“Messy” is such a mild way to discuss the horrible, awful, terrible, no-good, very-bad infection that would erupt after using a candy bar in such a manner.
Just find a way to hold the chainsaw in place as you move your arms. It’s not rocket science! And I should know, because I actually study rocket science!
Insufficient. You must hold the saw (set it on a table) and squeeze the switch. Without another arm. Toe won’t do; you’ll push the saw around. You’d need help.
I dunno — it’s kind of like that Frasier episode where it turned out Niles couldn’t actually see Daphne as she was, because he always saw her as perfect. And he had to accept she wasn’t perfect before their relationship could progress. (Of course, in that case, “progress” meant “have sex”, so this analogy is also not perfect.)
As individuals, still yes, but also: Becky, sweetie, no. Becky. Please. I’m going to need you to love yourself and be kind to yourself about 100000000% more, because you are breaking my heart into a billion pieces right now.
Well, I’m on the shit list for three out of the four of those. I’d be worried, but that’d require me thinking there was a deity who gave a shit about these rules
I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m a believer in any religion nowadays, but I did go through a phase of bouncing from one pagan religion to the next back in late high school till about mid college (so 16/17 til about 20), and I’d definitely count chemistry as alchemy.
i’m curious where you found alchemy? this christian website says that alchemy is indirectly condemned in various ways (its focus on earthly wealth, its associated beliefs of self-enlightenment) but not explicitely mentioned in the bible.
Galatians 5 says, “the works of the flesh are manifest, and they are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, quarreling, rivalry, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like.” and i will go on record to say i fucking love this sort of ridiculous pile-up of the criminal (murders), the mundane (envying), the weird (witchcraft), and the truly awesome: seditions, fornication and revelings!
Back in the day, useful chemicals, “magics” and drugs were all made by the same kinds of people: alchemists. Some of the rituals used by alchemists from India and the Arabian peninsula required elaborate steps to summon nature spirits and god-like beings, prompting animosity from those who pledged loyalty to their jealous god.
I kinda totally went off here, so let me preface this unspeakably verbose comment with a TL;DR: best i can tell, “alchemy” isn’t quite what the gospel (specifically Paul) is on about, but it’s a close enough approximation as long as we understand that the issue is with the metaphysics of it, not the material practices. (but i’m no expert, please knock down my flimsy argument)
in trying to figure out whether what you call alchemy could reasonably be inferred from Galatians or if i would be an annoying asshole and split hairs over this (i love splitting hairs, everyone hates me) i found that the original greek has “φαρμακεία” (farmakía) which is translated by greekbible.com as:
1) the use or the administering of drugs; 2) poisoning; 3) sorcery, magical arts, often found in connection with idolatry and fostered by it; 4) metaph. the deceptions and seductions of idolatry
So, i don’t know much about the bible, except for being raised catholic then becoming an atheist as an act of teenage rebellion and wilfully forgetting everything i’d learned (i’m now a satan worshipper so you see, progress), but my understanding of Paul is that he’s like head of PR for christianity which is a fringe sect mostly restricted to the middle east at that point. and in that context, and keeping in mind what you said about a lot of medicinal drug production being connected to animist beliefs, which Paul would have seen as competitors to his own Gospel and more generally to monotheism, his use of “farmakia” coming as it did right after idolatry and smack in the middle of a humongous rant about Everything That’s Wrong With The World Nowadays feels to me like he might have been smoothly slipping it in: you agree with me that ADULTERY and FORNICATIONandsorcery and HATRED and MURDERS are terrible things don’t you???
in that context, i guess “alchemy” while kind of inaccurate(?), would at least be a less complacent translation than “witchcraft”; although i guess on yet a deeper level, the smearing (and horrific repression) of witchcraft in the middle ages in Europe kind of repeated that history of reframing pharmaceutical know-how and its associated animist/shamanist traditions as sin. this is a rabbit hole i am not falling into right now (because i could spend my day on this and i have already spent like… three hours?! goddammit), but here’s some things i wonder:
– is there a consistent association between (pre-scientific) drug practices and animist beliefs? (at least in the sphere of influence of monotheism; i don’t know enough about, say, chinese culture to draw any kind of parallel)
– have the christian authorities systematically suppressed local pharmaceutical medicine throughout history? have they ever tried to “christianize” (colonize, appropriate, control) them instead? (an independent question is how often and to what extent they were actually successful in destroying/controlling said practices.)
– and here’s the big one: how does the development of modern medicine in the Renaissance interact with the church’s attacks on grassroots medicinal know-how? a lot has been written about the patriarcal nature of the war on witches in that period, but here i’m interested in the religious aspects of that particular “enclosure”. i suspect there’s a complex history of strategic alliances between medical science and the church especially when it came to burning witches, but probably just as many points of tension between them, because medicine was undergirded by humanistic philosophy and aimed for a form of secular authority that was a whole different sort of threat to organized religion.
final thought, in reaction to @NotThatDrew up there, chemistry doesn’t really seem to count as alchemy, cos what Paul was on about was not the material manipulation of chemical compounds i guess, so much as the animist beliefs and rituals associated with the practice of “farmakia” in his time. probably? speculation involved as you can tell (plus i left out like a whole page of my musings and research on various aspects of this). i would love to be meticulously proved wrong —or right, honestly i don’t care, again my kink is hairsplitting so being “right” is just convenient shorthand for “temporarily stumped as to which hair to be splitting next” =P
yeah, i also have vague memories about dissections being at least sort of frowned upon, but i tried looking it up quickly on wikipedia, and at a very cursory glance it seems that the catholic church was mostly fine with it.
the more fun and popular parts of the history of dissection of course have to do with how corpses were procured, which the article you quote goes into a bit
milu, on a completely different subject, I didn’t see your response yesterday to my comment on inherently biased sampling, so I went back and answered it today in yesterday’s comment section.
ooh, neat!
*reads*
haha nice example =) thanks for your explanation.
i think i see what i misunderstood.
inherent bias means that any universe with different constants would either not exist or not persist long enough or not be conducive to life/consciousness? right? in other words that at some point up the causal chain, the values that allow for water to behave the way it does are also the only ones that allow for consciousness?
in any case, that is pretty much what intuitively feels right to me, though if i get this right, it leaves out the question of whether there is any sense in which those constants are the product of randomness to begin with (kajillion-sided dice), or are somehow consubstantial with the definition of “reality”. ok, i’m out of my depth now =)
Also, in multiverse theory, the only possible universes which can spawn life are the only ones that may have life that can wonder at how amazing it is that their universe can spawn life.
No, I mean it doesn’t count because a robot can very easily replace their arms after removing them. For humans to attempt this, however, would be rather stupid.
