Not even north-east, honestly, that starts at like, Pennsylvania I think, we’re mid-west. Or at least everybody I’ve talked to here refers to us as part of the mid-west, same with Ohio which is further east and Michigan which is further north. Granted, the mid-west region is so large it’s basically useless as a regional term, but still.
My mom once referred to somewhere around Chicago (I think) as east (compared to Montana) and they were not amused. It is like referring to Seattle as the coast, or parts of the Salish Sea as the ocean. That sea may have whales and other marine life in it, but the people of Seattle absolutely do not appreciate it being called ocean. It is funny, as I think the people of Vancouver, just across the country border, are perfectly fine with it. I guess that they might be considered more “open” than Tacoma, though I would say that they are similar to Everett.
In any case, directional terms are very specific to a region and some places are very particular about what they might be perceived as or called. I don’t know if Europe has any particularities as such, but would be interesting to know.
Yeah, we once got into a (friendly) argument when an american friend referred to Austria as “Central Europe”. It might look central, but it is firmly a part of Western Europe.
Wait whut?! Since when do Seattle-ites hate acknowledging that Puget Sound is part of the ocean? Like sure, Lake Washington, and Lake Union were not originally as brackishly exposed, but the Salish Sea and all parts thereof – including Puget Sound – are indisputably a part of the Pacific Ocean. (Vancouverite by birth suddenly concerned about the mental well-being of my southerly kin)
I went to undergrad by Vancouver, so I picked up their mentality. People from Seattle consider the ocean to be on the other side of the peninsula (across the Olympic mountains). So if you are going to the coast on the Sound, they say that they are going to the Sound, not the ocean or coast. Since Vancouver didn’t have these particularities, I just always call it the ocean. Now I am just training to call it the sea since the whole thing is technically the Salish Sea (vs whatever sound or strait it fould possibly be) and sea is close enough to ocean for my purposes. I don’t think that they are denying that it is a part of it as much as that they reserve that terminology to specifically reference only places with open ocean.
Indiana is explicitly not south, we were part of the union in the civil war, and as far as I can tell that is what delineates “the south” from the other regions, membership in the former confederacy. That’s also why some particularly southerly states, like Arizona and New Mexico aren’t part of “the south” but rather “the west” or maybe “the south west”.
The definition of “the south” varies. Some people use it to mean “the old Confederacy,” 11 to 15 states (depending on how you count West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Oklahoma), and some people use it to mean “the places where slavery was legal just before the Civil War” which adds Maryland and Delaware to that collection.
Some treat it as a cultural area rather than a political unit, using things like “the sweet tea line” as a boundary, some go by accents, some by zones of settlement.
The “butternut counties” of southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were largely settled by southerners in the 19th century while the northern parts of those states were settled mostly from the northeast, and that shaped political divides in those states for generations as “greater New England” and “the greater south” faced off.
tldr version: “there are lots of definitions of ‘south’.”
You are correct in this specific case, but I know so many leftist/progressive queer people and allies who use that lingo ironically, especially when referring to themselves, that Joyce saying this didn’t even register as weird for me at first.
I kind of get it– the evolution stuff connects to the entirety of how humans and everything came to be. LGBTQ+ stuff can be seen more as about people in society, and that changes over time. (Joyce is enough of a Biblical scholar to know about various “back then” stories that aren’t how things work now.) More than that, though, it’s a more intellectual difference. Joyce can see queer people, she knows queer people, she loves queer people. And I think Joyce is ultimately guided by kindness, which shapes her reactions. Evolution, not as much direct experience, not as clear how to approach with kindness.
in terms of how I think those specifically relate to her former Christian identity:
Evolution is something she denied on the premise that “there’s no room for evolution in a world where nothing can die”, i.e. in her Creationist view the world that existed in Eden before The Fall of Man completely lacked ANY phenomenon of pain, harm or dying,
Her cult’s doctrine of Original Sin hinged on the premise that humans were wholly responsible for bringing death *itself* into this world by defying God, with of course the Heavenly Father having convenient lack of accountability for neglecting to lock up fruits which could potentially poison his newborn human children.
as for her interacting with queer people, she previously compartmentalized them as the object of evangelism, i.e. “pray the gay away” to “save us” and all that bullshit
that said Joyce still has a long way to go in terms of breaking from not only her religious but social conservative indoctrination, but still, progress!!! ^^
it’s funny because historical Jesus was most likely a political activist whose niche was reforming old Jewish ideas and challenging bullshit from the Roman one percenters
Oh, I love that! So beautiful! I’m gonna share this comic strip with my exegetical study-buddies. Just lovely. Thank you so much for turning me on to this sweet work of art and history.
To quote Paul, it’s all about Galatians 3:28 —
“There is neither “East” nor “West”.
There is neither “ingroup” nor “outgroup”.
There is neither “prisoner” nor “freeworld”.
There is neither “convict” nor “innocent”.
There is neither “male” nor “female”.
For we are all one.
We are all in this together.
Change is all there is.”
(OK, I’ve paraphrased the text just slightly, but that’s what that verse means to me…)
The thing is, it doesn’t even NEED to be “enlightened athiest imagining a socialist historical Jesus.” It’s just the evangelicals have such a hyper-fixation on being counter culture, and they boxed themselves into a situation by defending shit that the Bible never focused on.
How important is it to one’s faith that you believe the world is like ~6000ish years old? Not at all, according to the Bible, and if cornered, no one would say, “You’re saved by being repentant of your sins and accepting Christ as Lord AND renouncing evolution and literally everything queer.” Because THAT would be adding to the Bible, something they tell you they do not do.
But then you listen to blokes like Ken Ham at Answers in Genesis, and suddenly you’re told, wait a second, ACKSHUALLY, it’s incredibly important that you believe in a young Earth; it’s CRITICALLY important, if you don’t believe this it starts tearing down the entire Bible, because all of it has a foundation in Genesis. They *literally* have this presentation where they go through the Bible and say, “Well, if Genesis isn’t literal, then this falls apart, and this falls apart, and this falls apart…” and demand all the kiddos don’t even *think* about any other interpretation. Which honestly is basically making a pull tab around Christianity labeled “Young Earth,” so that kids plop out even easier as atheists when they leave home.
If C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape, or for that matter Sir Terry Pratchett’s Crowley were real people, I believe they’d get a commendation for Answers in Genesis.
