i mean, wouldn’t put it past her to at least bug the room even if it’s not dangerous but hopefully amber could help go through it/ detect it if she was trying to spy on Joyce that way
See. My concern is actually– is Carol suicidal? No, genuinely, Is She Suicidal. She’s clearing out sentimental belongings; she’s talking like she’s never going to see Joyce again, and maybe it’s just me but there’s Something about panel two that- just–
Well, she is very passive-aggressive…But she chose Ross and The Coward Collective over her husband and kids…Who didn’t exactly do much more for Ross than go broke (their church, anyway) trying to pay his bail and make excuses for him…And may have proven to be even less supportive now that Carol no longer comes with her husband and his respectable job….They need some foe to gang up on that won’t make them feel as removed from respectable All-American Middle Class as they really are, anyway….It “worked” for Mrs. McIntyre, and apparently life is meaningless if you can’t be proven to be right from the start…Right?
Well, if the only thing that’ll keep Carol from doing it is everyone she took for granted feeling sorry so she won’t have to…Well, it shouldn’t be Joyce’s problem anymore than it already is, should it?
If she is, maybe Becky will be the one to say something to Joyce. Becky was kicking herself to Joyce’s dad about not being able to see the signs with Ruth.
Having been on the outs with my parents to the point of being disowned and cut out of the will, but still kind of on speaking terms with them, what this likely is, is Mom is expunging all of Joyce’s stuff from the house in an effort to rid the house of her presence and any memories of her. I recently received a stack of photo albums from my mom of my childhood. I really have no space to store them, but she is basically removing my present from her house, but she can’t bear to throw them away, so she’s doing the next best thing.
I wonder if this arc is going to show us Carol’s less toxic (or at least mixed-bag) side? That would set us (the audience) up to see her with the same kind of conflicting emotions as Joyce does, instead of just as the cartoonish villain she was during the kidnapping arc and its aftermath.
I get the feeling that with the divorce, the old house is getting sold and Carol packed up all of Joyce’s stuff for her to deal with now. Or some portion thereof.
I’m suspecting Carol is always toxic. Joyce is conflicted because she grew up with it and the thin veneer of toxicity that would be her norm is something that Joyce would see as motherly will still give the rest of us cold shivers. Carol strikes me as someone who is sickly sweet when she is happy, interspersed with backhanded compliments designed to get people to conform to what she wants. When she is displeased, she gets passive aggressive. And when she is angry, the “L” in her name turns to an “N”
If the house is their biggest asset they might *have* to sell it to do an equitable split. Still you’d think one or both of them would be willing to store Joyce’s stuff in wherever they’re moving to / in a storage unit instead of just dumping it all in her tiny dorm room.
Hank would have to sign off on selling the house if he’s also on the deed.
My guess is she’s angling to get the house in the divorce, then she’ll sell it. Whether she then donates the proceeds to the church remains to be seen.
In cases like this, where there’s no minor children and the couple have shared the house for a long time, generally whichever party keeps the house owes half its value to the other (since they both have an equal right to it). Many couples simply don’t have enough assets to cover that because half the house is more than everything else combined, so unless they are willing to accept frankly the worst possible compromise (viz., one party gets the house and the other gets EVERYTHING ELSE, which is a lesser overall value), they just sell the house and split the cash.
Probably, I wonder if it’s because they didn’t completely pay off the house or because last we heard the church drained all their money along side the mob money they took to pay for Rosses bail and now Carol is selling her house to help pay if off.
But then Hank would keep Joyce’s stuff unless they both became homeless. Maybe they had to sell the house to pay off their restitution. And they are fleeing the country together to avoid the law. This doesn’t make sense.
And again, go back a page and just look at that slinky little dress the Christian matriarch is wearing, with no hat or scarf and a coat that’s not even buttoned. Wtf.
I guess also depends on when they bought the house and if they’ve finished paying off their mortgage.
We know they moved churches a few times, but they’ve lived in their own since Joyce was a kid since she’s grown up with Becky. Doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t move houses, but La Porte isn’t big.
Blaine’s execution was absolutely approved by the boss. However, just because his “donation” to the church was probably unauthorized that doesn’t mean the mob would just let go of that potential leverage.
Storage lockers aren’t THAT much. A quick web search says “from $21” for Bloomington, IN. Next lowest price, at a different location, is $54 for a 5×10.
My parents moved a lot. I’m a digital nomad without a permanent residence, and my parents can house a few boxes for me in their little basement — but that’s because there are only three kids, and one of us has already cleared out all his stuff.
The Browns have more like five kids. There’s little reason for the young adults to have gone through all their childhood junk that Mom insisted on saving for them, in that big suburban home, which is only now downsizing. Sorry, Browns, surprise, the time is now.
Clarification: not in a “Carol is right” type of way. She isn’t.
When you gave your kids the expectation of unlimited storage in a big suburban house, the time to say “actually, whoops we’ve got a sudden storage problem…” is not to suddenly appear and physically dump all the boxes on your kid, when she’s living in a dorm, and on her way to class.
I only comment in a “haha, yeah, sucks to be them” kind of way.
question: why do you keep using the word “slinky”…? as far as we can see of it, it’s just…a dress. even in the fullbody image that willis posted, it’s not particularly short (about knee or calf length) or tight-fitting, and we can’t see anything else about the cut to know if it has sleeves, etc…it’s just…a normal looking dress. she might not be all bundled up like joyce, but neither is, like, sal. some people run warmer than others, and if she just got out of a car with the heater running, maybe she’s not feeling the cold just yet. “slinky”??
Because obviously a Good Christian Woman must cover her ankles for propriety, and this vulgar clothing is only fit for a woman of ill repute.
… Yeah I don’t really see it either. It’s *at best* trying to look good rather than actively modest or frumpy, nowhere near the level I’d consider “slinky” to be an appropriate descriptor.
Yeah, that is strange. Like someone who maybe just rousted themself out of sleep or a fog and decided to do something impulsive, didn’t even bother to change out of a nightgown or just grabbed something off the clothing rack without planning layered clothing.
Between the two I picked Dina because she’s the one who’s canonically autistic. But a lot of the entries in round one of the bracket are characters you’d expect to see facing each other in the finals.
Even if she loses this is an amazing showing for Dina who’s probably far less well known than Webby.
Canonically Dina has never been diagnosed with autism though. Although that’s just a technically and it’s a much stronger claim than for Webby, which even though I’ve only seen a couple episodes I don’t know if she is even intended to be on the spectrum.
I’m pretty sure her VA, Kate Micucci is on the spectrum, that she’s said it before, but i’m not 100%, or even 80% sure, but if she is, i wouldn’t be surprised if she put that into Webby. And Webby does check a lot of boxes that could lead to a diagnosis so it’s highly probable, but i don’t have a p>.05 certainty
Lots of real people know we’re autistic without having a diagnosis. Dina got vocally upset with Joyce because a doctor said Joyce might be autistic, and Dina’s parents were actively fighting for a diagnosis for years. Dina is canonically autistic and the canon reason she is undiagnosed is medical racism.
Oh man I cannot make choices like that. Just scrolled up and down the bracket and it’s impossible.
Note: the fact that I know who almost all of these characters are and identify with many of them does not mean anything. Also add Chise Hatori from The Ancient Magus’ Bride. And Makoto Kowata from The Flying Witch. And Sanae Kōzuki from Sakura Quest. And Tamako Kitashirakawa from Tamako Market. And…
Meaning Carol sold her house, gave the money to the church, and is moving into a tiny apt. She’s definitely too happy(almost manic) right now.
In better news, the assassination of Shinzo Abe in Japan led to, among other things, investigations into and legal problems for his cult that exploited elderly people in similar ways.