Lamarkism is sneaking back in via epigenetics. If you keep cutting off the arms,
eventually enough DNA methylation tags will build upto stop the arms growing in the first place.
i was about to write that biology being the gruesome science that it is, someone is sure to have tested this on a bunch of mice, and it turns out that is pretty much exactly what Weissman did in his attempt to disprove lamarckian inheritance. ugh
Not only is epigentics cool that way, but new CRISPR technogy (literally CRISPRon, CRISPRoff) has been created that will allow us to use epigentics to turn off (or on) DNA using epigenetic switches, and this change is INHERITABLE. So now not only can we disable problematic DNA (hereditary diseases for example), but if we find out we need that DNA for something else, we can turn it back on.
It’s the DNA equivalent of patching a wound vs amputating the limb. (CRISPR originally worked by fully excising DNA, now we can leave it in place and disable it, like commented out sectiins of code.)
um look your own comment contains the words “cat” and “lap” -> cat domestication -> QED. it’s… really hard to not be talking about cat domestication on some level pretty much ever
Joyce wasn’t sure whether her feelings for women were Platonic or not, until someone asked her about an attractive guy and she went, “Welp, I figured it out!”
unless you wanna plead the loophole of “the bible basically doesn’t acknowledge that lesbians are a thing so i guess premarital lesbian sex is fine”, it totally is a sin. but idk, maybe the concept of sin is silly and outdated? i mean, i love the concept of sin, my satan worship would really take a hit if doing absolutely victimless stuff that’s a ton of fun, wasn’t condemned by anyone any longer.
another argument would be that christian sexual morality encodes patriarcal preoccupations with legitimate male-line filiation, so any form of sex that’s non-reproductive is in some fundamental, spirit-of-the-law sense, fine. of course by the same logic refusing to eventually marry a man is probably bad, but well, it was always gonna be a compromise.
oh yeah i know. it’s why i CYA’d my statement by saying “basically never” which errrr may stem from me thinking that Paul is terribly annoying and i remember his stupid epistles as the worst part of mass ever and i think they shouldn’t count as canon??? i mostly used to enjoy the actual Jesus stories, that guy seemed pretty cool. but Paul? such a grandstanding, joyless douche.
Dina makes me smile. She’s right in that, yeah, inevitably, close relationships do bring out some changes in us. That’s impossible to avoid, but I do also like that Becky doesn’t want to force drastic changes.
Of course, she also needs to allow herself this same grace.
To be fair female masterbation does not exist in the bible so you could convince her its okay. The bible only refers to a man “wasting” his seed and then dying horribly.
Onan’s sin wasn’t masturbation, though – it was pulling out so as not to impregnate his brother’s widow, as that was frowned on in his society at the time, even though the Lord had ordered him to. So essentially, it was once again disobedience of a particularly childishly stupid order. A lot of folks went down for that one in the OT.
Having children was pretty important to a widow’s security and well-being at the time, and Onan was denying her that because the child would be considered the dead brother’s heir rather than his own. Man, I’m glad I don’t live in the past.
There’s a lot of different, contradictory stuff in the Bible, it’s two anthologies, with translations aimed at supporting doctrine. How Matthew 5:27-28 is usually translated into English definitely forms a basis of purity culture. 29-30 lays a guilt trip, saying it’d be better to gouge out your eyes than look, and cut off your hand than … (touching yourself is inferred).
I need to know that you will always be
The same ol’ someone that I knew
What will it take till you believe in me
The way that I believe in you?–Billy Joel, circa 1977
How is it that, after coming to terms with being a lesbian Christian, Becky STILL does not understand that you can’t choose who/what you’re attracted to? How many “people are different” talks does she need??
She’s not trying to literally change anyone’s orientation. She just found Dina’s orientation confusing for about a day, followed by temporarily hating her own orientation and making the mistake of assuming that asexuality would fix her problems. The final panel proves the “teach me” bit was just more Beckyesque hyperbole.
Thank goodness for the Saruyamas. They must have imbued their daughter with a great deal of self-worth for Dina to be getting through this day or two of BeckyPanic with love and equanimity. I don’t think it’s possible for Becky to find her way out of a lifetime of indoctrination without the occasional screwup, but that’s gotta be a little hard on the people who care about her.
At this point Becky needs a basic actual college-level sex ed class just so she can A: better understand Dina’s asexuality and B: find better ways to channel her own UNRELENTING desires
Becky’s definitely still dealing with a ton of baggage from her upbringing. She could probably benefit from a therapist (provided she has one with a good understanding of queer issues), but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if part of her baggage is that therapy is a bad thing and you should be mentally strong enough to deal with everything on your own.
I mean, she definitely has that “I will berate myself until my brain starts working the way I think I want it to!” attitude.
It is also (very explicitly patriarchal) heteronormativity that is why Becky’s not okay!
No, seriously. ‘It’s my fault for having these sinful urges’? That’s Ross’s teachings. That’s their youth pastor’s. And I guarantee you it was imposed harder on the kids they thought were girls.
Now I want badly to Joyce came and confess all her atheism, just to crumb down all the rest of Becky’s faith. It’s time to her to give up these things that blocking her to be happy.
Oh my, the combination of fundy sex-hating upbringing and a girlfriend on the ace spectrum …
Dealing with two contradictory topics at the same time can send any mentally stable person for a rollercoaster ride, and it’s Becky…
I approve of you wanting to wait until marriage if that’s what you want, Becky. No one should force you into doing whatever you don’t want to do. You should also want to make sex special or not as you will. However, I’m not sure this is healthy or godly eiither.
I think the message is “Becky’s being silly”. I’m not sure where you’re getting that message from. Where’s the “pressure” coming from, other than from herself?
Becky’s not ready because she’s been pressured her entire life to not have sex outside of marriage. That’s got nothing to do with her personal, internal readiness.
Emotionally speaking some of the cast are still stuck in their early teens and sex is, or should be, a big deal
So for example Becky is waiting because of the notion that God is watching and she’ll feel guilty/bad if she does anything.
That’s not good (feeling guilty) but once she gets past the idea of God passing judgement then she’ll enjoy the sex even more, and not feel guilty, and that’s a good thing
i don’t agree that sex “should be” a big deal. it is for some, and not for others. i’m not sure what you mean by maturity in this context because it’s a messy and loaded concept, but if you’re asking me, what we need more of is not adults judging whether teenagers are ready to have sex or not.
you’re right, i could have expressed my discomfort more civilly. i wish i had, or i wish i had just said this: yes, having sex was a big deal for me when i was young. but it was a very chaotic sort of big deal. it was a shameful sort of big deal.
i felt ashamed for not having done it when, year after year, everyone around me had. i even felt ashamed of that shame, because it was not supposed to matter when i did it. (adults saying i should “do it when i was ready” felt like insult to injury.) i was horny, lonely, ashamed of my desires, how they didn’t quite conform to what i felt was expected of an ostensibly straight boy, ashamed of my questions, my very specific questions that it seemed was going to want to hear, i felt alienated from friends because of the shame, i felt like everyone was less messed up than me.