So yeah. Joyce balked at evolution because it was taught to her to be *the thing* that undid her religion. Whereas other aspects – gender, sexual orientation – are small portions of the larger faith, and can be tackled without shaking the whole.
I spent about 30 years dealing with the cognitive dissonance between growing up believing YEC was Essential Core Doctrine and my gradual realization that the evidence *was* there and evolution *was* real. (And by “dealing with” I mean “actively not thinking about.”) I didn’t go atheist, but to suggest that Christ was present in my life on a daily basis would be profoundly not true.
“elites” used in that context is a right-wing dog whistle used to refer to everything they hate bout the left
it also means “Jews” 👀
same with other conservative media machine verbal ammunition including, but not limited to:
– “globalists”
– “postmodernists”
– “cultural marxists”
– “funded by George Soros”
Honestly, any time conservatives fixate on a given word over and over I just assume that it’s their new codeword for “Jews.” Pretty much never fails, as a rule of thumb.
Context was literally given above, also my trans friend in Iowa has to put up with actual nazi shitheads like this both IRL and in discord servers she’s in 👀
They should be bullied into submission at every opportunity. Like, not even just vicious mockery, they need to be physically humiliated. Give bigots wedgies. Duct tape them to walls. Lock them in tight spaces and leave them there for a while. Knock their lunch out of their hands. Slap their phones out of their hands while they’re talking to a family member and then pick the phone up and pretend they just got hit by a car.
Southern “Belle” type women-folks early 1900s? All dolled up in society with their pearl necklaces, and expressing shock at any moral “transgression”. Dunno. I first saw the phrase in the 90s.
I thought we were all supposed to be flag-waving patriots, but all of a sudden we’re supposed to feel guilty beating the shit out of Nazis and everyone who supports their ideology? Nah, they lost the fuckin’ war like the two-bit chumps they are, and they can keep getting pounded into the dirt like the stakes their heads belong on.
I feel it’s not that she is repeating it in earnest, but instead she is mocking that very thing?
Like, in Germany, some right-wing politician at some point came up with the expression “links-grün versiffte Gutmenschen” – roughly “left-green grime goody two-shoes”, much to the amusement of said population because it is so over the top, and now people have reclaimed it and use it for themselves/to mock said politician.
Mom didn’t approve of him, but at least she acknowledges him, and Dad acknowledged him as “a good kid.” Whatever is dividing them is out, known, and begrudgingly accepted. So I dunno, maybe he voted Democrat once, or attends a Lutheran church, or something otherwise scandalous.
I headcanon-ed that he went through Joyce’s atheist awakening in high school, bolted the day he turned 18, and hasn’t looked back. Maybe keeping a minimal thread of contact with Jocelyne along the way.
Maybe someday he’ll appear in the strip after hearing about the divorce. Maybe.
I barely know of him, but in that context, I’m thinking he’s a Christ-centered fundamentalist missionary. That is, he emphasizes acceptance, love, and peace (which Hank can respect), and rejects Carol’s attempts at control (which Carol can never accept).
In my head cannon, he’s now a widowed physician and scientist who is presumed dead, travelling across the United States under assumed names and finding himself in positions where he helps others in need despite his terrible secret: Following an accident that altered his cells, in times of extreme anger or stress, he transforms into a huge, savage, incredibly strong humanoid.
In his travels, Jordan earns money by working temporary jobs while searching for a way to either control or cure his condition…
I mean anytime someone uses “woke” as an insult, I take it to mean they’re asleep at the wheel. I mean what the fuck else do they expect a sane person to take away from that?
it’s sad, really, that they’ve just up and made this their whole personality
they like IRL Jerry Smith:
young adult males who’ve gotten more than the blunt end of late capitalism, who have gotten so desperate for some niche, for some way of “earning respect”, for some way of feeling like a WINNER,
… that they’ve settled on this way of doing so which comes at a human cost
Oh, yeah, I remember that one. These days I interpret it as people who are all passion and no strategy, of which there are many in both tails of the population.
I cringed at “the transes” but again, at least Joyce is trying, too hard perhaps but she’s trying. also Jocelyne’s outfit is really cute, wish I could wear something like that, but I got them big shoulders. ~<3
Funny, I was picturing some sort of 90s sitcom called “Hip With the Transes.”
Main character Will “Hip” Hippson, leaves his mom in West Philadelphia after he gets beat up by a gang, and flies out West to live with his aunt and uncle in Portland, Phil and Vivian Trans. Phil and Vivian are, coincidentally, trans, and their three children are pan, demi, and ace. Hijinks ensue as crazy, wacky, straight cis white male Hip tries to fit in with his more straight-laced, respectable, queer family.
Oh, and Nathan Lane is the butler. Not as any character. Just Nathan Lane.
The cises, the gayses, the hetses, the homos, the transes. Joyce has all the latest terms. And to keep up, she only needs to ask Ethan, because he’s an expert on all this stuff.
I’m afab and I got huge shoulders, don’t let it stop you :>
Like, not just broad, I’m also a fat person, there’s a lot of stuff that I’m “not supposed to wear”, but I wear what I like and feel comfortable in.
It seems they both recognize the problem where news from their family is always bad, and both have the solution of not responding to calls or messages until it blows up in their face. Maybe the happy news can break the pattern, or maybe they can just start communicating more.
Reforming the family without Carol or John would be great for them. (Maybe Jordan too except they have no way to get in touch with him.) They can be and/or have The Brown Reformist Party.
Well, August/September Joyce probably would have gone running to Carol. She’s had a lot of character growth since then.
I used to be “with it”, then they changed what “it” was! Now what I’m with isn’t “it” and what is “it” seems weird and scary to me! This will happen to you!
Joyce says she’s only been okay with trans people since yesterday, but she shifted her entire worldview on a dime when Becky came out to her. Maybe she would’ve accidentally said things she shouldn’t if this conversation happened sooner, but Joyce would have accepted Jocelyne as her sister at any point. (Or at least after moving out of her parents’ house, but imo, even before then.)
Yea, she might have not said the right things but she wouldn’t have been a jerk about it. Just might have been more cringy and required more instructions.
These comments are sort of confusing. Like, it’s pretty obvious that Joyce was just telling a joke, right? To make fun of ridiculous conservative terminology? You see that kind of stuff all the time.
Some people really struggle to identify jokes in text form. This happens in the comments section of this comic all the time, people see a joke and start extrapolating whole personality defects from a punchline.