It’s ironic that Abe and others had strong connections to the Unification Church given the various issues between Japan and South Korea, and the place of ethnic Koreans in Japanese society. But their shared opposition to Communism probably overcame a lot of that.
I’d assume she can only unilaterally sell the house after it’s hers outright, instead of a joint marital asset. Unless Hank is just signing anything put in front of him to expedite the process…
Dude builds his own Gorn-blaster Captain Kirk gun, kills the former Prime Minister, and suddenly the entire nation says, “Hey, you now what? That guy was kind of dick, wasn’t he?”
Unfortunately political corruption has been pretty common in Japan post WW2. Back in the ’70s one of their big scandals was over aircraft purchases from US manufacturer Lockheed.(Other countries had similar bribery scandals involving Lockheed.)
But if she doesn’t want Joyce’s stuff she would just let Hank have it. Ditto if she’s fleeing the country to avoid the mob and the law. Something very weird is happening.
I mean the presumption is smaller place with less room. Or too much clutter in the old place for the movers. When you move, you get rid of things you can’t afford to bring with you.
But giving it to Hank means dealing with Hank, who she also has bad feelings towards. And this way she gets to sneer at and harass Joyce while sugar-coating it as concern for her feelings and welfare.
(Of course, the dirty trick Joyce could pull is to hide the stuff somewhere and then sue her mom to give Joyce’s property back, since Carol won’t have proof she already did so. One of the reasons this sort of thing is best done through third parties and with a paper trail.)
Various Georges Bush. Conservatives. Carol is a cretin and therefore votes red. Bushes as in topiary identical to Bushes as in those guys I said. Did I win the joke? I’m too high for better attempt.
I’m assuming that was Yotomoe’s intent, but I find it difficult to believe Carol’s only ever voted for Bushes, largely because there’s no way in hell she didn’t vote Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Probably especially since, while she _Knows_She’s_Right_*, she doesn’t want to alienate her daughter, and she is sane enough to also know her daughter would NOT agree with her on the issue.
NOT having a conversation with Linda is a good way to NOT have THAT bit of dirty laundry aired out in front of Joyce.
*To be clear, SHE knows she’s right. I’m convinced otherwise, but I also saw this all happen from a much different perspective than she has.
“‘Till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane…”
“Despair thy charm,
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee Macduff was from his mother’s womb
Untimely ripped.”
That was one C-Section feller who DEFINITELY came out of the bushes!
Linda stole her own daughter’s savings so she wouldn’t spend it on her friend’s surgery.
I doubt there’s much Linda wouldn’t do when she thinks she’s right (a hallmark of the terrible parents in this series).
The court is obligated by the judicial system to let out prisoners who meet bail requirements and aren’t remanded by prosecutors.
The church, on the other hand, made a conscious group choice that Ross’s freedom (to forcibly re-convert his daughter to their standards) meant more than any potential danger to the community and others he posed. So they’re actually at fault, and very culpable.
Yeah, I imagine it’s different rules place-to-place, but I’m pretty sure if you pay bail for someone, and they go on to commit more crimes, you’re “on the hook” in one way or another. Whether it’s fines, or you’re actually charged with a crime, idk. But they paid this guys’ bail, and like several people died as a direct result.
now i understand the church paying bail took responsibility that mr. Thumb will behave, he didn’t behave well, you can sue the church who promised to watch over him. I thought bail was just a matter of money
When you pay bail for someone, you are essentially taking responsibility for them and saying ‘they will not cause any trouble while waiting for the court date and will show up to court when expected’.
The bail money is then returned to you, as long as they show up to court as they are supposed to, regardless of trial outcome, as the point is to make sure they attend.
If they make a run for it and don’t show up, the bail money is forfeit. So it is like giving a deposit for damages or a credit card to a hotel, but the thing you are responsible for is a person, and the higher the bail is, the more incentive you have to keep them close and make sure they turn up to court.
You don’t get the bail back, but I don’t think you have any further responsibility. Obviously they can be sued, but I don’t think that would be an easy case to win.
Joyce’s mom is just going to be a constant presence now that she’s incredibly divorced and possibly losing the house. Living in the bushes near the dorms and hissing at passersby like an angry raccoon.
I’m wondering if we aren’t going to see one of Joyce’s siblings appear, because we’re overdue for a reappearance. Unfortunately given the current situation it will probably be John, not Jocelyne.
Given it was specified he doesn’t get along with his mother, I’m thinking that if Joyce blows up at her mom enough that he hears, he’ll come by to high five her.
it would be good if she actually got a chance to appear, maybe even bond with carla too
(though you’d think if it was that much of a big deal that she’d send a follow up text because it’s harder to ignore a text unless joyce can delete them w/o reading)
I wonder if I’m the only one, but my immediate association from “you picked a great color, you always did” in combination with the pink/purple box was that it is a passive-aggressive statement for Joyce to stay a girl. As if Jocelyne came out and Carol immediately went for “damage control” on her other children.
i can’t imagine this jocyelne coming out to her mother directly unless she moved halfway across the country where she wouldn’t have to deal with any sudden appearances/directconfrontation
I was wondering what was going on and my first thought was “my daughter abandoned god and i can’t stand to see this stuff that reminds me of her anymore” – but then i started reading the comments and divorce->sell house makes sense. I left a bunch of stuff at home when i moved to college then out, and my dad would often bug me to pick it up or get rid of it. So this is a practical ‘slice of life’ sequence.
That said, joyce’s life is more or less an autobiography of Willis’s deconversion, so i expect her mom to break or say something nasty once the task is done and her smileyface mask cracks.
Or not. She’s been wearing that mask for a LOOOOONG time. Female fundagelicals are taught from an early age that appearances are the most important thing; and to suppress their feelings, thoughts and opinions. Hm, maybe Joyce will call her out on it?
She didn’t know Joyce got glasses until this strip, if Joyce isn’t sharing relatively mundane life changes with her there’s no way she’s shared her Atheism
I suspect either Joyce is getting a ‘soft disown’ with her mums assumption itll ‘scare her straight’ into doing whatever Carol wants, OR she has decided to use Joyce as a pawn in the divorce and is trying to tug on some nostalgia heartstrings/practicality about the house.
she probably does have ulterior motives but it might be for the best if she was ‘disowned’/cut off or so since she’s not esp. co-dependent on her mom right now
though if the church doesn’t approve of joyce’s group of friends and all i wouldn’t be surprised if ppl on the community told her to disown her, as opposed to trying to ‘save’ her
If the church is actually in the throes of bankruptcy thanks to Linda suing them into the ground, that is the one decent thing Linda Walkerton has ever done in her life
Also in Linda Walkerton tradition, Joyce is about to get hit with a big blast wave of collateral damage
(It’s also just as likely the church spent literally its entire operating budget on Ross, and Carol is just doing the “good” cult thing, as…as you do)
who would pay the fees in court though? The head pastors or so? if that’s the case even if they end up struggling i imagine they could still hold fundraisers and bake sales and stuff and pressure ppl more often every sunday to donate to the collection plate or so
Oh I’m sure they are doing that, but like, bail bond services are expensive all on their own. Ross committed at least a level 3 felony under Indiana law, and that has a reasonable bond amount of $30,000 BEFORE you add on the bondsman’s service fees and other attached costs. And you know Blaine didn’t pay that in full, because he’s at least a successful enough organized crime associate to know that would be way too suspicious, especially given his next course of action was gonna be “commit a lot of level 1 and 2 felonies all at once” and he expected to cover that up.
Also Evangelical church operating costs are wonky and different from more, let’s say, established sects, because as Evangelicals will tell you, they are not religious. Religion is actually quite despised! Religion is what all the fallen, irredeemable or unawakened churches engage in. What THEY are doing in following Christ.