adults kept saying exactly this, that it was an important step, that it was a big deal, that it was an adult thing, but they would never say what they meant beyond coy platitudes, and they certainly didn’t seem to invite my opinion on whether and why it was complicated for me.
and when i did have sex, and thought the shame was finally over, i just discovered a whole new world of shame, that it took me some more years to finally open up about. was i mature enough? idk probably not, certainly less than most of the DOA characters in many ways, but that was just not a meaningful benchmark for me. i was all grown up, earning a living, renting a flat, moving to one city and another, and still sex was a big pile of shameful shame.
in a sense, i was naive to expect my parents and other close adults to be less messed up than me. but fuck, i felt so alone. and mad. (at myself, mostly.) i wish someone might’ve told me… no, i wish someone might’ve listened. fuck it, i wished anyone would’ve admitted how ashamed and confused they were.
it was a miserable time, and adults being all solemn about sex didn’t help at all.
so, i apologize for being curt, i didn’t feel like reminding myself of that whole shitty era of my life, but then i guess i should’ve just shut up.
i’m sure you have your own good reasons for how you feel about sex and maturity and all and they’re probably fine and valid, and i’m certainly projecting here. sorry about that.
thanks. you probably won’t be reading this (too late), but on the odd chance, i hope you can see why i reacted negatively to your comment. i’ve seen you write what i’d consider insensitive stuff before. maybe you can see how it can be affecting.
You asked literally everyone when you decided to post on a public forum. You want to have bad takes unchallenged, become a politician and call a press conference, a preacher and get on a pulpit, or be so incredibly shitty that the NYT or the WaPo ask you to write an op-ed.
I think the best argument is that a lot of people DO think its a big deal. Whether you do or not is your choice, though. Its a big deal to Becky, though, and she wants it to be important. So it makes it important.
The only way sex is a “big deal” to Becky is that she wants to have it REAL bad. What’s improtant to Becky is her RELIGION. If her religion didn’t say anything about sex, Becky and Dina would be fucking. If her religion said that only blue people got to fuck, these two would be smurfettes fucking.
On a reread, this may be one of those cases where I’m being too obscure. The point is that the question I just asked is obviously not about what you just said.
I think you are reacting as though MrSmith is advocating that people who are immature should not be allowed to have sex. This is something that I also would also object too, not least because it probably means I would never be allowed to have sex.
But what I think MrSmith’s position actually is, is that people who are immature probably shouldn’t be having sex. And this is something that I probably kindof sometimes agree with.
You were supposed to understand all that from my question.
If I say “You*’re nowhere sober enough to be driving”, I DO mean that people who are drunk shuldn’t be allowed to drive. Well, that’s not true, I imply that people who are drunk shouldn’t be allowed to drive, and that you*’re one of those people.
*This is obviously the general “you” and not the specific “you, Clif”. I mean, you, Clif, should also not be allowed to drive while drunk, but that’s not the case here. I hope.
If you say “You’re not sober enough to be driving,” you might mean that I shouldn’t be allowed to drive or you might mean that me driving is really not a good idea. Again the general you, because the specific you is the expert on what you mean. But since I believe that people should be free to do things that are bad ideas, as long as it’s not actively harming other people and certainly not harming me, I’m more inclined to take the second interpretation.
While I assume that we are both in favor of police preventing badly inebriated people from driving, I am really not convinced that MrSmith is in favor of installing immaturity police to prevent Walky some people from having sex.
FURTHERMORE, he’s suggesting a situation that’s not actually true. Becky DOESN’T want to wait. This isn’t about Becky going “well, I’d love to fuck, but I don’t feel emotionally ready for it yet, so I think we should wait”. The reason these two aren’t banging is because Becky is afraid that if she has consensual sex the Big Sky Wizard will be mad at her.
The ironic thing is that as soon as Becky accepts she isn’t sinful for having horny thoughts and just lets herself feel it, even if not act on it, the intensity of her reactions will immediately start to decrease.
Because repressing yourself and telling yourself not to have thoughts actually makes them more frequent and distressing. Which is shown with both PTSD and OCD where avoidance makes what thoughts you try to avoid come back more.
That said, I wouldn’t be shocked if Becky DOES eventually have sex with Dina in the course of the strip, but that would be if realizing ‘I’m not bad and wrong for having a sex drive’ leads to a bit more assessment of which things from their upbringing actually feel necessary to her personal faith and which are in hindsight more ‘damnit, was this ANOTHER way to keep kids controlled?’ Could be she does but still decides against sex, but I could see it going either way. (Once again I wonder what she’d think or do if same-gender marriage was still not legal.)
Repressing yourself and telling yourself not to have thoughts actually makes them more intense and enjoyable when you do have them because that’s the way people are built.
This is me dating as an ace.
Everyone else: Nooooo you’re fine you’re perfect the way you are! You’re so lucky to be asexual, I wish I was asexual!
Me: Right… So… You still wanna date me?
Everyone else: *Inhales through teeth* I’d love to buuuuuuut [is already out the door when sentence ends]
Me: Yay. So, so lucky.
I’m not ace, but I can sympathize with your experiences. It’s fairly similar to what I go through when I mention to potential partners that I’m into BDSM. Thanks to stuff like “Fifty Shades of Grey” (which btw, is a terrible TERRIBLE depiction of BDSM and please do not EVER try to model your D/s relationship on what those two do), awareness of our lifestyle is at least somewhat commonplace now, but reactions to it can be pretty mixed. If I’m lucky, they’ll get a look of curiosity or even excitement on their face, but other times, it’s a look of complete disgust/outrage/”this relationship is over”.
Mount the chainsaw on something before sawing either one…. why did that just instantly occur to me when I read your comment? Becky might not be the only one worried about their own thoughts now…
I know Becky was raised in a strict fundamentalist household, and still holds a lot of what she learned there close to her heart – but DANG, that girl needs to learn to masturbate!
Yeah Dina takes everyone in her life at face value. If Becky outright says what’s on her mind then Dina could come up with a plan, but Becky’s dancing around it because she doesn’t even know what to think.
“And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and. cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee. that one of thy members should perish, and not. that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”
Matthew 5:30
Loading ...
first, some aids
*gets lynched*
hangry crotch is not a mental image I needed
Wrong.
It is the mental image we all need.
It’s the mental image we all have to endure.
❤
This.
Need? No. Deserve..?
Becky, have a Snickers…on second thought, don’t that could get messy.
The thought of that is enough to make me Snicker.
“Messy” is such a mild way to discuss the horrible, awful, terrible, no-good, very-bad infection that would erupt after using a candy bar in such a manner.
Vagina dentata.
You forgot the Queen Of Wands link.
Oh that’s much less bad than I was expecting.
pretty much exactly what I was expecting.
Man, I loved that comic, I really miss it.
Sorry. But why in Italian?