Depends I suppose. I text my sister multiple times most days but my brother who is over a decade older than me I text like a couple times a year, maybe a phone call around Christmas or on one of our birthdays. He is notorious for being bad at staying in touch though. One time he didn’t get in contact for ages after a massive storm (pre mobile phones being the norm) and our Dad got worried and traveled over 3000km (2000 miles) there and back to see if he was alive. He found him walking on the beach near his place perfectly fine. Dad was relieved. And pissed.
I barely talk to my siblings outside of family gatherings, but they’re my half-siblings and literally decades older than me. They’re actually close in age and grew up together, and I think they keep in regular contact.
For my parents, my dad talks to his siblings regularly (his sisters almost daily, though he’d prefer it was a bit less– one sister has been needing a lot of support). My mom talks to her siblings much less, more “as needed.” Interestingly, because I due agree with your cultural divide suspicions in general, my dad’s side is very white, and my mom’s side isn’t as white.
For Joyce and not communicating with her siblings, I do see how it makes sense– Jordan dropped off her radar completely before the start of the strip; John was doing missionary stuff in India (and was a tool), so that probably was a point where communication dropped off. Then between Joyce and Jocelyne, I think it’s likely that Jocelyne was the one who drew back on contact– she was in college starting when Joyce was maybe 12 or 13, and as she was coming into her identity, she needed to pull away from her family… which included her still-living-with-the-folks, still-very-religious little sister.
I hope now that they’ll be in more regular contact and grow closer.
I mean if you don’t really with them anymore and you are all adults with jobs or school and stuff I think it’s understandable to lose.contact for a bit. Doesn’t mean you don’t care, you just have your own life to live (thought I still live with my parents and siblings so I can’t really say it for sure I guess)
While this is a very new development for Joyce, I do like to hope if she’d been told earlier she would have made some very quick adjustments in her head in the same way she did for Becky.
Oh, Willis. I hate to tell you this, but I think Joyce is too young to be using these terms even ironically. That’s what I was doing at her age IN EARLY 2000!!!
That said, I don’t know what terms the young folk are using ironically these days, but I’d be sad if it was the same ones.
Or… didn’t have a negative initial reaction that would have vilified Joyce in the eyes of the audience while she’s still growing because it’s kind of hard to figure out how she would have tracked Joycelynn down if things went badly the first time.
In real life, we understand that people change and grow over time, and that a fumbled first impression is not necessarily a representation of who they are (or at least, we should). In a story, where everything is scene-based and focused on building conflict, rising tension, climax, resolution, with lean plots where everything that happens, happens for a reason. If Joyce had not accepted her sister right away, it *would not matter* to the audience if it took her a few hours, or a few days, or more to accept that her sibling was Jocelyn, and not who she knew her as prior. She would have spent literal weeks or months as an unsympathetic villain who espoused every hurtful rejection that the audience had felt.
There’s a reason that after Becky kissed Joyce, she froze, and didn’t say anything other than that she didn’t feel the same way, and then *Sarah* gets angry, and the first thing that Joyce does is say, “Hurt ME?!” in defense of Becky. Yes, it’s because she’s a loyal friend who puts kindness first – but she’s neck-deep in fundie doctrine at that point. That’s her *entire character*. And to show her not even struggling with it past the initial shock; even giving a little speech to Becky about how she accepted her and she wasn’t wrong, and not until the next day does she even start looking up alternate interpretations of the scripture she has memorized – it kind of HAD to be that way, because any sort of struggle, or denial, or mention of scripture, even if just a foible in the moment, wouldn’t have been acceptable.
If Joyce and Jocelyn were real people, and at first Joyce is having a hard time understanding and says something obtuse or offensive, and asks for some space, and *later that day* Joyce comes back to her and fully apologizes and accepts her, IRL Joyce and Jocelyn’s relationship is solid because Jocelyn understands her sister is human and this is a jump, considering where they come from. But Comic Strip Joyce wouldn’t recover from that. As the arguable MC of DoA, she’d have hurt and angered WAY too many people, too personally, to just forgive and forget.
I think it’s less the audience, and more the medium. The story crawls compared to all other media – you spend a full day on like five seconds of interaction – so we dwell on it for much longer. And in fiction – *good* fiction, at least – there’s almost no unimportant scenes. Joyce and Jocelyn, or Joyce and Becky, that confrontation is a climax, and the resolution of it matters a great deal in fiction. If the climax goes poorly, the anticlimax MUST be far greater to offset the initial foible. There’s no, “Actually, sis, I’m sorry, I love you, let’s start over.”
That’s what happened when the Browns met the Keeners, after all – there HAD to be that confrontation at the fountain, where Joyce stands up to her parents and throws their words back at them, to make a satisfying story. If that accidental confrontation had never happened, even if Joyce comes to Dorothy right after and says “I’m sorry, Dorothy, my family was jerks but I love you, even though you’re going to hell” (because remember, she still talked like that back then) she’s still an asshole who just let her parents insult her friend.
Walky and Lucy demonstrate the above pretty good, actually. Walky didn’t initially stand up for Lucy, because they both agreed they wanted to make a good impression despite knowing the situation. It then blows up later. And then Walky stands up to his parents, and if that was IRL it would have been HUGE, but in a comic strip it is absolutely anticlimactic, and we’re left still thinking less of Walky.
It’s just the craft of storytelling. Because this was a huge pivotal climax that the story has been building to for over a decade, it HAD to go well, or else it would signal there truly was something wrong with Joyce and she hadn’t grown as much as we all thought.
which means, again, that Carla is everyone’s acceptable losses. It’s only important that Joyce is decent to the most important trans person in her life [that ranking would hurt Carla more than that she’s been getting cringe comments from Joyce]
I think Joyce is being a bit too hard on herself here. She pushed back against transphobia from her mom and from Mary before she even knew that she knew any trans people. She supported Becky even when she was still deep in right-wing religious mode. If Jocylene has come out to her earlier, she would have been a lot more awkward and probably wound up swallowing her foot, but she would have had her heart in the right place.
I hate that she used those words in that order to form a complete sentence, but also, I can’t think of any other way that properly conveys the current situation that Joyce is in/has gone through.
yeah I do appreciate how much of a leap of faith Joycelyn is taking to come out to Joyce at all. Not because Joyce aint a loving sister and (trying to be) a good person. Its just always a risk, and let alone with your lil sister from your incredibly evangelical family.