In financial terms this means they almost certainly don’t have a network of mutual support like, say, the Catholic Church or even major Protestant denominations, just to use Christian examples, and because their culture is the insular culture of a death cult, they don’t forge cultural bonds like a Jewish faith community or a Muslim faith community. There is only the in-group and the outer, shunned ones.
Also this, you’re completely right. The pastors are not going to put their asses into the line of fire, because this is their livelihood, this is their business.
If it’s like my church, the elders handle the business aspect, there might have been a call for a “love offering,” and probably one of them would be sent to deal with the bondsman. But, if they are smart, there was just a suggestion that someone might volunteer to take up a collection from “the church” (i.e. the members) and handle the bonding, so that “the church” (i.e. the business entity) is not fiscally involved. The pastor is an employee, not an officer, of the business entity.
Sorry Joyce, you’re officially Too Worldly(tm) for Carol now, what with the treating gays like humans, not supporting vigilante fanatic toe-dad, and catalyzing her divorce.
Carol’s gotta delete you from her life, like all cultists do.
…they’re getting divorced and don’t dare to tell Joyce. As if she won’t eventually add 1+1 when she force on her all her stuff that was still in the house (that I assume they are about to sell)
she already knows they’re divorced, back when joyce was getting glasses becky told her to ask dad for covering for it and liek “I don’t know if it’s ok to ask my dad for money/ok to take emotional advantage of him going through a divorce”
i mean, other than financially tied together/it being an ‘amicable’ divorce, i imagine a recently divorced couple wouldn’t just keep living with each other
Yeah, that is definitely the face of, “Look at me, being so generous and not throwing your stuff away! Now say thank you, because if you call me out on it, you’ll be the bad guy. 🙂 ”
My biodad did this when he sold their last family house. There was plenty of room in the new house for the nostalgic stuff my mom might have wanted to keep (old drawings and toys among them), and plenty of stuff that might as well have been garbage, but he made a big show of giving everything to me instead. Also, there were two boxes of stuff that looked vaguely like they might have belonged to one of his kids at some point, but neither of us recognized any of it and it basically just served to pad out the volume of stuff of he was “giving” me. Then he got offended when I wasn’t “grateful” about it.
Which could be doubly problematic if Carol raised her kids with the mentality that anything in the house when her kids were growing up belonged to her. Your clothes? My property. Your favorite toy? My property. Something I bought you as a birthday gift? My property. Something you bought with your allowance money? Still my property.
Because if she does have that mentality, then she possibly *genuinely believes* that she’s being generous by “letting” Joyce have them instead of throwing it all away, as would be her “right”.
Regardless, I hate that Carol is still completely ignoring/disregarding what Joyce has to say. I wish I could see someone give her a scathing lecture with enough force to get it in her head how forked up her behavior is, but I know that’s realistically never going to happen. Cognitive dissonance is a helluva drug, and Carol is a prime candidate to live the rest of her life with a “righteous martyr” complex.
how hilarious would it be if it was just like “i’m actually hooking up with a man half my age so i wanna get rid of the stuff at my place that makes me think i’m currently raising a young kid”
Wait a minute- last time we saw Carol she was about to get suplexed by Ruth; whatever happened with that? Even if Ruth didn’t go through with it there was never a resolution to Carol’s intrusion into the dorm.
we never saw on screen, idk if ruth actually would’ve injured her since she could’ve been charged for assault or so or had ppl help escort her off the premises but i imagine she’s been biding her time since the divorce and was waiting til things cooled down or so to where she could come on campus before nayone else notice
In the next strip Ruth’s in, she says that she “got to tackle and drag someone outside.” So it’s unclear whether literal suplexing happened, but there was apparently a physical removal of Carol from the building.
Carol misses her daughter. I get that. But unless the next words out of her mouth are, “I’m so sorry. I was wrong”, it’s hard to imagine this ending well.
okay, so don’t take this as a defense of Carol or an attempt to ignore signs that this is some kind of ploy, but this is also absolutely a thing my own, non-abusive mother did when I moved out. Granted, it’s a little strange to do it while your kid is in a dorm, but I think it’s likely she’s having to downsize/move out due to the divorce, and may be honestly out of room for this stuff.
Which isn’t to say she isn’t going to try to get that midwest-mom emotional blackmail in at the same time (or some other far worse plan), but while the penny is in the air, so far this isn’t that weird to me. Like, I wouldn’t do this to someone myself, but I’ve seen it happen and had it happen to me without any kind of malicious intent.
sure but in that case, i’d assume your mom would’ve given you heads up as opposed to showing out of the blue and inconveniencing you/sometime while you’ wouldn’t end up being there to receive the items as opposed to like “your stuff’s in our attic/basement, take it with you if you want otherwise we can donate it” or so
My mom did this, but waited until I was established in my own house (which, uh, took a while) and even then it was more triggered by her and dad moving/downsizing.
I could’ve sworn it was established somewhere (though I can’t find it) that both Carol and Hank use corrective lenses, actually— it’s just that Hank opts for contacts, so which makes it less obvious. I think Carol wore contacts herself, pre-timeskip, but she’s probably lost access to Hank’s medical insurance.
Willis has posted off and on about bins of his childhood drawings and mementos that his parents saved. I think some of it ended up in his father’s basement for years.
That’s apparently how a bunch of very early Ultra Car content was preserved.
She is thriving on passive aggressive spite right now. She is implying Joyce is to blame for her divorce and that she is better than Joyce because she did not throw away the drawings the way she’s implying Joyce threw her away.
I know I am inferring a lot, but I think she’s dressed up for the drama.
Although they probably are going to sell the house and stuff, I think this is more a “Carol grabbed everything of Joyce’s she could, so she would be able to force Joyce to interact with her*” kind of thing than a “we both (parents) are downsizing because divorce, take all your shit” thing.
*whether consciously going against Joyce’s wishes or thinking this would be received as a great way back into Joyce’s life, we cannot know at this time
also re the having to throw Joyce’s childhood stuff away thing, it’ll be ‘since you and your dad are forcing me to leave the house, I guess I’ll be homeless’ or some shit
The ‘you were always good with colors’ has some vague ‘you are dead to me’ vibes. And the fact that she comes in smiling like that makes me think this is a ‘cutting her off’ thing. If this was just a case of ‘I don’t have space for them in my new apartment’ I’m not sure if this is the mood. This feels an ‘I’m doing a godly thing in cutting her off’ situation
Oh that’s funny, I get a very “bring her back to the fold” vibe from this. Carol seems to be trying to put Joyce back in a small child’s role, and hoping that this love-bombing will work. I would guess that Carol is feeling a spectacular loss of control in other areas of her life, so she’s trying to get some back by getting Joyce under her thumb again. I’m interested to see which way this ends up going, because neither route feels implausible to me.
Two things. God appears to Moses from a burning bush. Carol appears from an icy bush. Just saying.
Carol has not only sold the house and split the proceeds, I’m betting she’s also seeing a new godly man. Shacking up with someone who doesn’t want her kids old junk around. One from her parish who will confirm her godliness and worth.
Hell, I could imagine it just being out of spite–I was picturing “Hank kept the house, Carol DEMANDED all the kid’s old stuff because she’s the mom, but has no place to put it and doesn’t actually want it.”
My mom had the good sense to wait until I was 40 to show up with all my boxes of random saved artwork from when I was a kid, but I SUSPECT it was for a similar reason.
(she and my dad downsized their house and moved nearer to my brother. I suspect all of that is substantially true except for “and Joyce’s dad” in this case)
Yeah, I couldn’t find the post on tumblr mentioning it to remember the finer details, but I do remember something along the lines of ‘my mother sold the house and gave the money to the church’.
I figure this is a coin flip. Either Joyce’s mom is going through a serious emotional crisis and looking for any excuse to reach out, or those bins are full of Joyce’s Jesus doodles and it’s an attempt at emotional subterfuge.