As great as chainsawing the arms off to deal with all lustful thoughts sounds on paper, you’re probably gonna need those for finals, Becky
There might also be logistical issues. The first arm would be easy enough to do, but the second one would be a bit more challenging…
Just find a way to hold the chainsaw in place as you move your arms. It’s not rocket science! And I should know, because I actually study rocket science!
Insufficient. You must hold the saw (set it on a table) and squeeze the switch. Without another arm. Toe won’t do; you’ll push the saw around. You’d need help.
While screaming in agony. You just sawed off our arm.
i’m sure she could ask her girlfriend. she’d probably jump at the opportunity to practice her dismemberment skills.
I assumed an effective design that would hold down the chainsaw AND its trigger.
Why would she need lustful thoughts for finals?
I mean, I’m not saying she WON’T, I’m just wondering what other classes she’s taking.
These two are the best you cannot change my mind
Agreed.
Really relieved by Becky’s first line accepting Dina for who she is… though going directly from there to hating herself is rather worrying.
Becky won’t accept that Dina’s not what she thinks she is. That’s extremely worrying.
…except Becky is accepting that Dina is ace here? It’s herself that she’s not accepting now.
Uhh, Bryy, she’s literally telling Dina she’s perfect as she is. Not sure how you’re seeing that as not accepting her
I dunno — it’s kind of like that Frasier episode where it turned out Niles couldn’t actually see Daphne as she was, because he always saw her as perfect. And he had to accept she wasn’t perfect before their relationship could progress. (Of course, in that case, “progress” meant “have sex”, so this analogy is also not perfect.)
I love them
I don’t agree with what you say but I will fight to the death your right to say it.
Maybe you should just fight to the first fall. I hear their right to say it fights dirty.
As a pair, yes.
As individuals, still yes, but also: Becky, sweetie, no. Becky. Please. I’m going to need you to love yourself and be kind to yourself about 100000000% more, because you are breaking my heart into a billion pieces right now.
Here’s an interesting fact. The “ways of flesh” (sin) as listed in the Christian Bible include drugs, sorcery, alchemy, and worship of all other gods.
Well, I’m on the shit list for three out of the four of those. I’d be worried, but that’d require me thinking there was a deity who gave a shit about these rules
Are you wiccan or are you counting chemistry as a form of alchemy?
I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m a believer in any religion nowadays, but I did go through a phase of bouncing from one pagan religion to the next back in late high school till about mid college (so 16/17 til about 20), and I’d definitely count chemistry as alchemy.
Well, like every other despicable villian in fiction, the god in question is proportetly jealous and proud of it.
“Ways of the flesh” sounds like it’s a forbidden lore of magic.
Nah, it’s just theopolitical supremacism.
tantric – https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-tantric-sex
Creating some horrifying sex creaters. Either that or spells that involve sex.
i’m curious where you found alchemy? this christian website says that alchemy is indirectly condemned in various ways (its focus on earthly wealth, its associated beliefs of self-enlightenment) but not explicitely mentioned in the bible.
Galatians 5 says, “the works of the flesh are manifest, and they are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, quarreling, rivalry, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like.” and i will go on record to say i fucking love this sort of ridiculous pile-up of the criminal (murders), the mundane (envying), the weird (witchcraft), and the truly awesome: seditions, fornication and revelings!
Back in the day, useful chemicals, “magics” and drugs were all made by the same kinds of people: alchemists. Some of the rituals used by alchemists from India and the Arabian peninsula required elaborate steps to summon nature spirits and god-like beings, prompting animosity from those who pledged loyalty to their jealous god.
Okay so this is really interesting =D
I
kindatotally went off here, so let me preface this unspeakably verbose comment with aTL;DR: best i can tell, “alchemy” isn’t quite what the gospel (specifically Paul) is on about, but it’s a close enough approximation as long as we understand that the issue is with the metaphysics of it, not the material practices. (but i’m no expert, please knock down my flimsy argument)
in trying to figure out whether what you call alchemy could reasonably be inferred from Galatians or if i would be an annoying asshole and split hairs over this (i love splitting hairs, everyone hates me) i found that the original greek has “φαρμακεία” (farmakía) which is translated by greekbible.com as:
1) the use or the administering of drugs; 2) poisoning; 3) sorcery, magical arts, often found in connection with idolatry and fostered by it; 4) metaph. the deceptions and seductions of idolatry
So, i don’t know much about the bible, except for being raised catholic then becoming an atheist as an act of teenage rebellion and wilfully forgetting everything i’d learned (i’m now a satan worshipper so you see, progress), but my understanding of Paul is that he’s like head of PR for christianity which is a fringe sect mostly restricted to the middle east at that point. and in that context, and keeping in mind what you said about a lot of medicinal drug production being connected to animist beliefs, which Paul would have seen as competitors to his own Gospel and more generally to monotheism, his use of “farmakia” coming as it did right after idolatry and smack in the middle of a humongous rant about Everything That’s Wrong With The World Nowadays feels to me like he might have been smoothly slipping it in: you agree with me that ADULTERY and FORNICATIONandsorcery and HATRED and MURDERS are terrible things don’t you???
in that context, i guess “alchemy” while kind of inaccurate(?), would at least be a less complacent translation than “witchcraft”; although i guess on yet a deeper level, the smearing (and horrific repression) of witchcraft in the middle ages in Europe kind of repeated that history of reframing pharmaceutical know-how and its associated animist/shamanist traditions as sin. this is a rabbit hole i am not falling into right now (because i could spend my day on this and i have already spent like… three hours?! goddammit), but here’s some things i wonder:
– is there a consistent association between (pre-scientific) drug practices and animist beliefs? (at least in the sphere of influence of monotheism; i don’t know enough about, say, chinese culture to draw any kind of parallel)
– have the christian authorities systematically suppressed local pharmaceutical medicine throughout history? have they ever tried to “christianize” (colonize, appropriate, control) them instead? (an independent question is how often and to what extent they were actually successful in destroying/controlling said practices.)
– and here’s the big one: how does the development of modern medicine in the Renaissance interact with the church’s attacks on grassroots medicinal know-how? a lot has been written about the patriarcal nature of the war on witches in that period, but here i’m interested in the religious aspects of that particular “enclosure”. i suspect there’s a complex history of strategic alliances between medical science and the church especially when it came to burning witches, but probably just as many points of tension between them, because medicine was undergirded by humanistic philosophy and aimed for a form of secular authority that was a whole different sort of threat to organized religion.
final thought, in reaction to @NotThatDrew up there, chemistry doesn’t really seem to count as alchemy, cos what Paul was on about was not the material manipulation of chemical compounds i guess, so much as the animist beliefs and rituals associated with the practice of “farmakia” in his time. probably? speculation involved as you can tell (plus i left out like a whole page of my musings and research on various aspects of this). i would love to be meticulously proved wrong —or right, honestly i don’t care, again my kink is hairsplitting so being “right” is just convenient shorthand for “temporarily stumped as to which hair to be splitting next” =P
Can I subscribe to your newsletter?
ahah that’s kind of sweet =)
Disclosure: all this is fuzzy armchair rememberings. no citations.
