), but they rarely vote those ideas, being easily distracted by the culture war or other distractions or just distrust of those proposing them. There’s an idea on the left that they really have massive support and if Democrats would just stop blocking them, they’d see it. There’s no real evidence for this.
You want to improve things? Do what Tea Party Republicans did. Take over the Democratic Party through primaries. It’ll be harder, since the Tea Party had big money behind it, but should be easier if the ideas are as popular as you think. Democrats are also far less anti-democratic than the GOP is, so they should be less willing to go to extremes to stop you than the establishment GOP was.
The Tea Party hardly “took over” the GOP. After kicking up a little bit of a stir, they were quickly assimilated. What’s left of the TP has largely abandoned the principles they originally proclaimed, degenerating into Trump cultists more interested in culture war bullshit and powning teh libz than actually doing anything to reduce the size and power of government.
I believe third parties can actually play a useful role, and I support reforms such as ranked choice voting and expanded ballot access. Even with those in place, it’s unlikely that third parties would get a significant number of candidates elected. But, if they attracted a significant amount of support, even if far short of an actual majority, then one or both major parties just might feel pressured to try and co-opt that support. Granted, this would likely produce more of a nudge than a shove, but I think even baby steps in the right direction are better than nothing.
Another way I think third parties could be more effective is to stop wasting time and resources on national races that are effectively hopeless. Instead, they should focus on state and local elections. Go after seats on city councils and education boards. The cost is much lower, and just showing up can turn an effective one-party race into something more competitive. And once again, just getting noticeable support can nudge things in a positive direction, even if you don’t actually win. Plus, if third-party candidates do actually get elected and the sky doesn’t fall, this could potentially give them more credibility that might eventually make them viable candidates for higher profile offices. This kind of bottom up strategy would be a long, hard slog, but I think it could actually work.
I thought they were united in their dream to collectively piss their pants at the first sign of opposition and blame everyone else for it, especially the people they demand votes from.
Look, I vote blue because I understand what you’re saying to be true. Is till think they’re weak and incompetent excuse-makers who hate their voters and have the charisma of a mashed durian on the sidewalk.
That’s a good point actually. Even if Becky manages to keep the house throughout her college career, would the out lesbian really want to live in the neighborhood with the church that helped bail out her father? A portion of them probably blame her for his death.
She wouldn’t be living there for about four years if she’s attending college anyway. In the meantime, the mortgage and property tax still needs to be paid, the yard still needs maintenance, it’s still going to rack up utility bills…
Either she would have to get a full-time job to pay for all that, or she’d have to rent it out. Sounds like she has no interest in becoming a landlord, and she’s not all that attached to it anyway, so on the market it goes.
I think the one thing that surprised me was you could sell the house back to the bank rather than selling it through a realtor, but I guess if it’s still on a mortgage, that makes sense (we went through a lender, which got sold to another lender, so I’m not aware of any bank being involved)
Re: renting: if her small town is like DH’s the rental market is completely broken with high rents and lots of people being unable to pay regularly. Super risky market for a landlord and a terrible one for a renter. (Much cheaper to buy if you can afford to, so everyone who can afford to buys and only those who have money problems end up renting, driving up rental prices because of the risk.)
As long as we’re not drawing that too many degrees outward, I agree. By “too many degrees”, of course, I mean sentiments like “Paying taxes pits your money into the conveyor belt that leads to terrorist activities,” which I don’t think you’re saying but I have seen said.
Not sure how much the house was worth, but between that, her tuition being on Robin and a very unlikely life insurance policy that Ross most plausibly doesn’t have, Becky is very moderately rolling in it!
She mentions selling it “back to the bank” which suggest the house was mortgaged. Depending on how much is still owed on the mortgage, that can mean she gets anything from almost the sales price to actually having to pay to get rid of it.
I owned a mortgaged house for 5 years and had to pay almost 10% of the initial price to get rid of it.
Yaay closing costs. *Unenthusiastic party horn and confetti*
If Bonnie and Toedead bought in the few years before Becky was born, and they took out a traditional 30-year, they should have significant equity built up in the house. Hopefully, the estate should still be in the black when all’s said and done.
A depressing though I just had – if Ross heard it described as “in the black”, it’s not impossible that he’d take offense because it made him sound like he supports minorities in any way, so he might deliberately tank the value of the house to put it “in the red”, AKA the color of the party he votes for. Not saying it’s likely, but we’ve seen the kind of person he was.
He was definitely a despicable bigot, but his bigotry was more anti-lgbt and pro-(his-type-of)-Christian. I don’t recall any point where he indicated any sort of racial bigotry.