Yeah, panel 2 was me to my mom during undergrad a lot. I would tell her “hey, that thing you sent me without asking? I didn’t have room for it so I gave it away unopened.”
But my mom was just trying to be helpful and being somewhat off base in what I needed. I suspect Carol is actually here to manipulate Joyce.
Passive-aggressive guilt trip + bid for sympathy. It’s your fault your father left me and I can’t afford to buy him out of the house or even afford to live in it without his income, because I sacrificed myself to be a stay at home mom and home-school teacher, so here’s all the crap we wasted money on for such an ungrateful child, since I’ll probably be on the streets soon, or living off the charity of the church.
That was meant to be a response to someone who mentioned her seeing someone as “Godly” as her after the divorce, but it is even more hilarious out of context.
Exactly, that’s why I mentioned it. Carol and Peter are both terrible human beings, as well as Mary. I could see that happening and then Mary having a breakdown after discovering it.
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Yeah she’s gonna want to have the campus police inspect all those bins. 👀
Nah, Carol doesn’t have the balls to do anything herself.
When dealing with someone who at this point is basically a terrorist, always suspect foul play.
i mean, wouldn’t put it past her to at least bug the room even if it’s not dangerous but hopefully amber could help go through it/ detect it if she was trying to spy on Joyce that way
Nannycam teddy bear. Joyce won’t realize right away because it’s one she had as a kid.
Yeah, I think it’s pretty obvious who initiated this divorce.
See. My concern is actually– is Carol suicidal? No, genuinely, Is She Suicidal. She’s clearing out sentimental belongings; she’s talking like she’s never going to see Joyce again, and maybe it’s just me but there’s Something about panel two that- just–
Warning bells. So many warning bells.
Well, she is very passive-aggressive…But she chose Ross and The Coward Collective over her husband and kids…Who didn’t exactly do much more for Ross than go broke (their church, anyway) trying to pay his bail and make excuses for him…And may have proven to be even less supportive now that Carol no longer comes with her husband and his respectable job….They need some foe to gang up on that won’t make them feel as removed from respectable All-American Middle Class as they really are, anyway….It “worked” for Mrs. McIntyre, and apparently life is meaningless if you can’t be proven to be right from the start…Right?
Well, if the only thing that’ll keep Carol from doing it is everyone she took for granted feeling sorry so she won’t have to…Well, it shouldn’t be Joyce’s problem anymore than it already is, should it?
We can only hope.
If she is, maybe Becky will be the one to say something to Joyce. Becky was kicking herself to Joyce’s dad about not being able to see the signs with Ruth.
I don’t think this is Suicidal.
I think this is Disowning.
Judging from what Willis has said about his life, she most definitely sold/is selling the house. To the church i think, but i don’t remember clearly
It’s selling the house and donating the money to the church,
followed quickly by the pastor skipping town.
That’s my worry as well.
Having been on the outs with my parents to the point of being disowned and cut out of the will, but still kind of on speaking terms with them, what this likely is, is Mom is expunging all of Joyce’s stuff from the house in an effort to rid the house of her presence and any memories of her. I recently received a stack of photo albums from my mom of my childhood. I really have no space to store them, but she is basically removing my present from her house, but she can’t bear to throw them away, so she’s doing the next best thing.
Yeah Mrs. Brown is just a few orchestral movements away from full horror villain here.
Also hey, you’re first. Looks like the early brain worm gets the bird today – good job.
Why are we not focused on what’s important here. Joyce’s mom totally appeared stepping out of that bush. We aĺl saw it.
I wonder if this arc is going to show us Carol’s less toxic (or at least mixed-bag) side? That would set us (the audience) up to see her with the same kind of conflicting emotions as Joyce does, instead of just as the cartoonish villain she was during the kidnapping arc and its aftermath.
i have a feeling Carol is about to love bomb Joyce in a way that will make the Tsar Bomba test look like a single firecracker
Oof, yeah you’re right.
I get the feeling that with the divorce, the old house is getting sold and Carol packed up all of Joyce’s stuff for her to deal with now. Or some portion thereof.
Yeah hpuse sale is where my mind immediately went
Taking it to God now that the nest is finally empty and it’s just her and the church family?
My take on the sitch too. House is about to go bye-bye for the Browns, or Carol is about to go bye-bye.
I’m suspecting Carol is always toxic. Joyce is conflicted because she grew up with it and the thin veneer of toxicity that would be her norm is something that Joyce would see as motherly will still give the rest of us cold shivers. Carol strikes me as someone who is sickly sweet when she is happy, interspersed with backhanded compliments designed to get people to conform to what she wants. When she is displeased, she gets passive aggressive. And when she is angry, the “L” in her name turns to an “N”
Could you call her…an Orchestral Manouevre in the Dar?
(Dark?)
OK, I got it.
Carol be like…
And anyone who sees Carol coming be like…
Love this! xD
/starting to wonder if that’s why my folks sprung for my single
Did your parents move house during college or did they just use your dorm as a spare closet?
My parents filled my room with books and the rest of the house with yarn, so… buh
You’d think a mini-storage unit would be cheaper.
I’m just going to put a timestamp here. 12:09. (EDT)
Her beautiful glasses match her beautiful eyes.
She’s selling the house
Probably because of the divorce
Save the church after the walkertons sued it into the ground.
Walky: Joyce, my parents sued your church for everything it was worth. Unfortunately that wasn’t much. You want any of this stuff?
Joyce: I doubt it, but what’d you get?
Walky: A complete vintage run of Chick Tracts.
Joyce: Had the whole set.
Walky: Six gross of red MAGA hats.
Joyce: Only Halloween costume I was allowed.
Walky: Some boy named Tristan.
Joyce: Joe you’re dumped, I got a better option now.
Pretend this comment is an upvote!
They’re selling the house.
Either because of the divorce, and/or their church just owed a lot of money to a Korean mob.
I have a new theory.
Hank was going to get the house.
Carol is selling it in either violation of the court order or somehow before it can go into effect.
If the house is their biggest asset they might *have* to sell it to do an equitable split. Still you’d think one or both of them would be willing to store Joyce’s stuff in wherever they’re moving to / in a storage unit instead of just dumping it all in her tiny dorm room.
Hank would have to sign off on selling the house if he’s also on the deed.
My guess is she’s angling to get the house in the divorce, then she’ll sell it. Whether she then donates the proceeds to the church remains to be seen.
She’ll sell it *to* the church
Sell it on the open market, then donate the proceeds to the church.
Former family lawyer here.
In cases like this, where there’s no minor children and the couple have shared the house for a long time, generally whichever party keeps the house owes half its value to the other (since they both have an equal right to it). Many couples simply don’t have enough assets to cover that because half the house is more than everything else combined, so unless they are willing to accept frankly the worst possible compromise (viz., one party gets the house and the other gets EVERYTHING ELSE, which is a lesser overall value), they just sell the house and split the cash.
Ninjaed. I said effectively the same thing a couple minutes below.
Probably, I wonder if it’s because they didn’t completely pay off the house or because last we heard the church drained all their money along side the mob money they took to pay for Rosses bail and now Carol is selling her house to help pay if off.
I’m assuming it’s cause they got divorced. House can’t be divided up, but money for a sold house can be.
Anyone else getting red flags? Like. Culty flags?
No. I think she got kicked out of Hank’s house.
That alone wouldn’t explain why she’s giving away Joyce’s stuff.
It would if she is using Joyce as a weapon.
Which.
She’s not giving Joyce stuff away, she’s giving it to Joyce.
Who has nowhere to put it except her shared dorm room.
But then Hank would keep Joyce’s stuff unless they both became homeless. Maybe they had to sell the house to pay off their restitution. And they are fleeing the country together to avoid the law. This doesn’t make sense.