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aaaaawwwweeee 🥲
also LOL XD
IKR? This is so damn cute on so many levels.
Wild
It’s all that rizz.
When your only dialect comes from red pilled conservatives
right? XD
girl has a LOT to learn, but on the other hand i can’t blame her that much?
Indiana has a well-known reputation as a religious red-state, so much so it’s sometimes referred to as the south of the northwest
of course a lot of her lingo comes from their ardent Christo-nationalist voter base
Northwest?
Did you confuse Indiana with Idaho?
I mean, Indian _was_ part of the Northwest Ordinance, but you have to be hip on your US History to know that, it’s not northwest _now_.
OOP North-EAST, yee
XD dammit i hate typos :/
Not even north-east, honestly, that starts at like, Pennsylvania I think, we’re mid-west. Or at least everybody I’ve talked to here refers to us as part of the mid-west, same with Ohio which is further east and Michigan which is further north. Granted, the mid-west region is so large it’s basically useless as a regional term, but still.
My mom once referred to somewhere around Chicago (I think) as east (compared to Montana) and they were not amused. It is like referring to Seattle as the coast, or parts of the Salish Sea as the ocean. That sea may have whales and other marine life in it, but the people of Seattle absolutely do not appreciate it being called ocean. It is funny, as I think the people of Vancouver, just across the country border, are perfectly fine with it. I guess that they might be considered more “open” than Tacoma, though I would say that they are similar to Everett.
In any case, directional terms are very specific to a region and some places are very particular about what they might be perceived as or called. I don’t know if Europe has any particularities as such, but would be interesting to know.
Yeah, we once got into a (friendly) argument when an american friend referred to Austria as “Central Europe”. It might look central, but it is firmly a part of Western Europe.
The key being whether one is discussing geography or culture I suppose.
Wait whut?! Since when do Seattle-ites hate acknowledging that Puget Sound is part of the ocean? Like sure, Lake Washington, and Lake Union were not originally as brackishly exposed, but the Salish Sea and all parts thereof – including Puget Sound – are indisputably a part of the Pacific Ocean. (Vancouverite by birth suddenly concerned about the mental well-being of my southerly kin)
I went to undergrad by Vancouver, so I picked up their mentality. People from Seattle consider the ocean to be on the other side of the peninsula (across the Olympic mountains). So if you are going to the coast on the Sound, they say that they are going to the Sound, not the ocean or coast. Since Vancouver didn’t have these particularities, I just always call it the ocean. Now I am just training to call it the sea since the whole thing is technically the Salish Sea (vs whatever sound or strait it fould possibly be) and sea is close enough to ocean for my purposes. I don’t think that they are denying that it is a part of it as much as that they reserve that terminology to specifically reference only places with open ocean.
It was called “the northwest” in the 19th century, and some people there haven’t grasped that it is no longer the 19th century, so…
Nonono. Indiana is “the middle finger of the South”.
What does that make Florida’s peninsula?
The colon. (holds a lot of shit; needs uncomfortable colonoscopies)
And needs an enema once in a while.
Absolutely!
Florida is America’s limp penis, obviously.
*USA’s erection goes flaccid* 0-0
Indiana is explicitly not south, we were part of the union in the civil war, and as far as I can tell that is what delineates “the south” from the other regions, membership in the former confederacy. That’s also why some particularly southerly states, like Arizona and New Mexico aren’t part of “the south” but rather “the west” or maybe “the south west”.
The definition of “the south” varies. Some people use it to mean “the old Confederacy,” 11 to 15 states (depending on how you count West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Oklahoma), and some people use it to mean “the places where slavery was legal just before the Civil War” which adds Maryland and Delaware to that collection.
Some treat it as a cultural area rather than a political unit, using things like “the sweet tea line” as a boundary, some go by accents, some by zones of settlement.
The “butternut counties” of southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were largely settled by southerners in the 19th century while the northern parts of those states were settled mostly from the northeast, and that shaped political divides in those states for generations as “greater New England” and “the greater south” faced off.
tldr version: “there are lots of definitions of ‘south’.”
You are correct in this specific case, but I know so many leftist/progressive queer people and allies who use that lingo ironically, especially when referring to themselves, that Joyce saying this didn’t even register as weird for me at first.
It’s kind of funny, because “red-pilled” is basically just their Bizarro World version of “woke.”
Or, rather, more like “anti-woke.” Asleep, in other words. Maybe comatose.
What’s really funny is that they stole this term from a film directed by two trans women.
Panel 2 Joss, ugh, I feel you.
Oh no, that doesn’t bode well for Hank’s reaction…
Any message from is dad or mom is trigger for anxiety to mu.
Panel 2 really drives home the whole ‘sister’ thing. At first I thought, “Why is Joyce answering herself sarcastically? OH YEAH…”
Dumbing of Age Book 15: I’m Woke-Pilled By the Liberal Collegiate Elites!
now banned in 19 states and counting!
I was gonna say… Joyce this is a very recent development for you lol
I laughed when she acknowledge the convenient timing.
I love how honest she was about that.
Speaking of, putting the pieces together about Ethan in 3 … 2 …
Hip is so last week, everything’s skibidi toilet now. (Kidding, it makes me happy to see this going so well.)
“I dig, I’m in step
When it was hip to be hep, I was hep
I don’t blow, but I’m a fan”.
It’s actually funny how Joyce reacted to trans and gay people better than she did evolution.
I kind of get it– the evolution stuff connects to the entirety of how humans and everything came to be. LGBTQ+ stuff can be seen more as about people in society, and that changes over time. (Joyce is enough of a Biblical scholar to know about various “back then” stories that aren’t how things work now.) More than that, though, it’s a more intellectual difference. Joyce can see queer people, she knows queer people, she loves queer people. And I think Joyce is ultimately guided by kindness, which shapes her reactions. Evolution, not as much direct experience, not as clear how to approach with kindness.