…. then again, the church was uniformly white and both Becky and Joyce were initially… far from acclimated to racial diversity, so it wouldn’t surprise me all that much if he were that type of bigot on top of everything else.
Ooh, I’m very curious about who this “us” is. (crosses fingers for a Jocelyne appearance)
…I’m pretty sure one of the early post-timeskip strips mentioned that Joyce and Becky stayed at “Becky’s house” for Christmas, so I’m guessing that sale hasn’t happened yet.
And I don’t remember if I made the point then or not but you can still believe in deities multiple or singular and not believe in the Abrahamic “God”. Like there are multiple deities in the Mediterranean from Spain to Persia. (Persia not actually on the Med, just adjacent to the region)
Interesting watching Sarah pressure Joyce into calling herself Atheist shortly before treating her like an asshole for discussing those beliefs in private and being overheard.
Of the few candidates who have enough personal connection with Becky to tag along for something like that, Jocelyne would certainly make the most sense, huh? (Who else could it be? maybe Robin or Leslie, since they both played a part in getting her a place to stay before this?)
I also haven’t been able to help noticing how the first chapter of the current book ends with Jocelyne being hung up on, and the final/current chapter focuses on Halloween, which was established as having some meaning to the Brown sisters all the way back in book 9… but anything is possible
As for Becky’s house, didn’t Robin mention she would make sure Becky gets a place to stay? I’d been assuming when they said “Becky’s House” that’s what they meant.
I think Johan probably is right. Remember, Joyce, Becky and Dina spent New Year’s together, apparently at the apartment. I think, given the collapse of her parent’s marriage, Joyce also is pretty much a Bloomington resident now, so even more reason for Becky to forget about La Porte.
Yep. Also, counterintuitively to a lot of pets, where handling them a lot is a recipe for annoying them, you actually want to handle iguanas often, routinely, to have them be tame and tolerate people.
I love that game. The atmosphere and lore is amazing. I’ve been playing it for like 7 years and I am very close to finally finishing my first play through. I know that is a long time to finish one game but I’ve been very busy during the last 6 years and I’m not very good at the game.
The DLC bosses are even tougher. On one of them I just said fuck it and never beat it since it was optional. But I did at least manage to beat the 3 final bosses.
Now, was it Krygor the Destroyer that gave you the trouble? If you keep the fireaxe after it’s marked as unessential, you can actually two-shot him by busting the steam pipes in his arena. It’s a little cheap, but it’s generally considered the optimum speed run strategy.
Arcane knowledge gained through possession of the third eye.
… or, you know, because lizards are so far removed from our mammalian norms that our intuitive, instinctive notions of emotions and body language are largely inapplicable to them.
People say the parietal eye is a rudimentary photosensory organ, but for Reasons scientists just flat-out refuse to study its psychic capabilities seriously. Which is not a surprise if, as my papers that keep getting mysteriously rejectd by all academic journals compellingly argues, Big Science is actually in the pocket of Big Iguana, which is my catchy coinage for what I more technically refer to as the Worldwid Iguana Intelligence Gathering and Interference Initiative.
But I have said too much. The iguanas are coming for me. Goodbye
Yeah, this is rough but Becky’s handling it about as well as it can! For now anyway. This is Halloween after all, and we’re told it was a drama clusterfuck. I want!
sweet scene but i wonderi f becky could realistically save up enough over the next 4 years for another place to stay or move in as roommates with dina and both work at something
Hopefully after 4 years, they’ll find someplace to live. 🙂
A lot of it might depend on how much she can clear from the sale of the house. If there was decent equity, Becky might be in pretty good shape financially. If not, it’ll be rough.
I read the book in sixth grade, and introduced it to a friend of mine. We went to the movie together a few months later and his next birthday party was entirely Jurassic Park themed. I felt very proud of making such a good recommendation.
Sattler doesn’t interact with any lizards in those movies though and most of her interactions with dinosaurs are pretty bitey. Really what she needs is a potted plant
Funny enough, she dyed polka dots into it, they’re just the exact same color value as her normal color, so it doesn’t get picked up by the flashback palette.
It’s one of those old “Are you colorblind?” tests. If you see a pink shirt then you are meet the exact definition of psychologically normal. If you see the number 3 you may be colorblind. If you see a blue shirt for more than four hours then you should seek immediate medical care.
While it’s a sweet thing to say on it’s surface, I think the pressure of being the “only thing left of [Becky’s] childhood” is a rough position to hold. It does further explain why Becky took such a bad turn at the notion of Joyce being Atheist (and therefore changing) since Becky was using her as a stand-in for The Way Things Were and here she goes being a human being instead.