And again, go back a page and just look at that slinky little dress the Christian matriarch is wearing, with no hat or scarf and a coat that’s not even buttoned. Wtf.
Hank can’t necessarily afford a big enough place to store Joyce’s stuff on his own, either.
I guess also depends on when they bought the house and if they’ve finished paying off their mortgage.
We know they moved churches a few times, but they’ve lived in their own since Joyce was a kid since she’s grown up with Becky. Doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t move houses, but La Porte isn’t big.
Also I’d assume Hank wouldn’t want to hang around the community that sicced a Korean mobster onto his daughter and her friends.
Wouldn’t surprise me if (assuming he owned the house by himself and it wasn’t a joint thing) he just sold to move the heck out.
Huh? What’s this about Korean mobsters? Do you mean Blaine?
Blaine was a loose agent that basically used the Korean Mafia’s resources for his own gratification.
I wouldn’t be surprised if his execution had some level of approval by the boss.
Blaine’s execution was absolutely approved by the boss. However, just because his “donation” to the church was probably unauthorized that doesn’t mean the mob would just let go of that potential leverage.
Ah. Ok, thanks. Missed that.
Storage lockers aren’t THAT much. A quick web search says “from $21” for Bloomington, IN. Next lowest price, at a different location, is $54 for a 5×10.
Yeah the decent way to do this is rent a locker, put the stuff in it, pay for a few months in advance, and mail the details and key to Joyce.
My parents moved a lot. I’m a digital nomad without a permanent residence, and my parents can house a few boxes for me in their little basement — but that’s because there are only three kids, and one of us has already cleared out all his stuff.
The Browns have more like five kids. There’s little reason for the young adults to have gone through all their childhood junk that Mom insisted on saving for them, in that big suburban home, which is only now downsizing. Sorry, Browns, surprise, the time is now.
The Browns have four. John, Josh, Jocelyne, Joyce.
I think it’s Jordan, the other child. Joshua was Jocelyne’s deadname.
Or, previous name, or birth name, or legal name, or however Jocelyne might call it.
You forgot Jordan
Actually it’s John, Jordan, Jocelyne and Joyce.
Clarification: not in a “Carol is right” type of way. She isn’t.
When you gave your kids the expectation of unlimited storage in a big suburban house, the time to say “actually, whoops we’ve got a sudden storage problem…” is not to suddenly appear and physically dump all the boxes on your kid, when she’s living in a dorm, and on her way to class.
I only comment in a “haha, yeah, sucks to be them” kind of way.
question: why do you keep using the word “slinky”…? as far as we can see of it, it’s just…a dress. even in the fullbody image that willis posted, it’s not particularly short (about knee or calf length) or tight-fitting, and we can’t see anything else about the cut to know if it has sleeves, etc…it’s just…a normal looking dress. she might not be all bundled up like joyce, but neither is, like, sal. some people run warmer than others, and if she just got out of a car with the heater running, maybe she’s not feeling the cold just yet. “slinky”??
for the record, the fullbody in question: https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1661777969952485380/photo/1
Because obviously a Good Christian Woman must cover her ankles for propriety, and this vulgar clothing is only fit for a woman of ill repute.
… Yeah I don’t really see it either. It’s *at best* trying to look good rather than actively modest or frumpy, nowhere near the level I’d consider “slinky” to be an appropriate descriptor.
Yeah, that is strange. Like someone who maybe just rousted themself out of sleep or a fog and decided to do something impulsive, didn’t even bother to change out of a nightgown or just grabbed something off the clothing rack without planning layered clothing.
Carol’s been in a cult since we met her. Are you thinking she joined a new one?
Im thinking about jonestown
Nah, just doubled-down on the old cult.
Again.
The browns are walking culty red flags
In more positive news, Dina’s featured in Autistic Girlies Bracket on Tumblr!!!! 😍
She’s 80 votes behind Webby Vanderquack and we have only 24 hours to vote her up lest she lose!!! 😱
https://www.tumblr.com/autisticgirliesbracket/717861569237794816/autistic-girlies-bracket-round-1-side-a
That’s a hard pick…I love Ducktales 2017 and Webby… but I voted for Dina because I always pick the underdog
I also always pick whoever canonically represents the poll category, which is also Dina
Between the two I picked Dina because she’s the one who’s canonically autistic. But a lot of the entries in round one of the bracket are characters you’d expect to see facing each other in the finals.
Even if she loses this is an amazing showing for Dina who’s probably far less well known than Webby.
Canonically Dina has never been diagnosed with autism though. Although that’s just a technically and it’s a much stronger claim than for Webby, which even though I’ve only seen a couple episodes I don’t know if she is even intended to be on the spectrum.
I’m pretty sure her VA, Kate Micucci is on the spectrum, that she’s said it before, but i’m not 100%, or even 80% sure, but if she is, i wouldn’t be surprised if she put that into Webby. And Webby does check a lot of boxes that could lead to a diagnosis so it’s highly probable, but i don’t have a p>.05 certainty
Lots of real people know we’re autistic without having a diagnosis. Dina got vocally upset with Joyce because a doctor said Joyce might be autistic, and Dina’s parents were actively fighting for a diagnosis for years. Dina is canonically autistic and the canon reason she is undiagnosed is medical racism.
I’ve never seen a clip of any duck-related tales even, but Dina is Dina so….
Oh man I cannot make choices like that. Just scrolled up and down the bracket and it’s impossible.
Note: the fact that I know who almost all of these characters are and identify with many of them does not mean anything. Also add Chise Hatori from The Ancient Magus’ Bride. And Makoto Kowata from The Flying Witch. And Sanae Kōzuki from Sakura Quest. And Tamako Kitashirakawa from Tamako Market. And…
Oof, this feels like an “I’m disowning you” is about to happen…
Nope, rerolling my avatar.
This is fine for now.
I can’t think of a more fitting Gravatar for that comment, though!
Getting strong “kicking you out of the house” vibes
More like “we won’t be owning the house soon” vibes.
How about all of the above?
I’m getting a “time for Joyce to take a long walk down memory lane and re-question her values, for drama’s sake” vibe.
Alternatively she’s moving out of the old house
If she was just moving out, she wouldn’t need to give Joyce her stuff. Hank can keep Joyce’s things in there if he wanted to.
Sounds like they NEED to get rid of the stuff.
That would assume she’s moving into an equally sized or larger property, and I strongly suspect she is not
And also that Hank was still living in the old house, an assumption I did not make and failed to make clear that I wasn’t
…We’re probably getting more autobio stuff here.
Meaning Carol sold her house, gave the money to the church, and is moving into a tiny apt. She’s definitely too happy(almost manic) right now.
In better news, the assassination of Shinzo Abe in Japan led to, among other things, investigations into and legal problems for his cult that exploited elderly people in similar ways.
It’s ironic that Abe and others had strong connections to the Unification Church given the various issues between Japan and South Korea, and the place of ethnic Koreans in Japanese society. But their shared opposition to Communism probably overcame a lot of that.
Yeah, my recollection is that Willis’ mom sold the house and gave the money to their church.
Bingo.
I’d assume she can only unilaterally sell the house after it’s hers outright, instead of a joint marital asset. Unless Hank is just signing anything put in front of him to expedite the process…
I keep forgetting that DoA is semi-autobiographical
Wildest political assassination of our times
Dude builds his own Gorn-blaster Captain Kirk gun, kills the former Prime Minister, and suddenly the entire nation says, “Hey, you now what? That guy was kind of dick, wasn’t he?”