All that said, yes, it is funny.
in terms of how I think those specifically relate to her former Christian identity:
Evolution is something she denied on the premise that “there’s no room for evolution in a world where nothing can die”, i.e. in her Creationist view the world that existed in Eden before The Fall of Man completely lacked ANY phenomenon of pain, harm or dying,
Her cult’s doctrine of Original Sin hinged on the premise that humans were wholly responsible for bringing death *itself* into this world by defying God, with of course the Heavenly Father having convenient lack of accountability for neglecting to lock up fruits which could potentially poison his newborn human children.
as for her interacting with queer people, she previously compartmentalized them as the object of evangelism, i.e. “pray the gay away” to “save us” and all that bullshit
that said Joyce still has a long way to go in terms of breaking from not only her religious but social conservative indoctrination, but still, progress!!! ^^
Joyce is more Christ-like now than when she was a fundygelical. Which nis ironicnconsidering that she’s an “atheist” now.
it’s funny because historical Jesus was most likely a political activist whose niche was reforming old Jewish ideas and challenging bullshit from the Roman one percenters
…Plus gay. Or at least bi.
and non-binary!!!! ^^ <3
Oh, I love that! So beautiful! I’m gonna share this comic strip with my exegetical study-buddies. Just lovely. Thank you so much for turning me on to this sweet work of art and history.
To quote Paul, it’s all about Galatians 3:28 —
“There is neither “East” nor “West”.
There is neither “ingroup” nor “outgroup”.
There is neither “prisoner” nor “freeworld”.
There is neither “convict” nor “innocent”.
There is neither “male” nor “female”.
For we are all one.
We are all in this together.
Change is all there is.”
(OK, I’ve paraphrased the text just slightly, but that’s what that verse means to me…)
Oops, no, sorry, I realized we’re not supposed to talk Bible-study stuff in this space!
Delete/erase…
Sorry ’bout that, DYW!
Apologies to all!
hey, hey no worries, that rule is intended to address people who directly condescend to Willis and proselytize about bible stuff
definitely not what you’re doing here, thanks for sharing ^^
Stay safe, stay woke, and may peace be with you <3
✊️❤️🩹
Historical Jesus worked in a toy store. Everyone knows that.
He found the tables to be very hard to flip.
+
For more about historical Jesus and Rome. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/554983.God_and_Empire
Thank you for the tip!
May I ask why the scare quotes?
Yes atheists EXIST. No quotes required.
The thing is, it doesn’t even NEED to be “enlightened athiest imagining a socialist historical Jesus.” It’s just the evangelicals have such a hyper-fixation on being counter culture, and they boxed themselves into a situation by defending shit that the Bible never focused on.
How important is it to one’s faith that you believe the world is like ~6000ish years old? Not at all, according to the Bible, and if cornered, no one would say, “You’re saved by being repentant of your sins and accepting Christ as Lord AND renouncing evolution and literally everything queer.” Because THAT would be adding to the Bible, something they tell you they do not do.
But then you listen to blokes like Ken Ham at Answers in Genesis, and suddenly you’re told, wait a second, ACKSHUALLY, it’s incredibly important that you believe in a young Earth; it’s CRITICALLY important, if you don’t believe this it starts tearing down the entire Bible, because all of it has a foundation in Genesis. They *literally* have this presentation where they go through the Bible and say, “Well, if Genesis isn’t literal, then this falls apart, and this falls apart, and this falls apart…” and demand all the kiddos don’t even *think* about any other interpretation. Which honestly is basically making a pull tab around Christianity labeled “Young Earth,” so that kids plop out even easier as atheists when they leave home.
If C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape, or for that matter Sir Terry Pratchett’s Crowley were real people, I believe they’d get a commendation for Answers in Genesis.
So yeah. Joyce balked at evolution because it was taught to her to be *the thing* that undid her religion. Whereas other aspects – gender, sexual orientation – are small portions of the larger faith, and can be tackled without shaking the whole.
I spent about 30 years dealing with the cognitive dissonance between growing up believing YEC was Essential Core Doctrine and my gradual realization that the evidence *was* there and evolution *was* real. (And by “dealing with” I mean “actively not thinking about.”) I didn’t go atheist, but to suggest that Christ was present in my life on a daily basis would be profoundly not true.
The fact that Becky was her best friend probably helped that one along a lot. She couldn’t reconcile Becky being considered evil.
Remember when Joyce was transvestigating Dorothy for a secret weenis? That was like 2 days ago.
hey Joyce, HOT TIP:
“elites” used in that context is a right-wing dog whistle used to refer to everything they hate bout the left
it also means “Jews” 👀
same with other conservative media machine verbal ammunition including, but not limited to:
– “globalists”
– “postmodernists”
– “cultural marxists”
– “funded by George Soros”
Honestly, any time conservatives fixate on a given word over and over I just assume that it’s their new codeword for “Jews.” Pretty much never fails, as a rule of thumb.
pretty much
also if you see anyone on the internet put a dog whistle like that into triple parenthesis, as in
“(((term)))”
that’s a surefire sign you found a card-carrying white supremacist
I mean, by now it’s a much surer sign of someone pointing out other people’s antisemitism… context is needed.
Context was literally given above, also my trans friend in Iowa has to put up with actual nazi shitheads like this both IRL and in discord servers she’s in 👀
It’s weird they have so many stupid codewords for Jews, because they’ll also just outright call people Jewish as an attempted insult.
they gotta have a slur for every occasion.
They should be bullied into submission at every opportunity. Like, not even just vicious mockery, they need to be physically humiliated. Give bigots wedgies. Duct tape them to walls. Lock them in tight spaces and leave them there for a while. Knock their lunch out of their hands. Slap their phones out of their hands while they’re talking to a family member and then pick the phone up and pretend they just got hit by a car.
make all restrooms all-gender,
and if they don’t feel “””comfortable””” sharing it with us they can use the bushes
or better yet piss themselves in public XD
Don’t tell them, but there’s an all-gender bathroom in their house right now! :O
*gasps in shock
*clutches pearls
*wonders where the hell these pearls came from
I’ve occasionally wondered why it’s pearls, specifically. What is it about being shocked that makes people think about grabbing a bunch of pearls?
Southern “Belle” type women-folks early 1900s? All dolled up in society with their pearl necklaces, and expressing shock at any moral “transgression”. Dunno. I first saw the phrase in the 90s.
Seems to have come from “In Living Color” in the early 90s.
“We’ve had to say a lot of stuff
we thought was fucking obvious
like, “Yes, It’s ok to punch Nazis!””
I thought we were all supposed to be flag-waving patriots, but all of a sudden we’re supposed to feel guilty beating the shit out of Nazis and everyone who supports their ideology? Nah, they lost the fuckin’ war like the two-bit chumps they are, and they can keep getting pounded into the dirt like the stakes their heads belong on.