Not a fair position to put Joyce in and, by her slightly cringed expression ,I think Joyce can see that’s going to be an issue at some point.
TL;DR – Don’t give your friends the responsibility of staying unchanged in memorial to a life you used to have. Humans grow.
you might be thinking a bit too much on what becky said.
i don’t think there was anything sinister or worrying about that she said.
all she said was that even if everything from her past was gone, even if her toys were burnt, her house was sold, her parents gone, she will be ok, because she had joyce. she is acknowledging that joyce is such an important person to her that just knowing her made life bearable.
this is literally a “the true treasures were the friends we made along the way” meme in action.
I don’t think they meant it as Becky meaning anything sinister, but just that it puts a burden on Joyce.
I’m not as convinced that Joyce’s expression means she’s thinking that.
People who don’t get the same thing as you when reading a comic are not “thinking too much” they are just getting a different thing.
As for the rest – I stand by what I said. I think you also have a good read on a different angle. Maybe both are true, maybe neither are. I’m good with my view on it.
If your college library has a copy of the textbook and a printer/scanner, and they likely do, all you need is about 8 spare hours to copy each page and send it to your email, chapter by chapter.
Or just “find the book freely available on a totally legitimate website that’s not in any way suspect, legally download it at no cost to yourself, and never pay a single penny, in a perfectly legal and not-at-all dubious way”. If’n you take my meaning. From what I’ve heard, you’ll only be using like 2 pages of it anyway.
noooooooooooooooo Becky….. i mean absolutely i get it, i wouldn’t want to keep a house full of shit memories either, but doooooooon’t sell it without having a clue how fricking valuable house / land property is these days…….!
I can only assume she’ll hand over the actual selling to a real estate agent. “Two textbooks” seems like a joke to deflect the discomfort that she’ll be wealthy by her peer’s standards.
Well, the bank apparently will buy the house from her. From what I understand they wouldn’t be interested unless they basically already own it – and Toedad was definitely the kind of barely employable, financial non-genius who’d buy a house he couldn’t really afford. It is possible Becky isn’t being very facetious but basically only gets some small change out of the deal.
Okay, this is a complete tangent from the Heavy Feels, but the mention of Zoomr reminds me that I’ve been meaning to ask about something for ages.
Can anyone find the strip where Joe says he has an ambition to create the first practical driverless car, but he expects Carla’s parents to beat him to it? That happened, right? It wasn’t a dream I had?
Quite honestly… why would she want her childhood home considering 1.the hometown it resides in and 2. The only positive experiences she had in her childhood were seemingly her mother (who died in a very traumatizing way for a my loved one, especially a child) and her best friend who she had a one sided crush on for at least a decade?
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at the rate of inflation of college costs, between the time this strip uploaded and its appearance today, the cost is now two houses per textbook
or maybe one textbook subscription
Be patient. They’ll make it microtransactions somehow.
NFT textbooks.
Non-fungible education
(My textbooks, Jerry! They’re gettin’ funged!)
I’m so glad that my courses didn’t require any textbooks. We have the internet and printed out notes.
Depends where you live. In coastal cities, housing prices outstrip college costs. How’s $3600/month for a studio sound?
*housing inflation outstrips college inflation, I meant.
That sounds like I would live in a hammock on campus. Or, like, the library.
(the security guard making morning rounds in our library had *lots* of fun scaring sleeping students awake though XD)
That’s… more than triple my monthly mortgage payment.
The fuck?!
have friends who are mad that paying $1300/mth rent on an apartment for literal YEARS does not qualify them for a (for instance) $750/mth mortgage, even though it should bc.. $1300 is more than $750???
But renting doesn’t contribute to their cReDiT sCoRe!
You wouldn’t happen to be criticising the hyperpredatory credit system that helps keep the little guy down in the dirt, would you?
Up side, mortgage on a 3 bedroom house ~$1000/month
Down side, the worst air pollution in America and water is scarce and likely to get worse. (also home turf of Kevin McCarthy)
Eh, housing costs are skyrocketing too.
… but all we need is another housing bubble to burst, and then we’re good!
Nope. As soon as the bubble bursts, Blackrock and co will continue buying up even more properties, to make the rent situation worse, not better. The amount of “It’s not blackrock’s fault” financial propaganda should be eye raising. Of course it’s not **only** their fault, but they are
definitely contributing, as are other firms doing the same thing.
Isn’t that basically exactly what happened during the depression? People who couldn’t afford their mortgage had to sell their house at fire sale prices, and those who could afford to buy a second property could suddenly afford 3?