Renaisance artists (Da Vinci) often were breaking catholic law when they engaged in dissections. They did this to achieve a better understanding of the human body, how it is put together and how it moves. In the process they provided a
body of knowledge that has helped inform medicine for centuries to the present day.
Not provided: reference about it being illegal at the time.
yeah, i also have vague memories about dissections being at least sort of frowned upon, but i tried looking it up quickly on wikipedia, and at a very cursory glance it seems that the catholic church was mostly fine with it.
the more fun and popular parts of the history of dissection of course have to do with how corpses were procured, which the article you quote goes into a bit
milu, on a completely different subject, I didn’t see your response yesterday to my comment on inherently biased sampling, so I went back and answered it today in yesterday’s comment section.
ooh, neat!
*reads*
haha nice example =) thanks for your explanation.
i think i see what i misunderstood.
inherent bias means that any universe with different constants would either not exist or not persist long enough or not be conducive to life/consciousness? right? in other words that at some point up the causal chain, the values that allow for water to behave the way it does are also the only ones that allow for consciousness?
in any case, that is pretty much what intuitively feels right to me, though if i get this right, it leaves out the question of whether there is any sense in which those constants are the product of randomness to begin with (kajillion-sided dice), or are somehow consubstantial with the definition of “reality”. ok, i’m out of my depth now =)
Also, in multiverse theory, the only possible universes which can spawn life are the only ones that may have life that can wonder at how amazing it is that their universe can spawn life.
yeah, i think that’s what i initially thought Clif meant by “inherently bias sample”.
Ohh too fascinating! Believe it or not, I almost went as far as you did in my original comment!
haha please don’t refrain your nerdiness ^^
“seditions, fornication and revelings” will definitely be on my next party invites.
I think my bathroom scale makes me guilty of weighs-of-the-flesh.
Sure, blame it on the scale.
I do from time to time.
…What is it with lesbians and chainsawing off their own arms?
Well I imagine this is a call-back to that.
Please don’t use that as the defining example. Leslie was not the brightest bulb in Shortpacked.
…do you have other examples of Willis’s lesbians chainsawing off their own arms?
I imagine Ultra-Car may have done so at one point, but seeing as she’s technically a robot, doesn’t really count.
Naw, that totally counts. Robots are people too!
No, I mean it doesn’t count because a robot can very easily replace their arms after removing them. For humans to attempt this, however, would be rather stupid.
Ah, but if we keep doing it, we’ll eventually evolve to have our limbs regenerate like some kind of reptile.
Nonono. Lamarckian evolution says that if you keep cutting off the arms they will eventually become stunted and stubby rather than….
…. wait. …Lamarckian evolution was disproved.
…. okay, yeah, that regeneration idea’s completely legit, chainsaw away!
“Ah, but if we keep doing it, we’ll eventually evolve to have our limbs regenerate like some kind of reptile.”
define “we”
“We” as in “all of us lesbians existing in a Willis comic.”
Lamarkism is sneaking back in via epigenetics. If you keep cutting off the arms,
eventually enough DNA methylation tags will build upto stop the arms growing in the first place.
i was about to write that biology being the gruesome science that it is, someone is sure to have tested this on a bunch of mice, and it turns out that is pretty much exactly what Weissman did in his attempt to disprove lamarckian inheritance. ugh
Not only is epigentics cool that way, but new CRISPR technogy (literally CRISPRon, CRISPRoff) has been created that will allow us to use epigentics to turn off (or on) DNA using epigenetic switches, and this change is INHERITABLE. So now not only can we disable problematic DNA (hereditary diseases for example), but if we find out we need that DNA for something else, we can turn it back on.
It’s the DNA equivalent of patching a wound vs amputating the limb. (CRISPR originally worked by fully excising DNA, now we can leave it in place and disable it, like commented out sectiins of code.)
All too fascinating!!!
I have a massive browser session of epigenetic resources if anyone wants it!
lol same, also lamarckism, and for some reason cat domestication??? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@milu Please tell me that those three categories do not mutually overlap.
um look your own comment contains the words “cat” and “lap” -> cat domestication -> QED. it’s… really hard to not be talking about cat domestication on some level pretty much ever
I had forgotten those. Faz on the previous page was a classic.
Dang or dumb?
To be clear for posterity: as of the time of posting, the comic says “dumb ol’ crotch” while the hovertext says “dang ol’ crotch”
Dang/dumb ol’ crotch needs head….
(Sung to Ding-Dong the Witch is Dead. Enjoy your earworm.)
I just happened to be rereading when this went up.
IT’S NOT A SIN BECKY JUST DO IT.
Was she even “excited”? Does she know what that even means? Given her sex mis-education, probably not.
Becky seems to operate similarly to how all high school principals/superintendents think male students do. The power of shoulders are just too much
I mean, we’ve seen how she reacts to her girlfriend’s scalp.
Please don’t compare her to those creeps.
*experiences flashback to the Jellybean king*
I’m pretty sure the kid can figure out when something has turned her on. Kinda extremely hard to be wrong about that
Joyce wasn’t sure whether her feelings for women were Platonic or not, until someone asked her about an attractive guy and she went, “Welp, I figured it out!”
And even if it is a sin, who cares. You just gotta pray like hell on your deathbed like the rest of us.
unless you wanna plead the loophole of “the bible basically doesn’t acknowledge that lesbians are a thing so i guess premarital lesbian sex is fine”, it totally is a sin. but idk, maybe the concept of sin is silly and outdated? i mean, i love the concept of sin, my satan worship would really take a hit if doing absolutely victimless stuff that’s a ton of fun, wasn’t condemned by anyone any longer.
another argument would be that christian sexual morality encodes patriarcal preoccupations with legitimate male-line filiation, so any form of sex that’s non-reproductive is in some fundamental, spirit-of-the-law sense, fine. of course by the same logic refusing to eventually marry a man is probably bad, but well, it was always gonna be a compromise.
I was aiming for the “Sins don’t exist” angle.
Joyce and Becky’s church interpreted Romans as condemning girl on girl.
oh yeah i know. it’s why i CYA’d my statement by saying “basically never” which errrr may stem from me thinking that Paul is terribly annoying and i remember his stupid epistles as the worst part of mass ever and i think they shouldn’t count as canon??? i mostly used to enjoy the actual Jesus stories, that guy seemed pretty cool. but Paul? such a grandstanding, joyless douche.
Too bad Becky doesn’t have the right type of creative mind to channel her lust and sexual repression into totally not wish fulfillment writing.
She should talk to Amber.
I wonder if her writings involve a lot more ambiguously brown messy haired boys these days.
last
weJoyce checked her fanfic tended to be m/m? so… who do you think she might ship Walky with? =PIt’s gotta be Danny.
it’s gotta be Danny. u_u
You mean Guy She Kinda Remembered When He Had A Hat?