I feel it’s not that she is repeating it in earnest, but instead she is mocking that very thing?
Like, in Germany, some right-wing politician at some point came up with the expression “links-grün versiffte Gutmenschen” – roughly “left-green grime goody two-shoes”, much to the amusement of said population because it is so over the top, and now people have reclaimed it and use it for themselves/to mock said politician.
That said, you are probably right that she is not at all aware of the meaning of “elites” in particular.
Yeah, she probably doesn’t make the Jewish connection, but she’s definitely using it ironically.
That sounds a lot like an American conservative saying something like “I’m rubber, and you’re glue”.
Tbf, Ethan and Dotty *did* have a pretty positive effect on this development, so teeeechnically…
as has Joe
Soros’s checks keep bouncing and the Clintons are irrelevant now. Who’s the hip new dog whistle that will pay me those sweet sweet woke bux?
Wait, you’ve been paid? Howinhell do I get in on that?
not in months I haven’t! It’s no wonder the Democrats lost, they don’t pay their antifa super soldiers.
I think that’s why she’s saying that. Basically like I’m everything our mom and church said is bad.
Honestly, she’s probably being facetious and using her mom’s language. It sounds *exactly* like what her mother would say.
TIL I can use HTML tags. I’ve been using reddit tagging for emphasis. EMPHASIS!
Joyce has the rizz sticks
I love this storyline *so* much. ♥
It’s very possible that it could span all 4 years.
The real question:
Where is the mysterious Jordan Brown?
He betrayed the Irregular Hunters and hid himself inside a volcano.
What a maverick!
Mom didn’t approve of him, but at least she acknowledges him, and Dad acknowledged him as “a good kid.” Whatever is dividing them is out, known, and begrudgingly accepted. So I dunno, maybe he voted Democrat once, or attends a Lutheran church, or something otherwise scandalous.
I headcanon-ed that he went through Joyce’s atheist awakening in high school, bolted the day he turned 18, and hasn’t looked back. Maybe keeping a minimal thread of contact with Jocelyne along the way.
Maybe someday he’ll appear in the strip after hearing about the divorce. Maybe.
I barely know of him, but in that context, I’m thinking he’s a Christ-centered fundamentalist missionary. That is, he emphasizes acceptance, love, and peace (which Hank can respect), and rejects Carol’s attempts at control (which Carol can never accept).
Joss knows. Maybe she will tell us. Mom and dad won’t.
In my head cannon, he’s now a widowed physician and scientist who is presumed dead, travelling across the United States under assumed names and finding himself in positions where he helps others in need despite his terrible secret: Following an accident that altered his cells, in times of extreme anger or stress, he transforms into a huge, savage, incredibly strong humanoid.
In his travels, Jordan earns money by working temporary jobs while searching for a way to either control or cure his condition…
*cue piano tinkling*
Last week she ‘didn’t know any transgenders,’ this week she’s up to two. At this rate, it’ll be her whole clique by midterms!
May wanna expedite any further penis behavior with Joe… sephine. Nailed it.
Joe can just become Jocelyn, for maximum confusion.
It’s too early to tell whether this effect is additive (she meets one more person per day), or exponential.
She doesn’t know many people! Either trend is not looking great vis-a-vis Joe’s penis.
Time is of the essence, Joyce. Chop chop.
… wow, that was poor phrasing.
It’s going to go fibonacci.
plenty of trans women have functional penises they enjoy using! Joesephine could be one of them!
I know, I know, I just want these kids to hurry up and swap tartar sauce. Willis’s year-long buffer only covers the week he drew them in.
No, she also knows Booster and maybe even Malaya.
I’m damn near 40 and that was still painful
You can tell she’s woke by how wide and open her eyes are.
I mean anytime someone uses “woke” as an insult, I take it to mean they’re asleep at the wheel. I mean what the fuck else do they expect a sane person to take away from that?
(This was meant to be a reply to Shade’s comment above).
+1!
They sound like brain damaged dogs. “Woke! Woke! Woke!” Like shut up already, the squirrel ran by three fucking hours ago and isn’t coming back.
“rainbows!?!??!?! the sky’s gone WOKE WOKE WOKE!!! BOYCOTT AIR!!! BOYCOTT REFRACTION!!! WOKE WOKE!!!””
“a black female protagonist in a cartoon? MUST make this problem SOMEhow, can’t FIGHT whitebred racist INSTINCT WOKE WOKE WOOOOOAAAAAHHAAAAH”
here i am i be like
are these fuckers for REALS? XD
If they’re gonna get so incredibly worked up all the time, they could at least do us all a favor and have heart attacks from the stress.
Co-signed. If they’re going to die mad about it, could they hurry that up a bit?
+1!
In all moroseness, I regret to inform you that, yes, they are for real. They are definitely in earnest. 🙁
it’s sad, really, that they’ve just up and made this their whole personality
they like IRL Jerry Smith:
young adult males who’ve gotten more than the blunt end of late capitalism, who have gotten so desperate for some niche, for some way of “earning respect”, for some way of feeling like a WINNER,
… that they’ve settled on this way of doing so which comes at a human cost
I’m old enough to still use ‘bleeding heart liberal’. Unironically (yeah, come at me).
Functionally the same, but seems more antique, small batch & refined.
Oh, yeah, I remember that one. These days I interpret it as people who are all passion and no strategy, of which there are many in both tails of the population.
Please, Joyce, no more fundy/right winger jargon
It takes time to get out of the mindset. I’ve been out of the conservaloop for more than 20 years and I still slip up now and again.
I cringed at “the transes” but again, at least Joyce is trying, too hard perhaps but she’s trying. also Jocelyne’s outfit is really cute, wish I could wear something like that, but I got them big shoulders. ~<3
The bigger the shoulders, the more pretty floral print you can show off, though.
Tell me about it, if it wasn’t for Torrid I’d be doomed to menswear.
the shoes are a lifesaver
For shoes even they can’t help me. :/
I am trans and I will never stop referring to us as the transes. It’s just incredibly funny
Contrapoints ruined me by saying “a tran.” It’s too funny not to.
Oh *that’s* where I got referring to myself as a tran from. Of course!
omg YES, I also can’t hear the word burgeoning anymore without her voice in my head lol
great, and now I’m thinking about Dr. Tran. ~<3
Are there no windows in your house?