Prices are dropping some, but it is because interest rates are rising- which means the payment is the same.
True, but it’s still better to buy with low prices and high rates than vice versa. You can refinance if it switches back.
Or one housebook per text
I find it more useful to just count by decades of living in debt after graduation.
Many people are still paying 30 years later.
There’s a peculiar energy to this strip — Gaurdian DemonI.
Yeah. That’s what I think I’ll call it….
*plays “Crumbling Dreams” by Leon Riskin on hacked muzak*
Becky also doesn’t want to be living in a land of terrorist fundamentalist supporters who are probably blaming her for “killing” her father. Mind you, I might have looked into renting the place but it seems that ToeDad was in heavy debt like most of America.
For a second I thought you were talking about like, America writ large rather than just her hometown.
I live in Kentucky and this is set in Indiana.
I feel like we need to keep pretending Blue States are magical lands of freedom and progressiveness run by Anarchist Hippie Christ, Optimus Prime, and Captain Picard.
Pretend all you want, but I’m staying sour. They’re run by Democrats, who are in turn run by corporations and the rich. But so long as the only two viable choices are center-right and extreme-right, I’ll take them over the alternative, I guess.
Why? Socialists are great. Why do you think the happiest countries in the world are all in Scandinavian.
Yeah, it’d rock if that were an option in America. But it’s not. It just plain isn’t an option because the system is rigged to keep it from being one.
Even just UBI would be a huge step in the right direction. Too bad we can’t discuss that rationally with everyone in America either, go frickin figure. 🙄
None of the countries in Scandinavia are socialist. They’re very much free-market capitalist with generous welfare states, which is not remotely the same thing. When they briefly flirted with actual socialism, they quickly realized that a robust free market is the only form of economic organization productive enough to support those welfare states.
I cannot for the life of me understand why many American leftists have taken to calling themselves socialists in recent years. When I hear their proposed policies, it’s clear that what they’re actually calling for is Euro style social democracy, not socialism. Given the toxic legacy of actual socialism, why on earth would anyway label themselves that way?
Because socialist has more zip to it than “free-market capitalist with generous welfare states”. Also, communism is different from socialism. Also, also, most young people weren’t around for for those times when large Communist powers were still in existence, and as such don’t have those cultural preconceptions.
So what’s wrong with “social democrat”, an existing term that actually describes what they’re aiming for?
As for communism, that’s another case of mislabeling, although in that case the dishonesty was intentional. The very term “communist government” is an oxymoron, since an ideal communist society would phase out the coercive state altogether.
Economist here: Medicare is socialist. Having a functioning social welfare system is kind of the definition of socialism. Capitalism works best with government intervention to fix market failures. Meaning: capitalism works best with some socialism. They’re not opposites. You can have both.
Try telling that to members of Congress. 🙄
Heck, even Milton Freedman, the emperor of libertarian economists, actually said himself that UBI would work superbly well in capitalism.
Ron Paul said we need to feed kids. And he’s right—taking care of children is way cheaper for government than cleaning up after adults.
Rand Paul otoh is a social conservative and not an actual libertarian.
Um, no. The definition of socialism is common ownership of the means of production. In practice, this usually works out to government control of most or all economic activity. This can actually work, but only in small groups, no more than about 150 adults. Any attempt to scale it up to something the size of even a small modern nation state inevitably results in disaster.
Government intervention doesn’t fix market failures, it causes them. (Just look at the recent baby formula crisis.) When people claim that the market has “failed”, it usually turns out that the only thing the market has failed to do is produce the outcomes they wanted.
As for Rand Paul, he seems to have steadily drifted away from any libertarian impulses he had. The best thing I can say about him at this point is that he’s definitely the better Senator from Kentucky. Granted, that’s a very low bar to clear.
Yeah, but it’s not a VIABLE option here in the states. 2-party system, first-past-the-post, winner-take-all. If a bunch of us lefty types switch our votes from the Democrats to a socialist party, then the Democrats get fewer votes than the Republicans and the Republicans get control. Voting for socialists thus gets transmuted into voting for the fascists. Irony.
And the Democrats understand this perfectly, which is why they oppose reforms and KEEP it a 2-party system. That way the rest of us lefty types have to keep voting for them instead of the candidates we actually like, or else we’ll end up getting stuck with worse.
Such reforms aren’t really viable, without gutting the system entirely. “first-past-the-post, winner-take-all” is built into the Constitution. Democrats couldn’t change that if they wanted to and don’t have to put effort into preventing such reforms. Even things like IRV wouldn’t really change the calculation.