I’m guessing a Jacob expy.
TRAIN WRECK, ALL ABOARD.
“Hangry Crotch,” Eric Carmen’s follow up to his hit single “Hungry Eyes,” was unfortunately far less successful than its predecessor.
Haaangry Crotch
You took me by surprise
Oh, I thought it was the sequel to Angry Birds.
Dina makes me smile. She’s right in that, yeah, inevitably, close relationships do bring out some changes in us. That’s impossible to avoid, but I do also like that Becky doesn’t want to force drastic changes.
Of course, she also needs to allow herself this same grace.
she also seriously needs to allow herself a vibrator, but I imagine that’d raise similar problems
To be fair female masterbation does not exist in the bible so you could convince her its okay. The bible only refers to a man “wasting” his seed and then dying horribly.
It also says to kill people to work on Saturday. But does anyone follow THAT instruction?
Only once a week.
Your religious dedication is impressive and a model for us all.
Something something “the Bible says not to use any part of your body to serve sin” something something “sin of lust” something something.
Damn, even foot fetishists can’t catch a break.
… so, wait, what are people who have denial kinks supposed to do?
So I can do it if I’m only thinking about non-lusty things?
This feels like a paperclip fetish waiting to happen, but aight.
Onan’s sin wasn’t masturbation, though – it was pulling out so as not to impregnate his brother’s widow, as that was frowned on in his society at the time, even though the Lord had ordered him to. So essentially, it was once again disobedience of a particularly childishly stupid order. A lot of folks went down for that one in the OT.
Having children was pretty important to a widow’s security and well-being at the time, and Onan was denying her that because the child would be considered the dead brother’s heir rather than his own. Man, I’m glad I don’t live in the past.
Take it up with various churches. I was taught in Catholic school that it was about masturbation.
Since the church largely regards women as incubatory flesh-lights, isn’t Onan using his widowed sister-in-law to get off essentially the same thing?
Not at all, because the entire point was for the widow to have kids
There’s a lot of different, contradictory stuff in the Bible, it’s two anthologies, with translations aimed at supporting doctrine. How Matthew 5:27-28 is usually translated into English definitely forms a basis of purity culture. 29-30 lays a guilt trip, saying it’d be better to gouge out your eyes than look, and cut off your hand than … (touching yourself is inferred).
I need to know that you will always be
The same ol’ someone that I knew
What will it take till you believe in me
The way that I believe in you?–Billy Joel, circa 1977
Today is Billy’s birthday. He’s 72 so I’m m feeling old too.
No, you need to save cutting off your arms for when you need to prove you aren’t destined to become the future self you’ve just encountered.
I understood that reference.
But what if multi-verse?
schrodinger’s arms.
Use quantum chainsaws, and close your eyes so that you can’t observe whether you actually cut off your arms or not.
(That is too how quantum mechanics works.)
Multi-Verse ROCK!
No, you need to save
cutting off your arms,
cutting off your arms,
cutting off your arms,
For when you need to prove
you aren’t destined to become,
cutting off your arms,
cutting off your arms,
cutting off your arms,
The future self
you’ve just encountered
cutting off your arms,
cutting off your arms,
cutting off your arms,
…
cutting off your arms,
cutting off your arms,
cutting off your arms, {fade}
Please let there be a scene where Becky learns such indifference to “ways of flesh”, analogous to the spoon scene from the Matrix!
What? A guy can dream, right?
“No! No temptations of the flesh! There is no schtoinking, there is no kissing, and THERE IS NO SPOONING!”
No, no no, I meant the scene with a literal spoon.
Except the analogous hypothetical scene would actually make sense.
oh dear this is really unhealthy
I fail to identify what you are referring to.
Chainsawing off your arms. There’s actually a lot of health complications that can arise from such an action.
It’s a move best reserved for only dire situations.
Becky thinks she’s a bad person, not because she’s attracted to *ladies*, but because she’s *attracted* to ladies. That’s pretty rough.
That, and what Yoto said. I lol’d.
The part where she is so at odds with herself that merely enjoying the presence of her girlfriend ‘too much’ throws her into crisis
I still think Becky should talk to Roz and get herself a sextoy of her choice.
Sarah’d be her best bet on a sex toy. Roz is who you go to for a fucktoy.
That would be a great thing.
I mean this is TECHNICALLY a conversation and they’re both trying really hard so I’ll take it.
How is it that, after coming to terms with being a lesbian Christian, Becky STILL does not understand that you can’t choose who/what you’re attracted to? How many “people are different” talks does she need??
Because she’s been in a cult for her entire life. Not only that, but a cult which took both her parents.
My name is Brynn and we’ve been given the same gravatar so I thought I replied to myself and forgot about it
She’s not trying to literally change anyone’s orientation. She just found Dina’s orientation confusing for about a day, followed by temporarily hating her own orientation and making the mistake of assuming that asexuality would fix her problems. The final panel proves the “teach me” bit was just more Beckyesque hyperbole.
Thank goodness for the Saruyamas. They must have imbued their daughter with a great deal of self-worth for Dina to be getting through this day or two of BeckyPanic with love and equanimity. I don’t think it’s possible for Becky to find her way out of a lifetime of indoctrination without the occasional screwup, but that’s gotta be a little hard on the people who care about her.
(I love that DoA Dina loves herself. It’s a balm to the soul after rereading IW.)
Walkyverse Dina did the best she could do.
(the best she could do was being the better Dina)
Oh Becky 🙁
Maybe couples therapy? Also if Becky isn’t getting individual therapy she probably should.
At this point Becky needs a basic actual college-level sex ed class just so she can A: better understand Dina’s asexuality and B: find better ways to channel her own UNRELENTING desires
Becky’s definitely still dealing with a ton of baggage from her upbringing. She could probably benefit from a therapist (provided she has one with a good understanding of queer issues), but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if part of her baggage is that therapy is a bad thing and you should be mentally strong enough to deal with everything on your own.
I mean, she definitely has that “I will berate myself until my brain starts working the way I think I want it to!” attitude.
You depend on God to help you with your problems. So therapy and sex toys are not necessary.
I’m pretty sure it’s called sacrilege if you try to get God to help you with the kind of issues a sex toy would solve.
But I support it.
Hangry crotch causing problems? Me, too, Becky. Me, too.
One wants sex but has hang-ups, the other has no hang-ups but isn’t interested in sex. Comedic gold.
the sins of the fully clothed flesh
Good thing Dina wears t-shirts all the time. If she had a tank top on, Becky probably would’ve burst into flames in that panel.
Just think of all the babies killed by not having sex at every opportunity.
Ev-er-y sperm is sacred
Ev-er-y sperm is good
Ev’ry sperm is neeeeeded
in your neighborhood…
There was a Moral Orel episode about that…
I take it that masturbation is not a viable option. Poor deluded thing.