Unfortunately political corruption has been pretty common in Japan post WW2. Back in the ’70s one of their big scandals was over aircraft purchases from US manufacturer Lockheed.(Other countries had similar bribery scandals involving Lockheed.)
i’d assume she’d move back in with her dad when she graduates if she doesn’t find her own place
But i’d think carol would’ve hung ont o more of her stuff to be like “Come visit me and get your stuff” or so versus just visiting her first
Pretty sure Joyce already disowned her, while that wouldn’t stop her from trying it back it does limit the potential drama.
They’ve sold the house.
Is… is she mourning?
She’s accepting the divorce.
They’re selling the house in the divorce and divvying up the stuff.
But if she doesn’t want Joyce’s stuff she would just let Hank have it. Ditto if she’s fleeing the country to avoid the mob and the law. Something very weird is happening.
I mean the presumption is smaller place with less room. Or too much clutter in the old place for the movers. When you move, you get rid of things you can’t afford to bring with you.
But giving it to Hank means dealing with Hank, who she also has bad feelings towards. And this way she gets to sneer at and harass Joyce while sugar-coating it as concern for her feelings and welfare.
(Of course, the dirty trick Joyce could pull is to hide the stuff somewhere and then sue her mom to give Joyce’s property back, since Carol won’t have proof she already did so. One of the reasons this sort of thing is best done through third parties and with a paper trail.)
She only votes for them!
Hey-Ooooooooo!
I see what you did there 👆🏾
Took me a second to get that one but I still give it credit for a chuckle it got from me.
I don’t get it 😅
Various Georges Bush. Conservatives. Carol is a cretin and therefore votes red. Bushes as in topiary identical to Bushes as in those guys I said. Did I win the joke? I’m too high for better attempt.
I’m assuming that was Yotomoe’s intent, but I find it difficult to believe Carol’s only ever voted for Bushes, largely because there’s no way in hell she didn’t vote Trump in 2016 and 2020.
I believe this is more of a contrasting sense of “only”… She doesn’t appear out of bushes; she only votes for bushes.
(ie, “only” is modifying “votes for”, rather than “Bushes”)
Ah. That interpretation does make more sense.
Oooo because out of the bush. I get it now. Thanks.
She was hiding in the bushes because she didn’t want to get called out by Linda again. Imagine ceding the moral high ground to Linda.
Probably especially since, while she _Knows_She’s_Right_*, she doesn’t want to alienate her daughter, and she is sane enough to also know her daughter would NOT agree with her on the issue.
NOT having a conversation with Linda is a good way to NOT have THAT bit of dirty laundry aired out in front of Joyce.
*To be clear, SHE knows she’s right. I’m convinced otherwise, but I also saw this all happen from a much different perspective than she has.
OK, I failed my DoA Lore roll. What is the history between Linda and Carol?
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/04-is-a-song-forever/maniac/
Found via /tag/carol+linda
Wow. I forgot that Carol had already outright said that what Ross and Blaine did were just. And that she literally blamed Ross’ death on atheists.
I assume they’re selling the house, yeah, as others are saying.
I hear Leslie’s got a vacancy.
Why would she sell it, when she can just tithe it to the church?
Well; depending on the lay of the land, we all appear out of bushes.
Not c-section folks
Especially C-section folks.
not if you have a happy trail
“‘Till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane…”
“Despair thy charm,
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee Macduff was from his mother’s womb
Untimely ripped.”
That was one C-Section feller who DEFINITELY came out of the bushes!
(the Scottish play)
If I remember correctly, this ironically both does and does not include those who can kill McBeth.
+2 Internets for you, my good friend, for giving me a decent chuckle there
He might need them to survive not speaking obliquely about “The Scottish Play”.
He did spell it wrong, maybe he’s safe.
She will not lose until the bushes move.
Who’s ready for “Your father and I are getting divorced… so you’re never moving back in my house”?
Or, “Linda Walkerton’s lawsuit bankrupted our church to a point we sold the house to help”
Do we know if Linda actually ended up suing? I am surprised she didn’t get dragged into that bush never to be seen again, if that was the case.
Linda stole her own daughter’s savings so she wouldn’t spend it on her friend’s surgery.
I doubt there’s much Linda wouldn’t do when she thinks she’s right (a hallmark of the terrible parents in this series).
oh fuck
that’s the other shoe.
why would linda sue carol’s church. Might as well sue the court for letting Mr. Thumb out on bail
The court is obligated by the judicial system to let out prisoners who meet bail requirements and aren’t remanded by prosecutors.
The church, on the other hand, made a conscious group choice that Ross’s freedom (to forcibly re-convert his daughter to their standards) meant more than any potential danger to the community and others he posed. So they’re actually at fault, and very culpable.
Yeah, I imagine it’s different rules place-to-place, but I’m pretty sure if you pay bail for someone, and they go on to commit more crimes, you’re “on the hook” in one way or another. Whether it’s fines, or you’re actually charged with a crime, idk. But they paid this guys’ bail, and like several people died as a direct result.
I wonder how that works with these guys like Kyle Rittenhouse who have GoFundMe’s to pay for their bail?
now i understand the church paying bail took responsibility that mr. Thumb will behave, he didn’t behave well, you can sue the church who promised to watch over him. I thought bail was just a matter of money
When you pay bail for someone, you are essentially taking responsibility for them and saying ‘they will not cause any trouble while waiting for the court date and will show up to court when expected’.
The bail money is then returned to you, as long as they show up to court as they are supposed to, regardless of trial outcome, as the point is to make sure they attend.
If they make a run for it and don’t show up, the bail money is forfeit. So it is like giving a deposit for damages or a credit card to a hotel, but the thing you are responsible for is a person, and the higher the bail is, the more incentive you have to keep them close and make sure they turn up to court.
You don’t get the bail back, but I don’t think you have any further responsibility. Obviously they can be sued, but I don’t think that would be an easy case to win.
“And by ‘we’, I mean me, because your father is no longer welcome under my roof.”
Joyce’s mom is just going to be a constant presence now that she’s incredibly divorced and possibly losing the house. Living in the bushes near the dorms and hissing at passersby like an angry raccoon.
Trying to seduce the freshmen in that slinky little nightgown.
Any nightgown she owns is probably slinky by the standards of the more repressed corners of Victorian England.
Clearly she’s trying to summon Mike back into this world so that nobody can call her an accessory to murder anymore.
….. oh my god what if she fucks paul.
You mean the rather bland everyday dress she’s wearing in this scene?
Nothing good will come of this.
Sarah doesn’t listen to comedy podcasts, but she did watch the MBMBAM tv show at a friend’s house one night in high school
I’m wondering if we aren’t going to see one of Joyce’s siblings appear, because we’re overdue for a reappearance. Unfortunately given the current situation it will probably be John, not Jocelyne.
be cool to finally see jordan and see what’s so ‘diff’ about him/what parents are so afraid of joyce ‘turning out’ like him
Given it was specified he doesn’t get along with his mother, I’m thinking that if Joyce blows up at her mom enough that he hears, he’ll come by to high five her.
Ah.
So we’ve hit that part of the autobiography.
Ah shit
Oh no…
I wonder if this has anything to do with what Jocelyne was trying to call Joyce about around 4 or 5 chapters ago
Ooh great callback, I forgot about Jocelyne’s call completely
Chekov’s Jocelyne!
Also, Carol wasn’t wearing glasses last time we saw her. Now she is. Huh.