Beyond that though, the bigger problem for lefty types is that you (or we, to an extent) are a minority. A lot of people sort of generally support social welfare policies (though not really actual “workers control the means of production” socialism), but they rarely vote those ideas, being easily distracted by the culture war or other distractions or just distrust of those proposing them. There’s an idea on the left that they really have massive support and if Democrats would just stop blocking them, they’d see it. There’s no real evidence for this.
You want to improve things? Do what Tea Party Republicans did. Take over the Democratic Party through primaries. It’ll be harder, since the Tea Party had big money behind it, but should be easier if the ideas are as popular as you think. Democrats are also far less anti-democratic than the GOP is, so they should be less willing to go to extremes to stop you than the establishment GOP was.
The Tea Party hardly “took over” the GOP. After kicking up a little bit of a stir, they were quickly assimilated. What’s left of the TP has largely abandoned the principles they originally proclaimed, degenerating into Trump cultists more interested in culture war bullshit and powning teh libz than actually doing anything to reduce the size and power of government.
I believe third parties can actually play a useful role, and I support reforms such as ranked choice voting and expanded ballot access. Even with those in place, it’s unlikely that third parties would get a significant number of candidates elected. But, if they attracted a significant amount of support, even if far short of an actual majority, then one or both major parties just might feel pressured to try and co-opt that support. Granted, this would likely produce more of a nudge than a shove, but I think even baby steps in the right direction are better than nothing.
Another way I think third parties could be more effective is to stop wasting time and resources on national races that are effectively hopeless. Instead, they should focus on state and local elections. Go after seats on city councils and education boards. The cost is much lower, and just showing up can turn an effective one-party race into something more competitive. And once again, just getting noticeable support can nudge things in a positive direction, even if you don’t actually win. Plus, if third-party candidates do actually get elected and the sky doesn’t fall, this could potentially give them more credibility that might eventually make them viable candidates for higher profile offices. This kind of bottom up strategy would be a long, hard slog, but I think it could actually work.
The Democrats are the conservative party.
The Enemy is the fascist party.
It’s always cute when people label the Democrats as some kind of unified ideology.
I thought they were united in their dream to collectively piss their pants at the first sign of opposition and blame everyone else for it, especially the people they demand votes from.
They’re what we’ve got to work with to stop an actual fascist takeover, so maybe tearing them down at every opportunity isn’t the best strategy.
Look, I vote blue because I understand what you’re saying to be true. Is till think they’re weak and incompetent excuse-makers who hate their voters and have the charisma of a mashed durian on the sidewalk.
Given the options, I’d prefer a party that’s terrible at being effective than one that’s effective at being terrible.
They’re not, but they do average out somewhere on the border of centrist and conservative.
This is precisely why I stay in New York.
New York is crazy, but it’s a level of crazy I can live with.
That’s a good point actually. Even if Becky manages to keep the house throughout her college career, would the out lesbian really want to live in the neighborhood with the church that helped bail out her father? A portion of them probably blame her for his death.
She wouldn’t be living there for about four years if she’s attending college anyway. In the meantime, the mortgage and property tax still needs to be paid, the yard still needs maintenance, it’s still going to rack up utility bills…
Either she would have to get a full-time job to pay for all that, or she’d have to rent it out. Sounds like she has no interest in becoming a landlord, and she’s not all that attached to it anyway, so on the market it goes.
I think the one thing that surprised me was you could sell the house back to the bank rather than selling it through a realtor, but I guess if it’s still on a mortgage, that makes sense (we went through a lender, which got sold to another lender, so I’m not aware of any bank being involved)
Re: renting: if her small town is like DH’s the rental market is completely broken with high rents and lots of people being unable to pay regularly. Super risky market for a landlord and a terrible one for a renter. (Much cheaper to buy if you can afford to, so everyone who can afford to buys and only those who have money problems end up renting, driving up rental prices because of the risk.)
Never mind all the dark money investment funds and mystery companies buying up housing stock and either flipping it or renting it out.
I do appreciate the labeling of their former community as “terrorists”.
Financing terrorism makes you a terrorist.
As long as we’re not drawing that too many degrees outward, I agree. By “too many degrees”, of course, I mean sentiments like “Paying taxes pits your money into the conveyor belt that leads to terrorist activities,” which I don’t think you’re saying but I have seen said.
Not sure how much the house was worth, but between that, her tuition being on Robin and a very unlikely life insurance policy that Ross most plausibly doesn’t have, Becky is very moderately rolling in it!
Becky will be a political scientist!