“the straights ain’t alright” — Becky
To be fair no one claimed that the queer people were better off, it’s just a matter of balance really
also, it’s just a meme.
(and also the line implies that the straights aren’t ok specifically because of heteronormativity. being gay is not why Becky’s not ok.)
It is also (very explicitly patriarchal) heteronormativity that is why Becky’s not okay!
No, seriously. ‘It’s my fault for having these sinful urges’? That’s Ross’s teachings. That’s their youth pastor’s. And I guarantee you it was imposed harder on the kids they thought were girls.
For their own good of course.
Always.
It’s about time for Becky to rethink her commitment to this idiotic religion.
She should commit to another idiotic religion instead.
Though I hear idiotic atheism is also a thing.
It definitely is.
Idiotic nihilism is absurd and meaningless.
Why do I always get Asher as a gravatar? I want Sal back. 🙁
Just find someone with the right gravatar, save it, and set it as your default. Then you shall be Sal forever.
Replace one or more letters from your email with capital letters and you’ll get a new gravatar.
THANK YOU! First try:
First try for me:
Nope. No Joe. G. I. Nope
Thanks! I’ll try that. 🙂
The right magical combination for Sal is harder to find though. At least it was for me.
Now I want badly to Joyce came and confess all her atheism, just to crumb down all the rest of Becky’s faith. It’s time to her to give up these things that blocking her to be happy.
If the comic were over, then we wouldn’t get to enjoy it for the first time each day.
Oh my, the combination of fundy sex-hating upbringing and a girlfriend on the ace spectrum …
Dealing with two contradictory topics at the same time can send any mentally stable person for a rollercoaster ride, and it’s Becky…
“dumbing of age book 11: things’d be great if my dang ol’ crotch weren’t so hangry”
Nice book title, Willis. Serve for almost entire DoA timeline.
I approve of you wanting to wait until marriage if that’s what you want, Becky. No one should force you into doing whatever you don’t want to do. You should also want to make sex special or not as you will. However, I’m not sure this is healthy or godly eiither.
But think of all the potential babies she is killing by not constantly having lesbian sex.
Oh, wait.
I approve of the comic giving a message, “have sex when you’re ready. Not when you feel pressured into it.”
Then again, I may be misinterpreting it and it could be, “Becky is being silly.”
It is a good message
I think the message is “Becky’s being silly”. I’m not sure where you’re getting that message from. Where’s the “pressure” coming from, other than from herself?
Becky’s not ready because she’s been pressured her entire life to not have sex outside of marriage. That’s got nothing to do with her personal, internal readiness.
Sorry Becky, I’m pretty sure you can’t teach someone to become asexual. And she really has some unhealthy fundie ideas about sex.
To be fair, she lives in a unhealthy family and she has a lot of thing to understand about LGBT stuff
Pretty sure most of the cast are nowhere mature enough to be having sex so at least Becky wants to wait
dude, wtf.
Emotionally speaking some of the cast are still stuck in their early teens and sex is, or should be, a big deal
So for example Becky is waiting because of the notion that God is watching and she’ll feel guilty/bad if she does anything.
That’s not good (feeling guilty) but once she gets past the idea of God passing judgement then she’ll enjoy the sex even more, and not feel guilty, and that’s a good thing
i don’t agree that sex “should be” a big deal. it is for some, and not for others. i’m not sure what you mean by maturity in this context because it’s a messy and loaded concept, but if you’re asking me, what we need more of is not adults judging whether teenagers are ready to have sex or not.
I wasn’t asking you
Unnecessarily hostile but aight
I agree there has been some unnecessarily hostile comments made
you’re right, i could have expressed my discomfort more civilly. i wish i had, or i wish i had just said this: yes, having sex was a big deal for me when i was young. but it was a very chaotic sort of big deal. it was a shameful sort of big deal.
i felt ashamed for not having done it when, year after year, everyone around me had. i even felt ashamed of that shame, because it was not supposed to matter when i did it. (adults saying i should “do it when i was ready” felt like insult to injury.) i was horny, lonely, ashamed of my desires, how they didn’t quite conform to what i felt was expected of an ostensibly straight boy, ashamed of my questions, my very specific questions that it seemed was going to want to hear, i felt alienated from friends because of the shame, i felt like everyone was less messed up than me.
adults kept saying exactly this, that it was an important step, that it was a big deal, that it was an adult thing, but they would never say what they meant beyond coy platitudes, and they certainly didn’t seem to invite my opinion on whether and why it was complicated for me.
and when i did have sex, and thought the shame was finally over, i just discovered a whole new world of shame, that it took me some more years to finally open up about. was i mature enough? idk probably not, certainly less than most of the DOA characters in many ways, but that was just not a meaningful benchmark for me. i was all grown up, earning a living, renting a flat, moving to one city and another, and still sex was a big pile of shameful shame.
in a sense, i was naive to expect my parents and other close adults to be less messed up than me. but fuck, i felt so alone. and mad. (at myself, mostly.) i wish someone might’ve told me… no, i wish someone might’ve listened. fuck it, i wished anyone would’ve admitted how ashamed and confused they were.
it was a miserable time, and adults being all solemn about sex didn’t help at all.
so, i apologize for being curt, i didn’t feel like reminding myself of that whole shitty era of my life, but then i guess i should’ve just shut up.
i’m sure you have your own good reasons for how you feel about sex and maturity and all and they’re probably fine and valid, and i’m certainly projecting here. sorry about that.
For what its worth I’m sorry for what you went through
thanks. you probably won’t be reading this (too late), but on the odd chance, i hope you can see why i reacted negatively to your comment. i’ve seen you write what i’d consider insensitive stuff before. maybe you can see how it can be affecting.
You asked literally everyone when you decided to post on a public forum. You want to have bad takes unchallenged, become a politician and call a press conference, a preacher and get on a pulpit, or be so incredibly shitty that the NYT or the WaPo ask you to write an op-ed.
I await your no doubt well-researched explanation on why sex should be a big deal and you have to be “this mature” to ride.
I think the best argument is that a lot of people DO think its a big deal. Whether you do or not is your choice, though. Its a big deal to Becky, though, and she wants it to be important. So it makes it important.
The only way sex is a “big deal” to Becky is that she wants to have it REAL bad. What’s improtant to Becky is her RELIGION. If her religion didn’t say anything about sex, Becky and Dina would be fucking. If her religion said that only blue people got to fuck, these two would be smurfettes fucking.
Tell us more about your maturity and how you get to decide who should be allowed to have consensual sex. But, really, don’t.
How can you defend punishing people for being immature by forcing them to have consensual sex?
On a reread, this may be one of those cases where I’m being too obscure. The point is that the question I just asked is obviously not about what you just said.
I think you are reacting as though MrSmith is advocating that people who are immature should not be allowed to have sex. This is something that I also would also object too, not least because it probably means I would never be allowed to have sex.