I think Joyce mentioned that both of her parents wear contacts, back in the “Joyce needs glasses” chapter.
it would be good if she actually got a chance to appear, maybe even bond with carla too
(though you’d think if it was that much of a big deal that she’d send a follow up text because it’s harder to ignore a text unless joyce can delete them w/o reading)
I wonder if I’m the only one, but my immediate association from “you picked a great color, you always did” in combination with the pink/purple box was that it is a passive-aggressive statement for Joyce to stay a girl. As if Jocelyne came out and Carol immediately went for “damage control” on her other children.
i can’t imagine this jocyelne coming out to her mother directly unless she moved halfway across the country where she wouldn’t have to deal with any sudden appearances/directconfrontation
I was wondering what was going on and my first thought was “my daughter abandoned god and i can’t stand to see this stuff that reminds me of her anymore” – but then i started reading the comments and divorce->sell house makes sense. I left a bunch of stuff at home when i moved to college then out, and my dad would often bug me to pick it up or get rid of it. So this is a practical ‘slice of life’ sequence.
That said, joyce’s life is more or less an autobiography of Willis’s deconversion, so i expect her mom to break or say something nasty once the task is done and her smileyface mask cracks.
Or not. She’s been wearing that mask for a LOOOOONG time. Female fundagelicals are taught from an early age that appearances are the most important thing; and to suppress their feelings, thoughts and opinions. Hm, maybe Joyce will call her out on it?
Carol shouldn’t know about Joyce’s godlessness yet. Even Joyce’s closest friends practically just found out.
She didn’t know Joyce got glasses until this strip, if Joyce isn’t sharing relatively mundane life changes with her there’s no way she’s shared her Atheism
Joyce isn’t sharing anything with her mom these days.
Based on several childhood drawings posted in the IW! blog, this seems semi-autobiographical. Waiting for the other shoe to drop
I suspect either Joyce is getting a ‘soft disown’ with her mums assumption itll ‘scare her straight’ into doing whatever Carol wants, OR she has decided to use Joyce as a pawn in the divorce and is trying to tug on some nostalgia heartstrings/practicality about the house.
she probably does have ulterior motives but it might be for the best if she was ‘disowned’/cut off or so since she’s not esp. co-dependent on her mom right now
though if the church doesn’t approve of joyce’s group of friends and all i wouldn’t be surprised if ppl on the community told her to disown her, as opposed to trying to ‘save’ her
Rough but pretty possibly true
Okay Carol, fuck off sweaty. You got your attention, now I wanna know what’s in the box. Fuck you, mean it, love you, joking, bye.
But is the truth, as Hitchcock observed, in the box?
Hitchcock was the one who built Daleks right
So few people know that.
I thought what was in the box was Gwyneth Paltrow’s head?
A button.
Olives
But are they Extra Virgin Olives?
I don’t know, but she ruined them by taking them out of the fridge.
If the church is actually in the throes of bankruptcy thanks to Linda suing them into the ground, that is the one decent thing Linda Walkerton has ever done in her life
Also in Linda Walkerton tradition, Joyce is about to get hit with a big blast wave of collateral damage
(It’s also just as likely the church spent literally its entire operating budget on Ross, and Carol is just doing the “good” cult thing, as…as you do)
who would pay the fees in court though? The head pastors or so? if that’s the case even if they end up struggling i imagine they could still hold fundraisers and bake sales and stuff and pressure ppl more often every sunday to donate to the collection plate or so
Oh I’m sure they are doing that, but like, bail bond services are expensive all on their own. Ross committed at least a level 3 felony under Indiana law, and that has a reasonable bond amount of $30,000 BEFORE you add on the bondsman’s service fees and other attached costs. And you know Blaine didn’t pay that in full, because he’s at least a successful enough organized crime associate to know that would be way too suspicious, especially given his next course of action was gonna be “commit a lot of level 1 and 2 felonies all at once” and he expected to cover that up.
Also Evangelical church operating costs are wonky and different from more, let’s say, established sects, because as Evangelicals will tell you, they are not religious. Religion is actually quite despised! Religion is what all the fallen, irredeemable or unawakened churches engage in. What THEY are doing in following Christ.
In financial terms this means they almost certainly don’t have a network of mutual support like, say, the Catholic Church or even major Protestant denominations, just to use Christian examples, and because their culture is the insular culture of a death cult, they don’t forge cultural bonds like a Jewish faith community or a Muslim faith community. There is only the in-group and the outer, shunned ones.
Oho no no no. The head pastors aren’t going to put their own assets on the line. Not while they have a congregation to draw from.
Also this, you’re completely right. The pastors are not going to put their asses into the line of fire, because this is their livelihood, this is their business.
If it’s like my church, the elders handle the business aspect, there might have been a call for a “love offering,” and probably one of them would be sent to deal with the bondsman. But, if they are smart, there was just a suggestion that someone might volunteer to take up a collection from “the church” (i.e. the members) and handle the bonding, so that “the church” (i.e. the business entity) is not fiscally involved. The pastor is an employee, not an officer, of the business entity.
Sorry Joyce, you’re officially Too Worldly(tm) for Carol now, what with the treating gays like humans, not supporting vigilante fanatic toe-dad, and catalyzing her divorce.
Carol’s gotta delete you from her life, like all cultists do.
…they’re getting divorced and don’t dare to tell Joyce. As if she won’t eventually add 1+1 when she force on her all her stuff that was still in the house (that I assume they are about to sell)
she already knows they’re divorced, back when joyce was getting glasses becky told her to ask dad for covering for it and liek “I don’t know if it’s ok to ask my dad for money/ok to take emotional advantage of him going through a divorce”
sorry, that “don’t dare to tell they’re moving”
i mean, other than financially tied together/it being an ‘amicable’ divorce, i imagine a recently divorced couple wouldn’t just keep living with each other
Joyce already knows they are getting divorced I think.
Yeah, that is definitely the face of, “Look at me, being so generous and not throwing your stuff away! Now say thank you, because if you call me out on it, you’ll be the bad guy. 🙂 ”
My biodad did this when he sold their last family house. There was plenty of room in the new house for the nostalgic stuff my mom might have wanted to keep (old drawings and toys among them), and plenty of stuff that might as well have been garbage, but he made a big show of giving everything to me instead. Also, there were two boxes of stuff that looked vaguely like they might have belonged to one of his kids at some point, but neither of us recognized any of it and it basically just served to pad out the volume of stuff of he was “giving” me. Then he got offended when I wasn’t “grateful” about it.
Which could be doubly problematic if Carol raised her kids with the mentality that anything in the house when her kids were growing up belonged to her. Your clothes? My property. Your favorite toy? My property. Something I bought you as a birthday gift? My property. Something you bought with your allowance money? Still my property.
Because if she does have that mentality, then she possibly *genuinely believes* that she’s being generous by “letting” Joyce have them instead of throwing it all away, as would be her “right”.
Regardless, I hate that Carol is still completely ignoring/disregarding what Joyce has to say. I wish I could see someone give her a scathing lecture with enough force to get it in her head how forked up her behavior is, but I know that’s realistically never going to happen. Cognitive dissonance is a helluva drug, and Carol is a prime candidate to live the rest of her life with a “righteous martyr” complex.
Cognitive Dissonance for the win. Carol was the one who said “he didn’t shoot anybody…”
A word for word conversation?
…So, your friend calls you Joyce?
how hilarious would it be if it was just like “i’m actually hooking up with a man half my age so i wanna get rid of the stuff at my place that makes me think i’m currently raising a young kid”
Your mom sounds scary if she hides in bushes
Wait a minute- last time we saw Carol she was about to get suplexed by Ruth; whatever happened with that? Even if Ruth didn’t go through with it there was never a resolution to Carol’s intrusion into the dorm.
we never saw on screen, idk if ruth actually would’ve injured her since she could’ve been charged for assault or so or had ppl help escort her off the premises but i imagine she’s been biding her time since the divorce and was waiting til things cooled down or so to where she could come on campus before nayone else notice
Maybe she landed on her head.
In the next strip Ruth’s in, she says that she “got to tackle and drag someone outside.” So it’s unclear whether literal suplexing happened, but there was apparently a physical removal of Carol from the building.
The real tragedy is that it happened off-screen.