Currently picturing a 1950s style sitcom called “The Transes”
Funny, I was picturing some sort of 90s sitcom called “Hip With the Transes.”
Main character Will “Hip” Hippson, leaves his mom in West Philadelphia after he gets beat up by a gang, and flies out West to live with his aunt and uncle in Portland, Phil and Vivian Trans. Phil and Vivian are, coincidentally, trans, and their three children are pan, demi, and ace. Hijinks ensue as crazy, wacky, straight cis white male Hip tries to fit in with his more straight-laced, respectable, queer family.
Oh, and Nathan Lane is the butler. Not as any character. Just Nathan Lane.
> Oh, and Nathan Lane is the butler. Not as any character. Just Nathan Lane.
Uncle Phil: “That’s how fucking rich we are, and we STILL don’t vote Republican.”
The cises, the gayses, the hetses, the homos, the transes. Joyce has all the latest terms. And to keep up, she only needs to ask Ethan, because he’s an expert on all this stuff.
“the transes” is something me and my friends have called ourselves and definitely comes off as “who are you” when Joyce says it XD
I’m afab and I got huge shoulders, don’t let it stop you :>
Like, not just broad, I’m also a fat person, there’s a lot of stuff that I’m “not supposed to wear”, but I wear what I like and feel comfortable in.
Also broad shoulders are attractive imo anyway
with the power of mild self-awareness i believe joyce can achieve anything
Joyce has so much negative rizz that it circles back around into positive rizz (affectionate)
I ADORE the last panel.
nope dangit crying again
she gets to have a DRESS, they MATCH–
It seems they both recognize the problem where news from their family is always bad, and both have the solution of not responding to calls or messages until it blows up in their face. Maybe the happy news can break the pattern, or maybe they can just start communicating more.
hank needs to show up and take them to (insert name for monkey master ver of disneyland) as a family trip 8D;
Reforming the family without Carol or John would be great for them. (Maybe Jordan too except they have no way to get in touch with him.) They can be and/or have The Brown Reformist Party.
This continues to be SO CUTE.
“You came at a good time”
Overstatement of the year. 😛
Yeah, definitely. Last semester would have been, well, dangerous.
Yesterday? I’d say it at least date since Becky came out to her.
good lord if she reacted to Jocelyne like she did to Carla she wouldn’t have a sister anymore
“Run off and tell mom” Not much anymore after the fallout.
Two. Two straight days of wanting to get Willis for the alt-text. Who even says on fleek and lit (much less marvy) on the reg these days?
Well, August/September Joyce probably would have gone running to Carol. She’s had a lot of character growth since then.
I used to be “with it”, then they changed what “it” was! Now what I’m with isn’t “it” and what is “it” seems weird and scary to me! This will happen to you!
Yea, she’s since seen how her mom treats people who are different but not hurting anyone.
Joyce says she’s only been okay with trans people since yesterday, but she shifted her entire worldview on a dime when Becky came out to her. Maybe she would’ve accidentally said things she shouldn’t if this conversation happened sooner, but Joyce would have accepted Jocelyne as her sister at any point. (Or at least after moving out of her parents’ house, but imo, even before then.)
Yea, she might have not said the right things but she wouldn’t have been a jerk about it. Just might have been more cringy and required more instructions.
It would seem that Joyce has been browsing just a bit of 4chan, and not the same parts that Jocelyne might’ve been stuck on at some point
may the “trans women are channers” trope die in my lifetime
In defense of the alt-text, Joyce does indeed have rizz – not too long ago she did in fact get some (mac n’ cheese) not too long ago
She did have some rizz on her hand, yes. (much to Sarah’s horror) 😀
These comments are sort of confusing. Like, it’s pretty obvious that Joyce was just telling a joke, right? To make fun of ridiculous conservative terminology? You see that kind of stuff all the time.
Extremely obvious to me as well, yeah.
It is really annoying but I’ll give Joyce a pass ‘cus she’s new.
She’s mocking the upbringing she shared with her sister. In that context, I’m really not sure what’s supposed to be wrong with it.
Some people really struggle to identify jokes in text form. This happens in the comments section of this comic all the time, people see a joke and start extrapolating whole personality defects from a punchline.
What do you mean? Conveying sarcasm without intonation and a single frame of expression is easy.
Finally! Someone who transes all the way.
Carla also “transes all the way” which I’m hearing to the tune of Jingle Bells now.
… I will not be able to unregister that when I hear the song now. Here’s hoping i don’t maniacally giggle in stores.
Transes bells, Transes bells
Transes all the way
(needs more development)
“Gender bells” was right there.
Well, yeah, but not all genders do the transes thing. Some are all about the cises thing. (cising? cisering?)
I think the legal term is “cissoring”.
*takes notes
That is a pretty weird thing to say.
Joyce for the lot of heavens what kid sland are you using now
I don’t know if it’s ok for you or not, but passing long time without talking to your siblings is really uncanny to me.
Yeah I talk to most of my siblings every few days at maximum (sometimes daily), but I’m non-white so I think there’s a cultural divide there.
Depends I suppose. I text my sister multiple times most days but my brother who is over a decade older than me I text like a couple times a year, maybe a phone call around Christmas or on one of our birthdays. He is notorious for being bad at staying in touch though. One time he didn’t get in contact for ages after a massive storm (pre mobile phones being the norm) and our Dad got worried and traveled over 3000km (2000 miles) there and back to see if he was alive. He found him walking on the beach near his place perfectly fine. Dad was relieved. And pissed.
I barely talk to my siblings outside of family gatherings, but they’re my half-siblings and literally decades older than me. They’re actually close in age and grew up together, and I think they keep in regular contact.
For my parents, my dad talks to his siblings regularly (his sisters almost daily, though he’d prefer it was a bit less– one sister has been needing a lot of support). My mom talks to her siblings much less, more “as needed.” Interestingly, because I due agree with your cultural divide suspicions in general, my dad’s side is very white, and my mom’s side isn’t as white.
For Joyce and not communicating with her siblings, I do see how it makes sense– Jordan dropped off her radar completely before the start of the strip; John was doing missionary stuff in India (and was a tool), so that probably was a point where communication dropped off. Then between Joyce and Jocelyne, I think it’s likely that Jocelyne was the one who drew back on contact– she was in college starting when Joyce was maybe 12 or 13, and as she was coming into her identity, she needed to pull away from her family… which included her still-living-with-the-folks, still-very-religious little sister.