But what I think MrSmith’s position actually is, is that people who are immature probably shouldn’t be having sex. And this is something that I probably kindof sometimes agree with.
You were supposed to understand all that from my question.
If I say “You*’re nowhere sober enough to be driving”, I DO mean that people who are drunk shuldn’t be allowed to drive. Well, that’s not true, I imply that people who are drunk shouldn’t be allowed to drive, and that you*’re one of those people.
*This is obviously the general “you” and not the specific “you, Clif”. I mean, you, Clif, should also not be allowed to drive while drunk, but that’s not the case here. I hope.
If you say “You’re not sober enough to be driving,” you might mean that I shouldn’t be allowed to drive or you might mean that me driving is really not a good idea. Again the general you, because the specific you is the expert on what you mean. But since I believe that people should be free to do things that are bad ideas, as long as it’s not actively harming other people and certainly not harming me, I’m more inclined to take the second interpretation.
While I assume that we are both in favor of police preventing badly inebriated people from driving, I am really not convinced that MrSmith is in favor of installing immaturity police to prevent
Walkysome people from having sex.I’m not in favour of immaturity police
And yet, here you are, claiming the cast isn’t mature enough to do what you consider “a big deal”.
Most of the cast not all and theres a slight difference between me thinking they shouldn’t and me deciding they can’t
Oh, most of the cast, I missed that. I guess if you’re ok with your chosen ones fucking, that makes it alright and I withdraw my previous comments.
Since tone doesn’t convey over text, please refer to my gravatar. I’m getting so much miileage out of this I should pay Milu for making it for me.
Thank you for admitting you got my comments wrong and that you’re withdrawing your comments, its appreciated.
FURTHERMORE, he’s suggesting a situation that’s not actually true. Becky DOESN’T want to wait. This isn’t about Becky going “well, I’d love to fuck, but I don’t feel emotionally ready for it yet, so I think we should wait”. The reason these two aren’t banging is because Becky is afraid that if she has consensual sex the Big Sky Wizard will be mad at her.
The big sky wizard may be why she wants to wait, but she still wants to wait. Whereas I’m more, do it for my vicarious enjoyment.
No. Doing something because you’re afraid of punishment if you don’t isn’t the same as wanting to do it.
I think there is something here about people who should not be allowed to drive while having sex, but I’m not sober enough to figure it out.
Don’t drink, drive and fuck (impressive if you can though)
consider this, Becky: neither of you are messed up
actually, IMO, Becky is; but it’s not her fault, and there’s a good chance she’ll be able to overcome it. eventually.
I really hope a day Becky will be free from her fear of committing sin. This is becoming really sad to see.
The ironic thing is that as soon as Becky accepts she isn’t sinful for having horny thoughts and just lets herself feel it, even if not act on it, the intensity of her reactions will immediately start to decrease.
Because repressing yourself and telling yourself not to have thoughts actually makes them more frequent and distressing. Which is shown with both PTSD and OCD where avoidance makes what thoughts you try to avoid come back more.
Yep. Her and Joyce both.
That said, I wouldn’t be shocked if Becky DOES eventually have sex with Dina in the course of the strip, but that would be if realizing ‘I’m not bad and wrong for having a sex drive’ leads to a bit more assessment of which things from their upbringing actually feel necessary to her personal faith and which are in hindsight more ‘damnit, was this ANOTHER way to keep kids controlled?’ Could be she does but still decides against sex, but I could see it going either way. (Once again I wonder what she’d think or do if same-gender marriage was still not legal.)
Repressing yourself and telling yourself not to have thoughts actually makes them more intense and enjoyable when you do have them because that’s the way people are built.
Fixed that for you.
I have some VERY strong complaints to file with the responsible engineer.
This is me dating as an ace.
Everyone else: Nooooo you’re fine you’re perfect the way you are! You’re so lucky to be asexual, I wish I was asexual!
Me: Right… So… You still wanna date me?
Everyone else: *Inhales through teeth* I’d love to buuuuuuut [is already out the door when sentence ends]
Me: Yay. So, so lucky.
I’m not ace, but I can sympathize with your experiences. It’s fairly similar to what I go through when I mention to potential partners that I’m into BDSM. Thanks to stuff like “Fifty Shades of Grey” (which btw, is a terrible TERRIBLE depiction of BDSM and please do not EVER try to model your D/s relationship on what those two do), awareness of our lifestyle is at least somewhat commonplace now, but reactions to it can be pretty mixed. If I’m lucky, they’ll get a look of curiosity or even excitement on their face, but other times, it’s a look of complete disgust/outrage/”this relationship is over”.
Poor Becky. Her upbringing sure did a number on her.
There’s the church trauma.
gravatar try 2:
ok, pretty good, but another one, then I stop
Gonna be tough after you saw the first one off…
Mount the chainsaw on something before sawing either one…. why did that just instantly occur to me when I read your comment? Becky might not be the only one worried about their own thoughts now…
Thats a solution oriented mind. Be proud!
“We will inevitably alter each other as we continue to interact” <3
Heisenberg! (no, not the drug dealer)
But they’ve got QM and all the mind bending drugs.
Or were you referring to the Heisenberg diamonds Heisenbergs? I can’t deal with the uncertainty.
I know Becky was raised in a strict fundamentalist household, and still holds a lot of what she learned there close to her heart – but DANG, that girl needs to learn to masturbate!
But you see that is also sinful because you are thinking of doing sinful things and therefore you have already committed the sin in your heart.
everything is sinful, give yourself to Jesus, it is the only way.
Jesus will-
oh no. Jesus no, put that away!
“Things’d be great if my dumb ol’ crotch weren’t so hangry”
Book title?
According to the alt text, yes. But do you trust the alt text?
okay, she REALLY needs some counseling, if Dina was half as perfect as Becky thinks she is she would be getting her some literature on sex positivity
I hardly think that’s Dina’s responsibility.
Yeah Dina takes everyone in her life at face value. If Becky outright says what’s on her mind then Dina could come up with a plan, but Becky’s dancing around it because she doesn’t even know what to think.
I don’t know how Dina could do that; the academic literature in paleontology is notably silent on sex positivity.
“And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and. cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee. that one of thy members should perish, and not. that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”
Matthew 5:30
Becky, please don’t become a bible literalist.
Wait, she has the same issues that led Joyce to be Ethan’s beard. Why did I not figure this out until now.
Sort of? I think part of that relationship’s appeal to Joyce was that sex would be off the table entirely, so she’d never have to admit she wanted it.
And want it she did:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/06-strange-beerfellows/itsme/
Becky at least admits she wants physical intimacy, but she’s afraid of retribution from the magic sky wizard if she acts upon those urges.
is this headed in a polyamorous direction?
Doesn’t solve the issue. If the problem was that Becky wanted to have sex and Dina didn’t, that might be a way forward, but that is not the case here.
Additionally, considering Beckyputs such a high value on getting married, it doesn’t feel like she’d be ok for poly.