Carol misses her daughter. I get that. But unless the next words out of her mouth are, “I’m so sorry. I was wrong”, it’s hard to imagine this ending well.
Considering her attitude towards everything last time we saw her I wouldn’t bet on her having reflected on anything since then
She’s there to blame her for the divorce.
okay, so don’t take this as a defense of Carol or an attempt to ignore signs that this is some kind of ploy, but this is also absolutely a thing my own, non-abusive mother did when I moved out. Granted, it’s a little strange to do it while your kid is in a dorm, but I think it’s likely she’s having to downsize/move out due to the divorce, and may be honestly out of room for this stuff.
Which isn’t to say she isn’t going to try to get that midwest-mom emotional blackmail in at the same time (or some other far worse plan), but while the penny is in the air, so far this isn’t that weird to me. Like, I wouldn’t do this to someone myself, but I’ve seen it happen and had it happen to me without any kind of malicious intent.
sure but in that case, i’d assume your mom would’ve given you heads up as opposed to showing out of the blue and inconveniencing you/sometime while you’ wouldn’t end up being there to receive the items as opposed to like “your stuff’s in our attic/basement, take it with you if you want otherwise we can donate it” or so
My mom did this, but waited until I was established in my own house (which, uh, took a while) and even then it was more triggered by her and dad moving/downsizing.
How many bins does it take to hold this guilt trip?
The Brown kids really have their mother’s eyes – defective, like her, sooner or later.
Are there two more boxes in the trunk?
No wonder Carol has a myopic view of the world.
Wait: Aren’t nobody talking about Carol KNOWING about Joyce’s drawing?? Open Joyce’s things and reading everything??
Like, reading all her old stuff?? How dare them?
My parents stays aways of my stuff. I even use a self-storage the keep my stuff away from home .
Joyce copied her brother Jordan’s drawings when she was little. I’m sure at least some of them cycled across the fridge over the years.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/pickup/
I could’ve sworn it was established somewhere (though I can’t find it) that both Carol and Hank use corrective lenses, actually— it’s just that Hank opts for contacts, so which makes it less obvious. I think Carol wore contacts herself, pre-timeskip, but she’s probably lost access to Hank’s medical insurance.
The famous bins of childhood stuff make their DoA debut!
I’m out of the loop on this one. Which famous bins?
Willis has posted off and on about bins of his childhood drawings and mementos that his parents saved. I think some of it ended up in his father’s basement for years.
That’s apparently how a bunch of very early Ultra Car content was preserved.
Carol is way more elegant than she was married. And she’s after a divorce.
Did she get over the drama? Or even she already found someone else…
She is thriving on passive aggressive spite right now. She is implying Joyce is to blame for her divorce and that she is better than Joyce because she did not throw away the drawings the way she’s implying Joyce threw her away.
I know I am inferring a lot, but I think she’s dressed up for the drama.
I’m feeling weird about having speculated on motives for such an autobiographic encounter. Expressing sympathy by saying I don’t know what to say.
Is she kicking Joyce out?
>Getting rid of her old stuff
her mom is kicking her out, but pretending to be a good person about it.
Although they probably are going to sell the house and stuff, I think this is more a “Carol grabbed everything of Joyce’s she could, so she would be able to force Joyce to interact with her*” kind of thing than a “we both (parents) are downsizing because divorce, take all your shit” thing.
*whether consciously going against Joyce’s wishes or thinking this would be received as a great way back into Joyce’s life, we cannot know at this time
also re the having to throw Joyce’s childhood stuff away thing, it’ll be ‘since you and your dad are forcing me to leave the house, I guess I’ll be homeless’ or some shit
Ok is it the night of the living parents? What the fuck is happening??
pulled a Homer Simpson
The ‘you were always good with colors’ has some vague ‘you are dead to me’ vibes. And the fact that she comes in smiling like that makes me think this is a ‘cutting her off’ thing. If this was just a case of ‘I don’t have space for them in my new apartment’ I’m not sure if this is the mood. This feels an ‘I’m doing a godly thing in cutting her off’ situation
Oh that’s funny, I get a very “bring her back to the fold” vibe from this. Carol seems to be trying to put Joyce back in a small child’s role, and hoping that this love-bombing will work. I would guess that Carol is feeling a spectacular loss of control in other areas of her life, so she’s trying to get some back by getting Joyce under her thumb again. I’m interested to see which way this ends up going, because neither route feels implausible to me.
i just thought it was her being semi nostalgic and kinda subtly or unconsciously implying that she still sees joyce as a little girl
She refuses to outright say that she sold/is selling the house. Interesting.
Two things. God appears to Moses from a burning bush. Carol appears from an icy bush. Just saying.
Carol has not only sold the house and split the proceeds, I’m betting she’s also seeing a new godly man. Shacking up with someone who doesn’t want her kids old junk around. One from her parish who will confirm her godliness and worth.
Hell, I could imagine it just being out of spite–I was picturing “Hank kept the house, Carol DEMANDED all the kid’s old stuff because she’s the mom, but has no place to put it and doesn’t actually want it.”
I’m smelling divorce.
That’s already been established.
Whelp, Joyce is banned from her own home.
Joyce’s home is no longer her home because her mom sold it & gave the money to her church. Or at least, if Joyce is still semi-biographical.
My mom had the good sense to wait until I was 40 to show up with all my boxes of random saved artwork from when I was a kid, but I SUSPECT it was for a similar reason.
(she and my dad downsized their house and moved nearer to my brother. I suspect all of that is substantially true except for “and Joyce’s dad” in this case)
Oh! I think I know where this is going.
Joyce is autobiographical
Willis has said in many places that his mother sold their house and gave the money to the church
She’s bringing Joyce her stuff from her room because there is no room any more
Yeah, I couldn’t find the post on tumblr mentioning it to remember the finer details, but I do remember something along the lines of ‘my mother sold the house and gave the money to the church’.
A lot of tweets about it, including one dream sequence.
Oh geez. This is the Joyce version of Willis’ mom selling the house for the church, isn’t it?
Was it a burning bush? Just checking
Test
Sorry my comments haven’t been appearing lately, just wanna see if I’ve fixed it
Okay cool
I wish I could time travel back to before all the readers brought up Willis’ mom’s house thing on this thread.
I figure this is a coin flip. Either Joyce’s mom is going through a serious emotional crisis and looking for any excuse to reach out, or those bins are full of Joyce’s Jesus doodles and it’s an attempt at emotional subterfuge.
Wow this is relatable.
Yeah, panel 2 was me to my mom during undergrad a lot. I would tell her “hey, that thing you sent me without asking? I didn’t have room for it so I gave it away unopened.”
But my mom was just trying to be helpful and being somewhat off base in what I needed. I suspect Carol is actually here to manipulate Joyce.
Passive-aggressive guilt trip + bid for sympathy. It’s your fault your father left me and I can’t afford to buy him out of the house or even afford to live in it without his income, because I sacrificed myself to be a stay at home mom and home-school teacher, so here’s all the crap we wasted money on for such an ungrateful child, since I’ll probably be on the streets soon, or living off the charity of the church.
Oh God. She’s banging Peter, isn’t she?
That was meant to be a response to someone who mentioned her seeing someone as “Godly” as her after the divorce, but it is even more hilarious out of context.
isn’t peter mary’s bf?
though would be interesting if mary was sorta ‘adopted’ by carol now as a more ‘ideal’ daughter
Exactly, that’s why I mentioned it. Carol and Peter are both terrible human beings, as well as Mary. I could see that happening and then Mary having a breakdown after discovering it.
As a kid and a present adult who walks quietly, it’s because seeing that little *Jump* of shock brings so much joy.
Maybe Carol use the Subtle Knife
Lucky that bush wasn’t burning, amirite?