I hope now that they’ll be in more regular contact and grow closer.
I mean if you don’t really with them anymore and you are all adults with jobs or school and stuff I think it’s understandable to lose.contact for a bit. Doesn’t mean you don’t care, you just have your own life to live (thought I still live with my parents and siblings so I can’t really say it for sure I guess)
While this is a very new development for Joyce, I do like to hope if she’d been told earlier she would have made some very quick adjustments in her head in the same way she did for Becky.
I’m getting all the latest slang from Joyce! This is great! I mean, this is lit!
(aww yiss i’m so riz now)
you definitely aren’t leaking aura
This was rather perfect 😀
Thanks for the smile. I needed that. The punchline in was great.
Thanks Carla!
Oh, Willis. I hate to tell you this, but I think Joyce is too young to be using these terms even ironically. That’s what I was doing at her age IN EARLY 2000!!!
That said, I don’t know what terms the young folk are using ironically these days, but I’d be sad if it was the same ones.
maybe she’s imitating her mom
(or FOX News or something)
Yeah, this whole arc was Willis getting Joyce ready so she didn’t wreck her relationship with her sister.
Or… didn’t have a negative initial reaction that would have vilified Joyce in the eyes of the audience while she’s still growing because it’s kind of hard to figure out how she would have tracked Joycelynn down if things went badly the first time.
Second, I think.
In real life, we understand that people change and grow over time, and that a fumbled first impression is not necessarily a representation of who they are (or at least, we should). In a story, where everything is scene-based and focused on building conflict, rising tension, climax, resolution, with lean plots where everything that happens, happens for a reason. If Joyce had not accepted her sister right away, it *would not matter* to the audience if it took her a few hours, or a few days, or more to accept that her sibling was Jocelyn, and not who she knew her as prior. She would have spent literal weeks or months as an unsympathetic villain who espoused every hurtful rejection that the audience had felt.
There’s a reason that after Becky kissed Joyce, she froze, and didn’t say anything other than that she didn’t feel the same way, and then *Sarah* gets angry, and the first thing that Joyce does is say, “Hurt ME?!” in defense of Becky. Yes, it’s because she’s a loyal friend who puts kindness first – but she’s neck-deep in fundie doctrine at that point. That’s her *entire character*. And to show her not even struggling with it past the initial shock; even giving a little speech to Becky about how she accepted her and she wasn’t wrong, and not until the next day does she even start looking up alternate interpretations of the scripture she has memorized – it kind of HAD to be that way, because any sort of struggle, or denial, or mention of scripture, even if just a foible in the moment, wouldn’t have been acceptable.
If Joyce and Jocelyn were real people, and at first Joyce is having a hard time understanding and says something obtuse or offensive, and asks for some space, and *later that day* Joyce comes back to her and fully apologizes and accepts her, IRL Joyce and Jocelyn’s relationship is solid because Jocelyn understands her sister is human and this is a jump, considering where they come from. But Comic Strip Joyce wouldn’t recover from that. As the arguable MC of DoA, she’d have hurt and angered WAY too many people, too personally, to just forgive and forget.
Yeah, this audience could definitely stand to chill out and not take every imperfection as a personal affront.
I think it’s less the audience, and more the medium. The story crawls compared to all other media – you spend a full day on like five seconds of interaction – so we dwell on it for much longer. And in fiction – *good* fiction, at least – there’s almost no unimportant scenes. Joyce and Jocelyn, or Joyce and Becky, that confrontation is a climax, and the resolution of it matters a great deal in fiction. If the climax goes poorly, the anticlimax MUST be far greater to offset the initial foible. There’s no, “Actually, sis, I’m sorry, I love you, let’s start over.”
That’s what happened when the Browns met the Keeners, after all – there HAD to be that confrontation at the fountain, where Joyce stands up to her parents and throws their words back at them, to make a satisfying story. If that accidental confrontation had never happened, even if Joyce comes to Dorothy right after and says “I’m sorry, Dorothy, my family was jerks but I love you, even though you’re going to hell” (because remember, she still talked like that back then) she’s still an asshole who just let her parents insult her friend.
Walky and Lucy demonstrate the above pretty good, actually. Walky didn’t initially stand up for Lucy, because they both agreed they wanted to make a good impression despite knowing the situation. It then blows up later. And then Walky stands up to his parents, and if that was IRL it would have been HUGE, but in a comic strip it is absolutely anticlimactic, and we’re left still thinking less of Walky.
It’s just the craft of storytelling. Because this was a huge pivotal climax that the story has been building to for over a decade, it HAD to go well, or else it would signal there truly was something wrong with Joyce and she hadn’t grown as much as we all thought.
I don’t really like how you phrase this like it is a definite thing.
Can’t tell if this is an object lesson or intentionally hilarious.
which means, again, that Carla is everyone’s acceptable losses. It’s only important that Joyce is decent to the most important trans person in her life [that ranking would hurt Carla more than that she’s been getting cringe comments from Joyce]
I’m going to use that alt text in a future time, either IRL or in writing. Fair warning 😉
The Woke-pill can be tough for some to swallow (especially for Joyce)
Good on Joyce on her honesty admitting that her acceptance is an admittedly recent event
I love that Joe is carrying Jocelyne’s coat for her, that’s a nice touch.
Oh he is. Nice
I think Joyce is being a bit too hard on herself here. She pushed back against transphobia from her mom and from Mary before she even knew that she knew any trans people. She supported Becky even when she was still deep in right-wing religious mode. If Jocylene has come out to her earlier, she would have been a lot more awkward and probably wound up swallowing her foot, but she would have had her heart in the right place.
Fair point
Aww dang it, no images.
SluggoJoyce is lit.I hate that she used those words in that order to form a complete sentence, but also, I can’t think of any other way that properly conveys the current situation that Joyce is in/has gone through.
speaking of pills, I just started taking the blue pill yesterday
makes me sad that they changed the color since the movie came out
Welcome to the real world.
Man I’m old, when I started it was the purple pills.
yeah I do appreciate how much of a leap of faith Joycelyn is taking to come out to Joyce at all. Not because Joyce aint a loving sister and (trying to be) a good person. Its just always a risk, and let alone with your lil sister from your incredibly evangelical family.
rizzler baddie serving conga, no cap
fr fr