Becky: *HISS*
Eh, Dina seems more likely to hiss actually, ’cause real dinosaurs would hiss and growl. They probably wouldn’t roar, however.
She mentions selling it “back to the bank” which suggest the house was mortgaged. Depending on how much is still owed on the mortgage, that can mean she gets anything from almost the sales price to actually having to pay to get rid of it.
I owned a mortgaged house for 5 years and had to pay almost 10% of the initial price to get rid of it.
Yaay closing costs. *Unenthusiastic party horn and confetti*
If Bonnie and Toedead bought in the few years before Becky was born, and they took out a traditional 30-year, they should have significant equity built up in the house. Hopefully, the estate should still be in the black when all’s said and done.
A depressing though I just had – if Ross heard it described as “in the black”, it’s not impossible that he’d take offense because it made him sound like he supports minorities in any way, so he might deliberately tank the value of the house to put it “in the red”, AKA the color of the party he votes for. Not saying it’s likely, but we’ve seen the kind of person he was.
He was definitely a despicable bigot, but his bigotry was more anti-lgbt and pro-(his-type-of)-Christian. I don’t recall any point where he indicated any sort of racial bigotry.
…. then again, the church was uniformly white and both Becky and Joyce were initially… far from acclimated to racial diversity, so it wouldn’t surprise me all that much if he were that type of bigot on top of everything else.
Wasn’t there something pretty ugly about Dina somewhere? Probably in the first kidnapping sequence?
I think this was it:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/deceptress/
Yeah, okay. That’s not a good look. Not proof-positive, I think, but definitely a red flag.
I can’t imagine someone being so racist they would detest a widely used financial saying and actively choose not to make money because of it.
Is there a word for foreshadowing put in a flashback that happens after the thing it’s foreshadowing already happened?
It’s some sort of Dramatic Irony.
…must… not… link to TVTropes…
(The timesink from hell refers to those as a “Call-Forward,” in case you want to risk entering the abyss. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.)
Flashception.
…. or what Rassilon says, but I win, because of Rule of Cool. (Look the rule up on tvtropes if you don’t believe me. I dare you.)
Get thee behind me, Satan.
Cowards! I popped in for just a minute and–wait, shit.
Ooh, I’m very curious about who this “us” is. (crosses fingers for a Jocelyne appearance)
…I’m pretty sure one of the early post-timeskip strips mentioned that Joyce and Becky stayed at “Becky’s house” for Christmas, so I’m guessing that sale hasn’t happened yet.
Yeah, here we go! Sarah says Joyce spent break at “Becky’s place.” Although I suppose she could have been living with Robin or Leslie.
Until today I assumed that line was referring to Robin’s apartment…
And I don’t remember if I made the point then or not but you can still believe in deities multiple or singular and not believe in the Abrahamic “God”. Like there are multiple deities in the Mediterranean from Spain to Persia. (Persia not actually on the Med, just adjacent to the region)
I didn’t mention them all, but I did mention my male deity specifically and how his worship was calming for me.
Interesting watching Sarah pressure Joyce into calling herself Atheist shortly before treating her like an asshole for discussing those beliefs in private and being overheard.
Sorry for the flag. 🙁
I think “us” is prolly Dina.
Of the few candidates who have enough personal connection with Becky to tag along for something like that, Jocelyne would certainly make the most sense, huh? (Who else could it be? maybe Robin or Leslie, since they both played a part in getting her a place to stay before this?)
I also haven’t been able to help noticing how the first chapter of the current book ends with Jocelyne being hung up on, and the final/current chapter focuses on Halloween, which was established as having some meaning to the Brown sisters all the way back in book 9… but anything is possible
As for Becky’s house, didn’t Robin mention she would make sure Becky gets a place to stay? I’d been assuming when they said “Becky’s House” that’s what they meant.
I think Johan probably is right. Remember, Joyce, Becky and Dina spent New Year’s together, apparently at the apartment. I think, given the collapse of her parent’s marriage, Joyce also is pretty much a Bloomington resident now, so even more reason for Becky to forget about La Porte.
Why does the lizard always look both slightly angry and infinitely cold at the same time? Why is it so still? What does it want? What does it know?
Green Iguanas are just kinda like that.
Yep. Also, counterintuitively to a lot of pets, where handling them a lot is a recipe for annoying them, you actually want to handle iguanas often, routinely, to have them be tame and tolerate people.
True for a lot of lizards, but Green Iguanas are both rather powerful and rather poor tempered, so it’s extra important to socialize them well.
Fuckface is beyond our ken, be careful pursuing knowledge men cannot comprehend.
I hear you grow eyes on your brain, there’s werewolves, it gets real weird.
I love that game. The atmosphere and lore is amazing. I’ve been playing it for like 7 years and I am very close to finally finishing my first play through. I know that is a long time to finish one game but I’ve been very busy during the last 6 years and I’m not very good at the game.
The DLC bosses are even tougher. On one of them I just said fuck it and never beat it since it was optional. But I did at least manage to beat the 3 final bosses.
Now, was it Krygor the Destroyer that gave you the trouble? If you keep the fireaxe after it’s marked as unessential, you can actually two-shot him by busting the steam pipes in his arena. It’s a little cheap, but it’s generally considered the optimum speed run strategy.
I waited 5 years for a PC port before finally putting my hopes to rest.
Arcane knowledge gained through possession of the third eye.
… or, you know, because lizards are so far removed from our mammalian norms that our intuitive, instinctive notions of emotions and body language are largely inapplicable to them.
People say Iguanas have three eyes but just because the Parietal eye is a rudimentary photosensory organ doesn’t make it a true third eye
People say the parietal eye is a rudimentary photosensory organ, but for Reasons scientists just flat-out refuse to study its psychic capabilities seriously. Which is not a surprise if, as my papers that keep getting mysteriously rejectd by all academic journals compellingly argues, Big Science is actually in the pocket of Big Iguana, which is my catchy coinage for what I more technically refer to as the Worldwid Iguana Intelligence Gathering and Interference Initiative.
But I have said too much. The iguanas are coming for me. Goodbye
That’s just what the Reptilians want us to think.
Yeah, this is rough but Becky’s handling it about as well as it can! For now anyway. This is Halloween after all, and we’re told it was a drama clusterfuck. I want!
sweet scene but i wonderi f becky could realistically save up enough over the next 4 years for another place to stay or move in as roommates with dina and both work at something
Hopefully after 4 years, they’ll find someplace to live. 🙂
A lot of it might depend on how much she can clear from the sale of the house. If there was decent equity, Becky might be in pretty good shape financially. If not, it’ll be rough.
Well it sounds like the parents have been paying the mortgage for over 18 years so I would hope there is some equity.
Well that makes their ‘kinda’ falling out after the timeskip a little sadder.
The “two whole textbooks” bit is depressingly hilarious.
Hope the window Joyce kicked doesn’t deduct much from the value.
Or else we’d have two textbooks but without the table of contents
Panel 4 is all I wanted and needed at this particular, drunk morning
Well if Becky is Dr. Sattler, there can only be one costume option for Dina.
She’s dressed as Dr. Malcolm. (/s)
No, as Dr. Walldorf.
I know the focus of my sentiment should be on Becky’s interaction with Joyce here but honestly, I’m loving Fuckface just chillin’ on Joyce’s head.
Iguanas apparently turn blue in the face when they’re horny, right? This fella’s blue all over.
To be fair, this is explicitly what Fuckface does. This is the thing.
That’s the most “I’m dying inside but if I don’t keep cracking jokes it’ll kill me” Becky face I’ve seen yet.
Dr. Ellie Sattler? Played by Laura Dern in Jurassic Park?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/piano/
“Yeah, it’s this cool old movie from like eleven years before we were born; have you seen it?”
I’m so old :´(
I was 4 when that movie came out, stop making me feel old. I’m only 33.
Young whippersnapper!
I saw that in the theater just out of college.
I read the book in sixth grade, and introduced it to a friend of mine. We went to the movie together a few months later and his next birthday party was entirely Jurassic Park themed. I felt very proud of making such a good recommendation.
Also, lesbian-adjacent.
https://youtu.be/nlQotkWWDQI
It’d be funny if it wasn’t incredibly sad
4th panel “wow, okay, no pressure”
Joyce is kinda non-reactive in panels 2,4 and 5 maybe?
Dr Ellie Satler needs a hat-lizard *way* more than Rapunzel does.
Sattler doesn’t interact with any lizards in those movies though and most of her interactions with dinosaurs are pretty bitey. Really what she needs is a potted plant
She is a botanist…
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t need a hat-lizard.
That pink shirt looks great on her.
How can you tell in a flashback that’s all blue monochrome?
That is the joke! Also: Dotty dyed her hair.
Funny enough, she dyed polka dots into it, they’re just the exact same color value as her normal color, so it doesn’t get picked up by the flashback palette.
It’s one of those old “Are you colorblind?” tests. If you see a pink shirt then you are meet the exact definition of psychologically normal. If you see the number 3 you may be colorblind. If you see a blue shirt for more than four hours then you should seek immediate medical care.
Awwww…. this is so sweet ♡.
While it’s a sweet thing to say on it’s surface, I think the pressure of being the “only thing left of [Becky’s] childhood” is a rough position to hold. It does further explain why Becky took such a bad turn at the notion of Joyce being Atheist (and therefore changing) since Becky was using her as a stand-in for The Way Things Were and here she goes being a human being instead.
Not a fair position to put Joyce in and, by her slightly cringed expression ,I think Joyce can see that’s going to be an issue at some point.
TL;DR – Don’t give your friends the responsibility of staying unchanged in memorial to a life you used to have. Humans grow.
I had a couple friends who did exactly that. Had.
Same. People who feel entitled to a specific and unchanging version of you are always people you outgrow. Sad but true.
you might be thinking a bit too much on what becky said.
i don’t think there was anything sinister or worrying about that she said.
all she said was that even if everything from her past was gone, even if her toys were burnt, her house was sold, her parents gone, she will be ok, because she had joyce. she is acknowledging that joyce is such an important person to her that just knowing her made life bearable.
this is literally a “the true treasures were the friends we made along the way” meme in action.
I don’t think they meant it as Becky meaning anything sinister, but just that it puts a burden on Joyce.
I’m not as convinced that Joyce’s expression means she’s thinking that.
Correct! And fair, I just thought she looked a little “eeesh” in the squinty eyes, but that’s just my interpretation.
People who don’t get the same thing as you when reading a comic are not “thinking too much” they are just getting a different thing.
As for the rest – I stand by what I said. I think you also have a good read on a different angle. Maybe both are true, maybe neither are. I’m good with my view on it.
* its surface, not it’s.
Gosh I don’t remember asking
If your college library has a copy of the textbook and a printer/scanner, and they likely do, all you need is about 8 spare hours to copy each page and send it to your email, chapter by chapter.
Or just “find the book freely available on a totally legitimate website that’s not in any way suspect, legally download it at no cost to yourself, and never pay a single penny, in a perfectly legal and not-at-all dubious way”. If’n you take my meaning. From what I’ve heard, you’ll only be using like 2 pages of it anyway.
Depends on the university and some textbooks aren’t available on totally legitimate websites.
Or at least, some weren’t for me.
A good amount of my classes used the books as required reading. Though it was a very mathy major I took.
Textbooks these days come with a code needed to access the online component which is the only way to access (some/all) the coursework
Or just, like, download it on z-lib
At this point even my professors are just posting the textbook pdf on the class site
noooooooooooooooo Becky….. i mean absolutely i get it, i wouldn’t want to keep a house full of shit memories either, but doooooooon’t sell it without having a clue how fricking valuable house / land property is these days…….!
The best time to buy a home is always 30 years before now. Presumably the best time to sell is also 30 years from now.
I can only assume she’ll hand over the actual selling to a real estate agent. “Two textbooks” seems like a joke to deflect the discomfort that she’ll be wealthy by her peer’s standards.
Well, the bank apparently will buy the house from her. From what I understand they wouldn’t be interested unless they basically already own it – and Toedad was definitely the kind of barely employable, financial non-genius who’d buy a house he couldn’t really afford. It is possible Becky isn’t being very facetious but basically only gets some small change out of the deal.
To be a little more sympathetic, there may have been serious costs with Bonnie’s death. Medical debt, covered by taking equity out of the house?
I’m not sure whether Becky is doing very well or very very bad. Here’s hoping for good
Okay, this is a complete tangent from the Heavy Feels, but the mention of Zoomr reminds me that I’ve been meaning to ask about something for ages.
Can anyone find the strip where Joe says he has an ambition to create the first practical driverless car, but he expects Carla’s parents to beat him to it? That happened, right? It wasn’t a dream I had?
I have hit the random button to an embarrassing degree and I don’t think it happened in this comic.
Could it have been a Patreon strip? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it, and those are the only things I haven’t read yet.
Joe hasn’t been mentioned or shown to be mechanically-inclined in the Dumbiverse, and also I don’t remember drawing this.
Dream I had. Okay, then.
I hate it when that happens. Thanks for letting me know.
If Becky makes enough money off her family’s house, she might even be able to buy three or four textbooks.
Who is “us?” My guess is either Dina or Leslie or both.
Quite honestly… why would she want her childhood home considering 1.the hometown it resides in and 2. The only positive experiences she had in her childhood were seemingly her mother (who died in a very traumatizing way for a my loved one, especially a child) and her best friend who she had a one sided crush on for at least a decade?